I got up and looked out the window — cars were leaving the pub, a horn going like the cry of a sick curlew, the fire-engine lights not twirling anymore — and suddenly voices came from down the landing, and I jumped back into bed.
‘Are you okay, Juanita?’
‘I am fine.’
‘Shall I stay here with you?’
‘I am okay, Alice, I am okay.’
‘I’ll stay with the boy.’
‘Thank you, Alice.’
‘Are ya sure?’
‘I am sure, gracias.’
And then the shuffle along the landing, and the knob turning and Mrs O’Leary coming to bend over me, moving to a chair that she had by the window, kicking off her shoes, breathing out a sigh in the cold, bringing a coat out of her wardrobe, slowly closing the buttons, a twist of a bottle and a small slurp, settling down into the flesh of herself, sighing deeply again before I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, Mam was gone and there was a make-up kit sitting on the bed where she had been, everything silent outside, a small mirror catching the light.
* * *
The bathroom lock clicked open and he stuck his head around the door, said: ‘Come on in, for fucksake, before I freeze me jewels off.’
He still had his shirt on, but his shoes and socks and trousers were off. He had put on his swimming togs, the old red ones that he used to swim and prance around in on the beach. Pulled the string tight until the material valley-rippled around his waist, but even then they were miles too big. I was almost afraid to think of him rubbing the sponge against himself. See him turn to dust. Maybe crumple in his own fingers. His hands were shaking when he fumbled with the bottom buttons on the shirt. Strange how embarrassed he was by the nakedness, even with the togs on, using the one good hand to cover himself.
I went to put my arm under his shoulder but he brushed me away, slowly steered himself towards the bath, tested the water with his toes. ‘The water’s too fucken hot,’ he said. ‘I can’t even remember how to make a bath!’ But I tested it with my fingers before he got in and it was simply lukewarm. I was sure he had lost some sense of feeling. The way his whole body gently shook. He went clawing for the soap after it fell in under his left leg. I was going to reach in and get it but he just shook his head. ‘Go on, now, I’m not a fucken invalid, I told ya a million times.’ Left the soap disintegrating away beneath his leg.
‘Right,’ he said, dangling his arm out the side of the tub, like it didn’t belong, a pantomime prop. ‘So tell me about all this travelling,’ he said. ‘Ya almost gave me a fucking heart attack yesterday.’
‘I just wanted to know some things.’
‘Like what things?’
‘About the past.’
‘Christ, couldn’t I have told ya that, Conor? Didn’t I tell ya everything? And you wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Isn’t that right? Didn’t I tell ya everything?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well, I did.’
‘Maybe.’
‘No maybes about it.’
‘Let’s not fight.’
‘I’m not fighting. Am I fighting? Do I look like I’m fighting?’
He raised his hands from the bath and turned his palms in the air. I turned away and picked his trousers up from the floor, placed them on the radiator to get them nice and warm. She used to do that for me when I was very young, five or six, clacking her way through a hum or a rhyme, neatly folding them first in the crook of her brown arm, weaving out a hand underneath them, smoothing them out, placing them on the radiator, always very precise, afterwards reaching in the cupboard for special soaps, leaning over.
‘I mean,’ he said, ‘it’s all so long ago now.’
‘It’s not really.’
‘We make our mistakes.’
‘We all do,’ I said.
‘Then we move along.’
‘We do.’
‘You learn finally that some things aren’t meant to heal.’
He said it without sentimentality. His voice was as slow as syrup. He let his head loll against the back of the bath and clacked his teeth together, sighed. Outside, through the hazy bathroom window I thought I could see the movement of some birds. I turned back to the bath. I must have looked at him too long and hard, because he turned his head away and then looked back at me again.
‘Conor,’ he said after a moment, raising one hand to scratch at his forehead, ‘d’ya think there’s any way you could put some of that shampoo on me hair?’
‘What’s that?’
‘My arm is sore here. Can’t reach up properly. Gives me a bit of a stab here.’ He rubbed his shoulder. ‘Maybe just help me wash it, you know.’
I stood.
‘What’s wrong with ya?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, nothing.’
‘Ah, it doesn’t fucken matter,’ he said, putting his hands back down into the bathwater.
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘sure I will.’
‘Good man.’
I reached into the cupboard, fumbled around, and got out the shampoo, my hands shaking. He laid his head underneath the water, a boat of bones sinking, got his hair wet, resurfaced, reached his fingers up and ran them through it, still greasy and tangled. ‘Phhhhfffff,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘Are ya right?’
‘Right so. Go easy on it, there’s not much of it left, for fucksake.’
I put a small dollop of shampoo on my hand, told him to wet his hair again, rubbed my hands together. ‘Ya look like a bloody executioner there,’ he said as he rose slowly out of the water. I sat on the edge of the bath and leaned over. ‘Out with the electricity, son.’ He hunched himself up, held on to the handrail, the veins stark and blue. The hairs on his back ran all the way down to the red togs.
The soap piled up at the back of his neck and he gave out a little contented hum as I massaged my fingers into his scalp.
‘She wasn’t in Mexico.’
‘No,’ he said. It wasn’t a question, the way he said it.
‘I thought she’d be there.’
‘Well, now, you can never be sure of anything.’
‘And she wasn’t with Cici.’
‘Why would she be?’
‘Why not?’
I kept massaging the soap into his scalp, around the age spots.
‘I miss her,’ he said.
‘I know ya do.’
‘No, no, you don’t understand, I really miss her. I honestly miss her.’
‘I know, I can tell.’
‘Ya can’t change the past. You know, you try to change the past, but you can’t.’
He let out a long whistle and closed his eyes, and my fingers worked themselves into the soft spots on his head and he almost pushed his head back into my hands and I thought how easy it would be to hurt him, just by mashing my fingers into his head.
‘And Cici, what’s she doing with herself?’ he said after a while.
‘This and that. Nothing really.’
‘Like the rest of us. Still writing poems?’
‘Says it’s not worth a damn.’
‘She’s dead right.’
‘Why did ya give up the photos, Dad?’
‘Jaysus, now, that’s a stupid question. Don’t be rubbing my hair away, now! For fucksake!’
‘Take a dip.’
He took a long time to position himself so that he could go down into the water again.
‘Once more,’ I said. ‘One more shampoo.’
‘Christ, it isn’t that dirty!’
‘Hold still there, now.’
‘And yourself, I mean, are ya making a living?’
‘A few bob.’