“Yeah, well.” A deep sadness settled over him. He would always be trying to make up for the past.
Her hand covered his under the blankets and squeezed. “Good night.” She rolled over, turning her back to him.
“Good night.” Long after she appeared to have fallen asleep, he stayed awake, marveling at how good something so small had felt—John clasping his shoulder, Tricia squeezing his hand.
Twenty-five
The next morning, Billy sat at his kitchen table enjoying a wedge of grapefruit, a small heap of scrambled eggs, and a feeling of satisfaction unlike anything he’d ever known. He’d appeared on national TV, on Matters with Maeve, and he’d done well. Better than well. The house phone rang, shrill and surprising. So few people used that number now, not since they’d all gotten mobiles.
Tricia answered. “Howaya, Maura.” She swung around to face Billy. “No, of course not,” she said, sharper. “Okay, fine, yeah.”
She ended the call. “She and your dad are on the way. She wanted to know if you were still wearing the army uniform.”
If the comment had come from anyone else, Billy might have chuckled. Instead, he felt heat in his face and a hardness in his stomach.
Minutes later, his parents arrived, both bundled in dark coats. While Tricia made tea, they sat at the table, shifting on the wooden chairs.
“Hard to believe, seeing you on the telly last night.” His father sounded almost admiring.
His mother sniffed. “Hard to believe that uniform.”
“Do you know?” his father said. “You’ve surprised me, so you have. I didn’t think you’d do as well as you’ve done, never thought you’d get the response you’re getting.”
All his life Billy had craved this kind of praise from his father, but now that it was here, he felt unbearably uncomfortable, as if his nerve endings were exposed.
His mother gave her shoulders a little shake and nodded at his father. “Give it to him, can’t you?”
“I’m getting to it,” his father snapped, reaching inside his coat.
Tricia set two steaming mugs of tea in front of his parents and a small plate of biscuits glittering with sugar. Billy’s stomach sighed. The truth annoyed his head. He would always struggle with food, with his parents.
His father handed Billy the folded check.
“Before you take that,” his mother said. “We want your word there’ll be no more of that awful uniform or shaving your hair. I thought my eyes were going to fall out of my head when I saw you in that getup on national TV.”
Billy glanced at the check. Eleven hundred euro. An amount no doubt chosen to exceed Lisa’s donation. “You needn’t worry, I’m not planning on wearing the uniform again. It did its work.”
“And the hair?” she said.
He rubbed his hand over the top of his head, a part of him missing his curls, curls just like those on his three sons. “We’ll see.”
His mother clapped her hands together, years seeming to fall away from her face and shoulders. “Thank God for that much at least.”
She and his father left a short time later, seeming pleased with themselves. Billy remained pinned to his chair. Outside, from Magda’s decorated birdbath, the chirp of birds that sounded part song and part whistle. Tricia leaned back against the sink, her arms folded over her scant stomach. She spoke, a faraway quality to her voice. “Just once, after my mother died, I broke down crying in front of my father. He kept going about his business, saying nothing and polishing his shoes faster, blacker. The more he ignored me, the harder I cried. I couldn’t stop.
“Then, out of nowhere, he started going on about Bertie Murphy, the local vet, and how he was the best yodeler anyone had ever heard. ‘That man could yodel for the country, so he could, could win an All-Ireland medal if he was let.’ Then Dad got up, put on his shoes, and walked out the back door. Left me sitting at the table, a crying, snottering mess.” She paused, red blotches breaking out on her neck. “Sometimes we don’t know what to do with people, maybe especially those closest to us.” Her eyes filled and her face creased with pain. “I’m sorry, I’ve tried, but I just can’t stop thinking that it took what Michael did to bring out all this in you. I keep thinking if only you’d cared enough about the children and me from the get-go, if you’d cared enough about yourself, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
He bowed his head, a ball of thorns in his throat. He’d disappeared inside the hulk of himself a long time ago, and Tricia had resurrected him for a while during those early years, but eventually he’d sunk back inside himself, where it didn’t hurt so much that he wasn’t the right kind of son and husband and father.