The Incredible Life of Jonathan Doe

by Carol Coffey

  It was too late for his sister. He had tried his best to control her but before he could pack her back off to Ireland, she was four months pregnant, secretly married to Brendan’s useless, waste-of-oxygen-on-this-earthfather and had run off to New York with him. Patricia’s elopement did not last long though and she had returned to Dover, shaken and penniless and about to give birth, the child’s father nowhere to be seen. He could see the same character in the boy, the careless attitude, the living of life without purpose or plan. It didn’t help that the lad looked just like his father. He felt that he could never tell what was going on behind Brendan’s dark eyes.

  Frank had only seen the boy once during his childhood, when he returned to Ireland for his mother’s funeral. He had stayed with his sister and the boy for a week during which Brendan hardly spoke to him and spent his time sitting in his room or in the field beside the shop, readingbooks when he should have been playing football with his friends. His sister had changed too. No more was she the boisterous, defiant woman he had so often fought with. She now rarely spoke except to bark at the boy for making noise. It had worried him for months after his return to America and he had even considered asking Patricia if Brendan could come to live with him – but by then he had his own growing family to worry about and he had put his concerns to the back of his mind. Now he could see he had made a mistake. His nephew was as silent as a mute, yet seemed unable to bear the quiet and kept the radio on so loud Frank could hear it from his bedroom when he tried to sleep at night. He had hoped that his nephew’s forced return to Dover might bring them closer but, now that the lad was here, he doubted that would ever happen.

  As he weeded his front lawn, he could see Brendan coming up the street. He cringed as he watched him walk with the same swagger his father had all those years before, the strut of someone with too much time on their hands.

  He hoped none of his neighbours could see his nephew and rose to his feet as quickly as his hip replacement would allow.

  “Brendan, come on for Christ’s sake, move it! You drop Eileen off okay?”

  Brendan nodded.

  “To the door? Like I said?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She do any of her whinging? Like asking you to let her walk on alone?”

  “No, sir.”

  Frank looked into Brendan’s eyes. He didn’t believe that Eileen hadn’t started any of her nonsense on him. His work as a police officer for forty yearsmeant he could always tell when he was being lied to, but he could see nothing in his nephew’s dark pools.

  “Okay, get the lawnmower out. There’s work to be done around here.”

  Chapter 2

  When Brendan woke at ten, it was with the realisation that he had dreamt all night about his mother and, upon waking, he could not get her out of his mind. In the years since he had come to America, he had not contacted her often. At Christmas he would send her a card and on her birthday, which was the day before his own, he would phone her and engage in an awkward ten-minute phone conversation during which they would discuss the weather, his work, whether he’d managed to find a teaching job yet and if he was going to Massregularly. He would dutifully tell her what he felt she wanted to hear and cringe for the last two or three minutes of the phone call where neither of them knew what to say.

  This morning he found himself worrying if she was okay and he couldn’t understand why. He briefly wondered if seeing how Frank bullied Eileen made him wonder if his uncle had also bullied his mother when she was younger. The similarities between the two women amazed him, except his mother had often been cruel to him and, as far as he could see, Eileen was a gentle person who could do with standing up for herself more often. He couldn’t imagine his mother being easily bullied yet the thought now weighed heavily on his mind. He remembered an argument between her and Frankwhen he came to Ireland for their mother’s funeral and how uneasy she had been during his visit. Until Frank arrived, Brendan, who was seven at the time, hadn’t even known that he had a grandmother or that she lived a mere fifty miles from their shop in a town they had visited often.

  One evening, Frank had arrived back at the shop wearing a dark suit and a black armband on his left arm. He’dclimbed the stairs and called Brendan out of the kitchenonto the narrow landing. Frank went inside to where Brendan’s mother sat and shut the kitchen door, leaving Brendan on the other side.

  Brendan heard his uncle shouting at his mother. He leaned his ear against the door and waited for her voice but in the few minutes that passed he could only hear his uncle bellow that because his mother had not attended the funeral, she had disgraced him in front of the whole town. Before Frank had finished yelling, he heard his mother clear her throat. He thought that his acerbic mother would snap back at her brother but instead she spoke so quietly that he had to strain his ear further into the door to hear her voice above his uncle’s.

  “You expected me to go? After all that happened when I came home!Her being dead doesn’t change the fact that neither I nor my son was welcome there.”

  Brendan moved back from the door, the shock of her words making his heart beat sofast he was afraid they could hear it on the other side. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to understand what she was saying. Why wasn’t he welcome at his grandmother’s? What was wrong with him?

  He moved to the door again and thought he heard her crying which seemed to soften his uncle for a while.

  “Well, it’s your own fault. If you weren’t such a –”

  “A what?” he heard his mother ask sharply, her voice louder now than before.

  “So . . . so goddamn headstrong! Always shouting about what you want. You’ve never listened to anyone else. Never cared what others thought. You’ve always been the same.”

  He could hear his uncle’s heavy footsteps moving towards the door but before he could react, Frank yanked it open so unexpectedly that Brendan fell into the room and landed at his mother’s feet, bruising his hands on the rough wooden floor. His uncle pushed by him and went into their tiny sitting room on the other side of the tiny landing, slamming the door behind him. Brendan looked up at his mother and gave her an appreciative smile for standing up for him, even if it was with relatives he didn’t know existed, but his happiness was short-lived. She leant down and slapped the backs of his legs hard and walked down the stairs to her shop where she remained until Frank went to bed.

  Brendan tried again to shake his mother from his mind. He had not thought about that argument between her and Uncle Frank for a long time, yet he could remember every little detail of what they said. When Frank said his mother was always shouting it had puzzled him at the time. He had rarely heard her raise her voice. He rarely heard her speak. Even when customers came into the shop, she would nod and say the odd word but he could not imagine his mother the way that her brother had described her. Neither had he ever found out why he wasn’t welcome at his grandmother’s but he had pushed this from his mind and tried to forget about it.

  He turned over in the bed and thought about the events of the previous evening, wondering if they had triggered the depressing memories that had surfaced this morning. He groaned as he tried to find a comfortable position. He hadn’t done manual work for weeks before arriving in Dover and his back ached from the hours of weeding his uncle had asked him to do the day before. When it was over and he was leaving to walk Eileen home, Frank offered him fifty dollars but for some reason Brendan refused payment even though he could have done with the money. He wondered if it was because he felt guilty for lying to his uncle about Eileen.

  The previous evening over dinner, Frank had chatted with Coleen about the day’s work and then the couple talked at length about their early years at the house and how they had enjoyed planting the saplings that were now mature trees, shading the garden during summer and blocking off the north wind that swept up along the side of the house during winter.

  Even though Frank’s wife was nice to Brendan, he felt she tried to mother him which, for reasons h
e could not fathom, made him feel like screaming out loud. Often he would find her looking at him with an expression of sympathy and she would startle him by hugging him for no reason as she passed.

  When the conversation died down, Frank looked directly at Eileen, who like Brendan rarely spoke during dinner, and asked her if Brendan had walked her all the way to the house. His question took Brendan by surprise especially as he had already answered it earlier that day. Brendan felt his throat constrict as he watched his nervous cousin put her dessertspoon down while she prepared her answer. His heart began to beat loudly as he wondered what Frank would do if he found out he had lied to him.

  His shy cousin slowly raised her eyes upwards to meet her father’s and confirmed that Brendan had indeed insisted on walking her to the door. She had even managed to fake an annoyed inflection in her voice which seemed to please her father. What was even more clever was the fact his cousin hadn’t actually lied to her father. Brendan had insisted on walking her to the door but had given in to her protests and let her go on alone. His uncle hadn’t even noticed this prevarication. When the conversation moved on to another subject, Brendan, who was seated beside her, could see Eileen’s hands shaking on her lap. He watched as she clasped them together in an attempt to stop the tremor and then, deciding that it was useless, excused herself and retired to her room where she spent most of her evenings.

  As he reflected on the previous evening, Brendan found himself getting annoyed aboutthe effect his uncle had on his cousin. Eileen was a grown woman so why was she so afraid of her father? Why didn’t she just leave? He got up and turned the radio on, then started to make a pot of coffee. He knew that until a few years back Coleen’s mother used to live in the apartment until she had to go into a retirement home and that she had since died. He looked at the small cooker and wondered if the old lady cooked her own food here as he would prefer to do. Coleen insisted that he came inside for all of his meals. His knew it was useless to say no as she would badger him with her warm smile and friendly eyes until he accepted. Twice a day he would go into the kitchen, for lunch and dinner. He preferred to be alone so after dinner every evening he would make his excuses and retire to the apartment where he would read until the small hours of the morning, keeping the radio on to drown out the silence.

  Brendan sat down on a small armchair and read until it was time to walk Eileen to Maple Street. He walked to the kitchen door and found Coleen alone in the kitchen, washing dishes. Before she could ask he told her that he’d already eaten even though he hadn’t. He could never eat in the morning.

  “Uncle Frank up?” he asked, even though he didn’t particularly want his uncle’s company.

  “Yes, honey. You want me to call him?”

  Brendan shook his head.

  “Coleen?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Was my mother . . . em . . . talkative . . . or you know . . . argumentative?”

  His aunt turned from the sink and faced him for a moment, a rare serious expression washing over her face. She shrugged her shoulders and masked a smile.

  “Your mom!” she said in her high-pitched voice. “She never stopped talking! Oh boy, you should have known Patricia when she was a teenager – your mom was quite the tiger! Oh, the rows in this house!” Shaking her head, she returned to her dishes.

  Brendan leant against the patio door and watched his aunt. She looked nervous. What she said didn’t add up. The Patricia he knew rarely spoke, let alone shout. What had happened to his mother?

  “So what happened? Why is she so different now?” he asked.

  The serious expression returned to Coleen’s flawless face. She pushed back a bang of chestnut-brown hair from her deep-set blue eyes and smiled nervously at him. Despite her years Frank’s wife was still an attractive woman. She had a slim figure and wore more fashionable clothes than her eldest daughter.

  “I haven’t seen your mother in . . . well . . . since she left here with you. Eileen was a toddler and I was expecting Orla. It’s more than thirty years now but Frank says . . .”

  She stopped talking and seemed to choose her next words carefully.

  “Well, honey, people change,” she said slowly. “Sooner or later, we all get sense, don’t we?”

  Coleen shook the soap bubbles from her hands, drying them with a small kitchen towel for longer than she needed to. Brendan saw her glance out the kitchen door and down the hallway. He followed her eyesand found that Frank was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking at him.

  Eileen came down the stairs past her father and stood in the hallway, putting on her coat, her eyes as usual downcast. Brendan knew his conversation with Coleen was over. Hewalked down the hallway past his gruff uncle and opened the front door. Then he beckoned for Eileen to exit ahead of him. She was again dressed in the same old-fashioned clothes and carried the same heavy bag.

  “You give any thought to your community service?” Frank shouted after him but he pretended not to hear and kept walking.

  As they made their way to the end of their road and turned the corner onto Blackwell Street, Brendan tried to make conversation with Eileen. At the very least he hoped he would find out what hold her father had over her.

  “Thanks for not dropping me in it with Uncle Frank last night.”

  “Okay,” she repliedcurtly as she turned her face as far away from him as she could.

  “I have to say, I was worried for a whilebut the way you got around that question . . .”

  When she did not respond, Brendan coughed nervously. He tried to think of something to say as they made their way silently through several small side-streets off the town’s main boulevard.

  “I . . . I noticed you seemed very nervous when your father asked about me,” he finally added.

  Eileen looked down at her shoes and swallowed.

  He could feel her tense up as she quickened her pace untilthey reached the spot where they parted.

  “Thanks for walking me,” she said as she left him.

  “I’ll see you at six!” he shouted after her but she was already out of earshot or pretended to be.Brendan watched her until she was out of sight.

  He turned around and sighed, wondering what his uncle had in store for him today.

  Chapter 3

  A week passed and Brendan had not got any closer to finding out why Eileen was so fearful of her father nor had he found or even looked for somewhere to do his community service, which sent his uncle into a rage whenever the subject came up. He wanted to tell his uncle that walking Eileen alone should be considered reparation for his driving offences but he didn’t have the nerve to say it and he didn’t want to hurt his cousin who seemed a lonely soul. He thought about how Frank’s other daughters behaved around him when they visited. They all seemed to love the old man and he watched as Eileen seethed in their company. Brendan didn’t enjoy their visits any more than she seemed to. Eileen’s sisters were, like their mother, loud and constantly cheerful in that all-American way.

  A breakthrough came one morning when, during their silent walk to the homeless shelter, the strap on his cousin’s heavy canvasbag finally gave way under the weight of its mysterious contents, strewing about ten books onto the pavement on Blackwell Street. Brendan quickly bent down to help her pick them up but she pushed his hands away and began to shove the books into the bag. Despite her protests, he lifted some of them and quickly scanned their titles before placing them in the bag. He was impressed to see the works of Irish authors Kavanagh and Ó’Faoláin as well as the great American writers Steinbeck, Hemmingway and Fitzgerald among her collection. He could see her hands shake as she lifted the remaining books, looking around as she did so to see who was watching. He briefly wondered if his cousin might be mentally ill and wondered, if that was so, why nobody would have told him.

  When the last book was safely packed away, Eileen stood and lifted the bag, hugging it tightly to her chest. He stood silently and watched her as she looked nervously at him.

 
; “You won’t tell Dad?” she asked frantically.

  He could see that she was terrified. “That you’re carrying a small library around with you?” he joked.

  He smiled at her but her odd behaviour made him feel nervous. He was now sure that there was something wrong with his cousin. A silence fell between them until she looked up at him with her pale grey eyes as though she was weighing him up, wondering if she could trust him fully. When he thrust his hands forward and offered to carry the heavy load, she cowered back at first and held her beloved books even closer before slowly relinquishing her treasure to her cousin.

  “Dad says reading is a waste of time. I carry them with me because he goes through my things. He doesn’t want me . . . getting any ideas.”

  “He won’t let you have books?” Brendan asked, astounded.

  Eileen blushed. “Not just books. Friends . . . a job . . . or . . . boyfriends,” she said, blushing even more. “He only allows my volunteer work because Father Guinan organised it at the church.”

  Brendan ran his hands through his thick black hair, unsure what to say.

  “I love to read,” was the only response he could think of. “It stops you . . . from feeling lonely.” He was astonishedat the words leaving his mouth. He hadn’t even known he’d felt that way.

  Eileen nodded and smiled shyly up at him, revealing two deep dimples he had never noticed before.