He hasn’t even enough intelligence to be silent; to realise that I am setting a trap.
Does he not realise what I can do?
‘It’s been a long time since I had it tested,’ he adds, ‘and it might be due for re-testing.’ This is the liar clarifying and amending until the deception is obvious.
I can hardly believe how bad he is at lying. I don’t understand at all how he can expect to get away with it and why he can’t stop himself. I don’t understand him. He must think I’m stupid.
Being in the room with him is like being alone, like being completely alone, but not as peaceful.
‘Thanks, Da. I’m going to get some milk.’
I get up from the bed, and he follows me into the hallway, the way Crito used to.
‘You’re all right, son,’ he says, patting me on the shoulder, but his face looks tired and sad.
I am afraid he will tell me that he loves me.
31
When I don’t see my mother at school the next day, I know that something terrible has happened. She usually goes past my classroom window at half ten with the other mothers, carrying the milk crates and jam sandwiches, and I usually wave to her from my desk.
I drink my milk and remove the waxy paper from my jam sandwich, but I don’t eat. I decide that I will go home and see what has happened to her.
During maths class, I don’t bother putting my hand up: I walk straight to the front of the classroom and say, ‘Miss? I feel very ill and I have to go home.’
I leave the classroom before my teacher can respond. Unfortunately, she catches me up just as I am about to leave the main building.
‘Young John Egan!’ she says, in her deep, man’s voice. ‘You can’t just walk out of school like this. Come back at once and see the nurse.’
I turn my back on her and double over, as though I’m dying of the pain, and I put my index finger down my throat and produce a reflex strong enough to vomit.
I’m surprised to see how much bread there is in what comes out of my gullet, since all I had for breakfast was a bowl of Ready Brek. ‘I have to go,’ I cry out and I run from her as fast as my legs will carry me.
‘God love you!’ she cries after me, suddenly full of sympathy.
* * *
When I get home, the door is wide open and my mother is sitting on the floor in the hallway. The phone has been pulled from the hall table and it lies next to her legs on the floor, the receiver out of its cradle.
She’s wearing her nightie — the one with the big holes in the armpit and elbow — and her hair is messy. She looks up at me when I walk over to her, but doesn’t speak.
My face feels very cold.
‘Well,’ she says at last, but without looking at me, ‘you’ve told the truth, and now you have no father.’
I am frozen; the blood has rushed from my head and is pummelling through my arms. My arms tingle from my shoulder all the way to the tips of my fingers. This shaking blood terrifies me; it is as though my arms might come loose and fall to the floor.
‘So, you’re not talking now?’ my mother says, her face crazy. ‘Has the cat finally got your tongue?’
I am frightened and want to stop this. I want to sit down on the floor and do something to comfort her. I swallow and try to wet my dry mouth so that I can speak.
‘What’s happened?’ I ask. ‘Where’s Da?’
She wipes her nose with the sleeve of her nightdress. ‘I rang him at work.’
She tells me that she called the factory and that the foreman told her he could only reach a man on the factory floor in case of an emergency. She had to say that there was an emergency.
‘What kind of emergency did you say there was?’ I ask. ‘What did you say?’
‘Never mind what kind of emergency. I had to embarrass myself and invent something and then listen to the foreman call for your father on the loudspeaker, ‘Michael Egan. Michael Egan. To the office for an urgent telephone call.’ Then your father came to the phone puffing and panting and I told him what you told me yesterday, and do you know what he said?’
‘No.’
I don’t want her to be on the floor like this. I want her to stand up. She shouldn’t be on the floor in her torn nightie.
‘He said, “Well, do what the boy says, then, if you believe him. Go ask them yourself.” And then he hung up in my ear.’
‘So?’ I say.
She thumps her fist on the floor and her fist makes a dull sound because of the carpet.
‘And so, I went up there. I went up there in my nightdress. I could smell the booze when the women answered the door. And I asked her about your father, and do you know what she said?’
‘No.’
‘She laughed and said, “He’s a good screw, yer one!”’
I almost fall. I can’t focus. She shouldn’t say this to me. She shouldn’t say this. I reach out for the door behind me, to get away from her crying, angry, horrible voice. I am afraid of what she will say next. ‘I’m going back to school,’ I say.
‘You are not going back to school! You will have your nose rubbed in this. Go and pack your father’s things. He’ll be here for his suitcase at three o’clock.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’
We are silent. The baby crying in the next-door flat seems to get louder and more panic-stricken. I look at the phone next to my mother and want it to ring. I want the woman upstairs to say she was only messing. I want this to be over. I want to be right and I want to be wrong.
‘Why?’ I ask again. ‘Why do I have to pack his suitcase?’
‘Because I’ve asked him to leave. You wanted me to believe you, and now I do. You should be happy. Now that you’re after having your way.’
I need to go to the toilet. ‘But I only meant the truth to come out.’
‘And what did you think would happen when the truth was out?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, wishing we could sit in the kitchen and talk in a normal way, instead of doing this in the hallway.
‘You don’t know?’ she says. ‘You don’t know?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re sorry?’
We are silent again and somebody outside kicks an empty can all the way along the corridor.
‘Go pack a suitcase for your father, and a suitcase for yourself, if that’s what you feel like doing.’
She lifts herself up from the floor, walks into her bedroom, and shuts the door behind her.
I go to the toilet and then I walk around the flat for a few minutes. The wedding photograph on the dresser has been removed and in its place there is a box of tissues. I still have something like a feeling that if I wanted to I could make everything go back to how it was; I could change things back. I think about calling my grandmother and asking her whether she will come and live with us a while, patch things up with my father, or let us come back to Gorey.
On the way, we could stop at a fairground or Duffy’s circus. And there might be a miniature steam-train and pony rides and people dressed up as animals. I wouldn’t want to leave.
All four of us could stop in at a circus and eat candy floss and watch the lion tamers and tightrope walkers, and I could sit between my father and grandmother. When they put their hands on my lap, I could make it so that they held each other’s hands instead.
I go to the phone and ring Granny’s number in Gorey. There is no answer. I put my hands over my eyes and lean against the sink. When I feel calmer, I walk out to the hallway and stand outside my mother’s bedroom door and I wonder if she wants me to leave with my father. I go to my room and sit on my bed and I bash my legs with my fists so that I will have bruises there tomorrow.
The apple box for puppet shows has gone. I rush to the kitchen to see whether it’s in the rubbish bin and there it is, and on the kitchen table there’s a note from my mother to my father, written on airmail paper: