My Dad Is Ten Years Old

by Mark O'Sullivan

  We have a lot in common these days, Martin and me. He thought he was Dad’s best friend, but Dad’s still afraid of him. Twice in the last few weeks Martin has tried to break the ice, but to no avail. My childish notion that I’d been Dad’s favourite was well and truly buried too. It was true that I’d always spent more time with him than Sean had. Talked more with him. Now, all those hours seemed like missed opportunities.

  When I try to remember what he’d told me about his young days, all I ever come up with is some funny incident or other because that’s all I ever got from him. The day he and his pals were caught stealing apples from an orchard because the ground level was lower inside the garden wall than out on the road and they couldn’t climb back out. Or the time they persuaded one of his pals to jump from a six-foot-high wall with an open umbrella to see if he’d float down. He didn’t. He twisted his ankle and grazed his elbow. That kind of thing.

  We’re inching our way towards the junction with the main road. The sky is darkening above the street lights. We stop again opposite the shopping centre at the edge of town. I’m staring at the multistorey car park there and a memory flashes into my head from seven, maybe eight years ago of Dad. Lying to me.

  Another of his funny incidents. He’d been down in Cork talking to some people he was doing a cartoon short with the day he told me the story. He’d left at six in the morning and got back around midnight. I worried all day. I had this obsession at the time about multistorey car parks. If we went somewhere and parked in one, I’d be paranoid about getting back before it closed so our car wouldn’t be locked in for the night. He still hadn’t got himself a mobile phone back then and I imagined him sitting in a dark car park a long way from home. When he came to my bedroom, the tears started. So he tried to cheer me up with one of his boyhood adventures.

  It was the story of this cranky old man who lived on the street where he and his pals played football every evening. Most of the people living there made no big deal of it when the ball ended up in their small front gardens. This old fellow, Bert, was different. Any ball that came over his wall, he confiscated.

  But Bert was more than cranky. He gloated in the boys’ misery when they’d lost yet another plastic football to him. He put all of the balls on the window sill of his kitchen facing the street. Eventually, ten footballs were piled high there.

  I listened to the story and my stomach tightened into a knot. I knew what happened next. One day, Dad and his pals saw Bert go to the shop – and leave his key in the front door. Dad was the youngest so they volunteered him to go inside and steal back their footballs. He went in. Bert came home unexpectedly. Dad was trapped under the kitchen table for hours before he could sneak back out.

  Except I knew it wasn’t Dad in the story. He’d read it to me from a book the previous year. And not one of his own books. Now he was telling it like it had all happened to him. Before he got to the end, I blurted out,

  ‘Dad, that story is out of a book you read to me. The Football Thief.’

  He rubbed the tiredness from his eyes.

  ‘Well, actually,’ he began. ‘The man who wrote that book has the same agent as me and I met him a few times in London. We’re about the same age and read the same comics when we were kids, went to the same films and all that stuff, and one evening we were swapping stories about the old days over a few beers. Well, he really liked that one and asked me if he could use it in a book.’

  ‘But you should’ve written it,’ I said. ‘Did he pay you for the story?’

  He laughed and tucked me in and kissed my forehead.

  ‘Maybe I should’ve asked,’ he said. ‘The thing is, though, I never told anyone about this before. Maybe we should keep it as a secret. Our secret.’

  Which was like asking me if I’d like a whole box of chocolates to myself. It was stuff like that had me believing I was his favourite. Why have I only remembered this now? Have I hidden it from myself? And if I have, is there more stuff like this buried deep in my brain? But there are bigger questions still. Were all of his ‘funny incidents’ really fictions? Was every last thing he’d ever told us about himself one great big lie?

  ‘Have you found out anything about Dad yet?’ I ask Martin.

  I don’t know if it’s the question or the suddenness of it that unsettles him more. The slow driving becomes a more difficult task. Or he pretends it to be. He keeps turning towards his side window as he drums the steering wheel. Hiding his face from me.

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Eala, I haven’t spoken to Judy about this yet.’

  ‘Please. Tell me, Martin.’

  I’m playing the part from last year’s show again. The orphan girl winding her rich benefactor round her little finger. I might not be Dad’s favourite, but I know I’m Martin’s. I’m his Angie. A weird thought, but true. I don’t hear the Angie in my head, but I see her and she doesn’t look all that happy.

  ‘There’s this tracing agency I used a few years ago to trace a guy over in England,’ he says. ‘I was trying to buy a house and this guy had been left it in someone’s will, but he’d never shown up and these people found him for me. Anyway, I asked them to check out your Dad’s papers – see where it might lead.’

  ‘You mean like private detectives?’

  ‘Nothing as dramatic as that, really. Most of the searching is in documents. Registers. You know, births, marriages and deaths. Tedious work and it takes time.’

  ‘But they found something?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  We’re stuck behind the first car at the junction. The driver’s too cagey about edging out on to the main road, though he’s got plenty of time. Martin blasts the horn. Martin doesn’t do stuff like that. He sits back, twists the cramp out of his neck.

  ‘These people, this agency, they know the territory very well,’ Martin explains. ‘They’re not too hopeful about the search.’

  ‘You mean we might never know who Dad was? Is?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘So we’re never going to get this insurance money, are we?’

  ‘The chances are that even if we discover Jimmy’s real identity, they won’t have to pay up,’ he says.

  The car in front makes a break for it at last and we’re free of the crawl. Cars speed towards us in the opposite lane. I look at the faces of the drivers and passengers. Are they all who they pretend to be? I find myself trying to pick out the ones who might have changed identities, but they whizz by too quickly for me to decide.

  ‘How can these agency people be so sure they won’t find something?’ I ask because, insurance money or not, I have to know my dad’s story. Everyone deserves to know that, don’t they?

  ‘They’ve done so many of these searches, they get to know the ones that are going to end in a blind alley. And they get to know why.’ Martin’s still avoiding my eyes and that makes me uneasy and the long pause doesn’t help either. ‘They think Jimmy’s new identity was either issued to him by the Ministry of Justice in the UK or he bought his papers on the black market.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘There’s half a dozen possibilities, Eala, and more.’

  ‘He’s done something seriously bad, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Or had something seriously bad done to him,’ Martin says.

  And Dad’s greatest fear comes to mind.

  ‘This is what the Man is all about, isn’t it?’

  Martin turns to me. I know Mam’s told him about this obsession of Dad’s. He’s glad to have this stop-go traffic to negotiate.

  ‘Maybe not. Fiona Sheedy has a theory about that and I think she may be right.’ There’s no escaping Miss Understanding. ‘She says the Man might very well be Jimmy himself. The old Jimmy.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I think it does. Deep down, Jimmy vaguely understands that he used to have another life. That he used to be a different kind of person
, if you like. He may think of that person as completely separate from him now. Some kind of shadowy figure he imagines is always close by. That has to be very troubling for him.’

  ‘But that doesn’t explain the fake birth cert,’ I tell him.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ he says. ‘But listen, Judy doesn’t need to know about the insurance money. Not yet, OK? She’s been through enough already today.’

  We cross over Blackcastle Bridge. The River Walk is in darkness over there. No swans this evening or none that I can see. I should ask Martin to turn left here so we’ll reach home from the river end of our street. I don’t. For almost a year now, I’ve avoided the other end, the junction where Dad’s old life ended. Which hasn’t been easy and, often, especially when I’m with Jill or whoever, I feel half daft as I insist on taking the long way round from town. It’s like being a kid and walking all the way from school avoiding the lines on the footpath. Now I’m thinking, What was the point? I’m there every night in my head anyway.

  ‘Why did he do this to us, Martin?’ I ask. ‘I mean it’s bad enough he didn’t tell Sean and me. But why would he not tell Mam? I always thought they were so close, so together.’

  ‘Think of the start in life he had, Eala,’ he says. ‘Losing his parents so young had to make him very insecure. It was always going to be there at the back of his mind, this fear of being abandoned by the ones he’s closest to. So he meets Judy and maybe he’s afraid to risk losing her by telling her this secret of his.’

  ‘But all these years and he still doesn’t say a word? Whatever he was hiding had to be something really major. There’s no other explanation.’

  ‘Of course there are other explanations.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Martin’s getting all edgy again. He leans forward to the steering wheel, his neck doing that weird snapping-stretch thing. I don’t know if he’s thick with me or with himself as he tries to dream up some excuse for Dad.

  ‘Such as … such as this, right? Jimmy didn’t have a regular family life, did he? He grew up in foster institutions where you have to build these walls around you to survive. You don’t talk about yourself, your past, your emotions. Then he hooks up with Judy and, as time goes on, it’s looking like, you know, the real thing, which makes it even harder for him to open up. He’s got so much to lose. And more to lose still when they married and you and Sean came along.’

  ‘If he really loved Mam, he’d have trusted her with his story no matter how bad it was,’ I tell Martin sharpish. We’re beginning to grate on one another.

  ‘He loved Judy. Believe me, I can vouch for that.’

  How the hell would you know, I’m thinking, but I hold my fire. I don’t want to add Martin to my blacklist. It’s full enough already. We pass along through Friary Street and as we go by the high gates of his house, Martin finds a way to steer us into more neutral territory.

  ‘I’m moving out of the house,’ he says. ‘Moving into one of the apartments I built out by the golf course. Can’t sell the damn things anyway with this recession.’

  ‘But why would you move?’ I ask, genuinely surprised. ‘It’s a lovely house.’

  ‘Too many memories. I should’ve listened to Jimmy.’

  ‘He said you should move out? When?’

  ‘After Kathleen left,’ he says and smiles. ‘“Wuthering Heights”, he called it. “And you’re no Heathcliff,” he says. He was a ticket, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He was dead right too. You know, as soon as I made up my mind to leave that house, it felt different. I felt different. And I couldn’t figure out why at first. Then I got it. Angie was gone. I’d let her go. We should never have stayed in that house after Angie.’

  A strange thought enters my mind. Martin lets Angie go – and she comes to me. The town square passes by in a blur of street light. The Long Mall too except that I notice Mrs Casey’s sweet shop is closed earlier than usual. We reach the junction where Dad was hit and I’m sitting up straight, my body rigid, my hand gripping the armrest on the passenger door like something’s going to happen. Nothing does. Nothing might ever have happened here for all these people walking or driving by know or care.

  ‘Do you think Mam and Dad will split up?’ I ask.

  ‘Judy’s completely devoted to your dad,’ he says. There should be more. There isn’t.

  Angie’s in my ear. Little Orphan Eala and her sugar daddy. How dodgy was that school show last year anyway? Young girl goes to live with older man? My stomach sickens. I think of Dad, a vulnerable, orphaned kid. Is this why he never talked about the foster homes he lived in or the people who took care of him? The people who were supposed to be taking care of him.

  We pull into the drive and park beside Miss Understanding’s car. I hate it when she’s alone with Mam. I don’t trust her. I should go inside and break up their little chat, but I’m too spun out. Dad appears briefly at the half-basement window. The Ice Queen is there too. She stares straight at me. Martin raises his hand, a little hesitant wave. And they’re gone.

  ‘Eala, keep an eye on Sean,’ Martin says. ‘I’m afraid he might do something foolish. Those Healys are dangerous people and the last thing Judy needs is hassle from that lot.’

  He’s looking up at the bay window of the sitting room. His eyes wide and bleak. Mam’s up there, leaning back on the sofa and staring up at the ceiling while Tom bounces up and down beside her. She looks pure washed out, emptied. I can’t see Miss U, but I know she’s doing the talking because Mam nods her head as though agreeing with whatever the psycho’s saying.

  ‘Are you coming in?’ I ask and unbuckle my seat belt. The sensation of release doesn’t last very long. For all its size, the inside of the Merc feels claustrophobic. I can’t breathe deeply enough. My fingers can’t remember where the door handle is.

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’ve got some stuff to do at the office.’ He doesn’t sound like he’s looking forward to it.

  I’m pushing against the door as it opens and I almost tip out. Martin doesn’t notice. He’s still watching Mam. The air I craved is so cold it finds every inch of my flesh instantly.

  ‘Did you and Mam go out together before Dad came along?’ I ask.

  ‘We were kids. And it lasted all of two months,’ he says with a rueful smile. ‘If you think I’m small now, you should’ve seen me back then. I was a year older than Judy and I looked like her kid brother.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ I say.

  ‘Take care, Eala,’ he says and the best I can do in response is to raise my hand goodbye.

  I wait as the Mercedes reverses on to the road and pulls away. A minute or two passes. The crawling cold tempts me to go in; the street light tempts me to wander out, escape for a little while longer. I go with the street light.

  17

  Sometimes you only know where you’re going when you get there. This is one of those times. I’m standing at the junction where Dad’s mind was sucked into a black hole. I’m not sure what I expect to find here. Dad’s MP3 player still lying in the gutter? His blood still staining the footpath? I go down on one knee, peer closely at the filthy concrete coated with cigarette butts and blobs of flattened chewing gum. There are plenty of stains, but they could be any disgusting thing. A man goes by speed-walking a greyhound. He keeps looking back and wondering what the hell I’m doing until I get up from the footpath. I walk slowly along by the gable wall Dad cracked his head against. I don’t find any trace of his blood there, no cracks in the plaster, nothing.

  Why didn’t you ever talk to me, Dad? Why didn’t you trust me with your secret? I’m crying and Angie’s at my shoulder. Yeah right, Eala, and if he had told you, you’d still be whining like you are now, feeling sorry for yourself because that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Feeling sorry for yourself and waiting for someone to come along and hold you, that someone being Brian, right? I tell her to leave me alone. I run tow
ards home, but I can’t shake her off. You’re such a loser, Eala.

  At our driveway, the noise of the pebbles underfoot as I run drowns Angie out. I go in by the narrow side passage by the half-basement. The light’s still on in there, but the curtains have been pulled. Halfway through the passage, I’m plunged into darkness. I’m stupidly afraid. I feel my way along by the wall, the palm of my hand chafed by the rough cement finish.

  Turning the corner into the Bernabéu, I’m met by a cloud of cigarette smoke blown by someone in the shadows by the back wall. My heart skips a beat. But it’s only Sean. Angie’s here again. You thought it was Brian, didn’t you? Ha ha, as if!

  ‘Jesus, Sean,’ I blurt out. ‘You frightened the bloody life out of me. What are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ he says and blows some more smoke in my direction. I don’t know if it’s deliberate, but it pisses me off anyway. I have to hurt him, hit him with something, make him feel as rotten as I do.

  ‘Some show you put on over at the courthouse,’ I say. ‘Just what Mam needed to see, wasn’t it? Her macho superhero son lashing out and drawing more trouble on us.’

  ‘Get lost, Eala.’

  ‘I won’t get lost,’ I say, which sounds pure infantile, but I can’t shut myself up. I remember Dad’s words from the night Sean clocked our baby brother.

  ‘Do you feel better now you’ve hit a child? Do you feel more like a man?’ I ask.

  The words are etched on Sean’s brain too and it shows. His cigarette hits the ground so hard that sparks fly up and pepper the skin along the side of my leg. I aim a kick at him, but he blocks it off and he’s in my face, his fist raised towards me and I make myself laugh because that’s what we do, Dad, isn’t it? Laugh away every last question, every last problem. What did the clown say when he went to the bar? Remember that one, Dad? The jokes are on me, ha, ha!