Ithaca

by Alan McMonagle

  The bridge was making its noises. It must have had a lot on its mind. The burdens it must carry. The stories it had heard. That’s it, bridge. Let it all out. No good will come of keeping everything locked up inside. What’s that, bridge? I’m not listening to my own advice. Well, I have to disagree with you there, I said, ripping another scab clean off. It feels good, doesn’t it, bridge? It feels good letting out all the pain, that useless blood inside. Listen. Can you hear that? It’s the sound of pain. That’s right. I’m letting go of it, bridge, can’t be keeping that stuff inside me. Here’s my blood. Taste and drink it down, bridge. Better than the scumwater you’ve been looking after for all this time. What’s that? Can I spare it? Of course I can spare it. There’s loads more where that came from.

  CUTS, CUTS AND MORE CUTS!

  That’s what it was all about. Like the man on television said.

  I gripped the shard of glass, raised it high, watched it glint in the street light, curving like a hook, like a sliver of silver moon. Was about to rip long and wide. But the energy was leaving me now, and I let my arm hang limp, stared at the bleeding scabs. And I dabbed at the blood where it fell, moved my fingers absentmindedly through it, until I had traced the word onto the bridge wall.

  DA

  *

  The quiet night was broken by the boy-racers. Along they came. Roaring across the bridge in their go-fast cars. Engines coughing smoke. Lights flashing on and off. Horns blaring, as though here to alert the sleeping town to the latest disaster. And they kept coming. A convoy of souped-up little cars piling at breakneck speed. I sat down against the wall and watched them all go at their handbrake spin-arounds and skids and reverses, before they all swerved to a standstill in the parking area the other side of the unfinished shopping centre, beneath the gaze of the Tower.

  It was some gathering. They parked up in little clusters, side by side, turned off their engines, rolled down windows. Pizza boxes appeared, crates of beer, cans and bottles of the stuff, music thumping out of car stereos, and in no time they had themselves a right little party going. One or two of them swapped cars and others were over to the Tower wall with their flies down and their dongs out, and they were soon spelling pisswords on the Tower wall, leaving streaky stains all over the place and a whiff as ripe as anything you would find inside Ma’s kitchen press. And all the time I could hear them chatting away, was almost tempted to join them, ask for a bite of pizza. But I didn’t. I just sat where I was, my back to the bridge wall, that useless Tower looking down on this dark-of-night gathering, and I wondered what would become of them all.

  And almost as soon as they had arrived, it seemed they were revving up again and tearing up the road to get out of there. Moving on to the next stop for them. And off they charged, leaving the same way they had come in, screeching across the bridge past me, the air around me a sudden stench of exhaust fumes and engine smoke. Left after them a patchwork of skid marks and piss stains and uneaten pizza crusts and empty cans and bottles.

  And again it was just me and the bridge.

  I was feeling more and more attracted to it. The crack was inching its way. I followed its progress, saw the mazy line pattern, the Tower looming. The black abyss, black and abysmal. The creaky strains determined not to change the tune. And I could still hear the boy-racers, faintly revving into the night, escaping, let loose, free.

  And I had us in a go-fast car, Gavin McGoldrick’s hi-octane sports car at that, and we were tearing up the streets, cop Lawless in hot pursuit. Here, kid, take the wheel, Brando was saying, and he was reaching for his pistol and rolling down his window and blasting away at the chasing car. And I had us on the open road and still Lawless was giving chase, the fool must have been immune to the bullets from Brando’s pistol, he would not be happy until he had the pair of us in the clink and thrown away the key. Oh yes, that would suit him perfectly. With me and Brando out of the way, he could pour a bucket of dust all over his starchy uniform, park his squad car outside our house and wait until Ma showed up. That is until me and Brando broke out of the clink, took care of Lawless once and for all, and then made our way as far as McMorrow’s to hide out until the coast was clear.

  And there we were, in McMorrow’s, up at the counter together, side by side on the high stools, deep in conversation.

  What are you drinking, kid?

  I’ll have whatever you’re having, Brando.

  Hey, kid, call me Marlon. OK?

  OK, Marlon. I’ll have whatever you’re having.

  OK, then. Shirley, set up two Long Island Iced Teas, please. Easy on the ice. Heavy on the rest. Tell me, kid, what are you going to do with yourself when the time comes?

  I haven’t decided yet.

  Well, would you accept a little advice from an older man?

  I’d say so.

  And he was into a little speech about his own childhood. How, when he was a boy, he was always up to no good. Stealing silver spoons from hotels. Eating meals in restaurants without paying for them. Lifting trees off bridges at Christmas time. And how his ma would send him down to the corner shop for a loaf of bread and he’d come back with a sack of potatoes, three or four loaves of bread, two pints of milk, a block of cheese, a box of teabags and half a dozen eggs. Man, those were the days, he was saying in his easy-listen-to voice, laughing gently to himself. I hear you, Marlon, I said, laughing just like him, lapping up every word.

  Then he was skipping quickly ahead into the future. It’s all about the bigger picture, he said and asked me what I thought, had I any plans? At once, I let him know that the town we lived in was a boghole, and that the only plan worth making was one that got us out of here once and for all. He agreed. We need to move on, he said. Spread our wings and fly. He knew the town was a boghole, too. He called it an arsehole. And not just any old arsehole. He said our town could compete with other towns for the title arsehole of the world. If there was an Olympics for arseholes of the world, he said our town would win the gold medal. Then he came out with his where-to-next plan. I was fast in with my contribution. There’s this girl I know, I said. And she keeps banging on about this place called Ithaca. It takes a man twenty years to find it, but once he gets there he can kiss all his troubles goodbye. I told him some more things the girl had told me, could see him nodding slowly at everything I said, while rubbing his chin with his thumb and finger.

  And it was a girl told you all this? he asked me after a quiet moment or two.

  That’s right.

  You keen on her?

  Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far, I said, thinking it the right thing to say and I could feel him smiling away to himself and I knew I had said the right thing.

  You know, he said next, long after we had stopped talking and he had spent time mulling over everything I’d told him, I think you and your girlfriend could be right. This place – what’s it called again? Ithaca, I said quickly. Yeah, this Ithaca place, he said, nodding now. A place like that is the last place they’d come looking.

  Oh boy. He was really going for my idea. And I was already spreading out the atlas page and plotting our course. And it made me think: talking about the future was even better than all the stuff about the past. Because it had yet to happen. I could feel excitement travelling through me during our talk, a sense of many things out there, somewhere, just waiting to happen to me. And I couldn’t wait until I had a past of my own to talk about.

  Remember kid, he said, reaching for a peanut, flicking it into the air and then catching it between his teeth. It’s all about the bigger picture. There, what do you think of all that?

  I think that’s good advice, Brando – I mean, Marlon.

  And look, here come our drinks. Just in the nick of time. Now then, what will we drink to?

  Whatever you say.

  OK then, kid. To the answers.

  To the answers.

  You’re supposed to say, To the questions.

  To the questions, I said.

  Then we raised our glasses a
nd clinked, and down the hatch with the Long Island Iced Teas.

  LISTEN TO ME, DA.

  I’m waiting. You hear me? Waiting for you to come and get me. Then we can go and live out our days together. Wherever you want. Doing whatever you decide. Maybe we can be the wandering kind. Restless explorers in the big world. Sailors aboard your yacht. Following the sun around the world. Mooring at a different port every day.

  Maybe we can be spacemen hopping rockets to the moon. Skipping off the atmosphere. Travelling the galaxies. Spinning. Turning. Catching the yellow dawns of new days. Hanging out with comets. Biding our time through the meteor showers. In time to come they’re going to name an asteroid after us. A new planet. We could be drifting up there, somewhere, light years away, taking it all in our stellar stride, our name already among the stars.

  Maybe we can be a pair of hold-up men. Every day, risking our necks for a till full of tidy cash. You, with your narrow eyes and stick-em-up face. Me, the fast-car man ready at the wheel to get us out of a tight spot.

  Or maybe we can just shoot the breeze together up the back lane. You know. Swap little stories from our lives. Play cards. Tell each other jokes.

  Yeah. Think I like the sound of that last one best. What do you say, Da? Can you hear me? Can you, Da?

  WE COULD HAVE PARIS

  Oh boy.

  I was a long way from Flukey now. Even if I was looking down at where he had chosen for his final resting place. And as for Mario Devine. Ma was right again. I was an even bigger-size numpty letting myself think for a second about him. Anybody around here for that matter. Little wonder she had to smash up the place from time to time. Besides, like I said before, Mario talked too much for my liking. Pretended to know things. His hands spent too much time fiddling, either inside his pockets or with Ma’s backside. And I didn’t like the bull-nut smell of him, didn’t know how Ma put up with it every month, even if it did get her off the hook when she had no money to pay the rent.

  From here out it was time to think big. Dream only in bright colours. See further down the road. Much further. That’s what it was all about. Larger life. The bigger picture.

  Like Brando said.

  Couldn’t get all Mario’s Paris talk out of my head, though, no way was that going away. The Moulin Rouge, riverside hotels and the Eiffel Tower. I would have to speak some more to the girl about Paris. With all her talk about where she’d been and where she was going, well, I should remember to get my say in. And I was thinking of the Champagne time we could have of it if we ever got to Paris. We wouldn’t be seen mooching about the places Mario Devine was banging on about. Hell, we’d probably not even end up staying that long in Paris. It could be the first stop of many for us. That’s all Paris would be. A part of our twenty-year adventure. The bigger picture. I closed my eyes and put us in one of those moonlit river boats that had featured during Mario’s sweet talk. Up and down the river we floated. Under bridges. The moon looking down, the leafy trees reaching out to wave hello, the night air soft as pillows.

  And fock me! Speak of the devil. When I looked again she was on the bridge.

  I was just thinking about you, I said as soon as I saw her.

  Why thank you, kind sir. Which part of me were you thinking about? No, wait. Let me guess.

  I was thinking about a trip we could take together.

  Oh.

  I’m thinking Paris, I said.

  Paris.

  That’s right.

  That’s no big deal.

  What do you mean that’s no big deal? Paris has the Louvre and the Palace at Versailles and the Bastille where they lopped everyone’s head off. I’m going, and soon. I’ll be staying in a hotel by the river. Play your cards right and I’ll let you tag along.

  No thanks.

  What! You mean to say you’re going to turn down a riverboat beneath the moon in Paris?

  You can send me a postcard.

  I might. Then again, I might not.

  Suit yourself.

  She brought her hand to the side of her neck, touched a couple of fingers off the bruise. Darker and darker it was looking. The colour of storm clouds, and yellow-green around the edges.

  I didn’t know you hung out at the bridge, I said.

  I’m always here. It’s one of my favourite places to hang out.

  Are you always here at this time?

  I’d say so. It gets a little tricky in my house at night.

  I didn’t say anything to that. I climbed up onto the bridge wall. Sat with my legs dangling towards the water. The girl joined me on the wall, except she didn’t sit down. She stayed standing, on her tiptoes, stretching out her arms either side of her, then she started pirouetting along the narrow wall.

  Have you got anything? she said as she moved.

  I have this, I said, scarcely able to speak, in case she took a tumble into the black abyss and I had to go diving after her.

  I showed her the Mars bar I’d brought with me. At once she leaned down and took it from me, threw it into the dark pool below. I heard a dull splash as it landed.

  Jesus! What did you do that for?

  This is sacred water. We have to pay homage, offer gifts.

  Since when is a scummy stream sacred?

  All great things begin with water.

  I was saving that for my ma.

  You were going to give your mother a Mars bar?

  She loves them.

  Don’t make me laugh. I might lose my balance.

  She danced across the bridge wall. Her arms spread out, her neck arching like a swan’s.

  Be careful, I said, watching her turn a few cartwheels. Along the bridge wall she went, then back in my direction she wheeled, spun herself into a sitting position, and she was beside me, legs dangling, and I could breathe easy.

  That’s a good trick, I said.

  Of course it is. I can also go invisible, fly, and walk on stormy water.

  Yeah, right.

  Don’t you believe in the extraordinary? In miracles?

  Not those kinds of miracles.

  Sometimes other worlds intrude on this world. That’s all a miracle is. Look, she said next, angling her head and pointing to the heavens. You can see the Pleiades. The Pleiades are the screaming daughters of Atlas. And Atlas bears the world on his shoulders.

  Where? I can’t see them.

  You have to look out of the corner of your eye.

  I did what I was told, and yes, she was right. I could make out the flickering cluster of stars.

  Sometimes the best things can only be seen out of the corner of the eye, I heard her say. And then, Let me have your hand.

  Here we go again, I thought, and she took my hand, and before I had a chance to pull it away, she had unbuttoned her top and placed my hand on her chest.

  Tell me what you feel, she said.

  I don’t feel a thing, I said, yanking my hand out of there.

  Liar, she said. Tell me.

  She had grabbed my hand again, and was trying to force it back onto her chest, then she was shoving it between her parted legs.

  Quit it, I said.

  Come on. Don’t be such a spoil sport.

  No! I yelled at her, and drew away, nearly losing balance. And when I looked at her again, she was staring wild-eyed at me.

  At least let me touch you.

  Get away.

  Ha! You’re some tough guy. Afraid of a girl’s touch. Off with you to Paris, then. Off with you to your plush palace and the Pastille.

  It’s Bastille, not Pastille.

  And to think I was actually considering taking you to Ithaca with me.

  Without another word she dropped softly to the ground and disappeared into the darkness, like one of those ghosts she said were afraid of her. I called out to her, but there was no reply. I sat there for a little while more. Then took myself home.

  BATH TIME

  When I got back to the house Ma was walking straight past me and heading for the bathroom. A couple of minutes later I
heard the water running. She was gathering all the available bubble bath, towels, shampoo, soap, make-up, moisturizer, skin cream. It was all going in the bath along with her.

  She was lighting candles and foaming up the tub with bubbles. She plonked herself into the bath and I could hear her humming away to herself in that badly-wired way of hers. Somehow she heard me tiptoeing through the kitchen and lifting bits off the finger-food plates she’d prepared, and she called me into the bathroom.

  Hello you, she said, soaping her arms.

  Are you getting ready for Mario?

  Listen to him. All of a sudden he wants to talk about Mario. As though he hasn’t tried hard enough already to ruin that for me. What have you got in mind this time, I wonder?

  I haven’t got anything in mind.

  You better not.

  I don’t.

  OK then. Would you like to make yourself useful?

  Yes. Maybe.

  Take this and soap my back.

  She pitched her bar of soap at me. It leapt about in my hands like a fish out of water, then I managed to grip it. I stood behind her and started rubbing her back.

  Ah, come on, she said. You can do better than that.

  I rubbed a little harder and she sighed pleasantly and let herself lean back.

  Tell me something interesting, she said next, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Tell me about your friend.

  There’s nothing much to tell.

  Don’t be ridiculous. What does she look like? Is she making your blood leap? Has she discovered things about you no one else will ever know?

  I didn’t give any answers to these questions. I just kept going in circles around her back with the soap.

  What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?

  No.

  Come on then. Is she pure like the snow? An angel, like me? Is she wild? Hmm? Nothing to say about her? Oh, it sounds to me like you’re in deep. You better watch out. It gets tricky when your feet can no longer touch the sand. Now, come on. Tell me one thing about her. That’s not too much to ask, is it?