‘Himself and the mucking out earlier? Turns out he wants to be a journalist.’
‘He’s told you so. I was wondering when he’d get around to it.’
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘Ah, Maurice, you know he’s always been into reading and writing.’
‘I know, but a career in it? Are there any jobs even?’
‘There’s no jobs in anything these days. Isn’t that what the teachers keep telling them? They’ll have to emigrate. Can you imagine, Maurice?’ she said, turning to me, looking horrified, as I sat in the bed. ‘Our little man leaving.’
‘Sure he’ll never make a penny at that game.’
‘Did you not hear me? It’s not about money, Maurice. We’re going to lose him. England or America.’
She turned from me with one of her exasperated sighs.
When you went off to college, the mourning went on for weeks. Even though you were only a few miles up the road in digs, where you were rung every evening and from which you came home every weekend with your backpack full of washing. But on a Saturday, I have to hand it to you, you still rose early to work alongside me.
‘Well?’ I’d say, ‘How are the books?’
‘Big,’ you said once, looking a bit hassled over the exams that were only a couple of weeks off.
‘Sure, didn’t I tell you this words business is a cod.’
When the exams started, I worked alone. I missed you then. Never told you but it was never the same. And when you decided to move to America in eighty-nine, when you graduated, joining the thousands of others doing the same, well I thought Sadie’d never recover.
‘But Maurice,’ she said to me one night over the dinner before you went, you had your tickets booked at this stage, ‘you have to know someone up there in Dublin who could give him a job. You’re always going on about your connections.’
‘If it was herd of cattle he wanted, that’d be no problem, Sadie. But no, I don’t know anyone of those tycoons who run the papers in Dublin or London.’
As it goes, I did enquire with those I knew had their fingers in many pies, just on the off chance that one of them might be a newspaper. But it was to no avail. But I never told your mother I’d tried. Never wanted to get her hopes up.
You left us after your graduation, a matter of days. Your mother cried through the ceremony and every night until you left. The airport was something shocking. Do you remember how she held on to you? How you had to actually take her arms from around your neck as we stood at the security gates.
‘I’ll be back, Mam. This isn’t forever,’ you kept saying, patting her back. Fair play to you; I would have lied too.
We watched you move inch by inch away from us in that line of young people, still teenagers some of them. Waving, until you disappeared behind the glass screen. But your mother wouldn’t leave straight away no matter how much I reminded her about the price of parking.
‘Just one more minute, Maurice,’ she said, ‘in case he’s forgotten something.’ So we waited, it must’ve been about fifteen minutes. In truth, I knew she was hoping you’d change your mind.
You did stay for good. And so your mother decided if you weren’t coming home then she was going to you, as often as she possibly could. She took to the travel big time. Loved to get over to you if not every year then every two years. I only went the once. A year after the wedding. You had the house by then. The size of it. You’d swear you were planning to have ten children. Five bedrooms, not to mention a basement as big as our house. But sure that’s the way of it over there, isn’t it? Rooms the size of a semi-d in Dublin. I rather the comfort and security of small spaces. There’s a warmth to them, not to mention the convenience of having everything right beside you.
‘Did you ever think of knocking the kitchen into the sitting room, Dad?’ you asked, about ten years ago now when you were home. We were all sat around the kitchen table. Rosaleen was there too. Was Adam even born then?
‘And why would I want to do that?’
‘The space.’
‘Do you think, Kevin?’ Sadie replied on my behalf, looking around her, considering the partition wall.
‘It would be more airy and freeing, you know.’
‘D’ya know you’re right,’ I said, ‘it gets fierce cramped alright in the front room when your mother and me are both in there watching the telly at the same time. I can’t lift the remote without elbowing her. And when she brings in the tea, sure I have to stand in the hall.’ I suppose that was a bit harsh, son. But you took it gracefully, or so it seemed. But then again, you’re good at hiding your frustration with me.
I liked your local post office over there. Every morning when we were with you, I’d walk to it. Six a.m. in the heat that felt like a summer’s day in Ireland, I went out for my strolclass="underline" down the driveway and left up along Mervin Avenue until I hit the church, the bank and the post office. And there I’d sit on the bench outside. The post office was white, wooden and spotless. I had to take a picture. I wanted to show Lavin when I got back what a real post office looked like, not the skit of the thing he has hidden at the back of his newsagents. Inside was tidy and clean, with a rail that shone and snaked its way to the counter. I was only actually in it the once, having volunteered to go get the stamps for the postcards. Apparently there were at least twenty people back home who needed telling of our trips to the shopping outlets. I liked to sit on the bench watching this foreign world wake up on those early mornings. I never got to stay too long as I had to be back for whatever excursion was planned for that day. I trundled along after Sadie and Rosaleen or you, whichever of you had taken the day off. All I wanted was the nearest seat in the shade and a cup of tea, if, that was, I could stand the queues and endless questions about how I took it. Medium, regular, with the milk on the side – I got it soon enough. I liked to stroll around the alien streets, listening to the alien voices. Never knew I was that much of an ear-wigger. Could’ve hung around those street corners all afternoon, if I was let. It helped me realise we were no different from our American cousins – the same things matter the world over: saving face and money.
And then there were the fancy restaurants. That one – Rolinsky’s up in New York. Rosaleen drove us and we met you there. You knew the owner. Same guy who owned the paper you worked for. Spick and span it was. Toilets as big as bedrooms, cloth towels for drying your hands. You couldn’t scratch yourself at the table but the waiters were over to check everything was OK. And as for the menu, that was huge too. I was exhausted before I even opened it. I laid it down not bothering to attempt.
‘Are you not going to have a look at the menu, Maurice?’ Rosaleen asked.
‘No. I know what I want.’
‘Would you not have a look. You should see the size of the steak. They do this surf and turf thing, it’s to—’
‘I’ll be having plain chicken breast with mash and gravy.’
You reached a hand and laid it firmly on Rosaleen’s.
I got my chicken.
‘Pan-fried chicken on a bed of mash covered with “maple jus”,’ the waiter said, when he put it down in front of me.
For a while, I stared at the plate, as big as a hubcap as I recall. I knew you were all watching me watching it. After a moment I scraped off the brown liquid from the chicken and transplanted what was left of it to my side plate. Next, I scooped away the soaked outer layer of the mash with my fork and lifted out any whiteness I could find underneath, putting it alongside the chicken. The hubcap, I pushed into the centre of the table and proceeded to eat my dinner from my side plate, refusing to look at any of you.
‘Is everything to your satisfaction?’ the waiter asked, arriving back to us after a bit.
‘Dandy,’ I replied, on our behalf.
‘Excellent. I’ll just take this for you,’ he said, reaching for the forlorn plate in the middle of the table. Not a flinch out of him. Professional to the end.