Friday reading

Deb reaches another crossroads and hesitates to move - until she's pushed

Well, Marge, I suppose you’re thinking I could have just come ‘home’ to Dublin at that point seeing as I had no other big plan or project for my life. I did consider it, believe me I did. My mind buzzed and buzzed and buzzed, crashing against the idea without ever breaking through the glass that separated me from the decision I could envisage without being able to act on it. I’d get dizzy and lapse into a daze while I scrubbed the floors and emptied the bins and polished the glasses in the pub.

Sometimes the boss, Sully, caught me staring out the window with a cloth in one hand and a glass in the other and called out, Wakey-wakey! following up with a comment like, You must have been doing a war dance round the fire all night last night out there. I’d resume cleaning the glass and mutter A war dance is the last thing we’d be doing. Oh yeah, I forgot, he’d say. It’s all peace love and knit your own yoghurt with you girls. I’d wince and grit my teeth knowing there was no use replying.

Photo by Jahanzeb Ahsan on Unsplash

At the same time I’d be disgusted with myself for letting him away with it. I suppose that’s one good thing Mam taught us, not to let people off if they insulted or belittled you. She was well able to give as good as she got, although when we were small that made us squirm with embarrassment, the way she’d snap at anyone who tried to barge ahead of her in a queue or gave her lip in a shop.

Yes, disgust with myself, or disappointment in myself, one or the other, or both, is the nub of why I didn’t come home then, Marge. Looking back I recognise how wooden-headed I was, to the point of frustrating myself. Fear was a part of it too, or maybe all of it, overriding every other emotion at the time. Fear of seeing Him again. Fear of what he could do to me again, knowing I couldn’t breathe a word to a single soul because who would believe me, knowing no one could do a thing about it, knowing no one could save me from Him. Even thinking about him as I write this sets the panic fluttering in my chest.

I would have liked to return as someone different, braver, stronger, more assertive, more sure-footed, more self-possessed, wiser. I pictured the person I might be, felt her stir inside me like a sleeping cat, or, occasionally, fall into step with me, like a good friend. My imaginary friend. I felt I knew her, that she had been present, hovering around me ever since Mam told me about Jim. She had been waiting, waxing and waning, fading and sharpening at the edge of sight. In certain bright moments she had been a kind of company for me when I was at the Mission. Call me crazy if you like. I tried explaining the creaturely sensation to Rose. She said I was too solitary, even if I was living in a community. I needed more occupation, she said.

In the end I decided to move to Jim and Ellen’s place, for a while at least, to plan my next step. They were fine with it. At first. She got me a job chopping vegetables and washing up in the kitchen of the old ladies’ home where she worked. When I’d been there a few months she suggested I train as a care assistant. Not a bad idea except I couldn’t see myself spending my days, or nights, looking after the old dears. The fact is they frightened me a bit. I thought if I was around them all the time I’d end up becoming one of them, as if I’d have leapfrogged my whole life straight into dotty old age.

Meanwhile, I was waiting for Jim to tell me more about myself, or at least about himself and Mam and why he never came back to see me or her, or took a blind bit of notice of us. I was sure she had driven him away but anytime I raised the question he’d suddenly get busy with a job he had to do and say he’d talk to me later, only later never came. What did come was rows at night that I could hear through the floorboards of my attic room. They started when he took to going to the pub at night, saying he was playing darts, or meeting some of the lads for a quick one. In the mornings his face was redder than usual, his hands shook and he smacked his lips with thirst.

After one particularly bad argument he sobered up and went back to staying at home in the evenings, watching telly with Ellen and me, Mr. Digby stretched at his feet, all of playing happy family. Yet I couldn’t escape the oppressive weight of the deep silence in that room. The telly couldn’t mask the echo of my unanswered questions, or the chill of Ellen’s fear that Jim would one evening stand up and announce he was going down the pub for a nightcap. Maybe the tension was what drove him out finally, on the pretext that he was taking Digby for a walk. Even Digby seemed to know what was afoot and, although he liked going out, he shot Ellen a guilty look before running to the door.

I wasn’t overly surprised when Ellen asked me to leave. She suggested I go to Manchester where I could maybe find a better job or even do some kind of training course. She fixed me up in a digs run by a friend of a friend of hers. A couple of weeks after I landed there I got a letter from her:

Dear Deb

It broke my heart to say goodbye to you and when you turned and waved from the step of the bus I was about to call out and tell you to stay. I’m glad and sorry now that I bit my tongue. Glad for you and sorry for us that your stay didn’t work out the way we had hoped it would. Jim was furious with me when he discovered you were gone. It took all the strength I had to try to get him to calm down. First I had to get him to stop drinking again. I know you must have heard some of the arguments between us when he came home from the pub. Not an edifying experience for you. I hope you understand that is why I had to ask you to leave. Then I threw him out!

He was gone for a couple of days and when he returned, ill-kempt and unshaven he was hangdog and apologetic, pathetic actually. That was the first time he’d fallen off the waggon in ten years. I suppose I’d become complacent about his sobriety. I forgot the motto, one day at a time, that we have both lived by for a long time. I understand his problem because I’ve been there myself. Most of the time we manage to keep one another sober. In this case though his demons reared up and deafened him to anything I could say.

I’m not saying you were a demon, far from it, but you brought back memories that he thought he had buried. I’m not even sure what they all are. His story to me about you and your mother was sketchy, to say the least. I was afraid to probe too much for fear that he would be angry and go off the rails again. I know that I have to simply wait for him to talk, in his own good time. We’re going to our meetings again to remind ourselves how important it is to keep on making the daily commitment to ourselves to stay sober. I feel that the sharing there might help him to open up about events in the past that torment him.

He’s a good man deep down and he’s very proud of you. I did remind him that he had to be grateful to your mother and step-father for your upbringing. He couldn’t let that go without adding “she has my genes and that’s what counts”! I had to laugh at his cheek. In time to come I hope you will visit us again.

Until then I hope you’re comfortable at Hilda’s house. My friend says she runs a tight ship but is a good-hearted person. Above all, I hope that you find your way in life. You have a lot of artistic talent. I’m going to buy a frame for your drawing of Mr. Digby and hang it in the lounge. You’ve captured him to the life. The women in the kitchen at work miss you as do the old ladies in the home. They thought you were my daughter which I take as a compliment.

Good luck and please do keep in touch.

Love,

Ellen.

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