The Breezes (5 page)

There he sits, his mouth open. And we are not concerned with especially desirable posts here, with company directorships or academic sinecures. No, we are concerned with ordinary vacancies, openings for sales engineers and area housing managers, for biomedical technicians and senior improvements officers. These are the jobs that enthral Pa.

It is almost inevitable, when he peruses the jobs pages, that he suddenly drops the paper, produces a pair of scissors and starts cutting away at the broadsheet. ‘Johnny,' he says as he snips away, ‘Johnny, this is it. This is the one.' He thrusts his handiwork at me and sits back to study my reaction.

SALES PEOPLE
–
Young progressive advertising company requires Sales People in all areas to carry out major expansion programme. Training and support will be provided, car with a telephone a prerequisite. Generous expense allowance plus commission.

‘Well? What do you think?'

‘Pa, Steve doesn't have a car.'

He is thrown for a moment, but then he bounces right back. ‘That's just a detail,' he says boldly. ‘What's a car? We can find Steve a car no problem. No,' he says, waving the cutting like a winning lottery ticket, ‘this is just the job for Stephen. Look – it says he'll get training and support. I'm telling you, that boy has it in him to do great things. It's not too late. He's just a young man, he has his whole life ahead of him. With a bit of help, who knows how far he'll go?' Pa tucks the cutting into his wallet. ‘I'll send it to him straight away.'

I have been through this with my father many times before, so I do not say anything. The short point is that Steve is not a worker. He has not lifted a finger in the five years that I have known him and he is not about to change now. While his inner being may be a mystery, I do know Steve this well: if you offered him a salary of twenty thousand a month to do exactly what he liked, he would turn you down – it would sound too much like work. I have not reached this conclusion lightly. Like Pa, I used to pass on to Steve ads which I had seen in the newspapers. That's right. I used to get the scissors out, too. Whenever I got wind of a cushy number, old Steve was the first to hear about it. But that strategy was like Steve himself: it didn't work; and after what happened last time, I have sworn that I will never try it again.

Wanted,
the advertisement said.
Trustworthy house-sitter for period residence while owners go abroad for a month. Generous pay.

‘Steve,' I said, ‘take a look at that. Now that's what I call a job.'

Steve reached out from the sofa and looked at the newspaper for a whole minute. ‘Thanks, Johnny,' he said. Then he carefully placed the paper on the floor.

I made a decision. I fetched a sheet of paper and typed out the application myself. ‘Sign here,' I said to Steve.

‘God, thanks, John,' Steve said as he wrote his name.

Then I posted the letter. I went to the post office, bought a stamp and personally mailed the fucker.

The reply came quickly. It was good news: Steve had been granted an interview on Thursday, at nine in the morning. Great, Steve said. Great stuff.

That Thursday morning I arose early – those were the days when I was still productive, back in September of last year. By eight-fifteen, though, Steve had not stirred from his bed: Rosie's bed: the bed which Pa had shelled out for. When I opened the bedroom door, there he was, a mound under the duvet.

‘Wake up, Steve,' I said, shaking him by the shoulder. ‘Wake up. You've got to go to your interview.'

He rolled over and stared at me with uncomprehending, unconscious eyes. Then he rolled over again and went back to sleep. There was nothing I could do to rouse him. I said to Rosie, Rosie, for God's sake, tell him to get up. Tell him to go.

Rosie, who was busy getting ready for work, said, ‘Oh, forget it. He won't do it, he's useless.' She put her head through the door and shouted, ‘You're useless, aren't you, Slug?' Then suddenly she snatched up a handful of objects – lipsticks, hairbrushes, books – and started hurling them at him. ‘You just lie there and rot and vegetate and do nothing, you bastard! Get up!' she screamed, tugging at the duvet. ‘Get up, you shit!'

‘Take it easy, Rosie,' I said. ‘It's all right, don't worry about it.'

Rosie started weeping with anger and humiliation, the tears leaving tracks through her deep stewardess's make-up. ‘He's so …He's just so …'

I said, ‘It's OK, Rosie … Rosie, it's all right.' I led her out of the bedroom and up to the front door. ‘We'll sort it out. Now you just go to work, all right?'

‘He's such a bastard, Johnny,' Rosie said, swallowing back mucus and cleaning her face. ‘He's such a bastard.' Then she put on her green hat and headed out into the street to the job she hates.

What a dope I was to allow myself to get into that situation – to allow myself to get involved with Steve like that.

Never again.

Pa, though, does not see it that way. Again and again is his motto. As far as he is concerned, where there is life there is hope, and in spite of everything he still believes that inside Steve there lie secret deposits of energy waiting to be tapped, gushers. Pa has got it wrong. Steve is not the North Sea or the Arabian peninsula. There are no oilfields in Steve.

I have to be careful – careful of letting myself be sucked in by Rosie and Steve and their wretched problems which I can do nothing about. But I can't stop it because I have to live with them; and I have to live with them because there's nowhere else for me to go.

This may sound strange, but not long ago I believed that I
had
gone, that I had swum free from the dismal whirlpool of their lives and had hauled up here, with Angela. My clothes were in that cupboard, my toothbrush and razor were in that bathroom cabinet and my books and records were stacked on those shelves over there, indistinguishable from Angela's. I spent nine nights out of ten here and the only reason I ever went back to the Breeze flat was because that's where my studio was, in the basement. As far as I was concerned, I had flown the cage.

Then one day – this was about four months ago, in January –an electoral registration form arrived in the mail. I got out a biro and filled in the form. I wrote our names, Angela Flanagan and John Breeze, in the Names of Occupants box.

Angela laughed when she picked up the form that evening. ‘What's this?' She pointed at my name, then started laughing again.

I didn't see what was so funny.

She came over and sat down next to me. She put an arm around my shoulders and gave me a soft, sympathetic kiss on the cheek, and then another. There was a silence as she continued to hold me close to her, her face brushing against mine, her light breath exhaled in sweet gusts. ‘Oh, Johnny,' she said. I kept still, waiting for the retraction of that laughter, confirmation that this place was officially my home. It never came. She released me, kissed me one more time and went over to the table. She picked up a yellow highlighter, opened a fat ring
binder and started reading, brightening the text with crisp stripes.

Ring binders. I'm sick of the sight of them. Towards the end of January, a messenger arrived with ten cardboard boxloads of the things – heavy, glossy purple files stamped with the Bear Elias logo.

‘It's the Telecom privatization,' Angela said excitedly as she tore the tape from the boxes. ‘There are over ten thousand documents. I've got to store them here because there simply isn't the space in the office.'

‘Where are you going to put them? There's no storage space here either.'

She ripped open a box, the sellotape tearing crudely away from the cardboard. ‘I thought that I might be able to use the cupboard.'

I said, ‘But that's got my things in it.'

She said nothing.

‘But where will my stuff go?' I said. ‘There's nowhere else for me to put it.'

Angela said, ‘Well, I don't know, my darling. I haven't really thought about it. Maybe we could fix up a clothes rail or something. We'll find the space somehow.'

But there was no space to be found, and we both knew it. There was nothing for it but to move my things out. ‘It's only for the time being, my love,' Angela said, hugging me as I packed up. ‘I'm not going to have these things here for ever.'

I didn't make a scene. I packed my clothes and, in order to create more shelf-space, took away my books and music in the cardboard boxes in which the ring binders had arrived. The binders moved in, I moved out. It bothered me, but I knew that I'd be back before long. There was no way I was going to be displaced by chunks of paper.

They're still here. In fact, there are more binders stored here than ever before.

The telephone rings.

It's her. At long last.

‘Hello?'

‘John,' Rosie says to me. ‘Listen, John – do you know where Steve is?'

A numb moment passes and I sigh, ‘Rosie.'

She sounds troubled. ‘He left the house this afternoon and, well, he hasn't come back.'

I say, ‘Right, I see.' I feel a dull surprise, because it is not like Steve to be away from home for any length of time; but that is all I feel.

‘I just don't know where he could be,' Rosie says. I can hear her expelling a cloud of smoking breath and then immediately taking another deep drag. ‘I've tried ringing his friends, but none of them knows where he is.' Rosie says, ‘I don't know what to do, John. This isn't like him. Something's happened to him,' she says.

There is a silence, and I know that Rosie is expecting some comforting words from me. ‘Well,' I say, ‘how about, how about trying …' Then I stop. I do not have a clue where Steve might be and when it comes down to it, well, when it comes down to it I do not care. ‘Look,' I say finally, ‘don't worry, Rosie, he'll be back. He'll show up sooner or later.'

She is weeping now, but she still manages to say, ‘You're heartless, John. I've always said that about you. You just don't give a damn about anybody.'

‘Rosie,' I say, ‘Rosie, listen, Steve will be– '

But then she hangs up.

Heartless? What does she expect me to do, go out into the rain and find her boyfriend for her? Set up a search party? Spend an hour on the phone commiserating? Bang my head against the wall just because I'm her brother?

I light a cigarette. Maybe I am heartless; but what choice have I got?

Look at what happened on Friday, for God's sake. She came home at about midday and bolted straight past me and Steve to her room, slamming the door behind her and falling on her bed with a dead thud. Two things were shocking. First of all, she seemed to be liquefying: teardrops were travelling over her cheeks down to her chin, her lips shone with run from her nose, and even her fingers were dripping. Then I registered the second thing about her: her hair.

Ah, Rosie's hair … Rosie's hair is a family legend. It is packed securely in that suitcase of Breeze myths that is clicked
open from time to time at family gatherings, its hand-me-down contents familiar and sentimental and orienting. Rosie's hair is in there with the story of Grandma Breeze's radical feminism as a young woman and the time when she granted asylum in her bedroom cupboard to a suffragette wanted for vandalism; of the number of languages (six: English, Irish, French, German, Italian and Spanish) which my mother's mother, Georgina O'Malley, spoke fluently; of the invention by great-grandfather Breeze of an egg incubator, and of how he failed to patent the invention and missed out on millions.

Rosie's long Irish locks, which when gathered and braided dropped from her head in a thick, fiery rope, have made her stand out like a beacon at baptisms, Christmases and weddings, and be recognized and kissed and admired by distant Breezes who have never met her but who have received word of her flaming head. If I should have children, no doubt they too will learn of the two-foot mane that Aunt Rosie once sported and how one day, the day before yesterday to be precise, Friday, she came home with it cropped down to her skull, dashing past me like a carrot-topped soldier late for parade.

Rosie barricaded herself into her room for the rest of the day. When Steve occasionally emerged from it to fetch her something from the kitchen and left the door ajar, I could hear muffled sobbing. I did not say anything; what was there to say? Pa, though, could not restrain himself when he came round yesterday morning on his way to visiting Merv Rasmussen in hospital.

‘Rosie … Your hair.'

She said nothing. She was in the kitchen with her back turned to him, busying herself with dishes in the sink. Pa was stock-still, his head tilted sideways, rooted in the hallway like a nail badly hammered into wood.

After a moment he looked up at me. Then he looked at Rosie again and then he looked at me again. He rubbed his face with one hand. He was lost for words, that was obvious. He wanted to say something, but as usual could not think what. No matter what he says or does not say, no matter how gently he treads, his words always seem to snag on Rosie's tripwire sensibilities and blow up in his face. To her chagrin, Rosie, who is always
buying him presents and sending him cheerful and amusing postcards from around the world, simply cannot talk to him face-to-face without something going off within her. When that detonation happens, she instinctively produces a wounding remark, retaliating for some nameless injury which my innocent father has caused her to suffer.

So Pa decided not to pursue the matter. He said, with a forced casualness, ‘So, who's coming with me to see Merv?'

Not me, I thought. Although I knew Merv, I hardly knew him well enough to visit him in intensive care.

‘Well?' Pa said, jingling his keys. He still had not moved from his original spot in the hallway. ‘Johnny? Rosie? Are you coming, my love?'

Rosie said from the kitchen, ‘Johnny and I don't know him. He's your friend. You see him.'

Pa said, ‘But Rosie, my love, the man's at death's door. He needs all the support he can get. He's met you and Johnny. He knows you. He knows you're my children. I'm sure he'd like you to be there.'

Racking up soapy plates with a clatter, Rosie said, ‘Don't be ridiculous.' She scrubbed furiously at a frying-pan, rasping it with all of her strength. ‘I mean, let's be honest, it won't make any real difference to Johnny or me whether what's his name – Marv? – lives or dies. We hardly know him.' She banged a dish. ‘If there's one thing I can't stand it's that kind of hypocrisy.'

Pa flinched. He gripped his car keys and there was a moment of silence.

Then he said, ‘Is that what you think, Rosie? Is that really what you think?' He slowly shook his head. ‘Well, I'm getting out of here,' he said, disgust in his voice. ‘All of you, you all …' He did not finish his sentence. He walked out of the front door and made for his car.

‘Brilliant, Rosie,' I said. ‘Bloody brilliant.'

Rosie turned towards me and shouted, ‘Go with him! Don't let him go there alone! Can't you see that he needs someone to go with him? Go on,' she shouted, ‘get after him!'

She was right; and I snatched a jacket and ran out into the street and caught up with my father just as he was steering
the car out of its parking slot. I opened the front passenger door and got in.

We drove along in silence.

The hospital was situated a few miles to the north, at the top of the hill overlooking the old harbour. It was a dark, cloudy afternoon. The leafing trees shook around in the wind and Rockport and its components – the oily canals, the bunched cranes and, north of the river, the housing towers with balconies flagged with drying clothes – jerked slowly by as we stopped and started.

Two miles and ten log-jammed minutes later, Pa still had not spoken. Usually, when Pa has been hurt by Rosie, he pours his heart out to me. ‘What's the matter with that girl?' he asks helplessly. ‘She's got everything: she's smart, she's got a good job, and, to cap it all, she's beautiful!' He shakes his head. ‘She doesn't mean the things she says, Johnny, not deep down. I know that. It breaks my heart to see her so unhappy. I just don't know what to do about it. I'm at a loss. There's something gnawing away at her and God help me I don't know what it is.' And off he goes, beating a path around the room. ‘Is it money? How's she doing for money? Maybe she needs some funds. Here,' he says, taking out a pen and cheque book, ‘I want you to give this to her.'

‘Pa, don't do that,' I say. I physically stop him from writing the cheque. ‘She's fine for money. You know it's not money.'

‘What is it, then? Johnny, all I know is that when she was a kid she was a little bundle of dynamite. You'd have to see it to believe it. Do you know that she used to bring your mother and me breakfast in bed? She was just four and half years old.' I know what Pa is going to say next. He is going to say, She used to bring us boiled eggs with our faces drawn on them, can you imagine? ‘She used to bring us boiled eggs with our faces drawn on them,' Pa says. ‘Can you imagine? Then you used to come in as well, and the two of you kids would jump into bed with us.' Those were glory days for my father, the days when his double bed bulged with all four Breezes. ‘I don't know,' Pa says. ‘Maybe she misses your mother. A girl needs to have her mother. She really loved Ma, you know, Johnny. The two of them were like two peas in a pod.' Then he
says, ‘But your mother's not with us, God rest her soul, and what can I do about that?'

But this time Pa was not coming out with all of this. This time he was keeping quiet.

I felt bad. I should have agreed to go with him to the hospital without hesitation.

‘What's that noise?' Pa suddenly demanded.

I could hear nothing.

‘You hear that? I'm stopping the car.'

‘I can't hear a thing,' I said.

‘You can't hear that? You can't hear that humming noise?'

‘Pa, that's the engine. That's the sound of the engine.'

He pulled over to the side of the road. ‘I'm going to have a look,' he said. ‘I'm going to open her up.' He stepped out into the wind and raised the bonnet.

I stayed where I was. As usual, Pa was hearing things. Although he drives a Volvo of perfect reliability, my father never stops detecting problems with it and constantly takes it to the garage for unnecessary services and check-ups and all-clears. The cause, I suspect, is this: Pa cannot believe that, unlike almost everything else in his life, his car will not let him down. Far from comforting him, this makes him anxious. Oppressed by the knowledge that this state of affairs cannot last for ever, that trouble simply has to be brewing somewhere in that machine, Pa drives around in a state of fretfulness, waiting for the worst. I just wish that the damn thing would break down and put him out of his misery once and for all.

‘Try her now,' Pa shouted from behind the hood.

I switched on the motor. It made a faultless, purring sound.

‘OK!' Pa shouted. He leaned over into the engine and made an adjustment. ‘OK, try her now!'

Again I turned the key and again the motor sounded like a stroked cat.