Long Story Short

by Siobhán Parkinson

  “I could make a stab at it,” she said. She was wiping her own eyes.

  “Okay,” she said then. “Tear-fest over.”

  “Julie?” I said.

  She must have heard the desperation in my voice, because she patted the back of my hand and said, “Tomorrow, Jonathan. I’ll be talking to some people, your case will be up for discussion, and I give you my word of honor that I will do my level best to … well, to make sure you’re both looked after in the best possible way.”

  What was that supposed to mean? Sweet feck all, as far as I could see.

  “There’s only one possible way,” I said. “She belongs to me—with me, I mean. I brought her up—well, me and my gramma, we did it together. I am the only one who … They can’t take her away from me. She needs me.”

  Then an awful thought struck me. “Is it because I gave her over to Da? Is that why they think I can’t look after her, that I don’t want to? I thought … I mean, I did it for the best. I thought she’d be better off. I didn’t want to, but I thought he loved her.”

  “That was the bravest thing, Jonathan,” she said very softly.

  I looked up at her. I was sorry I’d thought those things about her looking like a duck.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I wanted to howl. But I just sat with my head down. I suppose you could say I’m not really a howler.

  She said, “Tomorrow, Jonathan. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  14

  We went on this holiday when Julie was a baby.

  This particular holiday was different because we went to France, and we hired a car at the airport and drove off to this really cool campsite place with a pool and a place for barbecues and entertainment for the little kids and everything. It was a great holiday. There was soccer in the afternoons for the older kids, like me. Julie used to come and watch. She was only a toddler, but she sat patiently on the sideline and pointed at me every time anyone came by. I used to like soccer in those days, before I discovered I was no good at it.

  I never remember Ma and Da so happy. There were babysitters, so they could go out in the evenings. When I say a campsite, we weren’t in a tent, more a kind of mobile home. Only it wasn’t mobile, it was up on bricks. I don’t know why they call it mobile when it is immobile. Anyway, the babysitters would come and sit in the tiny living room and watch TV and Julie and I could stay up as late as we wanted to, and Ma and Da would go to the nearest town to one of the restaurants and eat fish. They never ate fish at home, but they said this was different. Maybe foreign fish taste better, I dunno.

  We didn’t speak any French, and the people running the campsite had desperate English. They thought they spoke English. They opened their mouths and these sounds came out, but they had nothing to do with any English words I ever heard. They would wave their arms a lot, though, and we more or less got the gist of what they wanted to say, because after all, what does a campsite person want to say except park your car over there or there won’t be any hot water for showers until after six, and really, you can either work that out, or you can manage without knowing it.

  The pool was really great. There was a small pool for the little kiddies like Julie, where they could waddle around in their diapers and splash their feet. And there was the shallow end of the big pool where the older kids could swim, and the parents used the deep end. They looked weird with their swimming caps on, you couldn’t recognize people at all, they didn’t look like themselves. One day I was watching Ma and Da swimming and splashing each other and roaring with laughter and then Da got out of the pool, and it wasn’t Da at all, it was some bloke from Wexford that Ma and Da had met in the supermarket a day or two before.

  On the last day of the holidays, we packed up the car with all the luggage to drive back to the airport, but our flight wasn’t until evening, so we thought we’d have a last swim before leaving. Da had all the stuff for the airport in this little waterproof bag, like a toilet bag or something, the passports and the tickets and so on. Ma told him to put the car keys in there too, so all the important things would be in the same place.

  Da put the little bag down on the ground beside this sun-lounger he was lolling on. Every two minutes, he shook the contents of the bag out as if to check something, it made him nervous having it all together and no place to keep it, as the mobile home had been handed over to the campsite people to clean it for the new family.

  Anyway, we all had a swim, and then we had a picnic by the pool, and we got dressed behind the car for going to the airport. All except Da. He was still in his swimsuit. He didn’t want to leave.

  Ma said, “I wish you had left the car doors open, hon, it’ll be like an oven in there, the children will roast.”

  “Nag, nag,” said Da, gulping back a can of something fizzy. “We can open the windows as we drive, it will cool down fast.”

  Ma shrugged and went on pulling up Julie’s socks. When she had the baby ready, she put her hand out and said to Da, “Okay, gimme the keys, and I’ll strap this one into her car seat while you get dressed.”

  Da leaned over and picked up the waterproof bag. He shook out the passports and the tickets onto the ground. Then he shook it again. No keys.

  “Jono!” he yelled. “Did you take the keys out of this bag?”

  I knew he hadn’t put the keys in the bag. I’d heard Ma telling him to put the keys with the other things, but he’d just waved at her in that yeah-yeah-I-hear-you kind of way, and he never did it. But now, he’d obviously forgotten.

  I couldn’t say that. I couldn’t remind him that he hadn’t done what Ma said. That was the thing about Da. He couldn’t ever just laugh it off if he made a mistake and look goofy. If you mentioned a mistake he’d made, he went apeshit, so for a moment I just froze.

  “Jonathan?” he said, in this piercing way he had when he was annoyed. If there was one thing worse than contradicting Da, it was ignoring him. I had to say something, so I said the first thing that came into my head.

  “Why would I do that?” I said.

  It was just an innocent remark, but Da was obviously in a tizzy about losing the keys, because he took it as some sort of a provocation, and he flew into a rage and he went for me with both his fists up.

  Ma jumped in front of me, to stop him. She had Julie in her arms still.

  “Put that child down!” Da roared at her. I think he thought she was deliberately using Julie as a shield.

  Ma was paralyzed. I could see that she just couldn’t move, she was so scared, but Da thought she was defying him, and that ratcheted his anger up another notch, and he went ballistic. He got red in the face, he started foaming at the mouth, and he flailed out and hit everyone, me, Ma, even Julie. We went reeling back against the car, which was roasting in the sun. I screamed, not because of the blow, but because my arms got burned on the hot metal.

  Everyone came running, all the French people who owned the place, and there was this huge ruckus and two of the French people knocked Da down and sat on him till the police came.

  We missed our flight.

  I don’t remember what happened about the keys, but we must have found them in the end, because we drove off after the police had finished with Da. We had to stay in the airport overnight, and the bloke from Wexford turned up and he bought Ma a bottle of wine and she drank the whole thing herself, and Da was yelling at her and Julie was wailing crying all the time, and Ma was pissed out of her head and Da had a fight with the bloke from Wexford.

  That was the first time I remember Ma drinking. She always drank, but I mean, serious drinking. And Da actually shook Julie to try to make her stop screaming, because everyone in the airport was gawping at us, but of course that only made Julie worse.

  That’s where I should have started the story. That was the beginning. But I’d forgotten that until now. I thought Da had never hit us, apart from the odd crack with the back of his hand, I mean, but it’s amazing what you can forget.

  It didn’t explain about Da not wanting Jul
ie, though. It couldn’t have been the bloke from Wexford, because Julie was more than a year old by then. I suppose there could have been a bloke from somewhere else that I don’t remember about.

  Not that it matters. What matters is that I have to get Julie back.

  15

  I was desperate to see Julie. I kept asking them, every day, when could I see her. It was driving me crazy the way they kept us apart. We’d been together for eight years, and then suddenly we weren’t allowed to see each other. It made no sense. She’s my sister. I’ve looked after her all her life. And she has no one else. Da won’t have her, and everyone else is dead. She needs me. I kept telling them that she needs me, but they didn’t seem to see that.

  Kate did her best, I know. She understands, but nobody else has the first clue. They’re all control freaks, bloody jailers, they are.

  They don’t know about my friendly little razor blade on the windowsill. It’s still there. I’d sack the cleaner if I ran this place.

  In the end, they said we could go to the funeral, Julie and me. Nice of them, that. Big deal.

  But I didn’t say any of this, because I was so relieved that I was going to see Julie at last. I hadn’t seen her for a week.

  They brought me to this place, some kind of hotel, I think, and I was sitting in this big, deep leather sofa, and I remember thinking, This is a really cool leather sofa, and I wish I could appreciate it. But of course I couldn’t.

  Then the revolving door started to revolve, and I saw Julie trapped for a moment in that capsule of glass, her big blue eyes wide open, her teddy firmly pressed under her arm. That made me smile. She’s supposed to be too big for teddies.

  She was wearing clothes I’d never seen before, some kind of a pink top and pink tights and a little flowery cardigan and a gray corduroy skirt, and these cute little gray shoes with smiley faces on the buckles. She looked like just any little girl, not a kid who’d been wrenched away from everything she has ever known. Except for the bruise on her face. It was much better. It seemed to have shrunk, and it was yellowy green now, and not nearly so dramatic, but it wasn’t going to just disappear for a while yet.

  I jumped up and waited for the door to revolve another quarter circle, and then there she was, in front of me.

  I hunkered down and said, “Hello, you.”

  She put up her arms and the teddy fell on the floor, but she stepped right over it and threw herself at me. I hugged her nearly to death. I practically ate her.

  At last I let her go, and I picked up the teddy.

  “Who’s this?” I said. “A new one?”

  “Daddy’s new girl threw my Arabella O’Brien in the bin,” she said. “They told me this one is nicer, but I preferred Arabella.”

  “So what is this one called?”

  “Jonathan,” she whispered.

  “That’s a nice name,” I said, and she grinned.

  “I hope you’ve changed your mind,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” She cocked her head on one side and looked up into my face, screwing up her eyes.

  “I hope you prefer Jonathan to manky old Arabella.”

  A slow smile dawned across her face. “You mean this Jonathan,” she said, poking a finger into my chest, “but you’re pretending you mean that Jonathan.” And she pointed at the teddy.

  She’s better at getting things these days. Growing up.

  “That’s right,” I said. “How’ve you been? Are they minding you properly?”

  She nodded. “Mam’s dead,” she said.

  “So I hear,” I said. “Does that make you sad?”

  She considered for a moment, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she asked, “Do you think she got our postcard?”

  I thought of Julie’s neat row of kisses along the bottom of the card and something in my chest constricted, but I said, “Oh, yeah, for sure.”

  She nodded at that, pleased, and then she asked, “So are we orphans now, Jonathan?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I couldn’t say, Technically, no. So I just shrugged.

  “You didn’t hit it off with Da?” I asked.

  “It’s his new girl,” she said. “She won’t let him be nice to me. She’s only three, but he likes her better.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “When are we going home?” she asked.

  I couldn’t answer her. I looked at Kate, and she said, “We have to go to the church now, Julie.”

  The funeral was terrible. There was hardly anyone there, just us and the priest and Kate and the woman who came with Julie. She introduced herself as Julie’s foster mother and said her name was Jean. She looked all right, but she’s just a woman in a red coat. A stranger.

  Kate said afterwards that was wrong, there had been quite a lot of people there, neighbors and so on, but if there were, they didn’t come to talk to me. Maybe they were embarrassed. People are always embarrassed to sympathize with kids, I’ve noticed that. And this was not an ordinary kind of situation, so I suppose you can’t blame people really. But it would have been nice to see a few familiar faces. It was very bleak, with the coffin blocking the aisle of the church, and a brass crucifix on it with Ma’s name under it, engraved.

  I kept thinking about the last time I’d seen her, stretched out, drunk and snoring beside a pool of vomit. They’d asked me if I wanted to see her before they put the lid on the coffin, but I said no, I couldn’t bear to see her all waxy and dickied up by the undertakers, but now I was kind of sorry I hadn’t, because I kept imagining her turned on her side and snoring softly under the wooden lid. I said that afterwards to Kate, and she said that image would disappear over time, and I’d remember her as she had been in life. I sure as hell hope that’s true, because I definitely do not want to be haunted by that image.

  We followed the coffin down the aisle, me and Julie in front, Jean and Kate behind. Jean was carrying the other Jonathan. There was some sad music on the organ, terrible shit it was.

  I was concentrating on holding on to Julie and walking in time to the music, even though it was fierce music. This was the last thing I could do for Ma, and I wanted to do it right. But for some reason—I must have caught sight of her out of the corner of my eye, or heard something, I don’t know—I looked to the side, and there was Annie, standing there in a pew watching me. Jamie was with her. We weren’t the only ones after all.

  I wanted to rush into the pew and bury my face in her hair. But I just raised my hand. Not exactly a wave, more a kind of signal.

  They said we didn’t have to go to the crematorium if we didn’t want to, so we said we didn’t want to.

  I grabbed Annie outside the church and I mumbled something in her ear, I don’t know what, and she just kept squeezing my hand. “I’ll phone you,” I said, and I squeezed her hand back. “I’m sorry…”

  She nodded, and then I got into the car with the others. They were taking us to some other hotel for lunch. I looked out the back window of the car, looking at Annie. She was standing there in her best coat, looking very thin and miserable, not a bit like my bouncy, funny Annie at all. You’d think she was the one whose mother had died instead of me.

  After lunch, they told Julie she would have to go back to her foster home with Jean, and her lip started to tremble, so to distract her I gave her back her phone. I’d had it all along.

  She was thrilled. “Where did you find it? I looked everywhere.”

  “That’s for me to know,” I said, “and you to find out.” One of Gramma’s most irritating sayings, but I understood now why she used it. Very handy way of ducking out of answering a difficult question.

  Then they told her I couldn’t go with her to Jean’s, that I had to stay in my own place. She started to cry. I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to die.

  “Why?” she kept wailing. “Why?”

  Well, they couldn’t tell her why, could they? They couldn’t tell her that I was officially considered a danger to her.

  “Tell me about the bruise on y
our sister’s face,” Paudge had asked.

  So I’d explained about the apples for dinner and Julie crying and Ma losing it, and how I’d kept her home from school for days, hoping it would heal up, and then when it didn’t, how we’d made a break for it.

  Paudge kept staring at me.

  “That’s exactly what you said before,” he said.

  I had told him all this already, in one of those endless, pointless conversations we’d had.

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s because that’s what happened. It hasn’t changed.”

  “You’re sure you aren’t the one who hit her, Jonathan?” he asked quietly.

  I saw red. Really, a red cloud came down over my vision and I started to kick and scream. My chest hurt, I screamed so hard.

  “See?” he said, after I’d calmed down. “You seem to have a problem controlling your anger.”

  Like father, like son, I could hear him thinking. Although that made no sense, because I hadn’t told him much about Da at all.

  “I have not!” I shouted. “I only screamed and kicked the furniture. I didn’t hit anyone, did I? I never hit people. I’m a sap. I wouldn’t hurt a fly. And certainly not an eight-year-old girl.”

  “No?” he said. “Not even Danielle Butler?”

  “What? What are you on about? What has Danielle Butler got to do with anything?”

  “Danielle Butler got an extremely threatening and offensive text message. It was so bad, her mother reported it, and we traced it. To your phone, Jonathan.”

  I opened my mouth, and then I closed it again. I shook my head. I stamped my two feet in frustration.

  “Can you explain that, Jonathan?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “But you won’t believe me.”

  “Try me.”

  I knew it was pointless, but I told him about the message Julie had got, and how I’d responded to it. I knew there wasn’t a chance he would believe me, because I’d deleted Danielle’s message off Julie’s phone, in case she might see it.

  “Are you sure it came from Danielle?” he said.