Narcissism for Beginners

by Martine McDonagh

  Life is just life, right? We all have the same amount of it when we’re alive and we all have the same amount of it when we’re dead, i.e. none. Just because we can write or drive cars doesn’t mean we have more life than, say, a fly, who can’t do those things, it just means we can do them and the fly can’t. So what? That might be too deep for you.

  I already know from the guys at the B&B that the best place to get pizza is right on the beach at the other end of town. It’s a little too close to Marsha Ray’s house for comfort, but I’m strong enough to deal now.

  It’s that time of day when the light turns everything pink and gold. Milly-Anna calls it the Golden Hour. If you ever want to see an Olympic-standard display of pelican-diving, or you just want to sit and watch Milly-Anna cry, all you have to do is walk the path above the beach at RB at sunset and you’ll witness a fine performance of both.

  By the time I get to the pizza joint the sky is blazing, deep pink and purple like one of those nasty tie-dye shirts they sell on Venice boardwalk. Can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone buy or wear one of those. Thomas says they’ve been there since the sixties and once a year they just take ’em down and wash ’em, like Thanksgiving flags in reverse. I should call Ike and Milly-Anna like I promised. I guess I won’t, though. Sometimes there’s too much past, right? Sometimes you just have to let yourself be swallowed up by the present.

  There’s a line around the block for ice-cream, but for pizza I can walk right in and order my favourite artichoke, caper and anchovy and the girl taking my order doesn’t look at me like a crazy person. I love this place. If Marsha Ray didn’t live so close by, I would buy a condo right next to the pizza joint, overlooking the beach.

  Ten minutes later I’m sitting on the stones, chewing away. Imagine if my own mouth noises made me angry – I’d starve, right? But I guess it’s nature’s mercy to keep us blind, or deaf, to our own faults.

  It’s kind of warm, like spring back home, and people are jumping around in the water, their skin all orange glow in the light of the low sun. I choose a spot close to a family – mom, dad and daughter – so maybe people will think I’m with them and won’t try to talk to me. They’re kind of cool, throwing stones at an empty coffee cup. Whoever knocks it off whack has to get up and straighten it. When it’s the daughter’s turn to get up they pretend to throw stones at her and make jokes about the Taliban. I totally get this Brit sense of humour. I sneak a photo of them on my phone and study it. It’s like someone took the best physical features of the parents, popped them into a cocktail shaker and poured out the daughter. I wonder if the same could be said about me.

  Three gulls are sidling up the beach to watch me eat. Guys, flying would be quicker. They stop at a respectful distance, cocking their heads right and left, keeping one eye on me, or on my pizza anyway, and the other on the competition. I throw a crust so it lands bang in the middle of their triangle. The biggest, whitest one gets to it first, and there’s a metaphor for life right there.

  The stoning family packs up and leaves, taking their cup with them, so I set up my empty soda can, pushing a few of the smaller stones in through the sip hole to weigh it down. I guess the game’s more fun with more than one person, but it’s not so bad alone.

  Down at the water’s edge there’s a guy with a baby. The baby is old enough to walk but is still wearing a diaper. (And nothing else – that’s how I know; I don’t have X-ray vision.) The guy is throwing stones into the sea, making these fancy cricket bowler moves with his arms (Thomas loves cricket; I get that it’s better than baseball, but that’s all I get about it) and the kid is copying him, but he doesn’t understand what he’s doing so does his fancy arm stuff as a separate movement to the throw. It’s hard to describe but it kind of goes arm waggle, pause, toss, arm waggle, pause, toss. The dad is so engrossed in showing off his own throwing-rocks-into-the-water skills, he hasn’t even noticed what the kid is doing. I want to run down the beach and yell at him to pay attention to his son. Look! See how cute your kid is? Get over yourself and your fancy arm shit and watch how cute your kid’s being. But I don’t. It might not even be that guy’s kid. The guy might be really embarrassed that some stranger’s kid is copying him. Instead I scramble over the stones and head back towards Kemp Town, through a stinking haze of barbecue smoke blowing in from the beach. Somewhere in the midst of it all is Marsha Ray and her party so I hurry along in case she’s looking out for me.

  I miss the Great Dudini; he’d snap her hand off if she tried to touch me. We could take it to a taxidermist and use it as a door handle.

  When I get back to the Avalon, I text Marsha, tell her some lie about having to go to London, then switch off my phone.

  Andrew’s Limp #1

  I’m on the train to Scotland, checking out the photos Ruth gave me. The one of Andrew and you and me, I figure was taken right after I was born. I mean minutes after. Someone has written the date, 6 June 1992, on the back of the picture and pressed too hard on the pen because the letters have embossed the front, right across your knees. I’m there but I’m not really visible, I’m just a bundle of yellow comforter in the crook of Andrew’s arm. You are sitting next to us, in a chair, your face turned away as if you’re listening to someone talking behind you, or maybe you’re already looking for an escape route. Andrew is standing, leaning a little, with one hand on your shoulder, holding you back. He seems tall in that picture. He’s tall in my memory too, but last time I saw him I was five years old so I guess most people were tall to me then. Tall and thin with orange hair – that much detail I don’t remember but get from the photo – and his smile looks sad, but I guess he’s happy. (How could he not be, right?) Looking at that picture, anybody would think Andrew was my dad.

  It’s bizarre (new favourite word, overheard at London Euston) how people from the distant past look familiar even though all you remember about them is not so much their physical presence, but more the things they did with you, like singing you a song as they push you on the swing (him), or being pissed at you for getting dirt on your clean sweater (you).

  Yet another picture of you and my dad when you’re first pregnant, with you both dressed in white tunics and pants with your bare toes poking out the end and my dad with a bush of a beard that’s so big it looks fake. Your me-bump doesn’t show yet and I can’t see if you’re happy or sad because you’re looking down at my dad’s hand on your belly like you’re thinking, Why does that creepy, weird guy have his hand on my belly? He isn’t looking at you, though, he’s standing straight but not so tall, staring directly into the camera, not smiling. I never could tell if he was happy, even if he was smiling. He has this facial expression, like he’s challenging the person taking the picture, like if he had a sword in his hand, his next words would be En garde! I totally get why you ran away from him.

  I stash Ruth’s photos in the folder with the ones Thomas gave me – yay, another envelope trashed!

  When I was a kid I thought about death a lot. All the time. Anything I did, I imagined a million possible violent death scenarios that could result from that one ordinary action: dribbling the ball towards goal would end in me smashing my brains out on a goalpost; crossing PCH to go to the store, I would be flattened on to the pavement by an imbecile running the red light; standing on the beach, I would see the tide suck all the way out then turn back as a mega-tsunami. I guess these fantasies were the daytime versions of my night scenes. They stopped happening so much when I hit twelve/thirteen, mainly because who needs to fantasise about it when the road you’re on will lead you to a certain death?

  Andrew is waiting trackside when I get off the train. That weird feeling I talked about that you get looking at a picture of someone you knew before you can remember? It’s double weird when you meet them in person. As if you’ve known them your whole life, and have never met them before ever, all at the same time. Kind of confusing, if you think about it too much.

  He is still tall. Taller than me. And super-thin, but healthy thin not junkie
thin. His hair is cut short but there’s a lot of it and it’s not orange any more like it is in the photos but the whitest shade of grey, and that’s the only sign he got older. With his serious face he’s kind of cool-looking. Inscrutable. Ruth and Mrs C’s first impressions of me showed in their faces, but I get the feeling Andrew doesn’t form a first impression EVER. About anyone. He’s a wait-and-see kind of guy. We shake hands and I want to say nice to meet you but that would be wrong because he was there at my birth so I make do with, ‘Hey.’ As he shows me the way to his car, which is way too small for a man of his height and he has to fold himself into it, I wonder if he always walked with a limp.

  In the car, he asks me polite questions about my trip. Am I jet-lagged? Is this my first time in the UK since… (incomplete question)? And I’m relieved that if I concentrate his accent is pretty easy to understand. He’s surprised by how many places I’ve already been, tells me I’ve covered a lot of ground in a short time, and I tell him that where I come from a couple hundred miles is considered a short trip and then realise that’s probably not what he meant. And from his point of view Redondo Beach is not where I come from, either. It’s one of those conversations where you’d like to keep talking but neither of you knows what to say because you’re both scared of saying the wrong thing. I guess I could ask if he has another family, stuff like that, but I don’t think of it until afterwards. I kind of hope he doesn’t. Guess I’ll find out soon enough.

  ‘This is Drongnock,’ he says, slowing the car down as we pass a couple houses, and I’m thinking one of them must be his house when he says, ‘Do you want to see your first school?’

  ‘Sure.’ I’m not sure I’m ready yet to paint myself into this picture, but by the time I realise that, he’s made a sharp turn to the left and pulled up across the street from a building that’s poking up like a pyramid from behind a grey stone wall, like it’s peeking over at us. A sign at the gate says St Mary’s First School. The huge front window is stuck with papercuts of all different colours and sizes.

  I wait for the memories to come flooding back in. They don’t.

  ‘Did I like this school?’

  ‘Well, you were only here for a couple of months, but you seemed to like it well enough. The village has had to fight to keep it open; the council keeps trying to close it down and make the local children travel to the school in Ayr. It’s shut for the holidays now but I’m sure if you wanted to take a look inside, it could be arranged. I know the headmistress quite well, she was a teacher when you were here, and I’m sure she’d like to see you.’

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ I say. ‘That could be cool.’

  ‘I’ll phone her tomorrow. Almost home now. I expect you’re tired.’

  Home. From Andrew’s point of view, this is my home.

  Andrew says he’ll take me to see the house he rented with you, where we all lived, but he doesn’t live there any more. I’m going to be staying with him in his new house. Drongnock is not exactly a metropolis so I guess we won’t have to travel far to see anything I want to see.

  Andrew has to duck to go through his own front door; it’s amazing that his shoulders aren’t permanently hunched into a residential and transportational posture. Inside, the layout is similar to Mrs C’s house, only without all the crap and the yap and the old-lady smells. In this country, the first thing everyone does when they bring you into their home is offer you a hot beverage of some description. Andrew is no exception. While we wait for the water to heat up, he shows me around: sitting room (TV, sofa, chair, fireplace, books), his office (desk, chair, computer, fireplace, books), his bedroom (bed, closet, books), my bedroom (my bedroom: bed, closet, books, nothing that’s actually mine), bathroom (toilet, bathtub, shower, more books). It’s over in a few minutes.

  ‘Dude, I guess you like to read.’

  Andrew laughs. ‘Not a lot else to do around here. It’s pretty quiet, besides the pub, though the locals are a friendly enough bunch.’

  I can’t help wondering how friendly they can be if he still refers to them as the locals after twenty years. I don’t say that, I say, ‘How do I sound to you – do I sound like an American? Back home, people tell me I speak like a Brit.’

  He laughs again. ‘Aye, that you do. Well, somewhere in between. You’ve no trace of your Scottish accent left, that’s sure enough.’

  ‘I had a Scottish accent? Like yours? How cool. Maybe that’s why I can understand you so well.’

  ‘You certainly did. I have a wee video of you at your fifth birthday party all set up ready to go. D’you want to watch it now, hear your accent for yourself?’

  ‘Yeeeaah, maybe later.’ (I’m guessing you’ll be in the video too. One step at a time.) I’m standing behind him in the kitchen now, talking to his back.

  He turns and gives me my beverage: tea. ‘You having trouble making yourself understood, then?’

  ‘Not so much that way around,’ I say.

  ‘Ah, I see. Do you fancy a wee walk after tea, to stretch your legs after your journey?’

  Andrew’s house is a mile or so from the ocean, and we walk there on a narrow trail that follows the course of a narrow stream. I ask him if it’s a desire line and he says, ‘Aye, it is, if you’re a sheep.’

  The landscape is super-flat and you can see all the way to the sea. It’s not beautiful. A few hills or trees would break up the homeliness, stop you seeing it all at once. If landscapes can be described as homely. Flies everywhere. Andrew breaks a long, thin stick off a tree, demonstrates how to flick it around to keep them away and passes it to me. While we’re walking, he starts to tell me about my childhood. I’ve left my phone charging at his house but I figure it would be impolite to ask him to hold off until I can record what he’s saying. In the end, it seems better to just listen.

  He begins by asking me if I have any memory of that day and I admit that most of my childhood before California is a blur, that I have no memories of anything much before Brazil and even Brazil is sketchy. I have no idea which day in particular he means.

  There’s a sheep stopped sideways on the trail, staring at nothing. Andrew claps his hands at it and it straightens up and trots ahead of us. We walk at sheep speed for a while until the sheep turns his woolly ass through a hole in the fence and trots over to join his homies in the field. By which time Andrew has set the scene of a regular school day: up at seven, breakfast, me in the wheelbarrow for the walk to school. I tell him I have a photo of me in a wheelbarrow and he smiles a sad little smile.

  ‘You loved that bloody wheelbarrow. The buggy we bought you was a complete waste of money. As soon as you could sit up unsupported you wanted to go everywhere in the barrow. You’d ride to and from the allotment with all the spuds rattling around you. I thought you’d grow out of it by the time you started school, but no, you insisted on being pushed up the road on your first day. I sat you on a clean sheet to stop the dirt getting on your uniform. You don’t remember?’

  It feels like I do because of the photo, but honestly I don’t in any real sensory way. But hey, how cool was I? ‘I don’t remember anything,’ I say, ‘but man, that would be dope. If I ever have kids, they’re riding to school in a wheelbarrow.’

  ‘Do you remember your mother?’

  ‘Not so much. I mean, I think I’d remember her if I met her again. Now I’ve met you, I kind of remember you.’

  ‘You haven’t seen her, then?’

  ‘No. Have you?’

  ‘No. Not since.’

  (That word since again. Since what? I guess it could be Scottish for for a while.)

  ‘What’s an allotment?’

  ‘It’s a wee plot of land for growing vegetables, fruit, flowers, that kind of thing, a hangover from the war. Ours was pretty basic – spuds, cabbages, onions, you know. You used to bring your bucket along and would spend hours shovelling dirt and stones or worms or woodlice into it with your wee spade, or anything you could pull out of the ground really.’

  Now I get a sensory flashback, of
an earthworm writhing in the palm of my muddy hand, tickling my skin. It could be a meth flashback or it could be nothing so I keep it to myself. We walk on in silence and I get the impression Andrew is thinking about what to say next.

  ‘Our house was a bit further away from the school than most,’ he says. ‘I’ll show you later. It was down a lane with no pavement so we had to walk on the road.’

  I’m confused for two seconds then I remember sidewalk and pavement are false friends.

  ‘When you started school you wanted us to let you walk to school alone. In those days, no one thought twice about letting the younger kids walk to and from school on their own. The older ones would look out for them and there was practically no traffic. But your mum said no, categorically, you were too small. She had her reasons, but I thought she was being overprotective.

  ‘Any road, you and I made a sneaky agreement that on the days I picked you up, which was most days because your mother couldn’t cope too well with the wheelbarrow, you could walk the first few yards of the journey home, just to where the pavement ran out. I knew it was wrong to overrule your mum, but I didn’t see what harm you could come to.

  ‘So, anyway, that day, the day I was talking about, it was Wednesday 22 October, I was there waiting as usual at two-forty-five. The school bell rang at ten to. Followed by the usual chucking-out-time racket. We’d been through the routine often enough by then for me to know without counting exactly how long it would take you to get from the school gate to me. There were only thirty or so pupils in the whole school so it took no time for everyone to clear out. At first, when you didn’t come, I thought maybe you’d gone to a friend’s house for tea, because it’d happened before that your mother had accepted an invitation over the phone and forgotten to tell me, or told me and I’d forgotten. I stuck my head around the corner for a look. Nothing out of the ordinary was going on, besides you not being there of course, but then I noticed a camper van, parked down the side of the school, just a bit further along. Even that wasn’t so unusual: we get our fair share of tourists, passing through on their way to Ayr or Troon or just lost or in need of a toilet. But then I see this wee white face smiling at me from the back window of the van, and a little hand waving, and I realise it’s you.