“No talk about school,” she said. “I promise. Unless it’s slagging the system. How about that?”
He was holding his breath, and he wasn’t even aware of it until the floaties showed up in his field of vision.
“Earth to Dermot? Are you receiving me?”
He nodded, and concentrated on his breathing.
“I promise not to nag too,” she said. He tried to smile, but couldn’t. Her eyes were big and clear now, he saw, and full of that teasing tenderness.
“Great,” he said. “That’d be great.”
Her eyes flickered with concern.
“We’ll make it, Dermot. We always have.”
The turmoil was actually hurting his chest.
“I know it’s tough,” she whispered. “Working away, trying to get things done. Reinventing yourself, and having to depend on yourself so much.”
He had to do something tonight: that was all there was to it. Waiting wouldn’t help.
“You’re a good father,” she said. “And you’re a good husband. You keep it all together. There’s not many can do that. Very few, in actual fact.”
An image flashed into Fanning’s mind of reaching out and slapping Brid across the face. The shock of it stole his thoughts of Cully, and the puddled footpath where the Polish man lay. He rubbed hard at his eyes. Brid’s face was inches from his when he stopped.
“Give it to me here,” she whispered, and he felt her hands on his thighs, reaching.
“Jesus, Brid,” he muttered, and saw her face take on its usual set. She sat back on her heels, and looked sideways at the table. Then she sighed, and got slowly up.
“Sorry,” he said. “That didn’t come out right, I know.”
“It’s okay,” she said. She was in teacher mode, he could tell.
She was hesitating.
“You know Liam and Susan, how they were, back last year,” she said.
Liam was his friend, he thought of reminding her. Had she forgotten?
“Good ideas, we should go out with them some night. Yes.”
“I meant Liam, what he did. The time he, you know?”
Fanning knew immediately. When he was ten, he had seen an accident between a car and a cyclist, on the Clontarf Road. He remembered knowing it was going to happen a few seconds before it did. There was something about the way things were going that made it inevitable, he believed.
“Brid, don’t start that again. For Christ’s sake.”
She was not going to let it go.
“I’m just saying think about it. Please. I mean, you yourself saw what it’s done for Liam, for the whole family. You said so yourself.”
“I was joking-”
She stood very still, and he could see the anger turn her face impassive.
“It saved their marriage,” she said. “That’s nothing to laugh at, in my opinion.”
Fanning was up out of the chair in one move. She frowned at him. It surprised him that he did not feel rage, so much as an unbearable impatience.
“You think a frigging counselling session is going to help the situation, do you? Like sharing feelings, and a good cry or two? Screw that. Not going to happen.”
“Then I’ll go myself,” she snapped. “I’m the one needs it, and that’s plain to see, isn’t it?”
“Whatever that means.”
“I’m the one who’s the shock absorber in this family, Dermot Fanning. Or haven’t you noticed? The one who has to bite their tongue. Hold back. Be a saint pretty well, when I feel far from it.”
“You’re not biting any tongue now, are you!”
“Oh freedom of speech is only for the creative types, is it? ’Cause they’re the ones make the rules? Oh now I get it — but it has taken me a while, hasn’t it. I’m a slow learner, I suppose. I don’t have that, what’ll we say, flair.”
“You switch over from being me mother to a… well I’m not going to say it, but all I’ll say is it was faster than I ever saw-”
“Well I have to be your mother half the time!”
The words seemed to bounce off the walls for several moments, reverberating in Fanning’s mind. The room seemed very quiet now. He took in the folded arms, the hurt look, and anger.
“You’re shouting,” he said. “Did you know that, Brid?”
“Screw you, and this ‘you’re shouting’ crap!” “You want to wake up Aisling. You want her to hear you ranting.”
“I don’t care if she hears it or not! Why would I worry? She already knows. Children know, you know. They’re not like adults that way.”
“Adults,” he said.
“That’s right: adults. Adults hide things, or try to. Or they hide, themselves. They avoid. They run away from things. From people.”
He glanced at her, and then looked down the short hall, half-expecting to see Aisling there. He wondered if the people next door were listening. Of course they were.
The furniture looked dull and even ugly now. Even Aisling’s art on the walls looked faded. The whole place looked pathetic, comforting, futile.
“People do that, Dermot. They let things go on too long.”
“You mean us, do you?”
“Of course not. I mean taking care of things, of themselves.”
“Who needs a shrink when we’ve got one in the house right here.”
“Stop that!”
It was a shriek. Fanning counted to three before he heard a tapping on the walls.
“Because change is too scary,” said Brid, her voice ragged now.
It had never been this bad, ever, Fanning thought.
He looked around the room, and then picked up the can of beer and his mobile. He took his time walking to the sink, and he poured the can down the drain. The smell coming up from the sink reminded him of when he was ten again, going down to the pub to buy stout for his grandfather in the village near Bansha.
“Go ahead to your counsellor dude,” he murmured. “And do what he tells you, like a good little girl, and behave yourself.”
The words hung in the air. He wondered where they had come from, and how they had tumbled out of his mouth with so little effort. He heard the bubbles from the spilled lager still breaking on the stainless steel below. He didn’t turn around.
“You fucking asshole, Dermot Fanning,” he heard her say in a quiet voice. Then the footsteps, and the pyjama bottoms rubbing together as she made her way back to the bedroom.
He knew he had to do something now. He switched his mobile back on and waited for the Unlock prompt. He couldn’t go back into the bedroom for a change of clothes. His shoulder bag was by the door, though. He opened the washer/dryer, and pulled the clothes out onto the floor. It didn’t matter now. There was a T-shirt, and the white dress shirt, and knickers. It took him a few turnovers of the clotheslines to find a second sock.
His fingers didn’t seem to be working so well. He thumbed his way slowly to the Recent Calls. There it was, Murph’s number. Though he had expected it, the shock surged through his chest and down his limbs. He switched off the mobile again.
He looked in his wallet, and checked that he had the two tenners and the twenty that he had yesterday. Movement in the window brought his eye over. It was himself, his face shadowed by the flaring light coming up from the table lamp. The row had actually happened. Aisling might be awake right now, about to cry out.
He had no plan. It was a few hours yet before the city would come to life proper, and he could figure out what to do. He would wait until he had a spot somewhere in the city centre, and then phone Cully. So things had gotten out of hand, and someone had been hurt.
Cully’s two arms up in the air, like a dancer, stomping.
He clenched his eyes as tight as he could. Colours came and went quickly. He opened his eyes, and tiptoed to the door. There were gloves and a folded-up umbrella in the shoulder bag. Fanning paused, and considered the laptop again. It would be an impediment. He folded the shirt as best he could, and slid it into the bag, along with the phone.
The door squeaked, he remembered, but only after it was about halfway opened. He squeezed the handle hard and opened the door, working his way around it before it had swung too wide. He turned the key before he pulled the door behind him.