by Eoin Colfer
It’s true, Evelyn does look good. She’s a skinny drunk without a single strand of gray in her dark hair. I can see how she would work that face to roll guys. Zeb and me have this people-watching thing, where we try and figure out if a girl is actually beautiful or simply young. I figure it’s okay for us to play this game seeing as we’re so goddamn perfect our own selves. But the point is that some faces have a beauty that lasts. Others hit thirty and get plain overnight. Evelyn’s beauty has longevity. She has fine features and the kind of clean neckline that people take photos of and show to their cosmetic surgeon. And it pains me to think of my mother’s baby sister using her features to turn occasional tricks for beer money.
Evelyn flaps her lips. “Vitamin shots? Spare me, Dan, okay. I been down that road a dozen times. All I need is a fifth. Maybe a coupla Percodan for this goddamn headache.”
I find myself losing patience faster than I normally would. Christ, I’ve been a bouncer half of my adult life. I deal with drunks on a daily basis. But this is Evelyn. Sweet, plucky Evelyn who’s the image of my mother. So I slap the steering wheel with a palm and blurt: “Pull yourself together, Aunt Evelyn. For Christ’s sake you’re my mom’s baby sister. You’re the last of her.”
Evelyn laughs. No doubt she meets meaner characters than me in the gutter.
“Okay, nephew. Wow. I’m the last of her. That’s deep or some shit. And here I was thinking I’m my own person.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Relax, Danny. You could use a drink. What say we pull over and knock a couple back. Talk about the old days. You remember that thing with the ice pick?”
She has ruined that memory for me. Polluted it with her slovenly alcoholic self. Fecking alcoholics.
Selfish.
Disease, my arse.
“Please, Evelyn, just sit there, okay?” I am pleading now, funny how quickly it comes back. Please, Dad. Just sit there. Let me make you a cup of tea.
Evelyn tugs on her belt. “I don’t have much choice, do I, Dan? You kidnapping me?”
“Hey, you came to me, remember?”
“I thought we could hang out. Party a little, like we used to.”
Evelyn gave me my first sip of alcohol. Cooking sherry, it was. Revolting stuff, but there was something glamorous about stealing it from the cupboard. The shine has worn off at this point. Nothing glamorous about a middle-aged woman with stains on her pants.
“You’ve partied enough. How did you find me?”
“Kept your postcards, Dan. Last one was from Cloisters.”
Ask a silly question. I bet my postcard pep-talks really helped Ev through withdrawal.
“So that’s it? You’re just working your way down the list?”
Evelyn finger combs her matted hair in the visor mirror. “Kid, you are the list.”
“So, you don’t need help?”
“Yeah, I need help, look at me. And I’ll get it too, maybe in a couple of years. I still have some partying to do first.”
Evelyn rubs at some dry skin under one eye, then seems to notice that we’re going somewhere. “Dan, where are you taking me?”
“Home,” I say, hanging a right onto Central Park south.
I expect Evelyn to freak out, to scream and thrash in her seat, to curse her father’s memory and swear that she’s rather be dead than set foot in that blasted apartment where her life was a cold hell on earth. But all Evelyn does is shiver like she just swallowed her first oyster, and say:
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You don’t mind going back?”
“Nah, it’s time. Edit is okay. And they have good booze up there. I heard stories, Dan. Stories about rich drunks who get their blood changed once a year. They can function, Danny. Run banks and all that stuff.”
I think maybe some of those functioning bankers were drinking meths these past few years.
“So why did you leave?”
Evelyn coughs for half a minute or so before answering. “Leave? I was stupid, I guess. Poor little rich girl, right? I thought I knew about life, well I didn’t know.”
I nod along to this. I have seen this sad story play out a dozen times: rich kid thinks she has it tough, so lives on the credit card for a few years, then ends up with grazed limbs and blackouts. If she survives the cheap hooch, she runs back to the penthouse faster than you can say delirium tremens, which is also comically known as the Irish jig.
You know a country is in bad shape when they start naming alcohol-related illnesses after its inhabitants.
“To be honest, Dan,” says Evelyn, rubbing her nose with a sleeve. “I don’t remember why I left. Not specifically. I was always angry with Dad about something. Seemed important.”
We are stuck behind a horse and carriage loaded with tourists heading into the park. It always amazes me that people can do normal stuff when life-or-death stuff is happening not ten feet away. I remember seeing kids in the Lebanon playing mortar attack with shrapnel from actual mortar grenades, in a minefield, using blood from real corpses as fake blood.
Okay. Maybe not that last bit.
“Edit will look after you,” I promise Evelyn. “It’s time you got straight.”
“Tomorrow,” says Evelyn and her eyes are flickering. “I need a couple of shots of the good stuff first. Maybe a few hours’ sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll go to the clinic.”
This is good enough for me. “Okay. Tomorrow.”
Evelyn chuckles and the decades of whiskey and smoke make her sound like an emphysemic octogenarian. “Did you know Edit is more than five years younger than me? My own stepmom. I wish she was a bitch. I really do; then, you know, I’d have someone to blame besides myself. But Edit was cool. We never did too much group hugging in our family, but she was okay. Bailed me out a couple of times.”
The ultimate good deed in the eyes of a lush: bailout from the drunk tank.
Suddenly my eyes are watery and my laser focus is diffused by sentiment. This is happening to me more and more lately; a childhood memory bobs to the surface and gets me all mushy. I remember, back in Dublin, hiding out with Evelyn on the garage roof. She was teaching me how to roll a cigarette, which is a skill every kid should have in his arsenal, and I was thinking how she looked like my mom and I always wanted to marry my mom, but maybe I could marry Evelyn instead. So I said that to her, how we should get married and she replied; Sure, Danny. We can get married, but you gotta take it easy on my boobs, okay?
Now look at the both of us: A drunk and a fugitive. Where did it all go wrong? Zeb has a saying for most occasions and I think the most apropos one for this moment is Sometimes the ugly duckling don’t turn into no swan, ’cause it’s a fucking duck. And you know what happens to ducks? They get fucked.
That’s what we are, Ev and me, a couple of ugly ducklings. And I know what happens to ducks.
I like a nice four-star hotel, something minimal and modern where the plumbing hasn’t had a chance to buckle under the onslaught. Five-star upscale joints usually bring on an attack of the unworthies. Especially ones like the Broadway Park House, an old-world Central Park South upscale joint with uniformed doormen shooting me the beadies the moment Evelyn and I are disgorged into the lobby by a revolving door. Smells like money in here: floor polish and whiskey fumes. Evelyn’s nose goes up like a bloodhound’s.
“Hey, Dan, you smell that?” she says. “Why don’t we . . .”
“No,” I say, cutting her off sharply. Whichever version of just one drink she is about to launch into, I’ve heard it before. I’ve heard them all.
Edit is pacing the lobby waiting, which is just as well because the doormen have formed a casual cordon around us and are getting set to tighten the noose. She catches sight of Evelyn and freezes like someone pulled her plug. It takes a few seconds to reboot then she’s across the shining floor and all over my aunt. Hugging her close, kissing her forehead. Evelyn grins and works her elbows like she’s dislodging a puppy.
“I don’t even really know this bitch,
” she whispers to me between giggles.
If Edit hears this comment she doesn’t let on, but after a few more seconds of flurried hugs and kisses, she backs off and straightens the skirt of her wraparound pattern dress, which, I happen to know, from watching the ruthless Joan Rivers eviscerate red-carpet celebrities on Fashion Police, is a Diane Von Furstenberg.
“Last season,” I say inanely. “But an instant classic.”
“Thank you, Daniel,” says Edit and I swear she is blushing a little, not because I noticed her dress but because she has let her emotions show in public. Getting emotional is anathema to the top 1 percent. Nobody ever got rich by wearing a heart on their sleeve, unless it was someone else’s heart. And this was especially true of Paddy Costello, who tried his darndest to turn his kids into Vulcans and succeeded instead in pushing them somewhere to the left of Cheech and Chong.
Your mother is a whore, was my own father’s comment on mom’s hippie politics. I remember him telling me in a bar in front of all his drink buddies. She screwed so many guys before you popped out, I ain’t even sure you’re mine. Then he paraded the length of the bar collecting pound notes from all the soaks who bet him he couldn’t make a tough little terrier like me cry. Pop was so thrilled with himself he even gave me one of the notes. I took it too, for my ice-pick fund. Screw him.
Terriers. What a great show. What kind of moron cancels Terriers?
Edit calms herself down with some yoga breathing and literally beams at me. Her teeth are white and even like rows of Orbit spearmint except for a slightly crooked fang. I read somewhere that orthodontists are leaving in a flaw these days for a more natural look.
“Daniel,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t believe this is happening. You are my savior.”
I am almost blushing, myself. Edit is genuinely over the moon. There’s no fakery here. I read people pretty good and my levels are all in the green with this woman. She may not be a straight shooter but she’s shooting straight vis-a-vis Evelyn and myself.
“I didn’t do anything,” I say, playing the “shucks ma’am” card. “Just gave my aunt a ride home.”
Home. The word sets Edit off again. “Yes, home. You are home, Evelyn. Please stay. Please. You are all I have. You too, Dan.”
I thought she’d never ask. “Actually, I could use a hideout for a few days. My situation is complicated right now.”
“Of course. Of course. I have plenty of room. Stay as long as you need. In fact longer than you need. Do you have any bags, Evelyn?”
Evelyn frowns. “I had a trash bag full of stuff but the guy who rolled me in Queens took it, the bastard. What the hell does he need pantyhose for?”
Edit is confused. There are so many elements of her stepdaughter’s statement that she can never relate to.
“Rolled you?” she says, almost afraid to ask.
Evelyn elaborates. “Yeah. I had to do a little light hooking for beer money.” She winks. “You know that story, right Edit?”
One of the hovering bellboys snickers and I decide this is the ideal moment to get my aunt squared away before she gets the both of us tossed.
I take a good grip on Evelyn’s belt and march her past the snicker-er. “Elevators back here, Edit?”
Edit’s Laboutins (Fashion Police) tick-tack the marble as she hurries to keep pace with my marching feet.
“Yes. Big golden doors. You can’t miss them.”
That’s not true. You could miss them. All the doors in this place are big and golden, even the restrooms. I take an educated guess and pick the set of golden doors with call buttons.
The Costello penthouse is more subtle now that Edit is pulling the curtain cords. I remember being here once before, the year before Dad introduced the family car to a concrete wall. I was fifteen and mom brought me over for a reconciliation attempt. The logic being that I was the spitting image of Paddy himself as a young man and that gazing into the time-mirror might melt the ice packed around Old Man Costello’s heart. Mom didn’t really want to be there, but she didn’t really want to be where she generally was either and so allowed Evelyn to talk her into coming over.
Father wants to see Dan, Evelyn had told us on her last visit. Dan’s a scrapper and you know Dad’s a sucker for a spunky hard-ass.
I remember sitting in the antechamber waiting for an audience, feeling a little anxious about the phrase spunky hard-ass.
In those days, the Costello penthouse apartment was like something from the Acropolis, with honest-to-God Greek pillars and a couple of busts mounted on plinths. The décor was all from the testosterone school, including the mounted head of a twelve-point buck and a taxidermed mountain gorilla, which was scaring the pants off me with its unblinking stare even though I knew its eyes were glass. I remember Mom hugging the gorilla and calling it Buttons, but that only made the thing creepier. If it had come alive at that moment and squashed my mom in its powerful black fingers I would not have been in the least surprised.
We were kept waiting for half an hour, then a light over the office door flashed green, which meant Mom was cleared to enter.
She squeezed my hand and said. “Okay, Dan, I’m going into the lion’s den. Don’t worry if you hear shouting. That’s just how Paddy Costello communicates.”
Mom slipped inside, the double-height doors making her look elfin, and there was plenty of shouting, almost immediately. I managed to contain myself until I heard the musical tinkle of breaking glass, then I thought to hell with this and barged into the sanctum.
I was feeling pretty good about myself in the role of protector. Only the previous week I had pushed my dad so hard that he cracked his spine on the tabletop and I regularly messed up boys much older than me. Surely I could manage an old man.
Paddy Costello was not even the giant I had built him up to be, in fact I was half a foot taller than he was, but the guy had an energy coming off him in waves, an aura of harsh intimidation. He reminded me of a billy goat, with his spearhead Vandyke, wiry frame and wild, darting eyes. Those eyes flitted from the trophy cabinet, with its glass door that had been shattered by the hurled book, to my mother, who huddled scared in a low wooden chair, then finally to me. The boy who had come to rescue his mother.
My grandfather spat on his own floor then pointed a stiff finger at me, as though I was to blame for the thrown book. I didn’t know what to say to this old guy—I say old but I guess he was maybe fifty—but I needed something strong. My mouth went ahead of its own accord and said, “Fuck you, old man.”
The fuck you didn’t bother Paddy at all. It was the old man that riled him.
“Old? I could take your head off with a punch.”
I didn’t bother responding to that challenge. I just arranged my feet the way my school boxing coach had taught me. Now either he would fight me or shut the hell up.
Paddy did neither. Instead he chuckled, showing a mouth of craggy teeth, and crossed behind his desk to the trophy cabinet.
“Young Daniel. A chip off the Costello block, so they say. Seems like a day doesn’t go by without someone filling my ears with stories of young Daniel.”
I did nothing but keep my eyes on him. Could be he was a tricky bastard.
“Daniel is bright and he’s tough. Daniel could carry on the Costello business, if not the name.”
Paddy reached into the trophy cabinet, through the ring of jagged shards, ignoring the fresh cut on his index finger.
“Let me tell you something, Daniel,” he said drawing out the book. “I don’t need someone to carry on my business or name. I’m gonna live longer than a man has ever lived and after that they’ll put me into the ground. Then I could give a shit about the whole ball of wax. The whole world can go to nuclear hell and I won’t know a thing about it. I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been.”
My mother once told me that her father only had two moods: bad and worse. I supposed that he was giving me a peek at worse.
Paddy thrust the book at me and I caught it on reflex.
“Here’s a test for you, boy. That book is a signed first edition of The Fountainhead. You can sell it today for ten grand. There’s a guy on Fifty-ninth that would give you twelve. But if you hold on to it for a few years it could be worth ten times that. Choose wisely, boy, because this book is all you’ll ever get from me.”
I looked down at the book with the spatter of his blood soaking into its leather cover, then at the man, my grandfather, who had given it to me. He wanted me to throw it back in his face, but I wouldn’t, because when little Patrick was older, ten grand could get us to London. Far away from our father. I’d take Mom with me then, just as I would take her out of here now. So I said:
“You better take two steps back, old man, or you’ll be going into the ground a lot sooner than you planned.”
He wasn’t convinced I was serious, so I played the schoolyard trick of faking a punch. The old man wasn’t used to that sort of behavior. It had probably been a long time since someone faked out Paddy Costello, so he flinched and I laughed in his face. I saw in his eyes then that he would kill me if he could, right there in his office, and I knew I had sealed Mom’s fate as an outcast, but there was no upside to being beholden to this man.
“Get out,” he spat. “Take my . . . your mother with you. And do not ever come back.”
So I took my mother with me and I never came back. Until now.
And the book? I sold it the following day and hid the ten grand in the trunk of our car inside the first-aid kit. It was incinerated when Dad rammed that wall.
I often remind myself that there are people worse off than me; in the Lebanon and so forth, or Calcutta. But on dark days, I can’t help thinking that I’ve been cursed to live a certain kind of life. I try to take care of my friends and run a straight business but instead I get people hurt or run foul of people who want to hurt me. Maybe I have some kid of dark destiny, or maybe that old maxim the luck of the Irish doesn’t apply to me.
Years later, I spotted a secondhand copy of The Fountainhead at a stall on Mingi Street, the rambling souk adjacent to the UN HQ in Beirut. I tried to resist but a person clings to anything with resonance in a war zone. So I paid my ten bucks and pocketed the paperback along with some editions of Will Eisner’s The Spirit. I liked The Fountainhead fine, and I realized that Paddy Costello’s whole “I regret nothing” speech was lifted from the book. I understood then that Gramps considered himself to be in the same principled genius bracket as Rand’s architect Howard Roark.