by Carol Coffey
“Kuvic’s here? I thought he was suspended!”
Pilar let out a huge breath. “He is but he still has a right to attend the interview.”
“Today’s the interview for Alice’s replacement? Good luck!”
She nodded nervously and cleared her throat. “Brendan, do you think I have too much make-up on? Isabel said I looked like a whore when I was leaving the house!” But she was smiling as she said it.
“You look lovely,” he replied, laughing.“Especially when you smile. You should do it more often.”
He turned to leave but swivelled back on his heels. Pilar seemed happy which meant it was a good time to ask her something.
“I don’t suppose you’d let me take you to Alice’s party?”
A moment passed before she answered but it seemed to Brendan like an eternity.
“No strings?” she asked.
He raised his hands in mock horror.“No strings!” he agreed.
As he walked away, Brendan was wondering exactly what he had agreed to but guessed that it meant the night would not be ending as he’d hoped it would.
He climbed the stairs and knocked at Jonathan’s door.
“Come in,” his friend said meekly.
Brendan opened the door and found Jonathan sitting on his bed rubbing his foot.
“Now I know why I didn’t see you on the road,” he said as he looked down at Jonathan’s swollen foot. “What did you do, run all the way so you wouldn’t have to talk to me?”
“Something like that,” Jonathan replied sourly.
Brendan sat on the bed and looked out of the circular window.“You’ve got a good view from here,” he said absent-mindedly.
“But it’s not the view that I want, Brendan. I want to see the mountains again. I want to see my family again.”
Brendan sighed and went to the window. He looked out at the neat manicured lawns of the houses on the opposite side of the road.
“My mother’s flying in here on Thursday and . . . I envy you your feelings towards your family. I wish I felt that way. I don’t get along with my uncle – well, we’re getting on better these days. That is, as long as he doesn’t catch me giving Eileen driving lessons or notice that I lost his fishing-rod today! And my aunt – she’s nice to me but the way she looks at me with such . . . such pity . . . I find it hard to look her in the eye because I don’t want to see her looking at me that way. My cousins . . . well, I’d rather chew my arm off than spend time with them . . . with the exception of Eileen . . .Eileen I like. And my mother . . . well . . . we have nothing to say to each other. I don’t even like being in her company.”
“So, you’re saying that I shouldn’t want to see my family becauseyou don’t like yours?” Jonathan asked, a slight tone of sarcasm in his voice.
Brendan shook his head. “No, no. Just that family is not everything. There are other things . . .like friends.”
“Do you have many friends?”
Brendan thought about the lads in the pub that he would never see if he didn’t go into Murphy’s. Not one of them had contacted him since he’d come to Dover – not that he left them with a forwarding address, he conceded, but he knew that they wouldn’t have phoned him even if he had. They were drinking buddies, not friends. He hadn’t even had any real friends in school where he had stood out from the pale-faced, blue-eyed Irish kids in his class.
“You’re the only friend I have,” he said as he stared out of the window.
Jonathan got up from the bed and hobbled over to the window.
“It’s not a bad view, I guess,” he said.“Maybe we’ll go fishing again?”
Brendan turned his gaze from the window into the dismal room. A thought struck him. “Do you like amusements?” he asked. “You know, like dodgem cars and big wheels?”
“Em . . . sure,” Jonathan replieduncertainly.
“Well, there’s a place on Warren Street. Eileen could come too if she’s not too busy here.”
“Yes.”
“How ’bout we do that? Tomorrow?” Brendan moved to the doorway.
“Tomorrow!” Jonathan echoed.
Chapter 22
The following Tuesday, Brendan helped Henrietta in the kitchen after he had finished feeding Zeb another semi-solid meal. He and Eileen had to leave early that day to welcome his mother whom Orla and Doug were collecting at JFK airport at three o’clock. He rubbed down the counter and stacked the plates into the dishwasher, breaking two in the process.
“What’s got into you?” Henrietta asked.
Brendan shrugged.
“Well, somethin’s up!” she snapped in her strong New York accent.
Henrietta had moved to the small town after her son transferred there and, like Alice, she could see right through him.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
He didn’t want to tell the cook how much he was dreading his mother’s visit. The image of his mother sitting across the table looking at him with her icy stare made him feel physically sick. He had taken Frank’s advice to forewarn her that he was now jobless and penniless and living in his uncle’s tiny annex until he completed his community work, but he could not muster the courage to phone her and had chickened out by sending her a one-page letter, leaving out the part about serving eight long days in jail that he would never forget as long as he lived. He wasn’t surprised when he received no reply.
He was sorry that her visit had dampened the good mood he was in. It had been a great few days with Jonathan. They had been out every day, including the weekend – at the amusements, which Jonathan and Eileen had loved, looking in museums, walking through the mountain trails and exploring the outer regions of Dover on the days when Pilar could drive them. He had even managed to sneak in two driving lessons with Eileen when Frank and Coleen were busy shopping for their visitor.
He washed his hands and walked slowly home with Eileen. As they neared the house she stopped and faced him.
“Now, Brendan, you stay calm. No matter what!” she ordered.
He laughed at how forceful his timid cousin could be when she wanted to.
Brendan shook his head. “Why would I need to stay calm?”
“Just promise me, okay?” she pleaded.
When they made their way around the side entrance, Brendan peered into the patio glass at the gathering. Orla and Doug were sitting at the kitchen table with his mother who had her back to him. Frank and Coleen sat at the other end of the kitchen by the fireside, playing with Orla’s two freckle-faced children whom Brendan had long since taken a dislike to. He took a deep breath and opened the door, beckoning Eileen to go in ahead of him. His mother stood and turned to greet him. He could feel the eyes of everyone in the room on them and wished he could escape, could break out of the room to the safety of his apartment. He searched her face, which was thinner and more lined than he remembered. She had the same hairstyle, light reddish-brown hair cut in heavy layers at the jaw-line to disguiseits thinness. It was twelve years since he had last seen her and she looked smaller than he remembered. Only her eyes were the same. Small lifeless grey eyes that never seemed to express any emotion.
“Brendan,” she said in her too-quiet voice.
He noticed how hesitantly she moved towards him and how she glanced furtively at the onlookers before placing her short arms around his large frame.
“Mam,” he said nervously as they hugged awkwardly. “Was . . . was your flight okay?”
She nodded and stepped back, turning her gaze from him to Eileen who stood in the doorway with her eyes fixedon her footwear. He noticed tears welling in his mother’s eyes and was taken aback at her sudden expression of emotion. He looked at Frank and Coleen who sat silently at the other end of the room, their eyes locked on each other as though they were the only two people in the room.
“Eileen,” she whispered. “Look at you!”
Heavy tears began to roll down her face. She moved forward and hugged Eileen tightly before looking guiltily in Brendan’s direct
ion.
“I’m supposed to be the image of you,” Eileen said shyly.
“Isn’t she? Isn’t she the image of you, Aunt Patricia?” Orla asked in her shrill, annoying voice. “Everyone says so, don’t they, Dad?”
Frank moved his eyes slowly away from his wife’s stare.“They do,” he said.
Eileen moved into the room and sat by Coleen who patted her daughter’s knee affectionately.
Brendan felt like he was missing something, that there were things going on in the room that were going over his head. He sat down at the table and tried not to make direct eye contact with his mother. He pretended to listen as Doug explained to her just how bad the economy was and which investments were a sure-fire way of making a good return.
As the evening went on, he felt himself withdrawing from the group as he did when he was a child. He watched as mouths opened and closed. He saw Coleen laugh nervously and Orla and Doug take centre stage as they told the gathering about their new house in New York’s more affluent suburbs. He glanced quickly at his silent mother who nodded and smiled but said very little, and at Frank whom he had never seen so detached from a conversation. Twice Eileen caught his eye and grinned shyly at him. He lost count of the number of times he checked to see if the clock was working as he calculated how much longer he would have to endure the tension that hung in every corner of the room.
At eight o’clock, his mother rose abruptly from her seat and said she was exhausted. She looked at him and said goodnight. He stood and kissed her awkwardly.
Only then did she reveal her prickly ways. As Frank began to explain which room she was in, Brendan watched her screw up her tiny face like she used to do when she was angry with him.
“I know, Francis,” she said curtly, using her brother’s full name. “Coleen has already shown me and, remember, that room used to be mine.”
She glanced around the table and walked slowly out of the kitchen towards the stairs.
“Well,” Coleen said as she stood and collected the last few plates, “that wasn’t too bad.”
Chapter 23
“What will he do when you have returned to New York?” Pilar asked Brendan softly as they walked behind Jonathan and Eileen on the main pathway in Turtle Back Zoo.
Brendan shrugged and watched as his friend stared at the bear enclosure beside the picnic area. “I don’t know.”
“Have you told him yet?”
Brendan stopped and let Eileen and Jonathan walk ahead of them.
“No. I . . . will . . . in a few days,” he replied.
“How do you think he will react? He’s come to depend on you.”
Brendan threw a stone he was holding into the small pond and frowned. “I’ll come by and see him, when I’m visiting.”
Pilar looked sourly at him.“There was a volunteer at the shelter when I started there. I think Ray or Rob was his name, something like that. He took a special interest in John, took him ten-pin bowling and to baseball games. He was a real sports fan– Ray, that is, not John. Then he moved to Florida. He sent letters for a while, phoned a few times and then the contact gradually faded until John never heard from him. There were others over the years who promised to keep in touch with him but didn’t. Can you imagine what that’s like for him?”
“I take your point, Pilar!” Brendan snapped.“But what do you expect me to do? I can’t stay here because of John!”
“I know that. I’m just saying, people come into his life and they go. They go back to their lives and take with them the good time they showed him and he retreats back into Jonathan Wyatt Nelson.”
“You mean . . . he’s not . . . cured? What about the tablets?”
“They’ll work for a while and eventually he’ll be taken off them . . . or he’ll pretend he’s taking them. Then, gradually he’ll begin to buy maps and pin them up on his walls again. That’s the first sign that he’s becoming unstable. But . . . you should know that no one has ever got as close to him as you have. You mean a lot to him.”
Pilar stopped and watched Eileen and Jonathan walk hand in hand towards the wolf enclosure. She leaned on the fence and shook her head.
“He’s due at the housing authority nextWednesday,” she said. “I was hoping that . . . you could take him?”
Brendan nodded.
“I’m hoping that he’ll understand that seeing the apartments with you means that it is time for you both to move on.”
“Do you think he’ll settle into an apartment alone?”
Pilar shook her head. “No. It hasn’t worked before but we have to try. If Kuvic gets the manager’s job, he’ll see to it that John is out permanently and there’ll be nothing I can do about it. I guess that at least if he’s living in an apartment close by, it’ll be better than if he is on the street.At least we can keep an eye on him. We won’t know the board’s decision for a few weeks. Thompson’s going out of town and they won’t make the final decision without him.”
Brendan exhaled loudly.
When he and Eileen had arrived at the centre that morning, Kuvic was standing in the hallway wearing his usual navy outfit and steel-capped prison-officer shoes. As they made their way to the kitchen Brendan caught Kuvic looking Eileen up and down. He moved back to grab him but Eileen reached for his arm and pleaded with him to ignore the sleazy man. She then updated him and told him that Thompson couldn’t fire Kuvic without giving him a warning first and that he was now on his last chance. Brendan thought about Alice and how she seemed to think the board would fire Kuvic, but Eileen informed him that Alice knew Thompson would only issue a warning but that her hope would be that the board would see that Kuvic was not fit to manage the place and that sooner or later he’d step out of line again and that the next time would be the last.
“What if . . . what if I took Jonathan to New York with me?” Brendan asked now.
Pilar laughed sarcastically.
“No offence, but you can hardly take care of yourself!” she laughed.
Brendan frowned at the insult.
“Look, I’m just teasing you,” she said, “but maybe you need to let him know that you’ll be going soon.”
Brendan sighed again and went to stand beside Jonathan at the cougar enclosure.
“He looks sad,” Jonathan said as they stared at the wild animal behind the wire fence.
“I thought you’d like it. I mean, it’s not a mountain lion but . . .”
Jonathan shook his head and looked away. “It’s like he’s wondering what he’s doing here when he has business someplace else,” he drawled.
Brendan stared at the big cat as he paced back and forward behind the mesh, growling occasionally at the spectators who stared mindlessly into his adopted home.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see something a little less depressing.”
The four walked to a nearby area and sat among the ducks. Brendan watched Eileen sitting on the grass beside Jonathan as they threw breadcrumbs at the cackling ducks bytheir feet. Frank’s supposedly ‘good’ hip was now getting so painful that he could hardly walk to the end of their street so he wouldn’t be able to escort Eileen to the shelter in the future. How would she manage to see Jonathan then? In any case, if Jonathan moved away from the shelter, how would they cope?
The cousins had become even closer since his mother’s arrival. In the three short days that she had been there, an atmosphere of tension had settled in the houseand he was relieved that his other cousins came each day to drive Patriciasightseeing around the county, his lack of a licence thankfully prohibiting him from helping out. Each evening when he and Eileen arrived home they could both sense the friction in the house. They would arrive in the kitchen door to find Coleen busily preparing dinner and pretending as usual that nothing was wrong. His uncle would be in the garden doing unnecessary work and his mother would be sitting silently in the kitchen watching Coleen work, or lying on her bed until she was called for dinner. He couldn’t understand why whatever had passed between the three people
could not be aired, talked out and put to bed finally and why his uncle had allowed his mother to visit when such hard grudges were apparently still felt between them.
He hoped that tonight would be different. The entire family was coming to dinner to welcome his mother home and for once he would embrace the noise of their incessant chatter in the hope that it woulddrown out the sound of his mother’s silent brooding. He had watched her across the table each evening, glaring at her brother as he barked at Eileen’s requests to attend the trips he and Jonathan now frequently took.
Since their discussion about Jonathan, Frank had begun to show an interest in the case and had frequently asked Brendan about the progress, or lack thereof, that he had made. Not once did he suspect that there might be something between his eldest daughter and the man. He simply thought she was trying to spread her wings and he was having none of it, so she’d only been able to go on the trips that would get them home safely by six. Brendan noticed his mother flinch on more than one occasion when Frank barked at Eileen’s pleading as though it rekindled a memory of their own difficult relationship when she was a young girl. He tensed as he watched her roll her tiny hands into fists and boil with rage as she looked down at her empty plate. For the first time in his life, he began to feel pity for his mother, which disquieted him. He had never felt anything but disdain for her, and the change in his attitude, however small, made him want to move to New York sooner than he had planned and put geographical as well as emotional distance between them.
When Orla called loudly for everyone to come to the table, Brendan waited for his mother to sit before he took a seat at the opposite end of the table, beside Frank in his usual place at the head. Eileen sat facing Brendan while the rest of Frank’s large brood sat randomly about the extended table. His uncle said grace and peeked to ensure everyone blessed themselves before tucking into the meal Coleen had spent most of the day preparing.
Brendan glanced down the long table at his cousins. Frank’s youngest daughters, twins Emer and Fiona, sat facing their boring husbands in the middle of the table while Kiera and her husband positioned themselves at the other end with their baby daughter placed on a high chair between them. Orla and Doug sat nearest to his mother and had cleverly placed their two naughty sons at the other end of the table where they hoped Eileen would spend the evening looking after them. Brendan began to eat his meal as the clatter of too many voices collided around him.
