1
Morris
March
An unusual family. Us. Thereâs Dad who isnât here but whose shadow is, and Mum who is here but whose heart is broken. Thereâs Gina whoâs sad, and Karen whoâs not. Thereâs Victor whoâs intelligent, and me who isnât. There was Adam, too, who hurt us more than we imagined we could be hurt.
We live in a large bungalow set in a corner of a field, near a crossroads. Dad farmed sheep and trained two racehorses. He did neither very well. We survived on what he made from selling off bits of the land and what he won from gambling. He is lucky at the horses. Back then, he only told us about his lucky days. He didnât have to mention his bad ones, we knew by the puss of him, the way his eyes squinted, as though he were trying to squeeze piss out of them.
Mum tends to her face a lot. Fighting wrinkle advancement on every front with all sorts of creams. Sheâs losing the battle around her eyes, where the lines are deep. Dad used to tell her she could no sooner push back time than he could his belly-button. Mum didnât speak with him all that much. I think she blamed him for the lines about her eyes. Mum and Dad acted like people who were extremely fed up with each other and didnât know what to do about it. Dad is very small in Mumâs eyes and has been for a long time. We didnât think he could get any smaller. But he did. This is how.
Mum has two friends who drop in a lot. She met Father Pat Toner through her best friend, Kay Walsh. They hold private meetings in the sitting-room, smoking, all crossing their legs as though they were afraid of farting in each otherâs company.
Victor says they talk a lot of shit about shit. I know they cross their legs because I brought in tea on a tray, and they all went quiet and said thanks very much. And they all had their legs crossed. It looked funny. It just did. I donât know why. Mum used to do that sometimes. Let off. We could be eating our dinner or anything. She blamed her stomach instead of her arse. Dad said sheâs full of wind. When Dad found something he didnât like about Mum, he sunk his teeth into it like a dog with a fresh bone. Anyway, Mum got the problem sorted out, so she doesnât get embarrassed in front of us any more. Sometimes I wonder where all her wind goes. We didnât mind her farting as much as we minded Dad for getting on to her. Nerves â I think Mumâs stomach nerves were shot for a while, shot from worrying, but now sheâs sharing her worries with her friends, and I donât hear them farting, so they must be able to handle the pressure.
A week leading up to what happened Adam, Gina told us all she was pregnant. Sheâs a very attractive redhead with a smooth figure. She wasnât happy with her breasts, though, because Iâd caught her a couple of times feeling herself in the mirror, and sighing this way and that, as if she were half-afraid of discovering something. I heard her telling Karen sheâd go absolutely fucking crazy if she ever found a hair growing around her nipple. But I think sheâs afraid of discovering something else now. Aunt Julie died before Christmas. And how she died affected all the women in our house something dreadful. Mum drove over to Doc Fleming in Kildare and got him to examine the lot of them. He booked them into a Dublin hospital for check-ups. Lately, Doc Fleming sends all his doubts to hospital. His confidence was shook when eight of his patients died in one week. Victor and me call him Doctor Doom, but not in front of the women.
Mumâs about the worst affected. Aunt Julieâs her sister. And they looked alike. She told Dad it was like looking at herself lying in the coffin. Of course, Dad had no drink in him, so he said nothing, just sat there in his armchair by the range, smoking his pipe. Probably wishing that it was Mum. Wishing with his eyes like he does with the horses he backs, wishing so hard itâs not wishing but praying.
After Gina told the lot of us she was pregnant, none of us could say anything. A guy on the news talked about English soccer fans going mad on the streets in Holland. Dadâs eyes went like grey slivers of steel. His cheeks went in, as though his heart had pulled on strings attached to them. Mum often said his heart was like a cactus, dry and spiky. Weâd been eating our dinner. Mum puts a big effort into cooking the main evening meal. Itâs the one meal she insists weâre all together for, in at the table, like a proper family. Once she tried to get us to say the Rosary, but praying together to stay together didnât sit easy with us, not with Dad about. Victor told me that God had put all the Antichrists under the one roof and surrounded them with a moat of sheepshite.
We sat like zombies around the table. Mumâs hands were on her throat, checking to see that she hadnât said she was pregnant. Karenâs eyes fell sleepy. Sheâd known, of course. No one can sneeze in this house without her knowing. But she didnât know everything. I found out she didnât later, when we got closer and didnât pick on each other all the time. We thought Dad would lose his temper. Sometimes he does over nothing. Heâd be so quiet in himself, and then heâd get thick about something: the TV being too loud, someone leaving a smell in the loo, one of us lazy about getting out of bed, stuff like that. Pregnant. Jesus.
Mumâs hands shot to her temples. Karen buried a nervous smile. Victor looked up from his book. Heâs always reading, even at the table; he says his nerves canât stand people making slopping noises. Adam had tracks on his teeth, so he probably made the most noise. He asked Victor what he wanted him to do â shove his food up his butt? Adam could be crude. Victorâs reading Robinson Crusoe. Must be for the fortieth time. He loves the idea of being away on a desert island, away from everyone. Though he says heâd have a preference for a Woman Friday. He thinks the author might have been a little queer to think up a Man Friday in the first place. Though the times he lived in might have had some bearing on his decision. They liked to keep the lid on their shit back then. Legs crossed, maybe?
Victor and me are twins. Iâm thirteen years, four months and three days old. Heâs two minutes older. He says on the way out he grabbed the only brains on offer. Karen says he grabbed the good looks too. She said that to spite me. But Victor is handsome. He has jet-black hair, lean features and large blue eyes youâd think a clear sky had spat into. My hair isnât so dark, features arenât so lean. My nose â well â Victor says whoever had it last time must have been a boxer ⊠who jabbed with his snout.
Dad and Adam stared at each other. Gina stared at the two of them, then the rest of us.
Adam had his own room. He used to hand his shoes down to Dad. Mum blames the chemicals in the food chain for the kids being so tall these days; âbig-feeted kids,â she says, when sheâs full of Baileyâs. Talking about Adamâs yacht-sized footwear parked on the hairmat. He never put away his shoes in the shoe cabinet Mum bought in Argos in Tallaght. She was always getting on to him about it. He never listened. He ignored her sometimes, just to annoy her.
âPregnant!â Mumâs shriek pierced my thoughts.
Gina bit her lower lip.
âHow ⊠who ⊠you stupid little bitch. How could you be so stupid?â
Tears came to Ginaâs eyes. Genuine, Iâm sure. My sisters can do that: turn tears on and off at will.
âWho?â Mum demanded.
She wanted to know who so she could kill him. She couldnât kill Gina, although part of her probably wanted to. Victor told me afterwards that some women blame men for getting them pregnant without realising they had something to do with it too. It proved, he said, how easily women can forget things when they want.
âTerry,â Gina said.
She said Terry as if the lot of us should know him.
A certain colour came to Adamâs cheeks. More purplish than red. His eyebrows moved up and down. He was seventeen. His face had fiery red pimples and his lips were thin as razor-blade edges. Heâd light fairish hair which he kept smoothing and it was always gelled. Sometimes he put dyes in his fringe: blue and pink. He loved watching the wrestling on TV. His favourite wrestler was âThe Undertakerâ. I didnât like it so much at the start, but I like it now. Adam used to practise his moves on me and Victor but Victor used to get so serious. He punched Adam on the nose and drew blood that pumped like it was never going to stop. Adam didnât go crazy. He just paled. That finished the wrestling messing for us â Mum went spare. Victor said Adam had him pinned, what else could he do? Adam said Victor didnât like being bested by anyone.
Dad hated the sport, said nancy boys played it, and that the whole thing was just a rig-up. We thought he was so anti-wrestling because it was Adamâs hobby. And Adam thought so too.
Dad jumped to his feet, his eyes full of storms. Looking at us as though we were to blame for Gina getting herself pregnant.
âTerry who?â Mum said, trying to keep calm. The fat of her upper arms jiggled and I thought how the needle-mark on her arm looked like a third eye. Gina thumbed her hair behind her ears. She has big ears, which is a good reason for wearing long hair. Karenâs ears arenât so big, so her hair is tight. She likes to wear earrings and sometimes a stud in her nose.
âMageeâ Gina breathed.
Youâd know Gina was lying. But youâd have to know her to know. A signpost doesnât come up on her head to tell you. Her soul has little ingredients: a drop of blush on her cheeks, a line of worry down her forehead, the way her forefinger touches the corner of her lip. Mum knows how to read the signs too. But she lets on she doesnât. I think itâs because she can read other signs I havenât learned to read yet.
Then Adam slunk away, shoulders hunched. He used to suffer from asthma, and kept an inhaler in his pocket. We could count on him going into hospital for a week every year, mostly when the fog rolled down from the mountain, or in summer when the sun was blistering. But he sort of grew out of it during a time when everyone thought heâd have asthma forever. Dad used to look at Adam like a sun-worshipper looking at a grey day, with disappointment. Victor said Dad failed to realise that Adam cared nothing for him either â each was bad weather to the other.
Karen shook her head. Sheâs not really into fellas, she says. Sheâs never going to get married or have babies. Ever. She used to like playing with my Action Men. Victor said it was because Action Man had no penis, and therefore did not constitute a threat to her.
Mum said to Karen, âDo you know who this fucker is?â
âNo,â gulped Karen, âI donât.â
She sat on her knees on the chair, elbows on the table, hands supporting her chin, looking at Gina as though she were watching a TV soap.
âWhere did you meet this lad?â Mum said.
âAt a disco ⊠Nijinskiâs.â
âWhen?â
âAbout two months ago.â
âWhere does he live?â
Gina froze, then she broke down; tears streamed down her cheeks. Her shuddering something terrible. Her hands slapping her face, and when that didnât hurt her enough, they started tugging at her lovely red hair. Mum and Karen pulling at her, trying to get her to stop, which I thought was all weird, given that Gina was doing to herself what Mum wanted to do to her. They stopped her just as Victor touched my arm and nodded for us to leave. Thatâs something I like about Victor. He knows when itâs the right time to leave. He doesnât wait to be told, like I normally do. In our bedroom, he climbe...