It must be the way I say it because he gets it straight away, he believes me, he knows he’s nothing to The Barber, has always tried to make himself more important than he is, like pulling the stunt he pulled tonight. I’ve revealed him and he hates it. He knows there’s nothing he can do to talk me out of it, or into it.
When I walk down the alleyway and get close to the house I suddenly feel a slap on the side of my head. It stings. I think it’s The Barber at first, not him but one of his boys. Instead it’s Sarah and she’s crying.
‘Jesus, Sarah, what are you doing out here at this hour?’
‘Is it true?’ She’s crying. ‘Did you and Annie … do it?’
By the next day I can forget about Annie, I can forget about Sarah and I can forget about Hamish.
The guards come round looking for Hamish, but Hamish has already legged it. He’s luckier to have escaped the wrath of Ma than anything the guards would have done to him. Everyone thinks I know where he is but I don’t. I tell them I don’t and that I don’t care either. It’s true too. He went over the line last night and I can’t back him up on that one. For the first time, I can’t. It should make me feel sad but it doesn’t, it makes me feel tougher, stronger, like if I can think I’m better than Hamish then that practically gives me superpowers. I’ve never thought of myself as better than Hamish and I spend the day puffed up with something like pride.
That night in bed the lads and I are whispering, we have to because Ma is so close to the edge any one of us will get it over nothing. Duncan says a lad he knows who works on the docks saw Hamish getting on a boat going to Liverpool.
And now I feel less like a superhero. I didn’t think our meeting would be the last. I wanted a chance for us to make it up, for him to say sorry, for him to see what a big man I was. The lads talk about what Hamish will do in England, having a laugh picturing him in situations, but all I do is lie in the dark and see him working his way through England to Scotland, some old-fashioned image of him climbing across the land with a stick, finding some of Da’s family to settle down with, living on the farm I can’t remember any more, working the land like Da did. The thought helps me drift off to sleep, but no less worried, no less guilty, and feeling none of the superpowers I’d felt only moments earlier.
I get a warning from the guards for being a stupid kid in the wrong place at the wrong time, being influenced by my older brother. As a gesture I give the rich boy that Hamish beat up his Annie marble, much as it pains me to do it. But I win it back off him a few weeks later. That and the whole comic collection. Whenever I see those marbles they remind me of the night I became a man with Annie and the night that I went one way and Hamish went another. And sometimes when I really want to go the other way, Hamish’s way, when life is just begging me to do it, I take them out as a reminder and it quietens the voice.
I don’t see Hamish for a long time, and when I do, the sight of him is enough to tell me never to cross to the other side, ever. But seeing a dead body will do that to most people.
Armed with the new information from Mum, I hop in the car and drive to Virginia. I get parking on the street, outside Mickey Flanagan’s office, which is between a closed-down DVD rental store and a not-yet-open Chinese takeaway. The window on to the street is covered in frosted glass and his name stencilled in black on the front. Mickey’s secretary, her name badge says Amy, sits behind a protective screen, with holes punched in the glass in a circular design either for her to breathe or for us to talk. It’s only when I go to speak that I realise I’ve been holding my breath. I must have been doing that all the way to Virginia because my chest feels tight.
‘Hello, I’m Sabrina Boggs.’ I made an appointment as soon as I hung up the phone to Mum and they kindly squeezed me in, though now that I look around the empty waiting room I’m not sure much squeezing was necessary.
‘Hello.’ She gives me a polite smile. ‘Please take a seat, he’ll be with you as soon as he can.’
The waiting area is beside the frosted glass. I sit between a water cooler and a waxy-looking potted plant. The radio is on to hide the usual uncomfortable silence in a waiting room, more talk about today’s total solar eclipse, which has commanded every news station and talk show for the past week: what can we expect to see, where can we expect to see it, how to look at the sun, how not to look at the sun, where best to look at the sun. I’m all eclipsed-out. Aidan is taking a half-day this afternoon to collect the boys from school, then they’re going to a campsite, one of the official areas for watching the total eclipse. He’ll be joining his brother and his kids, whose new money-making scheme has been to invest his savings in solar eclipse glasses, which he’s been selling the past few weeks at hiked-up prices. My boys have been so excited about it all week, wearing the glasses, making versions of solar eclipses with cereal boxes, Styrofoam and balls of string, decorating their bedrooms with glow-in-the-dark moons. It helps that it’s a Friday night in May and we’re having good weather so everyone can show interest and actually be able to see the sky. I’m not disinterested in sky-gazing but I’m not a camper and so I have a night to myself.
‘I’m just not a camper,’ I’d said to Aidan when he’d told me of his plans last week.
‘You’re not a happy camper,’ he’d replied, watching me. I knew he was watching me though I pretended I didn’t, continuing to make the school lunches. His comment had irritated me, but I didn’t want to let it show. Count to five in my head, butter, ham, cheese, bread, slice. Next. He was still watching me when I jammed the raisins into the lunch boxes.
‘This is a natural phenomenon,’ a scientist is saying on the radio. ‘In some ancient and modern cultures, solar eclipses have been attributed to supernatural causes or regarded as bad omens. It was frightening for people who were unaware of the astronomical explanation, as the sun seems to disappear during the day and the sky darkens in a matter of minutes.’
‘I totally believe in all of that,’ Amy says suddenly from behind her screen. ‘I had a boyfriend once who used to go totally mental when there was a full moon.’ She screws her finger into her temple. ‘Locked me in a wardrobe, threw my shoes in the toilet. Accused me of saying things when I hadn’t even opened my mouth, of moving things I didn’t even know he owned, like “Me, did you touch my chessboard?” and I’d be like, What chessboard? And I hated being called Me. It’s Amy. Isn’t it weird that he called me Me, like he wanted me to be a part of him? Weird stuff. If I’d stayed, I’m sure he would have killed me like he killed that rat.’ She looks at me to explain. ‘He kept it for three days in the basement, torturing it.’
I picture a rat being waterboarded.
‘Days like today scare me. Especially when dealing with the public. You wouldn’t believe the calls we get. Freaks. The word lunatic comes from it, did you know that?’
I nod but she continues anyway. ‘Lunar. Lunatic. It brings out the worst in people: violence, mentalness, you name it. I have a friend who works as a paramedic and she says full moon days and nights are her busiest. People just flip out. It’s to do with the tidal effect and the water in our bodies,’ she says. She’s quiet for a moment, thinking. ‘Though I think there really was something wrong with George. He was mental on days when you couldn’t even see the moon.’
I think of me throwing the mug against the wall at work. Of saying to Eric, ‘The moon made me do it.’ It would be ridiculous of course but not so far out for me. I’ve always had difficulty sleeping during full moons. Not so much pounding headaches as too many thoughts. Too many thoughts too quickly, all together, like the moon acts as a signal tower for my brain. Everything flowing all at once instead of slowly filtering. I think of me sitting here today, on a quest to find Dad’s marbles, and wonder if this is lunacy after all. The moon made me do it. But I don’t care what’s making me do it. I’m doing it and if I need the moon to urge me on, then I’ll take it.
I think of how excited the boys will be if the day actually darkens. If the clouds don’t cover the per
fect sky first and ruin everyone’s chances of witnessing it. I wonder where I’ll be, what I’ll be doing during it, and hope it will coincide with my discovery of Dad’s marbles, Scooby-Doo style, in Mickey Flanagan’s house, using the veil of darkness to sneak in unnoticed and steal them back from his safe behind the oil painting in the walnut-panelled study.
‘It’s a new moon today,’ Amy continues. ‘Also known as a dark moon, because it’s just a black circle. You know how crazy people go when it’s a full moon, now imagine a black full moon. I mean, we should really have just stayed inside today and locked the doors. Who knows what will happen?’
She leaves us hanging on that thought.
The phone rings and we both jump, and then laugh. ‘He’ll see you now.’
I enter Mickey Flanagan’s office, feeling anxious about what I’m here to do, and am faced with a short bald Humpty-Dumpty-like man with a welcoming face. We met just after Dad’s stroke, to discuss how to manage Dad’s affairs, but we’ve had nothing but the occasional electronic correspondence since. Each time I see an email from Mickey I worry that the money’s run out, that Dad’s rehabilitation will have to come to an abrupt end. I’ve avoided every type of meeting with him since to avoid discussing that inevitability. Mickey struggles to his feet, bumping his belly off the edge of the desk and comes round the desk to shake my hand warmly, before returning behind his desk.
I’m nervous. I pull the plastic folder with Dad’s inventory out of my bag and prepare myself for my questioning. If he has taken the marbles, I know that he won’t admit his theft right away, maybe he won’t admit it at all, but I’m hoping my appearance will rattle his conscience at least. I’ve thought of every possible scenario, I’ve heard his every possible answer: I had to sell them, he hadn’t paid me for months, do you expect me to work for free? Or of course I sold them, we had an arrangement, see this contract here, he is paying me through the sale of his marbles. I’ve thought about it all, but my answer will be the same. Get them back.
‘Nice to meet you, Sabrina, how’s your dad doing?’ he asks, concerned.
‘How’s he doing?’ I ask, feeling my legs starting to tremble, my whole body in fact, including my tongue. My lip starts to twitch, which irritates me and makes me even more frustrated and angry. I want to be able to say what I want to say without impediment. I need to be emotion-free but it has bubbled up inside of me so quickly, the mere question How’s he doing? acting as the trigger, that my emotion clouds my clarity. This feeling reminds me of the dream I have when I’m trying to explain myself to someone, always a different person, but chewing gum gets stuck in my mouth and the more I pull it out the more it keeps forming, stopping the words.
I clear my throat. ‘Sometimes he doesn’t even remember yesterday. But then he’ll tell you a story with pinpoint accuracy from when he was a child, so clear and vivid, it’s like you’re back there with him. Like today, this morning he told me about being at the All-Ireland final in 1963 when Dublin beat Galway, when he was a boy. He remembered every single little thing, explained in so much detail I felt like I was there with him.’
‘Well that’s a day to remember,’ he says politely, good-natured.
‘And then he’ll forget something that is or once was apparently incredibly important to him.’ I clear my throat again. Make the segue, Sabrina. ‘Like his marbles. Up until today I didn’t even know he had marbles. But he has hundreds of them. In fact, probably thousands if I was to count. Some of them are valuable, but regardless of the price all of them are important, or otherwise why would he have taken the time to do all this?’ I fumble to pass over the inventory with trembling fingers. He goes through each page, from the page to my face, up and down, over and over again.
‘Mickey,’ I start, ‘there’s no way for me to say this politely. You had these marbles in your possession until yesterday. There’s a part of his collection missing. Do you know what happened to my dad’s marbles?’
He looks surprised, freezes with the inventory still in his hand. ‘Goodness, no!’
‘Mickey. I really need to know. I’m not accusing you of stealing them, I mean, obviously there could have been an arrangement with someone, with Dad maybe, where you were given permission to take them. Whatever happened, I don’t need to know. I just want to find them so I can get them back and complete the collection.’
‘No. No, I didn’t take them and there was no arrangement with anyone, not your dad.’ He straightens up, and is firm. ‘As you know, the boxes were delivered to me after his stroke and, as you say, he doesn’t remember owning them so he couldn’t have instructed me to do anything with them, nor would I have so much as laid a finger on them.’ He is genuine, also clearly annoyed to be accused of such a thing, but he is being professional about it. ‘You have my word on that, Sabrina.’
‘Could anyone have had access to them in your house? Was there ever a break-in?’ I try to soften the accusation of his nearest and dearest. ‘The marbles that were taken were the most expensive marbles, it seems somebody went through the inventory and chose them.’
He gives me the courtesy of appearing to think about it before answering. ‘I can assure you that neither I nor anybody who was in my home is responsible for the missing marbles. I never opened the boxes. They were sealed on arrival and still had the same seal when they left. They were kept in the garage for the past year and they were out of sight and out of reach in all that time.’
I believe him. But I’m stuck because I don’t know where else to go after this.
Mickey hands me back the inventory and I just stare at it, at Dad’s lovely loopy handwriting, seeing, Sabrina could not come to school today because she had a doctor’s appointment. I see handwritten birthday cards. I see scribbled notes around the house.
I purse my lips, my cheeks still a little pink with embarrassment for the accusation, no matter how politely I tried to put it.
‘Well there’s one other thing. Apart from wanting to find them, it would help to know who brought them to you. Mum and I packed up everything from the apartment and we never saw these boxes before.’
He frowns, genuinely confused. ‘Is that so? You didn’t have help? Movers or family members?’
I shake my head. ‘It was just the two of us.’
He takes his time thinking about it. ‘I’m not sure if you know how I came to store your dad’s things.’
‘Mum said that you kindly offered. I didn’t have the space for them and she … well, she’s obviously moved on.’
‘The thing is, I didn’t kindly offer,’ he says politely, a twinkle in the blue eyes that glow from his big moon face. ‘Your mother hasn’t been entirely honest with you, but I’m going to be, particularly as you have come here with these … concerns, and rightly so, as the boxes were in my possession for the past year.’
I squirm in my chair, embarrassed now, when before I was determined.
‘Your uncles, Fergus’s brothers, expressed dissatisfaction with Gina keeping your dad’s things. They felt that the boxes weren’t safe in Gina’s hands, given her feelings towards your dad. But Gina was suspicious of why they wanted the boxes, as they and Fergus weren’t close in her opinion, and so we all came to the arrangement that the boxes would be kept safe by a third party. Both parties were satisfied that I was neutral enough to be trusted with them. It’s not the usual thing for me to do, but I was fond of Fergus and so I did. Unfortunately my personal circumstances have changed and I no longer have the space to store his things.’
I nod along quickly, trying to kill my earlier embarrassment and surprised that Mum didn’t share this with me. Did she think he wouldn’t tell me? I was oblivious to all of this family drama while setting up Dad in the rehab. I was just focused on him getting better, going from the hospital to his apartment, to work, taking care of the kids, completely exhausted, like a walking zombie. I took photos of Dad’s furniture and sold it all online, delivering couches across the city, meeting people on George’s Street at five a.m. to
hand over a coffee table. I think of the days it took to sort the items to keep from the items to sell, seeing how my dad lived, his private things, all of it so simple really, apart from the sickening stashes of chocolate bars, the disturbing collection of DVDs that you never want to imagine your dad watching, but no grand revelations. No sign of any person other than my father in the whole place.
I went through every room, every cupboard, every drawer and I sold every single one of those cupboards that wasn’t stuck to the floor or wall. Of all the boxes I taped shut, I never came across these marbles. Somebody else packed them, and sent them to Mickey’s home, and if it wasn’t me or Mum, then who?
‘I don’t know how else I can help you, Sabrina.’
Me neither.
‘My only thought is that they weren’t in the boxes before they were delivered to me, but of course if it was just you and your mam who packed everything up then I don’t know what to think.’
But it’s glaringly obvious. He’s being polite, but if it wasn’t me then it had to have been Mum, who has already lied to me about why the boxes ended up with Mickey in the first place.
So many secrets, so many things I didn’t know. What else don’t I know?
I see Hamish again when I’m nineteen years old. It’s the last thing I would have expected: to get on a plane and leave Ireland for the first time in my adult life, since arriving on a boat when I was five, for this reason.
Ma receives a visit from a garda, who received a phone call from the Irish embassy to say that Fergus Boggs has been found dead in London, and that somebody needs to go and identify the body.