Touchy Subjects: Stories

by Emma Donoghue

  "Don't call him that," said Jon.

  "But he is one."

  Jon shook his heavy head. "Don't call him my dad, I mean."

  "Oh."

  The silence stretched between them. "It's like the honey jar," said Jon.

  Davy glanced up. His lashes were like a cat's.

  "I was about three, right, and I wanted a bit of honey from the jar, but he said no. He didn't put the jar away or anything—just said no and left it sitting there about six inches in front of me. So the minute he was out of the room I opened it up and stuck my spoon in, of course. And I swear he must have been waiting because he was in and had that spoon snatched out of my hand before it got near my face."

  "What's wrong with honey?" asked Davy, bewildered.

  "Nothing."

  "I thought it was good for you."

  "It wasn't anything to do with the honey," said Jon, dry-throated. "He just wanted to win."

  Davy walked beside him, mulling it over.

  They went the long way, through the park. When they passed a gigantic yew tree, Davy turned his head to Jon and grinned like a shark.

  Without needing to say a word, they ducked and crawled underneath the tree. The dark branches hung down around them like curtains. Nobody could have seen what they were up to; a passerby wouldn't even have known they were there. Jon forgot to be embarrassed. He did a sliding tackle on Davy and toppled him onto the soft damp ground. "Man on!" yelped Davy, pretending to be afraid. They weren't cold anymore. They moved with sleek grace, this time. It was telepathic. It was perfect timing.

  "For Christ's sake, stay onside," Saul bawled at his team.

  Davy's trainers blurred like Maradona's, Jon thought. The boy darted round the pitch confusing the defenders, playing to the imaginary crowd.

  "Don't bother trying to impress us with the fancy footwork, Irish," screamed Saul into the wintry wind, "just try kicking the ball. This is footie, not bloody Riverdance."

  Afterwards in the showers, Jon watched the hard curve of Davy's shoulder. He wanted to touch it, but Naz was three feet away. He took a surreptitious glance at his friend's face, but it was shrouded in steam.

  Saul never gave Jon and Davy a lift home from practice anymore. He said the walk was good exercise and lord knew they could do with it.

  "I don't know why, but your dad is out to shaft me," said Davy, on the long walk home.

  "No he's not," said Jon weakly.

  "Is so. He said he thought I might make less of a fool of myself in defense."

  "Defense?" repeated Jon, shrill. "That's bollocks. Last Saturday's match, you scored our only goal."

  "You set it up for me. Saul said only a paraplegic could have missed it."

  Jon tried to remember the shot. He couldn't tell who'd done what. On a good day, he and Davy moved like one player, thought the same thing at the same split second.

  "I don't suppose there's any chance he knows about us?"

  Jon was so shocked he stopped walking. He had to put his hand on the nearest wall or he'd have fallen. The pebble dash was cold against his fingers. Us, he thought. There was an us. An us his dad might know about. "No way," he said at last, hoarsely.

  Jon knew there were rules, even if they'd never spelled them out. He and Davy were sort of mates and sort of something else. They didn't waste time talking about it. In one way it was like football—the sweaty tussle of it, the heart-pounding thrill—and in another way, it was like a game played on Mars, with unwritten rules and a different gravity.

  The afternoons were getting colder. On Bonfire Night they took the risk and did it in Jon's room. The door had no lock. They kept the stereo turned up very loud so there wouldn't be any suspicious silences. Outside the bangers went off at intervals like bombs. Jon's head pounded with noise and terror. It was the best time yet.

  Afterwards, when they were slumped in opposite corners of the room, looking like two ordinary postmatch players, Jon turned down the music. Davy said, out of nowhere, "I was thinking of telling the folks."

  "Telling them what?" asked Jon before thinking. Then he understood, and his stomach furled into a knot.

  "You know. What I'm like." Davy let out a mad chuckle.

  "You're not..." His voice trailed off.

  "I am, you know." Davy still sounded as if he were talking about the weather. "I've had my suspicions for years. I thought I'd give it a try with your sister, but nada, to be honest."

  Jon thought he was going to throw up. "Would you tell them about us?"

  "Only about me," Davy corrected him. "Name no names, and all that."

  "You never would."

  "I'll have to sometime, won't I?"

  "Why?" asked Jon, choking.

  "Because it's making me nervous," explained Davy lightly, "and I don't play well when I'm nervous. I know my family are going to freak out of their tiny minds whenever I tell them, so I might as well get it over with."

  He was brave, Jon thought. But he had to be stopped. "Listen, you mad bastard," said Jon fiercely, "you can't tell anyone."

  Davy sat up and straightened his shoulders. He looked small, but not at all young; his face was an adult's. "Is that meant to be an order? You sound like your dad," he added, with a hint of mockery.

  "He'll know," whispered Jon. "Your parents'll guess it's me. They'll tell my dad."

  "They won't. They'll be too busy beating the tar out of me."

  "My dad's going to find out."

  "How will he?" said Davy reasonably.

  "He just will," stuttered Jon. "He'll kill me. He'll get me by the throat and never let go."

  "Bollocks," said Davy, too lightly. "We're not kids anymore. The sky's not going to fall in on us. You're just shitting your shorts at the thought of anyone calling you a faggot, aren't you?"

  "Don't say that."

  "Touchy, aren't you? It's only a word."

  "We're not, anyway," he told Davy coldly. "That's not what we are."

  The boy's mouth crinkled with amusement. "Oh, so what are we then?"

  "We're mates," said Jon through a clenched throat.

  One coppery eyebrow went up.

  "Mates who mess around a bit."

  "Fag-got! Fag-got!" Davy sang the words quietly.

  Jon's hand shot out to the stereo and turned it way up to drown him out.

  Next door, Michaela started banging on the wall. "Jonathan!" she wailed.

  He turned it down a little, but kept his hand on the knob. "Get out," he said.

  Davy stared back at him blankly. Then he reached for his jacket and got up in one fluid movement. He looked like a scornful god. He looked like nothing could ever knock him down.

  Jon avoided Davy all week. He walked home from the training sessions while Davy was still in the shower. In the back of his mind, he was preparing a contingency plan. Deny everything. Laugh. Say the sick pervert made it all up.

  Nobody else seemed to notice the two friends weren't on speaking terms. Everyone was preoccupied with the big match on Saturday.

  At night Jon gripped himself like a drowning man clinging to a spar.

  Saturday came at last. The pitch was muddy and badly cut up before they even started. The other team were thugs, especially an enormous winger with a moustache. From the kickoff, Saul's team played worse than they'd ever done before. The left back crashed into his central defender, whose nose bled all down his shirt. Jon moved like he was shackled. Whenever he had to pass the ball to Davy, it fell short or went wide by a mile. It was as if there was a shield around the red-haired boy and nothing could get through. Davy was caught offside three times in the first half. Then, when Jon pitched up a loose ball on the edge of his own penalty area, one of the other team's forwards big-toed a fluke shot into the top right-hand corner.

  "You're running round like blind men," Saul told his team at halftime, with sorrow and contempt.

  By the start of the second half, the rain was falling unremittingly. The fat winger stood on Peter's foot, and the ref never saw a thing.
"Look," bawled Peter, trying to pull his shoe off to show the marks of the studs.

  The other team found this hilarious. "Wankers! Faggots!" crowed the fat boy.

  Rage fired up Jon's thudding heart, stoked his muscles. He would have liked to take the winger by the throat and press his thumbs in till they met vertebrae. What was it Saul always used to tell him? No son of mine gets himself sent off for temper. Jon made himself turn and jog away. No son of mine, said the voice in his head.

  Naz chipped the ball high over the defense. Jon was there first, poising himself under the flight of the ball. It was going to be a beautiful header. It might even turn the match around.

  "Davy's," barked Davy, jogging backwards towards Jon.

  Jon kept his eyes glued to the falling ball. "Jon's."

  "It's mine!" Davy repeated, at his elbow, crowding him.

  "Fuck off!" He didn't look. He shouldered Davy away, harder than he meant to. Then all of a sudden Jon knew how it was going to go. He wasn't ready to meet the ball; he didn't believe he could do it. He lost his balance, and the ball came down on the side of his head and crushed him into the mud.

  Jon had whiplash.

  Saul came home from the next training session and said Davy was off the team.

  "You cunt," said Jon.

  His father stared, slack-jawed. Michaela's fork froze halfway to her mouth. "Jonathan!" appealed their mother.

  Above his foam whiplash collar, Jon could feel his face burn. But he opened his mouth and it all spilled out. "You're not a coach, you're a drill sergeant. You picked Davy to bully because you knew he's going to be a better player than you ever were. And now you've kicked him off the team just to prove you can. So much for team-fucking-spirit!"

  "Jonathan." His father's face was dark, unreadable. "It was the lad who dropped out. He's quit the team and he's not coming back."

  One afternoon at the end of a fortnight, Davy came round. Jon was on his own in the living room, watching an old France '98 video of England versus Argentina. He thought Davy looked different: baggy-eyed, older somehow.

  Davy stared at the television. "Has Owen scored yet?"

  "Ages ago. They're nearly at penalties." Jon kept his eyes on the screen.

  Davy dropped his bag by the sofa but didn't sit down, didn't take his jacket off. In silence they watched the agonizing shoot-out.

  When it was over, Jon hit rewind. "If Beckham hadn't got himself sent off, we'd have demolished them," he remarked.

  "In your dreams," said Davy. They watched the flickering figures. After a long minute he added, "I've been meaning to come round, actually, to say, you know, sorry and all that."

  "It's nothing much, just a bit of whiplash," said Jon, deliberately obtuse. He put his hand to his neck, but his fingers were blocked by the foam collar.

  "You'll get over it. No bother."

  "Yeah," said Jon bleakly. "So," he added, not looking at Davy, "did you talk to your parents?"

  "Yeah." The syllable was flat. "Don't worry, your name didn't come up."

  "I didn't"

  "Forget it," interrupted Davy softly. He was staring at the video as it rewound; a green square covered in little frenzied figures who ran backwards, fleeing from the ball.

  That subject seemed closed. "I hear you're not playing, these days," said Jon.

  "That's right," said Davy, more briskly. "Thought I should get down to the books for a while, before my A-Levels."

  Jon stared at him.

  "I'm off to college next September, touch wood." Davy rapped on the coffee table. "I've already got an offer of a place in Law at Lancaster, but I'll need two Bs and an A."

  Law? Jon nodded, then winced as his neck twinged. So much he'd never known about Davy, never thought to ask. "You could sign up again in the summer, though, after your exams, couldn't you?" he asked, as neutrally as he could.

  There was a long second's pause before Davy shook his head. "I don't think so, Jon-boy."

  So that was it, Jon registered. Not a proper ending. More like a match called off because of a hailstorm or because the star player just walked off the pitch.

  "I mean, I'll miss it, but when it comes down to it, it's only a game, eh?...Win or lose," Davy added after a moment.

  Jon couldn't speak. His eyes were wet, blinded.

  Davy picked up his bag. Then he did something strange. He swung down and kissed Jon on the lips, for the first time, on his way out the door.

  Speaking in Tongues

  "Listen," I said, my voice rasping, "I want to take you home but Dublin's a hundred miles away."

  Lee looked down at her square hands. I couldn't believe she'd only spent seventeen years on this planet.

  "Where're you staying?" I asked.

  "Youth hostel."

  I mouthed a curse at the beer-stained carpet. "I've no room booked in Galway and it's probably too late to get one. I was planning to drive back tonight. I have to be at the office by nine tomorrow."

  The last of the conference goers walked past just then, and one or two nodded at me; the sweat of the ceili was drying on their cheeks.

  When I looked back, Lee was grinning like she'd just won the lottery. "So is it comfortable in the back of your van then, Sylvia?"

  I stared at her. It was not the first time I had been asked that question, but I had thought that the last time would be the last. She was exactly half my age, I reminded myself. She wasn't even an adult, legally. "As backs of vans go, yes, very comfortable."

  The reason I got into that van was a poem.

  I'd first heard Sylvia Dwyer on a CD of contemporary poetry in Irish. I'd borrowed it from the library to help me revise for the Leaving Cert that would get me out of convent school. Deirdre had just left me for a boy, so I was working hard.

  Poem number five was called "Dha Theanga." The woman's voice had peat and smoke in it, bacon and strong tea. I hadn't a notion what the poem was about; you needed to know how the words were spelt before you could look them up in the dictionary, and one silent consonant sounded pretty much like another to me. But I listened to the poem every night till I had to give the CD back to the library.

  I asked my mother why the name sounded so familiar, and she said Sylvia must be the last of those Dwyers who'd taken over the Shanbally butchers thirty years before. I couldn't believe she was a local. I might even have sat next to her in Mass.

  But it was Cork where I met her. I'd joined the Queer Soc in the first week, before I could lose my nerve, and by midterm I was running their chocolate-and-wine evenings. Sylvia Dwyer, down from Dublin for a weekend, was introduced all round by an ex of hers who taught in the French department. I was startled to learn that the poet was one of us—a "colleen," as a friend of mine used to say. Her smooth bob and silver-grey suit were intimidating as hell. I couldn't think of a word to say. I poured her plonk from a box and put the bowl of chocolate-covered peanuts by her elbow.

  After that I smiled at her in Mass once when I was home in Shanbally for the weekend. Sylvia nodded back, very minimally.

  Maybe she wasn't sure where she knew me from. Maybe she was praying. Maybe she was a bitch.

  Of course I had heard of Lee Maloney in Shanbally. The whole town had heard of her, the year the girl appeared at Mass with a Sinead O'Connor head shave. I listened in on a euphemistic conversation about her in the post office queue but contributed nothing to it. My reputation was a clean slate in Shanbally, and none of my poems had gendered pronouns.

  When I was introduced to the girl in Cork she was barely civil. But her chin had a curve you needed to fit your hand to, and her hair looked seven days old.

  On one of my rare weekends at home, who should I see on the way down from Communion but Lee Maloney, full of nods and smiles. Without turning my head I could sense my mother stiffen. In the car park afterwards she asked, "How do you come to know that Maloney girl?"

  I considered denying it, claiming it was a case of mistaken identity, then I said, "I think she might have been at a reading I gave
once."

  "She's a worry to her mother," said mine.

  It must have been after I saw Sylvia Dwyer's name on a flyer under the title DHA THEANGA/TWO TONGUES: A CONFERENCE ON BILINGUALISM IN IRELAND TODAY that my subconscious developed a passionate nostalgia for the language my forebears got whipped for. So I skived off my Saturday lecture to get the bus to Galway. But only when I saw her walk into that lecture theatre in her long brown leather coat, with a new streak of white across her black fringe, did I realize why I'd sat four hours on a bus to get there.

  Some days I have more nerve than others. I flirted with Sylvia all that day, in the quarter hours between papers and forums and plenary sessions that meant equally little to me whether they were in Irish or English. I asked her questions and nodded before the answers had started. I told her about Deirdre, just so she wouldn't think I was a virgin. "She left me for a boy with no earlobes," I said carelessly.

  "Been there," said Sylvia.

  Mostly, though, I kept my mouth shut and my head down and my eyes shiny. I suspected I was being embarrassingly obvious, but a one-day conference didn't leave enough time for subtlety.

  Sylvia made me guess how old she was, and I said, "Thirty?" though I knew from the program note that she was thirty-four. She said if by any miracle she had saved enough money by the age of forty, she was going to get plastic surgery on the bags under her eyes.

  I played the cheeky young thing and the baby dyke and the strong silent type who had drunk too much wine. And till halfway through the evening I didn't think I was getting anywhere. What would a woman like Sylvia Dwyer want with a blank page like me?

  For a second in that Galway lecture hall I didn't recognize Lee Maloney, because she was so out of context among the bearded journalists and wool-skirted teachers. Then my memory claimed her face. The girl was looking at me like the sun had just risen, and then she stared at her feet, which was even more of a giveaway. I stood up straighter and shifted my briefcase to my other hand.

  The conference, which I had expected to be about broadening my education and licking up to small Irish publishers, began to take on a momentum of its own. It was nothing I had planned, nothing I could stop. I watched the side of Lee's jaw right through a lecture called "Scottish Loan-Words in Donegal Fishing Communities." She was so cute I felt sick.