Ithaca

by Alan McMonagle

  What are we playing?

  We’re playing Suicide. Like the fellows suggested. Take the card and clamp it to your noggin.

  Without looking to see what it was, Chancer had already taken his card and slapped it against his forehead. I copied him, even sat back comfortably in my chair the way Chancer had.

  The others looked from one of us to the other and let out long shrill whistles.

  Highest card wins, Chancer said. Place your bet.

  I looked at the card on Chancer’s forehead. I looked at the others. I looked into Chancer’s eyes. They were hard and unblinking, I didn’t want to see what lurked behind them.

  I bet a euro, I said, and a collective laughter erupted. Some knee-slapping. General yahoos.

  A euro, Chancer repeated.

  Yep. A euro.

  OK. Let’s see the colour of your money.

  I dredged my pocket for the euro, tossed it onto the table between us. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Shirley looking in my direction, shaking her head, smiling slowly to herself.

  Fair enough, Chancer said. I’ll see your euro. And out of nowhere, it seemed, he flipped a coin onto the table too.

  What’s he got boys? Chancer asked the rest of them, all the time staring my way.

  A king, they all chimed in, scarcely able to restrain themselves.

  A king, said Chancer with a heavy sigh, rubbing the tip of his chin. That’s a good card.

  So I win, I said, reaching out an arm to gather in the coins.

  SO YOU DIE! Chancer said, with a rapid fire movement grabbing my busy arm and at the same time spilling his card onto the table. Aces are high in this game, kid.

  And the rest of them were having an awful time suppressing their chuckles, high-fiving their man, warning all-comers not to mess with the Chancer Fay, the sharpest card man in town.

  You win some, you lose some, kid, one of them said, ready with a gentle slap on the back for me.

  I left them to it and climbed back into my stool. Threw what was left of the peanuts in me. Finished the ends of the Fanta. Harry and Fergal offered me another.

  No thanks, men. I’ve had enough.

  I slid off the stool again, gave Shirley a salute and headed for the door. Don’t be a stranger, one of the card players called after me, I didn’t know which one.

  TO THE TOWER

  Late now. I was still out and about. Trying to look unsuspicious after my trip to the pharmacy. The streetlights weren’t working tonight. It gave the place an eerie feel, how it might be if it had been deserted by everyone once and for all. It was quiet too. There was no one about, a few parked cars. Neon flashing outside Dante’s empty chipper. Either side of me, the buildings looked as though they wanted to come together, squeeze me in like the tree branches on that country lane Ma and me had taken that time in Mattie’s car. They looked darker than normal, taller and emptier.

  It was so clear. A sliver of moon and dazzle of stars, clearer than ever in the unpolluted dark, sending out their tiny specks of light from all that distance away. I could’ve walked for ages on a night like this. I could’ve crossed Violin Bridge, turned the last corner and walked all the way out of town. Kept going. Let my feet do all the work. See where I was when dawn arrived.

  Climbed up onto the bridge wall, took off my hoodie. Closed my eyes, felt the night air cool on my skin. Opened my eyes again and there she was, up on the wall beside me. Rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Yes, there she was. On her toes, moving over and back, dancing again, framed in the shallow moonlight. Now she paused, teetered on the edge, balanced like a ladybird upon a wisp of grass. I held my breath. A single movement, one sound out of me, would send her over the edge.

  What are you doing? I gasped.

  I’m going to jump, she said, looking straight ahead.

  No, you’re not.

  Yes, I am. You never have anything to say to me. You don’t like my knockers or any other part of me. You won’t put your thing in me. You won’t even touch me.

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and anyway, figured she’d have something to say right back. With nothing better to do I inched my way until I was standing right next to her, looking down.

  What are you doing? she said.

  If you jump, I will too, I said.

  Don’t be daft.

  You’re one to talk.

  We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. We just stood there, side by side in the dark, peering down into the black abyss. At some point I was thinking, those lads at Flukey’s funeral were right. It wasn’t such a long way down, and then there mightn’t be so much water. I wondered what she was thinking. I looked over. She was rigid, fixed to the spot, hardly moving, as though all along she had been part of the bridge and nobody had taken any notice until now.

  It’s not as far a drop as I thought, I said.

  That’s what I was thinking.

  Well then. Let’s get down.

  Let’s. We can always find someplace else.

  Like where?

  Like where do you think? It’s practically staring down on us.

  Five minutes later, thanks to another wonky window, we were inside the unfinished shopping centre. Her, making a fast dash for the Tower. Me, fumbling my way behind her, wondering what we were going to do when we reached the top, and at the same time trying my best not to come up with any answers.

  She was bounding ahead of me, her feet fast on the stairs winding their way up, up, up. A door faced us when the stairs ran out. I almost prayed it was locked. It wasn’t and she was through it like a knife through butter. I was after her and then we were standing high and I did not want to look down.

  Get over here, she said, already near the edge. Well? Are you going to stay there after coming all this way?

  I moved uneasily towards her. Was stepping slow, feeling light-headed, did not want to face the view below. She reached out an arm and I took it. She was hovering right at the edge and one more step would paralyse me. She held my hand in hers, and the feel of her fingers, skin, flesh, put me at ease and I edged my way until I was standing beside her.

  Whoa! I said, and she gripped my hand, held it firm.

  Now, this is more like it, she said. Look down.

  Like an idiot, I did what I was told, and at once I was dizzy, reeling where I stood, the heart inside me clapping against my chest, my two legs wobbling like a drunk from the back lane. I clasped her hand even tighter.

  Guess what, she said.

  What?

  We’re holding hands.

  Right now, that suits me just fine, I said.

  Here, she said, and let go of me, sat down, let her legs dangle over the edge and tapped the space beside her. For a minute I couldn’t figure out what to do. I reached for her hand, she took it and I lowered myself down beside her. Awkwardly, I stretched out my legs, tried my best not to look down.

  It’s hard to get used to, I said.

  That’s what’s good about it.

  You’re not going to . . .

  To what?

  You know.

  Jump? Did you think I was going to? Ha! You are a fruitcake. I think I’ll sit up here for a while, though. Anyway, I’ve told you before.

  Told me what?

  I have a life to live. Places to see. People to meet.

  Well then, what are we doing up here?

  I think I’ll let you come up with an answer to that yourself. As for me, I like the quiet.

  The boy-racers soon put an end to that. Along they came. Tearing up the road in their spluttery cars. She didn’t seem to mind. By now she was lying face down, her chin resting in her crossed arms, taking in the car-rally spectacle way below. I did the same and we stayed like that until long after the boy-racers had racked up dozens of fast swerves and handbrake turns and were now parked-up way below us, with pizzas and beer and pisswords along the Tower wall and all the time the music thumping out of the car stereos and the town lights still not working and stil
l more cars arriving and more pizza and beer and pisswords, and we stayed right where we were until long after I knew she was right. That, despite all the noise below, it was peaceful up here. That I could have stayed here, lying right beside her, for as long as she wanted.

  Hey! she said, I almost forgot.

  What? I said, not wanting to turn to her in case she started on about knockers and putting my thing in her.

  The Happy Pills. You got them?

  Jesus! Yeah. I’d forgotten all about them, I said, fetching a box or two out of my bag. Here. A box of blues and a box of yellows.

  Wow! You have enough to keep your mother going until doomsday. Tell her to take the blues with her morning toast. The yellows after another repeat episode of The Sopranos.

  Is that what your da does?

  They stopped working on my father. But don’t worry. The way he is these days, I don’t think anything will. Give them to your mother. They might do her some good.

  Do you want one?

  No thanks. They don’t work on me either.

  Fair enough, I said, and put the boxes in my bag and stretched fully out again.

  You know what we should do? she said into darkness. We should go down there and steal one of their cars. Look at them all. They’ll hardly miss one less.

  Can you drive?

  No. Can you?

  No.

  Well then, what are we waiting for? Come on.

  Minutes later, we had tiptoed as far as a tiny banger of a thing, eased the doors open and slid inside. Me in the passenger seat, on lookout duty. Her in the driver seat, behind the wheel, the key in the ignition as if waiting for us all our lives. A second later she was revving like there was no tomorrow.

  Release the handbrake, I hissed at her.

  OK. Here we go, she squealed and we chug-chug-chugged out onto the road.

  You have to change gears, I said.

  OK, she said, and yanked the gear stick this way and that.

  Now press the accelerator, I told her, and the car growled and coughed out smoke and that was enough to attract the boy-racers pissing up the Tower wall and they were tucking in their dongs and zipping along their strides and sprinting up the road after us, one or two of them wrestling for their own car keys, one or two tripping over themselves to give the best chase.

  DRIVE! I yelled. DRIVE, DRIVE, DRIVE! And she pressed down for all she was worth, and took the sharp bend rapidly approaching and all the time we were picking up speed and she was squealing and I was watching the road ahead and checking behind us for pursuers and there was no doubt about it, we were getting away.

  You drive better than my ma, I told her.

  Of course I do, she squealed, I was born to drive, and she revved some more and the car accelerated and I was already convinced we could have driven all the way out of town and continued all night and been as far away as we wanted to be if we hadn’t met cop Lawless coming the other way in his squad car. He knew something wasn’t right and he swung his squad around and we now had a proper pursuer.

  We pulled off the main road, onto a road with nothing going for it other than potholes, none of which the girl wanted to avoid. Lawless followed us. He’s catching, I told her, and she accelerated into another pothole, one that made the car skid. Watch out, I yelled, and next thing we were leaving the road, bumping over gravel, onto a grassy bank and then the car dipped headfirst into a ditch.

  We scrambled out the driver door, crawled up the other side of the ditch. I could hear Lawless hollering at us, you could tell he had no idea who it was or what exactly had happened, and once we had climbed the ditch and squeezed through a gap in a wire fence and into a field, we wasted little time putting ourselves a long way out of his reach. We kept running until we were out of breath, until we collapsed in the soft grass. We lay on our backs, side by side, waiting for our galloping hearts to calm down, for our scorched lungs to recover, and when at last they did, we looked at each other and laughed like a pair of let-loose lunatics.

  FOUR MINUTES PAST FOUR IN THE MORNING

  Ma was gone.

  Three or four hours I must have spent mooching about the place, convinced that any moment now I was going to hear her crazy singing, her key scratching at the front door and she would come waltzing in, complete with her merry news of a mighty night on the town. But none of that was happening. And the longer I waited, the less likely it seemed that it was going to happen. To make doubly sure she hadn’t been here all along, I went through the place again.

  She wasn’t in the kitchen. Not on the sofa. Not upstairs in her room.

  The TV was switched off. The radio wasn’t blaring. There wasn’t an ooh, aah, the merest whimper to be heard.

  I drew back the sitting-room curtain and looked out onto the road.

  The rust bucket was gone.

  Wait. That didn’t mean a thing. Gavin McGoldrick had been taking care of it since Ma filled the tank with the wrong kind of petrol.

  I looked at the kitchen clock. Ten to eight. It couldn’t be that time. Of course it wasn’t. It was the middle of the night. Then I remembered the clock hadn’t been working since the start of summer.

  I turned on the TV. The late night news was on. Some lad with a bushy moustache going on about, what else, the shite-and-all mess the country was now in. Factories closing down. Youngsters packing their bags. Old people crawling hospital floors looking for a doctor, for crying out loud. And all the time a look on moustache face that meant one, and only one, thing: we should all take a running jump.

  I sat there on the sofa.

  I stood up and paced circles around the sitting room.

  One more time I pounded upstairs and through her bedroom door, made sure she was not in the bathroom, hidden inside the basket of dirty clothes.

  I looked out the window of my room. Hurried back downstairs.

  The time is four minutes past four in the morning, the newsman was announcing to anybody who cared. I cared. It was four minutes past four in the morning, not a doctor in sight and Ma had disappeared.

  I walked into the kitchen.

  On the table I saw a page from the atlas. Lipstick marks on a near-empty glass.

  It took a moment, then it hit me: Mario had come good on his promise. He had whisked Ma all the way to Paris. On her birthday.

  Oh boy. I would need to think about this.

  I walked back into the sitting room, sat down on the sofa again, took a last glance at the serious head on the newsman and turned off the TV. Then I reached in my bag, took a look at the boxes of Happy Pills. And I thought: might as well.

  MORNING PILLS

  They must have legged it when I was playing Suicide in McMorrow’s. Otherwise how could Ma have managed it? Not with Barty Brophy the out-of-pocket handyman showing up on our doorstep at first light, and lovesick cop Lawless parading away the daytime hours up and down our road, and Mattie Conlon looking for her to pay for all the apple tarts and sticky buns she’d been taking from the storeroom of his café even if they were out of date. Not with the TV licence man on the prowl and the witchy voice from the credit union on the line and Barry the bank clerk with his polite letters asking her to call in for a chat.

  For a chat.

  I could imagine how that chat would have gone. Hello, Jacinta, is it alright if I call you Jacinta? Why of course it is, Barry, and is it alright if I call you Barry. Call me whatever you like, Jacinta. Why, thank you, Barry, in that case I’ll call you gobshite of the century. Fair enough, Jacinta, but know that I have been called worse. A lot worse. Now, Jacinta, I’ve hauled you in here today because, as you may be aware, you have a long outstanding loan and you’ve fallen a little behind on your repayments. More than a little. I’ve run some checks and I know you owe the credit union twenty thousand plus interest, which is steadily accumulating by the way, and we were wondering had you any comments to make before we throw the book at you once and for all. She’d have a comment for you, Barry, be in no doubt about that. Drop dead, loser. In your d
reams, money man. Pull the other one, it plays ‘Wank Me With A Spoon’.

  Even so. It’s a wonder she made it out of town. It’s a wonder cop Lawless hadn’t been parked up, watching her every move. It’s a wonder me and the girl hadn’t spotted them. Maybe Mario knew a way. One of those quiet roads Ma liked. All trees and bushes and tufts of grass. Sheltered from the greedy eyes out to get her last penny.

  Well, off with her. I hope she enjoys Paris. Let Mario take her to that riverside hotel and show her the Louvre and the guillotine and all the skulls chopped off by the thing. Let him show her the flower market and pour her wine and feed her all the bread she can stomach. One thing she doesn’t have, and that’s Happy Pills. All the bread in Paris won’t make up for that. I was looking at them now, boxes of the things, spread out on the kitchen table. Well, Ma, all I can say is that it’ll be a shame for all these pills to go to waste. Especially after the hard work put in getting them in the first place. Now what was it the girl said? Take the blues with morning toast. OK, then. Let’s see what we’ve got by way of food around here. Porridge. Ha! Good luck to that. A bowl of leaves and withered tomatoes. I don’t think so. Wait. An extra-large plate of mince stew. I wouldn’t give that to the rat that’s been gnawing at my ear. Aha! What have we here? A slice of cake. Looks good to me. I jammed the pill into the spongy wedge and wolfed the lot down. Hey! The blues go well with sponge cake. This just might be the first of many a happy eating experience.

  Well, then. Here’s to Paris, Ma. For me, it’ll have to be another slice or three of sponge cake and blue pills. I just hope you have time to make the most of the place before word gets out about you. I’m prepared to stay quiet myself, they’ll have their work cut out for them if they want to prise your whereabouts out of me. But this is a small town. Someone is bound to have seen or heard something. Lily the Nose won’t be long getting on the case. Harry Brewster’s eyes and Fergal Flood’s ears. Rommel and Himmler, the mongrel dogs.

  Now then, what next? Ah yes. It’s nine o’clock in the morning and that can only mean one thing.

  The ringing telephone needs answering.