The Story of Before (18 page)

‘I think I’ll go home now,’ Shayne said, squeaking his chair over the lino as he stood up.

‘Mick and I were talking,’ Mam said, folding a pair of Dad’s underpants. ‘And if you want to stay here for tonight, that’d be all right.’

If she’d said the world was ending we’d hardly have been more shocked.

‘Here?’ Mel asked. ‘Why? Where’ll he sleep?’

‘I just don’t think we could let you go home to that empty house and you after getting sick and all,’ Mam continued. ‘You can sleep in Mel’s room. Mick’ll
bring in the fold-out bed for you.’

Sandra’s mouth fell open and her ice cream dripped off her spoon. None of us had ever had a friend to sleep the night. And the fact that Shayne Lawless was the first was almost too much
for her to take in. Mel squelched his jelly through his teeth and let it dribble out the sides of his mouth. Shayne turned away. If anything was going make him vomit again, it was that.

‘Is that all right, Shayne?’ Mam asked. He nodded. ‘Now, finish up and go get yourselves ready. You heard what your father said.’ She handed Shayne a pair of Mel’s
pyjamas from the pile. ‘Take these. They’re not ironed but they’ll do you for tonight.’

It was far too early to be going to bed on a Friday night and really embarrassing in front of Shayne. But he was too ill to complain and even seemed relieved to be heading upstairs. Dad came up
and pulled the fold-out bed from the hot press, dragging it across the landing into Mel’s room with a lot of huffing and puffing.

Sandra and I sat on her bed. She’d spread two nightdresses out on the eiderdown. ‘Which one do you think I should wear?’ she asked me.

‘Oh, definitely the lilac one,’ I said, not caring in the slightest.

‘Why?’

‘It’s Shayne’s favourite colour.’

‘Really?’ she asked, her face all serious. ‘How do you know?’

‘He told me. “Ruth,” he said, “I do so love a girl in lilac. Nothing gladdens my heart more than to see a young maiden in—”’

I was stopped short by a pillow in the face.

‘Shut up!’ she said. ‘I hate you. And you know what? You sound just like David O’Dea.’

‘I do not!’ I said, even though I’d actually felt like him when I was saying it.

‘And it’s all your fault we have to go to bed this early. You had to blab, didn’t you?’

‘I was only telling the truth. Someone had to. And thanks for pretending you knew nothing about it, by the way.’

‘Yeah, well, I don’t know if he fell on purpose, do I? None of us do. We weren’t there, were we?’

‘Come on, you know right well what David’s like. And I had to do something to make his mam and dad see. They think he’s some kind of saint. You know they do! And
anyway—’

‘Shut up, Ruth. I’m sick of hearing about it. Just leave it.’ She sat down at the dressing table then turned sharply, her hair swishing round and whipping her face. ‘And
get off my bed.’

She started to brush her hair with long, forceful strokes, something she never usually did before going to bed. Then she sprayed a cloud of 4711 all over her neck. It was obvious she was hoping
to go in and talk to Shayne. But Mam came in to say goodnight and told us she’d left a basin in Mel’s room in case Shayne got sick again and under no circumstances were either of us to
go near him. And Dad peeped his head round the door to say more or less the same thing. Mam asked him did he think Shayne had thrown up because he was more used to the muck Liz Lawless dished up
than the proper meal he’d had with us. She said you’d only have to look at Liz Lawless to know she used Smash instead of real mashed potato, and frozen peas and fish fingers instead of
fresh veg from Pat the vegetable man and nice fillets of plaice from Boylan’s. Dad said not to be ridiculous, that she’d no way of knowing what Shayne ate at home and he was sure
he’d seen Liz making mash when he was round painting her kitchen. They started to go downstairs and I heard Mam saying that if he did, it must’ve been all for show because you
couldn’t be peeling potatoes every day and have nails like hers. Sandra hopped into bed and flicked through her latest copy of
Jackie
for a few minutes before sighing deeply and
flinging it onto the floor. She was asleep in minutes.

I’d decided I wouldn’t say anything about David being adopted. At least not yet. It was something I wasn’t supposed to know and I felt I’d said too much that evening
already. But as my mind wandered through all sorts of thoughts – what we were missing on telly, or the way I couldn’t get the taste of banana ice cream out of my mouth even though
I’d brushed my teeth – the word ‘Adopted!’ kept appearing in my head in a starburst shape, like ‘Pow!’ or ‘Bam!’ or ‘Ka-Boom!’ in a
comic.

Adopted. The word kind of changed the way I thought about David. He might’ve been someone completely different if he hadn’t been given to Mona and Eamon. Or maybe he’d have
been exactly the same. Who knew how things would turn out if even the tiniest thing about our lives was changed? If I’d been given away when I was born, would I be me, I wondered? The me I
knew. Or would I be another person altogether?

I tried to think about David as a tiny boy like Kev, asleep in a strange cot in a strange room, the very first night the O’Deas brought him home. Where was his real mam? And his real dad?
Did he have real brothers and sisters who would’ve taken care of him if he hadn’t been given away, the way we took care of Kev? And how did he feel when Tina and Linda came along?
Caught forever between the solid pairings of his parents on one side, and his twin sisters on the other. A sort of stranger in his own family. A bit like me.

Shayne appeared to have made a complete recovery the next morning and was well able for the toast and boiled egg Mam made him for his breakfast. He sat at the table, stuffing
his mouth and wiping his fingers on the front of his T-shirt. While he’d been asleep, Mam had taken his jeans from Mel’s room and sewed patches over the rips and holes, and although
he’d have to have been blind not to notice, he didn’t say thanks or mention anything about them at all. Mam wouldn’t come right out and ask him to stay longer, but she said a few
things like: ‘I hope you’ll be all right on your own’ and ‘You know where we are if you need us’. And when she announced we were having sausages and mash for dinner
and apple crumble for dessert, she searched his face for a reaction but there was none.

We didn’t see much of him the rest of the week. Dad said he saw him in Mealy’s later that day, buying a packet of Tuc crackers and a Choc Ice, and that Shayne ignored him when he
asked how he was. He did much the same to me one evening when I saw him cycling back from the village with a bag of chips and a bottle of Cidona under one arm. It was hard to tell if he was
avoiding us, embarrassed by the whole vomiting thing and wearing Mel’s pyjamas, or if he was, as I suspected, simply making the most of having the whole house all to himself. I pictured him
stretched out on the brown couch in their sitting room, eating Rice Krispies straight from the box and guzzling Liz’s whiskey, watching horror films late into the night when we were all fast
asleep. Mel asked to go down to his house a couple of times but Mam said ‘under no circumstances’ and if she caught any of us sneaking down while Liz was away, we wouldn’t be let
out for the rest of the summer holidays.

It didn’t take long before the whole estate knew what had happened in the O’Deas’. Once Geraldine and Nora found out, it may as well have been on the
Nine O’Clock
News
. Mam gave out to Sandra for relaying everything to Tracey but Dad said not to be too hard on her, that Mona O’Dea would’ve made sure she let everyone know anyway. He had to
tell Mam how he’d let a roar at the neighbours. She was definitely not pleased but said she understood – to a certain degree – even though the whole thing had nothing to do with
us. It was all Liz Lawless’s fault, she said. If she hadn’t gone and left Shayne on his own, Dad wouldn’t have been the one bringing him over to the O’Deas’ in the
first place.

Despite David’s predictions, Liz’s plane made it back safely and when I saw Shayne cycling around the green clicking a pair of castanets and wearing a huge orange sombrero on his
head, I knew she was home.

It must’ve been about two days later when I stopped him at the edge of the green on my way back from Mealy’s and asked him if she’d had a good time. He said he didn’t
know; she’d gone to bed as soon as she came back and hadn’t been up since. Uncle Vic had only dropped her off, he said, then had to go away ‘on business’.

‘Have you seen much of David?’ I asked him.

‘O’Dea? Nah. Not much. Keepin’ clear of his ma now, amn’t I?’

‘I wonder did she get her rug cleaned?’ I said and he sort of smiled.

I realized I must’ve grown a lot over the summer – my eyes were almost level with his. I was able to look straight into them now, and as I did, it was like they gave something to me.
It seeped down into my body, deep and dark and endless, mixing with my insides, with my heart and blood and bones.

There was something about Shayne that would stay with me always. I could tell.

‘I . . . I have to go and check on me ma,’ he said, and in one swift move he was up on the saddle, pedalling fast towards his house. I followed after him, my legs not feeling like my
own as I ran. My head tingled with sparks and flashes, with waves of hot and cold. He looked back when he reached his gate and I pictured myself as he did, racing down the road, my cheeks pink and
my hair all over my face. The evening sun flashed between my eyelashes, golden and grainy. It was late August now; summer was nearly over. Soon we’d be back into the ordered, daily routine of
school and homework and early bedtime. I still had a year to go in Kilgessin National, but Sandra, Mel and Shayne were heading off to Grangemount. Everything was changing. I was being left
behind.

I got to his gate, breathless, and leaned my back against the pillar. He stood in front of me, blocking out the sun, took a length of Wrigley’s from his pocket and bent it into his mouth.
My heart still raced and my legs shook. Then he reached into his pocket again and handed me a piece. I unwrapped it slowly and folded it into my mouth. It zinged against my tongue as my teeth
worked it into a soft ball.

‘Ye can come in if ye want,’ he said, shouldering open the side passage door. I pushed myself away from the pillar.

‘Is she OK? Your mam, I mean. She’s not sick or anything, is she?’

He reached the kitchen door and stepped into the house. ‘Nah. Think she just got sunburned and stuff.’ He took a glass from the sink and held it up to the light. I could see it was
filthy. He rubbed it against his T-shirt and poured the last of a bottle of red lemonade into it, taking a gulp of it himself before heading out to the hall and up the stairs.

The kitchen was just as untidy as the last time I’d been there: the sink filled with dirty plates and glasses, the countertops littered with crumbs. I peered out to the hall. Liz’s
suitcase stood at the end of the stairs, half unzipped, some of its contents spilling out onto the carpet: a lime green swimsuit, a red, plastic, high-heeled sandal with a huge yellow daisy on the
toe, and a multi-coloured towel.

‘Yeah, OK!’ I heard Shayne say, his voice raised. ‘Fuck’s sake. I’m gettin’ them!’ He thundered back down, sighing loudly, plunging his hand into the
suitcase and rummaging around. He pulled out two packs of cigarettes and a bottle of red wine. Stuffing one pack in his pocket, he raced back up. There was some mumbling and heavy footsteps and the
slamming of a door. Then silence.

I sucked on my chewing gum, pushing it from side to side with my tongue, and I waited. I watched how the dust floated in the shafts of sunlight that poured in through the crinkly glass panels
beside the front door. I wandered back along the hall and peeped into the front room. It smelled like The Ramblers. The couch cushions were strewn about the floor, covered in cigarette ash and
crumbs. A tower of LPs, stacked beside what looked like a brand-new record player, had collapsed and slid across the carpet in a line all the way to the window. Cliff Richard’s dark eyes
peeped out at me from under the hem of the curtain.

On the coffee table, a box of Sugar Puffs lay on its side, along with a half-empty bottle of Martini and a mound of greasy chip bags. It was more or less exactly as I’d imagined, but I
felt none of the satisfaction I usually did when I got things right. It’d seemed funny when I’d thought about how Shayne spent his evenings when Liz was away, but standing in the stuffy
room with the pathetic still life of his week laid out before me, I felt flattened, sort of squeezed and tired.

Shayne was taking his time. Maybe he’d forgotten about me. Or maybe . . . he expected me to follow him. I left behind the sour, vinegary smell and made my way up to the landing, where soft
radio sounds seeped out from Liz’s bedroom and eye-wateringly bitter smoke clouded the air. The smell of it followed me as I walked up the narrow attic stairs. At the top it was even
stronger. I chewed harder on my gum and knocked gently on the door. I let about a minute pass before I quietly pushed down the handle and looked inside.