No charges. Just stay away. You and the boy.
Mum stayed drunk for a month. Dad did the cooking.
The next time I saw Dale, he called me a fucking weirdo, said my mum was a mental hippy, and hit me so hard in the stomach that my pee was red for a whole day.
Melody stayed away for ages. Because I was angry, she told me later. She doesn’t like me when I’m angry.
I don’t know if she really likes me the rest of the time. She says she does, but I’m not sure. Sometimes she calls me the Walrus. Not because I’m fat. I’m not. Because of the song by the Beatles.
I am the Walrus.
I am he as you are me, or something like that.
It’s on Dad’s iPod. My back to hers, I take one earbud out and hand it over. She pushes it into her ear.
We listen to olden-days music together until it gets dark and I get hungry. By then, she’s gone, but she’ll be back tomorrow.
Mum says she’s too tired to do school stuff today. I can go and play in my room if I want. She sleeps on the couch. Dad stays up in his office.
He says he’s working, but I don’t hear the clatter of his keyboard when I listen at the bottom of the narrow stairs that lead up to the attic. I’m not allowed to disturb him when he’s up there. That’s the worst thing I could do. It would break his concentration.
Dad hasn’t written a book in years. He’s started lots, but not finished any. He used to talk to Mum about it. Now he just stays in his office.
I go to Mum and Dad’s bedroom.
The curtains are closed, and the bed isn’t made. Clothes on the floor. The room smells like sweat and warm earth. I turn on a bedside lamp, the one on Dad’s side, with all his notebooks and the scribbles I can’t read.
I cross to the big chest of drawers. The second drawer down is open a little bit, clothes spilling out over its lip. I open the bottom drawer and smell something like old damp towels.
There are clothes in here that haven’t been worn in years. And broken things, a hairdryer without a lead to plug it in, a razor with no batteries. An old passport. It’s Dad’s. I’ve looked at it before. It has stamps from America and Australia and other places. He used to travel a lot for his books. Now the passport’s out of date.
What I’m looking for is at the bottom. A folder made of orange card.
Inside there are pages from newspapers. Some of them proper famous papers, like the Sun and the Mirror, but most of them are local papers like the Belfast Telegraph and the News Letter and the Ulster Gazette. The pages have turned yellow. They all have that same photograph from Mum’s album, the baby holding on to the chair, smiling. That one tooth.
Toddler Swept Away by River
Swollen River Claims Little Melody
Local Child Drowned, Family Devastated
I read one of the stories.
An Armagh family is in shock today as it comes to terms with the drowning of toddler Melody Chaise. The mother had removed the child from her buggy to walk along the bank of the Folly Glen River, known locally as the Folly, which had swollen due to recent heavy rainfall, when Mrs. Glenda Chaise reportedly slipped and fell, losing her grip on the child’s hand.
I read another.
The grandmother of local toddler Melody Chaise has spoken of her family’s utter devastation at the child’s tragic drowning. Carol Mawhinney said the little girl, an only child, will be desperately missed by all who knew her. Mrs. Mawhinney said, “I don’t know how we’ll get over this. I’m so worried for her mummy and daddy. How can they survive it?”
And another. This one has a photograph of the funeral. Dad carrying the white coffin, his face all crumpled up. Mum looking like a ghost.
The Coroners Service for Northern Ireland has ruled that the recent drowning of a fourteen-month-old girl was a tragic accident. The coroner stated that weather conditions in the days previous to the incident contributed not only to deeper and faster-moving water at the Folly Glen River, but also to poor footing along the path that runs alongside.
I know the river. I’ve been there lots of times.
Once, Mum took me. She walked me along the path to the fence made of wire and wood with the steep drop on the other side. Mum said the fence didn’t use to be there. She stood beside me, holding my hand tight, looking at the water. It moved slow and lazy.
She asked me if I remembered. I said no, I didn’t.
I’ve gone back other times. Sometimes if Mum has a nap, and Dad’s upstairs working, I go to the river. It’s only a few minutes away from our house. Some days I go to that spot, where the fence wasn’t before, and other times I don’t. I like the trees and the quiet. In the autumn, the squirrels run and hop through the leaves on the ground. I wish I could bring Angus so he could chase them.
I think he could catch one. I would watch him eat it, his teeth red. The guts spilling out.
I’m kneeling by the chest of drawers, the newspaper pages on the floor in front of me, picturing the dog eating the raw meat. The tiny bones breaking. It gives me a feeling that I think I shouldn’t like.
A movement in the corner of my eye. I spin around, fall on to my arse.
Melody sitting on the edge of Mum and Dad’s bed.
“You were touching yourself again,” she says.
“Piss off,” I say. “I wasn’t.”
“Yes you were. Pervert.”
I stand up. I cross the few feet of floor to the bed. I open my hand and slap her cheek. Her head rocks back. She closes her eyes for a few seconds. I feel the burn on my own face, and the heat on my palm.
When she opens her eyes again, she asks, “Do you want to bite me?”
She reaches out her bare forearm. I take her skin between my teeth, close them until I can’t stand the pain anymore. Tears roll down her cheeks, and she wipes them away. I see the twin red crescents on her forearm, exactly the shape and colour of the ones that have appeared on mine.
She looks down. I know what she’s looking at. I want to hit her again, but instead I walk towards the door.
“Hey, Walrus.”
I stop. My insides are hot with anger. “What?”
“You’re forgetting something.”
I turn and see her pointing to the newspaper pages on the floor. “Shit,” I say. I go back and gather them up, put them in the folder, return the folder to the drawer, arrange the old clothes and broken things as they were before I disturbed them.
Melody asks, “Why don’t you ask Mum if you can look at the papers? She’d probably let you.”