The Things We Know Now

by Catherine Dunne

  He nodded, his head already bent over his sketchbook, his sandwich beside him on the seat, uneaten. I watched, silenced by what I was seeing. The birds took flight under his fingers. As he sketched, he moved from pencil to charcoal, to occasional vivid whispers of colour. The sketches were not just faithful representations of what we had seen that morning, sharing the binoculars silently between us. Instead, these birds had real personality – their heads cocked cheekily this way or that, their beady eyes gleaming with some ancient knowledge. They took my breath away.

  I didn’t want to disturb him. The focus, the concentration across his eyes was extraordinary. Suddenly, my son looked older, much older. I felt that I was seeing the face he would grow into. I could see what he would look like as a young man. And then, just as quickly as the vision had appeared, it disappeared. He was a nine-year-old child again.

  ‘Those are very good, Daniel. Very good indeed. We should frame some for your bedroom.’

  ‘You think?’ his face lit up.

  ‘Absolutely.’ I smiled at him, ruffled his hair. ‘And now, I also think it’s time to eat that lunch. Get stuck in there, buddy, eat up. Or your mum will have my guts for garters.’

  We had an exciting journey back. The wind gathered in strength and the placid waters of the lake began to make themselves felt in small surges under the bow. The sail flapped and strained, the noise it made suddenly violent and unearthly in that silent place. Daniel responded well to learning the ropes: he was quick, light on his feet, he could anticipate what needed to be done next. We reached the shore just before the late April downpour unleashed itself upon us. Laughing, shouting, trying impossibly to dodge the shower, we tied up the Aurora and raced each other to the car.

  ‘That was cool!’ he exclaimed, launching himself into the passenger seat.

  I laughed. ‘Not only cool – I’m freezing! We’re soaked through.’ I rubbed my hands together, feeling the sticky chill of the rain that trickled down the back of my neck.

  ‘Can Edward come with us next time?’ he asked. He wiped his sleeve across his face. His hair stood up in dark, slick spikes.

  ‘Of course. Any Saturday you wish.’ I tried to ignore the small sigh of disappointment that ruffled my contentment with the day. It was unworthy, and I knew it. ‘Edward is welcome anytime.’

  And so, for the next five Saturdays, Edward kept us company. He proved to be a useful little sailor, too. Some of that usefulness, I think, came from his eagerness to please me. No matter – both he and Daniel learned some new skills, and I learned a little more about both of them and their lives. Edward was talkative, more expansive, once he was on the water; he became easily absorbed in doing things, the sort of physical activity that seemed to make him forget his shyness. Daniel was content to let him chatter.

  I observed that, for Edward, the joy of those days came from the process of learning – reading the wind, filling the sails, getting to know about ropes and knots – whereas for Daniel, it was something different.

  Sailing was simply something that brought Daniel to wherever he wished to be: to the bird sanctuary, to the swans, to the autumn woodlands that were ablaze with colour after a particularly icy winter. The journey was simply a means to an end. He filled several sketchbooks that year.

  I still have them. I look at them from time to time, their contents reminding me of those light-filled Saturdays. When I turn the pages, I can see Daniel again. I can read his happiness in the soaring flight of the sparrowhawk, or the curve of the mute swan’s elegant neck.

  At least I have that sure and certain knowledge of my son’s happiness. It is the only certainty that I do have. Ella and I will never know the exact nature of the process that drove our sweet boy to despair. That drove him to step bluntly out of his life, out of ours, leaving behind a crushing void that can never be filled.

  On those earlier days at least, aboard the Aurora, in my company and with his best friend beside him, my son was happy.

  There is some comfort in that.

  Rebecca

  IT WAS, IRONY OF IRONIES, sometime during the Christmas holidays of 1999. I can’t remember the exact day or date: just that the whole world seemed to be convulsed with fin-de-siècle angst as the turn of the millennium approached.

  Except that it wasn’t the turn of the millennium at all: call me pedantic, but that had yet to happen. We were all a year ahead of ourselves that December, egged on by the harbingers of doom and the end-of-the-world-is-nighers and the new-agers and the certain predictors of the Second Coming. The 1st of January, 2001, on the other hand – the real beginning of the third millennium – slipped by us, passing under our collective radar while we had all turned the other way.

  Ah yes: the momentous event that happens when we are too busy looking at something else. I know the feeling well.

  That Christmas of 1999 in our household had been rather a tense one. Nothing new there; it was merely the continuation of a long year that had also been rather a tense one. Adam and I had been wrestling with some ‘issues’, as he called them. To wit: my frequent, disruptive absences from our home. The pressure he felt under at work. The weight of all that domestic and child-rearing responsibility that fell squarely upon his shoulders.

  Except that it didn’t. We – that is, I – had put structures in place: people and things that stopped all the mother-shaped gaps when I wasn’t around. My international trips had dwindled to just the occasional few days away, much to my relief. But I still had to travel around Ireland, delivering modules in our sister colleges the length and breadth of the country. Dull overnights in overpriced and dingy hotels; under-resourced lecture theatres; uncooperative colleagues. Not the stuff that career dreams are made of.

  For my absences, national or international, I’d hired a daily housekeeper. A rota of childminders. And still the guilt came home with me in every suitcase, every time: those solid blocks of the family edifice that travelled everywhere with me, that saw me pick up the slack on all those other days when I was there. Days that outnumbered my absences by a factor of three to one.

  Anyway, it was one of those lull days, sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. The previous week had been the usual whirl of activity, visits to and from the children’s friends and cousins, family expeditions to indoor playgrounds and cinemas. I was exhausted. I wanted a day at home, to call a halt to all the doing. Ian was a sturdy five-year-old, a child happy in his own company. I can’t remember which computer game was all the rage that Christmas, but he had it. As long as he varied it with books and physical activity, I didn’t mind. Ian has always been an easy child.

  Aisling was three, as clingy as a vine, constantly wailing about the unfairness of life. She’d wangled her way onto my knee again, just after lunch, and I felt a sharp stab of sorrow for her. She didn’t lack attention, or affection, or love – but nothing was ever enough. Right now, she was in search of another story. I held her close, kissed the top of her head, inhaling the scent of soap and shampoo and my perfume, which I’d earlier dabbed on her wrists and behind her ears.

  ‘Which one, sweetheart?’ I asked. ‘What story do you want?’ Her books littered the sofa, where Adam was sitting, half-asleep, something mindless flickering across the TV screen.

  She pointed. ‘That one,’ she said. ‘I’ll get it.’ She wriggled off my knee, and clutched The Gruffalo to her chest, tripping over Adam’s feet in her anxiety to get back to me.

  He jumped, startled awake by the sudden movement. His face filled with annoyance and I reached down and scooped my daughter into my arms, hoping to drown out whatever sharp reprimand was coming her way.

  ‘C’mere, sweetie,’ I said, settling her on my knee. I turned to face Adam, about to shake my head, to ask him to stop, not to say whatever it was he was about to say.

  And right at that moment, his phone rang. He pulled it out of his trouser pocket and frowned at the screen before he answered. I can still picture him: it was one of those moments in which we see something w
ith an extraordinary clarity. The force of the illumination stunned me, made me sit back in the armchair as though I had been slapped.

  My husband’s face suddenly lit up as he answered the call – a brightness that had nothing at all to do with the reflected light from the screen of his mobile phone. Right then, I knew. I said nothing. I watched as he struggled into standing. I watched as he left the room. I listened to his claim of ‘bad signal’ in the living room when he returned. Smiling. Cheerful. And still I said nothing. Nor did I say anything later when he mentioned, casually, that he had to go out to see some colleagues from the UK who had just arrived in town for New Year’s Eve.

  Down through the years, I have puzzled over that reticence of mine. It is not one of my most defining characteristics – as anyone who knows me will agree. Perhaps the fact that my husband was having an affair felt like my fault. Perhaps I felt it was what I deserved for being absent from home, for demanding that I had a supportive partner, one who believed in equality and justice and a fair shake for working mothers. Perhaps. Whatever the reason, I stayed silent.

  Except for one occasion. Maybe six months after that Christmas, when Adam’s behaviour had grown increasingly furtive – there is no other word for it – I decided to confront him.

  ‘Is there something we need to talk about?’ I asked. The children were in bed and we were alone in the kitchen. That in itself was unusual. I seized my moment.

  ‘Hmmm?’ he said, barely lifting his eyes from the newspaper. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘Adam. Do we need to talk?’ I tried to be calm, but even I could hear the urgency in my own voice.

  He looked at me then. ‘What is it?’ He still held onto the raised newspaper. An air of impatience surrounded him, like an aura. I could almost see its colour shimmering.

  ‘You seem very preoccupied. Is everything okay?’

  He kept his gaze level. He took a moment before he replied. I had the impression that he was weighing his words, carefully. ‘What an extraordinary question,’ he said. ‘What on earth could be wrong?’

  I didn’t answer. I waited instead.

  ‘You don’t need to worry,’ he said. ‘Everything is just fine.’ Then he put the newspaper down and left the kitchen.

  I thought I understood that conversation. It told me that nothing was fine, that everything was wrong, but that, nevertheless, he would not rock the family boat. I sat at the table, long after he’d left, fear alternating with numbness. For the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to do. I was consumed by a terror of abandonment.

  I had two children. I had a life entangled with Adam’s – no matter what thread I pulled, the whole fabric came apart, leaving holes and gaps and weaknesses that could never be filled or mended.

  And so, I did nothing.

  Daniel

  DAD TOOK ME TO THE OPEN EVENING. Mum came along later on because she had to work. But she didn’t miss much, just the principal, Mr Murray, waffling on about stuff. I wanted to get going to see the classrooms, but Dad said we had to wait until all the boring bits were over. The bits about being welcome and a whole new chapter and the different routines of secondary school. Things like that.

  Pretty much everybody from sixth class was there. Mikey and Cliodhna and Maggie and Brendan. I saw them with their parents. Edward too, with his mum. His dad was working as well. I spotted James and Jeremy, but they were way back, at the end of the hall. Anyway, we don’t bother saying hello any more, not since the time they used to pick on the smaller kids in the playground. I never told on them back then, but they think I did. Them and Jason, but he’s in America with his mum and dad now.

  When the speeches were over, we were allowed to see the classrooms. In the Woodwork Room they had all kinds of stuff on display. Mug racks, bedroom lockers, even small tables with tiny coloured bits of mosaic on the top. When Mum came, she really liked them, especially the tables. She and Dad both said I could do any subjects – options they called them in the school – that I wanted. So that night, I picked woodwork. The teacher, Mr Byrne, was cool. He chatted to me for ages and I told him about all the stuff in Granddad’s garage.

  On one of the other corridors, there was the Art Room. Miss O’Connor was there. I thought she must have run real fast from the hall to get there, because she was the deputy principal as well and had to say some of the speeches. She talked to me for a good while about what they do in art, to me and about three others. Mum and Dad stood at the back but she talked to us instead and I liked that. I told her about drawing the birds and she asked to see them. I said I’d bring my sketchbooks in on the first day. Mum and Dad said it was fine if I wanted to do art, so that was two subjects.

  Then we could hear piano coming from the Music Room, just down the corridor. Mr Kelly teaches English and music and he’s in charge of the school band as well. When Mum told him I play the violin he got real excited. So I joined the band there and then and said I wanted to do music. He told me about the syllabus and it sounded good so that was three subjects. I’m not sure about the last one but Dad says there’s no hurry. It can wait until September.

  But I can’t wait. The school is great. There’s loads of room and you move around to each teacher after every class: you’re not stuck sitting in the same place every day. And you get lots of teachers, not just the same one. I always liked Mrs MacCarthy though, our sixth-class teacher. She was like another mum. She told us loads of times that we were a group with ‘exceptional talents’, that’s what she said. And she said we had a duty to go out into the world and develop all our talents to their ‘fullest potential’. She said as well that we must never forget to be kind, both to ourselves and to others. Mum said that it sounded like a pretty good philosophy to her.

  Miss O’Connor’s Art Room was deadly, though. For the open evening she showed us all kinds of things like lino-cutting and a kiln for pottery and the option of doing photography on a Wednesday afternoon – a kind of club that met because of the half day. I can’t wait to get started. And Mr Kelly says I can learn another instrument if I want as well, not just stick to the violin.

  We met up with Edward on the way out. He’s really excited too except he doesn’t like the navy uniform. I don’t care. There was a notice on the door on the Green Corridor – they call it that because the doors are painted green and all the different colours make it easier to find your way around the corridors – about drama workshops after school, and that they needed people to paint scenery for the end-of-year show. How cool would that be for next year?

  Graduation from sixth class is at the end of May. Then there’s the summer, and Dad has promised loads of trips for me and Edward on the Aurora, maybe even an overnight.

  And then it’ll be September. I don’t really want to show it but I am so excited I wish it was the end of August already.

  Patrick

  THE FIRST TIME that I took Daniel fishing belonged to a very special time in our brief life as a family. It was during that wonderful, long summer that marked one of the first major transitions of my son’s life. He’d just finished primary school, had graduated along with his classmates on an evening so full of talent and ceremony and youthful exuberance that Ella and I had been charmed.

  As we left for the school that evening – the evening of his ‘graduation’ ceremony – Daniel said he had a surprise for us. We could both sense his mounting excitement. But no amount of teasing or guessing or bribery could get him to divulge his secret. ‘Wait and see,’ he kept saying. ‘You’ll just have to be patient.’ And he grinned at me. He’d just used one of my own favourite phrases against me.

  The school hall was thronged when we entered. We were welcomed by the staff, by a delegation from fifth and sixth classes, by members of the board and the parents’ committee. Such warmth and inclusivity took me aback. I looked around me, saw how every space in the hall was now filled from floor to ceiling with the children’s paintings. Daniel’s covered almost one full wall. I knew without being told which ones
were his. He loved blue: every conceivable shade of it.

  ‘Is this the surprise?’ I whispered to Ella, motioning towards the wall of blue as we were shown to our seats.

  ‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘We’re going to have to wait until he tells us. We’ll just have to be patient.’ And she winked.

  As we waited, I was suddenly overwhelmed at the contrast between my own schooldays and those of my son. Memories – all too vivid ones – transported me back to the early fifties and my own days at primary school. In sixth class we were ‘the big boys’ – almost ready to be unleashed upon the world. The world of work and apprenticeships for most, and of secondary school for those few – and I was among them – who were more economically fortunate.

  We all, however, had the privilege at the start of that final year of childhood of moving ‘upstairs’ – via a ramshackle wooden stairway that led to the biggest, coldest, bleakest classroom in the school. No pictures hanging there: no plants, nothing to lighten the all-pervasive shadow of Mr Gradgrind. We were warned to keep our lunches in our desks: rats had been known to climb into the schoolbags of the unwary. I could still see the rows of hard wooden benches; feel the freezing winter air that the turf fire in the corner did nothing to soften. And I could never forget the frequent sting of the leather across my palms, or the pain of a slapped ear.

  Once, Tommy Lalor, who sat beside me, got the worst beating I had ever witnessed. He had had the temerity to complain at home about the toilet block in the schoolyard outside. The floor ran with water and waste: the pans leaked constantly, blocked up on a daily basis, overflowed. The stench made us gag. Tommy’s mother, a feisty woman, brought her complaint to the Brothers. In class the following day, Tommy was hauled up to the top of the room and beaten across the head, the legs, the hands by the vicious Brother Michael, with a savagery I had never witnessed before. He wielded the leather with uncanny accuracy. He knew just which of its angles hurt the most. ‘Sticky’, we knew him as – although the derivation of that nickname had long been lost.