My Dad Is Ten Years Old

by Mark O'Sullivan

  I’m telling myself all this tonight so that if I do wake later, I won’t give in for a second time. I need to be as normal as possible tomorrow. Act my best, look my best. I was thinking I’d ask Jill for a loan of some of her girlie clothes, but she’ll be freaked out enough when she hears what I’m asking her to do for me. If she ever does hear. I keep putting off ringing her and it’s close to eleven already. I keep thinking of other stuff so I won’t rehearse for the hundredth time what I’ll say to her when I get up the courage to ring.

  So. Dad. The evening before he left. We were down in his room. A small wheelie suitcase stood at the end of the bed. He and Mam had packed it earlier. He lay on the bed. Happy or sad, it was hard to tell between his drugged-up drawl and his constant yawning. I was doped up too. In the pocket of my denim jacket I had the Zidane DVD I dug up in his workroom. Cruel to be kind, I was thinking, that’s how it works, right? I sat on the armchair beside his bed like a hospital visitor.

  ‘You’re all ready so?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. All ready.’

  ‘You don’t mind going, do you? I mean it’s only a few weeks, right?’

  ‘Naw, I don’t mind,’ he said, stretching his arms and yawning. ‘I need a break from this kip.’

  ‘You could move upstairs, if you liked.’

  He turned on his side and leaned on his elbow, his back to me, looking out at the evening rain.

  ‘I mean this house,’ he said. ‘It’s so old. Did you ever listen to it?’

  ‘Listen to the house?’

  ‘In the night. The creaks. The pipes banging and gurgling. One of these days the whole place is going to fall down.’

  ‘This house won’t be falling down any time soon.’

  He looked around the room. The pictures on the wall, the TV, the shelves of DVDs, looked at everything except me.

  ‘Is Marta coming back at all?’

  ‘When you’re home from your break.’

  ‘She comes from a little village in the mountains. She misses it a lot,’ Dad told me. ‘They’ve got three streets along this slope. High Street, Middle Street and Low Street. They grow wine there. And up above them, they’ve got these old ruins called the Three Maidens’ Castle.’

  ‘That sounds lovely.’ If it’s so wonderful, I was thinking, why don’t you trot off back there, Marta?

  ‘People shouldn’t have to live where they don’t want to live. Animals too. Poor old Argos. I should never have beaten him.’

  I got up from beside him and went over to the TV. I took the DVD from my jacket.

  ‘I’ve something to show you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Deep down I knew that what I was doing was reckless, but every feeling is deep down in me now, deep down beneath the fog in my brain. I stood in front of the screen and slipped in the disc.

  ‘You’re a pane, but I can’t see through you,’ he said, his voice high and nervous.

  I flicked on Scene Select and picked one at random. The music is cool. Drum and bass with a kind of bass guitar riff above an electronic crackle and buzz. I stepped away from the screen.

  ‘Is this the Man, Jimmy?’

  Dad’s eyes widened. His mouth hung open like it was a few seconds away from drooling. Dumbfounded. Dumb. Please don’t look so dumb, Dad. He began to press the buttons on his watch. He couldn’t stop his eyes being drawn to the screen. Zidane’s in the all-white Real Madrid gear. It’s a floodlit game. The cameras don’t follow the play, just him, his every move. The sockets of his eyes are dark pools in the glow of white. He does the foot-drag thing, then breaks into a run. Sometimes you don’t see any of the other players nor even the crowd. He’s watching. Always watching and it’s like he sees things no one else can see.

  ‘Is this him?’ I asked.

  He looked at me as if to say, Why are you doing this to me? Then his expression hardened.

  ‘If he comes around here, I swear, I’ll kill him again,’ he said.

  ‘Again?’ I said when I got my breath back. ‘It’s all right, Jimmy, you can tell me. It’ll be our secret. Tell me what you remember.’

  ‘Flames on the water?’

  I went and knelt by him and held on to his arm.

  ‘Try to remember more,’ I said. ‘What did the Man do to make you kill him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was small, really small,’ he said. ‘I feel bad, Eala, I feel dizzy. Turn it off, please.’

  He grimaced, swallowed back hard. I could see he blamed me for this torment he was going through. I couldn’t keep up the questioning.

  ‘Jimmy, this is a film about Zinedine Zidane,’ I said. ‘He’s a famous French footballer. He scored two goals in one World Cup Final and got sent off in another. And he’s alive, Jimmy. You never killed him. You never saw him except on television playing football.’

  ‘He makes books too. Upstairs,’ Dad whispered, his eyes raised to the ceiling. ‘He’s bad news, he is.’

  ‘Jimmy …’

  ‘I’m not so good myself. I break things and hurt people. What am I like, Eala?’

  ‘You’re a good man, a lovely man.’

  I’m there on my knees and I can’t move because if I do I know I’ll fall down into the dark. He’d killed a man when he was a kid? Who can it have been and why? He’d begun to pick at one of the little daisies embroidered into the duvet.

  ‘What happens to me, Eala, when I lose it?’

  ‘We all lose it sometimes.’

  ‘Alan never does,’ he said. ‘And I never lose it when I’m with him. Or with Marta.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said.

  ‘I wish Alan was coming to the rehab with me. I’ll miss him,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do when he goes to live in Limerick.’

  He pulled harder at the embroidered daisy and it came away between his fingers. He looked up guiltily at me. He gave me the flower.

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ he said.

  Weird how, when you’re in the middle of these situations, you can hold yourself together, hold back the tears dammed up in you and then completely fold up when you’re alone again. But every day since Dad left it’s been getting harder. Even with the tabs. And what happens when I start running out of these things? I won’t have to worry about that if my plan works out. It has to. I can’t think of any other way to bring something of the old Dad to the surface, to rescue him from his nightmare world of broken, jagged memories and give him a life again, a reason to live again.

  I take one of the pillows from under my head, lie on my side, close my eyes and hold the pillow like it’s my baby wrapped up in a soft blanket. I imagine Mam freaking out when she hears I’m pregnant. I see myself insisting on keeping the baby and her doubts turning to pure delight. I imagine how Dad’s fascination with my child will grow into responsibility, into love, into realizing that he has children too and that I’m one of them and that he loves me. And I imagine telling him that his dark secrets will always be safe with me, safely buried away forever.

  I’d like to take my sleeper now and stay in this dream, but I have to make it happen first. I have to ring Jill. And then Brian. I scroll up Jill’s number and press green to go.

  ‘Eala?’

  ‘Well, how’s … how’s it going?’ Perk up, Angie tells me, you’re slurring your words. ‘Sorry to ring so late.’

  ‘It’s half twelve,’ Jill says. There’s a sleepy pause. ‘Are you all right? Are you drunk, Eala?’

  ‘What?’ Don’t get thick, Eala, Angie tells me. ‘No. No, drowsy is all. But I can’t sleep and I … I didn’t think you’d mind if I rang.’

  ‘Course not. I got a fright, like.’ She sounds even more doped-up than I feel.

  ‘Things all right there, yeah?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, grand. Quiet.’

  ‘They’ve gone back up to Dublin, have they?’

  ‘No. Next week.’

 
‘That’s a shame,’ I say. ‘I mean, like, it’s a shame they’re going, not that they’re not gone yet, like.’

  ‘Eala, you don’t sound right. Do you want me to come over?’

  ‘No, no. Don’t mind me, I’m a bit scattered.’ Here goes. ‘And excited.’

  ‘Excited? Why?’

  ‘I’m going out with Brian.’

  ‘So I’ve heard,’ she says. ‘He’ll break your heart, Eala, I’m telling you.’

  ‘You got over him, didn’t you?’

  ‘That was different.’ This is getting too heavy for my liking. ‘Eala, there’s something you need to know about Brian. I never wanted to have to tell you this but …’

  ‘I know all I need to know about Brian, believe me,’ I tell her, but I’m thinking, How does she know about Brian being in the car that crashed into the riverbank wall?

  ‘I don’t think you do, Eala. Listen, Win told me –’

  ‘I know all this,’ I insist. ‘Brian told me everything, right? He was stupid, he made a big mistake is all.’

  ‘But how can you go out with someone who’s so … so irresponsible, so careless?’

  ‘It’s what I want.’ Lay it on thicker, Angie says. ‘I’m sick of having nothing, nobody.’

  ‘You don’t have to be alone so much. You know that. I’m always asking you to come to the cinema and stuff.’

  Being tanked up with prescription drugs slows your brain down. Which is not always a bad thing. When your thoughts are flying about pure rapid, you can’t pull them together. You miss the obvious connections, the two plus twos that make up four. One plus one making three, in this case. Win plus Brian equals Little Richard. How could I have been so blind?

  ‘Win told me …’ Jill’s not been talking about the crash on our street, she’s been talking about Win’s pregnancy. Another memory sweeps back. New Year’s Eve and we’re sitting on the window sill of Mrs Casey’s shop and Brian’s telling me not to believe Jill if she’s dissing him. ‘Or Win either,’ he’d said. And his sudden, unexpected break-up with Jill? That was probably Win’s doing. Warning him off her little sister.

  ‘Eala? Talk to me, will you?’

  Another chunk of time seems to have passed me by. I stand up and walk around to get my head moving again, stop myself from disappearing again.

  ‘I’m back. I thought I heard Tom crying here,’ I tell her. ‘There’s a favour I want to ask you.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Not Sure or Anytime, but Yeah? like she’s thinking, What’s this nutter going to say next?

  ‘Tomorrow night … will you cover for me? Like, invite me to sleep over in your place?’

  No answer. Keep your cool, Eala, Angie warns me. Do your sweetly innocent West Side Story Maria thing.

  ‘This isn’t Brian’s idea, Jill,’ I say. ‘And I’ve no intention of getting myself … you know what I mean. I’m thick, but I’m not stupid.’

  I laugh and it comes out like a pure girlie giggle. I have to dig deeper.

  ‘Please, Jill? All this time since …’ No, Angie, I’m not bringing Dad into this. ‘I never asked anything of you before, Jill. Don’t let me down. Every day is a let-down for me.’

  ‘Eala …’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘But I don’t like it, Eala. I’m worried about you. You’re so not yourself these days.’

  Not yourself. I hate that phrase. But I let it pass.

  ‘I know, I know. But I’ll be all right. I’m getting there. Thanks, Jill.’

  I switch the phone off rapid. My heart is skipping beats. My mouth is pure dry. It always is nowadays. I take my sleeper and drink off the half-litre glass of water. I’m swimming with the stars and have to lie down. The bed is a boat come loose of its moorings. I still have most of the texts Brian sent in the days after New Year’s Eve. I look through a few of them. His pleas give me the courage to ring him. One beep and he picks up.

  ‘Eala.’

  ‘Brian, just listen and say yes or no, right? Are your folks gone to Morocco?’

  ‘They’re going in the morning.’

  ‘Can I stay over in your house tomorrow night?’

  ‘You mean like sleep …?’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Yeah … Sure … if you …’

  ‘I’ll be there at nine.’

  30

  Brian’s house is on a quiet cul-de-sac of bungalows at the edge of town. Out behind the back walls lies the golf course. As I turn into the street, I can see right across the wide, contoured expanse in the moonlight. Right across to the river. I don’t know why, but it makes me feel so lonely. I have to move on, get myself quickly by Jill’s house. She’ll be watching from her bedroom window, I bet. I think about stooping low as I go by the front wall, but that’d be pure childish. I can imagine the view from her window if I did. My backpack floating along above the cap of the wall with me hidden away under it. I smile and a chuckle breaks out of me. I go by the house and don’t look to see if Jill is there.

  Mam wanted to give me a lift. She was so glad to see me in good form today and doing this normal sleepover thing that she didn’t mind when I said I’d prefer to walk. Sometimes I wonder how she hasn’t copped on to my drowsiness in the mornings and my nervy state before I take my evening tablet. Or why Sean hasn’t told her of his suspicions. It feels like he’s watching me all the time and I can’t trust him not to search my room when I’m not there, so I play safe. I keep the tablets in the knapsack I carry everywhere with me.

  Brian’s is the last bungalow in the cul-de-sac and the biggest. It has more windows in the front than the others and all of them are lit up as I open the gate. There’s a fountain hissing in the middle of the lawn. At first, it looks like the statuette of a young Greek or Roman boy is peeing into the pond around him and it’s so mad the chuckles start up again. Closer in along the path, I realize that the water’s coming from a long, narrow vase he’s holding.

  I stand at the front door and suck in a few lungfuls of air. I’m not afraid. During the day, I didn’t take any tabs because I’d decided to take two before I came here. A good plan. I’m so in control as I swing off my backpack, brush a hand through my hair, zip open my jacket and open another button on my blouse. It’s a relief to get the bag off my back. Weird how heavy a bottle of vodka can be.

  The other day in rehearsals I played Maria like she was something out of a Britney Spears video. Throwing slinky shapes and come-on looks. Derek was pure lost for words. He couldn’t focus on his lines and couldn’t come up with any smart ad-libs of his own. Miss O’Neill had plenty to say. She took me aside after my performance.

  ‘I can appreciate the fact that you’re trying to find another side to Maria’s character, but I’m afraid you’re straying too far for my liking.’

  ‘She’s so gullible, it’s ridiculous,’ I said. ‘She’s not me.’

  ‘We all have our gullible moments, Eala, believe me,’ she said. ‘And besides, flagrant is not sexy. It’s cheap.’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this show anyway,’ I said and it came out like I was asking her to tell me why. What is it about her that draws me out like this? She never shows any emotion no matter what the situation. And yet I was this close to breaking down in front of her.

  ‘My grand-aunt was an actress,’ Miss O’Neill said. ‘Never especially famous or anything, but she spent her life on the professional stage. What she loved best was acting in the Gaiety pantos. All that “Oh, yes I do,” and “Oh, no you don’t,” stuff that kids love. Well, she did her last panto when she was in her eighties and crippled with arthritis. I linked her from the dressing room to the wings. Carried her, is more like it. Then she passed me her walking stick and I held her arm while she waited for her entrance. And bang on cue, out she went on to the stage. Dancing like a young girl. There has to be somewhere we can throw away the stick, Eala. It’s as simple as that.’

  An
d this is where I’ll throw away mine. I ring the doorbell of Brian’s house. A car starts up and pulls out of one of the drives back along the street. I press closer to the door and ring the bell more urgently. Not exactly rushing to let me in, is he? Through the frosted glass side panel, I see a shape moving, hesitating, moving again. The door opens.

  ‘Well, Eala.’

  I can’t bring myself to say anything. What can you say to someone you hate so much and love so much? Someone who made a zombie of your dad and made a fool of you and –

  ‘You look cold,’ he says. ‘Come in.’

  I do a fake smile that feels creepy as soon as I start it up. I go by him and he closes the door behind me. How’s he going to want you if you keep this silence going, Eala? Angie asks. The hallway is pure flowery. Big, embossed flowers on the wallpaper. Smaller ones in the pattern of the carpet. Even the hallway mirror has a whopping great tulip etched into it. And Brian, tall behind me, staring into my eyes. Bewildered. Time to start making sense.

  ‘Your mother’s into flowers?’ I say and a snicker comes out. Not funny, Eala.

  ‘Yeah.’

  I open the backpack and pull out the vodka bottle.

  ‘Do you have any mixers for this?’

  Only now do I notice how bloodshot and puffy his eyes are. There’s a tissue in his hand and he rubs his nose with it. How romantic is that?

  ‘Sure,’ he says, all nasal and grimacing like his own voice is too loud for him to bear. ‘I can’t drink, though. I’m on antibiotics. Sinus infection.’

  ‘One drink won’t kill you, will it?

  ‘I suppose. Is orange OK as a mixer?’

  ‘I suppose. If you don’t have any Red Bull.’

  ‘I don’t think that’d be very –’

  ‘Joke, Brian. Relax.’

  He sneezes. When he’s finished clearing up the damage he looks like Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer. The flowers on the walls and floor are doing my head in. They’re beginning to stir like there’s a light breeze catching them.

  ‘Are we going to stand out here for the night?’ I ask.