Knucklehead & Other Stories (7 page)

“You need to eat. You can't expect to stay healthy if you don't eat and then throw up all day. You or the baby.”

“I'll have some cheese and crackers.”

“Cheese and crackers! For supper?” Colm spread a thick layer of mustard on one of the bagel halves. He was slightly disgusted by the bright yellow goop from the no-name jar. He had scoured his mother's fridge, cupboards, and pantry shelf in the basement, hoping to find good mustard, but to no avail. He added Dijon mustard to the list he was keeping in his head, essentials that Gaddie's house lacked: capers, fresh garlic and ginger, prosciutto, kalamata olives, feta and chèvre, sesame oil, fish sauce, three-ply toilet paper, citrus-oil household cleaner, decent candles—he couldn't believe that he'd let Beverly and his mother talk him into giving all that stuff away. He'd had a good Dijon, and a fine Russian mustard dressing too, but they hadn't kept any food when they moved. Nothing. The only time Beverly and Gaddie had ever agreed on anything. He was looking forward to shopping on Saturday.

“You need something more substantial than cheese and crackers.”

“Melba toast and cheese,” Beverly said.

“Green vegetables,” Colm said. “The foetus needs folates or it'll be a spina bifida baby.” He'd been studying pregnancy, nutrition and prenatal health. I'll do the theory, he said to Beverly, you do the practice. He put the lid on his sandwich and admired his handiwork. He found a box of melba toast and sliced several pieces of cheddar. “How about some broccoli?”

“Ugh. I can't stand the sight of it. Don't even say the word. Just visualizing how it's spelled makes me sick. Yech.” Beverly stuck the last of her unused pins into a pincushion. “Is there any celery? Or pickles? It's such a cliché, but I'd kill for pickles.”

“Cravings for salty and acidy foods are completely normal.” Colm arranged the melba toast and cheese on a plate, four stalks of celery and one of his mother's huge home-made dills and some of her bread and butter pickles too. He brought Beverly's snacks and his sandwich into the family room, and they settled onto the couch. “You didn't get far,” he said, looking at the work spread on the carpet. “You said you'd be finished this afternoon.”

“I got distracted,” Beverly said. She nibbled at a pickle. “A man came to the door.”

“Hmm,” Colm said as he chewed a mouthful of ham and cheese. He swallowed and added: “Distracted by a man. I should be concerned.” He dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his finger, checking for mustard.

She crunched a bite of celery. “I let him in.” Beverly told Colm about the visitor. He listened, still at first, then slowly shaking his head. She kept her tone light and nonchalant, how much like a drowned rat the poor man looked, joking how the smell of his stew made her gag, how she chased him out on account of nausea. She left out the parts about her holding the phone with her thumb poised over the 911 speed-dial, bolting the door, breathing into a paper bag. She chased sweet pickles around the plate in her lap with a spear of melba toast.

Colm held his bagel in both hands, as if poised for another bite.

“I gave him an old spoon,” Beverly said. “I told him to leave it in the mailbox, but that he had to eat outside.” Colm stared. The sound of Toots bending his harmonica around “Take Five” filled the silence.

Finally Colm said, “Wow. I can't believe you'd let him in.” Colm put his sandwich down. “I mean, it's so dangerous. You thought he was the gardener, so you let him in, and gave him a spoon? Shouldn't you have asked for
ID
or something?”

Beverly glanced at Colm. “Don't give me that.”

“What. Give you what? What, exactly, am I giving you?”

“That look. That fucking voice. I can practically see the italics when you speak to me like that, your holier-than-thou voice. You suck at sarcasm. The poor bastard was soaking wet.”

Colm went outside to check the mailbox. The spoon was there. Back inside, he examined it under the bright kitchen light, looking for a clue to its user. “It's not just some old spoon. It's a piece of mother's flatware.” He paced in the narrow strip between the mermaid costume and the coffee table.

“At least he gave it back,” she said.

Colm stopped in front of Beverly, pointing the utensil at her. “This would be worth three, maybe five dollars to somebody desperate.” Beverly turned her head away from him.

“You're awfully worried about Gaddie's flatware. What about me?”

“Well, what about you? Aren't you responsible? How did you know he was a gardener? He could have been anybody. Did you check the book? No, not Beverly, the book's too much like work. That's how these gangs operate.”

“Gangs?” Beverly said. “What are you on about now? Who said anything about a gang? You're doing it again, Colm.”

“That's what they do.” Colm started pacing again. “They send someone in to case the joint.”

Beverly rolled her eyes.

“I saw that,” Colm continued. “They case the joint. Then they send eight-year-olds through the basement window, or down the chimney. You know how small those Vietnamese are.”

“Oh give me a break, eight-year-olds. Besides, he was closer to sixty-eight,” Beverly said. She tossed her plate aside and a pickle fell on the floor. “And who said anything about Vietnamese?”

“Well, was he?”

“Was he what?”

“Vietnamese?”

“He was white. He was a pasty-white, wet old man. White like a boiled potato. If he was anything, he was Irish, as if that matters.”

“White?” Colm pounced on the information. “Like a potato. Didn't you think it odd that a gardener would be white like a potato in October? He's been out in the sun all summer, gardening, getting whiter and whiter. Were his hands dirty? Did he have calluses?”

“We didn't shake hands. He had work boots. Worn and dirty work boots,” Beverly shot back.

“Jailhouse pallor, that's what he had,” Colm said. “The big-house tan.” He went into the kitchen, and scrubbed the spoon vigorously with a brush and detergent. “Tuberculosis and hepatitis are rampant in prisons.” He scrubbed his hands.

“Oh christ, don't be stupid. You're worse than your mother.”

“Don't call me stupid. Or insult my mother. Did I call you stupid? Would she have let some man into her house? I think not.”

“Not bloody likely,” Beverly said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You think I did something stupid, but you won't say so. So you end up saying really stupid things, Colm. Listen to yourself, for once. Gangs, Vietnamese, ‘the big-house tan.' Where do you come up with this stuff?” Beverly rose, picked up her shears off the worktable and squatted down on the floor.

“Did you pick up that pickle?” Colm asked.

“What?”

“You dropped a pickle. Damn,” he said, lifting the shiny spoon up to the light.

Beverly hesitated before she cut the fabric. She knelt, back straight, scissors in hand. “Look, he was a nice man. He was wet and cold and needed to warm up his lunch. I let him do that and I threw up and he left. He had a nice smile. Perfect teeth. He said thank you. He returned the spoon. End of story.” She scissored deftly down the edge of the pattern.

“White potato skin and perfect teeth. They have free dental care in prisons, you know. Free. They all come out with perfect teeth.”

“I'm not listening to this anymore,” Beverly said. She found the remote control and hit the button to change the
CD
to the next platter. The Tragically Hip. She turned up the volume.

“Fine,” Colm said. He opened the fridge door and pulled out a can of Guinness Draught. He popped the top and listened as the button of nitrogen gas in the bottom of the can released with a hiss. He took comfort from the knowledge of the engineering that could go into something as simple as a can of beer. He drank a gulp. Nearly as good as the real thing in a Dublin pub. In fact, he liked his beer chilled, even his stout, so maybe better than a Dublin pub. “I'm calling the condo people,” he said.

“Go right ahead,” Beverly answered. She continued to trim the Lycra, her head bent.

“Fine,” Colm said. Tucking the green binder under his arm, and holding the beer and sandwich in either hand, he climbed the three short flights of stairs to the top level.

The upstairs portable handset for the telephone wasn't in its charging cradle, and he got no answer when he used the locator button—the ringer was probably turned off anyway, the battery lasted at least four times as long if you left the ringer off. He sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn't really want to call anyone. He needed to get away from Beverly before he said anything else to regret.

The master bedroom was a large space, with its own five-piece bath accessible through double French doors. He stared at where the ceiling vaulted upward to follow the line of the roof, which was buttressed by two outsized laminated beams. Colm had never been able to determine to his own satisfaction whether the beams were structural elements, or merely for design. Gaddie decorated sparsely here. The walls were a brilliant white. A queen bed with a goose down comforter. An escritoire that had belonged to Colm's grandmother, now used as a dressing table. A simple cushioned chair without arms, draped in a slipcover. A massive white dresser like a slab of marble that she had hired a cabinetmaker to build. The only adornments in the room were an oversized urn filled with impossibly huge dried flowers, a bevelled plate-glass mirror installed on the wall over the dressing table, and a photograph of Colm's father hung dead-centre on the wall above the bed. The expanse of the room seemed like a museum gallery awaiting an installation.

For Beverly, that would mean an installation of laundry, Colm thought. Three of her suitcases sprawled open on the creamy-white pile carpet, spilling clothes across the floor. Two half-full laundry baskets had been dropped by the bathroom door. One was for clean things, the other dirty, but Colm never knew which was which. Her shoes were piled in a heap outside the closet. A brassiere hung from the doorknob.

Looking at her clothes, Colm had a sudden rush of panic. It was typical of her to allow a stranger into the house, like a stray cat. She does these things. The Germans probably have a word for it, he thought. Not for her actions, but his panic. Almost-Grief, or Grief-Narrowly-Avoided or the Horror-That-Might-Have-Happened. He would cease to exist without her. It drives him crazy. It makes him say those things, he can't stop himself. Convicts with perfect teeth. Did I actually say that? Colm thought. I don't give a rat's ass about a spoon or gangs.

Colm looked at his father's photograph. A studio portrait, perhaps for an advertisement. Colm guessed that in the photo his father wasn't any older than he was, probably younger. He had a sudden pang of embarrassment—of
course
his father was younger in the photo. Colm was older now than his father had been when he'd died. He felt his ears turn red, and looked about the room, as if he were afraid that someone had heard his thoughts. A son should remember when his father died. Even if he was too young when it happened to remember.

Glum now, he ate the last of his sandwich methodically, drank the beer in rapid sips. It was weird drinking beer here, in this house. He went down to the kitchen, rinsed the plate, put the beer can in the recycling bin. In the family room, he picked up the pickle from near the sofa. He sat down, looked at the pickle, then ate it. He felt something under his leg: the portable phone jammed between two cushions. Loose bits of threads littered the carpet, he could see the glint of straight pins lost in the cut pile. They'll never clean it all up by the time Gaddie comes home.

Beverly worked at the machine now, sewing the seams of the costume. Holding the phone in his hands, he asked: “Are you okay?” Beverly continued her work. “We can get a dog,” Colm said. “For when you're alone.”

Beverly comes to bed late, long after midnight. Colm snores lightly, but wakes when she gags on her toothbrush. She moves into the room, shedding her clothes as she stumbles through the near darkness, leaving a trail of sweater, blouse, bra, slacks and panties, socks. Colm holds open the bedclothes and she slips in naked beside him. Together, they slide their bodies into a familiar nighttime embrace, Beverly on her side, facing away from Colm as he nestles like a spoon behind her. His long lean arm wraps around her and his hand cups the plumpness of her belly below her navel. There is no quickening yet, the round curves of her abdomen do not yet show the changes occurring inside her. Beneath Colm's hand, in Beverly's uterus, cells divide and re-divide, growing and aligning according to their genetic code, with her every breath, her every heartbeat.

“Your bum is cold,” Colm says into the nape of her neck.

“You're warm,” Beverly answers. “Hug me.”

He presses even closer. “You worked late.”