by Carol Coffey
“How come he gave it to the charity?”
“Mr Thompson – that’s what he made everyone call him –”
“You knew him?” Brendan interrupted.
“I had the pleasure of knowing him. I worked with him here from 1973 to 1982.”
Brendan raised his thick dark eyebrows at her. “You’ve been here that long?”
She nodded. “Course he was an old man by the time I came here. His two sons – there’s portraits of them downstairs – they lost their lives in the Second World War. He wanted to do something to make up for the waste of his sons’ lives. He didn’t have any other children and his wife died a long time before those boys even went to war. Anyway, he saw how some servicemen came home injured with nowhere to go or nobody to care for them. He put his money into making the house a home for them until they got on their feet again. Later, he dedicated the house to helping the homeless from all walks of life. Then . . . when I came to meet him . . .”
Brendan noticed her smile fade slightly.
“It was Vietnam.” She snorted a short laugh and shook her head as if to expel a painful memory. “My fool husband always wanted to get us out of the south. As if by some miracle he’d come to another state of the US and find nobody minded the colour of his skin.”She looked away and smiled again as if she was remembering him for a moment. “Well, he must have known what he was doing after all because we upped and moved to Dover. We were young and I had my first and only baby. A boy, Theo Junior. He’s in New York now. An artist. I wasn’t but twenty-three years old when I first came into this house. I never would’ve met Mr Thompson if it hadn’t been for Theo’s fool-headedness. Well, Theo got drafted and before I knew it he was sending me mail from places I never even heard of. Bin Thuy and Phan Rang. Can’t believe I can still remember those strange names!”
Brendan became uneasy at the personal story she was telling him. He was, after all, a stranger. He moved into one of the large bay-windowed rooms at the front of the house to look around. He knew that her story wouldn’t have a happy ending and hoped she’d change the subject if he tried to distract her. She followed him and sighed.
“The men use this room?” he said, glancing around at the comfortable armchairs and large television.
“Sometimes,” she replied absent-mindedly.
Brendan could see she was intent on finishing her story.
“Anyway,” she continued, “my Theo never came home and I never got no more cards off him since the last one. 1972 it was. I still have it. Going to give it to my eldest grandson when I’m gone. That same year, I read in the local paper here that Mr Thompson was taking in Vietnam vets who needed a home. Not all of them were local boys – most in fact came from other places. Landed home and ended up here. Much like me. Well, I’d come down here and look for my husband among those poor men. Some had no legs, arms, some blind. Some didn’t know who they were anymore. So I thought, maybe he’s here. Maybe my Theo remembered Dover and got himself here to look for me and our baby.”
She shook her head and let out a long breath, as if the memory, despite the passing of the years, was still too painful.
“Oh, my foolishness! I looked and looked and then I got so down I let go of everything I believed in. I’d have lost my will to live if it wasn’t for my child. Every so often, Mr Thompson would come out of the parlour downstairs and talk to me. He was kind and on days when I thought I could look no more, he’d phone me if any confused black men ended up on the doorstep.”She laughed out loud and shook her curly hair again. “But he was just being kind because he knew Theo wasn’t ever coming back. Then, after a while, I knew it too. Though they never found him. Never found my Theo’s body. Probably, they said, he’d drowned on a shore with a strange name to it. But I still came here whenever I could just to talk to the men here, to find out what it was like, what life there had been like for my Theo. And you know something? I started to find love here, to find my way again. I found God here in these men, black and white. Soon I wanted to come here every day and, when Theo started school, that’s what I did. Mr Thompson gave me a job looking after those men. They didn’t have to wander the streets during the day like they do now. No, he cared for them around the clock until he’d spent nearly all of his inheritance doing it. I had never had a job like that before, one I loved. Mostly I worked in stores or diners before I married. Then, when Theo went to senior school, I went to college and got my social work degree. Proudest day of my life and I said Theo must’ve known what moving to this place would bring me. He did find me a place where colour didn’t matter as much, though it hadn’t mattered to me at all beforehand. I never thought about it like he did. He knew. He knew he had to leave me somewhere where I’d be okay.”
Alice clasped her hands and rubbed them together. She fixed her gaze on Brendan who continued to avoid her eyes. He thumped a large wooden pillar that stood in the middle of the large living area and hoped she didn’t want him to respond. He never knew what to say in these situations. While she was speaking, an idea had slowly come to him. If Alice bought the materials, he could do all of these repairs as his community service. It could be the perfect place for him to do it. Apart from John Doe, who he could keep his distance from, there wouldn’t be anyone else here to bother him. Frank had a large shed full of tools that he could use so it wouldn’t cost her much. He looked at Alice and noticed that she seemed to be waiting on him to say something.
“I can do all the repairs,” he said, hoping that she hadn’t been expecting anything remotely resembling empathy.
“Now, that’s what I’d hoped you’d say,” she replied, smiling once again.
“You knew I could do carpentry?”
“Mmm-hmm. Eileen told me all about her talented cousin.”
Brendan grinned and wondered if Alicehad told him her sad story to manipulate him into doing something to help. In fact, he wondered now if she had been manipulating him since he arrived at the picket fence of the shelter. He thought back to when he’d arrived and how he’d thought he’d seen Alice looking at him as she spoke to the contractorand how she hadn’t acknowledged him but had looked away. Then the slow realisation came to him that the visitor looked nothing like a builder and that she’d known Brendan was watching her.
“That man, he wasn’t a contractor, was he?”
Aliceburst out laughing. “Lord, I almost lost it when you said he must be doing okay for himself. Dr Reiter is a contractor of sorts, ’cept he comes here to work on heads, not doors!” she laughed. “And, even then, he doesn’t get the job done!”
Brendan walked with her towards the hallway but stopped suddenly when he saw John Doe sneaking up the stairs. He wondered if the strange man had been listening to his conversation with Alice.
He creased his forehead, wondering now if he could cope with John Doe’s madness.
“Don’t you worry ’bout John. He’s the kindest, gentlest soul I ever met in my life and in here I’ve been blessed to know many.”
She led to the front door where Eileen was waiting patiently. His cousin didn’t look surprised when she saw him inside the house. He knew that she must have had some part in Alice’s plan or perhaps she had even been the one to orchestrate it. He turned to Alice, unsure if she knew the reason he wanted the work. His probation officer would be contacting her and he didn’t want to have to explain this later. It was better that she knew now.
“It’s for . . . community service,” he said, somewhat embarrassed.
“Uh huh. I know it. See you tomorrow,” she drawled, laughing as she walked away.
Chapter 6
“Here?” Brendan asked from the top of a shaky wooden ladder that looked like it had seen better days.
“No! A little to the right!” two voices shouted from beneath him.
Brendan adjusted the outside light that had come down from the back wall of the house during a storm the previous winter.
“Here?”
“More right!” Pilar shouted while Alic
e squinted up at him.
“Here?”
“Yes!” the two voices chorused.
Brendan took the drill from his nail-belt and was about to start driving the fixing into the wall when he noticed John Doe hiding behind the dense scrub at the back of the large garden, watching him. Pilar followed Brendan’s gaze and beckoned for John to come out of his hiding spot and join them but he moved swiftly along the boundary wall of the garden, his eyes trained forward to avoid making eye contact with Brendan.
“He will come around,” Pilar said in her New Jersey accent which transformed to a rich, melodic Spanish accent when she spoke with John Doe. In the five days since Brendan had come to work at the shelter, he had learnt that the Puerto Rican beauty had come to America with her family when she was five but that Spanish was still the language she spoke at home where she lived with her brother and sister-in-law.
Brendan shrugged and returned to his work. Despite John Doe’s apparent fear of him, he was enjoying the work and even more so enjoying spending time with the pretty Latina who had worked at the shelter for ten years. After his first day, she had offered to drive him home and had now taken to picking him up when she was on day shift. So pleased was Frank to hear that Brendan had not only sorted out his community service but was doing it at a charity which was a favourite of the parish priest, that he surprised Brendan by allowing Eileen to spend more time at the shelter to ensure he could continue to escort her each day. Even more surprising was his uncle’s reaction when Pilar called to the door on the second morning.
As Brendan entered the kitchen he heard her in the hallway,greeting Frank warmly and calling him “uncle”. Frank practically dragged the petite woman into the kitchen in a bear hug while Brendan stood open-mouthed.
“You know each other?” he asked, astonished.
“Know each other? Coleen and I practically raised this little beauty when her mom died.Pilar was in the same class as Orla. Her dad, Emilio, Lord rest him, was my partner for twelve years right here in Dover!” He excitedly lifted Pilar off her feet for another bear hug.
His uncle’s enthusiasm for Pilar had thrown water on Brendan’s theory that he was a racist who had no time for anyone that wasn’t white andpreferably Irish. That evening, when Coleen was alone in the kitchen, Brendan told her about his uncle’s comment about the Hispanic men on the morning that they drove to the hospital, and asked her if he did not like Latinos.
Coleen looked embarrassed but as usual smiled sweetly, her deep-set blue eyes showing only a hint that there was something behind her husband’s comment.
“Honey,” she had said in her high-pitched voice, “your uncle is a kind man and no, he has no problem with Hispanics. None at all.” And she walked abruptly from the room, leaving him alone in the kitchen.
But despite her insistence that his uncle had no problems with Hispanics, Brendan heard his aunt and uncle arguingabout it later that night in their bedroom above the kitchen, so he knew that he had not come to the wrong conclusion. The question was why his uncle behaved that way when he clearly had no problem with Pilar. Brendan opened the patio door quietly and walked down to his apartment, sorry that he had brought up the subject at all.
After almost two weeks, John Doe finally began to show signs he acceptedthat Brendan was no threat to him, just as Pilar had predicted he would.
It happened one morning when he tried to pass Brendan who was carefully repairing several loose balustrades on the stairwell. Brendan stood and moved his tools to one side to allow the man to pass.
“Sorry,” Brendan said but John looked away and ran down three of the marble steps before turning around to look at Brendan.
“That’s okay,” he said nervously, once he was safely out of Brendan’s reach.
Alice, who was standing at the foot of the stairs, winked at Brendan and patted John’s back as she led him down the hallway.
Threemore days passed before John said another word to Brendan and, again, it happened when John had no option but to try to pass him as he continued to repair the intricate banisters.
As he moved carefully past, Brendan could hear himmurmur nervously in Spanish.
“You learn Spanish in school?” Brendan asked, startling both himself and the frightened man.
He had continued to be puzzled about how this Southern-sounding man spoke such fluent Spanishbut he had not intended to initiate contact with him. The question had just come out spontaneously. Things were going well at the shelter and the last thing he needed was another one of John Doe’soutbursts.He had asked Pilar about it on the ride home one evening and learnt that the Spanish John spoke was different from her Puerto Rican dialect and was in fact more like the Spanish spoken by Mexicans.
John pressed his back into the wooden stairwell and eyed Brendan suspiciously.
“I don’t know . . . no.”
“Where’d you learn to speak it so well then?”
“I . . . I always spoke it. I didn’t learn it.”
Brendan could see that John was becoming anxious and knew it was time to end the conversation.
“Well, you’re pretty good,” he said as he returned to his work.
He heard John walk down a few more steps and halt.
“Are you really Irish?” John asked.
“I was born here but, yep, I’m Irish. I was raised there.”
“And you’re really Eileen’s cousin?”
“Yes,” Brendan replied, amused.
“You don’t look Irish,” John said quietly.
“I get that a lot!” Brendan laughed. He turned to look at the unusual man and noticed how very innocent he seemed.
And you don’t look Spanish, Brendan thought, but did not articulate this for fear of affecting the man’s erratic temperament.
John nodded and gave Brendan a somewhat wary smile and continued down the stairs, this time turning his back to Brendan and moving down the stairs at a slower, more relaxed pace.
The following afternoon, as Brendan set about trying to fix the old bedroom furniture in the two large dormitories on the second floor, Alice called him from the bottom of the narrow stairs that led to the attic. It was Friday afternoon and Brendan had begun to dread it as the long lonely weekend stretched out before him.
“Could you fix John’sbookcase before you go? He said it looks like it’s about to collapse.”
Brendan went back to the dorm for his tools and then followed Alice up the creaking stairs.
“Does he know we’re coming up?” he asked nervously.
“He’s the one who asked for you to fix it!” she exclaimed. “And John lets hardly anyone in that room of his. I haven’t been up here myself for months. Anyway, he’s with Dr Reiter downstairs in the living room so . . . we’ll likely expect some Spanish mumbling later. He’s always like that when the doctor’sbeen.”
Brendan remembered his first encounter with the aloof man in the sky-blue suit and wondered if the psychiatrist was any friendlier to John.
He bent down slightly as he entered the tiny door that led into a large open area. The small entrance reminded him of the door in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He tried to stand but the truss roof of the attic only increased to his height in the centre of the room.
“It used to be used just for storage but John’s been up here a long time now,” Alice said as she pulled a cobweb from her hair.
“How come he doesn’t sleep in the dorms?” Brendan asked.“Looks like you could use this space.”
Alice nodded.“We could use it all right but . . . this suits him better. John’s been on the street lots of times but he’s not your average homeless person. Needs to be here in the quiet at times. And, Lord, we don’t send him out neither. John ain’t made for the street, that’s for sure.”
Light slanted in from the round window and from its twin which looked out towards the back of the house. Brendan looked around the dusty room which looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. The old oak floor was covered with a f
ine film of dust and cobwebs hung in every corner. John’s single wooden bed, unlike the other beds in the shelter, was not hospital issue. A toilet and sink stood behind a cheap partition at the far end of the room. Brendan could hear the tap dripping and made a mental note to come back and fix it.
A large plywood bookcase, strained with the weight of a multitude of books, stood against the wall to the left of the bed. Two of the upper shelves had given in to their burden and had broken clean across the middle, their contents hanging precariously down onto the shelf below. Brendan scanned the books quickly and reckoned the man had at least a dozen books on how to grow apples trees.
The remaining wall was surprisingly clear of any objects save for a large map of North America. Brendan, who had grown up with a love of maps, studied the chart. He had also had a large map of America on his bedroom wall as a child and had marked all the states he planned to see when he got here. He had not made it to any of the places he had longed to visit. He knew that deep down he worried that the realisation of these long-held dreams might bring him disappointment or that the solitude these quiet places would offer his troubled mind would leave him alone with thoughts he would rather avoid. Instead, he had buried his head in the noise of the big city and, apart from his rare trips to his relatives in New Jersey, he had never left the state of New York. He peered closer at the map and noticed tiny coloured pins placed in various states with a fine red string wound from pin to pin.
“What’s this about?” he asked Alice.
She let out a long breath. “Poor John. Dr Reiter sees this, he’ll tell him off for sure.”
“What is it?”
“It’s him trying to get home. Poor love. Ever since I’ve met him he’s been trying to figure it out. Never did though. This is John’s home and, for now anyway, this is where he’ll be. Young Mr Thompson, that’s what I call old Mr Thompson’s nephew who oversees the funding for the house, he’s pushing for us to get John into a housing development but we’ve tried before and it fails . . . it fails badly . . . and he ends up back here all down in despair. Ain’t worth it. I guess though that you can’t blame John for trying to get home. I’d do the same thing myself. There’s times I don’t rightly agree with Dr Reiter – or Pilar for that matter. She trained with Dr Reiter in New York asa psychiatric nurse. Seems normal to want to find out where you’re from, don’t it? Seems like everyone wants him to move forward but how can he when he doesn’t know what’s behind him?”
