You open another can, looking blankly at the screen. The sound is turned down because of the headache. You couldn’t be listening to those muppets, anyway. The minor match is nearly finished. Kilkenny again, the bastards. Your phone (on Airplane Mode) says 13:57. An hour and a half to go.
She was full of it this morning, of course. Heading off to the match with Trish and that dopey husband of hers. Poured, as she’d say herself, into those white skinny jeans she thinks she’s only divine in. What was that expression she had the other day about something she didn’t like? Oh, yes. I wouldn’t be wild about that. Yes. Very good when you think of it, but the opposite doesn’t work. I’m wild about that. No. You can say, I’m crazy about that, all right. Can you say I’m not crazy about that?
Speaking of crazy, take another Tofranil there, while you think of it, boy. Take two, to be sure to be sure.
You open another can. These slabs of beer are great value, only €20 for twenty-four cans. You hear a song from the radio in the kitchen: ‘Breakfast in America’. E.L.O. Or is it Supertramp? You sing along about the girls in California, a vision entering your mind of blue skies and blonde young women in bikinis on a beach.
You ‘na na na’ yourself off into reverie and then you sleep. You dream about walking down a never-ending hospital corridor. It’s in John of Gods, of course, and yet it isn’t. In the way that dreams have of bringing you somewhere that isn’t really there. It is John of Gods because you know it is. It isn’t because there are no zombie patients shuffling around in tracksuit pants and stained T-shirts; no kind-faced nurses or competent-faced psychiatrists; no bloat-faced, doped-up, stubbled ex-architects looking out at you from mirrors. No smells or mumbling or shame or terror.
You wake up. Can you even smell in dreams? It bothers you. You try to recall if you ever have. There are ads on the TV and you have a sudden horror that you slept out. 14:29. Phew. An hour to go. A bit of a lurch when you get up, but you right yourself. Have to tidy the place up. You pick up some empty cans and the hot chocolate cups – one Star Wars, one Frozen. You smell the dregs in the cups. Nothing. No wonder they use it to drug girls and rape them. Another thing you’re saving them from.
Altruistic filicide – you count them, seven syllables. Sounds almost innocuous. Stupid name, Halcion, too, when you think of it. Should be called Somnium, or something like that.
The sunlight in the kitchen assaults your eyes and takes you back to the incessant rows when you were redesigning the house. When you’d show her the new drawings.
‘I thought we were going to have the island here,’ she said, pointing to the centre of the room on the plan.
‘Yeah, it kind of blocks the flow there. If we have it here, we’ll get the benefit of the French doors and the view outside.’
‘Fuck the fucking flow of the room, I wanted it there. It’s the one thing I asked you, the one thing – to have my own kitchen. But no. The flow of the room. Jesus Christ,’ she said, storming out and slamming the door behind her.
She never got her island in the end. Events intervened, didn’t they? Events, dear boy. But you were right, too, it would have blocked the flow. Not that it matters now. The bank will probably take the house anyway, along with everything else.
You put the cups in the dishwasher. Must turn that on, too.
It all seems so unreal. Or surreal. Maybe you’re dreaming the whole thing. Maybe you’ll wake up in a minute and it’ll be …
Be what?
Be fine?
Be over?
She’ll have ‘lover boy’ to console her, of course. The barefaced cheek of her, denying it to your face when you eventually built up the courage to confront her. It was all in your head, she had no interest whatsoever in any other man, you invented the whole thing. She thinks you’re some fool, laughing at you behind your back, but we’ll see who has the last laugh. She can go and fuck him all she wants now. See how she enjoys it now. She can make two more kids for herself with him and see how that works out. But she’s not getting yours. Oh, no, they’re yours. They stay with you.
Anyway, the literature was quite clear: Resnick’s study catalogued the motives for filicide as: 1) altruistic (tick); 2) acutely psychotic (tick, probably); 3) accidental filicide (e.g. maltreatment) (no tick); 4) unwanted child (no tick); and 5) spouse revenge (tick).
Three out of five. And when you add in the history of depression (tick), previous self-harm (tick), mental illness (tick), consumption of alcohol and medication (tick tick), and fear of spousal estrangement (tick tick tick), that’s a lot of ticking. Which reminds you.
You look at the kitchen clock. 3:14, getting close now. They’ll be on the pitch already. If they can only mark McMahon, they’ll do it. Sully’s scoring goals, he’s scoring goals.
If you’re psychotic, can you be aware that you’re psychotic? Wouldn’t that negate the psychosis, if it’s true? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
You check yourself – you wonder sometimes if you’re saying out loud what you’re thinking. No. It’s quiet.
Another thing: isn’t it fair to say that if life is hard (which it is) and full of pain and suffering (which it is) and then you fall in love and get dumped (which you do) and then you’re alone and lonely (which you are) and then you get depressed (which you do) and then you can’t work (which you can’t) and then you are poor (which you will become) and then you are stressed to the gills (which you are) and then you get old (which you do) and then you get sick (which you will) and then you die in misery (inevitably), isn’t it better to prevent all that?
Isn’t it?
To have never suffered pain or worry or despair? To fall asleep painlessly as a child and never to wake up? As an innocent? Pure and clean? To become angelic, to become, in fact, an angel. Angels – that’s what they looked like in their two beds and that’s what they will always be now. Perfect. Washed pure in the sunlight. Buried side by side in their little white coffins in their good dresses. Beautiful and pure. Daddy’s little angels.
And you there with them. Beside them in the ground. Looking after them, forever.
Will that happen? Will it, though?
You bend over. You moan. You hold on to the sink for support. You press your forehead against the sun-warmed white ceramic.
You wander back into the living room. Stagger, really. You flop on the sofa. Need to keep on top of things, but fuck it. You open another can from the slab. You think about turning up the sound, but no, this is better. Both teams are parading behind the band. The players form two lines for the national anthem and face the flag. After that, they take their places around the pitch. Here we go. Clare bastards. Up the Rebels!
Looks like they put Culloty on McMahon at left half-back. Good move. The game begins. You sip your beer and settle down to fret.
The game is shit. Cork are hanging on for dear life. Sully hardly touches the ball. Lucky to be just a couple of points down at half-time.
You take a well-earned piss in the downstairs toilet. Coming back into the living room, you stand and stare for several moments at the carpeted stairs through the door. No going back upstairs, not now. Angels. Daddy’s angels, forever.
You wake up on the sofa. Did you fall asleep again? Shit, you did. How could you have fallen asleep at a time like this? You look at the TV but can’t focus. You’re groggy; must be all the beer.
You look for the packet with the fifteen metres of rope on the coffee table; it isn’t there. It was earlier, you’re almost certain. You bought it six months ago, surprised that the shortest rope you could get was fifteen metres long.
Did you bring it in from the shed earlier and put it on the table? Did you open the packet and make the noose like you learned on YouTube and wrap it around two of the banisters? You’re almost certain you did. Or did you imagine it?
The match is over and the muppets are talking in silence. They start laughing, whatever’s funny. It switches to show Sean Culloty accept the cup and raise i
t above his head. Did Cork win?
You look to your left.
Two little pale waifs are standing by the door in their little bare feet. Two angels. Cass in her Frozen pyjamas, Eeyore hanging from her right hand. Jenny in her long nightdress, the back of her index finger in her mouth, the way she does when she’s anxious; her hair over her eye, the way it hangs there.
Your angels.
Jenny has grown so tall. She’s the image of your sister, Eva, at that age – all gangly arms and legs. She’s looking straight at you, her head swaying slightly.
Cass is staring at the TV. Her eyes are wide, replete with wonder, and she gives a shiver of excitement. She says something; you almost don’t hear her. She says, ‘Oh.’
You feel your face fall in upon itself. It fissures and caves in and something escapes out of it. Some untenable sound.
Is this really happening?
Her Mother Evelyn
The birthdays are the worst. I tend to walk through them in a daze. Mind you, Roisín, it’s a daze for which I’m glad – and not the type of daze I suffered from when I was taking all that medication. I hated the foggy feeling that stuff used to give me. For your birthdays, on the fifteenth of May – although of course it’s not just your birthday, is it? – I spend a lot of time in the back garden, even if it’s raining. There’s always something to do that time of year, thank God. The weeds are flying up, and the first chrysanths are out, and the delphiniums and the irises near the hedge, and the lilies and the poppies – it’s all go. I bring the small radio with me to distract myself. I couldn’t go out in case I’d meet somebody. Tim tends to rise early and go straight in to work and come home late after one of his meetings. It’s better if we’re not around each other on those days; we’d probably tear strips off each other. Or I’d tear strips off him – he was never any good at fighting with me. He never was any good at hating; even in his hurling heyday when he’d knock the block off some lad from Tipp or Kilkenny, it was never personal. But I can hate. Oh yes, I can hate very well indeed.
The only person your father ever hated was himself, and he’s still good at that – though not as good as when he was drinking. I think it’s mainly because he never fought back against my father over Sean. He was only eighteen and my father was a piece of work, but of course Tim blames himself.
You’d be twenty now, if you’d lived. Sean – who I still think of as James, the name we gave him, the name he’d still have if he’d stayed ours – he’ll be twenty-nine before we know it.
Twenty-nine years.
So that’s forty-eight birthdays between the two of ye and another in a few months. That’s a lot of birthdays without a party.
When I think about it now, I have gone through three main phases of reaction to the question: And do you have children yourself, Evelyn? My first, when I was younger and frail (I was sick for a long time after you died, love), was to redden and fluster and blurt out a no – which embarrassed the life out of the questioner because it wasn’t just a no, not yet, or a no, I’ve no interest, it was (and I’m sure this was very obvious, too), it was a no, no I don’t and it’s all I want in the world and now it’s never going to happen kind of a no.
Later on, when I had no hope of a reunion with Sean (and I was angry about that for a long time), and when, if I’m honest (and I’m a bit ashamed of this), I had gone into a kind of denial about you too – about ever having had you at all; then I used to give a cold no, a curt no, a this is the end of the conversation, what a rude question, what kind of person are you even to ask it, kind of a no. And the person (it’s nearly always a woman, though Tim probably gets it from men), sure she just wanted to chat and talk about her own children. There’d be a terrible silence after I spoke, a frightful thing altogether that froze the air around me, and even seemed to block out the light, and all I’d want to do is run away and hide.
And now? Now I give a smiling no, or a matter of fact, almost casual no, or a no maybe with a hint of regret. But it’s a measured kind of regret, poles apart from the raging guilt that almost consumed me when I had to be admitted to St Pat’s – a place I thought at one time I’d never be leaving. I always say back: And what about yourself? So then she has permission to talk about her own children and I can pretend to be interested, and ask some of the usual types of questions back. Or maybe she had already been talking about her children, in which case I’ll say something like: And what age are yours now? or So is it only the two you have? Something like that. It’s mostly when I’m golfing with people who don’t know me that the question arises these days, and I’m always on guard, ready for it.
I don’t think golf would really be you, Roisín. Definitely not, at twenty – that would be all wrong.
Now I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I gave another answer too, for a while. Not often, but I did it and I’m a bit ashamed – I never told anyone about it. Sometimes I used to say yes. When somebody asked me if I had children, I used to say, yes, I’ve two, James and Roisín and I’d give whatever ages you were at the time. I’d say that James was in college and you were in such-and-such a year in secondary school, or that he was in secondary and you were in primary, and I used to say that you were a handful (sorry about that, love) and that James was quiet and studious and a hurler like his father. But I’d feel terrible afterwards and I’d be afraid that the person might say something to somebody who knew me, and people would talk about me and think I was queer in the head. So I stopped doing that. I haven’t said yes to the question for years, now, and I don’t think I’ll ever do it again.
Tim tried to hide his nerves this morning before he headed off to the match with Pat. Neither of us slept, of course, but that’s nothing new. I don’t know how he can stand watching Sean on the pitch at all. It’s a terrible rough game. I couldn’t bear to watch your father play, either, even when we were going out first. I suppose losing a final must be hard, too. But Tim seems to think Cork will win and that gave me a little prick of hope.
I tell myself it’s never going to happen and I should just keep seeing out the days, one by one, as best I can. But Tim might mention him, or I’d hear a story about a late reunion on the radio or the television (there was a series about adoption on TV3 last year), or I’d go on the Internet and I’d think: Why not? He’s only twenty-eight and I’m only forty-six. There’s plenty of time.
So lately I’ve had this silly idea that if Cork do win, that Sean might change his mind, that something might be triggered in him that will make him want to make contact – with his father, especially. And I know, I know, I’m probably grasping at straws and I’m setting myself up for another fall and I feel so foolish whenever the phone rings and I think that might be the social worker now, or when I hear Liam’s van at the bottom of the drive.
I used to stand by the window in the front room and watch out for Liam – he always delivers just after eleven. I did it for a long time. I’d imagine all sorts of things while I was standing there, looking out through the blinds. All sorts of things, Roisín. About where we’d meet him, and how it would be, and how he’d get on with his father, and how they could talk about hurling and I could ask him about his job, or Michael and Anne, or his girlfriend. My excitement, on the days when Liam would pull up and put something in the box. I’d count to a hundred and go out the back door and slowly walk down the drive, as if I was just going down to pick up the post, maybe say hello to Mick next door, on the way. Just walking down to the gate.
Whereas in reality my heart would be pounding and I’d be praying ‘Hail Holy Queen’ all the way down. Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, hail our life, our sweetness and our hope.
And my hand shaking as I open the flap, hoping upon hope to see the Tusla stamp on a letter or some other indication that it’s Sean wanting to make contact with us, wanting us to be part of his life.
But it’s never there, Roisín. It never is. It probably never will be.
Then I’d have to turn around and walk back to the house wi
th a bill or some brochure in my hand. Maybe chat to Mick or Helen on the way, and do a bit of cleaning around the house, or listen to the radio, or make myself a cup of tea and pretend that everything is fine.
The dahlias look nice in the vase, don’t they? The pink ones are lovely altogether. It was a great idea of Tim’s to dig a little hole on the grave so that the vase goes into it and can’t fall over. It almost seems like the dahlias are growing there above you, along with the petunias. I suppose I could plant some too. Anyway, I’ll put in fresh water tomorrow and take a little off the stems – there’s no sign of rain. That fold-up secateurs is the best thing I ever bought, and I want this place to be nice for you, pet. I do want that. For me too, being selfish.
I feel bad sometimes that I never told your father about the time I made contact with Michael and Anne all those years ago. I feel terrible guilty about it. He’s been sober for so long now that I think I could, but he’d be very hurt. If Sean ever does make contact, and he won’t now – if he was going to do it, he would have done it when he turned eighteen – but if he does, sure I can tell him then. He’ll be so happy it won’t matter. It was a kind of betrayal, I know that, but he was in and out of recovery at the time and I didn’t want to risk a relapse. At least I did something to get Sean back, seeing as how Tim did nothing. Not one single thing.
But if he knew that I told Sean who he was, that his father was the great Tim Collins; if he knew that Sean had known all along and never said anything, never approached him. I dread to think what would happen. So I keep saying nothing. I’m good at it.
Or maybe it’s my way of getting back at him, my revenge for his years of drunkenness and for our chance at adoption that we missed out on because he wouldn’t countenance it. Whenever I tried to talk to him about it, he’d storm off to get drunk somewhere and I mightn’t see him for days. Oh, I was fierce angry with him over all the drinking and him being missing all the time, and me at home on my own like a fool waiting for him, and all the awful things he’d say when he’d stagger in the door. I still am angry. I am, but I don’t want to think about it any more, what’s the point of dwelling on it? I don’t know if that’s the reason I never told him, but it could be. Like I say, I’m good at being angry and I’m very good at hiding it. When I go over to my mother and father’s graves after I leave you I’ll bottle it up tight and say a prayer for them as if I mean it.
The First Sunday in September Page 9