My Dad Is Ten Years Old

by Mark O'Sullivan

  ‘Well, it’s kind of down to you, really, Eala. See, Dad went ballistic when he heard about your … your visit, like. So he’s laying into me and I go ballistic too and I spit out the whole story about being in the car with Sham and all that. Then everything comes out and Mum’s there like a referee letting him talk, letting me talk, calming us down when it gets too heavy. It’s like this thing’s been waiting for years to explode and nothing could get sorted until it did. I know what I’m going to do now.’

  I’m heading down the Long Mall. Mrs Casey’s shop is on the other side. The front door is bolted, but there’s a weak light shining inside. I remember how she stood on our doorstep in that flimsy nightdress and I feel lousy for being so mean to her. She has nothing. I have something.

  ‘Eala?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m here. I’m nearly home.’

  ‘We came down today to have a look round this college where they teach furniture-making. I’ve to decide between this one and another college up in Galway.’

  ‘That sounds good.’

  I’m at the turn into our road. There are no cars at the junction, but the traffic lights don’t know that. They keep going green and amber and red until they’re needed again.

  ‘And we came out to visit Grandad’s grave and called to some of the old neighbours,’ Brian says. ‘The folks are waiting back there for me. I better head on up.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m home now anyway.’

  ‘Listen, Eala,’ he says. ‘Have you heard about Trigger Healy?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘They caught him outside Nenagh yesterday with his supplier. Nabbed them doling out a load of cocaine. Plus, he took a swing at Dad and they got him for assault. They reckon he’ll get five to seven years.’

  I’ve stopped walking now and I’m at our front gate. Down in Cork, Brian seems to set off at the very moment I stop. I think of Trigger Healy sitting in a cell somewhere. Maybe I should be punching the air with delight, but I couldn’t be bothered wasting the energy.

  ‘You won’t believe this, Eala,’ Brian says. ‘They put in a drainage system in the Wet Field last summer and it didn’t flood this year. So the swans never came. I wonder where did they go?’

  ‘Where’s the nearest river?’

  ‘About half a mile up this road.’

  ‘That’s where they’ll be.’

  ‘D’you reckon?’

  ‘Somewhere nearby anyway.’

  ‘Kind of sad, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not for the swans,’ I tell him.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says and thinks about it, or that’s what the quietening storm in the phone sounds like. ‘So. We’ll give it another shot, yeah?’

  ‘We’ll see how it goes, yeah.’

  ‘Catch you later then.’

  ‘Catch you later.’

  I go in along our drive, skirt around by the side of the darkened half-basement window and in around to the Bernabéu. In by the kitchen window, I see Mam leaning against the worktop. She’s got a plate in one hand, a fork in the other. She never sits at the table to eat these evenings and most of what’s on the plate goes in the bin and it’s on to the next job and the next. I try to anticipate what the next job might be and get it done in the hope that she’ll slow down.

  Last evening, she insisted on washing the kitchen floor even as we told her about that long-ago fight at the punk club and the court case and all of that. Sean did most of the talking and it didn’t take very long really. We waited for her reaction, which took forever. All the while, we’re retreating as she wields the mop and glances threateningly at our feet. In the end, we’re stuck in a corner, afraid to step out on to the wet floor tiles. Then she starts on us.

  ‘So he was always some kind of thug,’ she said. ‘Is that what you’re implying here? That he’s reverted to type since the accident?’

  ‘We wanted you to understand why he found it so hard to, you know, bring up his past,’ Sean said. ‘This has nothing to do with Jimmy. Jimmy can’t help it when he flips.’

  She tossed the mop into the plastic bucket of water. Filthy suds splashed up on to her skirt. I thought I could hear the sizzle of their popping bubbles, but that can’t have been possible.

  ‘I notice it’s all Jimmy this and Jimmy that with you two now, isn’t it? And not Dad, like it’s always been.’

  ‘Jimmy is not Dad,’ I said.

  I thought my heart would break when I came out with that, but it had to be said. The last leaf has to fall or winter will never end, is how I see it, is how it is. Mam wasn’t impressed.

  ‘You,’ she said. Spat, more like. ‘You frightened me half to death in the hospital. And you.’ She rounded on Sean. ‘Worrying me sick with your carry-on, hanging around the streets and drinking and God knows what else. And this is the thanks I get for trying to keep the show on the road, for trying to … to … What do you want? You want me to abandon him, is it?’

  ‘It’s not about what we want, Mam. It’s about what Jimmy wants,’ I said.

  ‘What Jimmy wants? Jimmy wanted to play that stupid Wii game all day. He wanted to go play five-a-side with his old pals. For God’s sake, Eala, he wanted to go and live in bloody Moravia. That’s the whole point. He knows what he wants, but he doesn’t know what’s good for him.’

  ‘He knows he’s not happy living in this house, living with us,’ Sean said. ‘It’s not his fault and it’s not ours.’

  She wandered around the kitchen like she’d reached the centre of a maze and couldn’t find her way out. She passed by the cooker, talking to herself, not out loud, but you could see this big debate happening in her constantly changing expression. She stopped up, glanced back at the cooker like she’d copped something there. She tried the light switch in the cooker hood. It didn’t work. It hadn’t worked for years.

  ‘Jesus H. Christ, how many times did I ask him to fix this?’ she said. ‘How many times? But no, no, of course, he didn’t fix it. Tonight, tomorrow, next week. When I finish The Flutterbyes, when I finish Terry the Bloody Tank, when I …’ She punched the underside of the cooker hood and punched it again. ‘Bastard. Lying, secretive bastard.’

  ‘He was always so good to us,’ I say. ‘Nothing can change that.’

  She landed one more shot on the cooker hood. The rectangle of plastic covering the light fell on to the ceramic hob. It didn’t damage the smooth glass-like surface, but the skin along Mam’s knuckles was torn. Stupid things came into my head to say. Would you like a cup of tea, Mam, a glass of wine? I’ll get a bulb for the cooker hood tomorrow, Mam. Why don’t we go into the sitting room and light a fire and watch some TV, Mam? But she’d left us standing there and gone upstairs before I could get a word past the lump in my throat.

  Out here in the Bernabéu, I look up at the moon. It’s a sliver away from being a full moon. The light from the kitchen window forms a long rectangle on the grass. At its centre a white plastic football lies like something waiting to happen.

  34

  ‘Well, Jimmy.’

  ‘Awright?’

  ‘I missed you.’

  He’s had a haircut, tidy but not too tight. He wears a silvery grey shirt over a Real Madrid T-shirt. I kiss him on the cheek and hold him tight. He doesn’t exactly resist, but it’s like he’s waiting for the embrace to end. He sits down on the sofa and fishes a stringy piece of tissue from his pocket. He’s raising it towards his cheek, but hesitates.

  ‘Judy’s told me you’ve had the flu,’ he says. ‘I hope you haven’t passed it on to me now.’

  ‘Course she hasn’t,’ Mam says. ‘She’s well over it.’

  He changes his mind about wiping my kiss away and puts the tissue back in his pocket. He sighs, distracted by some thought. A wide yawn brings him back to us. To me.

  ‘You’ve got well skinny, you know that?’

  ‘Thanks, Jimmy, I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  Sean’s laughte
r is nervous and an octave too high. Tom is laughing at Sean’s laugh. Mam and me are smiling hysterically. The TV isn’t on, but Jimmy prefers to look at it than at us. There’s no fire in the grate, only ashes. We calm down, embarrassed for each other and everyone makes a move at the same time.

  ‘Right then,’ Mam says. ‘Let’s get some dinner going.’

  ‘I’ve a new DVD for you, Jimmy,’ Sean says. ‘Avatar, did you see it yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll go get it then.’

  ‘Want a wee-wee! Wee-wee, quick!’ Tom pipes up.

  ‘I’ll take you,’ I say. Unlike the others I didn’t have a plan when I started moving. ‘Hold on to it, OK?’

  I’m halfway up the stairs with Tom in my arms before I realize we’ve left Jimmy alone in the sitting room. Raised voices suddenly fill up the stairwell. He’s turned on the TV. The volume goes down a few notches. The disconnected noises of channel-hopping start up. Fragments of music, talk, cartoon sound effects like broken memories. Nothing he wants to linger on.

  ‘Huwwy, huwwy!’ Tom pleads and I quicken my steps.

  We make it just in time. There’s a long mirror on the airing-cupboard door directly opposite the toilet. It’s too weird and always makes me want to hurry when I sit on the pot, but Tom loves to watch himself pee and usually laughs his head off. Today he doesn’t look in the mirror.

  ‘Jimmy sad,’ he says.

  ‘He’s tired is all,’ I tell him, but he’s not convinced.

  We head back down to see if Mam wants some help in the kitchen. In the sitting room, they’ve started to watch Avatar. Tom joins them. I find Mam standing by the worktop near the kitchen sink. She’s got a carrot in one hand and a vegetable peeler in the other. Neither hand is moving. There’s nothing to stare at along this bare stretch of wall, but she stares anyway. She looks pure weary after the drive down from Dublin.

  ‘Will I wash some potatoes?’ I ask and she stirs herself.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. She brushes the fringe from her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘He looks lovely, doesn’t he? The shirt and all. I can’t remember the last time I saw him in a shirt.’

  She continues to peel the carrots. She used to have this knack of peeling off long, perfectly unbroken shavings. When I was a kid it drove me crazy when I’d try and fail to do the same. ‘Your hands aren’t patient enough yet,’ she’d tell me. But her hands work erratically now. Short strips are scattered out and beyond the chopping board and half the skin is left on the carrots.

  ‘Insisted on buying a new shirt,’ Mam says. ‘And when I asked him what colour he wanted, he says he’ll know when he sees it. I think it’s because of that old black and white newspaper photograph of his father. The shirt he’s wearing might be blue or green maybe, but it looks a powdery grey.’

  The table is set. She’s slicing the carrots now and I wish she’d pay more attention to the knife that strays too close to her fingers as she daydreams.

  ‘He looks … What’s the word I’m looking for?’ she says. ‘More mature somehow.’

  ‘Will I finish cutting those carrots for you?’ I say because I can’t bear to hear the hope in her voice.

  ‘Go on in and watch the film,’ she says. ‘I’ll get the stew going and follow you in.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She nods and goes back to cutting the carrots, chopping so hard that the toaster on the granite counter rattles. The metallic shiver grates on my brain as I leave the kitchen. In the sitting room, Jimmy’s slouched back in the armchair. He doesn’t look up when I come in. His eyes are fixed on the TV, but he’s not focused on it. Tom sits on the floor by his feet holding on tight to the kiddie’s football we bought for him. I sit on the sofa beside Sean. We glance at one another and the glance holds for a few seconds. I don’t know what it is we’re saying to each other. Jimmy pulls in a long, tired breath. I wonder if he’s back there again in the houseboat, waiting for the madness to start.

  Sean called over to Martin’s apartment last week to collect the file. There were photocopies of the fake black-market birth cert and the real one, newspaper cuttings of the inquest in 1974 and the trial in 1982. When I first saw the front-page photo of Thierry and Cath, I was perplexed. He didn’t look especially like Zidane. Tall, yes, but gaunt and lank-framed with this big, late-sixties Afro hairstyle. The closest resemblance was in the eyes. Something dark and beautiful and inscrutable about them. Alongside him, Cath seemed tiny and you could see that she’d once been very pretty, but the light had already left her downcast eyes and her blonde hair fell in ratty strings.

  Jimmy yawns and yawns. I think of the terrors he’s endured. The constant fear his paranoid parents instilled in him, the horror of that night when they crashed and burned. I think of the weirdness of having his name changed so often as a kid. The double weirdness of having to take on yet another identity so that his years in prison wouldn’t come against him. I think it’s a miracle that he held it together all these years and never allowed a trace of bitterness or anger with the world to poison our lives. Who needs superheroes when you’ve had a man like that for a father?

  No one’s watching Avatar now. Jimmy’s eyes have closed. Tom is sleepy too. Sean looks out by the bay window as the daylight fades. There’s no sound from the kitchen, but Mam’s still out there. Jimmy stirs again. He sits forward abruptly. He fingers his watch in that agitated way of his.

  ‘Are you all right, Jimmy?’ Sean asks and looks out the window again like something out there’s bothering him.

  ‘I’m fucking not,’ he says and Tom points up at him, shaking his head. ‘Fuck off, Tom.’

  ‘Fucky, Jimmy,’ Tom says and makes a run for the door, but I catch him.

  ‘It’s OK, Tom,’ I tell him. ‘Jimmy’s only joking. We won’t say that bold word any more, right?’

  Suddenly Jimmy’s tearful. He’s staring at Tom’s frightened smile. Mam’s at the open doorway. She’s got a tea towel wrapped tightly around her fist. The other fist is pressed to her temple.

  ‘Is the film good?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s rubbish,’ Dad says. He stands up too quickly. His eyes do a kind of dizzy swivel. His spread fingers float down on to the arm of the sofa to keep him steady. ‘Alan doesn’t have to move to Limerick. He’ll be living in the new Head-Up house in town, so why can’t I?’

  ‘We talked about this on the drive down,’ Mam says. She’s so pale that the redness about her eyes is like some weird mascara. Tom starts bawling.

  ‘You talked,’ Dad says. ‘But you didn’t listen.’

  I try to calm Tom down, but it’s Mam he wants. He goes to her. She doesn’t sweep him up into her arms. Sean’s looking out the window again. Maybe looking at the reflection of this stand-off in the glass makes it seem less real.

  ‘This is your house, Jimmy,’ Mam says. ‘We’re your family. Not Alan.’

  ‘I told you I didn’t want to come back here. I get a pain,’ he jabs himself so hard in the stomach it hurts me. ‘Every time I come into this house, I get a pain in here. And in my head. I don’t belong in this house. I don’t know why, but it upsets me. It makes me feel …’ A grimace of desperation collapses his face. ‘Like a fool, like I can’t do anything right, like I’m … trouble. When I’m not here, do you fight and argue all the time? Do you? Do you?’

  The front doorbell rings. Sean’s off the sofa and tearing past me in an instant and it’s like I’m sucked along in his slipstream because I don’t know why I’m following him. He snaps the front door open. Clem Healy looks up at us from under his hoodie. He’s scared. He keeps glancing back over his shoulder. His lower lip trembles as though he’s about to burst out crying.

  ‘What do you want?’ Sean asks.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  He wipes his runny nose on his sleeve and hops from one foot to the other. I wonder if he’s been sniffing some of his father’s wares. Maybe not. His eyes are
n’t wild enough. Pathetically sad, more like. He’s got his MP3 player in his fist like it’s his only possession in the world.

  ‘Can I talk to Mr Summerton?’

  ‘How did you know he was here? How long have you been watching the house?’

  ‘A few days only. Was he away somewhere?’

  Sean’s trying hard to keep his fists to himself, but I can see it’s tearing him apart. Clem looks beyond us. From the end of the hallway, Mam stares in disbelief at the kid who shattered our lives. Clem’s hoodie drops back, exposing his scraggily shaved head and his scrawny neck. It seems like he’s decided I’m the only one who’ll listen to him. He holds up the MP3 player towards me.

  ‘I couldn’t come when my da was around,’ he tells me. ‘Mr Summerton owns this. I should’a brought it before. I wanted to.’

  The cold of the evening has drifted into the hallway. I take the MP3 player from Clem. His head goes down. There’s a crack along the screen and one of the earphones looks like it’s been stepped on. Sean takes the player from my hand and checks out the damage. He tries switching it on, but nothing happens. It seems almost silly to me now, but I still feel sad that we’ll never know the last song he heard.

  ‘Get out of here, Clem,’ Sean says.

  The kid shrinks away from him. But, no, it’s not Sean he’s shrinking away from. Jimmy’s followed us out from the sitting room. I’m sure he doesn’t know who Clem is, but he’s wary of him all the same. Mam steps forward to the door, ready to close it.

  ‘You should go,’ she tells Clem, but he’s watching Jimmy and he’s going all weepy again.

  ‘I’m awful sorry, Mr Summerton,’ he says.

  ‘Sorry for what?’ Jimmy says and comes closer.

  ‘For hurting you.’

  ‘It was you? It was you that messed up my head?’

  Mam’s trying to ease the door to a close, but Jimmy makes a sudden lunge and slaps Clem across the face. The kid doesn’t back off. He waits for the next blow like he’s learned not to bother trying to escape punishment. Jimmy throws another swipe, but Sean catches his arm.