‘Where have you been?’ I ask.
‘Working,’ he says as he turns on the lamps.
‘Where? What work?’
‘Let me make these sausages and then we can watch the idiot box together and we can talk. All right?’
‘Granny is saying a novena so you’ll get a job. It must have worked already.’
He throws his head back and opens his mouth and keeps it open and his head thrown back. This is his way of laughing without making any sound.
‘Why are you laughing like that?’ I ask.
‘Is laughing a crime now?’
‘No.’
‘Just as well, because I’m in the mood for it.’
He tousles my hair and smiles at me.
‘Where’s Mam?’ I ask.
‘Upstairs. Bedroom. Leave her in peace.’
‘I want to talk to her,’ I say. ‘I have to tell her something important.’
‘Is something the matter?’
‘There’s nothing the matter with me. But isn’t there something wrong with you and Granny?’
He pulls hard at his fringe, tugs the thick hair, using his fingers to pull it down, straight and flat over his right eye. ‘We’ve had a few discussions and we’ve disagreed over a few things, but we’ve made our peace. Anyway, it’s not anything for you to worry about.’
‘I’m going upstairs,’ I say.
‘I said to leave her.’
‘I have to talk to her about something.’
‘John, can you not just leave your mam in peace? You’ll see her soon enough.’
We are silent while he makes the sausages and then he leaves the kitchen with his plate and goes to the living room. I follow. He sits on the settee and I sit down with him. We each have a plate of sausages; four sausages each.
‘If you’ve anything to get off your chest, you can always tell me,’ he says.
I pick up a sausage and put it back down again. ‘Brendan’s not talking to me,’ I say.
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’
He eats a whole sausage without chewing, swallows it in three mouthfuls. The chunks of sausage are so big I can see them going down his throat.
‘Have you asked him why?’
‘No,’ I say, looking at my plate.
‘Well if you don’t ask him you won’t find out, will you?’
I don’t want to talk about the day I wet my pants. ‘He’s made friends with the new girl.’
‘Oh. Well then, I think you should make friends with her.’
‘But I don’t think he wants me to be his friend any more.’
My father has already finished his sausages. ‘Are you going to eat yours?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘I think you should talk to Brendan.’ He scratches his chin. ‘I think you should talk to your friend and not go running to your mother.’
I make a sausage stand upright and use it to push another one over on its side.
‘Do you agree?’
‘I agree,’ I say.
I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m sick of the way he changes in the middle of a conversation. He can do what he likes from now on. I know what I want to do.
‘Time for the news,’ he says. ‘Shall we watch it together?’
* * *
We watch the news together, in silence. There’s a policeman on the news and he says: ‘The suspect allegedly tore at the victim’s night skirt and asked her to undress but the female did not comply with this alleged request and the evildoer’s intentions were quite clear.’
Without looking at me, my father says, ‘I love the way the guards talk. They’re always trying to sound intelligent and end up sounding brain-damaged.’
‘I s’pose,’ I say.
‘You suppose, not you s’pose.’
Crito jumps onto my father’s lap and my father pushes her off. ‘I’ve had just about enough of that cat’s dander,’ he says.
‘What’s dander?’ I ask.
‘The stuff that gets up my nose. I hate stuff that gets up my nose.’
He laughs then, like a madman, and gets up to take a cigarette out of the box kept on the mantelpiece. He sucks at the cigarette as though it is a burning sweet, as though he has to get to the end of it as quickly as possible to receive his reward. He rarely talks while he smokes. He prefers to squint and look at the fire. Let him. I leave.
My mother still hasn’t come downstairs and it’s nearly nine o’clock. I go to the kitchen and fry another six sausages and I bring them up to her with some bread and a bottle of tomato sauce.
She’s sitting up in bed, wearing a cardigan over her pink shop coat.
‘Room service!’ I say. I put the plate on her bed and she laughs.
‘Six sausages! You sausage!’
‘Do you want them?’
‘No, you have them. I’m too tired to eat.’
‘Are you going to sleep now?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘Where’s Da been?’
‘When?’
‘Yesterday and today.’
‘Working. He’s got himself some odd jobs.’
‘Does that mean everything is normal again with Granny?’
‘It will be soon,’ she says. She closes her eyes.
‘Will you turn off the light on your way out.’
I didn’t know that I was on my way out.
She turns over and doesn’t look at me. The room smells of farts.
I feel embarrassed for her.
17
My father doesn’t come downstairs for breakfast. I ask my mother where he is and she wipes her hand along the side of my face. ‘He went on the early bus to Wexford to talk to his old boss.’
‘Again?’
‘He’s still trying to sort out a few things,’ she says.
‘But it’s three years since he stopped working,’ I say.
My granny lowers a rasher into her mouth the way a zookeeper lowers a piece of fish into the mouth of a sea lion. ‘He’s doing the things a man does,’ she says. ‘He’s getting his nose out of the books and he’s getting off his bony backside.’
My mother stands up and goes to the window. She’s counting to ten to control her temper the way she taught me; I can see the fingers of her left hand tapping out the numbers on her thigh. She’s wearing pink lipstick, a long pink woollen skirt, a white blouse and her hair is out. She looks beautiful and she knows I’m staring and does nothing to stop me. When she’s finished counting she comes back to the table and smiles at me.
‘Another lovely day,’ she says. ‘Fine and fresh and crisp.’
‘Who wants a game of backgammon?’ asks Granny. ‘John?’
‘There’s not enough time.’
‘You’ve got ten minutes. How about a few quick hands of blackjack then?’
‘OK.’
My mother starts whistling and Granny gets the cards from the dresser and deals.
On the way to school I think about last night’s dream in which Ripley found out about my gift for lie detection. I was living with him in his big house in America and it was as though I was his son.
I could see every one of his small, crooked teeth. I said, ‘Even though you have small and crooked and buck teeth you are still famous,’ and he smiled and put his arm around me and we walked together down his driveway towards his convertible sports car.
Because I can’t do an American accent very well, not even in dreams, Ripley had to mumble when he spoke to me, and because he was mumbling I couldn’t exactly understand what he was saying, but I felt sure he was telling me that I’d be famous one day soon.
There was only one bad part in the dream. The roof of Ripley’s car was made of cardboard and, as we drove along the highway together, the cardboard buckled and warped and seemed to want to break off.
When I told Ripley I was worried about the roof, he turned to look at me and his teeth were suddenly straight and big. He didn’t look like himself any more. I woke up then, and blamed the last part, the bad part of my dream, on the noises in the hallway outside my room; the noises of my father and Granny arguing.