“I know,” said Jonas. “I didn’t mean—”
“I’m only teasing,” I said, not wanting any apologies. “You’re only sixteen years old. In this day and age, any sixteen-year-old who wanted to do what I do would be asking for trouble from his friends, I’d say.”
“That’s not the reason,” said Jonas, staring directly at me.
“Did you hear that he had an article in the paper?” asked Hannah.
“Ah, Mam,” said Jonas, edging toward the door now.
“What’s that?” I said, looking up.
“An article,” she repeated. “In the Sunday Tribune.”
“An article?” I asked, frowning. “What kind of an article?”
“It wasn’t an article,” said Jonas, blushing furiously now. “It was a story. And it wasn’t anything, really.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t anything?” asked Hannah, sitting up and staring at him. “Sure when did any of us ever get our names in the paper?”
“Do you mean a short story?” I asked, putting my plate down and turning to look at him. “Like a work of fiction?” He nodded, unable to meet my eye. “When was this?”
“A few weeks back.”
“Ah Jonas, you should have called to let me know. I would have liked to read it. Fair play to you all the same. A story, is it? Is that what you want to do, then? Write books?”
He shrugged and looked almost as embarrassed as he had the previous year, when I’d made that inappropriate comment at the wake. I turned back to the television to spare him any further discomfort. “Well, good luck to you anyway,” I said. “That’s a grand ambition to have.”
I heard him shuffle out of the room then, and I started to laugh as I shook my head, turning to Hannah, who was busy reading the schedules in the RTÉ Guide. “A writer, is it?” I said.
“It’s a long walk from Brow Head to Banba’s Crown,” she replied, a response that mystified me slightly. A moment later she put the magazine down and stared at me as if she didn’t know me at all.
“You never told me what happened with Mr. Flynn,” she said.
“With who?” I asked. I racked my brain; I could think of no Flynns.
She shook her head, dismissing this, and stood up to walk into the kitchen, leaving me bewildered. “I’ll make some tea,” she said. “Will you have a cup?”
“I will.”
When she returned to the living room a few minutes later, she had two cups of coffee in her hands, but I didn’t say anything. I thought there was something on her mind perhaps; she appeared so distracted.
“Is everything all right, Hannah?” I asked. “You don’t seem like yourself. You’re not worrying about anything, are you?”
She thought about it. “I didn’t want to get into it,” she said, leaning forward in a conspiratorial fashion. “But now that you mention it, and strictly between you and me, I don’t think Kristian is very well at all. He’s been getting these awful headaches. But will he go to the doctor? You try telling him, because he won’t listen to me.”
I stared at her. I wasn’t sure what to say. “Kristian?” I said finally, the only word I could muster. “But Kristian is dead.”
She stared at me as if I’d just slapped her across the face. “Sure don’t I know that?” she said. “Didn’t I bury him myself? Why would you say such a thing?”
I was confused. Had I heard her right? I shook my head. I let it go. I drank my coffee. When the clock said nine and the news came on, I listened to the headlines, watched Bill and Hillary board a helicopter and wave goodbye to the nation, and then said I better make a move myself.
“Well don’t leave it so long next time,” she said, neither standing up nor making any sign that she was going to see me out to the door. “And next time I’ll cook you that dinner I promised.”
I nodded and left it at that, going out into the hallway to retrieve my coat, closing the living room door behind me. As I stood there putting on my coat, the door opened upstairs and Jonas, barefoot, came to the top of the stairs and looked down at me.
“Are you off, Uncle Odran?” he said.
“I am, Jonas. We should talk more often, you and I.”
He nodded and came downstairs slowly, handing me a piece of folded-up paper. “You can have this if you want,” he said, unable to look me in the eye. “It’s my story. From the Trib.”
“Ah great,” I said, touched that he wanted me to have it. “I’ll read it tonight and get it back to you.”
“No need,” he said. “I bought ten copies of it.”
I smiled and put the paper in my pocket. “I’d have bought it myself if I’d known,” I said. He stood there nervously, looking back toward the living room door, bouncing up and down on his toes. “Is everything all right, Jonas?” I asked him.
“Yeah.”
“You seem like you’ve got something on your mind.”
He breathed heavily through his nose. “I wanted to ask you something,” he said.
“Well, go on so.”
“It’s about Mam.”
“What about her?”
He swallowed and finally looked directly at me. “Do you think she’s all right?” he asked.
“Your mam?”
“Yes.”
“She seemed a bit tired to me,” I said, reaching for the latch on the door. “Maybe she needs more sleep. We could all do with a bit extra, I suppose.”
“Wait,” he said, putting a hand on the frame to keep me there. “She’s been repeating herself a lot and forgetting things. She forgot that Dad is dead.”
“They call it middle age,” I said, opening the door now before he could stop me. “It comes to us all. It’ll come to you too, but not for a long time yet, so don’t be worrying. It’s cold enough out here now, isn’t it?” I added, stepping outside. “Get yourself back inside before you catch something.”
“Uncle Odran—”
But I didn’t let him continue. I walked down the path, and he watched me for a few moments before closing the door. I felt the guilt of it but could do nothing; I just wanted to go home. As I stepped over toward the Fiesta, there was a tap on the window behind me. I looked around, and there was Hannah, parting the net curtains and calling something out to me.
“What’s that?” I asked, cupping a hand to my ear, and she beckoned me forward.
“Where’s the rest of me?” she cried before laughing heartily, closing the curtains, and turning away.
I knew then that Hannah wasn’t right, that here was the start of something that would only bring trouble about all our heads, but in my selfishness I dismissed it for the moment. I would call her in a week, I decided. Invite her to Bewley’s Café on Grafton Street for lunch. Buy her a fry-up and a cream bun to follow and one of those coffees with the frothy white heads. I would make an effort to look in on her more often.
I would be a better brother than perhaps I had been in the past.
* * *
Before driving home, I decided to make a late-night visit to Inchicore, a longer route, of course, but I wanted to pull in to the church and take a few moments at the shrine there, a replica of the grotto at Lourdes, a town I have never visited nor wanted to see. I have little patience for those places of pilgrimage—Lourdes itself, Fatima, Medjugorje, Knock—which seem always to be the inventions of impressionable children or the delusions of tumbling drunks, but Inchicore was no pilgrim’s destination, rather a simple church with a shrine and a statue. I often came here at night if I felt unsettled.