Freckles(21)

He gets out of the car and opens the boot for my luggage but I tell him I’d prefer to keep it with me and he slams it closed and gets back into the car. I take a deep breath and briefly wonder if I have any other options, but I know I don’t, and avoiding this could make things even worse, so I sit inside, in the back, behind the passenger seat, which feels odd as he and I would always sit side by side.

I hope you drive faster than your dad, I joke. We all know his dad crawls, we both laughed about it, it drove Jamie insane. But maybe I forget to add warmth to my voice and he doesn’t realise it was supposed to be playful. Or he does and he doesn’t want to pretend everything’s okay when it’s not, because he looks at me in the mirror and says, I hope you’re not a perv like your dad.

He locks the door, turns the radio up loud and drives.

Faster than his dad.





Eleven


Your dad is a perv.

I’d heard it before. When I was in secondary school. I must have been twelve years old.

She came out with it one day, Katie Sullivan, after I’d tackled her in camogie training and then went on to score. She’d always been a bad sport, hot-tempered and vicious. Mostly it came out in kicks, scratches, pulls and even a bite. Not me. Opposing teams usually. I wasn’t expecting her to say it. I laughed at first. It seemed like such an odd, random insult to choose and her anger was funny. Flared nostrils, red face, a vein down the centre of her forehead, cartoon character angry. She had issues. This is the same girl who wrote hate mail to her mam for cheating on her dad. I heard a rumour she’d flirted dangerously with her mam’s new boyfriend and then accused him of coming on to her. She was twisted. Made of anger.

My image of a pervert didn’t match up to my Pops. Some dirty-haired old greaseball in a soiled trench coat flashing people in parks. That’s what made the accusation so funny. But nobody else laughed. I remember that. That was almost worse. They didn’t know that she was just making it up to embarrass me, to hurt me in the same way as me tackling her, and winning, had made her feel.

It’s true, she’d shouted as she was being taken off the court by Sister Lettuce. Just ask Carmencita. I’d laughed again, nervously this time. But the name shut me up. Stunned me. Made my body shake on the inside. Because that was my mam’s name and no one but me, Pops, Aunt Pauline, Uncle Mossie and my two cousins, knew about Carmencita. I thought maybe she’d read the name in one of my notebooks where I’d doodled it once or twice, but it seemed unlikely that, even if she had, she’d be able to link the name with my mam.

After the shock of what she’d said died down I wanted to ask her more, but she’d received such severe punishment for what she said she was afraid to even look at me. She was suspended from the camogie team for the rest of the season, which was a punishment for the whole school because she was our star player. I got the blame then, from everyone on the team. The girls used to crowd around me and tell me to forgive Katie. Convince me that she hadn’t hurt my feelings at all. As if I had any control or power over her punishment.

Of course I assumed what she’d said wasn’t true, why would I actually believe it, but I did want to know what she knew and how. Katie travelled on the same train as me to Limerick on Friday evenings, where Pops met me. When she was alone one day I built up the courage to sit beside her on the carriage and ask her, Why did you say that about my Pops.

Jamie Peter, JP, flies along the country roads as fast as he can through Saturday-morning traffic with his music blaring. I feel a little sick from all the jerking and try to lower my window but he has it locked and I can’t bring myself to break the tense silence even though I can’t breathe and need air. He pulls into a service station and gets out without a word. The music finally stops. I let out a slow breath. I use the opportunity to buy a few things for Pops, like bread, milk, bacon, porridge, juice, pears, the basics he never seems to have. I don’t know what he survives on. Ham, tomatoes and cartons of vegetable soup.

Jamie is behind me as I’m paying and I feel his eyes boring into me. There’s an awkward moment, another one, when I’ve finished paying and I don’t know whether to wait for him in the shop or not. I wait but it’s more of a linger at the paperback stand. He pays and leaves and I follow him, wishing I hadn’t bothered waiting at all. He doesn’t turn the radio back on when we get back in the car and I wonder if he’s going to say something but we sit in silence. I zone him out, trying to pretend he’s just another taxi driver, lower the window, which is now unlocked, close my eyes and breathe in the air. Almost home.

When I open my eyes he’s watching me in the rear-view mirror. Caught, he has no choice but to speak.

So how’s the Big Smoke, he asks. Busy, I suppose.

There’s an air of bitterness to his tone. Sometimes there’s a feeling with people left behind that others have departed for something greater. That we must be looking down our noses at everyone and everything when we return. An inferiority complex which doesn’t sit well because the island is far superior to Dublin and any city in the world. If he could see where I live now, above a garage in a suburb I don’t think it would quite match up to the ideas he may have of me single-handedly managing Dublin city traffic. I’m not sure if I want him to know the truth.

Yeah. It’s okay, I tell him, eventually deciding that okay is neither too braggy or too whingey. Is this your new job or are you just filling in.