Ithaca

by Alan McMonagle

  Can you keep a big secret? she said to cop Lawless the night we returned from our spin in Mattie’s car, as soon as Lawless was finished the stern speech he had been waiting to deliver. She’d listened wide-eyed and attentively to every word that left his lips, occasionally bringing her hand to her mouth or placing it elaborately on her chest and from there onto the sleeve of Lawless’ uniform, every gesture she made and every surprised breath she took, further distracting Lawless from what it was he was trying to do. I wasn’t sure what exactly she was doing myself or how she was doing it, but you could see the stern expression on Lawless start to dissolve, and soon not only was he returning Ma’s smile but was starting to convince himself that maybe this tale of the stolen car wasn’t such a big deal, and that maybe it should be hardened criminals answering tough questions in the middle of the night and not this innocent beauty giving me her big eyes.

  By now he had the garda hat off and he was leaning right in through the rolled-down driver window, and I could tell by the way he glanced at me that he wished I could somehow vanish so that he could slip into the car and he and Ma could continue their cosy conversation side by side. That’s when Ma made that comment about keeping a secret, and I thought she was going to make some crazy confession to Lawless about her love affair with Mattie’s car or start in on some of that if-I-was-a-man talk. Instead, she reached over and brushed some invisible dust off the shoulder of his uniform. He looked to where her hand had brushed, and then into Ma’s eyes, the loon was probably wishing he had dust everywhere. Then she gestured him even closer, nodded sadly towards me, and told him all about my sorry state.

  DEATH

  She was alive and well when I showed up back at the house after my night up on Rich Hill. Doing twirls around the kitchen, and singing along to the cranked-up stereo.

  There you are, she said when she spotted me. For a minute there I thought you had run away. Hey! Are you hungry? I can make something.

  No thanks.

  Anything you want. Go on, tell me. How about a fry? I might have some sausages.

  I’m a bit sleepy, Ma.

  Are you sure? You’ve had plenty of porridge this week. We should mix things up a bit. Let me take a look at what we have.

  She made a bee-line for the kitchen press. Threw open some doors. Started pulling down whatever was there. Tins of tomatoes. A jar of gherkins. Some Mars bars. The telephone started ringing and I answered it. Listened to the familiar voice.

  It’s the Credit Union, Ma, I said, covering the receiver. They want their money back.

  Tell them they can sing for it. Tell them I’ll have it for them in my next life. Tell them I’m busy cooking breakfast for my boy. Have you decided what you would like?

  I might go for a lie down, Ma.

  Lying down is for dead people. Look at you. You need to eat. Now tell me. Anything you want.

  She was practically climbing inside the press. Mumbling her breakfast menu. Tossing out bags of rice. Packets of cream crackers. Cans of soup. Again the ringing telephone came to my rescue.

  It’s the Hungry Worm, Ma, I said when I answered it. They want you to come in.

  Well tell them I can’t. Tell them I’ve got the hiccups. Tell them I’m dead and I’m not coming back.

  She can’t, I said into the phone. She’s got the hiccups. She’s also dead and not coming back.

  Good boy. Now, come on. We have eggs. Let me cook you an omelette.

  She pulled a soggy box out of the press, opened it and at once turned up her nose.

  Maybe we’ll skip the eggs, she said, and took a good look around the kitchen as though she was convinced a second press, one with proper eggs and other food, was hiding on her. Her scan complete, she shook her head sadly, threw out her arms and yelled, What a dump! As fast again, she jerked her head towards the stereo, her face lighting up at what was coming out of it.

  And off she went. De-de doo-duh. De-de doo-duh. Clicking her fingers. Her crazy head moving forward and back like a camel. And, turning towards me, hand on her heart, the high-pitched voice chipped in.

  People say I’m the life of the party

  ’Cause I tell a joke or two

  Although I might be laughing loud and hearty

  Deep inside I’m blue

  Hey! Who sings that song? she said next, and before I had a chance to let her know that sorry, I have no idea who sings it, and that sorry again, I have been up all night and am not in the mood for sing-song games, with either hand she had grabbed both my cheeks and was singing crazy again. So take a good look at my face, she squeaked like an out-of-tune canary, hunkering down and giving me her intense stare. You’ll see my smile is out of place. Well, who is it? she said, relaxing her grip a bit, her big eyes imploring me to take a guess.

  I don’t know, I said.

  Take a wild guess.

  Madonna.

  No! she howled.

  Marilyn Monroe.

  Now who have you been talking to that has you handing out answers like that?

  Is she the answer?

  No, but today I’ll give you an extra egg for thinking it might be. Guess again.

  Madonna.

  You said that already.

  Who do you want me to say?

  Whoever you think.

  Madonna.

  If you say her name again I will stab you in the spleen with this fork. After that, I reeled off the first names to enter my head. No, no and no, she kept howling at me, and I shrugged my shoulders. I hadn’t a clue who it was, but I had started guessing and she wasn’t going to drop it until the correct answer left my lips. I’ll give you a clue, I heard her say, and she was into another verse, sashaying across the kitchen, looking over her shoulder at me when it was time for the high bit. What the hand-on-heart and poor-me look had to do with it I couldn’t say, either way it didn’t matter because I still had no idea who she was supposed to be, was starting to wonder did she know herself. Then she swung around to face me, arms spread out before her, that don’t-you-know-anything expression forming on her face. Quickly I shook my head, was all set to make a fast dash for my room, when yet again the ringing telephone came to the rescue. For once in her life Ma decided to answer it, and as soon as she heard the words spoken at the other end of the line she wasn’t long forgetting her guessing game.

  She paraded about the place some more, the phone clamped to her ear, someone babbling down the line, and it took Ma a few minutes to realize that someone was dead, someone she knew, and at last she was telling me who it was, but not before she had disappeared upstairs for a few minutes and then come back down, dabbing her red eyes with a hanky and yelling at me to get ready, that we had a dead man to say goodbye to, not that I could see the point in that, and I was cursing myself for not staying well away when I had the chance.

  Flukey Nolan.

  That’s who it was.

  Ma’s ex-boy.

  The man I had been looking for.

  How can Flukey be dead? I wanted to know, but she wasn’t listening to me, was too busy in front of the cracked mirror making sure she looked OK for the farewell party being thrown for the dead man, not that it was going to make any difference to Flukey how she looked, and already I was thinking how it was only last month the two of them were hanging out together, making plans, talking up some bright idea of Flukey’s. And all the time I was looking at Ma and her powdered face, waiting for her to answer my question, waiting for her to tell me that this was just another one of her stories. Then one or two of Ma’s friends showed up and I didn’t get a chance to ask anything else.

  And I was listening to them talking about what had happened. At the beginning of the week he did it. Jumped off Violin Bridge and into the drain of a river and by the time they managed to haul him out he was not a pretty sight. Word from the hospital was that he had died of bronchitis, a huge liver and the finishing touches of pneumonia. And even then the doctors had been scratching their chins and saying how baffled they were he’d stayed alive as lon
g as he did. I was tempted to get word back to the doctors that not three full weeks ago he’d been eating a plate of Ma’s cooking, but I thought that would only baffle them more, and so I said nothing. To be honest, I didn’t know why the doctors had even bothered taking a look at him. Scrub Flukey from head to toe for a long time, give him a new set of teeth, a normal coloured nose, good breath, trim back the hairs growing out of his ears and then dress him up in a suit, tie, coat and top hat and chances are he still would not have been a pretty sight. And that was before he had ended up at the bottom of the river. Three nights and three days. That’s how long they reckoned he’d been down there. Dead. All by himself. I was not looking forward to the dreams I would have about that.

  Flukey.

  That’s what everybody called him. If you ask me, an arse-over-heels name for someone ending up as fish food at the bottom of sludge river, but that’s the way it was around here these days.

  Arse over heels.

  Flukey of the top tips and big bets. Flukey of the latest get-rich-quick scheme. Flukey of the lend-me-a-tenner-today-and-I’ll-give-you-back-a-twenty-next-week. Flukey of the trembling lips and curly nose. There would be no more tenners for Flukey, and no next week either.

  He was broke.

  That’s what they were saying drove him to it.

  Oh, boy.

  I was broke. The crazywoman I lived with was broke. Everybody else was broke. Imagine the state of the river if we all went diving off Violin Bridge. The skin-and-bone fish quivering in the dirtwater would think they had won the lotto.

  Take off that hoodie and put on some clothes, Ma was yelling at me when we were heading out the door. What did she think I was going to do? Show up to say goodbye to Flukey in my numbskulls? That would’ve looked good. Not that it made any difference as far as Flukey was concerned. Put on some clothes. She was a good one to be using words like that.

  The men were all ogling her at Flukey’s farewell party. Could see their leery eyes all over her as soon as she entered the room. Taking in her shape inside the black dress she was wearing. All the way from head to toe their eyes travelled, pausing at certain parts of her before continuing their way. And all the time the question on the tip of their practically-hanging-out-of-their-mouth tongues. What did Flukey have that we don’t?

  He was laid out in the front room of his shack of a house. I kept my distance, had no desire to get too close to the curly nose on him, wished they’d hammer down the lid on the coffin and be done with it. There wasn’t a sound out of him. It was hard to get used to. Up until his running jump he was well able to make himself heard. Especially when he and Ma got together. Oh, Jacinta, baby, that is so good. A little to the left, Jacinta. That’s it, baby, that’s the spot. No, wait, baby. A little to the right, Jacinta. Oh, yes, baby. Oh, yes, yes, yes, baby. Don’t stop. Oh, wait, baby. A little to the left again. Oh, yes, baby. Oh, please, baby. Oh, yes. Oh, no. Don’t stop. Hold on. To the left. To the right. Jesus, the loop-the-loop could never make up his mind.

  The house was already filling up with the cream of the town’s gobshites, each and every one of them determined to spend a lot of time saying what a great lad Flukey was, even though every last one of them would’ve happily walked out to the useless by-pass and gone round the town the long way if they thought it would’ve meant not having to pass him in the street.

  After a little while, groups of men gathered around in little circles and spoke in low huddles because, by now, they had a few early whiskeys inside them and once the early whiskey was inside a man around here he had to be a part of a low huddle. I grabbed a seat in a corner of the front room, did my best to pretend I was somewhere else.

  You should’ve heard the things they were saying about the dead man. He was full of brains. He had the soul of a poet. He knew everything there was to know about fish. He had a unique way of looking at things. He was a personal friend of trees. Why didn’t any of you lot tell him all this when he was alive and well instead of crossing over to the other side of the street to avoid him? is what I wanted to know, but there was no time because already they were quickly into talk about how Flukey managed to do it.

  Sure, how could a lad end up dead after throwing himself off that moany old bridge? one lad pointed out. It’s no distance to the water. A bump on the head and a watery nose you might end up with. Nothing more. You thick eejit, someone else barked, it wasn’t the throwing himself off the bridge that did the damage, nor for that matter was it the landing in the two feet of mucky water. It was the fact that he was more than half soused when he jumped and that he had decided to stay exactly where he was until someone took it upon themselves to notice that he had been lying there for the better part of seventy-two hours. And still that explanation wasn’t good enough for the first lad. Well, I don’t know what he wanted to go messing with that crock of a bridge for. If it was me that was feeling at the end of despair I would have gone some place else. Where would you have gone? they quickly asked. And of course he held off for a minute before offering another word, and of course some jackass couldn’t wait, he had to know what was coming next and he urged the first lad to go on and spit it out and don’t be keeping it a big secret, God knows there were enough of those already floating about the place. The first lad didn’t need a second urging. I’d go to the Tower, he said. The Tower! the others repeated after him as though it was one of the wonders of the modern world and not the sort of place a fellow at the end of despair should be contemplating jumping off. The first fellow folded his arms. He was terribly satisfied with the effect of what he had just said and he was going to bask in his moment like a lad put out of doors for an afternoon of rare sunshine.

  And that got them started on the Tower. And how it was good for nothing and all the money spent on it and it just there, an empty coffin of a building trying to reach all the way to the sky. A waste of money, about as useful as a lighthouse in a bog and no sign of the lad who thought it was a great idea to build it, and if anyone should be made take a running jump off the thing, it’s that fat bastard Grehan, milking the place for all he’s worth and then taking off when it all goes sour. And a few others weren’t long weighing in with how Fat Grehan should be dealt with. String him up, said one. Pin him against the wall and riddle him. Castrate the fucker. They liked the sound of that idea. That’s the thing for him, they said. Castration. And it all came back to the Tower and how its construction had been a bad spell cast on the town, a bad-luck charm. It’s good for nothing, they said, and kept saying it. Good for nothing except jumping off, said the first lad. Castrate the fucker, said the other lad. I was listening to all this, it was hard not to, was even starting to enjoy some of it, but one or two of the women must have heard that castrate the fucker comment because they were upon the whiskey huddle like flies on dead dogs and they were shushing the men or else there would be castration galore required, and of course, knowing that, unlike themselves, the women often carried out their promises, the men did shush, and that was the end of all the jumping and castrating.

  And anyway, they had said all they wanted to say about the bad-luck Tower and wanted to move on to more important topics. Weather. The fucker of a ref who blew up four minutes before he should have last Sunday. The knockdown price of a pint on offer in McMorrow’s. The lack of perch in that same useless drain that spat out Flukey. And the big question on everyone’s lips – what had happened to all the money? That summer it was the number one hot topic of conversation. It didn’t matter what else might be happening. A psychopath could’ve charged through the streets gunning down women and children. The Swamp could’ve finally burst its banks and destroyed our neighbourhood once and for all. The entire town itself could’ve sank into the ground. Nobody would’ve batted an eyelid. Because there was only one thing worth talking about and that was where had all the money gone? I wished I was armed and dangerous. I could’ve pulled my gun. Annihilated the entire room.

  When Ma wasn’t looking I slipped out of there, took a walk through
the kitchen, grabbed a triangular-shaped sandwich with a flimsy slice of ham flapping out of it and stepped outside. I went round the side of the house. The sun was doing its best to make an appearance, and a few teapots were shielding their heads and staring up at it like it was an apparition. I ditched the sandwich, picked up a nail I saw lying on the ground, and wandered further away from everyone.

  Had rolled up a sleeve and was about to cut my arm when I heard the familiar voice.

  What are you doing?

  Nothing.

  Crap, nothing. You’re cutting up your arm. I can see the marks.

  Listen to her that goes jumping into swamps, I said, quickly rolling down my sleeve.

  Well then.

  Well then, what?

  I suppose we both have a secret to keep, don’t we?

  Yeah. Well that doesn’t mean anything. And no more occupying my rock. OK? Tomorrow, I’ll be expecting it back.

  Oh dear. Here we go again.

  I’m not going anywhere with you.

  She brought her hand to her face and mimicked an almighty yawn. I saw one or two bruises on her arm. Was all set to ask about them but she beat me to it.

  If that had been me, I wouldn’t have got caught.

  I wasn’t caught.

  Yes you were. By me.

  You’re not so special.

  And you are?

  I didn’t say anything to that. Shrugged and looked away from her.

  Now what will we do? she said next.

  What do you mean?

  You’ve started something between us. We need to carry on. So?

  So, what?

  Come up with something for us to do.

  We could go through a few jackets.

  No!