David hears knocking and for a lovely second it is part of his dream, and then it is gone and he is awake. He sits up, looking at his mother half in, half out of the room.
‘I left you for as long as I could, come on down, people will be arriving soon.’
The half of her disappears and the door closes with a little soft sound, like a slipper on tiles. David picks at his eyes, trying to remember the dream.
He gets out of bed, puts on his pants, opens the curtains. It is Christmas Day.
It seems silly, celebrating. He wonders who’ll be coming, how they’ll fit into the small, awkward spaces the house creates; the awkward, uncomfortable spaces that they themselves create.
Katie probably woke up early and ran to the tree. It’s her last year believing, David’s mother said, don’t you go spoiling it. It is already ruined; his mother just hasn’t realized it yet.
Downstairs, he can already hear The Pogues playing and, when he opens the door to the sitting room, his mother is on the sofa with Katie and Cian, their feet hidden by ripped wrapping paper, smiles on their faces. David can’t understand it.
‘Come on over, Santa’s been.’ ‘Just gonna get something to eat.’
He opens the cupboard and takes down the cheap, fake Coco Pops. Even the name irritates him — Choco Rice.
He sits at the counter with his back to his family and fills a bowl. He can feel movement behind him but hunches over and scoops the spoon to his mouth. Cian sits next to him. David feels a hand resting on his shoulder and is uncomfortable.
‘I know things are fucked man, but like, can you not just try? For Katie’s sake. For mum as well, she’s wrecked.’
David crunches on more cereal, nodding. He looks at Cian’s face slouched in the palm of his hand. David hopes to grow into his looks, that one day he will resemble Cian, a fuller mouth, a dark beard.
‘You’re not the only one feeling like shit,’ Cian whispers as he walks away.
David slurps the remaining milk. Somebody gets up and skips back a song on the CD player and The Pogues are again filling that new silence the house creates.
David walks over and sits next to Katie. He puts an arm around her, and she squeezes him. She shuffles free from his grip, her tiny feet in red Santa tights skip to the Christmas tree.
She bends down and picks up a present, turning to David, smirking and biting her lower lip. It is as if she floats back to him.
‘Open it, come on.’ ‘You help me.’ Her hand takes one edge of the wrapping paper, his the other, and they pull in opposing directions, revealing the new boxset of Buffy.
‘Can I watch it with you?’ ‘You cannot!’ His mother standing over him, kissing him on the head.
‘Merry Christmas my handsome man.’ ‘Merry Christmas, Mum.’
His mother walks over to the kitchen. He can see the sadness in her back. In the way her feet are heavy, the slight slide of the slippers along the tiles.
There is a breath of time in between each of her movements – the putting the wrapper in the bin, the opening of a cupboard, the vacant stare on her face lit up by the fluorescent fridge light.
‘Here, hold this,’ he gives the boxset to Katie and whispers, ‘Course you can watch it with me!’
He walks quietly to his mother; afraid any sudden movement might startle her. She turns and hugs him tightly.
He can smell countless memories from her skin and wants to cry and doesn’t want to cry in equal measure.
‘Let’s just get through today,’ she says, holding him by the shoulder. Her hand cups his face.
‘Do they know when the body will be back?’
‘Soon, it’s just there is paperwork, and loads of boring stuff you don’t need to worry about.’
‘Does he just go in with the suitcases like?’
‘Jesus, David.’ ‘What? Does he?’
‘I think so but it’s not something you should be worrying about.’
‘I’m just going to shower.’
‘Ok, don’t be long, they’ll be arriving soon enough.’
‘There’s not even enough space in this shithole for us, not alone the rest of them.’
He cannot curtail the anger. It slithers out of him, pooling at his feet as he walks away. He just about stops himself from slamming the door.
Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our last.
They’ll all be over, trying to find words to fit the size of their sadness. He is angry at his aunt, at his friends, and especially his cousins.
He envies their lovely, detached grief that can be turned on and off. Envies the distance, the staring – coming over to see the poor old souls, and then talking about it afterwards in the car, or over coffee.
Did you see the dark circles under her eyes, they’ll say, and David, he was always trouble, God knows what will happen him now.
In his room, he sits at the keyboard. His fingers caress the blacks, the whites, slowly pushing down but not enough to create sound.
He wants to speak aloud his language of flats and minors, for them to be understood. He starts playing the melody that has lived in his head for days now.
A low, inky bass rhythm from his left hand; a splaying of flat, slow notes from his right. A short murky return that repeats, with the slightest change each time – the real sound of grief.
He closes his eyes, and that stillness comes, a capacious opening he wants to share with the world.
If this were the only language we knew, he thinks, but the doorbell – a sharp, hoax of a sound – rings through the house.
Again, he is flesh and limbs and bones, and a gunky taste clogs the back of his tongue.
He walks back downstairs and into the living room and his aunt Carol is there. A chubbier version of his mother.
His aunt is always hugging for too long and speaking loudly so everyone knows she is there.
She is standing by the flimsy, pathetic Christmas tree talking to Cian.
When she sees David, she waddles to him and hugs him. She is wearing too much perfume and her make-up leaves an orangey print on David’s favourite T-shirt.
‘Ya poor crater, how are you holding up?’ She squeezes his arm.
‘Grand yeah. Fine like.’ David forces a jammy smile and walks over to his cousin, Catriona, who is a year older but goes to a private school in town.
She’s wearing bootcut jeans with little stuck-on diamonds at the curve of the pockets and a tight green T-shirt.
‘Sorry about Mam, she’s painful.’
‘It’s grand. They’re all the same.’
‘You doing ok?’ ‘Not really, but like, it’s grand.’ ‘Any news on the funeral?’ They have naturally huddled into the utility room.
‘Nothing. Have to wait for the body to come back.’ ‘Was it in Brazil he was found?’ ‘Yeah, so weird.’
‘I heard it was Venezuela … Thailand … Cambodia! This fucking village and the rumours.’
David laughs a little and imagines all the voices talking about him and his family. It feels oddly satisfying.
‘Come on,’ Catriona says, pulling him by the arm, ‘let’s get a drink.’
He follows her out and she takes a glass of the prosecco, and he goes to the fridge and gets a bottle of beer.
Back at the counter, he opens the bottle and, as he is about to take the first swig, his mother’s hand pulls it from him.
‘I don’t think so!’ ‘Seriously, Mum, are you actually serious?’
His aunt has come over. He is about to turn on her when she puts her hand on the bottle and gives it back to him.
‘It’s only the one, Angie, leave him off.’ David takes it before she has a chance to argue. He sits down on the sofa next to Cian.
‘Big man with your beer!’
‘Oh, fuck off.’ ‘I’m joking man, chill.’ Cian lifts his bottle of beer clinking it against David’s.
‘To Dad, the fucker that he was.’ ‘To Dad,’ David whispers, feeling that familiar swollen knot at his throat. The beer has to fight its way down.
‘Has Granddad arrived yet?’ ‘Haven’t seen him. Right, another.’ Cian gets up and shakes the empty bottle and walks over to the kitchen. David sits with his beer.
Christmas songs sour the room. Neighbours walk past their house in groups of hats and scarves. Kids skip. He wonders if his dad is in a coffin yet.
If his body will have any remnants of him at all when it finally lands in Cork. David knows by the stretched silences and unfinished conversations what happened.
He just doesn’t know how. Drinking himself into a stupor and then a lash of prescription drugs? A rope? Stones in pockets, and a slow walk to the sea?
Dave notices his grandfather come in the side door, his eyes meet David’s, his head motions towards the door.
He stands up, leaving his bottle on the ground and walks over to the side door. They hug a little awkwardly.
‘How are you doing my boy?’ ‘Not bad, could do without this like.’
‘Yes, well. Life goes on. Fancy a stroll?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, let me just get my coat.’
‘Good man. I’ll wait outside.’ ‘Don’t you wanna see Mum or anything?’ ‘Time enough for all that.’
David watches his grandfather walk back out the side door – he looks like a man who has turned up at the wrong place at the wrong time.
David runs upstairs, throws on a jacket and grabs a hat. He can feel the photo in the jacket pocket.
Downstairs, he keeps his head down and hears his name being called but walks out, leaving the rising voices and the dwindling music behind.
He walks next to his grandfather, who links his arm, and they stroll past the council houses and down onto the main road in silence. Only as they near the crossroads and go towards the fort does his grandfather speak.
‘Come on, we’ll get up there and sit on the wall. See if there are any cruise ships heading off.’ They sit down.
There is a little shelter from the fort. David remembers his head tucked in tight under his father’s arm.
How his heart beat out that mad melody, the very same as his own. He remembers thinking, This is important, his heart beats the same as mine.
‘How are you holding up?’ His grandfather has shifted so he’s almost facing David. His skin is tight, eyes sunken in his head.
‘Not great actually. Like, nobody is really talking, you know.’ ‘I suppose nobody knows what to say.’
David takes out the photo from his jacket pocket. In it, he is eleven, maybe twelve, and his dad’s arm is around his neck, pulling him in playfully.
They are both laughing. David has no memory of it. He hands over the photo.
‘Do you know when this was taken, or like, where we were?’ His grandfather’s thumb rubs the photo quickly, as if fixing his son’s hair.
‘He had the best laugh, your dad. Even as a boy.’ ‘Yeah. I’d hear it at the school gates. He was always talking to someone.’
‘He was a good man. Deep down. Just troubled … but he was good. I hope you know that. And he loved you something fierce.’ ‘I know. It’s just so weird.’ His grandfather hands back the photo.
‘No idea where it was taken, sorry. Lovely picture, though. Remember him like that.’
David adds this day, this moment, to all the other things that will never be answered.
‘I wanted to ask you, and say no now if it’s too much, but I thought you might want to play something at the funeral. You’re so talented.’
‘I hadn’t thought about it. I could. I have something that I’ve been working on. But I don’t want people to see me.’
‘Oh, you’ll be upstairs. Have you forgotten what the church looks like?’
His grandfather laughs a little. The wind picks up. It whines a little whistle. David plays with the sounds in his mind, extending them out to a refrain.
There are no cruise ships, no boats out on the sea, just the rough waves ceasing and becoming, over and over, the spume like fallen clouds.
David thinks, This is the time: just ask him. He’ll tell you. But he cannot find the words, is unsure the words even exist. Maybe they are learnt, much later.
Maybe when he himself is a father, he will have the syntax, the intonation, the order of it all to ask the question, but not now.
He thinks of his own future as a leggy arachnid thing with half a heartbeat, always in the shadows, always scuttering out of sight.
‘How is everything else at home?’ ‘Home, that’s not home.’
‘I know, it’s not ideal. I wish there was more I could do.’ ‘It’s not your fault. It’s his, really. Pissing away all our money. I hate him for that like. How could he do that to us?’
‘I feel like I didn’t know him at all.’ ‘Of course you did. And don’t hate him, he acted the only way he knew how. The main thing is he loved ye all. You especially. He never stopped talking about you, the talent you have. Said you were going to blow everyone away, wide open, he said.’
David can feel his eyes sting. That horrible, laboured stutter of breath going into him. He wipes at his face with his sleeve and gets up from the wall.
He walks closer to the cliff’s edge and spits over. Then he screams. As loud as he can for as long as he can and the wind takes it, swings and stretches it across the sky.
They walk back together talking about ordinary things because the world is still ordinary, he thinks, cars still pass by and presents are opened and too much gravy is spilled onto a plate, and someone somewhere has forgotten the stuffing.
And something he never thought about before, something nobody in this village has ever even contemplated is now all he can picture.
Dead bodies are stowed away just like suitcases. Goods being sent, being returned. Leftovers of wherever it is they come from; whatever it is they have done.
At the door, Crosby croons… where the love light gleams, I’ll be home for Christmas. David opens the door, and his mother is in the hall.
Her hair has fallen loose and strands are stuck to the sweat at her temple. One hand holds a glass of prosecco, the other jackets, which she loops over the bannister.
‘I was wondering where ye had ran off to.’ She moves to them and hugs his grandfather, then releases him and squeezes his shoulder with her free hand.
‘It’s good to see you.’ ‘You too, Angie. Merry Christmas. I have presents in the car, I’ll bring them in.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly. Go in there and get yourself a glass of something.’
His grandfather moves past them and opens the door to the sitting room – the noise escapes, voices, laughter, a general whoosh of life. And then it closes, and all the sound is muffled.
His mother sits on the bottom stairs and taps the empty space next to her. David sits down. She rests her head on his shoulder and places a hand on his thigh.
‘I have another present for you upstairs, it’s under my bed. It’s something from your dad.’ ‘What? Like he sent it?’ ‘No, they belonged to him. He always said how he wanted you to have them. Open it in your own time, no rush.’
‘Ok, thanks.’ ‘One other thing.’ ‘What now?’ She laughs and pushes his leg away.
‘You wouldn’t ever bring down the keyboard, liven the place up a bit?’ ‘I will yeah, if I can have a few beers.’ She stands and pulls him up by the arm.
‘Just don’t let me see you.’ ‘Grand so.’ He walks up the stairs.
In his mother’s room, he lies on the ground and reaches under the bed. He pulls out a box, unwrapped. It is Nike and probably once held his father’s new shoes.
It has weight to it. In his room, he sits with it, playing with the edges of the lid, opening them slightly to close them again.
Hearing the cardboard grain against itself. Noises travel from downstairs, from outside. It is everywhere – life.
Nothing can be contained, not really. It all has a way of escaping, of stretching beyond the limits of itself and spilling over. Days themselves. Air. It’s impossible to be free of it.
He puts it under his bed, leaving whatever it is guarded for now.
He takes the keyboard in both hands and swings it under one arm, thinking of the melody he will set free to the world.
