by Alex Coleman
The day was off to a great start, I couldn’t help but think.
* * *
The drive to the zoo was memorable for one reason only. The entire way, from the front door to the parking spot in the Phoenix Park, Melissa sang “We’re Going to the Zoo”. She only knew the chorus: “We’re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo! How about you, you, you? You can come too, too, too! We’re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo!” In fairness to her, Niall was absolutely delighted with this mini-concert and joined in with an occasional “YOU, YOU, YOU!” or “ZOO, ZOO, ZOO!”.
She’d almost lost her voice by the time we crossed the river, but her enthusiasm remained undimmed. I tried to remember the last time I’d sung myself hoarse to entertain a child. On the way to Wexford on an ill-advised day-trip in about 1990, I concluded. The child was Robert – Chrissy was never bothered by long car journeys – and the song was “Puff, the Magic Dragon”. I suddenly felt very old.
“We’re here!” Colm said, somewhat redundantly, when he was finished toing and froing. “Everybody out!”
“Yay!” said Melissa. “YAY!” said Niall.
I thought about saying “Yay!” too, but by the time I’d decided that it was appropriate to join in, it felt like it was too late.
It had been quite a while since I’d been to the zoo – a decade, at least – and I simply could not believe how much it cost to get in.
“They can’t be serious,” I said as I stared, goggle-eyed at the price list.
Melissa and Colm weren’t bothered, and not just because they were minted.
“That’s what things cost,” Melissa said simply. “Have you been to a circus lately?” Colm added.
Once inside (Colm paid), we trooped off to the left. Although we had a map, Melissa decided it would be more fun if we just wandered aimlessly. I wasn’t a big fan of aimless wandering, as a rule, but kept my mouth shut. The first enclosure we came across was home to a group of macaques. I didn’t know that when I caught sight of them, of course. Like Colm and Melissa, I pointed and said, “Look, Niall! Monkeys!”, as if I’d been expecting the zoo to be full of hamsters and kittens and couldn’t believe my luck. The macaques were just being macaques – they had little choice in the matter – but it was hard to shake the feeling that they were putting on a show, dangling from beams, tight-rope walking, chasing each other only to turn round and leg it when their prey was cornered. I was completely captivated (as were they, of course – best not to think about it). Colm and Melissa seemed equally thrilled. Niall, on the other hand, wasn’t at all impressed. No matter how much we pointed and ooed, he kept the same blank expression on his face, not quite a scowl but a long way from a smile. He did say, “Monkeys” at one point but he said it the way you might say “Rain” before going back in for an umbrella. For that reason, we didn’t stay long chez macaque. No more than five minutes had gone by before we shuffled off towards the tigers. Or tiger, I should say. There were three of them in there, according to the information plaque, but only one was receiving visitors. My God, he was impressive though. He was sitting on an old tree trunk with one paw dangling down and he had that superior look on his face, the one that all cats, big or small, seem to sport most of the time: Yes, I am this cool. Get used to it. Melissa and I offered fresh murmurs of astonishment and delight as Colm read aloud from the plaque, but Niall stayed mute. He was standing right in front of me, leaning against the glass with his forehead bearing the weight and for a moment I thought he’d actually dropped off. Then he turned and looked up at me. His eyes were wide and unblinking, his mouth agape.
“It’s a tiger,” he whispered in a voice filled with awe. I nodded. “Yup. He’s big, isn’t he?”
Niall returned his gaze to the main event for a moment, then came back to me. “It’s a tiger,” he whispered again.
“Isn’t he lovely?” Melissa said.
“It says here he eats nine kilos of meat a day,” Colm said. “Imagine that, Niall.”
Melissa tutted. “Oh for God’s sake, Colm. Niall doesn’t know a kilo from a hole in the ground.”
Colm bristled. “I’m just saying . . . it’s a lot of meat.” “Fine, but leave the maths out of it.”
“It’s hardly maths!”
“Units of measurement, then …” Colm shook his head. “Maths …”
While this mini-argument was blowing up and then immediately dying down, Niall moved his feet closer to the glass and then spread his arms and legs, as if that could get him closer to his new god. I hunkered down beside him. Just as I did so, the tiger yawned, possibly because he was exhausted by being so cool and possibly because he wanted us to get a load of his teeth.
“He yawned!” Niall marvelled.
“He must be very sleepy,” I said. “Maybe he’s been running around a lot.”
Niall turned. His nose was almost touching mine. “Does he eat people?”
I thought about it for a moment and decided to tell him the truth, mostly because the truth was more fun. “He might if he was very, very hungry,” I said. “He’d rather have something else, though. And don’t worry, he can’t get us. We’re safe.”
He blinked at me and I could practically see the information settling into his brain. “I would hate that,” he said solemnly. “Being eat by a lion. Tiger.”
“Me too,” I agreed. “It would be no good at all.”
“He’s got a name,” Colm said then. “Do you know what it is? Go on, have a guess.”
Niall gave it some thought. “Niall?” he ventured.
Colm’s head dropped. “No. Turlough. Turlough … the Tiger.” He seemed to realise slightly too late that his son didn’t appreciate being asked to guess something that he had no chance of getting right.
It was a tumbleweed moment. I was reminded of my twenty-fifth birthday party when Robert squinted up at me and asked me my age. When I challenged him to guess, he bit his thumb for a moment, then said, “Sixty?” Asking children to guess things is a mug’s game.
We watched Turlough for another few minutes, during which Niall’s devotion only seemed to grow. It wasn’t easy getting him to move on. We managed it, in the end, by making outlandish claims about the animals around the corner. The word “magical” was used more than once.
Over the course of the next hour and a half, I tried to discern a pattern in Niall’s response to the animals but without success. He thought the spider monkeys were “boring”, but the colobus monkeys were “lovely”. The lemurs were “funny”, but the orangutans were “sad”. He found the hippos mesmerising but didn’t even slow down at the giraffes; he toddled right past, waving his hand dismissively, as if to say, Yeah, yeah, long necks – I get it. The zebras were his least favourite of all. He did pause by their enclosure but only long enough to deliver this damning indictment: “Stripey horses.” He said it with such an air of finality, as if nothing ever needed to be said about the species again, that I instantly cracked up. Niall looked at me from the corner of his eye, checking to make sure that I wasn’t laughing at him. Once he had satisfied himself that I was not, he joined in, his little shoulders rising and falling with each guffaw.
Predictably enough, the dining facilities at the zoo weren’t up to much. When lunchtime came around, we had flavourless sandwiches, which somehow managed to be both limp and hard, and bottles of water that cost as much as the average cocktail. Colm kept Niall amused with impressions of the animals we’d seen so far (he did a particularly fine macaque), while Melissa and I put our heads together to bitch about the woman three tables over. She had two kids with her, both of whom were horrendously fat. The mother was no pipe-cleaner herself, but the kids were like something from a documentary. They were tucking into quarter-pounders and chips, pausing periodically to suck on jumbo Cokes, the kind that come in buckets.
“I feel like going over,” Melissa whispered. “Bloody idiot. It’s practically child abuse. They’re, what, about six or seven years of age? They must be twenty stone between them.”
“A bit of
junk once in a while does no one any harm,” I agreed. “But those two must be living on it. Must be.”
“They’ve bars of chocolate there too, look – and crisps. That’s dessert.”
“They probably wouldn’t know an apple if it ran up and kissed them.”
“It’s disgusting, that’s what it is.” “Disgraceful.”
“What would Jamie Oliver say?” “I know.”
Yes, we were being horribly judgmental and no, it was none of our business in the first place, but I was really enjoying myself. In days gone by, Melissa and I had regularly joined up to bitch about a third party; it was practically a hobby and one I had sorely missed. I was greatly disappointed when she dropped the subject and started telling me about the deli near her house, whose greatness was only slightly marred by the fact that it was run by the rudest man in the world. I tried to feign interest, but my attention kept wandering back towards the fat children. They were having a bit of a row because the little boy – the young boy, rather – had stolen some chips from his sister’s stash. This, despite the fact that he had plenty of his own in front of him. I couldn’t quite hear what she was saying but, whatever it was, she really meant it. She had a face on her like a clenched fist and seemed to be having difficulty forcing the words past her teeth. I’d been watching for a few seconds before I became aware that I was being watched back. When I flicked my eyes slightly to the left and saw the mother staring at me, I jerked my entire body towards Melissa and started nodding furiously, as if I was thoroughly engrossed in what she was saying. Just as I began to hope that I’d got away with it, the mother pushed back her chair and rose steadily, like Godzilla coming up from the depths. I allowed myself to believe that maybe, just maybe, she was going to one of the two tables between us, both of which were empty. For more salt, I thought. Or more ketchup. Or more napkins. She wasn’t, of course. She was coming for me.
“You,” she said as she arrived in our airspace. Before I could even blink, much less respond, she brought her palm down on the table in way that sounded like it must have hurt. “Yeah, you.”
I looked up at her.
“What’s your problem?” she said.
“Excuse me,” Melissa puffed. “You’re frightening my son.” In fact, Niall was looking at the new arrival without the slightest trace of apprehension. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying her obvious fury.
“And what about my son and daughter?” the woman hissed. “What about them? Are they not entitled to have their lunch in peace without people staring at them like they were animals in a zoo?” Her mouth puckered as she remembered where she was. She carried on regardless. “Just because they’ve got a weight problem, that doesn’t give anyone the right –”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t looking over because they’re because of their weight. They just caught my eye because they were arguing.”
“Bullshit!” she cried. “You’re lying.”
“Steady on there!” Colm said, putting his arm around Niall’s shoulders. I sneaked a peek at the other table. The kids had stopped arguing and resumed shovelling food.
“First of all,” Melissa said, “don’t you dare call my sister a liar. And second of all, if you’re all that concerned about your children’s weight, then maybe you shouldn’t be buying them burgers and chips and great big flippin’ Cokes.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” the woman spat (literally – a small globule landed by the remains of Colm’s sandwich). “I’ll feed my kids whatever I want to feed them. And for your information, they happen to like burgers and chips and Cokes.”
She said this with such confidence that it took me a moment to realise that it was nonsense. Melissa got there way ahead of me.
“Oh, well that’s all right then!” she said. “Sure it doesn’t matter what you give them so long as they like it, isn’t that right? For a minute there, I thought you were force-feeding them rubbish against their will. But they like it, you say? God, I apologise. I had no idea, please forgive me.”
I got the impression that the woman wasn’t used to dealing with sarcasm on this scale. It seemed to defuse, or at least confuse, her for a long couple of seconds. Then she returned her attention to me and started barking again, this time at even greater volume. “You’re so bloody smug, aren’t you? Little Miss Perfect, passing judgement on everyone else’s shortcomings. Have you taken a look in the mirror yourself lately?”
This, I desperately hoped, was a reference to my hairstyle and not my face. I decided immediately that it was not worth responding to.
Melissa decided otherwise. She cleared her throat and leaned forward on her elbows.
“If I were you,” she said softly, “I would apologise for that remark. Then I would turn around and walk away. Right now.” And then she smiled, sort of. I felt goose-bumps popping up on my arms. Right before my eyes, she’d turned into Tony Soprano.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. She sucked on her lips for a moment, then turned and walked away, mumbling something under her breath. I didn’t quite catch it but, whatever it was, it wasn’t an apology. Despite the tension in the air, I felt mildly giddy – had my ears deceived me or had Melissa fallen back into the role of protective big sister? The fact that I’d only required her help because I’d been staring at some unfortunate fat children seemed beside the point.
There was no doubt about it. We were really getting somewhere.
* * *
Our afternoon in the zoo was much like our morning. We adults pretended to be wildly enthusiastic (and knowledgable) about each and every one of the animals, while Niall, for no obvious reason, veered between near- hysteria and abject boredom. He was greatly impressed by the sea lions, for instance (sample quote: “Look at his flippy- floppy feet!”) but regarded the elephants with folded arms and a decidedly grim expression. “They’re enormous, aren’t they?” his dad said in an attempt to raise the excitement level. “Yeah,” Niall sighed from the depths of his push-chair (his little legs had long since failed him), “really, really big.” He had no time for birds of any kind, no matter how extravagant but did at least three tours of the reptile house.
Eventually, exhaustion overran him completely and we made our last stop of the day, in the zoo’s shop. For the first five minutes or so, all was well. Niall skipped from aisle to aisle, pointing out items of interest, which Colm duly picked up. Melissa and I hung about by the entrance, each of us long since ready to call it a day. When we heard a sudden howl, Melissa seemed to think, as I did, that it had come from a nearby animal enclosure. The truth dawned only when we saw a cardboard box appear from behind a display and strike the ceiling. We rushed over and found Niall on his side, enthusiastically kicking his father who, try as he might, couldn’t get close enough to lift the boy back onto his feet. The screaming started just as we arrived and attracted the attention of the few shoppers who had missed the flying cardboard box.
“Niall!” Colm hissed. “Get up! Please, son! Please!” “JIGSAW!” Niall roared in response. “JIGSAW, JIGSAW, JIGSAW!”
“He wants a jigsaw,” Colm explained, as if we hadn’t grasped the essentials of the current difficulty. “But it’s for ten-year-olds and up.”
“JIGSAW!” Niall insisted and lashed out with his foot again, this time catching a stuffed gorilla square in the kisser.
I was about to hunker down and start negotiations, reasoning (with no great confidence) that he was unlikely to lash out at a stranger the way he lashed out at his dad, but Melissa spoke up before I could make my move.
“All right, Niall,” she said soothingly. “Get your jigsaw and we’ll go.”
Her son was on his feet in a flash. He grabbed the box that had recently rebounded from the ceiling and ran off in the direction of the cash register.
I bit my lip and wondered if I should say anything. The answer, I quickly decided, was yes and no; yes, I should but no, I wouldn’t. There was no way I was going to risk annoying Melissa. So I kept my trap shut and faked sud
den interest in a range of Dublin Zoo keyrings.
On the way back to the car, Melissa asked me if I’d had a good time.
“Of course!” I said. “I had a lovely time.” “Are you sure?” she asked, slowing down.
I slowed down too and then we both stopped. Colm looked over his shoulder, but kept pushing the buggy.
“I’m sure,” I said. “Why?”
She shrugged. “Ah, I don’t know, I just started to feel guilty. After the weekend you’ve had, I thought maybe you were secretly fuming that we’d dragged you out for this.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “It was great. Better doing this than moping around the house.”
“So long as you’re all right.”
“I am,” I said and smiled at her.
She smiled back. Then she gave my shoulder a little rub. I patted the back of her hand and she withdrew it, embarrassed.
We turned forwards again and walked off, each of us pretending that nothing had happened.
CHAPTER 16
We got back to the house at about four. Colm went out to do a bit of gardening, which, Melissa swore, would involve nothing more than mowing the lawn, then poking at various under-performing plants while frowning. Niall went – or rather was put down – for a much-needed nap. Feeling at something of a loose end, I decided to have a bath. It was there, lying up to my nose in what felt like very expensive bubbles, that I suddenly remembered it was a Monday; The O’Mahonys would be on at seven thirty. When I finally dragged myself out of the water (which took a lot of willpower), I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at my mobile for a few minutes. My reconciliation with Melissa was going great guns. Did I dare to try and push things with Robert? When he first got the job on the show, I’d called him twice every Monday night, once to say how much I was looking forward to it and then again to tell him what I thought. No matter how sincere my congratulations, no matter how clever my criticisms of the script and his fellow actors, he always treated me like a phone company cold-caller. There was one occasion, after a quite spectacular bout of rudeness on his part, when I actually said, “Can I speak to the person who pays the bill?” He didn’t get the joke, of course, and took it as further evidence that I was simply not worth talking to. I gave up trying in the end, just as I had given up calling over to his flat.