Thanks for the Memories (10 page)
A home. It’s a sound far more than deserving of the two uptwo down, but then again, so is my father. The sound teleports me back to my life within these walls and how I used to identify visitors by their call at the door. When I was a child, short, piercing sounds told me that friends, too short to reach, were hopping up to punch the button. Years later, fast and weak snippets alerted me to boyfriends cowering outside, terrified of announcing their very existence, never mind their arrival, to my father. Unsteady rings late in the night sang Dad’s homecoming from the pub without his keys. Joyful, playful rhythms were family calls, and short, loud bursts warned us of door-to-door salespeople. I press the bell again, but not just because at ten a.m. nothing has yet stirred inside the quiet house; I want to know what my own call sounds like.
Apologetic, short, and clipped—as if it doesn’t want to be heard. It says, Sorry, Dad, sorry to disturb you. Sorry the thirtythree-year-old daughter you thought you were long ago rid of is back home after her marriage has fallen apart.
t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 8 3
Finally I hear sounds inside and I see Dad’s seesaw movement coming closer, shadowlike and eerie in the distorted glass.
“Sorry, love,” he says as he opens the door, “I didn’t hear you the first time.”
“If you didn’t hear me, then how did you know I rang?”
He looks at me blankly and then down at the cactus in my hands and the suitcases at my feet. “What’s this?”
“You . . . you told me I could stay for a while.”
“I thought you meant till the end of
Dancing with the Stars
.”
“Oh . . . well, I was hoping to stay for a bit longer than that.”
“Long after I’m gone, by the looks of it.” He surveys my baggage on his doorstep. “Come in, come in. Where’s Conor? Something happen to the house? You haven’t mice again, have you? It’s that time of year for them all right, so you should have kept the windows and doors closed. Block up all the openings, that’s what I do. I’ll show you when we’re inside and settled.”
“Dad, I’ve never called around to stay here because of mice.”
“There’s a first time for everything. Your mother used to do that. Hated the things. Used to stay at your grandmother’s while I ran around here like that cartoon cat trying to catch them. Tom or Jerry, was it?” He squeezes his eyes closed to think, then opens them again, none the wiser. “I never knew the difference. But by God they were impossible to catch.” He raises a fist, looks feisty for a moment while captured in the thought, then stops suddenly and carries my suitcases into the hall.
“Dad?” I say, frustrated. “I thought you understood me on the phone. Conor and I have separated.”
“Separated what?”
“Ourselves.”
“From what?”
“From each other!”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“We’re not together anymore. We’ve split up.”
8 4 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
He puts the bags down underneath the wall of photographs, there to provide any visitor who crosses the threshold with a crash course on the Conway family history. Dad as a boy, Mum as a girl; Dad and Mum courting, then married; my christening, communion, debutant ball, and wedding. Capture it, frame it, display it; Mum and Dad’s school of thought. It’s funny how people mark their lives, choose certain benchmarks to show when one moment is more of a moment than any other. For life is made of countless of them. I like to think the best ones are in my mind, that they run through my blood in their own memory bank for no one else to see.
Dad doesn’t pause at the revelations of my failed marriage and instead works his way into the kitchen. “Cuppa?”
I stay in the hall looking for my favorite photo of Mum and breathe in that smell. The smell that’s carried around every day on every stitch of Dad’s back, like a snail carries its home. I always thought it was the smell of Mum’s cooking that drifted around the rooms and seeped into every fiber, including the wallpaper, but it’s ten years since Mum has passed away. Perhaps the scent was
her
; perhaps it’s still her.
“What are you doin’ sniffin’ the walls?”
I jump, startled and embarrassed at being caught, and make my way into the kitchen. It hasn’t changed since I lived here, and it’s as spotless as the day Mum left it; nothing has been moved, not even for convenience’s sake. I watch Dad move slowly about, resting on his left foot to access the cupboards below, and then using the extra inches of his right leg as his own personal footstool to reach above. The kettle boils too loudly for us to have a conversation, and I’m glad of that. Dad, clearly upset, grips the handle so tightly his knuckles are white. A teaspoon is cupped in his left hand, which rests on his hip, and it reminds me of how he used to stand with his cigarette shielded in his cupped hand, stained yellow from nicotine. He looks out the window to his immaculate garden t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 8 5
and grinds his teeth. He’s angry, and I feel like a teenager once again, awaiting my talking-down.
“What are you thinking about, Dad?” I finally ask as soon as the kettle stops hopping about.
“The garden,” he replies, his jaw tightening once again.
“The garden?”
“That bloody cat from next door keeps pissing on your mother’s roses.” He shakes his head angrily. “Fluffy”—he throws his hands up—“that’s what she calls him. Well, Fluffy won’t be so fluffy when I get my hands on him. I’ll be wearin’ one of them fine furry hats the Russians wear and dance the Hopak outside Mrs. Henderson’s front garden while she wraps a shiverin’ Baldy up in a blanket inside.”
“Is that what you’re really thinking about?” I ask incredulously.
“Well, not really, love,” he confesses, calming down. “That and the daffodils. Not far off from planting season for spring. And some crocuses. I’ll have to get some bulbs.”
Good to know my marriage breakdown isn’t my dad’s main priority. Nor his second. On the list after crocuses.
“Snowdrops too,” he adds.
It’s rare I’m around the house so early on in the day. Usually I’d be at work showing property around the city. It’s so quiet here now, I wonder what on earth Dad does in this silence.
“What were you doing before I came?”
“Thirty-three years ago or today?”
“Today.” I try not to smile because I know he’s serious.
“Quiz.” He nods at the kitchen table, where he has a page full of puzzles. Half of them are completed. “I’m stuck on number six. Have a look at it.” He brings the cups of tea to the table, managing not to spill a drop despite his swaying. Always steady. I read the clue aloud. “ ‘Who was the influential critic who summed up one of Mozart’s operas as having too many notes?’ ”
8 6 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
“Mozart,” Dad shrugs. “Haven’t a clue about that lad at all.”
“Emperor Joseph the Second,” I say.
“What’s that now?” Dad’s caterpillar eyebrows go up in surprise. “How did you know that, then?”
I frown. I don’t know. “I must have just heard it somewh— Do I smell smoke?”
He sits up straight and sniffs the air like a bloodhound. “Toast. I made it earlier. Had the setting on too high and burned it. They were the last two slices, too.”
“Hate that.” I shake my head. Then I remember to ask,
“Where’s Mum’s photograph from the hall?”
“Which one? There are thirty of her.”
“You’ve counted?” I laugh.
“Nailed them up there, didn’t I? Forty-four photos in total, that’s forty-four nails I needed. Went down to the hardware store and bought a pack of nails. Forty nails it contained. They made me buy a second packet just for four more nails.” He holds up four fingers and shakes his head. “Still have thirty-six of them left over in the toolbox. What is the world comin’ to?”
Never mind terrorism or global warming. The proof of the world’s downfall, in his eyes, comes down to thirty-six wasted nails in a toolbox.
“You know which one. So where is it?”
“Right where it always is,” he says unconvincingly. We both look at the closed kitchen door, in the direction of the hall. I stand up to go out and check. These are the kinds of things you do when you have time on your hands.
“Ah”—he jerks a floppy hand at me—“sit yourself down.” He rises. “I’ll check.” He goes and closes the kitchen door behind him, blocking me from seeing out. “She’s there, all right,” he calls to me.
“Hello, Gracie, your daughter was worried about you. Thought she couldn’t see you, but of course you’ve been there all along, watchin’ her sniffin’ the walls, thinkin’ the paper’s on fire. But sure t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 8 7
it’s madder she’s gettin’, leaving her husband and packing in her job.”
I haven’t mentioned anything to him about taking leave from my job, which means Conor has spoken to him, which means Dad knew my exact intentions for being here from the very first moment he heard the doorbell ring. I have to give it to him, he plays stupid very well. He returns to the kitchen, and I catch a glimpse of the photo on the hall table.
“Ah!” He looks at his watch in alarm. “Ten twenty-five! Let’s go inside, quick!” He moves faster than I’ve seen him move in a long time, grabbing his weekly television guide and his cup of tea.
“What are we watching?” I follow him into the television room, regarding him with amusement.
“
Murder, She Wrote
, you know it?”
“Never seen it.”
“Oh, wait’ll you see, Gracie. That Jessica Fletcher is a strange one for catching the murderers. Then over on the next channel we’ll watch
Diagnosis Murder
, where the dancer solves the cases.”
He takes a pen and circles the listing on the TV page. I’m captivated by Dad’s excitement. He sings along with the show’s theme song, making trumpet noises with his mouth.
“Come in here and lie on the couch, and I’ll put this over you.”
He picks up a tartan blanket draped over the back of the green velvet couch and places it gently over me as I lie down, tucking it around my body so tightly I can’t move my arms. It’s the same blanket I rolled on as a baby, the same blanket they covered me with when I was home sick from school and was allowed to watch television on the couch. I watch Dad with fondness, remembering the tenderness he always showed me when I was a child, feeling right back there again.
Until he sits at the end of the couch and squashes my feet.
h at d o y o u t h i n k — w i l l B e t t y be a millionaire by W the end of the show?”
I have sat through an endless number of half-hour morning shows over the last few days, and now we are watching
Antiques
Roadshow
.
Betty is seventy years old, from Warwickshire, and is currently waiting with anticipation as the dealer tries to price the old teapot she has brought to the show.
I watch the dealer handling the teapot delicately, and a comfortable, familiar feeling overwhelms me. “Sorry, Betty,” I say to the television, “it’s a replica. The French used them in the eighteenth century, but yours was made in the early twentieth century. You can see from the way the handle is shaped. Clumsy craftsmanship.”
“Is that so?” Dad looks at me with interest.
We watch the screen intently and listen as the dealer repeats my remarks. Poor Betty is devastated but tries to pretend it was too precious a gift from her grandmother for her to have sold anyhow. t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 8 9
“Liar,” Dad shouts. “Betty already had her cruise booked and her bikini bought.” He turns to me. “How do you know all that about the pots and the French? Read it in one of your books, maybe?”
“Maybe.” I have no idea. I’m starting to get a headache thinking about all this newfound knowledge. Dad catches the look on my face. “Why don’t you call a friend or something? Have a chat.”
I don’t want to but I know I should. “I should probably give Kate a call.”
“The big-boned girl? The one who plowed you with poteen when you were sixteen?”
“Yup, that was Kate.” I laugh. He has never forgiven her for that.
“She was a messer, that girl. Has she come to anything?”
“You saw her last week at the hospital, Dad,” I remind him.
“She just sold her shop in the city for two million to become a stayat-home mother.” I try not to laugh at the shock on his face.
“Ah, sure, give her a call. Have a chat. You women like to do that. Good for the soul, your mother always said. Your mother loved talking, was always blatherin’ on to someone about somethin’ or other.”
“Wonder where she got that from,” I say under my breath, but just as if by a miracle, my father’s ears work for once.
“Her star sign is where she got it from. Taurus. Talked a lot of bull.”
“Dad!”
“What? I loved her with all my heart, but the woman talked a lot of bull. Not enough to talk about something, I had to hear about how she felt about it too. Ten times over.”
“You don’t believe in astrology.” I nudge him.
“I do too. I’m a Libra. Weighing scales.” He rocks from side to side. “Perfectly balanced.”
9 0 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
I laugh and escape to phone Kate. I go upstairs and enter my old bedroom, practically unchanged since the day I left it. Despite the rare guest staying over after I’d moved out, my parents never removed any of my belongings. The Cure stickers remain on the door; wallpaper is still ripped from the tape that had once held my posters. Once as a punishment for ruining the walls, Dad forced me to cut the grass in the back garden, but while doing so I ran the lawn mower over a shrub in the bedding. He refused to speak to me for the rest of that day. Apparently it was the first year the shrub had blossomed since he’d planted it. I couldn’t understand his frustration then, but now, after spending years of hard work cultivating a marriage, only for it to wither and die, I can understand his plight. But I bet he didn’t feel the relief I feel right now. My childhood bedroom can only fit a bed and a wardrobe, but for years it was my whole world. My only personal place to think and dream, to cry and laugh and wait until I became old enough to finally do all the things I wanted to do. My only space in the world then, and my only space now, at thirty-three. Who knew I’d find myself back here again without any of the things I’d yearned for, and, even worse, still yearning for them? Not a member of the Cure or married to Robert Smith. No baby and no husband. The wallpaper is floral and wild; completely inappropriate for a place of rest. Millions of tiny brown flowers clustered together with tiny splashes of faded green stalks. No wonder I’d covered them with posters. The carpet is brown with light brown swirls, stained from spilled perfume and makeup. The old and faded brown leather suitcases still lie on top of the wardrobe, gathering dust since Mum died. Dad never goes anywhere—a life without Mum, he decided long ago, is enough of a journey for him.
