Twisted River

by Siobhan MacDonald

  He laughed then, loudly. “Me? Soliciting?”

  Fuck sake! He’d been accused of a lot of things but this was definitely a new one.

  She didn’t respond but looked wordlessly at a couple of long-legged women leaning against the trunk of a huge sycamore tree a few yards away.

  “Garda, I assure you, I’m just enjoying the night air.”

  She looked at him dubiously, eyeballing him as her window wound slowly upward. The squad car crawled off, doing a three-point turn outside the boathouse, and crawled in his direction again. In the rearview mirror, he could see that it had pulled in to where the two women were now smoking. It was laughable. That was all he needed—a charge for soliciting.

  Mannix turned the key in the ignition and the shiny green numerals on the dash read 9:55. He flexed his arms on the steering wheel. He could turn around and drive back up the strand, over the bridge, and home. He’d try again to tell her. He’d tried earlier but she’d deflected him. Maybe it was fate. He wasn’t meant to tell her. But he knew that wasn’t true. He was definitely going to tell her . . .

  Or he could go to the Curragower Bar for just the one.

  That’s where she thought he was going to end up anyway. He wouldn’t get any brownie points for coming home early, not with the mood that she’d been in these last few weeks. Preoccupied with Fergus and their finances. Still, he’d take her preoccupation over the explosive spats that had erupted out of nowhere when he’d been unemployed.

  He was procrastinating. He knew that. He should go home but the anonymous conviviality of the Curragower Bar was very appealing. It had been a long day. He succumbed to the lure of the bar.

  “Mannix.” His neighbor turned around and saluted him as he walked into the bar.

  He wasn’t going to get the anonymity that he had hoped for.

  “Roger.” Mannix jerked his chin, returning the salute.

  Mannix scraped a stool alongside him. In the tiny bar there was nowhere to hide and there was no point in offending the man. There were only two other couples in the front bar and they were deep in conversation.

  “Pint?” asked Roger.

  “You’re grand. I’ll get my own,” Mannix replied, signaling the barman, pointing at Roger’s pint, and holding up one finger.

  After a while, he smelled a faint tang of salt and sweat and felt embarrassed as it dawned on him that the waterproof running jacket he’d found in his kit bag in the back of the car probably hadn’t been washed since the last time he was out with the club. He’d needed something to cover up the stains. Had that female garda noticed? Probably not in the dark of the car.

  “I hear you’re back in the saddle,” said Roger by way of a conversation opener. It was the last thing Mannix wanted to talk about.

  “Yeah, coming up for six months now.” Mannix sipped from the creamy head.

  “Tough going?” Roger addressed his query to Mannix’s reflection in the mirror behind the counter.

  Roger considered work of any description tough going. He’d been on the dole for years, and he wasn’t called Roger the Dodger for nothing. In fact, he wasn’t even called Roger. It was something more like Sean or Harry.

  “Under the capitalist’s yoke,” said Roger, sighing, when he didn’t get an answer.

  “Well, it sure beats hanging around like a tool all day!” said Mannix, who was beginning to regret coming in now. Roger irritated him, coming over all superior as if he were somehow against work on the grounds of some high-minded ideology or principle. Roger was a lazy arse and that was the holy all of it.

  “Ah, I dunno,” drawled Roger. “Where else would you want to be on a sunny day apart from sitting on the deck out front here, looking at those mad young fellas trying to canoe up the falls?”

  He turned then and looked directly at Mannix, his hooded eyes slowly blinking, lizardlike. It was then that Mannix noticed the curl of the lip and realized that he was being taunted.

  “Feck off, Roger.” Mannix smiled, thinking that he should really relax a bit. Not let things get to him so much.

  “Well, I’m not exactly living the dream, I’ll give you that,” said Mannix, opening up. “My new boss is twelve years younger than me, what do you make of that?”

  What did he expect Roger to say? How could he really expect Roger to commiserate? To empathize? What would Roger know of Mannix’s belittling daily grind? Of how it felt to bite his tongue and rein in the caustic comments that bubbled to the surface in the face of constant corporate drivel. It was a job. That was all. He should be grateful. And Mannix knew he just had to grin and suck it up.

  “That’s what happens, you see, Roger . . .” The dark sticky liquid was beginning to hit the spot. “When you’re back into the workplace after a break . . . you have to start at the bottom all over again.”

  “I suppose . . .” replied Roger, talking again to the mirror.

  “You know what this kid asked me the other day—my boss, bearing in mind that this kid is barely out of braces . . . asks me where I see myself in five years’ time. Asks me what my short- to mid-term goals are, what my long-term career plan is. And all the while I’m sitting there like a spanner, staring at the downy fluff of the baldy beard he’s trying to grow.”

  “Oh, sure, I know where you’re coming from . . .” said Roger, with conviction.

  Like fuck, Roger knew. He couldn’t possibly know the daily humiliation Mannix faced.

  The couple in the corner looked over in Mannix’s direction. He was talking too loudly. Far too excitedly. The other couple must have made a silent exit, slipping out unseen into the night.

  “Ever think of joining that brother of yours?” Roger was swilling the dregs of his pint around in a circle.

  “Spike?”

  “Yeah, Spike . . .”

  “Oh, I thought about that one many a time . . .” Mannix grinned ruefully. When he lost his job it seemed like a no-brainer. The most obvious thing in the world to do. But he hadn’t made much progress with the idea. A brick wall would not be putting too fine a point on it.

  “Was chatting to Spike in here last week,” said Roger, gulping the last foamy dregs and slapping the glass back down noisily on the counter.

  “Spike likes the pint in here, same as me,” said Mannix, also finishing his drink.

  “Yeah, haven’t seen him at all this week.” Roger paused. “A couple of guys came in here looking for him last night . . . the Bolgers, I think.” Roger addressed the mirror again, casual as you like.

  “Is that right?” said Mannix, slipping off the stool and putting his beanie cap back on. Suddenly he felt uncomfortable again. Time to go.

  “You off, then?”

  Roger seemed disappointed to be curtailed in his line of questioning. “You won’t have another?”

  “Can’t afford it, mate,” said Mannix, heading for the door. As it was, he shouldn’t even have had any. But after the night he’d had . . .

  • • •

  It was quiet enough when Mannix entered the street. The tide was gurgling over the rocks, and as he headed around the curve in the road he heard the swish and plop of a fisherman’s line. Lately, when he couldn’t sleep he’d thought about joining them, but then he didn’t want to give Kate any cause for further consternation. He hoped she’d unwound a little over the last few hours. He wanted to get this over with.

  As Mannix neared the house he looked up to see a glow coming from the top floor. Kate was in the study. She must be working late tonight. The rest of the house was in darkness. He carefully opened the front door and entered the stillness of the house. The kids’ bedroom doors were shut, not a sound coming from either.

  He sniffed. Mixed in with the lingering smell of stir-fry was a musky vanilla scent wafting down the stairs. Kate had lit a candle.

  As deftly as he could, he turned the knob of Fergus’s room. In the
sliver of light cast from the hallway, he could make out a small tuft of Fergus’s white-blond hair poking out from underneath the Spiderman duvet. His wire-rimmed glasses were neatly placed on the bedside locker. The duvet rose and fell softly under the haunted face of King Kong on the poster above the bed. Fergus was in the refuge of sound sleep. A rustling sound came from beside a pile of neatly folded clothes in the corner. Darrow—Fergus’s guinea pig—scrabbled about in his cage.

  Pushing the door a little wider, Mannix made out a collection of figurines on the floor beside the bed. Fergus hadn’t played with those in a while. They were normally kept in the large toy chest in the hallway. A shiver coursed down his spine.

  The pageant that played out on the board disturbed him. Each assembly of figures scattered around the board depicted a scene of combat. Okay, so the figures and models were soldiers and tanks, it was to be expected. But these were not the usual scenes of sentry duty or sniper positions—the collections of figures were now cast in scenes of carnage, mounds of soldiers heaped on top of one another. He’d even fashioned a rope and hung one soldier upside down from a tower. The figure dangled eerily in the draft of the doorway. Mannix shivered.

  He must have stood in the doorway for a good few minutes or more, brooding, when a muffled cough interrupted his rumination. So Izzy was awake next door after all. Poor Izzy, forced to grow up too fast for his liking, too sensible, the childish giddiness she was entitled to slowly squeezed out of her.

  “Izzy? You awake?” he whispered.

  No answer. Yet he swore he heard her cough and click her bedside lamp. The room was in darkness save for a chink of yellow streetlight coming in through the curtains and glowing eerily on the cast of Izzy’s arm. She’d made it with her mother in the Art College, and the white plaster of Paris model was now proudly mounted in a wire frame on her chest of drawers.

  Mannix stumbled on a discarded shoe as he edged closer to the bed.

  “Izzy?” he said, more loudly this time.

  She sat up in bed with a jolt, turning on the bedside lamp.

  “What’s wrong? Is something wrong?” Her dark eyes were wide and anxious.

  “No, sweetheart, why would anything be wrong?”

  There was plenty wrong, but nothing that Izzy needed to worry her young head about.

  “Oh, it’s just that . . . well . . . I thought. Oh, never mind. Good night, then, Dad.”

  She retreated, sliding beneath the duvet.

  “Night, night, Izzy.”

  He closed the door and had that horrible feeling that once again he was failing his children. Fergus and Izzy were a long way from happy campers.

  His legs felt heavy going up the stairs. In the kitchen a candle flickered on the breakfast counter. A freshly ironed shirt hung over the kitchen doorknob.

  Shit!

  He’d been distracted by the kids. He almost forgot. Making his way quickly downstairs again to the bedroom, he unzipped the whiffy nylon running jacket, putting it in the wicker laundry basket in the en suite shower room. He tugged the shirt over his head, not bothering to unbutton it. That could not go in the laundry basket. Those stains were never coming out—he knew that. Pulling on fresh boxer shorts and the T-shirt that he slept in, he opened the front door quietly and made his way to the wheelie bin around the side of the house.

  Upstairs, on the top floor, he found Kate deep in thought, staring at the computer screen.

  “Drink?”

  He offered her the glass he’d brought from the kitchen. He’d opened a bottle of the cheap wine she’d bought last week. She might want it when she heard what he had to say. But Kate didn’t even look up. She didn’t even acknowledge that he had entered the room. Tap, tappedy, tap, tap, tap went the keyboard. So it was going to be like that, was it? He might think the better of telling her anything just yet.

  “Fergus stubbed his toe . . .” she said casually.

  “Oh . . .”

  Hardly a 999 call in the grand scheme of things, he thought.

  “He was pretty upset.”

  He kept his mouth shut. She was going somewhere with this.

  “Like really, really upset, Mannix. You know the way he gets?” She looked up this time. Accusingly. “I-want-Dad upset, I-want-Dad-now-this-minute, that kind of upset . . .”

  “Poor Ferg has had one shitty day,” said Mannix.

  Her gaze was steady. “So I called your mobile, and when I couldn’t get you, I called Spike. At home. Spike said he hadn’t seen you . . .”

  Now was his opportunity. The door was wide open. He should tell her now. He felt his pulse quicken. Her eyes searched his face for an answer. He opened his mouth to speak.

  “My mobile . . .” He hesitated. “Must have left the bloody thing on silent. A problem with one of the servers tonight—we had a patch release, there were bugs, and guess who they call?” He grinned widely, amazing himself at how readily the lies tripped over his tongue. How easily they came to him now. It isn’t what he had meant to say, not how he’d anticipated the conversation going, but once more she’d thrown him off course.

  “You were at work?”

  Her tone was assured. She gave little outward sign of not believing him. Her question innocent. But this was how things had been lately. Tiptoeing around each other. Yet it represented an improvement.

  “Yup. No rest for the wicked . . .” He tried another smile and once again proffered the glass of wine. This time she took it, her fingers softly brushing his as she clasped the stem.

  “I want you to take a look at something . . .” Taking a sip, she looked back to the screen.

  Oh, Christ, what had she found?

  “Come here.” She leaned back, pulling up a curvy chair she’d bought at a college end-of-year show during the good times.

  His heart was in his mouth. But what he saw surprised him. Confused him. He leaned forward to get a closer view of the screen. An estate agent’s website displayed a shot of an elegant wood-paneled sitting room with a large marble fireplace and an ornate over-the-mantle mirror. Three oversized windows dominated the room, one recessed in a high-ceilinged alcove. It wasn’t an estate agent he recognized.

  They’d spoken briefly about downsizing, but neither of them had had the stomach to mention it since. They loved this house. Selling the beach house had been wrenching enough. As for the apartments in Bulgaria, he didn’t give a fiddler’s, but this house was different. It was their family home. The bank couldn’t take that. But what Kate was showing him was definitely not a downsize. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  “What . . . ?” He looked at Kate.

  “Just a minute,” Kate responded. “You’ll see . . .” She proceeded to scroll and enlarge each of the thumbnail shots on the screen.

  There was a well-appointed kitchen with a center island and ice-white floor-to-ceiling cabinetry with eye-level glass-paned cupboards. Saucepans and other kitchen utensils hung from a rack over the island.

  “Mmm . . .” Kate murmured her approval at the stylish room.

  “But, Kate . . .” Mannix tried to interrupt.

  “Hang on to your boxers, I’ll explain,” she said, and with exaggerated exasperation she proceeded to scroll through more photos. “The patience of a gnat,” she muttered.

  Mannix thought he’d better do as she had asked. After all, it wouldn’t hurt to humor her. He found himself looking at photos of bedrooms. There was no doubt about it. This was the home of someone with taste. And equally obvious, it was the home of someone with means.

  The bedrooms were large, the beds too, and built-in shelving and wardrobes kept everything neat and tidy. A kid’s bedroom showed a poster of Harry Potter behind the bed. Mannix had often thought it odd how Fergus liked Harry Potter in a dispassionate kind of way—not with the same all-consuming enthusiasm as other kids his age. King Kong was the man for Fergus. Poor ol’ Ferg was i
mmutable in his likes and dislikes.

  “And the pièce de résistance . . .” Kate gave a final click and pushed the mouse away with a flourish. She sat back in the chair with the satisfaction of an artist who has confidently swept the last brushstroke on a canvas.

  In the foreground of the photo in question was a balcony complete with outdoor furniture. It overlooked a park and a river. Tower blocks could be seen in the distance. Dublin? London? It certainly wasn’t Limerick. Two glasses of wine sat invitingly on a glass-topped rattan table.

  “I don’t get it.” Mannix shrugged as he swatted a tiny fly determined to land in his glass. “What am I looking at? Have we won the lotto?”

  “I wish,” said Kate, smiling, and tried to sip her wine. The fly had switched its attention to her glass now.

  “It’s an impressive pad, I’ll give you that . . .” Mannix eyeballed the screen, engaging with Kate in her flight of fancy. “The dude that owns that gaff isn’t short of a few euros.”

  “A few dollars, you mean . . .”

  “Oh . . .” Mannix looked again at the screen, squinting at the small type in a sidebar. The address was given as New York. Riverside Drive, Manhattan, New York. He now stared stupidly at Kate. Was he supposed to know what was going on? Was this a reference to some earlier conversation that he was supposed to have kept in storage, something he’d nodded and smiled at, pretending to hear while he was mentally working on something else?

  “Am I missing something?”

  “No.” She laughed at his confusion, and leaning over, she put her head on his shoulder in a rare but welcome gesture of intimacy. He tangled his fingers in the blond waves. She didn’t say anything for a second or two and he savored the moment. It had been awhile since she had openly sought any affection from him.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said, straightening herself up and looking into the viscous yellow of the glass. “I’ve been thinking about Fergus and Izzy. And about you and me as well. But mainly about Ferg . . . We have to do something.”

  “I agree.” Mannix nodded, unclear where the conversation was headed. What did a smart apartment in New York have to do with anything?