17
The answering machine had a message from Jackie, asking me to give her a ring: “Nothing important, now. Just . . . ah, you know yourself. Bye.” She sounded drained and older than I had ever heard her. I was wrecked enough myself that a part of me was actually scared to leave it overnight, given what had happened when I ignored Kevin’s messages, but it was some ungodly hour of the morning; the phone would have given her and Gavin matching heart attacks. I went to bed. When I pulled off my jumper I could still smell Nora’s hair on the collar.
Wednesday morning I woke up late, around ten, feeling several notches more exhausted than I had the night before. It had been a few years since I’d been in top-level pain, mental or physical. I had forgotten just how much it takes out of you. I stripped off a layer or two of brain fluff with cold water and black coffee, and phoned Jackie.
“Ah, howya, Francis.”
Her voice still had that dulled note, even heavier. Even if I’d had the time or the energy to tackle her about Holly, I wouldn’t have had the heart. “Howya, honeybunch. I just got your message.”
“Oh . . . yeah. I thought afterwards, maybe I shouldn’t have . . . I didn’t want to give you a fright, like. Make you think anything else had happened. I just wanted . . . I don’t know. To see how you were getting on.”
I said, “I know I headed off early, Monday night. I should have stuck around.”
“Maybe, yeah. Sure, it’s done now. There was no more drama, anyway: everyone had more drink, everyone sang a while longer, everyone went home.”
There was a thick layer of background noise going on: chitchat, Girls Aloud and a hair dryer. I said, “Are you at work?”
“Ah, sure. Why not. Gav couldn’t take another day off, and I didn’t fancy hanging about the flat on my own . . . Anyway, if you and Shay are right about the state of the country, I’d better keep my regulars happy, wha’?” It was meant as a joke, but she didn’t have the energy to put a bounce on it.
“Don’t push yourself, sweetheart. If you’re wrecked, go home. I’d say your regulars wouldn’t leave you for love or money.”
“You never know, do you? Ah, no, I’m grand. Everyone’s being lovely; they’re bringing me cups of tea and letting me have a smoke break whenever I need one. I’m better off here. Where are you? Are you not in work?”
“Taking a few days off.”
“That’s good, Francis. You work too hard, sure. Do something nice for yourself. Bring Holly somewhere.”
I said, “Actually, while I’ve got the free time, I’d love a chance to have a chat with Ma. On our own, without Da around. Is there a good time of day for that? Like, does he go out to the shops, or to the pub?”
“Most days he does, yeah. But . . .” I could hear the effort she was putting into trying to focus. “He was having a terrible time with his back, yesterday. Today as well, I’d say. He could hardly get out of the bed. When his back does be at him, he mostly just has a sleep.” Translation: some doctor gave him the good pills, Da topped up with floorboard vodka, he was out for the foreseeable. “Mammy’ll be there all day, till Shay gets home anyway, in case he needs anything. Call over to her; she’ll be delighted to see you.”
I said, “I’ll do that. You tell that Gav to take good care of you, OK?”
“He’s been brilliant, so he has, I don’t know what I’d do without him . . . Come here, d’you want to call round to us this evening? Have a bit of dinner with us, maybe?”
Fish and chips with pity sauce: sounded tasty. “I’ve got plans,” I said. “But thanks, hon. Maybe some other time. You’d better get back to work before someone’s highlights turn green.”
Jackie tried obligingly to laugh, but it fell flat. “Yeah, I probably had. Mind yourself, Francis. Say howya to Mammy for me.” And she was gone, back into the fog of hair-dryer noise and chatter and cups of sweet tea.
Jackie was right: when I rang the buzzer, Ma came down to the hall door. She looked exhausted too, and she had lost weight since Saturday: at least one belly was missing. She eyed me for a moment, deciding which way to go. Then she snapped, “Your da’s asleep. Come on into the kitchen and don’t be making noise.” She turned around and stumped painfully back up the stairs. Her hair needed setting.
The flat stank of spilled booze, air freshener and silver polish. The Kevin shrine was even more depressing by daylight; the flowers were half dead, the Mass cards had fallen over and the electric candles were starting to fade and flicker. Faint, satisfied snores were trickling through the bedroom door.
Ma had every bit of silver she owned spread out on the kitchen table: cutlery, brooches, photo frames, mysterious pseudo-ornamental tat that had clearly spent a long time on the regift merry-go-round before falling off here. I thought of Holly, puffy with tears and rubbing furiously away at her dollhouse furniture. “Here,” I said, picking up the polishing cloth. “I’ll give you a hand.”
“You’ll only make a bags of it. The great clumsy hands on you.”
“Let me have a go. You can tell me where I’m going wrong.”
Ma shot me a suspicious look, but that offer was too good to pass up. “Might as well make yourself useful, I suppose. You’ll have a cup of tea.”
It wasn’t a question. I pulled up a chair and got started on the cutlery, while Ma bustled in cupboards. The conversation I wanted would have worked best as a confidential mother-and-daughter chat; since I didn’t have the equipment for that, a little joint housework would at least steer us towards the right vibe. If she hadn’t been doing the silver, I would have found something else to clean.
Ma said, by way of an opening salvo, “You went off very sudden, Monday night.”
“I had to go. How’ve you been getting on?”
“How d’you expect? If you wanted to know, you’d have been here.”
“I can’t imagine what this has been like for you,” I said, which may be part of the formula but was probably true. “Is there anything I can do?”
She threw tea bags into the pot. “We’re grand, thanks very much. The neighbors’ve been great: brought us enough dinners for a fortnight, and Marie Dwyer’s letting me keep them in her chest freezer. We’ve lived without your help this long, we’ll survive a bit longer.”
“I know, Mammy. If you think of anything, though, you just let me know. OK? Anything at all.”
Ma spun round and pointed the teapot at me. “I’ll tell you what you can do. You can get a hold of your friend, him, what’s-his-name with the jaw, and you can tell him to send your brother home. I can’t get onto the funeral home about the arrangements, I can’t go to Father Vincent about the Mass, I can’t tell anyone when I’ll be burying my own son, because some young fella with a face like Popeye on him won’t tell me when he’ll be releasing the body—that’s what he called it. The brass neck of him. Like our Kevin’s his property.”
“I know,” I said. “And I promise you I’ll do my best. But he’s not trying to make your life any more difficult. He’s just doing his job, as fast as he can.”
“His job’s his problem, not mine. If he keeps us waiting any longer it’ll have to be a closed casket. Did you think of that?”
I could have told her the casket would probably have to be closed anyway, but we had already taken this line of conversation about as far as I felt like going. I said, “I hear you’ve met Holly.”
A lesser woman would have looked guilty, even just a flicker, but not my ma. Her chins shot out. “And about time! That child would’ve been married and giving me great-grandchildren before you’d have lifted a finger to bring her here. Were you hoping if you waited long enough I’d die before you had to introduce us?”
The thought had crossed my mind. “She’s pretty fond of you,” I said. “What do you think of her?”
“The image of her mammy. Lovely girls, the pair of them. Better than you deserve.”
“You’ve met Olivia?” I tipped my hat to Liv, mentally. She had skated around that one very prettily.
“Twice, only. She dropped Holly and Jackie down to us. Was a Liberties girl not good enough for you?”
“You know me, Ma. Always getting above myself.”
“And look where that got you. Are the two of yous divorced now, or are yous only separated?”
“Divorced. A couple of years back.”
“Hmf.” Ma’s mouth pursed up tight. “I never divorced your da.”
Which was unanswerable on so many levels. “True enough,” I said.
“Now you can’t take Communion.”