‘Hey, it’s Rip Van Winkle,’ Dad said.
When Sean was a kid, the Rip Van Winkle tag really bugged him. He never said anything at the breakfast table except, ‘What are you looking at?’ Dad, being the tease he was, could never resist stirring him up in the mornings. Now the greeting delighted Sean and he jumped at the chance it seemed to offer.
‘We’re playing football this evening, right?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Dad said. ‘Maybe I’ll try the treadmill too.’ He counted me in. ‘Fancy a work-out on the treadmill, Eala?’
‘No sweat,’ I said and he thought I was hilarious.
Accountancy I don’t like so much. Unfortunately Mr Lynch, our accountancy teacher, is a young guy with a really dull voice that suits the subject. Last class on Friday evening, it’s guaranteed to put you to sleep. As Jill says, ‘Great face, shame about the voice.’ I wonder if she’ll ever say anything to me again after our big scene in the lunch hall earlier. Every time Mr Lynch turns to the whiteboard, she’s gaping at me like I have two heads on me.
We were down in the lunch hall for the mid-morning break. The noise was doing my head in. Squeals of laughter, screeching chairs and everyone speaking more and more loudly to make themselves heard. Added to which, Jill was in tragic mode. Again. Things were going pear-shaped in the O’Brien household. I was nursing a small carton of orange juice and wishing it was cider or beer. Or better still, a grenade I could clear the hall with.
‘My dad comes home from work every evening and he’s going, “Is she still here?”’ Jill said. ‘And this is, like, right in front of Win. He says he won’t speak to her until she tells him who the father is. He’s convinced it’s someone in town but, no, “some fellow from college” is all Win ever says.’
I felt this tightness in my stomach and at the back of my brain. I didn’t want to know about any of this. I heard Angie telling me what to say. I don’t care, Jill, I’ve enough on my own plate. But I didn’t want a row either, so I said, ‘Why doesn’t she go back to Dublin? Why stay and listen to all that crap?’
‘She’s got no money and the Lone Parent Allowance won’t come through for weeks yet. Plus she’ll have to find the deposit for a new apartment, which Dad refuses to give her. Then there’s all the baby stuff she has to buy and –’
‘So, let the sugar daddy stump up,’ I said, my patience stretched to the limit. And it was fair lousy, I know, but when I saw her tears welling up, all I wanted to do was make them pour down. ‘Or was it, like, a one-night stand or something? Was so twisted, she can’t remember who it was?’
Which drew a few tears, but not as many as I’d hoped for. Jill shielded her eyes so as not to attract attention to herself in the crowded hall. I was shaking inside, fit to burst.
‘Why are you like this, Eala?’
‘Because you’re always moaning about Win and little Richard and –’ I didn’t realize how loud I’d got until the volume in the hall suddenly dropped. But I didn’t stop. ‘What’s it about, Jill? Are you trying to prove your life is more tragic than mine or something?’
‘Eala?’ She was staring down at my hands.
‘What?’ I looked down. I’d squeezed the carton so tight that all the juice had poured out over my fingers and on to the table and down on to my uniform. Only when I saw the mess did I feel the wetness. I got up and walked away through the giggling gaggles of airheads.
As Mr Lynch drones on, I tell myself I had every right to say what I said. Why did she have to go dragging me down like that, making me feel so uneasy, spoiling the pleasant turn our life at home has taken? Making me fear it won’t last?
Every evening when I get home, Dad’s waiting at the window again. Not his workroom window, but the half-basement window. It doesn’t matter. That first glimpse of him is like a shot in the arm – and these busy evenings I need it. First off, Dad and me go for a walk. We turn left at the front gate and head towards the river. The junction where the accident took place is in the other direction. We haven’t ventured up to the town square because Mam says he’s not ready yet for crowded streets and traffic and all that. He always walks on the inner edge of the footpath and when we go along the River Walk that winds its way out from the town, he insists that I take the side nearer the water.
The Walk extends only half a mile or so and he’s always in a hurry to get back. He has no interest in the swans and ducks any more. Most mornings he comes down here with Mam and Tom and he’s bored out of his tree with the place by now. I tell him about school. He tells me about Tom’s latest adventures – my baby brother is slowly morphing back into a wrecking ball again.
Then there’s the treadmill running and the football out in the Bernabéu. The games are hotting up. Not exactly rougher, but more competitive. And Dad is starting to get back some of his old tricks. Like kicking the ball against the side-wall so it bounces out behind you as he slips past. He does it slowly, but we give him time and once in a while he gets it spot-on.
We switch teams every day. Two against two. Yesterday, it was me and Brian against Dad and Sean. It’s like the old saying, If you can’t beat them, join them. So I’m one of the boys now. And I keep it that way. I never answered Brian’s text. I waited to see if he’d try again. It was like a test. I don’t know if he failed or I failed, but there was no second text. The way I see it, he won’t be hanging around for long more anyway. Sean’s told me that Brian is off to college next month to do Architecture. If the buildings he designs are half as big as his ego, they’ll all be skyscrapers.
After the football, we scatter. Brian heads home. Sean goes up to his room to study. It’s his final year at school and Mam can’t believe he’s so focused already. I can’t believe it either. To be honest, I don’t care if he spends every evening in the fantasy world of superhero comic books, as long as he helps keep Dad happy.
So after the football I go and take over The Surprise Addition and let Mam have some time alone with Dad. Normally, the very idea of smooching parents would be too gross to think about. But ever since I saw them last week down there I’ve felt, I don’t know, so hopeful. More hopeful than before anyway.
I’d been keeping Tom out of mischief, trying to get him interested in the Lego collection Sean and me built up as kids. We used to fight all the time while we played with the blocks. Tom didn’t need anyone to fight with – he fought with himself. When he couldn’t make the blocks fit together, he flung them across the sitting-room floor.
‘Want my gween twactor,’ he said.
I searched everywhere and couldn’t find it. He’d soon be screaming for Mam, I was thinking. Then he went over to the window and pointed down to the drive.
‘Gween Twactor!’
I warned him not to move from the sitting room and went out and down to the bottom of the steps where the green plastic tractor lay on its side. I glanced over at the half-basement window. The curtains were open an inch or two. I saw Mam and Dad lying on the bed, his head resting in her lap. She gently stroked the scar above his temple. His lips moved. Whatever lie Mam spoke of on the phone to Martin can’t have been so serious then, can it, I thought? I wanted to stay there watching them, but Tom had started to knock on the sitting-room window above me and I went back inside. It felt like I was walking back into a different house.
The bell goes and the school day is over. I pack up my things, keeping my head down until I know Jill has left the classroom. I curse her silently for making me blow up like that, for leaving this sour taste in my mouth. For the first time in a week I’m nervous about getting home and finding Murphy’s Law in operation again. If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. ‘La loi de Murphy’, Dad used to call it, of course. That was Dad. Laughing everything off with a grin and a shrug of the shoulders.
I make my way out by the yard behind the school because I’ve someone else to avoid. Miss O’Neill, our music teacher. She wants me to audition for the next school show. West Side Story. The
school show usually happens in November, but next Easter is the hundredth anniversary of our school and the show will be part of the celebrations.
Miss O’Neill’s a small, heavy woman. Her arthritic hip has left her with an odd, rolling kind of walk. She wears long black shapeless dresses brightened up with a different multicoloured scarf for each day of the week.
‘No red wig this time,’ Miss O’Neill told me the other day. ‘And no cute orphans, Eala. Believe me, Bernstein was a real composer and this is the real thing.’
‘I won’t have time this year,’ I said.
‘There’ll be no clash between the show and basketball practice this year, if that’s the problem.’
‘I won’t have time for basketball either. Not for a while.’
‘Well, you should make time,’ she said in her usual abrupt, no-nonsense way. ‘We all need time for ourselves or we forget who we are.’
I told her I’d think about doing the show. I actually like Miss O’Neill’s directness. Forget political correctness or sweet pretence. One day in class, someone called her Ms O’Neill.
‘Mizz?’ she said. ‘You make me sound like some kind of insect. I’d prefer you didn’t saddle me with that idiotic modern invention. “Miss” it is and “Miss” it will remain.’
As I head home, I notice that the trees along our street are putting up a longer fight than usual to hold on to their leaves this year.
10
‘Not the fecking river again,’ Dad complains.
We’re standing at the swinging gate into the River Walk and he won’t budge. It’s a beautiful evening. A rose-red sky beyond the treetops, the rustle of birds playful among the dry leaves, the river bubbling across the stones of a makeshift ford. The old Dad would’ve been going, ‘See that? Listen to this!’ Then again, the younger me would probably have been going, ‘So?’
‘It’s nice and quiet,’ I tell him.
‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘Too quiet.’
I link his arm. It feels as unyielding as a metal stanchion. Sometimes I forget how strong he is.
‘Come on, Jimmy.’
‘Why don’t we go up to the town.’ He points back towards Blackcastle Bridge and before I know it he’s pulling me along beside him, his arm locked on mine. Up around the corner from the arched stone bridge lies the town square and it’ll be busy as hell this time of evening.
‘Judy’s not going to be too happy about this,’ I say.
As we draw closer to the town centre, he slows down a little. There’s a long stream of cars and the footpaths on the bridge are busy too. He’s looking more apprehensive. That drag of his foot every few steps is more exaggerated than usual. Now I’m thinking, What if we bump into Clem Healy or his brother Sham or his drug-pushing father? I’ve seen them around town a few times since the accident, but only ever in the distance. They make themselves scarce once they’ve spotted me. After each glimpse of them, I feel sick for hours.
‘Let’s go back, Jimmy,’ I say. ‘Sean and Brian will be waiting for us.’
A couple of girls dressed in our green school uniform are heading towards us. First or Second Years, probably. I don’t recognize them. I realize I’ve pulled my arm away from Dad’s. I feel pure rotten for doing that. He’s a few steps ahead of me as the young ones pass. They’re gaping at him like he’s The Incredible Hulk or something. I’m furious, but for Dad’s sake I don’t say anything. I’ll remember those faces.
At the bridge, he takes a sharp left by the old castle and walks straight into a young woman who’s turning the corner. She’s power-dressed in a pin-striped suit and carrying a designer briefcase. She’s not hurt, but her pretty face is twisted into a weird mask that’s half offended, half disdainful, like Dad has deliberately invaded her space.
‘For God’s sake, look where you’re going,’ she seethes.
‘It was an accident,’ I tell her.
‘Yeah,’ Dad says, fingering the scar on his temple. ‘Wrecked my head, it did.’
I have to get him away from here, but he’s too busy gazing into her pale blue eyes, which freaks the woman out and she breaks into a little trot. Dad turns to watch her go. Fascinated.
‘She’s got a fine ass on her, hasn’t she?’ he says and I’m dumbstruck.
He heads into the town square. I follow him, though my legs have gone to jelly. The footpath is wide, but he walks close to the shopfronts. So close that people keep bumping into him at the doorways as they emerge. He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t speak at all until we come to the Castle Inn. He stops up. Thinking. Remembering?
The Castle Inn is the pub he and Martin sometimes went to. It’s the only old-style pub left in town that isn’t fake. Tobacco-stained wallpaper, little nooks and crannies, timber that’s darker than its own shadow. Dad often talked about the elderly landlord, a Cork man, who spends his days dreaming of going back down to Clonakilty ‘where I belong’.
‘Wherever you hang your hat, that’s your home,’ Dad told him once. The words of an old song, apparently. But the landlord’s a cranky type and answered sourly.
‘I don’t wear a hat.’
Which we all thought was hilarious when Dad told us. Things aren’t so funny now as he stands here oblivious to the odd looks we’re getting from passers-by. The effort of racking his brain shows too clearly on his face. God knows what the effort of trying to shut Angie up about that woman is doing to my face. How does that feel, Eala, she’s saying, having a dirty old man for a father?
‘Jimmy? We should head home.’
‘Will we go in for a pint?’ he asks.
‘I don’t have any money, Jimmy. Another day maybe.’
‘No sweat,’ he says. That old phrase again. He reaches into the pocket of his denims and takes out a ten-euro note.
‘Where did you get that?’
His eyes go shifty. I know he’s about to lie to me.
‘I found it.’
‘Jimmy?’
‘I found it, right? In the Bernabéu. Yesterday. Or Sunday, was it?’
He gives a sudden start. There’s this old wino heading towards us with his arms outstretched like he’s Dad’s best mate. He’s wearing a quilted bomber jacket that’s been slashed open in a few places. He has, maybe, four teeth, all of them splintered and nicotine-stained. Dad was always a soft touch for these guys. ‘There but for fortune,’ he’d say, if Mam or me got on to him for giving them money they’d waste on booze anyway. I can smell the beer from five yards off. And the stale vomit.
‘Howzit goin’, Jimmy?’ the wino says. There’s a peeling scab from an old cut on the bridge of his nose. It’s leaking yellow gunge. ‘I heard you got an awful rattle on the head.’
I try to get Dad moving, but he’s planted to the spot.
‘Do you remember me at all, Jimmy? Dick Russell, remember? Up on the left wing when we played soccer together? Remember the one I scored against Saint Michael’s in the Tipperary Cup Final?’
‘No,’ Dad says and his voice is quaking.
Drunk as he is, the wino realizes he’s put his foot in it. He searches his addled mind and finds another line.
‘But you’re looking grand, all the same. With all that hair, like,’ he says. ‘Are you at the books again? Have you any new ones?’
People have to steer round us in the middle of the footpath and aren’t happy about it.
‘Books?’ Dad says and I have to call a halt to this.
‘We really have to go,’ I tell Dick. ‘Sorry.’
‘No bother,’ he says. ‘But you wouldn’t have a loan of a few bob for a burger and chips, would you, Jimmy?’
Dad’s hand goes into his pocket, but I pull him away. He’s forgotten about pints and pretty asses. He looks baffled. When he looks baffled, he looks dumb. I don’t want to think stuff like that.
‘Who was that?’ he asks.
We’re back on our own street. There’s a cold b
reeze blowing into our faces. The leaves are falling like crazy. It’s like they’re sniggering at us, like they’re whispering, Remember what happened the last time we fell, ha ha!
‘I don’t know, Jimmy.’
‘Why did he ask me for money?’
‘I don’t know, Jimmy.’
‘What was all that about new books?’
‘He just wanted to know if you got any new books lately.’
‘Why?’
I’m at a dead end. At least we’re near the house. He’s trailing after me now, I’m in such a hurry.
‘Is he the Man?’
‘God’s sake, Jimmy, will you stop asking bloody questions? I’m sick of it. And don’t ever say anything like that about a woman again, do you hear me? It’s revolting. Filthy.’
He’s hurt. More than hurt. Wounded. Skewered.
‘Forget I said that, Jimmy. Please.’
He’s got on a dopey half-smile, half-grimace. It’s like he’s telling me he deserves what he got because he’s some kind of simpleton. We’re at the front steps of the house. He digs around in his pockets and holds out the ten-euro note to me.
‘Will you put that back in Judy’s purse?’ A half-whisper that makes the scream inside me sound even louder.
‘No sweat, Jimmy.’
He doesn’t follow me up the steps. Instead, he goes around by the side of the house. I don’t follow him either. Tom’s green plastic tractor is on the top step. I kick it down on to the drive and the front wheels come off. I open the front door and Mam is by the kitchen door at the end of the hallway. She does this pure obvious, looking-at-her-watch, where-the-hell-were-you thing.
‘Where’s … where is he?’
‘He went round by the back, what d’you think? He’s run away or something?’
‘You were gone so bloody long,’ she says. Seething, she is. ‘I was worried sick.’
Neither of us moves. Me from the front door. Mam from the kitchen door. There must be – what? – thirty feet or so between us, but I can see every line on her face. The smell of the curry dinner she’s been making turns my stomach.
My Dad Is Ten Years Old Page 6