“Dad?” I say, frustrated. “I thought you understood me on the phone. Conor and I have separated.”
“Separated what?”
“Ourselves.”
“From what?”
“From each other!”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“We’re not together anymore. We’ve split up.”
He puts the bags down underneath the wall of photographs, there to provide any visitor who crosses the threshold with a crash course on the Conway family history. Dad as a boy, Mum as a girl; Dad and Mum courting, then married; my christening, communion, debutant ball, and wedding. Capture it, frame it, display it; Mum and Dad’s school of thought. It’s funny how people mark their lives, choose certain benchmarks to show when one moment is more of a moment than any other. For life is made of countless of them. I like to think the best ones are in my mind, that they run through my blood in their own memory bank for no one else to see.
Dad doesn’t pause at the revelations of my failed marriage and instead works his way into the kitchen. “Cuppa?”
I stay in the hall looking for my favorite photo of Mum and breathe in that smell. The smell that’s carried around every day on every stitch of Dad’s back, like a snail carries its home. I always thought it was the smell of Mum’s cooking that drifted around the rooms and seeped into every fiber, including the wallpaper, but it’s ten years since Mum has passed away. Perhaps the scent was her; perhaps it’s still her.
“What are you doin’ sniffin’ the walls?”
I jump, startled and embarrassed at being caught, and make my way into the kitchen. It hasn’t changed since I lived here, and it’s as spotless as the day Mum left it; nothing has been moved, not even for convenience’s sake. I watch Dad move slowly about, resting on his left foot to access the cupboards below, and then using the extra inches of his right leg as his own personal footstool to reach above. The kettle boils too loudly for us to have a conversation, and I’m glad of that. Dad, clearly upset, grips the handle so tightly his knuckles are white. A teaspoon is cupped in his left hand, which rests on his hip, and it reminds me of how he used to stand with his cigarette shielded in his cupped hand, stained yellow from nicotine. He looks out the window to his immaculate garden and grinds his teeth. He’s angry, and I feel like a teenager once again, awaiting my talking-down.
“What are you thinking about, Dad?” I finally ask as soon as the kettle stops hopping about.
“The garden,” he replies, his jaw tightening once again.
“The garden?”
“That bloody cat from next door keeps pissing on your mother’s roses.” He shakes his head angrily. “Fluffy”—he throws his hands up—“that’s what she calls him. Well, Fluffy won’t be so fluffy when I get my hands on him. I’ll be wearin’ one of them fine furry hats the Russians wear and dance the Hopak outside Mrs. Henderson’s front garden while she wraps a shiverin’ Baldy up in a blanket inside.”
“Is that what you’re really thinking about?” I ask incredulously.
“Well, not really, love,” he confesses, calming down. “That and the daffodils. Not far off from planting season for spring. And some crocuses. I’ll have to get some bulbs.”
Good to know my marriage breakdown isn’t my dad’s main priority. Nor his second. On the list after crocuses.
“Snowdrops too,” he adds.
It’s rare I’m around the house so early on in the day. Usually I’d be at work showing property around the city. It’s so quiet here now, I wonder what on earth Dad does in this silence.
“What were you doing before I came?”
“Thirty-three years ago or today?”
“Today.” I try not to smile because I know he’s serious.
“Quiz.” He nods at the kitchen table, where he has a page full of puzzles. Half of them are completed. “I’m stuck on number six. Have a look at it.” He brings the cups of tea to the table, managing not to spill a drop despite his swaying. Always steady.
I read the clue aloud. “‘Who was the influential critic who summed up one of Mozart’s operas as having too many notes?’”
“Mozart,” Dad shrugs. “Haven’t a clue about that lad at all.”
“Emperor Joseph the Second,” I say.
“What’s that now?” Dad’s caterpillar eyebrows go up in surprise. “How did you know that, then?”
I frown. I don’t know. “I must have just heard it somewh—Do I smell smoke?”
He sits up straight and sniffs the air like a bloodhound. “Toast. I made it earlier. Had the setting on too high and burned it. They were the last two slices, too.”
“Hate that.” I shake my head. Then I remember to ask, “Where’s Mum’s photograph from the hall?”
“Which one? There are thirty of her.”
“You’ve counted?” I laugh.
“Nailed them up there, didn’t I? Forty-four photos in total, that’s forty-four nails I needed. Went down to the hardware store and bought a pack of nails. Forty nails it contained. They made me buy a second packet just for four more nails.” He holds up four fingers and shakes his head. “Still have thirty-six of them left over in the toolbox. What is the world comin’ to?”
Never mind terrorism or global warming. The proof of the world’s downfall, in his eyes, comes down to thirty-six wasted nails in a toolbox.
“You know which one. So where is it?”
“Right where it always is,” he says unconvincingly.
We both look at the closed kitchen door, in the direction of the hall. I stand up to go out and check. These are the kinds of things you do when you have time on your hands.
“Ah”—he jerks a floppy hand at me—“sit yourself down.” He rises. “I’ll check.” He goes and closes the kitchen door behind him, blocking me from seeing out. “She’s there, all right,” he calls to me. “Hello, Gracie, your daughter was worried about you. Thought she couldn’t see you, but of course you’ve been there all along, watchin’ her sniffin’ the walls, thinkin’ the paper’s on fire. But sure it’s madder she’s gettin’, leaving her husband and packing in her job.”
I haven’t mentioned anything to him about taking leave from my job, which means Conor has spoken to him, which means Dad knew my exact intentions for being here from the very first moment he heard the doorbell ring. I have to give it to him, he plays stupid very well. He returns to the kitchen, and I catch a glimpse of the photo on the hall table.
“Ah!” He looks at his watch in alarm. “Ten twenty-five! Let’s go inside, quick!” He moves faster than I’ve seen him move in a long time, grabbing his weekly television guide and his cup of tea.
“What are we watching?” I follow him into the television room, regarding him with amusement.
“Murder, She Wrote, you know it?”
“Never seen it.”
“Oh, wait’ll you see, Gracie. That Jessica Fletcher is a strange one for catching the murderers. Then over on the next channel we’ll watch Diagnosis Murder, where the dancer solves the cases.” He takes a pen and circles the listing on the TV page.
I’m captivated by Dad’s excitement. He sings along with the show’s theme song, making trumpet noises with his mouth.
“Come in here and lie on the couch, and I’ll put this over you.” He picks up a tartan blanket draped over the back of the green velvet couch and places it gently over me as I lie down, tucking it around my body so tightly I can’t move my arms. It’s the same blanket I rolled on as a baby, the same blanket they covered me with when I was home sick from school and was allowed to watch television on the couch. I watch Dad with fondness, remembering the tenderness he always showed me when I was a child, feeling right back there again.
Until he sits at the end of the couch and squashes my feet.
Chapter 11
WHAT DO YOU THINK—WILL BETTY be a millionaire by the end of the show?”
I have sat through an endless number of half-hour morning shows over the last few days, and now we
are watching Antiques Roadshow.
Betty is seventy years old, from Warwickshire, and is currently waiting with anticipation as the dealer tries to price the old teapot she has brought to the show.
I watch the dealer handling the teapot delicately, and a comfortable, familiar feeling overwhelms me. “Sorry, Betty,” I say to the television, “it’s a replica. The French used them in the eighteenth century, but yours was made in the early twentieth century. You can see from the way the handle is shaped. Clumsy craftsmanship.”
“Is that so?” Dad looks at me with interest.
We watch the screen intently and listen as the dealer repeats my remarks. Poor Betty is devastated but tries to pretend it was too precious a gift from her grandmother for her to have sold anyhow.
“Liar,” Dad shouts. “Betty already had her cruise booked and her bikini bought.” He turns to me. “How do you know all that about the pots and the French? Read it in one of your books, maybe?”
“Maybe.” I have no idea. I’m starting to get a headache thinking about all this newfound knowledge.
Dad catches the look on my face. “Why don’t you call a friend or something? Have a chat.”
I don’t want to but I know I should. “I should probably give Kate a call.”
“The big-boned girl? The one who plowed you with poteen when you were sixteen?”
“Yup, that was Kate.” I laugh. He has never forgiven her for that. “She was a messer, that girl. Has she come to anything?”
“You saw her last week at the hospital, Dad,” I remind him. “She just sold her shop in the city for two million to become a stay-at-home mother.” I try not to laugh at the shock on his face.
“Ah, sure, give her a call. Have a chat. You women like to do that. Good for the soul, your mother always said. Your mother loved talking, was always blatherin’ on to someone about somethin’ or other.”
“Wonder where she got that from,” I say under my breath, but just as if by a miracle, my father’s ears work for once.
“Her star sign is where she got it from. Taurus. Talked a lot of bull.”
“Dad!”
“What? I loved her with all my heart, but the woman talked a lot of bull. Not enough to talk about something, I had to hear about how she felt about it too. Ten times over.”
“You don’t believe in astrology.” I nudge him.
“I do too. I’m a Libra. Weighing scales.” He rocks from side to side. “Perfectly balanced.”
I laugh and escape to phone Kate. I go upstairs and enter my old bedroom, practically unchanged since the day I left it. Despite the rare guest staying over after I’d moved out, my parents never removed any of my belongings. The Cure stickers remain on the door; wallpaper is still ripped from the tape that had once held my posters. Once as a punishment for ruining the walls, Dad forced me to cut the grass in the back garden, but while doing so I ran the lawn mower over a shrub in the bedding. He refused to speak to me for the rest of that day. Apparently it was the first year the shrub had blossomed since he’d planted it. I couldn’t understand his frustration then, but now, after spending years of hard work cultivating a marriage, only for it to wither and die, I can understand his plight. But I bet he didn’t feel the relief I feel right now.
My childhood bedroom can only fit a bed and a wardrobe, but for years it was my whole world. My only personal place to think and dream, to cry and laugh and wait until I became old enough to finally do all the things I wanted to do. My only space in the world then, and my only space now, at thirty-three. Who knew I’d find myself back here again without any of the things I’d yearned for, and, even worse, still yearning for them? Not a member of the Cure or married to Robert Smith. No baby and no husband. The wallpaper is floral and wild; completely inappropriate for a place of rest. Millions of tiny brown flowers clustered together with tiny splashes of faded green stalks. No wonder I’d covered them with posters. The carpet is brown with light brown swirls, stained from spilled perfume and makeup. The old and faded brown leather suitcases still lie on top of the wardrobe, gathering dust since Mum died. Dad never goes anywhere—a life without Mum, he decided long ago, is enough of a journey for him.
The duvet cover is the newest addition to the room. New as in over ten years old; Mum purchased it when my room became the guest room. I moved out to live with Kate a year before she died, and I wish every day since that I hadn’t, all those precious days of not waking up to hear her long yawns turn into songs, to hear her talking to herself as she listened to Gay Byrne’s radio show. She loved Gay Byrne; her sole ambition in life was to meet him. The closest she got was when she and Dad got tickets to sit in the audience of The Late Late Show; she spoke about it for years. I think she had a thing for him. Dad hated him. I think he knew about her thing.
He likes to listen to him now, though, whenever he’s on. I think Gay Byrne reminds Dad of time spent with Mum, as though when he hears Gay Byrne’s voice, he hears Mum’s instead. When she died, Dad surrounded himself with all the things she adored. He put Gay on the radio every morning, watched Mum’s television shows, bought her favorite biscuits even though he didn’t enjoy them. He liked to see them on the shelf when he opened the cupboard, liked to see her magazines beside his newspaper. He liked her slippers staying beside her armchair by the fire. He liked to remind himself that his entire world hadn’t fallen apart. Sometimes we need all the glue we can get, just to hold ourselves together.
At sixty-five years old, Dad was too young to lose his wife. At twenty-three, I was too young to lose my mother. At fifty-five she shouldn’t have lost her life, but cancer, undetected until far too late, stole it from her and us all. Dad had married late in life for his generation, and he always says he passed more days of his life waiting for Mum than actually being with her, but that every second spent looking for her and, eventually, remembering her, was worth it for all the moments in between.
Mum never met Conor, so I don’t know whether she would have liked him, though she would have been too polite to have shown it if she didn’t. Mum loved all kinds of people, but particularly those with high spirit and energy, people who lived and exuded that life. Conor is pleasant. Always just pleasant. Never overexcited. Never, in fact, excited at all. Just pleasant, which is simply another word for nice. Marrying a nice man gives you a nice marriage, but never anything more. And nice is okay when it’s among other things, but never when it stands alone.
Dad would talk to anyone anywhere and not have a feeling about them one way or another. The only negative thing he ever said about Conor was “What kind of a man likes tennis?” A football man, Dad had spat the word out as though it had dirtied his mouth.
Our failure to produce a child didn’t do much to sway Dad’s opinion. He blamed it on the little white tennis shorts Conor sometimes wore, whenever pregnancy test after pregnancy test failed to show blue. I know he said it to put a smile on my face; sometimes it worked, other times it didn’t, but it was a safe joke because we both knew it wasn’t the tennis shorts or the man wearing them that was the problem.
I sit down carefully on the duvet cover bought by Mum, not wanting to crease it. A two-pillow and duvet cover set from Dunnes with a matching candle for the windowsill, which has never been lit and which has since lost its scent. Dust gathers on the top, incriminating evidence that Dad is not keeping up with his duties. As if at seventy-five years old the removal of dust from anywhere but his memory shelf should be a priority. I place the cactus on the windowsill beside the candle.
I turn on my cell phone, which has been switched off for days, and it begins to beep as a dozen messages filter through. I have already made my calls to those near, dear, and nosy. Like pulling off a Band-Aid; don’t think about it, move quickly, and it’s almost painless. Flip open the phone book, and bam, bam, bam: three minutes each. Quick, snappy phone calls made by a strangely upbeat woman who’d momentarily inhabited my body. An incredible woman, in fact, positive and perky, yet emotional and wise at all the right momen
ts, her timing impeccable, her sentiments so poignant I almost wanted to write them down. She even attempted a bit of humor, which some members of the near, dear, and nosy coped well with, while others seemed almost insulted—not that she cared, for it was her party and she was refusing to cry if she wanted to.
Fortunately, I don’t have to put on an act for the woman I am calling now.
Kate picks up on the fourth ring.
“Hello,” she shouts, and I jump. There are manic noises in the background, as though a mini-war has broken out on the other side.
“Joyce!” she yells, and I realize I’m on speakerphone. “I’ve been calling you and calling you. Derek, sit down. Mummy is not happy! Sorry, I’m just doing the school run. I’ve to take six kids home, then a quick snack before I take Eric to basketball and Jayda to swimming. Want to meet me there at seven? Jayda is getting her ten-meter badge today.”
Jayda howls in the background about hating ten-meter badges.
“How can you hate it when you’ve never had one?” Kate snaps. Jayda howls even louder and I have to move the phone from my ear. “Jayda! Give Mummy a break! Derek, put your seat belt on! If I have to brake suddenly, you will go flying through the windscreen and smash your face in. Hold on, Joyce.”
There is silence while I wait.
“Gracie!” Dad yells up to me. I run to the top of the stairs in a panic, not used to hearing him shout like that since I was a child.
“Yes? Dad! Are you okay?”
“I got seven letters,” he shouts.
“You got what?”
“Seven letters!”
“What does that mean?”
“In Countdown!”
I stop panicking and sit on the top stair in frustration. Suddenly Kate’s voice is back, and it sounds as though calm has been restored.
“Okay, you’re off speakerphone. I’ll probably be arrested for holding the phone, not to mention cast off the carpool list, like I give a flying fuck about that.”
“I’m telling my mammy you said the F word,” I hear a little voice say.