by Carol Coffey
Brendan let out a long puff of air and stood, stretching himself. He looked out at the front driveway and wondered what he’d do with himself that day. In the driveway stood Eileen’s perfectly shiny car.
“Hey, do you want a driving lesson?” he asked.
“Are you allowed?”
“I won’t drive, you will!” he replied.
A rare broad smile washed over Eileen’s face. She leant forward and embraced him gently. “Thank you, thank you!” she said excitedly as she ran upstairs to get dressed.
Brendan walked down the hallway and went into the kitchen to pour himself a cold coffee from last night’s leftovers. As he replaced the coffee pot onto the port, he noticed a letter on the counter. He recognised the tiny, neat handwriting as his mother’s.
Without thinking he picked up the letter and moved to the table to read it. It was addressed to his aunt and uncle and began with the usual few lines asking how the family were. Brendan scanned down to read how business in the shop was bad because large supermarkets had taken over the trade small shops used to depend on. She went on to say that she had decided to sell up and had placed the small shop on the market. He moved further down the letter and read that she had decided to come to America for an extended stay while she decided what she was going to do with herself and that she hoped they could put her up for a while. He cringed when she added that she would understand if they didn’t want to do that and that she’d find accommodation in town. It made her sound so desperate, so alone. So like him. Her last line read that she did not want to go to New York for “obvious” reasons. He wondered if the “obvious reason” was him and the anger that he felt towards her in his childhood resurfaced and surged through him like molten lava.
He threw the letter down on the table and buried his head in his hands. He understood now why his uncle had been so irritated last night and how quiet the normally talkative Coleen had been over dinner. It also made sense now that Frank had asked him if he had told his mother about his forced move to Dover and why he had said in hushed tones, unusual for his uncle, that he’d better tell her soon. Brendan’s breathing quickened and his heart began to race. He did not want his mother here, not when his life was going well for a change. Not when he was happy. He lifted the letter again to see if she’d said when she would arrive but there were no dates given. Without thinking, he ripped the letter up and walked out of the patio door to his apartment where he lay on his bed, completely forgetting about Eileen, who had come downstairs to find him gone and the letter in pieces on the kitchen floor.
It was after eight that evening by the time Brendan finally calmed down. He had remained in the apartment for the day and had risen from his bed only twice: once to use the bathroom and then to eat a small bowl of dry cereal. He got up and walked down the side entrance and out onto the street. He felt like walking and found himself moving along the town’s main street, which looked very different at night. Small groups of teenagers, many of whom were Latinos, stood on the pavement, queuing for a nightclub or talking to friends. He watched couples walk into the cinema, hand in hand, and others take a stroll through the town with their children. He suddenly felt very alone and wondered what John was doing at that very moment. He hoped that Pilar was working and that John would not be hiding in his room from this Kuvic.
With nothing else to do, he turned onto Salem Street and took the long way to the shelter. It looked very different in the darkness. The window of each room was ablaze with light, including Jonathan’s single round window in the attic. Brendan glanced around the pristine lawn and the apple trees. The place looked so peaceful and welcoming. When he returned his gaze to the attic, Jonathan was standing at his window looking down at him. It was as though he knew that Brendan was standing there. For a moment the two men just stood and stared at each other until Jonathan raised his hand and waved weakly. Brendan waved back and felt suddenly embarrassed to be standing there, waving at another man in the darkness. He turned and walked quickly away from the house but when he glanced back, Jonathan was still in the window, his spectacled face pressed close to the windowpane.
Brendan was still not ready to return home and decided to take a different route along Richards Avenue. The air had not yet cooled from the July heat and he wandered slowly through the picturesque streets, trying to banish his mother from his thoughts by focusing on the beauty around him. All along the boulevard, cherry blossoms shone in pink hues under the streetlights. The moon, large and round above him, looked particularly beautiful. He stopped to count the stars but could only make out three or four of the brighter ones, the light of the others drowned out by the town’s lighting.
When he finally arrived onto Watson Drive, his uncle was sitting in the dark on a wrought-iron seat in the far corner of the garden.
“Brendan, come here. I want to talk to you.”
Brendan let out a sigh. He walked slowly to where his uncle sat.
“Sit down. It’s a lovely night,” Frank said quietly.
Brendan sat and folded his arms instinctively as he waited for the lecture on why he shouldn’t read or tear up other people’s letters.
“I just wanted to tell you that I’m proud of you,” Frank said.
Brendan turned and narrowed his eyes suspiciously at his uncle.
“The way you’ve worked at the shelter, the pride you’ve put into the work. Coleen was talking to Pilar after Mass last Sunday and she says you’ve done wonders there.”
Brendan nodded but remained silent. He could feel a ‘but’ coming.
“I know things haven’t been easy for you . . . and I know I’ve been hard on you . . . but Coleen and I want you to know that everything we’ve . . . everything I’ve said has always been for your own good. It’s because we care about you.”
Brendan could see the old man’s eyes moisten. He looked down, embarrassed to see his tough uncle becoming emotional.
“How do you feel about your mother coming here?”
The directness and suddenness of his question took Brendan by surprise. Helooked up for a moment and shrugged, returning his gaze to his feet much like Eileen did when she felt awkward.
Frank sighed and folded his arms across his fat body. “Well, son, you know my sister and I haven’t always gotten along. There are reasons for that that are best left in the past but what I want to know is how it’ll affect you. You’ve been a different man these past few weeks. Happier. Coleen and I don’t want to see that change. If you feel that your mom coming will affect you, then we’ve decided to put you first. It’s something we should’ve done a long time ago.”
Brendan kept his eyes on the ground. He briefly wondered what his uncle meant by his last comment but decided to focus on the part about him being happy. He was in a much better mood lately. He was probably the happiest he had ever been but he didn’t want to be responsible for shutting his mother out, not when she had no one else to turn to. There were no other family members in Ireland and, despite how he felt about her, he didn’t want to see her grow old alone. Also, he planned on returning to New York as soon as he could, so he felt he had no right to insist that his mother stay away.
“It’s fine, Uncle Frank,” hesaid as he stood up.
He watched his uncle grimace with pain as he tried to lift himself off the hard bench, and leaned forward to help him.
Frank grabbed Brendan and hugged him tightly. He seemed relieved, as if he couldn’t bear the thought of turning his sister away.
“You’re a good boy,” he said, his voice muffled in Brendan’s thick hair.
Brendan moved backwards until Frank let go his grip.
“Anyway, we’d better go in now – let’s get some food into you,”Franksaid as he moved toward the front door, embarrassed now at his show of affection.
Chapter 8
Monday morning came and Brendan walked with Eileen to the centre. Pilar had started on a week of night shifts and he would only see her if he came back late in the evenings, which he planned t
o do. For weeks he had tried to chat her up but the Latin beauty was having none of it. His charm had worked well on other American girls but Pilar was different. He was going to have to come up with another way to ask her out.
When he entered the hallway of the shelter he was surprised to find a tall, lean man of about forty standing in the entrance. Eileen took one look at the man and scurried off to the laundry where she would spend the day washing the sheets from the night before. Brendan had been genuinely surprised to see how hard his cousin worked each day at the shelter. It was not the picnic he had imagined and he knew she often left with tired legs and an aching back.
The man walked forward and thrust out his hand to Brendan.
“I’m Kuvic. You must be Eileen’s cousin.”
Brendan nodded and took Kuvic’s hand. “Is that your first name?”
“No,” Kuvic replied curtly.
“I’m Brendan.” He winced from the tight clutch. As he tried to free himself from Kuvic’s grip, he noticed the deep pockmarks in the man’s face, a sign of teenage acne. He had light brown hair and sea-green eyes that seemed to be mocking him. He wore a navy shirt and trousers that made him look like a security guard instead of a social-care worker in a homeless shelter.
“It’ll be nice to have someone round here who pisses standing up,” Kuvic sneered.
Brendan cringed at the man’s vulgarity and managed to loosen his hand from his tight grip.
“You mean apart from the clients?” he replied amiably, referring to the mostly male ‘clients’ that passed through the door each day. He had become used to the politically correct terminology used at the shelter, terminology that he’d once scoffed at but now embraced.
“Well, they mostly piss in the beds. The ‘clients’. Don’t know why I keep forgetting to call them that.” Then he walked abruptly away from Brendan and into one of the sitting rooms where the television blared.
Brendan stood for a moment and tried to make sense of what had just happened. He couldn’t believe that a staff member could talk about the people that came in each day in such a demeaning way. He knew that he’d been guilty of judging the clients when he first came to the shelter only six short weeks beforehand. In the beginning, he’d thought they were a useless lot of wasters, living on benefits and taking no responsibility for themselves. Then he began to see similarities between himself and the men who crossed the threshold each day and he began to recognise the simple life events that for some led to a lifetime of homelessness. He had even come to understand the destructive nature of Zeb whose dyslexia had prevented him from acquiring an education in the small town where he had grown up in the 1940’s. Poor literacy and noqualifications meant Zeb couldn’t find work and, when his benefits ran out, he lost the room he was renting in a boarding house and took his life’s frustrations out on everyone around him. When Brendandrove for a second time while drunk, which he accepted now as a stupid, reckless act, he knew that Colm Mooney had no choice but to sack him – it was Colm’s work van that he had been driving that night. In a few short weeks he had no money to pay his rent and, despite his problems with his Uncle Frank, if it hadn’t been for his support he’d be in one of these shelters himself.
He had learnt a lot in what had been a new environment for him but Kuvic worked here and should know better than to talk about the clients in that way. He went to the shed to collect his tools for the day and began repairing the shutters on the side of the house.
He didn’t know where Alice was but he wished she was here to keep an eye on Kuvic who had not made a great first impression on him. At lunchtime he relaxed when she appeared in the driveway in her battered Ford. She looked harried but still took the time to quickly check on Jonathan who was sitting in the garden waiting on her to return.
Brendan sat on the grass and ate a sandwich that Henrietta, the cook, had taken out to him. Jonathan, who had been sitting in the distance almost the entire morning watching Brendan work, came up and sat close beside him. He uncovered the plate of lunch Henrietta had given him also and took a swig of water. Brendan glanced furtively at Jonathan’s strange clothes. He wore a different sleeveless woollen vest, this time with yellow and green stripes, over a white striped shirt. Brendan wondered where John managed to find these old clothes and why he wore them in the first place.
“Sure is a lovely day,” Jonathan said.
Brendan looked up at the July sunshine. He pulled off his T-shirt to work on his deepening tan. It had been the reason Molly Keenan had followed him behind the bike shed on the school grounds one summer. She told him she loved his dark skin and eyes and had allowed him to kiss her. They were both about fourteen years old and it was the first time Brendan realised that girls found him attractive.
“You’ll get skin cancer,” Jonathan said as he placed a blade of grass in his mouth and lay back on the lawn.
Brendan laughed.
“Oh, I’m not sassing you. My daddy knew about that long before people were talking about it. He said too much sun is a bad thing.”
Brendan laughed but then remembered the sad photo of Jonathan staring out of the newspaper’s archives.
“You remember him? Your father?” he asked.
“Sure do,” Jonathan drawled. “We lived on a property in Newsart, Virginia, and, boy, it was hot there each summer. You had to wear a hat, save you from sunstroke. We owned a huge apple orchard on ’bout fifty acres. Me and my daddy and my brothers worked there all year round and two Negro families came back each year at harvesting time. Yeah, Daddy said there was nothing like a hard day’s work to keep a man happy.”
Brendan peered closely into Jonathan’s face to see if he was making the story up but the strange man stared back at him without blinking. The language he used was so old-fashioned. He was pretty sure that people of African-American heritage preferred to be called ‘black’ and that no one had used the term Negro since the ’50s or ’60s. Yet he knew that the man meant no offence. He was also sure that people in Virginia didn’t use the term ‘sassing’ half as much as he had heard Jonathan use it when he was talking to Alice.
“Sounds nice. Sounds like a nice life,” he replied.
“Yeah. It sure was. When the work was done, I’d climb that mountain beside our farm or, if I was plumb tired out, I’d ride my old mule up there and breathe in the cool air high up on that hill. It was so fresh and clean, make you want to stay up there, drinking it in.”
Jonathan picked an apple from his lunch pack and polished it on his woollen vest. He took a bite.
“Ughh! I don’t much care for these early apple varieties. You wait ’til my crop in the fall. You won’t taste better apples anywhere. Course if I was in Virginia, I could harvest them at least two weeks earlier than I can here.”
“What were your parents’ names?”
“My dad was also Jonathan and my mother’s name was Lorna.”
“Did . . . did you have any brothers and sisters?”
“Sure. I have two brothers, Clay and Virgil, and three sisters, Mackenzie, Tyler and Cassie.”
“They’re pretty strange names, except for Cassie,” Brendan replied, remembering the Cassie he had bumped into in Murphy’s pub on more than one occasion.
“Yeah, but they’re common names round those parts,” Jonathan replied.
“Where are they now?” Brendan asked.
“I . . . I don’t know. Been telling you about that. I guess . . . I guess they moved, maybe.”
Brendan bit his lower lip, the guilt of probing the man about his family weighing down on him. “I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Jonathan replied genially.“It’s nice to have someone to talk to about them. Most people try to make me stop!”
Brendan nodded and stood. He dusted himself off and lifted his plate off the grass to take it into Henrietta.
“I can do that,” John said as he took the plate and rushed inside with it.
He returned almost immediately and sto
od smiling at Brendan.
“Can I help?” he asked, looking down at the shutters that Brendan had taken off to plane back.
“Sure,” Brendan replied.
He handed John a sheet of sandpaper and watched as he rubbed the shutter so hard that he was eating into the wood. Brendan took the shutter from him and looked around for something else for his new apprentice todo.
“Can you paint?” he asked.
“Landscapes?” Jonathan asked seriously.
“No! Shutters, Jonathan! Do you think you could paint them?They just need a fine coat, that’s all. Real light strokes, okay?”
“Sure. I can do just about anything,” he replied, oblivious of the mess he had made sanding the shutter.
Brendan opened a can of paint and handed Jonathan a shutter he’d already sanded. He looked up and saw Kuvic standing at the corner of the house, smiling at them.
“I see he’s got you calling him Jonathan? That’s not your name, is it, John Doe?”
Brendan looked at Jonathan who had frozen to the spot. He returned his gaze to Kuvic as he walked off, his steel-capped heels tapping loudly on the driveway as he moved.
“You okay?” Brendan asked.
“Sure. I don’t pay him any attention,” Jonathan replied nervously.
“What’s his problem?” Brendan asked.
“He just hates to see anybody happy,” Jonathan replied. “Word is he was put out of his job as a prison guard cos he was abusing the female prisoners . . . you know, sexually.”
Brendan’s mouth dropped open.“Really?”
“Yeah. I heard Pilar telling Alice and Henrietta ’bout it. Her brother’s a police officer and she said even when they sent him to the male part of the prisonhe tried to bribe prison guards to let him into the female prison at night. The governor got rid of him but Kuvic’s uncle put pressure on Mr Thompson here to give him a job at the shelter. All the women here including Pilar, Alice, Jane, all of them, they don’t much care to be around him.”
