Flood (19 page)

Vinny won't change. Vinny with his stale cigarettes and whiskey, his songs and jokes, his gambling. Vinny with his moonlight and raisins and thorn trees. A lion in the wild, Vinny will never change. Andy is beginning to understand that now. Vinny is Vinny. Just as Mona is Mona and Hugh is Hugh. Vinny will never find a job, Andy now realizes. Or move from the Mayo Rooms. Or change his life. It isn't possible to change Vinny, no matter how hard Andy tries. What did Vinny say when Andy warned him about smoking? “I'm too old to give it up. Set in my ways I am.” No, only Vinny can change Vinny, nobody else. The thought strikes Andy with the force of a blow.

He slides out of bed and looks out the window. Brick is already at the door, impatient to be let out. Sunshine. Lots to do today: go get John after mass and kick the ball around with the other kids, get a game going maybe. He can't wait. He dresses quickly, skips downstairs, and lets Brick out the back door into the yard. He feels good. Better than good; he feels great. “Grand,” as Vinny would say.

He feels free.

Uncle Hugh is in the living room reading a Sunday paper. He looks up. “Good morning, Andy.” Grand smile.

“It's a grand day, Uncle.”

His aunt is still in the kitchen, making porridge and mixing batter for pancakes. Andy has already changed his mind about porridge; his aunt's tastes better than his
mother's. “Let me do that, Aunt Mona; I'm grand at stirring porridge.”

“Grand is it? Very well.” She leaves the porridge for him to finish. “You sound chipper this morning. Must be the sunshine.” She mixes the batter.

“Big soccer game today.”

“Soccer is it? Then maybe you should be playing every day if that's how happy you'd be.”

Aunt Mona has a nice face when she smiles, Andy decides.

Uncle Hugh appears at the kitchen door, newspaper trailing in his hand. Andy can tell by the grin on his face he has been listening. He and Aunt Mona exchange glances.

“A grand morning,” Hugh says, his face stiff and serious.

“Grand altogether,” Mona agrees, nodding, hiding a smile.

Monday, after school. He gave the secret knock and waited. Then he tried the door; locked; Vinny out. Or not home yet, more like.

He'd remembered to bring his key this time.

The place looked exactly the same. He hadn't realized just how poor and bare and cold it really was. A spoonful of raisins in the saucer. Vinny and his raisins. No changes except the
Playboy
centerfold back on the wall near the kitchen.

The place smelled stale; he'd forgotten about the smell.

Vinny would never change. Somehow that seemed okay now; Andy accepted the idea that people could change only themselves, not others. He lay on the sofa, stretching himself out in this new freedom of understanding. The flood had claimed his mother's life, he accepted that now; someone you loved could die; his mother was dead. The flood had killed his mother and had tossed him, upside down, into the arms of a tree. But now he was back on his feet, no longer upside down, seeing the world the right way up, the way things really were, recognizing his father's weakness and his aunt's strength.

By nine o'clock he was cold and restless. He wished he'd told Aunt Mona he was coming over. He should get back and save her worrying. He got up and opened the window and looked out. No rain and an almost full moon. The fire escape hadn't been fixed. He looked in the fridge. The usual: milk and tea and raisins and an opened packet of potato chips. He stayed away from the bedroom, resisting an urge to look under the bed.

At ten o'clock he walked over to Dan Noonan's. Vinny wasn't there.

He tried Ryan's and the Pink Elephant: no Vinny. He walked back to the Mayo and knocked in case his father had returned, then let himself in and lay on the sofa again, covering himself with a blanket.

A moonbeam shone through the window, bathing the raisins on the table in a pale silver glow.

He would wait for as long as it took, even if Vinny didn't come home till morning.

He fell asleep.

The sound of the key rattling in the lock woke him up. He looked at his new watch. Past midnight.

“Andy, is it you?” Vinny surprised.

Andy sat up. He could see that his father had been drinking: slow, tired movements, strong smell of the pub. “Hi, Dad.”

Vinny collapsed into the chair without taking off his old raincoat, its pockets empty. “What are you doing here? Did you run away from your aunt again?”

“I didn't run away.”

“You came to see your poor old father.”

“Yes. I worry about you, Dad, I worry that you're all right. You promised to call, so when you don't call I imagine the worst, that you've fallen off the fire escape again, or that Fingers Agostino and his sidekick have hurt you.”

His father snorted. “Those two thicks! It's nice you worry about me, Andy darlin', but I'm used to looking after myself.”

“Also, Dad, I need to ask you if it's okay for me to stay with Aunt Mona and Uncle Hugh. And Gran. We get along, and I'm used to the school and everything, so I'd like to stay where I am. For now anyway. If that's all right with you.”

His father stared at him, surprised.

Andy said, “You wouldn't need to move from here if you didn't want to. You could stay, and we'd still see each other, lots. But I just wanted you to know I'm okay where I am right now and you shouldn't worry about me and you needn't worry about moving, like I said.”

His father grinned. He looked relieved. “Maybe that's best, Andy, for a wee while anyway, till the job situation improves and I can find a place for us. Meantime, your aunt can do more for you than I can and that's the truth. And Hughie's a Galway man, so you can't go wrong there. But I'll come over and see you regular, leave it to me. I'll keep an eye on you, don't you fret about that.” He nodded his head several times. “Don't you fret about that,” he said again. “Would you like a cup of tea to warm you?”

“No thanks, I've got to get back. It's late and there's school tomorrow.”

There was a soft knock on the door, uncoded.

Vinny struggled up and opened the door a few inches, keeping a foot behind it.

“Hello, Vincent.”

Aunt Mona, stern and haughty as usual.

Vinny opened the door wider. “It's yourself. Come in, Mona, come in.”

“I won't come in. It's late. I came for Andy.”

Andy went to his aunt.

Vinny said, “I'll be here if you need me, Andy, don't forget.”

“No, Dad, I won't forget. I'll come to see you the Saturday after next, in the morning, late, have a cup of tea with you, make sure you're okay. I'll bring Brick — he's my dog, a puppy — so you can meet him.”

Vinny gave a tired smile and ruffled Andy's hair affectionately. “That'll be lovely.”

Andy descended the stairs to the street with his aunt
and they stood together at the bus stop. The street was flooded with moonlight, and the tops of the trees whispered together in the wind, sharing secrets.

His aunt said, “It was so late. We were worried. You okay?”

“I'm okay,” said Andy, and he was. He looked up at his aunt. “I told him I wanted to stay with you and Hugh and Gran.”

Aunt Mona smiled and nodded.

Andy said, “Do you think he'll be all right? Without me, I mean?”

“He'll be fine.”

“Do you remember you told me that my father is wasting his life?”

“I do.”

“Well, I don't think it's wasted. He's happy. He's got lots of friends, people who love him. And he's got me. I don't think it's wasted, Aunt Mona.”

Mona thought for a few seconds. Then she said, “You're a fine boy, Andy. Your father's proud of you, anyone can see that.”

They looked along the bright, empty street.

“The last bus has gone,” said Mona.

“Then we'll walk,” said Andy, taking his aunt's thin arm.

They set off together, walking through the moonlit streets while what was left of the summer's dry leaves rose up in tiny whirlwinds about their feet and the Sheehogue danced happily behind them all the way home.

Air Canada, flight 185, Halifax to Vancouver.

The Old One was exhausted. He slept almost the whole way home.

The Young Ones celebrated their freedom in a harmless exuberance of broken rules, causing tiny problems with teapots, coffee urns, and meal trays; flight attendants warned everyone to watch out for hockey pucks skating down the aisle; a washroom door had to be forced open to release an extremely large lady who was yelling to be let out; the dialogue of the American in-flight movie came through, without subtitles, in a strange language that one scholarly passenger swore was ancient Celtic. On arrival in Vancouver, the crew agreed that it had been an abnormal flight, not simply because of the strange incidents and unusually high number of minor accidents, but mainly because of the merry good spirits of their passengers.