‘Have you ever been up to the thirteenth floor?’
He sits forward and reaches out to touch my face. ‘No, son. I’ve no reason to go up there.’
He never calls me son and he never touches my face.
‘Have you really never been up in their flat?’ I ask. ‘The flat of the three blind mice?’
‘Why do you keep on hounding me with these questions? Why these questions?’
‘You seem to know a lot about these women.’
He thinks now. He’s taking his time. ‘Well, the answer is no. I’ve no reason to go up there.’
He’s lying. I am certain he’s lying. He is getting ready to get up off the bed.
‘So you haven’t been upstairs?’
‘Yes, I’ve been up to Mark’s for a cup of tea after work. He’s on the fifteenth floor. So, yes, I have been upstairs.’
‘Can I ask you one more important question?’
‘Of course you can, son. You can ask me any damn thing you like.’
‘Have you ever done anything dirty with them?’
He stands up. He stands up right next to me and his legs are close to mine. His face is red and he is panting. I think he’s going to belt me. But I’m not afraid. I’m in the right, and he’s in the wrong. I know he’s been up there with those women. His lie has told me the truth.
But he kicks the bedroom door instead of kicking me and I worry that he’ll wake Mammy. I expect him to storm out but he turns around to face me and stands with his hands dangling by his side as though waiting. I look at him and say nothing and he opens his mouth but makes no sound. He walks to the wall and back twice, head down.
‘I give up,’ he says. ‘I give up.’
And then, without another word, he leaves.
I get back into bed with my mother and pull myself up next to her body and lie close to her. Although I’d like to stay like this, and fall asleep with my chest against her warm back, I move away to my side of the double bed and that’s where I sleep.
At night, instead of watching television after school, I go outside. Every night, for five nights, I tell my mother that I’m going down to the basement to take a guitar class.
Instead of going to the basement, I walk upstairs to the flat above ours, where the three blind mice live. I loiter near their doorway and pace up and down the hall until after nine o’clock. When my father comes out, I’ll catch him.
But he doesn’t come out and I can’t hear him through the door. At ten o’clock I go back down the stairs to our flat.
On the fifth night, I decide to wait at the bottom of the stairs on the twelfth-floor balcony. I sit on the bottom step and look up. And when I see him, I can hardly believe it. He is coming down the stairs from the thirteenth floor, carrying the black bag he takes to work, wearing his ugly blue overalls.
‘Hello there,’ he says when he sees me, as though nothing at all is wrong with the world.
I grip the rail and stare up at him. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ he says, ‘but I’ve been up to Mark’s flat for a cup of tea.’
‘No you haven’t. I saw you coming down from the thirteenth floor.’
He pushes past me and his foot knocks my knee. ‘Your problem is that you see what you want to see.’
I wait until he has been inside for a while before I go in. I get to the bathroom just in time, and vomit until there’s nothing left. I haven’t been sick for a long time and his lie must be the worst kind to cause this reaction. My heart thuds with anger when I hear him in the kitchen, talking in a normal and innocent way with my mother.
It is teatime, the day after I caught my father coming down the stairs, and he hasn’t come home. I’m in the kitchen making semolina and my mother is at the table drying her hair with a hairdryer that has a tube connected to a plastic hat. She plugs the contraption in and the tube fills the plastic cap full of hot air until it expands like a balloon on her head.
‘What do you think of this?’ she asks. ‘What do you think about this old-fashioned hairdryer?’
‘I think it’s good,’ I say. ‘It has personality. Just like you.’
She laughs and takes the plastic cap off and puts it on her knees.
‘My mammy used this hairdryer once to dry a chicken. Did you know that?’
‘No.’
‘She kept chickens, and one day one of them fell in a big puddle of mud and she decided to wash him. She gave the chicken a bath and then she brought him into the living room and used this gizmo to dry him off.’
‘Did it work?’
‘Wait there,’ she says.
She comes back a few minutes later with a black-and-white photo of a chicken inside this hairdryer with its head and beak sticking out.
‘So,’ she says, ‘that’s something else you can think about. You can add it to your amusement park.’
‘Thanks,’ I say.
‘Gimme a kiss,’ she says and, when I give her a kiss on the forehead, I feel like I’m her husband.
‘Mam? I have something really, really important to tell you.’
‘Stop scratching your head.’
‘Can I tell you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll wait till you’re ready and you’re listening properly.’
‘Tell me now. I’m listening properly.’
‘I think Da is doing something funny with them upstairs.’
‘For goodness’ sake!’
‘No, Mammy. Listen. I think you should know. Just listen to me for a minute.’
I tell her that Da came into the room at 3.15 am and that he was drunk, that he lied about where he’d been. I tell her that he’s been upstairs with them.
‘This is crazy business,’ she says. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m telling the truth.’
‘Not this time, you don’t. Your father would never do such a thing. Not ever. He might have fibbed about where he was, but I know this for sure: he wasn’t upstairs with those women.’
‘How can you not believe me? Why can’t you just listen?’
‘I don’t like this talk one bit.’
‘If you don’t believe me, why don’t you go up and talk to the women yourself? Ask them if Da has been up there.’
She stands up. ‘I’ll do no such thing. And you should wash your mouth out.’
I protest and beg her to believe me.
She puts her head in her hands. ‘OK. You’ll go back to your own bed tonight. A boy as filthy as you can put up with a bit of stink from a rubbish chute.’
‘I’m not filthy. I’m the opposite! I know the truth!’
‘You weren’t filthy in Gorey, but you are some filthy now.’
I get my anorak and go downstairs.
I hope I might run into the gang. I don’t care now what happens, and I feel the urge for something to take the place of the trouble and drama I wanted but didn’t get with my mother. But I don’t see the gang, so I go alone to the new housing estate and walk around in the concrete trenches. There’s a small red wellington boot stuck in one of the newly laid cement slabs.
When I get home, my father is at the kitchen table with my mother, eating corned beef, carrots and mashed potatoes.
‘Yours is over there,’ says my mother.
My plate is being kept warm on top of a saucepan filled with hot water.
‘Where’ve you been?’ asks my father.
‘Just went down to the basement to see if there were any activities.’
‘And were there?’ asks my mother.
‘Only a bit of painting and little kids making stuff like snakes out of egg cartons.’
‘That’s funny,’ says my father. ‘I was down there not so long ago and it was closed for cleaning. There’s a sign on the door saying so.’
I’ve been caught but he lets me go.
‘Anyway, you’re a bit old to be making snakes,’ he says, smiling, and patting me on the hand.