Notes from a Coma

by Mike McCormack

  So there I was pacing the room with my hands clasped behind my back, trying to look like I knew what I was doing, peering into the cribs like a cattle jobber looking at weanlings. But what did I know about finding a child—a forty-three-year-old bachelor from the west of Ireland with neither niece nor nephew? I hadn’t a clue where to start looking …

  I took a few more turns round the room peering into the other cribs, not wanting to rush things nor give anything away. At the back of the room, just inside the door, there stood a woman with her arms folded across her chest like a bouncer. JJ calls her Dragana but I can never remember hearing her name. Like the hooked nose and the broomstick it was one of those details he made up. But he was right about the arms. She was built like a wrestler, her coat looked like it was going to come apart at the shoulders. This was a woman you didn’t want to mess with. This was her orphanage and these were her kids. If any of them were leaving the room it would only be through her. She was the one who would fix up the paperwork and exit visas. She was the one who would take a percentage of whatever money changed hands.

  I didn’t want her forcing my hand so I just kept walking round the room. But those eyes kept turning me round and drawing me back to that little face pressed between the bars. He was wearing these big pyjamas with the leg ends frayed from dragging through the dampness and filth in the bottom of the crib. And if there was any colour or pattern on them under that filth I couldn’t make it out. But there was this look on his face, a look I’ve never seen on any child or adult before or since. It was like he was saying to me, “I’m the child you’ve come for, forget the rest. I’m the one you’ve come for.” He wasn’t saying he was any better or stronger or healthier than any of the others. All he was saying was that he was the one. And he was right; he was the one I had come for. I could have gone round that room a hundred times and looked in a thousand other cribs throughout the city and I knew I would have ended up back at that same spot looking down at that child with those black eyes and those filthy pyjamas. This was my child, big eyes, white knuckles and everything. We just stared at each other and there might as well have been just the two of us in that room. If there was a specific moment when our lives came together this was it. Something clicked between us. I felt like putting my hand out and introducing myself, saying, hello, my name is Anthony O’Malley from Louisburgh in the west of Ireland. You probably haven’t heard of the place but in a few days when everything is sorted I’m taking you out of here and you and me are going to have a long and happy life together. But of course I didn’t. Things were strange enough without me talking to a child who couldn’t understand one word I was saying. And then for one moment I had the feeling there was something wrong with him. He was sitting stock-still, not the tiniest movement out of him. For some reason I thought there might be something wrong with his head, his sight or his hearing or something. But it wasn’t that. I waved my hand in front of his face and his eyes followed it over and back. I shouted softly beside his ear and he started sideways. But there was still this stillness about him … The boss woman, Dragana, came up behind me and began telling me something. I didn’t hear her. It had dawned on me why he was so still; he was the only one in the crib not grinding his teeth.

  The boss woman was pulling on my sleeve and talking away. She was telling me something, the child’s name, I think. But she didn’t have to tell me. I knew his name, I’d known it from the moment I’d first set eyes on him. His name was John Joe O’Malley and I was going to call him JJ.

  It took four days to round up the paperwork: medical certs, exit visa and so on. They were the longest four days of my life. At first I thought it would be a simple job of handing over the money and walking out of there with him in my arms and getting a plane home. That’s how much I knew.

  Now that I had chosen JJ I itched to get out of that city. I wanted to take him away from that orphanage, away from the filth and the dampness and the paint peeling off the walls and the smell of detergent that would choke you. I was so worried someone might come and lift him out from under my nose that I spent every minute of those four days standing over him and talking to him, just getting used to him. When I saw him a couple of days later he’d been taken from his crib and was sitting by himself in a separate cot at the back of the room. He was wearing a new pair of pyjamas and there were clean sheets under him. For the first time I had a clear view of him and I hardly recognised him with all the dirt stripped off him. His eyes were still dark but his skin was several shades lighter and I knew straight away that this was one thing that would set him apart when I got him home. Of course what I couldn’t see then were all the other things that would make life so awkward for him, all the grief and misery which has him lying out there today on that ship with pipes draining and feeding him.‡ All I saw that day was a little boy who needed love and attention, a thin hardy boy with eyes round from hunger, eyes balanced over those high cheekbones like two marbles.

  We got back to Ireland on the twenty-second of March, flew into Shannon at two o’clock in the afternoon and I was never so happy to see rain in all my life. One hundred and fifty pounds it cost to get a taxi from Shannon to the door here, 130 miles the driver told me. It was half six when I brought JJ O’Malley through the back door of the old house and he must have felt right at home the minute he got inside. You have to remember this is the old house I’m talking about—bad roof and damp walls and draughts coming in under the doors rattling the window frames. I stood there in the middle of the floor with him in my arms watching our breath cloud up in front of us and it was as cold as a grave.

  We were in about an hour, the fire down and me feeding him a bowl of soup on my knee when the knock came to the door. I knew before it swung open who it was; he’d have seen the light in the window.

  “Frank,” I called, without getting up, “come in.”

  He was in the middle of the floor before he noticed JJ. You could see him nearly take a step backwards. I never let on.

  “Take a seat, Frank,” I said. “Push out the door.”

  Frank swung a chair out from under the table and sat down. I was pretending to fuss with JJ but what I was really doing was trying to put myself in Frank’s place and figure out what he might be thinking. We go back a long way, Frank and myself; neighbours and school together since we were kids and a long spell in London in the seventies and eighties. There’s not a lot we don’t know about each other but I could tell that evening I had him fairly flummoxed.

  “You were gone a few days,” he said, not taking his eyes off JJ.

  “A few days,” I said. “Out foreign.”

  “Out foreign?”

  “Out foreign.”

  He wasn’t happy. He tried another tack.

  “I thought there might be something wrong.”

  He was still staring at JJ. He told me afterwards it was as much as he could do to stop himself from reaching out with his hand to touch him and make sure he was real. Leaning out on his elbows he was, staring at him. I turned JJ round to face him.

  “Say hello to your new neighbour, JJ. Frank, this is my son, this is JJ O’Malley.”

  I held out JJ and Frank drew back in his chair.

  “Anthony …?” He had his hand out, pointing. “Anthony … how, where …?”

  I could barely keep from laughing.

  “I bought him,” I said casually.

  “Christ!”

  “Two thousand dollars, give or take a few pounds, import duties and all the rest.”

  “For God’s sake, Anthony!”

  “What?” I said, playing the innocent. “You don’t think it was a fair price. I thought it was a fair price.”

  You could see the colour rising in Frank’s face. Go to the dresser, I said, and get the bottle. He poured two stiff ones and drew in his chair. It was my turn to start talking and now that it was I didn’t know where to start. The more I thought about it the more I realised that some stories are so daft it makes no difference where you start telli
ng them. You might as well start at the end as at the beginning because one part is as far from making sense as the next. But I had to start somewhere so I just took it out of face. I told him how, after the cattle had been taken away, I’d had a lot of thinking to do. Six months before I could stock up again, what was I to do in the meantime? Night after night in front of the fire thinking and mulling things over, looking at the telly and trying to make sense of things. I told him how I’d seen the coverage of all those revolutions and those orphanages and how I’d got the idea of going abroad and getting a child of my own. Money wasn’t a problem, I had my own house—what else would I do with it all? So I told him about the trip to that bitter city and all the days spent traipsing from one orphanage to the next with no clue what I was looking for. And then I told him how I found JJ and the wicked witch and about the haggling as well. No more than JJ years later, Frank could hardly believe it either, you could see it in his face. But I wasn’t ashamed of it. I wasn’t ashamed of it then nor am I now and that is something I cannot explain. He was quiet for a while after that and then he shook his head.

  “I’ve heard some good ones in my time but I can say in all honesty I’ve never heard the beating of what you’ve just told me.” He laughed. “And I never figured you for the fathering type, Anthony.”

  I shrugged. “There it is, you see, you never know. Spend enough nights on your own thinking and you start seeing things about yourself. You see the things you’ve done and the things you’re likely to do and when you see that the balance of your life is already in the past you find you’ve got some hard decisions to make. You either face up to it or you settle down to pissing away what’s left of yourself. There were nights here when that fire never went out.”

  It all sounded a lot wiser than I felt but it seemed to make sense at the time.

  “He’s a fine child though,” Frank said. “How old did you say he was?”

  “Two years old, he’ll be two years old in the middle of April. At least that’s what I’ve been led to believe.”

  “And he’s healthy and everything?”

  “He seems to be, there’s nothing wrong with his appetite.”

  We talked on for another hour and it must have been near eight when Frank got up and put his glass on the table. Maureen would call over in the morning, he said. By that time JJ was flat out in my arms, his eyes closed and his mouth open. I put him in my bed next to the wall with two pillows outside him so he wouldn’t roll over in his sleep and end up on the floor. He looked comfortable in that big bed, all warm and peaceful with the blankets pulled up under his chin. I put the light out but left the door open and when I got back into the kitchen I saw the two empty glasses on the table. I was happy that on his first night in his new home someone had already drunk to his health and happiness.

  Maureen came over the following morning. We’d been up about an hour, JJ was fed and the fire was down when she opened the door. She passed straight by me to JJ, picked him up and held him out at arm’s length to get a look at him. That’s Maureen’s way—cut straight to the heart of things, no beating around the bush. A lot different to Frank in that way; he has to know the ins and outs of everything before he can make a move. I suppose that’s what makes them a good team. Anyway, whatever it was she saw in JJ she took to him straight away.

  “JJ,” she cooed. “Aren’t you the gorgeous little thing? Such dark eyes.” She turned him round so that the light fell on his face. “You’re going to break a lot of hearts with those eyes, JJ, isn’t that right, Anthony?”

  Breaking hearts was something I knew nothing about so I kept quiet.

  “How has he settled in, Anthony? Is he making strange with the place?”

  As far as I knew he seemed to have settled in fine. I’d woken up that morning and found him sitting up in the bed beside me, looking around him. The poor fella hadn’t a clue where he was. I pulled him on to my knee and talked to him and don’t ask me what I said to him but whatever it was it seemed to put him at his ease. After he was dressed and fed he sat on the ground while I put on a fire. I’d just finished when Maureen came in. Of course she saw problems straight away.

  “Does he have any clothes but these, Anthony? These could do with a wash.”

  “Not a stitch but those.”

  “Well, don’t go buying anything just yet. I have a load of things young Owen has grown out of. I know someone who’ll make good use of them, don’t I, JJ?”

  It wasn’t the first time I was glad to have Maureen Lally for a neighbour and it wouldn’t be the last either. It was only a small thing, a child’s clothes, but it made me think for the first time that I might have bitten off more than I could chew. What did I know about a child’s clothes, or anything else for that matter? For the first time I had a feeling I had done something foolish. This wave of fright came over me. If Maureen had taken JJ away with her at that moment and told me I was never going to see him again I wouldn’t have raised a hand against her, that’s how spooked I was. She must have seen the look on my face. She handed JJ to me and laughed.

  “Children are simple things,” she said. “Keep them clean and warm. The only thing they need after that is love.”

  She came back an hour later and tipped a black rubbish bag of clothes on the table. After separating them out in little piles she went through them piece by piece, telling me what would go with what and holding up little sweaters under JJ’s chin and saying didn’t that go lovely with his eyes and doesn’t that suit his colouring and of course it was all lost on me. As long as he’s warm and clean I kept telling myself.

  She stripped JJ then and put on a little sweater and blue pants and he looked a lot brighter in himself; I hadn’t realised how dirty those clothes were.

  “We’ll bin these old things, won’t we, JJ?” Mauren said, throwing them into the black bag. “And we’ll get you a nice new coat and wellies so you can go outside and play with our Owen. Wouldn’t you like that, JJ? Of course you would. Anthony, you’ll have to bring him over this evening to meet Owen, to see how they get on.”

  “I’m thinking of bringing him to the doctor tomorrow and getting him checked out. Tests and everything, whatever they do with kids. These health certs, I don’t know if they can be trusted.”

  “Wait till Friday. Tomorrow is dole day, the town’ll be packed. Friday morning will be quiet, you won’t have to answer half as many questions.”

  And that was another thing. How was I going to explain JJ? However hard it had been to explain him to Frank, it was going to be a lot harder to explain him to the whole of Louisburgh. Middle-aged bachelors don’t up and go to foreign countries every day of the week and arrive back with two-year-old sons under their oxter …

  “How would you handle it, Maureen? If JJ was your child what would you say?”

  JJ was standing with Maureen bending over him. She had him gripped by the shoulders and he was stepping forward awkwardly, pawing the ground with his foot like it might give way under him. Maureen looked up at me.

  “He’s your child, Anthony, you’re his father now. What explaining is there?”

  “There’ll be talk, Maureen, you know the way people are.”

  “People will always have plenty to talk about. If talk is the only thing you have to worry about you’ll get no sympathy here. People will always find something to talk about, won’t they, JJ? One look at those lovely eyes and they’ll all be jealous. They’ll all want to know where they can get little boys like this.” She scooped JJ up into her arms. “If you want something to worry about you need look no further than that fire. The way this little fellow is going he’ll be up to every mischief in a few weeks. You need to screen off that fireplace as soon as you can.”

  She left after that and we were alone together for the first time with a whole long day ahead of us. JJ had found his feet by this time. He was gripping the leg of the table and bouncing up and down, pointing out things around him. It was nearly midday and from what I could tell it was a mild grey da
y outside. I pulled a second sweater on him and a cap down over his ears and took him out into the yard to show him around. There was no cold in it but the sky was down on the ground and every place was running with water. We went round the sheds and barns and I told him what everything was for and what animals lived where, showed him where the calves were penned and bucket-fed in the winter and showed him where I kept the geese before selling them off before my trip abroad. I told him I’d never keep geese again because they were dirty things but that I might get in a few ducks because ducks were better company around a house. Then we sat up on the tractor—an old Ferguson 35 it was. He got a great kick out of that, twisting and swinging out of the steering wheel for a while. Then we stood under the bales of hay in the hayshed and looked out towards the sea, out towards Achill and Clare Island. I lifted him up on my shoulders and showed him that the sea was black and that that was a sure sign of rain. Sure enough as we stood there it came rolling in over the land, a dirty big shower, hammering off the roof of the hayshed and frightening JJ and setting him to cry for the very first time.

  There was over a year between them. Owen was February and JJ was the middle of April. And from the beginning they were like brothers.

  Maureen was in the kitchen talking to Owen in the sitting room when we went over that evening. Bring him through till we see how they get on, she said. Owen was on his feet gripping the side of the couch, running this plastic tractor up and down the length of it. I sat JJ in the middle of the floor and stood back to see what would happen. The two boys looked at each other, sizing each other up, Owen with this narrow frown on his face.

  “This is JJ, Owen,” Maureen said. “Say hello to him, your new friend. Go and say hello to him, Owen.”

  She took Owen by the hand and led him over to JJ. I was nervous then, afraid for JJ. It seemed to me somehow that the balance of his life hung in that moment. If he could only make a friend then nothing would be impossible for him.