The Story

by Victoria Hislop

  My father didn’t like sitting close to people, and he didn’t like touching, and said he loathed displays of affection of any kind, but he was sitting very close, and his hand stayed on my knee a bit too long, and he softly squeezed, and my knee got hotter and hotter, and he kept looking at me, as though waiting for me to do something, and I had an idea that he was going to ask if we could have sex, father and son. It was a crazy idea, but I was certain of it. I moved my leg.

  ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘you’ve been warned. You thought your mother was an angel because she looked like one, but you were completely wrong about that.’

  I didn’t want to hear any more. I told him I needed to use the toilet and I went to the bar and used the last of my money to pay for our drinks. I wasn’t going to say goodbye, I couldn’t stand him anymore, but he came round the corner, and saw me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said.

  ‘I need to go back to Uni. I just remembered I have to meet my tutor.’

  My father and I had lived alone together for seven years and, for seven years, when he got home from work, I’d be stuck with him, trapped with his talking in the kitchen or lounge, and if he wanted me when I went into my bedroom, he’d barge in, and I’d have to yawn my head right off its hinges to get rid of him. Nearly every weekend I’d pretend to be going into the city to see a film with friends and instead, catch the bus to an internet café three suburbs away, and drink coffee and play games online.

  He followed me to the front door of the pub. ‘Did you hear what I said? Were you listening?’

  ‘Yes, but I have to go to a lecture.’

  ‘You’re a stinking liar,’ he said. ‘I’m staying on and I’ll finish these beers. I don’t like people who waste time and money. Do you follow me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He opened the door for me, and saw me out to the street.

  We saw very little of each other after that spring afternoon; once or twice a year, my birthday and Christmas, but that changed when I married Janice. On our wedding day, at a small outdoor ceremony by the lake, he gave me our wedding gift; a Tartan picnic flask, six blue plastic cups, and a matching rug.

  ‘You’ll have a family of your own, soon,’ he said. ‘And I want to help you along. I can help you get on with things. I can help you sort things out.’

  After the wedding, he formed a habit of stopping by the flat, donating furniture, giving me loans, calling me late in the night and saying things like, ‘I’m just around the corner. Have you got a minute?’

  And here he was again, only two months since his last visit, standing beside my kitchen table and holding a pineapple in the crook of his arm.

  I turned my back to him and checked the whiteboard on the fridge to see if Janice had left me a message. She hadn’t. I pretended to check the clock over the sink and looked into the backyard. Her bike was leaning against the shed, but her helmet wasn’t in the basket. She might be gone for good and my father would be here to see it happen.

  As I turned round to face him, he gave me the pineapple, offered it to me as though it were something of great value.

  ‘It fell off the tree when I was heading home last night,’ he said. ‘What a glorious country, eh?’

  ‘I don’t really like pineapples, Dad. Why don’t you give it to somebody at work?’

  ‘Give it back to me, then. It’s not going to waste.’

  I gave it back to him.

  ‘You should eat more fruit,’ he said.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I should.’

  I thought he was going to leave but he sat at the table and put the pineapple in his lap. He was going to stay, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  ‘What do you want to drink?’ I said. ‘Will a cup of tea do?’

  ‘That’d be nice.’

  I opened the fridge and looked out to the backyard again. The neighbour’s ginger cat was curled up, asleep, on the Greek family’s trampoline.

  ‘Sorry, Dad. There’s no milk.’

  There was always milk in the fridge. Janice bought two litres every night when she went to the 7-Eleven on the corner for her cigarettes.

  ‘Then I’ll have water,’ he said. ‘Do you have ice?’

  ‘You don’t want a beer?’

  ‘Christ, no,’ he said. ‘It’s too early. I’m working today.’

  ‘What time do you start?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be there by nine. But there’s no mad rush. I’ve arranged for the locum to do the mornings.’

  There was no ice in the ice-tray, but I rummaged in the freezer as though there was hope it might be found. The breeze from the frost took some of the heat off my hands.

  ‘There’s no ice,’ I said.

  ‘Forget the water, then. I’ll suck on one of these.’

  He took a packet of Fisherman’s Friends from the back pocket of his khaki shorts.

  ‘Do you want one?’

  ‘No thanks, Dad. They make me cough.’

  As soon as I sat at the table, he stood and went to the sink and put the pineapple on the draining board, tried to stand it upright. When it toppled, he held its bottom and moved it round ‘til he was sure it wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Thanks for the pineapple,’ I said. ‘Janice will love it.’

  ‘Does she usually go out so early in the morning?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I lied. ‘She likes going for walks.’

  ‘Is she still selling buttons?’

  ‘No, she quit. And it wasn’t buttons, it was sewing equipment…’

  ‘I know that.’

  He sat down again, but didn’t pull his chair under the table. I thought he’d be leaving soon.

  ‘How have you been?’ he said. ‘How are you keeping?’

  ‘I’ve been well-enough, thanks, Dad. The nights are hard, but I like the quiet hours when the patients are sleeping. And the walk home is good.’

  He looked at the ceiling fan.

  ‘Is that broken?’

  ‘Yes. The landlord’s coming to fix it soon.’

  He looked at the window.

  ‘Didn’t she leave you a note or anything? Didn’t she tell you where she was going?’

  ‘No, Dad. I’m not her minder.’

  I sat up in the chair and put my shoulders back, tried to make my body look bigger, tried to hide my panic. But it made no difference. I was work-wrecked and nervous and he could see it. Janice was gone somewhere, and it might be for good this time.

  ‘How about you, Dad?’

  ‘I could use a bit more help. The locum’s pretty good, but my secretary’s always behind. Things are getting to be too much for us. I’ve been wondering if I should retire.’

  We were silent then and the only sound came from the traffic in Ormond Road, the delivery trucks beeping as they reversed out of the Mornflake warehouse. He wasn’t troubled by the silence, or the lack of something to do with his hands. He was tidy and ambitious and he liked his own company. Even a stranger could see it; the way he sat with his hands on the knees of his khaki shorts, the creases just as they were when he pulled them, brand new from the box.

  ‘Maybe you need a new secretary,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be daft, son. I’ve spent too long training her. Anyway, the patients like her. She keeps teddy bears behind the desk for the kiddies.’

  ‘That’s good then, Dad,’ I said. ‘Surely the fact that the patients like your secretary’s much more important than paperwork.’

  ‘You’re right, son,’ he said. ‘Of course, you’re right.’

  The baby in the flat upstairs started howling.

  ‘It’s too hot in here,’ I said.

  I stood and opened the back door and, as soon as it was open, the ginger cat jumped off the trampoline and ran into the kitchen and sniffed at the cupboard door under the sink, walked to the door and looked at us for a moment, then sat.

  ‘Is that yours?’ he said.

  ‘No. It belongs to the upstairs neighbour.’

&nb
sp; ‘Why does it come in here?’

  ‘That’s what cats do,’ I said. ‘It wants food, I suppose.’

  ‘It stinks,’ he said. ‘Is it neutered? You should tell those Greeks upstairs that neutering is a relatively cheap and simple operation.’

  There was no air coming through the kitchen door and the backs of my knees were sweating.

  I stood up from the table.

  ‘Listen, Dad. I might have a bit of a sleep now, if that’s alright.’

  ‘Won’t you be waking up again soon?’ he said. ‘When Janice gets home?’

  ‘Not necessarily. I’m a heavy sleeper.’

  He stood and looked over at the pineapple on the draining board.

  ‘I’ll get out of your hair then, will I?’

  We faced each other across the table, and we were breathing in unison.

  ‘OK. Stay for a bit,’ I said. ‘I can sleep later. Let’s go into the lounge room.’

  I stopped in the hallway and told him I’d be in soon.

  ‘I just want to open the bedroom window.’

  Janice had cleared out most of her clothes. I couldn’t check the bedside drawers, without my father wondering what I was doing, but I knew the drawers would be empty, too. She’d threatened leaving, but I didn’t believe she would, not like this, not this suddenly, not without a final warning, not without a last chance. People didn’t end marriages this way, without warning, without second chances.

  I got two glasses of orange juice and brought them into the lounge. My father was standing by the window and he’d unclenched his jaw, let his mouth hang open. I saw how he might look in repose, when there was nobody else around. He’d let me see him, not as strong, and not as calm. He was thinking about my mother, and I sensed it there in his slackened mouth and, for a moment, I thought of her too, the memory that always came to me first, though I didn’t want it to.

  It was a few months before she left home, a winter’s day, and the three of us were eating lunch in a café. She told the waitress she wanted something that wasn’t on the menu. She asked for a ‘large onion sandwich’. The waitress was still at our table when my father laughed at her. ‘Precisely how large is a large onion?’ he said.

  My mother got out of her seat.

  ‘The waitress knew what I meant,’ she said. ‘Everybody else knew what I meant.’

  He tried to apologise, as he often did, by saying, ‘Oh, pet. Don’t feel that way.’

  She came round to my father’s side of the table. She’d hung her coat over the back of his chair and she needed him to sit forward to get at it.

  ‘Move,’ she said.

  He turned round to her, put his hand on her arm, and tried to console her as best he could, as he often did, by holding onto a part of her.

  ‘I said move,’ she said, ‘you slow, deaf pig! I need my coat.’

  My father didn’t move quickly enough. She wrenched the coat from behind his back.

  ‘You’re embarrassing me, Richard,’ she said. ‘Get off my bloody coat!’

  I stood in the lounge room doorway and held the glasses of orange juice and looked at him, waited for him to see me.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ he said. ‘I’ve turned on the fan for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad. Here’s your OJ.’

  I sat down on the end of the settee and he sat in the armchair near the door. As we sat, we crossed our legs, left over right, a genetic tic, something we always did when we sat down.

  ‘So, where do you think that young wife of yours has got to?’

  ‘She’s probably meeting a friend for coffee or something.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘It’s very early for that.’

  I said nothing, and he sat forward, moved his legs round so that his knees and feet were aimed in my direction.

  ‘I think I’ll call Janice,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask her to bring some milk and ice back with her.’

  ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘I should be heading off soon anyway.’

  ‘OK,’ I said and felt the phone warm in my hand.

  He waited for me to check for messages, but there were none. She was gone.

  ‘She’s on her way home,’ I said. ‘She says she’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But I think I’ll try and get some sleep now.’

  I thought he’d leave then, but he didn’t. He was going to stick it out, wait with me until she came home – or didn’t.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ he said. ‘Have you given any more thought to taking the exam?’

  He was talking about the mature-age medical school exam. He’d reminded me of it the last time we met, and the time before that.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said, ‘but I will.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll work as a nurse for the rest of your life?’

  ‘I might, Dad. I like it.’

  ‘How’s your blood-pressure been of late?’

  ‘Normal, Dad. It’s normal.’

  ‘Do you still get those dizzy spells? Maybe while I’m here I could check your pulse?’

  ‘I can check my own bloody pulse. There’s no need.’

  ‘You look a bit flushed. A bit iffy around the gills.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m just real hot, Dad. It’s just stuffy in here. I feel like I’m wearing a bear suit.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘You never did warm to the heat.’

  He laughed at himself, like a school-boy.

  ‘Good one,’ I said. ‘That’s a good one.’

  We were silent and he scratched his arm while looking out the window. A Mornflake truck was reversing out of the factory warehouse.

  ‘There might be fleas in here,’ he said, ‘from that cat. Have you been bitten?’

  ‘No. I haven’t been bitten. It was probably a mozzie.’

  ‘There’s a lot of sand,’ he said. ‘In the carpet.’

  We lived fifteen minutes from Bondi Beach and that’s part of the reason why we paid so much rent for such a cramped, gloomy flat. I wanted to move out to the suburbs, just for a few years, and save some money for an air-conditioner and a trip back to London, but Janice couldn’t stand the stench of the suburban sticks and so we stayed and bought three fans; so that made four fans, including the overhead in the kitchen that was busted.

  I looked at him and jiggled my glass, swirled the juice round as though it had ice in it, and said nothing about the sand.

  ‘You can check your mobile phone again if you want,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not worried, Dad. She’ll be here in a minute.’

  He stood. ‘I should be going,’ he said. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  ‘OK, Dad. Thanks for coming over. I’m sorry I wasn’t very good company.’

  ‘You’re tired, that’s all. You’ve never liked the heat.’

  We stood in the hallway, near the front door. His hands were stuffed inside his khaki pockets and he didn’t look like he was ready to go. In this in-between state, this waiting, this not coming or going, he’d usually be the one to make the first move to action. But on that morning, he stood stock still, and looked at me. I didn’t want to speak, and he didn’t either, so I opened the front door and stepped outside and waited for him to follow. I was in a bad state, sweating and nervous, and even though I didn’t want to be left alone, I didn’t know how to be this way with him watching me.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said.

  ‘Goodbye, son.’

  I’d already turned to go back inside when he stepped back onto the porch and took hold of me. He hugged me, long enough for me to feel what went on beneath his chest, and I closed my eyes as he held me, and there was no rush from either of us to get it over with, and I held him with the same strength as he held me.

  He let go first, but it wasn’t to be rid of me. He wanted to say something. He took hold of my wrist.

  ‘I hope you can find a way out of this situation, son. I wish you luck.’

  And so he knew Janice had gone,
and he’d probably known for a long time that she’d leave me, and maybe he hadn’t come to rub my nose in it. Maybe it wasn’t that at all.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK, Dad.’

  Saying ‘OK’ said nothing, and meant nothing, but as I held my breath, and watched him walk down the path, I hoped he’d realise that I wanted to say more, and that I just didn’t know how to take the chance. He’d know, wouldn’t he, that I was too surprised to speak? Maybe he’d have seen that I was too afraid to do anything, or say anything, that might bring my emotions to the boil. I was too busy shuddering to say anything more, and I hoped he knew that, and that he realised, that morning, I loved him.

  The Gift

  Emma Donoghue

  Emma Donoghue (b. 1969) is an Irish-born playwright, literary historian and novelist. She has published seven novels, eleven plays and four collections of short stories. Her 2010 novel, Room, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.

  Mrs. Sarah Bell

  177 3rd Street

  Jersey City

  March 5, 1877

  I need to put my little one with you. Her name is Lily May Bell, she is of one hundred per cent American parentage. Her father John Bell died unexpected when she was only three months old leaving me alone in the world and I cannot supply her needs tho’ not for want of trying. I would work and take care of her but no one will have me and her too, some say they would if she was 2 or 3 years old. She is just from the breast, her bowels have not been right for a long time. I have cried and worried over her so much I think my milk hurt her. I boarded Lily May out for some months so I could work at dressmaking but she did not thrive, and the woman said it might be the best in the end for a fatherless mite. A neighbor told me in confidence that woman is no better than a baby farmer and doses them all stupid with syrup so I have taken Lily May out and can see no way except to throw myself on the mercy of your famous New York Society. Be kind to her for God’s sake. You must not think that I neglected her. Do not be afraid of her face, it is nothing but an old ringworm. I will try hard to relieve you of her care as soon as ever can be.

  Mrs. Sarah Bell

  177 3rd Street

  Jersey City