by Alex Coleman
“Anyway. So there we were on the street, chatting away good-o. It wasn’t too late, so I thought maybe we’d go and get a drink, you know, keep the thing going.”
“But she wanted to go home. Eddie, you shouldn’t read too much –”
“No, no, it wasn’t that. Just the opposite. I suggested going for a drink and she said ‘Wouldn’t you rather come back to my place?’ Like, she stepped all close and everything when she said it.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe that such a thing had happened.
“I’m not sure I see the problem,” I said. “You like her, don’t you?”
“Oh yeah! Yeah.” He smiled. “She told me this great story about a chap at work who went to Greece with his wife … Well, I’ll tell you some other time. But she’s … lovely, she’s really lovely.”
I took a deep breath. “I think I know what you’re telling me, Eddie. Are you saying that it’s been a while? Since you … y’know. With a woman.”
He rolled about on his hips and clasped his hands together. “This is a big, it’s a big … I don’t know why I’m telling you. Sorry, sorry, that’s not true. I do know why I’m telling you. Because you’re helpful and kind and … knowledgable. But you can’t laugh.”
I patted his knee, confident that I had his number. “I didn’t laugh at your Internet printouts, did I?”
“No. You didn’t.”
“Eddie, maybe it’d be easier if I said it for you.” “Maybe.”
“Are you telling me you’re a bit … inexperienced?” He recoiled as if I’d slapped him. “You could say that.” I gave him time to elaborate.
He leaned forward and stared down at the ground. “Jackie, I’ve never even kissed a woman. Let alone … anything else.”
My first thought was that I should be very quick about saying something supportive. But nothing came to mind. I peeled my tongue from the roof of my mouth, where it had suddenly lodged, and made a noise along the lines of “Uhwehuhum”.
“It’s a shocker, isn’t it?” Eddie said, still staring at the ground. “Forty-five years of age. Pathetic.”
I recovered the power of speech. “It’s sad, that’s what it is.”
He looked up at me. “Oh. I didn’t think you were going to agree with me.”
“No, Eddie, Jesus, I mean it’s sad as in heartbreaking, not sad as in … sad. How did … I don’t understand how …”
“Just never happened. What can I say?” “But when you were a teenager . . .?”
“Not when I was a teenager, not when I was a twenty- something, not when I was thirty-something … and so on.”
Right on cue, a young couple walked past hand in hand. I spoke up quickly, hoping to distract his attention.
“Could be worse. I had twins when I was a teenager.” His reply was instant: “That’s not worse, Jackie.”
I was about to protest but thought better of it. He had a point. “You just didn’t go on dates, is that it?”
“That other woman I told you about? My dad’s nurse?” “Yeah.”
“That was in 1993. The last time before that was about 1988, maybe even 1987, I’m not sure. And that was my first ever. I’ve been on three dates in my life.”
I tried not to look shocked. “But, dates aside, surely there was a game of spin-the-bottle or some drunken –”
“Jackie. This is hard enough without you not even believing me. Trust me. I’d have remembered if it had happened.”
“I’m sorry, Eddie. That was a stupid thing to say.” I saw an opportunity to compliment him then and grabbed it. “I’m just saying, with all the creeps and losers out there, I’m surprised that’s all, I’m surprised that a kind, decent bloke like you has … missed out.”
He didn’t reply. I guessed that the same thought had occurred to him long, long ago, but he was too modest to agree. “So finish your story,” I said. “She asked you back to hers …”
“And I just panicked. I know what you’re going to say. You’d think I’d have jumped at the chance, but –”
“I wasn’t going to say that. You must have been really on edge. The unknown and all that.”
He gave me a half-smile. “See? I knew you’d get it. She asked me back and my stomach churned. We’d been getting on so well and now all I could see was me making a complete mess of it. She’d be able to tell as soon as I … started. There’s just no way she wouldn’t be able to tell. Is there?”
This was a real question. I was determined to give a good answer. “There is such a thing as a natural, you know. I remember when the kids were about twelve, we all went out to play pitch ‘n’ putt one day. We were all hopeless, except Robert. Now I’m not saying he was getting holes in one or anything, but you could tell by looking at him, the way he swung the pitcher or whatever it’s called – he was just naturally good at it. People were telling Gerry and me that he could be a professional golfer if he kept it up. Which he didn’t, of course. He never keeps anything up, that one.”
Eddie didn’t look impressed. I wished I had a better example than pitch ‘n’ frigging putt.
“I don’t think I can rely on being a natural,” he said. “Not at this. Not at anything.”
His confidence in me was obviously shaken.
I tried a different tack. “Well, how about this: for all you know, she’s just as inexperienced as you are.”
That was no good either.
“I know for a fact she’s had at least one boyfriend,” Eddie said, “because she told me about him. He was a real scumbag. Went out with her for a few months then dumped her over the phone and never gave her CDs back. Even if he was the only partner she’s ever had – which I severely doubt she’s still a long way down the track ahead of me.” “You never told me how it ended.”
“Sorry?”
“On the street outside the restaurant.” “Oh. I just made up an excuse.” “What did you say?”
He made a face like someone sucking a lemon. “It was the first thing to come into my head.”
“Go on.”
“I said I had a tummy bug.” “That’s not so bad.”
“Yes, it is. When people say ‘I’ve got a tummy bug’ what they really mean is ‘I’ve got the raging squits’.”
He had me there. I could think of nothing to say but “Hmmm”.
“So not only did she have to toddle off home on her own, she was left with an image of me glued to the pot all night with bad guts.”
“Well, people do get sick, Eddie, it’s not a sin.”
He ignored that. “And I’ll tell you what was worse. She started asking all sorts of questions. Why hadn’t I mentioned it before? How come it hadn’t been bothering me up until then?”
“And you said what?”
“I said it had been coming and going all day. There was more imagery she could have done without. What the hell’s the matter with me? Last time it was Dad’s impacted colon and now it’s my dose of the trots. Every time I go out with a woman – every decade or so – I wind up on the subject of … bums.”
“It’s unfortunate. I’m not saying it isn’t unfortunate. So how did you part?”
“Once I finished answering her diarrhoea questions, I just sort of backed off, waving. She looked awful confused. She took a little step towards me again so I turned and … well … sort of … ran away.”
“You’re exaggerating for comic effect, I presume …” He shook his head miserably. “Not really, no.”
“You literally ran away?” “A wee bit, yeah.”
“Oh.” I gave it some thought. “Well, we’ve got one thing going for us at least.”
“We?”
“You, then.” “I prefer we.”
I melted again. “We’ve got one thing going for us and that, if you ask me, is the very fact that you used that particular excuse.”
“Don’t follow.”
“For a start, it’s embarrassing –” “It sure is.”
“No, I mean it would be embarrassing if it was true. So
that gives you a lot of leeway for acting a bit … odd. And, number two – so to speak – it helps explain why you ran off at the end. You needed the loo.”
Eddie chewed on this for a moment. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. You’re saying that, assuming she answers the phone to me, I shouldn’t avoid the whole diarrhoea thing, I should try to use it to my advantage.”
“Exactly.”
“To be honest, I had my heart set on avoiding it.” “Tough. Eddie, you can’t call her up and act like nothing peculiar happened. She threw herself at you and not only did you not take her up on it, you started babbling about your tummy and then ran off. I guarantee you she’s sitting at home today thinking He could have just told me he wasn’t interested, there was no need to start making up silly excuses.”
“Oh God …”
“I haven’t finished yet. Then she’ll be thinking On the other hand, no man in his right mind would tell you he had a tummy bug i.e. the raging squits if it wasn’t actually true. You see?”
He looked out across the park again and I saw the beginnings of a smile. “Yeah … yeah, I see what you’re getting at.” He turned towards me again. “You’re very good at this.”
“It’s just common sense, Eddie, really.”
“Yeah. I’ve never been too good on the old common sense. Em . . . Jackie?”
“What?”
“Are you in a hurry to get back home? Back to your sister’s, I mean? Sorry.”
“Not really, why.”
“I don’t want to impose much more, you’ve been a great help and God knows you have enough on your plate without –”
“What is it, Eddie?”
“Well, I was wondering, seeing how I’m so nervous and all … I was wondering if maybe you and me could practise it together first.”
A thin squeal escaped me, followed by “Eddie! Are you out of your mind?” I jumped to my feet and grabbed my bag. It was only then that I realised what he meant. “Oh! Oh. You’re talking about the phone call.”
He blinked at me, deep in shock. “The phone call, yes. What did you think I meant?”
I sat back down again. “Y’know. I thought you meant … y’know . . .”
He looked more shocked than I had felt. “No! No. No, that’s not what I meant. Oh God. No. No.”
“So you want to practise the phone call?” “Yes. The phone call. Not … anything else.”
“And you mean actually practise it, like a rehearsal? Not just talk about it?”
“Like a rehearsal, exactly.”
It sounded childish. But it sounded fun too. “Okay. I’m game. Do you want to start?”
Eddie made a fist, then stuck out his thumb and little finger. He held the hand up to his ear and said, “Ring, ring!” The urge to laugh was almost overwhelming, but I resisted it. I made a hand-phone of my own and held it up to my ear.
“Hello,” I said. “Margaret speaking.”
CHAPTER 14
When I got back to the house and Melissa asked me how it had gone with Chrissy, I hesitated. We were just starting to get along. If I told her what had happened, there might be a row. I couldn’t imagine her being very impressed with the way I’d walked out on my crying daughter. On the other hand, I mused, there was a chance for further bonding here. I was the one who’d been offended, after all. And I was the one having the crisis. I quickly decided that it was worth the risk. We sat down in the living room and got ourselves comfy while Niall quietly made confetti of a colouring book on the rug.
To my relief and delight, Melissa saw my side of the Arnotts incident. Chrissy should have been more supportive. Chrissy should have been more understanding. Chrissy should have been more sensitive. This was a ricochet from her own reaction on Friday – I understood that – but still, I lapped it up. My big fear, I explained, was that my relationship with my daughter was going to go the way of my relationship with my son. It wasn’t just today. I’d also learned that she’d been pretending to share my low opinion of Robert’s girlfriend while laughing about it behind my back. This was the way it had started with him: small disagreements, small deceptions. Melissa and I had never talked about any of this, naturally enough – on those rare occasions when we had spoken, I’d thought it wise to stay off the topic of feuds – but she’d been dimly aware that all was not well. Now she wanted details. I started with Jemima, explaining how Robert had seemed to like her precisely because I didn’t. Melissa sympathised and probed further. Go back to the beginning, she said, back to the first sign of trouble. I was more than happy to oblige.
“It’s hard to say when things started to go wrong,” I told her. “We just … I don’t know … We just seemed to start getting on each other’s nerves. Little rows, but lots of them.”
“When was this?”
I thought, Funnily enough, it was around the time you and I fell out. “Towards the end of his schooldays.”
“And what were the rows about?”
“Well, lemme think. Steven Morris for one. He was this tiny wee guy from Dunshaughlin that Robert started hanging around with in sixth year. If you only saw a photo of him, you’d know you couldn’t trust him.”
“Eyes too close together, were they?”
“Yes! I know that sounds stupid, but …” I paused, aware that I wasn’t doing a very good hatchet job. “It wasn’t just the way he looked, it was the way he moved about too, all slippery and slidey and sneaky, like he was on castors. But mostly it was the way he acted, what-do-they-call-it … over- familiar. The first time I met him was in our house, in the kitchen. Robert pointed at me like I was a stain and said out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Steven, my mum, my mum, Steven.’ Your man slipped over towards me and said, ‘What’s your first name?’”
“Ooh,” Melissa said. “Don’t like that.”
“Neither did I. It’s Jackie, I told him, but Mrs O’Connell will do fine.”
“You were just right.”
“Made no difference. He always called me Jackie, every time. Actually, once or twice, it was Jackie O. I didn’t want to look like an old bat, so I let on I didn’t care.”
“The tosser.”
“That wasn’t the half of it. He used to help himself to biscuits out of the cupboard.”
“Jesus.”
“Honestly. One time I caught him walking out with our newspaper under his arm. He said he ‘thought we were finished with it’. I didn’t want to say to Robert, flat-out, that I thought his friend was a dick, but he knew I didn’t like him. So that was one thing. Steven Morris.”
“What else?”
“All the usual suspects. His bloody awful music, stupid haircuts he got, his unbelievable untidiness, that horrible earring that he quickly removed, thank God.”
“But isn’t that always the way with teenagers?” Melissa said. “I’m sure Chrissy had the same faults.”
“What are you getting at?” I said sharply – more sharply than I meant to.
“Nothing.”
“Are you trying –”
“Nothing, Jackie, I wasn’t getting at anything. Go on.” “Listen, even if I did give out to Chrissy about, I don’t know, the state of her room, she’d just roll her eyes and, at worst, mutter something under her breath. Robert would always go for me, screaming and roaring, then storm off and not speak to me for a few days. Then there was the famous hash incident, of course.”
“Tut-tut.”
“Tut-tut is right. This was in the summer after he left school. There was already tension because he said he had no intention of going to third level, he wanted to pursue his acting. He’d applied to a few courses because we’d stood over him and made him, but we knew he wasn’t going to go, even if he got accepted – which, later on, he was. Anyway, I was cleaning his room one day – I mean, I was moving the piles of rubbish about – he’d go mental if I threw anything out – when I came across this little wooden box. Very ornate, nothing like you’d expect our Robert to have. I opened it up, not snooping, just curious, because
I couldn’t imagine what he was using it for. And inside there was this little brown lump about the size of a clove of garlic. I wouldn’t have known what it was if there hadn’t been a packet of Rizlas with it. Even then, it took me a minute to work it out. I showed it to Gerry and he hit the roof. You know what he’s like about drugs.”
Melissa rolled her head about on her shoulders, neither nodding nor shaking.
“There was a huge row, a real top-of-the-lungs job. Just Gerry and Robert – I kept out of it. But still, I was the one who took all the flak. He blamed me, Robert, for invading his privacy, that was the way he put it, and most of all for getting his dad involved. It wasn’t long after that when he started talking about moving out. And that was when the trouble really started.”
“Yeah, I remember you telling me about it.”
I was taken aback. I’d almost forgotten that she wasn’t a total stranger.
“It just seemed too soon,” I said, recovering quickly. “He was only out of school; he wasn’t even nineteen. He’d got a job in a call centre by then – a call centre, you can imagine how proud I was – so he wasn’t entirely broke, but he had no idea about budgeting or anything like that. And practical things, he was hopeless at, just hopeless. He had trouble changing a light-bulb. He couldn’t work a washing machine, he certainly couldn’t cook. I’d tried to teach him a few things, but he wasn’t interested; I’d get as far as ‘Peel an onion’ and he’d be off. I was sure the whole thing would be a disaster. And, of course, when I pointed this out I was the worst in the world.”
“It wasn’t a disaster, though. He managed, didn’t he?” “Well, he managed, yeah, but … Look, I suppose the real reason I didn’t want him to move out is because I knew that would make it even harder for the pair of us to get back on good terms. Gerry said it would work out just the opposite, that he’d get a dose of reality and realise how much I’d done for him at home, blah, blah, blah. Gerry was wrong. I was right. Once he moved out, things went from bad to much, much worse. And quickly too. He never called me, never. And when I called him, he used to just sigh down the phone at me, like he couldn’t believe what an idiot I was.”