by Jan Carson
Five grand off the Montgomerys in Portstewart.
Another five from the folks in the big bungalow outside Lisnaskea.
Six grand in Markethill last December.
Eight thousand euro from the Gormans in Portlaoise (the only time we’ve ventured into the Free State).
Plus ten thousand or so in jewellery and small, untraceable electronic items which my mammy is selling on eBay. She is using a false name of course, lifted from a girl in Larne who used to do her hair.
Mammy’s careful to keep a fair amount of distance between one family and the next. There’s always the fear that a couple might have told someone about us, especially in the country, where there is little else to be talking about. We go backwards and forwards across the province, putting wee adverts in the local papers: ‘Struggling to start a family?’ ‘Frustrated by long waiting lists for adoption?’
Mammy has a mobile just for the adverts. When it goes off, the ringtone is the theme tune from The Littlest Hobo, which is a programme about a travelling dog she used to watch when she was a wee girl. The song always makes her smile, even when she’s just been shouting at my dad. She knows to answer the phone in her sad voice because the calls are always about my brother.
‘Yes,’ Mammy says. She can sound like she’s near crying on the telephone. ‘I’m at my wits’ end. I can’t give the child what he needs. I’m heart feared his da’s going to come home and lay into him again.’
She always gives them a price straight off, something around the twenty grand mark. This is what they decided my brother was worth. He’s not a baby any more. We could ask more for a baby. They’re better value for money because you get longer with them. We don’t have a baby and Mammy’s too old to have another one. Besides, how would we get it back if it couldn’t walk?
‘The money’s just for expenses,’ she explains slowly. ‘You wouldn’t believe what it costs a lawyer to draw up adoption papers.’ She asks questions about what the couple do for a living, whether they’ve a happy marriage, and whether they’re churchgoers or not. They always say they are. They think this is the right answer. My Mammy could not give a toss about whether they are Protestants or Roman Catholics or practicing Satanists. She only asks these questions so the whole set-up doesn’t sound too suspicious.
‘Well,’ she says, ‘this is an answer to prayer, a real weight off my mind knowing my wee Josh (or Brendan, or Philip) is going to get everything I can’t give him. Bless you. Bless you both. Why don’t I drop him ’round to youse for a trial run, just for the night? You can see what a wee dote he is and sure, I could lift a deposit off you at the same time, kill two birds with the one stone.’
There is a damp pause. This is the moment when the deal will either take or fail.
‘Would five grand seem reasonable?’ asks Mammy. Another pause. ‘Perfect, I hope you don’t mind doing cash. I don’t want himself getting at the money. He’s a wild man for the drink.’
The deal is all go then. Dad and I do a silent air punch, ‘Yesss.’ My brother is too young to understand any of this. He thinks it’s all just a game, like hide and seek in someone else’s house. The people who adopt him will spoil him with ice cream and crisps before bed. They want him to have good memories of his first night in their house. They never think about hiding their iPods or wallets. Why would they suspect a five-year-old child, especially such a cute one? They put him to bed in his new bedroom and don’t even notice he’s gone till the next morning. My mammy makes Owen leave a note, in crayon, just in case they try to report him missing. This could ruin everything for us.
We’ve been waiting for over an hour now. I have bit away all the fingernails I can. There’s nothing else to do in the dark.
We can’t risk the engine. The last thing we need is the neighbours calling the police about a suspicious looking Saxo. Everything rides on a clean getaway, not least my brother, who my parents cannot afford to leave behind. By Mammy’s calculations, we need at least two more jobs before we’ve enough for Australia, especially if we’re for taking Owen with us. I’m not that bothered either way. It was better before we got him. There was more room in the back seat for me. My dad had his job at the chicken factory and Mammy made the sort of meals you need both a knife and fork for, not just sandwiches, which we are always having these days.
Everything has changed. We are outlaws now. Mammy has started smoking tight little roll-up cigarettes, which she dangles through a gap in the car window. I am getting fat from all this sitting around, and also the sandwiches. Dad is turning into an American.
I have not seen the jeans jacket in months, but he still insists upon his Bon Jovi tapes. Because my dad was reared in Ballymena, which is a little like being reared in a time machine, he assumes that everyone enjoys Bon Jovi. ‘Your love is like bad medicine,’ he is singing now. He pauses just long enough to make me think he’s forgotten the next line, before he belts out, ‘Bad medicine is what I need.’ His head is a hammer nodding out each syllable.
There is something about the way my dad taps the beat out on the steering wheel, prodding at it with a single limp finger, which drives Mammy clean mad. Or, maybe the words are what wind her up. She has never been like bad medicine for Dad, unless Jon Bon Jovi is meaning cough syrup that’s gone off. The two of them only touch when they’re both going for the TV remote at the same time.
‘Turn that shite off, Samuel,’ she snaps. ‘It’s a wonder you’ve not woken up half the neighbourhood.’
Dad turns the stereo down, a wee bit at first, and then completely off. The car is full of silence and wet breathing. He does this in a way which is meant to make Mammy think he was going to do it anyway.
‘Listen,’ he says, ‘I think I hear a noise.’ He rolls the window down a half-inch. Outside the car smells like cut grass and last night’s barbecue. ‘Naw, it was nothing, just the wind.’
Outside the car is a nice estate of medium-sized houses with pebble-dash walls and two-car driveways. The lawns are perfectly rectangled and green, like the smooth felt on snooker tables. Every third or fourth house has a touring caravan moored outside its garage door. The kind of people who live here are teachers and estate agents or different kinds of social workers. They have two children or three. Sometimes they can’t work up to one, and this is where we come in, with my brother.
Experience has taught us that the middling people are more desperate. They are more likely to believe my mammy on the telephone and then, later, at their front door in a dirty T-shirt. They are easier to destroy than the very rich. Very rich people are always suspicious of people who want to help them, even when it is the kind of help they need such as window cleaning or gardening. We only do middle-class houses now. Afterwards, these people are too mortified to call the police. They do not want to look like eejits in front of their friends.
‘Besides,’ says my mother, ‘it’s only their holiday savings we’ve taken or what they were setting aside for a conservatory. They can afford it.’
Every house in the estate has its curtains drawn. Apart from the street lamps and the odd red-eyed alarm, the estate is completely dark. We are parked three houses from the Williamsons’, on the opposite side. My brother is inside this house. Any minute now he will turn the key in their patio door and come creeping down the driveway, twisting himself sideways to edge past Mr Williamson’s speedboat. His pockets will be full of credit cards and small but valuable items easy to sell on the Internet. Mammy always puts Owen in trousers with deep pockets when he’s on a job. She is clever like that, thinking of problems before they happen so they are not even really problems.
‘What time is it now, Samuel?’ Mammy asks. The digital clock on the Saxo only works when you have the engine on.
Dad tugs at the elbow of his jumper, eases his sleeve off of his watch, and whispers, ‘Ten past two, Pearl,’ as if someone might be listening outside the door. ‘Any minute now, the wee man’ll come bolting round yon corner and we’ll be out of here.’
We a
ll lean forward, peering through the sweaty windscreen at the street and the hedges and the spot which will, any second now, be Owen, running.
‘Next time, I could go,’ I suggest.
‘No way,’ says Mammy, as she always does. In the two seconds it takes to form her next sentence, I tell myself this is because she loves me more than Owen. She is trying to protect me, I tell myself. The believing of this is warm all around me, and spreading out across the back seat, like when you are in the swimmers and allow yourself to piss a little and float in your own heat. Then she says, ‘You’re too old, Paddy,’ and all the good feeling is gone.
‘Nobody wants to adopt a ten-year-old,’ continues Dad. ‘They only go for Owen ‘cause he’s five and he looks like a wee angel.’
‘Like a young Macaulay Culkin,’ adds Mammy, ‘before he got into the drugs and the sexual stuff. Folks look at that wee face and they can’t get their front door open quick enough. The child’s a bloody gold mine.’
‘Folks look at your face, Paddy, and they go off the idea of children altogether,’ says Dad. He winks at me and I can see it, backwards in the rear-view mirror.
‘It’s not your fault, son,’ Mammy butts in. ‘You take after your da, not me.’
I bite my teeth into the edge of the passenger seat. It tastes of fire-retardant foam, but it stops me from saying the sort of thing which will land me with a slap. I look over my dad’s shoulder while I’m chewing, and I see Owen come belting round the corner in a pair of button-up pyjamas. Everyone springs into action. Dad flicks the ignition on and, for a moment, my brother goes all slow motion, suspended in the Saxo’s full beams. Mammy opens the passenger door and jumps out, crying, ‘Good lad, Owen,’ and, ‘What are you in your jammies for?’ I get ready to push the passenger seat forward so my brother can get into the back.
Owen stops in front of Mammy. He is close enough to be heard without raising his voice but far enough away to be beyond her reach. I can tell from the way she is holding her arms that she wants to hug him. She is not a very good mammy, but I think she still worries about us, especially Owen, when he’s on a job.
‘Get in the car, son,’ she says.
‘Naw, Mammy,’ replies my brother, ‘I fancy staying with these ones. They’re nice.’
‘Get in the car, Owen,’ she repeats.
My dad leans across the handbrake and shouts, ‘Get in the bloody car now, Owen.’ He is not even using his John Wayne voice.
‘They’re going to call me, Miles,’ says my brother. ‘I’ve got my own bunk beds: two whole beds and there’s only one of me.’
‘Get in the car,’ all three of us shout.
Mammy makes a lunge for Owen and he stumbles a little trying to avoid her. He is wearing the kind of slippers children wore in wartime. His hair is split in a line down the middle so all his curls are flat.
‘I’ll skin you, if you don’t get in the car right now, Owen,’ shouts my dad.
My brother begins to cry, quietly at first and then with a kind of crazy edge like an out-of-control truck thundering down a hill. A light goes on in the house closest to us.
‘I don’t want to do the stealing any more,’ screams Owen. He does not look like a young Macaulay Culkin now. He looks like a just-born baby all pink-faced and screaming. ‘It’s not fair. Why doesn’t Paddy have to do it?’
‘I will,’ I say, ‘I’ll totally do it.’
Nobody hears me. Mammy takes three steps towards my brother. She wraps her arms around his arms and braces him against her chest as if he was a sack of new potatoes. She throws him in the back seat and does not even bother with his seatbelt.
‘Drive,’ she says to Dad, and neither of them bother with their seatbelts either.
‘I could make myself look younger than I am,’ I say. ‘I could wear, like, a Disney jumper or something.’
‘Wee bugger didn’t even lift a credit card,’ my mammy mumbles to herself.
‘At least we’ve got the deposit,’ says Dad. They both turn their heads to look at the glove compartment where Mammy has stashed six grand in fifty-pound notes.
‘He’s getting too old for this, Samuel.’
‘We only need him to do it two more times.’
‘You’re right, two more jobs, and then Australia.’
‘And if worst comes to worst, Pearl, I can always take my belt to him – for his own good.’
In the back seat, my brother is still crying. He reaches through the dark for my hand, and I will not take it.
‘You could have stayed with them,’ I hiss in his ear. I hate my brother for coming back to the Saxo, for still being the one they need.
In the front, my dad has turned the radio back on and it is Bon Jovi, the one about saying a prayer. I think this is their most famous song.
7.
More of a Handstand Girl
My brother is allergic to people. He lives in the spare-room closet. It is four years, two months and a handful of days since I last saw his face. It is no big deal. He is not my twin brother. I am a girl and I am not allergic to people. I like people just fine.
My brother is allergic to people. He told me this one night, ten days after he first moved into the spare-room closet. I thought it was just an adolescent phase. He was odd and determined, utterly set on living inside a closet.
He moved the stereo into the closet and ran an extension lead to the nearest outlet. I made him ready meals and peanut-butter sandwiches, leaving them on a tray with eating instructions just outside his door. It was the best of times. I felt useful, like a real girl. Even then I couldn’t see his face. He wore a motorcycle helmet every time he crossed the hall to the bathroom. I took to wearing dark glasses inside. I pretended I couldn’t see him. It was important to indulge him.
I was on the other side of the apartment when my brother first told me about his allergy. We were talking into two Campbell’s soup cans attached by a piece of string. They still smelt of mushroom soup when you raised them to your mouth for speaking.
‘Don’t lick the edges of the telephone,’ I said, because my brother, when he was younger, had liked to lick things such as coins and forks in restaurants.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. ‘I only lick things I like.’
My brother has never liked mushrooms.
I was watching television in the front room, describing everything I could see through my dark glasses, laughing into the soup can so the laugh went jiggling all the way down the string into my brother’s ear. There was no television in the spare-room closet.
Between the programmes there was a commercial for hay-fever remedy. ‘Hey,’ I said to my brother at the other end of the Campbell’s-soup-can phone, ‘Remember the time our mom got hay fever?’
My brother remembered that whole crazy summer like it was only yesterday or the day before. He remembered the way our mom used to tape a Kleenex across her mouth and nose to filter out the pollen. We talked about the way those Kleenexes rose and fell with every breath, like tiny parachutes descending on her face. My brother remembered the acupuncture, and the time our mother set fire to the neighbours’ herb garden. In fact, my brother accurately remembered almost every detail of that whole hay-fever summer, and so, naturally, we got to talking about allergies.
I said, ‘I guess I’m allergic to this dumb city. I guess I’ve almost caught asthma from it.’ I huffed on an empty inhaler to prove my point.
‘That’s nothing,’ my brother replied. ‘I am allergic to people. If someone sees me I might probably die. I might probably die the kind of violent death where I have to go to hospital immediately even though everyone knows it is already too late.’
I knew exactly the kind of death he was talking about. I watch a lot of television in my spare time.
I stopped considering the spare-room closet an adolescent phase and became very serious about my brother’s condition. ‘Listen here,’ I said in a very serious voice, though I could never be sure how well my vocal inflections were travelling down the Cam
pbell’s-soup-can phone, ‘we’ve got to be very serious about your condition. This is no laughing matter. At any minute you might probably die.’
My brother agreed wholeheartedly. I could hear him nodding down the telephone string.
Right after this conversation I built a trash-bag wall between my brother and I. I split the apartment in two and drew a map to avoid confusion. I am good with lines and other straight things. ‘That is your side and this is mine,’ I shouted through the trash-bag wall. Everything was plastic and futuristic like the part in ET where the science people try to steal ET and do experiments on him. My brother used to cry at that part in the movie. It was sadder to him than the time our grandma really died.
Building those black plastic walls down the middle of our apartment, I felt older and clever, like a scientist.
We got a bathroom each, and I got the television. ‘What about the kitchen?’ my brother asked and I got it because I am the girl and I am entirely capable of sliding his meals under the trash bag every morning and evening.
‘It works,’ he said. I imagined it was the last conversation we’d ever have.
I wrote his words on a Post-it note and stuck them to the fridge. ‘It works.’ Last words are important things, not to be forgotten.
It is four years, two months and a handful of days since I last saw my brother’s face. His allergy has gotten worse. Just thinking about people is enough to bring him out in hives all the way down his back. He tells me this, whispering into the soup-can phone late at night. We don’t speak now. If I hold my breath and keep the line quiet, he can pretend I don’t even exist. He can imagine an apartment at the end of the world where he is the only real person left. He can tell himself, ‘This isn’t my sister. This isn’t a telephone. This isn’t even a conversation. It’s just the only boy in the world talking to himself, cramming all his thoughts into a Campbell’s-condensed-soup can.’
If I don’t breathe and I don’t speak and I manage not to jiggle the soup-can string, he feels completely alone and the hives are barely visible.