The Last Night at Tremore Beach

by Mikel Santiago

  “You seem a little under the weather,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s nothing . . .”

  I just got struck by a little lightning, and since then, I’ve been having macabre visions, but other than that, I’m totally fine.

  “I was up late playing. You know how it is. There’s not much else to do around here,” I said.

  “I’m glad to hear it. How’s the work coming along?”

  I knew Clem was asking with the best intentions, but coming out of her mouth, everything sounded like an accusation. What do you want to know? Why bother asking, since you already know, don’t you? I wasn’t up all night playing. I was tossing and turning in bed dwelling on the river of shit my life has become. I came downstairs, downed a glass of warm milk and whiskey, and managed to sleep for an hour before waking up again. THAT’s my life . . .

  “It’s coming along slowly but surely,” I managed to say. “I think I’m about to turn a corner, to start a new . . .”

  Just then, I heard another voice reverberating in their grand apartment in the Netherlands: Niels. Clem turned her head for a second, and I missed out on telling her about the new creative and spiritual phase I was entering (mowing the lawn and painting the fence like in The Karate Kid). She turned back to look at me with a pitiful smile. She said she had to go. Niels was waiting for her, probably to do something magnificent. A big social event, a highbrow lunch in Concertgebouw, something else equally out of my reach.

  “Don’t forget to get the kids’ paperwork ready for when you pick them up at the airport, okay? I’ll call you next week.”

  JIP AND BEATRICE arrived on July 10 on an Aer Lingus flight from Amsterdam to Dublin.

  I got up early that morning. I was one of the first customers at Andy’s that day. I fueled up the Volvo, bought a huge caffè latte, two candy bars, and a pair of CDs for the trip: Neil Young’s Harvest, and an album of Fleetwood Mac’s greatest hits.

  I drove all day, stopping only once in Ballygawley to eat some fish and chips and use the restroom. I reached Dublin in the midafternoon to find it packed with traffic. I eventually reached the new-and-improved international airport, a sleek and futuristic port that was far different from the old shoe box of an airport I’d left from all those years ago, in search of a new life. I arrived with enough time to finish the paperwork to pick up the kids and down a second cup of coffee.

  At five-thirty, after only a twenty-minute delay due to some issue with high winds, Aer Lingus flight EI611 landed without incident. Twenty minutes later, Jip and Beatrice followed a gate agent among a multitude of passengers to the arrivals area. They held hands and wore the serious expressions of children who were flying alone for the first time. Thirteen-year-old Beatrice pulled along a pink carry-on case. Eight-year-old Jip toted his Ninja Turtles backpack. My heart leaped at seeing them for the first time in three months. They both looked like they’d grown six inches.

  They didn’t spot me right away. They stood next to the gate agent, looking around with their brows furrowed and an expression that said, “Where’s Dad?” Jip was the first one to pick me out. He dropped his bag and ran to me, jumping into my arms. Then Beatrice came running and jumped on my back, and we almost tumbled to the ground. They complained that my new beard was itchy and Beatrice poked fun at my ponytail. I told her it was better than letting my mane run wild; I hadn’t been to the barber in a couple of months, and I didn’t want the cops to arrest me for looking like a nut.

  “They’d never arrest you, Dad,” Jip said. He turned to the smiling gate agent. “That’s ’cause my Dad’s famous, you know.”

  I signed off on the “unaccompanied minors” form, and the agent did the same. She checked in with her supervisor over a walkie-talkie, and my children were officially mine again.

  “They behaved really well during the whole flight,” she said, stroking Jip’s hair. “They’re two very brave children.”

  We arrived in Dublin at about six-thirty. The city was just as I remembered it. A line of taxis up Dame Street. The Olympia Theatre. Tourists gathering like lemmings at the Temple Bar. Traditional music wafted in the air and mixed with the scent of the breweries. My fun, old, dirty blackguard of a city, Dublin.

  My father, Old Patrick Harper—still built like an ox, with a strong jaw, clean-shaven and groomed, and redolent of Old Spice—greeted us with the best you can expect from an Irish widower: beef stew, oven-roasted potatoes, and an ice cream cake from Tesco for dessert.

  We ate while the children spoke and filled the silence between us.

  Dad asked them how school was and, of course, they answered just “fine.” They always were bad liars. I knew Jip got good grades, but he didn’t have many friends—basically, zero. Beatrice, on the other hand, was going from bad to worse in all aspects. She said she “didn’t give a flip” about school because she was going to be a musician, like me, and I hadn’t been good at school either. “Right, Dad?” Brilliant decision to tell them about all my high school troubles.

  The start of her teen years had been a challenge: a divorce and an exiled father; it was no wonder she didn’t give a shit about school. Clem paid a child psychologist a thousand euros to tell us what we already knew: that the divorce was the reason for all their troubles. That’s when we decided they’d spend at least the first few weeks of the summer with me, away from everything. Tremore Beach would be our refuge.

  I set the kids up upstairs in my old room. My posters of Thin Lizzy, Led Zeppelin, and Queen were still up, as well as a flyer for a gig for one of my first childhood bands: Punzi and the Walking Zombies, in the BomBom Room on Parnell Street. May 26, 1990.

  “This was your room, Dad? You actually slept right here?”

  “Every night,” I said, “until I turned eighteen.”

  “And then you met Mum and left to live in Amsterdam, right?”

  “Yep. That’s how it happened.”

  My God, how time flies, I thought, looking at the Punzi poster. Of our original four, only Paul Madden, the drummer, was still into music, playing “Sweet Caroline” at weddings and baptisms, and covers of Thin Lizzy, Led Zeppelin, the Stones and Creedence at Mother Reilly’s in Rathmines. The rest had gotten married, had children, started careers, and forgotten all about music. I was the only one to make a living at it, and it hadn’t been exactly easy. Every generation is like a giant orgasm, and I’d been the lucky sperm cell to make it all the way to the ovum of musicians who made a living with their music. Hooray, for me. But if I didn’t get my head in the game soon, I’d end up like Paul, playing for peanuts at weddings and baptisms.

  Dust gathered on my diplomas from the Royal Conservatory along with a couple of sports trophies (one for hurling, the other for track and field, where I was never better than mediocre). After tucking in the kids, I tiptoed out of the room and back downstairs.

  Dad was on his comfy couch by the windows facing Liberty Street, watching TV. This must be a freeze frame of what his life looks like nowadays—sitting alone in the dark, merely surviving. He hadn’t lost or gained weight, but his hair had gone totally white, and he dressed neatly in clothes he’d probably bought back when Mom was still alive. I cried inside; outside, I tried to smile.

  I sat on a chair by the dinner table and offered him a cigarette, but he said he’d stopped smoking and drinking at home. “Ma never liked it,” he said. I respected his rule and left the smokes in my coat pocket. But he did take me up on my offer to make tea. I went into the kitchen and set the kettle to boil. Meanwhile, I nosed into his fridge and cupboards and didn’t find anything too frightening. Your basic food, some canned, some fresh fruit. No alcohol to speak of, and everything looked neat and orderly. His mind was still sharp, and I thanked God for that. As an only child, I’d felt guilty about leaving him alone after Mom died and thought I should live closer. But when things went to hell with Clem, and I returned to Dublin, I realized that living back home with my dad, in that city, would’ve shredded my last bits of self-
respect.

  I came back into the living room with the old pink teapot and a couple of teacups with images of Amsterdam on them. They were souvenirs my mother and father had bought when they came out for Beatrice’s baptism, the only grandchild my mother ever met. When Jip was born, Dad settled for pictures and listening to him cooing over the phone until we finally made a trip out here. Nothing in the world could make him leave Dublin—hell, he barely left this house—since Mom died.

  We sipped tea and made small talk for a while. Eventually, he asked me about Clem, the divorce, and how I was holding up. I told him about Clenhburran, about the friends I’d made, and about the house. I left out all references to Judie. I started to tell him about my creative problems, but Dad never was too interested in any of that (or maybe it was just too boring a topic for a former Irish railroad worker.). “How are the kids holding up?” he asked. “They’re the big losers in all this, remember that, Peter. Never use them against each other. Christ, I’d never forgive you.”

  The last time I was there, after a visit to Amsterdam, I’d told him about the problems with Beatrice and her new school and how I’d been against starting her at a new school during a year in which she’d already endured so much. (Although, I saw Clem’s point. The neighborhood school had become a haven for drugs and fistfights.) I’d asked him how he was doing, and he asked me whether I really needed to ask. Look around you, lad, his eyes seemed to say. I haven’t so much as moved a picture frame. Everything is where your mother left it. Including me. I spend all afternoon sitting on this couch. Sometimes, I go to the pub, numb my brain with a couple of pints, and manage to have a bit of a laugh. Then, I come home and open the door. . . . Sometimes, I imagine there’s a light on, and it’s your Ma who’s here. I imagine that she hears me come in, and she calls out to me with that voice that was music to my ears. I dream that she hugs me and flashes that radiant smile—because she was always in a good mood. And she shoos away all the demons in my head. I imagine her sitting beside me, quietly knitting a scarf while I watch television, one of the thousand boring and happy evenings we spent together. You really want to know how I’m doing? I’d rip out my own goddamn heart, if I had the guts; jump in front of a train. Stick my head in an oven. But I can’t do that. She made me promise I’d push forward, but I can’t do that either. And so I sit here in my little cave, waiting to breathe my last breath. Does that paint a clear enough picture?

  We sat quietly for a while, as the television droned in the background. Some show about the Chieftains on RTE 1.

  “I had an accident,” I said, finally. “Nothing major, though. I got hit by lightning out by the house, near the beach.”

  Well, that succeeded in getting Dad to turn away from the television.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph . . . Are you . . . ?”

  “I’m fine, Dad. Just a little bit of a headache, but the doctor says that’s normal. Went in and out clean, like a bullet.”

  “Thank goodness, Pete,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder, a gesture I appreciated. “You should buy a lottery ticket.”

  “Yeah, that’s what people keep telling me,” I said, sipping my tea. “But you want to hear something strange? That night before I left the house, I had sort of a bad omen. A kind of a premonition. Like something inside me was saying, Don’t go out tonight . . .”

  My words hung in the air. Paddy Moloney’s flute from the television filled the silence between us. My father sat stiffly, staring ahead at the television, but his eyes were looking somewhere beyond it.

  “Dad . . . did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes,” he said, without turning away from the television. “A premonition. Like the ones your mother had, isn’t that so?”

  “Well, yeah,” I answered. “I mean, I think so. Although, I know you never believed . . .”

  “It was true,” he said, cutting me off. “Ma had the gift. I guess you do, too. A sixth sense, or whatever it’s called.”

  I blinked, incredulously. I couldn’t believe my ears. I looked closely at my father and noticed his eyes filling with tears. My cheeks flushed, and I felt my throat tighten. It was the price we paid for remembering Mom.

  “I always played it off when your mother talked about those things,” he said. “Someone in the family had to be the realist, to counterbalance the crazy talk. And, sure, at first, I didn’t believe any of it. But when that thing happened with the flight from Cork, the accident . . . Do you remember that?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It happened just like your mother said. She woke up crying that morning and hugged me. She told me she’d seen it. The funerals. And then, that afternoon, the news came out over the radio. I was working down at the station, and I had to get out of there to get some air. I was scared, you know? Scared that your mother was . . . sick or something. That’s why I hated talking about it. But it was true. So when I hear you speak about it, I figure you must have it, too. That ‘gift.’ After all, her mother had it and so did she. It ran on her side of the family. It must be something that’s passed down.”

  His words kept ringing in my ears. I felt a shiver run down my spine. Passed down? What if Jip or Beatrice . . . ?

  We continued watching TV in silence. A half hour later, he got up, and announced he was going to bed.

  “I left you two blankets,” he said, pointing to the oversized sofa by the fireplace. “If it gets too cold, light a fire or come and get another blanket. You know how much your mother loved to stockpile them. I still have forty pounds of blankets collecting moths in the closet.”

  “Have a good night, Dad.”

  He ruffled my hair as he passed.

  “You too, son. And, listen, the local barber needs to eat, too, okay?”

  “Did you just make an actual joke?”

  I lay down on the couch, covered myself in a wool blanket and closed my eyes. I figured after a long day of driving, I’d fall fast asleep, but my body resisted. Even though I’d taken my new pills after dinner, my headache was pounding. God, it was driving me crazy. Dr. Ryan couldn’t do anything else for me. Not even the most vile drug could manage to yank this railroad spike out of my head. There was that doctor in Belfast she suggested, Kauffman. I’d thought about calling him a few times, but I didn’t want to mess with the kids’ vacation. Dammit. Nothing left but to grin and bear it.

  I grabbed the cigarettes out of my coat, threw the blanket over my shoulders, and went out to the yard for a smoke. It was a clear night with a full moon, and I smoked looking out at the old Dublin houses silhouetted against a starry sky. When I eventually walked back inside, I found myself lingering by my old upright piano. I sat on the stool and opened up the keyboard. A scent of old wood and marble wafted up to my nose and filled me with memories.

  A musician? Get those ridiculous ideas out of your head, Peter Harper. You’re the son of a seamstress and a railroad man, you get it? Not an aristocratic bone in our bodies. Our people work with our hands; it’s what’s in your blood. No use fighting your destiny. Learn a trade and forget about fairy tales. This is all your fault, Ma, for putting those ideas in his head.

  I found an old notebook of musical scores in the bench compartment. It was full of hastily written melodies. Ideas plucked out of the air.

  He was right, Mom, I thought, caressing those old pages and feeling tears well up. This was all your doing.

  Maybe it was the cigarette or the mental distraction, but the pain in my head eased. I lay on the sofa, turned a couple of times to get comfortable despite the ornery old springs, and closed my eyes at last.

  SOMETHING WOKE ME a little while later. Moonlight shone into the living room. And a strong scent of burning tobacco was in the air.

  I looked over and saw an ashtray filled with butts smoking in the darkness. I remember putting out my own cigarette in one of the pots in the backyard, so it must have been Dad. But didn’t Dad say he gave up smoking in the house . . . ?

  I sat up on the couch and noticed something next
to the ashtray. It was enough to make me get up and walk over. Sitting on the table was a bottle of whiskey and a half-finished glass. And next to it was a newspaper, its pages open.

  Now I was worried. Had Dad gotten up in the middle of the night for a nip of whiskey and forgotten I was asleep in the living room?

  But something in the newspaper caught my eye. It was a copy of the Irish Times, which Dad usually bought, and it was open to a center section. Inside, was a headline in huge typeface. By the hazy moonlight, I read it to myself:

  TRAGEDY IN DONEGAL

  Vicious crime spree ends in the deaths of four in the quiet town of Clenhburran

  A single cigarette butt smoked in the ashtray, casting a fine and twisting column of smoke into the darkness. And then I noticed the whiskey bottle was completely empty.

  Please, let this be a dream.

  It was dark, but in the photograph just below the headline I could make out a police officer standing guard. It was somewhere along the coast. It could’ve been any place; it was hard to tell in this light. What you could see clearly, however, were the shapes of four bodies under a white sheet at an officer’s feet behind a line of police tape.

  I squinted but couldn’t make out the caption under the picture. Same thing with the rest of the article. The letters were too small and fuzzy in the faded moonlight. I looked back at the picture and something rang so familiar about it. Wasn’t that the same tile roof as on Leo’s house? I felt a horrible wail ready to rise in my throat, enough to fill the house, the neighborhood, the entire city. I ran to the doorway, looking for a light switch. I needed to read this. Though I knew (I feared) what I might learn. That it was Leo, Marie . . . and maybe even Judie?

  But why hadn’t Dad said anything to me? Didn’t he know I lived there? Had it only happened that night?

  I flipped the switch and electric light flooded the room. The light disoriented me for a moment and I felt a sharp stab from deep inside my head. I held on to the wall to steady myself a moment until I could fully open my eyes.