‘He’s probably gone to visit your Uncle Jack while he’s in Gorey.’
‘Why is Uncle Jack in Gorey? Where is he staying? In a hotel? What is he talking to Da about?’
‘Your uncle’s here from Dublin on business.’
‘What kind of business?’
‘Boring business.’
‘What kind?’
‘Mind-your-business kind of business.’
I don’t laugh. I stand up and walk around the table. I walk around it twice. I don’t really know that I’m doing it until she says, ‘Sit down!’
I sit and scratch my head. ‘You’ve been like a crazy ghost,’ she says. ‘What’s the matter?’
I’ve been waiting for her to ask me but, now that she has, it’s not the way I wanted her to ask. ‘Why am I like a ghost?’ I ask.
She puts her hand on my hand. She looks tired. There are bags under her eyes, almost black, and she has grey hairs. I don’t know how long they’ve been there, but her hair is messy today and the grey sticks out.
‘I’m sorry, John. I only mean that you creep around. You keep appearing in places.’
‘What places?’
‘You come to my room and don’t respect my privacy, or your father’s.’
‘That’s not true.’
She ruffles my hair and pretends to laugh. I pull away. She has no choice but to speak to me in a different way. ‘Oh, but you do, John. When I lie down to take a nap, suddenly you appear. I’m thinking of getting one of those Do Not Disturb signs from a hotel.’
She is trying to make me laugh, to cover up for the bad things she has said.
‘All right,’ I say, ‘I’ll leave you alone.’ I stand up.
‘John, darling. Please sit down. I don’t want you to leave me alone, I just want you to tell me what’s wrong. Will you tell me?’ She tugs on my arm until I sit down again.
‘Everything is different,’ I say. ‘You’re different and Da’s different and Granny’s different and even Brendan is different.’
‘Well, I don’t know about Brendan, but people who love each other sometimes have disagreements.’
‘That’s not it,’ I say. ‘Everybody is strange with me. Nobody treats me the same as they used to.’
She takes her hand away from mine and puts both hands around her cup. ‘You’re growing up, John. Sometimes things change when you grow up and it takes a while to get used to them.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like people don’t baby you any more. They don’t mollycoddle you. Be flattered by that. When people see you can stand on your own two feet, then they’ll not let you lean on them. If you can stand straight and tall, then that’s what people will expect of you. The tougher and stronger you are, the less they’ll look after you.’
Her words are strange and her head jerks up and down as though she’s trying to get a fly off her face. It’s not the kind of lie my father tells; it’s a white lie, a lie about how she feels; a lie to make me feel better. But it’s a lie.
I’m standing now, and my voice is loud and spitting. ‘You think I’m weird. If I were smaller everything would be different. The way it used to be.’
She swallows and looks away, afraid of me. ‘No, John, that’s not it at all.’
I move towards the door.
‘John, darling. Stay a minute. Let’s finish our tea and biscuits and then you can come and help me wash my hair.’
I stand near the door.
‘You’re very dear to me, John. Very dear to me.’
I ignore her and go to my room. A few minutes later she comes to me. She has a towel in her hand. ‘Come. Help me wash my hair. It’s in a desperate state. Don’t you love to help me wash my hair?’
She pulls her long brown hair over the top of her head so that it covers her face and she sticks her arms out in front like a ghoul and walks around my room bumping into things.
I get up and we go to the bathroom. I help her wash her long brown hair in the sink. I like how, when she dunks her head, her hair fills the sink and floats to the top and reaches out like seaweed.
I tell her about Brendan and Kate.
She stands and wraps the towel around her head and puts her hands on my shoulders.
‘If your friend is not tugging at your arm or calling you back, then he isn’t a friend. A friend must need you as well as love you. Wait and see whether he comes to you and tugs at your arm.’
‘Like you did before,’ I said.
‘Did I?’ she says.
‘Yes. Twice.’
‘Well then, I practise what I preach.’
I will write about this in The Gol of Seil. I will write that a person can change during a conversation, tell the truth, then tell lies; change from mean to kind, suddenly, without any warning at all.
16
At the end of school the next day, Kate bumps into me when I’m taking my coat off the rack in the corridor outside our classroom. ‘Whoops,’ she says. ‘So sorry.’
‘That’s all right,’ I say.
‘I’ve heard all about you,’ she says. ‘Brendan’s told me.’
I try to put my coat on, but it falls from my numb fingers.
‘The smell of urine makes me feel sick,’ she says. ‘It puts me off drinking my milk. I’m already squeamish about milk and your smell just puts me off my milk even more.’
I’m hurt and I’m curious. I’ve never heard the word squeamish before, and it swims in my head.
‘Do you know what surreptitious means?’ I ask.
‘No, but I bet you don’t either,’ she says.
‘I do,’ I say. ‘It means in secret. The day I wet my pants, I was breaking a world record for not going to the toilet. I was doing it surreptitiously.’
I have an itch in the back of my throat, the kind of itch that threatens to turn into an uncontrollable cough. This is probably because I have lied. It will be good to learn to lie without my body doing anything bad to me.
‘You?’ she laughs. ‘How hilarious.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say.
I walk away.
But I can barely manage it. My legs, like my fingers, feel numb. The sound of my shoes on the floor is odd, one shoe making a louder noise than the other. My steps are out of rhythm; the stride on my right side is longer than the stride on my left.
I hold my breath and wonder if I might fall over. I want to lean against something. I have lost the knack of walking. I hold my breath until I’m out of the school grounds, until I reach the first tree at the start of the laneway. My heart is hurting. I walk quickly, then stop.
It’s a bright, clear day and the birds seem to know it. I look around and pay attention to the trees. I pay attention to the clouds between the trees. I turn three full circles like a discus thrower and throw a stone as hard as I can at the sky.
It’s a good, strong throw.
I wait for the sound of the stone, but it doesn’t come back down — at least, I don’t hear it land — and I stand in the laneway, puzzled about where it might have gone. And still the stone doesn’t land, and I smile at the sky.
By the time I arrive home, I’m not as sad as I expect to be. I go to the living room; there’s nobody there. I go to the kitchen; there’s nobody there either. Granny isn’t in her room but she has a fat, white candle lit on her dresser. She must be saying a novena. That was what she meant about having nine days of patience left. The novena will take nine days. But what is she praying for? For my father, praying that he’ll get a job? I will tell him when he comes home. I sit at the kitchen table and wait.
When my mother comes home, she goes straight upstairs to her bedroom. It’s night-time and when I see my father standing in the kitchen doorway, I realise that I’ve been sitting in complete darkness.
He comes to me and puts his hand on my head. ‘I’ll make you some sausages for tea,’ he says.