Every Single Minute (17 page)

I asked Maeve did she want something to eat but she didn’t, not even cake. I told her the silver stud in her bottom lip looked great, but that’s not what she came to hear.

When she came into the kitchen it felt as though we were going to have dinner together. Maeve sat at one end of the table and I sat at the other. It was no big deal, just a formality. We read through the instructions first and there was no need to say too much or keep looking at each other. I think we both wanted to get on with it. It was a bit embarrassing, to be honest, so unnecessary. So we just moved on as if it was no more than a form to be filled in together. Tax returns or something like that. I licked my swab. She licked her swab at the other end of the table. We had to keep things very separate, that was important to bear in mind. Because you can’t allow the colours to get mixed up. Otherwise everybody is related to one another and there is no way of proving anyone apart. So we did all that. As per the instructions. I had the green envelope and she had the pink one. There was a third blue envelope which would have been for the mother, but there was no dispute over her and no need for that extra one, Emily was not present. Then Maeve and myself put the two envelopes, the green one and the pink one, into the big envelope and we threw the other one out, the blue one. And that’s where we stood, so to speak, in doubt, unresolved.

It felt like being on one of those reality shows,
Jerry Springer
, there must be a million stories like it all over the world, I thought. This must be going on in every town in Ireland, Europe, anywhere. It felt like we were in one of those TV dramas, maybe inside an opera, even older than that, something that’s been going on in families for centuries, since the beginning of time. There was no sense in getting emotional about it, saying things that could not be revoked. I think we tried to behave quite normally, as though nothing was happening. We carried on as always, like father and daughter, not taking too much notice of each other.

Although.

There was one moment where Maeve and I made eye contact, I remember. Across the table, we looked at each other as if we were both saying what? What are we doing here? Only we didn’t say anything at all. It was nothing more than a brief look, directly in the eyes. It was filled with a million passing questions, going back and forth in a great hurry. Like how come we were sitting here in the same room together? We could be people who never met before, we could have been in different lives coming from different families and never laid eyes on each other until now. It was so ridiculous, we smiled. A quick smile, just to confirm how close we were and how many things we could remember together, so much stuff that didn’t even need to be said. But we were also examining each other, checking each other out, as they say. Because everything was up for comparison. Everything that was familiar was being questioned, like going through the family check-list, everyone does it. Ticking off. Measuring. Eyes, nose, cheekbones. The laugh, the voice, the whole person you are, the kind of jokes you make.

All those thoughts were listed off in that smile, nothing hidden. It was a moment of honesty. We were sharing something, I suppose you could say. Sharing, that’s a terrible word, completely misappropriated. Why is your child not sharing? We’re disappointed that your child has not learned to share yet like the other children, they said when Maeve was in Montessori. Today we are going to learn how to share, OK? I don’t know about those words they impose on children. It’s like the word connection, or the word included. They can be so meaningless, so unhelpful, so common to everyone and nobody. Maybe it was more of a confirmation, if you can even trust that word. Because there was something in that smile between myself and my daughter that made us both feel so included, so connected, so much like a confirmation, like we were sharing something that involved nobody else in the world, nobody else could have come to claim any part in it, we were in the same place, in the same life, in the same stretch of time together.

It felt like an attempt at clearing up our family story, like tidying up the house, turning it into a show house, no trace of anyone actually living there, ready to rent. That’s what my life suddenly looked like to me. Unoccupied. I was smiling at her, trying to make sure she understood that she was still part of the same family disorder, I suppose, that not everything was tidy, we were leaving a trace.

I wanted to say something along those lines to Maeve, something father to daughter. I mentioned the wedding, which was a mistake. I was encouraging her to go ahead with it, asking her what kind of music she was thinking of having, a DJ or a band? I suppose I was looking for practical things to say, not realizing that the less I said about the wedding the better.

Maeve looked at her phone.

I asked her did she want to stay and have a drink, would we open a bottle of wine? She raised her head up from her phone as if she was blinded by the sun. What? Again it was the silent word, what? Was this the right moment for a drink? Had I suddenly discovered something to celebrate in all this? She got up from the table and said it was time for her to go. She went around picking up everything she had brought with her, one by one in reverse order, her phone, her coat, her bag, making sure to leave nothing behind. Then we walked out the front door and went to the nearest postbox down on the main street. We posted the envelope together, you know, in each other’s presence, because that’s what you’re meant to do, to make sure nobody has tampered with the evidence in the meantime.

I put my arms around Maeve, and, of course, she returned the embrace. I knew it was important not to make it look like we were saying goodbye. She was not going away anywhere, she was not leaving, only going home, back to her place. And she didn’t want me standing in the street watching her walking away as if she would never be seen again, the way I used to do when she was going to school. Waiting for her when she came out of school again as if I hadn’t moved from the spot. I knew not to do that. Be cool about this, she said to me. Only she didn’t say that. I just heard myself saying it for her.

I spoke to Maeve on the phone as soon as the result came back and she was not saying very much, neither of us were. We’re not related, Maeve and me. She still kept calling me Dad. I suppose it takes time to get out of the habit of saying that. Dad, she said, are you still there? Dad? Because I was silent, as if I had turned off the phone. I had no idea what to say to her. It was all a bit of a transition for me. I felt myself sweeping back over everything as if my life had been a mistake. My memory was not to be trusted. It was all being questioned. It felt like having nothing to hold on to, nothing to go by.

You never suspected? Úna asked me.

Well, yes, I kind of knew. You know and you don’t know, at the same time. I didn’t want to know, I suppose. And now that I know, I’m trying to tell myself it doesn’t matter. Who cares who the father is, I’m fine with all that. It has no substance, it’s only proof. I don’t have to believe the proof. It was knowing and not knowing, that was the problem. I wanted to be the owner of my life with my daughter in it. I should never have started following Emily with questions she could not answer. I was trying to find out something I should not have been hoping to find out, that’s all.

You’re still her father, Liam. She’s still your daughter.

No question, I said.

Of course she’s my daughter. I brought her up. It was me who brought her out to Tallaght Hospital when she was only four to get a blood test, just a precaution really, we thought she was too small for her age. I was afraid she might have stopped growing. I remember telling Maeve this long story to keep her distracted while the nurse was getting the needle ready, all about a stormy night with lots of big words like ferocious winds and mountainous waves. It was me who made sure nothing was wrong with her, only that she was not very tall, and her height was always something she could compensate for, she’ll look great in a pair of high heels, so the consultant said at the time. It was me who helped her with her homework, I explained how fermentation works, the solar system. I made her sandwiches for school, that sort of thing. All the journeys we went on together, the large stones we brought back from Kerry with us in the car, I know that’s not very ecological now. Big oval stones, glossy in the rain. The eggs of a dinosaur, so we believed and maybe she still believes that, I hope so. All the photographs I have of her sitting on the stones. All the stories we made up about dinosaurs hatching and how we had to bring them back to the beach in Ventry where they came from, because that’s where the dinosaurs live.

This is the proof that I am her father, as far as I’m concerned. The stories. The photographs. The school reports. All those times she came back from being away on holiday with her mother, visiting Emily’s parents in Canada, how much she had grown in three weeks, all the things I had to catch up with, the whole trip, from what the flight attendant said to her to what she saw along the straight roads of Ontario, the cornfields like forests where they said children sometimes get lost and are not found again until the corn is harvested.

I’ve kept all the things that made her afraid and all the things that made her laugh. I still have the drawing she made of a castle with three entrances, one where you climb up a ladder, another one where you climb up by this long plait of hair, and also across a bridge straight through the main door. I have everything. I’ve even kept her mispronunciations, the family words, I suppose you call them, like what in earth, instead of what on earth. Like coldy and warmy, instead of cold and warm.

That’s the only proof, I swear.

What else is there to be said? Apart from the fact that this was my story, the story I told to Úna in Berlin, that’s who I am now. I am the story of doubt and never being sure and always having to prove that I am the only father that matters. I am the story of a man who loves his daughter even more because of all this doubt, the story of a man who would not exist without the story of his daughter.

So yes, absolutely I’m still her father, one hundred percent, just not biologically.

Ah Liam, Úna says.

She begins to take all her things off the table, throwing them back into the see-through bag in no particular order. As if they don’t matter very much now and all the care she took in placing them on the table was for nothing. All on top of each other, including the Pergamon brochure. The medication was the last to go in and she rattled the Xanax in the air, offering me more. What harm? I take another one, just to be myself again.

Manfred is bringing her back down in the hydraulic lift. She’s waving at me and holding her see-through bag against her chest with the other arm. He helps her out of the lift and straight into the wheelchair, which he’s already left at the bottom of the steps. The car is waiting with the sliding door open, but instead of getting back in, she decides to go for a walk. She wants to see a bit of the area, on foot, so to speak. She takes my hand and gets Manfred to push the wheelchair. We walk side by side, not saying anything, just holding hands. We walk around the island of museums, past other museums we could have gone into if only we had more time. We stop for a while on a bridge. It’s still warm enough out and she has her cap on. I want to take a photograph, but she tells Manfred to take it instead, with myself and Úna together.

She won’t let go of my hand in the photograph either. We’re like a couple. She’s smiling and I’m smiling.

I think she’s trying to distract me from myself, so she starts asking Manfred questions. Where did they get married? How did he meet his wife? And what time of the year did they get married? Manfred answers all the questions in reverse order. He says he got married in May, around this time of the year. He met Olga at a cookery course. They got married here in Berlin. It was a funny time for us, Manfred says, a big wedding with a great mixture of people from Turkey and Poland and Germany.

He says the Turkish side of the family were the noisiest. You cannot imagine, he says. His cousins got the entire fleet of cars out for the day, everybody blazing their horns, he says. Blazing, is this correct?

Blaring, she says.

Yes, blaring, he says. Blaring. Blaring. We do this in Berlin, like in Turkey. We drive through the streets to let everybody know that somebody is getting married.

I know what you’re saying, she says. It puts people in a great mood. You want to catch a glimpse of the bride’s face passing by.

Manfred tells us that his cousins stopped the whole fleet of cars on Potsdamer Platz. Crazy, he says. In the middle of the junction. Many beautiful cars, Mercedes, Lexus, BMW, mostly black, he says, decorated with ribbons. And Turkish flags. Like Potsdamer Platz was deep in Turkey, a village in Antalya, can you imagine? The men and women got out and danced, he says. Me and Olga had to get out and join them, in the street. The traffic was held up for five minutes, more. Very crazy.

Manfred shows us some pictures on his phone.

And the police didn’t interfere, Úna says.

By the time the police come, he says, everyone is gone. I am a driver myself, he says. I have seen it many times. You see a wedding and you say, OK, relax, this will take time. If you are in a hurry, please take a different route.

We look at the pictures of Manfred and his bride Olga dancing in the street with the Sony Centre in the background. The car doors are left open behind them. Ribbons and brightly coloured scarves tied to the wing mirrors. The wedding guests dancing in a circle, holding hands. A dancing human chain, if you like. Women in long dresses. Big men linking up with their little fingers, so it seems to me.

Can you imagine, Manfred says. On Potsdamer Platz. Blazing horns everywhere, very crazy. It was so funny for us, he says. Dancing with the music from the car. People were standing on the street watching. Very crazy. Very crazy. The men were whistling, he says. And some of the women were screaming. No. Shouting. Down at the back of the throat.