Bright Burning Things(39)

A young guy about eighteen, a new recruit on work duty as a waiter, approaches our table.

‘What you having?’ he says to me.

‘Peppermint tea. Thanks.’

The boy sucks in his lips. ‘Doubt they have anything like that in here.’

‘They do, actually.’

‘Right,’ he says as he walks away, looking as if he’d like to rip someone’s windpipe out.

David smiles at me, conspiratorially, I think.

The boy returns with my tea, which he throws down on the table, liquid sploshing over the sides. David jumps, his thighs scalded through the soft cotton of his chinos.

The boy’s hands form into automatic fists, every muscle and sinew in his body straining.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say, trying to catch his eye. ‘Can happen to any of us.’

David looks furious. He goes to the bathroom.

‘Are you new here?’

The boy’s mouth is a hard line.

‘This place is a joke.’

I don’t contradict him.

‘Would you like me to show you around later? Have you met the kittens?’

‘Has no one drowned them yet?’

It’s only bravado, he’s still a boy, and yet I sense an undercurrent of hurt that needs to hurt in return. I watch him walk away, his prowling back.

David returns.

‘You ok?’

‘Bit scalded, actually, but I’ll live!’

‘I don’t think he meant it.’

David looks at the boy, studying him like he’s a rare exhibit in a zoo.

I suddenly want that gaze on me.

‘Tommy came to see me last Sunday,’ I say, in a spurt.

‘Did he? That’s great. How did it go?’

‘Difficult, and lovely.’ I allow myself to relive the lovely. The moment with the leaf, the kissing it, the final hug at the end.

David sits up straighter in his chair. Neither of us have touched our drinks.

‘Did your father place him in care?’

I can sense my joy as an external thing – a pink balloon with ‘LOVELY’ scrawled on it – floating loose from my grip. I have to stop myself climbing on the table to draw it back down.

‘It can be a difficult process to get a child back once they’re in the system.’

He piles a teaspoon with sugar, then tips it back in the bowl. He lifts the cup to his lips, then stops short of sipping, puts the cup carefully back into its saucer.

‘Are you paid to say stuff like that?’

Above my head is another sort of balloon. I sit back in my chair, slumped and heavy. No point in engaging with any of that.

He picks up a napkin and folds and unfolds and folds.

‘Sonya, I only wish you all the best with everything, I hope you know that.’ He stands up, pushes his chair away from the table.

And before I have time to think of something to say, he’s gone.


The sight of a back again. I think of all the times when my father turned away. The turning away when my mother died and I was only eight; when I was a hormonal, grieving teenager, crying my heart out over my first lost love; when I was off to London to pursue my dreams; and then, back in Dublin, when I was most likely mired in post-natal depression. Has the sight of my father’s back set up some kind of psychic imprint? Every man I’ve tried to love since has turned away too.

The boy is standing at the counter, staring straight at me, smirking, before he too turns his back. I squeeze my eyes shut. Behind my lids a kaleidoscope of various shades and patterns of darkness play out. The creatures stir and rouse themselves, a kinetic force of nature, a flock programmed to fly thousands of miles, even in inclement weather, even if they might be flying to their death. My eyes open just as my mouth does. This shouldn’t happen, not while I’m sober, and not in front of this angry, wretched boy. It’s all I can do to witness the stream of abuse I hurl at the world, the boy, who turns and observes me in a detached manner, as if he’s watching a play, and maybe he is, and I’m entirely taken over by the character I’m playing.





23


Sometime after my white-out (I’ve no idea how much time has passed), I find myself sitting in front of Sister Anne in her office, sipping tea heaped with sugar. The nun is playing with her hands, seemingly fascinated by them. ‘How do you feel now, Sonya?’

I look out the window at the squiggles of rain that hit the glass, little translucent worms, and think of Simon the torturer, my childhood neighbour who used to dangle earthworms in front of my face until I’d cry – for the poor worm. I draw my attention back to the room. Is Sister Anne scared of me? The way she’s sitting, tensed, at the edge of her seat, ready to bolt, suggests she is.

‘We have seen this kind of behaviour before. Usually in men with violent tendencies. When they can’t use their fists, their tongues will have to do.’

‘I have never hit anyone.’ I feel my colour rising, my hand starting to itch.

‘Have you ever lost control like that around Tommy?’

‘No, no, never with Tommy.’

‘How can you be so sure? You’re not in control of yourself when rage takes over, or when you’re under the influence of alcohol, surely?’

‘Sister, it’s because I’m away from my boy that I feel this angry. It’s like part of me has been cut away.’