How We Remember Read online

  ‘Look at you, Dad, you were so young there. Just a kid,’ I say, trying to find something, a little space where we can begin to talk about Ma, the captivating young Terry.

  He says nothing but holds the photo in his hands and stares. Releasing a bit of a sigh, finally, he says, ‘Yup. That was a long time ago.’

  He’s still steadying his gaze on the image when suddenly he makes a surprising sound as he gasps for breath, and starts weeping. For a second I think it could be the start of a heart attack, then it builds quickly to a loud whimper until he finds a break. ‘Shit… I thought I was done with all this.’

  Then the wailing starts. It’s the first time he’s let himself go in front of me over the whole time Ma was dying and is now gone. So many tears suddenly. And the nose, how all that watery mucus runs into his mouth. He wipes it fast with his jacket sleeve, leaving its trace there, wet and bubbly.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘It’s normal, Dad, you need to let it out.’ Someone needs to say such things at times like this.

  And he continues to bawl. He can’t stop himself and while I’m encouraging him I’m feeling a sense of helplessness when he struggles for air as though it’s his last breath. What will I do if he can’t stop? What will I do if he collapses? What will I do if he wants me to embrace him? There were only two times in my life when I’d witnessed my father crying. The first time was during my childhood when my mother caught him entwined in a lengthy string of lies about where he’d been, why he didn’t come home some nights and even full weekends. He’d been seeing another woman, spending time at her place. We found out she was divorced, had her own children whom, oddly enough, he didn’t seem to mind being around. I may have been twelve at the time, the same year I downed all those aspirins. Where Dave was on the day I found my father in tears, I have no recollection. Where my mother was, I don’t remember either, but their bedroom door was open and he was packing clothes into a duffle bag.

  I said, ‘Hi. Where’s Ma? What’s going on?’

  No reply. Then, as I stood at the doorway, he stopped what he was doing, although he still didn’t look my way. His hands and arms were shaking, and he started to sob.

  ‘What’s wrong, Dad? Is it Grandpa? Did something happen to Grandpa?’ Then I thought the worst and cried, ‘Is it Nonna? Is Nonna dead?’

  He turned, looking straight at me this time, still crying, sniffling. ‘No. Nobody’s dead… I’m sorry… I’m sorry.’ Sob, sob and more sob.

  It was hard to understand. He left, my mother explained afterwards, because he wanted to be with them and not us, but I had seen him in the bedroom, falling apart. How could it be that he didn’t care about what happened to us, and yet he stood there shedding tears? It was the first and the last time ever I would actually hear him utter the words, I’m sorry.

  Dave and I told our mother that we three didn’t need him, we would survive better on our own without him. We huddled together on the couch, me on one side, Dave on the other, and hugged our mother as she cried.

  ‘We don’t need that bastard,’ Dave finally said, wiping her tears away, to which my mother replied sternly, ‘Don’t you go talking about your father that way. He’s still your father.’

  Dad returned a couple of months later. That evening I heard voices from their bedroom, the soft noise of muffled weeping that belonged to my father. I moved closer to their door, but quietly so they couldn’t hear me and saw them through the gap where the door was left ajar. He sat on the side of the bed holding his head in his hands, rocking back and forth in a frenetic kind of way I had never witnessed before. I wondered if his head was in pain. Every now and then he’d begin to wail and she’d shush, shush him like a baby, holding him in a tight grip as if trying to prevent him from exploding.

  ‘It will pass. You’ve got through this before, Jimmy, you’ll get through it again,’ she said.

  I remember questioning if the thing he’d get through again was some kind of problem with money or work. Maybe, I thought, he was in trouble with the police again and he was getting ready for them to take him away, but that never happened. Maybe it was the Irish mafia.

  That night at dinner he was quiet as usual at the table, but his eyes were glassy and vacant, as if he was stoned, and there was a sadness, not anger, in them. For days afterwards he was home more than ever, sleeping throughout the day, taking some kind of medicine, and going to bed early.

  ‘What’s wrong with Dad?’ I asked Ma.

  ‘Just tired,’ she said. ‘Getting over the flu, that’s all.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like the flu to me.’

  It wasn’t too long before he returned to work, coming home for food, leaving again in the evening, with my mother never able to explain where he was, claiming, ‘He had to see someone about something.’ And it didn’t take long before I stopped asking or caring. His persistent absence and her passive acceptance was their habitual way of life that continued for years. He left again and lived across town with another girlfriend when I was a teenager for a length of time that is no longer clear or even significant in my memory. It would happen again; in and out he was, back and forth, never with any firm reason. An impressive yoyo act.

  And here he sits now, the man whose wife forgave him for all his wrongs; the woman whose earnings gave him a far better life than he ever would have known on his truck driver’s salary or his hustling backhand deals. He has her savings, her pension, the dusty little house, the cottage, her car, and now her investment earnings, but he no longer has her, the regular figure that kept his life in order, the thing that gave him constancy when all else collapsed. Now with both foundation and structure gone, he’s going to have to find a way to carry it all on his own. It might be easier if I wasn’t here making things worse.

  ‘It’s going to be hard for a while, Dad, but time will help. It’ll get better.’ These are the things you say.

  Here and there he swears through his tears. ‘Fuck…fucking shit.’ He stands, swipes his runny nose with the end of his sleeve again and says, ‘Gotta go to the bathroom.’

  He returns some time later, eyes bloodshot and dry. ‘Look, this guy down the road wants to talk to me about buying this car and he wants my advice and I told him I’d see him this afternoon. There’s some stuff in the fridge for a sandwich, whatever. Have what you want. OK?’

  Is he telling me, maybe, in his Jimmy O’Brien way, the only way he knows, that he doesn’t really need to see his friend? Because, in fact, he should have been working until 5pm and wouldn’t have arranged to see anyone now, but with all this crying he’s just done, he can’t cope with any more talking. Please, he’s begging me in silence, don’t show me any more photos. Please let me go.

  I say it’s all fine, yes, not to worry, I will take care of myself, of course, I will take care of myself, just set me down in a fucking corner and leave me there. I remind him, in the nicest, possible voice I can muster, that we talked about meeting tomorrow with Dave to sign the papers, that Dave wants to talk to us about the alternatives.

  ‘We should probably think about what Dave wants, Dad,’ I say.

  Dad turns away fast towards the door. ‘Can talk all he wants but it’s done already. What Ma did. It’s done.’

  I know it all makes sense on paper. But now there’s something else stirring in the back of my mind, a sense of something irrational that I can’t quite pin down. What would happen, I’m wondering, if maybe, just maybe, I was the one who agreed to help Dave? What is going on in my head that makes me think this might be a good plan?

  I move to the living room with the half-baked notion that I might find something to watch on TV as I have no energy for anything else, and I see that pic of the young Dave, then his little girl, Amy, posing and all cutesy, then grown up, smiling and proud in her white wedding dress. Now she’s a young mother with her own baby in tow, a little girl, and I want to feel happy for her, I honestly do.

  Eighteen

  What does it mean to settle into a new country where you do
n’t have a history? You start with basics, I guess. Speak the same language – that helps. Find work, make money, build friendships, find love, get married like all those other law-abiding, conventional heterosexual couples. After the wedding you continue to work hard, save money, buy a flat, have a baby, save more money then sell the flat to buy a house that will fit the two of you plus baby and hoards of baby stuff. Often another baby will arrive at some point. This is expected too. Some people are even crazy enough to have more. Later you have grandchildren. You’ve been blessed, people say. You retire. You downsize. Money will go to your children. You die, then it all goes to them. There you have it. You settled. You created a new history, one your kids will look back on with teary eyes and happy bank accounts when they’re trudging through your old photos, asking who’s who and trying to remember at what exact point in your life you began to look and act old.

  I graduated from fancy pants Ivy League with magna cum laude. Such a grand Latin way of distinguishing between American university students. I was fortunate enough to gain the middle magna one, meaning that I had graduated with great honour. In spite of some of the pain that accompanied those college days – I could compare my undergraduate education to the process of having all my bad teeth removed over time so they could be replaced with stronger, straighter and more respectable expensive white ones – coming out at the other end still in one piece felt pretty good. I made it, and London, Jon, and even Alice, with her offer of a tiny, walk-in closet-size room in her south London flat share, were ready to have me with open arms. Me and my ticket to my exciting new life; my Irish passport.

  On the afternoon of my London flight my parents took me out to lunch. My mother cried but was happy for me. ‘I know you’re going to be OK, Jo. You’ve got good friends there now. And Jon sounds like a decent guy. I’ve got a good feeling about him. And who knows, you might both find jobs here in Boston in the future, maybe? That could work, right?’ she said. ‘But I’ll come visit you in London.’

  My mother had spoken to Jon several times on the phone when I was visiting her at the house and she offered to pay for the long-distance calls. During the second call she told him straight that she was worried about me and wanted assurance from him that I’d be OK.

  ‘Now Jon,’ she said. ‘My daughter’s something special and I don’t want to hear about her getting hurt.’

  In the background I waved my arms trying to stop her, at the same time mouthing ‘Stop. Shut up, Ma!’ then grabbing the receiver before any more was said.

  After I apologised, Jon said, ‘You tell her she has nothing to worry about. Just come. Everything’s going to be just fine.’

  At the airport my father said, ‘I hear they drink warm beer over there. And I hear the food sucks. Better eat good now ‘cause you’re gonna miss our restaurants. And don’t forget to call your mother.’

  Jon collected me at Heathrow in the old Ford estate his father had passed on to him. My head was filled with a combination of exhilaration and jetlag, which made me feel like I’d been high on drugs for days.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re finally here,’ Jon said. I could see a tiny welling of tears in his eyes which he managed to hold back after we hugged.

  We stopped first for a coffee in the airport where he presented me with a copy of James Joyce’s Dubliners. Inside he wrote, You can’t move to London with an Irish passport and not visit Dublin. This is your homework before we go. Love Jon.

  ‘And start practising a Dublin accent before you order your first Guinness,’ he said.

  When still in Boston, I contacted top London recruitment agencies, spoke to people over the phone, set up interviews, found temp work, then permanent work in the up-and-coming field of desktop publishing. My experience with the early technology at the printing company, my new fancy pants degree, and, I told myself, my highfalutin’ magna cum laude status, must have impressed them all. New, confident smile practised and ready to go, I found well-paid work and pretended I was in charge of my universe.

  Success continued. My salary increased. I was considered valuable.

  ‘Are you happy here, Jo?’ My well-groomed boss, who prided himself in looking busy in his glass-fronted office after 5.30pm every evening, asked me at my three-month review meeting. ‘Because we think you’re doing a smashing job. Really smashing. And we think you should be rewarded for that.’

  My generous salary and my penchant for penny-pinching allowed me to save money; every few months I sent my mother £1,500 instalment cheques for her to deposit and change to dollars so she could pay off my old student loans. I had a future to plan. I was in this perfect, easy-love thing with Jon, the kind that made me feel as though a light wind was lifting then tossing me into the air where I floated around weightlessly, bouncing gently from cloud to cloud.

  After that first year in London I moved out of Alice’s flat share and Jon and I decided to rent a one-bedroom place in Clapham. We shared the bills. Went food shopping together. Shared the cooking, although it was clear his repertoire was more palatable than my basic, pasta-sauce variations. I returned to drawing and painting in evening classes at a local art college, activities I enjoyed when taking my undergraduate art options. I continued to impress Jon with my creative impulses and even astounded him, and myself, when I took up a part-time Art History MA and finished three years later with a distinction and a thesis on feminist art practice that my supervisor encouraged me to edit into an article and publish.

  Sometime that year my dissertation supervisor, Nancy Harvey, a well-respected academic, model feminist, single forty-something mother of two, whose only real vices were chain-smoking and fingernail-biting, put me in touch with a contact who offered me the chance to teach. It was a two-term slot to cover Art History A-level at an all girls’ private secondary school.

  ‘Jo, you’ve really got something and this is a good way to get started,’ Nancy said when we met. ‘You’ve got to grab the damn bull by its balls when you can. Wait, I know that sounds kind of sexist, talking about bulls and balls. But you get the gist. You have to do this.’

  I didn’t have the same self-belief as Nancy, but agreed to take a risk and gave up the security of my growing corporate salary, with the assumption that I could pick up work as a freelancer if needed.

  Events followed in fast motion. My article was accepted for publication in a high-profile, academic peer-reviewed journal. Seeing my name in print for the first time sent a funny chill through my arms and legs which made me quiver. And hell yeah, it felt good. With a push that made me initially suspicious, Nancy continued to mentor me in her free time, helping me to develop my ideas which I could turn into a PhD project, supervised by her. She showed me where to look for funding, took me through the process in a way that reminded me of the care Constance had offered. Oh, how I missed Constance. Nancy pushed without breaking me. I relished her attention, indulged in as much reading as I could. I fought through my fears of not belonging in British academia. There was too much I wanted to do, too much I needed to do, Nancy reminded me, and nothing was going to stop me. Yes, I wanted to grab any fucking bull that stood in my way and not just tug at his balls. I wanted to crush them.

  I was accepted onto a fully funded PhD programme and by the latter part of that first year was teaching some year one undergrad classes. From that point on I didn’t look back. My days in the corporate world had ended. Hurrah, hurrah! I, Joanna O’Brien, was on my way towards becoming a fancy pants academic.

  By that time Jon had finished his PhD and secured a full-time lecturer’s job straightaway, eventually publishing multiple papers and later a book. Well, what a neat and tidy academic pair we were, indeed. We married later that year at a stylish registry office in Chelsea Town Hall, south-west London. It was an understated occasion celebrated afterwards at our favourite little Italian osteria, probably the smallest wedding I had ever attended myself, squeezing in about sixty people, but we wanted it that way, deciding that our money and energy was better spent on our h
oneymoon to the Greek island of Rhodes.

  My parents flew over, Dad pumped up with drugs to relieve his plane-flying anxiety, but my brother stayed behind. He never spoke to me directly, but told my mother to tell me it was a difficult time; he had no money, couldn’t get away from work and had family responsibilities.

  ‘I told your brother he has to come,’ my mother said over the phone. ‘You’re his sister, his only sister after all. I’m not happy about this. Not one bit. But, Jo, I can’t pay his way this time, if that’s what he’s waiting for, then, sorry, I can’t do it.’

  At the time I thought, OK, this is Dave’s way of getting back at me for my inebriated episode at his wedding rehearsal party and my determination to display my alcohol-infused badge of honour, my sourpuss face, throughout their wedding day. (Well, I never asked to be a bridesmaid.) For a second I considered offering to pay for his flight, but decided against it without much of a second thought. I accepted it was probably for the best. I was getting pretty good at dodging uncomfortable encounters. Beth had no problems paying her own way. (‘Are you kidding? There’s no way I’m going to miss your wedding. You bet I’ll be there.’) My mother’s cousin, Dan, and his wife, Sinead, from Dublin agreed to come. That gave my mother some satisfaction after I confessed I just couldn’t bring myself to invite her sister Peggy and by extension Josie. Uncle Tom I wouldn’t have to worry about, he’d be too busy tending to the poor, and Uncle Ken, my mother’s younger brother, like Dave, wouldn’t have the money. I wanted Nonna to come but knew the only kind of long-haul travel she could afford was her annual bus-package deal for seniors’ gambling weekends to Atlantic City, New Jersey. A year later I lost Nonna for ever when she died of a heart attack. When she visited me in a dream soon afterwards, she tried to console me.