Colum McCann - This Side of Brightness

I don’t know why. But Dancesca she gives me this smile like she understands and she kisses me on the cheek.

So I cut the cake and arrange all the pieces on two plates so that they’re equal size. Put ’em on large white plates.

’Cause I like things equal.

Yeah.

And I think that mighta been one of the times I felt the very best, just sitting there in that room watching the kids eat that birthday cake, even though Lenora didn’t have a chance to cut it and there was just one piece with all the birthday candles on it. And I was happy. Just sitting there, being a father. And after all them kids left, Dancesca she was cleaning up and she says to Lenora, Why don’t you go down the park with your daddy?

Now, she’s getting older, Lenora, but for some reason she still likes them swings. Getting taller and filling out and puberty coming along and all, but she loves them. She could go on them swings all day long. So we went down. It was summer. Garbage in the playground. Cherry blossoms out along the walkways topside. We’re at the swing together. Her hair is done in braids. She swings happily and calls for a push. All I wants to do is give her a greater lift. I stand behind her. She just about fits on the small wooden swing, and her feet make these curves in the air. At first I’m just pushing the metal chains forward. She’s laughing. It’s not on purpose.

I swear it.

It’s just that my hand — this hand — comes around the chain. I only brush her on the very edge, just a light finger touch, and she doesn’t even notice and she’s calling again for more height — she’s wearing her birthday dress — and, shit, I don’t mean to, I’m just pushing her, hands at her armpits, and Dancesca is coming along the pathway, carrying three cans of Coca-Cola, but I see her and my hands rest against the metal chains once more. But you see, I did it again.

And then I did it again. At the swings.

And then I did it one night in the bedroom and she was wearing a little nightdress and I says to Lenora, It’s our little game, but it’s just around her armpits, that’s all it is, it’s just that I’m stroking around her armpits.

No.

No fucking way.

No.

I ain’t gonna tell you again.

It’s not that.

I ain’t crying.

It’s just that I’m cold, that’s all. Cold making my nose runny.

Listen up. Please.

This woman, see, she had made an appointment ’cause she said something was happening at school with Lenora. And I remember ’cause when she came in she looked at my hands and they was all scarred up and all. With cigarette burns and them paper clips. I went tucked my hands in under my ass and I was just sitting there waiting. I’m sitting at the table with Dancesca. The social worker, she came in and she seemed nice to Dancesca, but she wouldn’t say nothing to me; she just said, If you’d give us a moment, please, Mister Walker.

It’s the first time in years anyone called me that: Mister Walker. But, see, that name makes me feel like I got nothing in my body, like I been carved out, so I just leave the room. I was drinking pretty heavy then. I had this gin in the room. I’m just climbing into the bottle. Not even listening at the door or nothing. Then the door closes and I hear Dancesca in the kitchen. She’s rumbling in the cupboards. I’m looking at the aquarium. She has a knife when she comes into my room but she doesn’t use the knife, it’s just in case. She stands in front of me with the knife. And then she just slaps me and leaves my face in my shoulder, and then she moves away and the sting of her hand is in my face and I’m thinking, Slap me on the other side, slap me on the other side, but she’s gone. She’s in the other bedroom. Slap me on the other side, slap me on the other side. I went and stood in the doorway. I’m watching her. She reaches for the suitcases. She loads her clothes without folding them, stuffs two of the suitcases tight. She clamps down the locks. Then she moves past me as if I’m nothing but air. Lenora’s not around, she’s still at school. Dancesca, she opens Lenora’s cupboard and holds up a training bra. You recognize this? she says to me, and then she buries her head once more and goes to filling the suitcase. She loads all of Lenora’s clothes and then rips the sheet of blue plastic off the wall, gathers the photos from the ground, and throws the one of me at me. And she says to me, Pervert. You’re nothing but a pervert.

And I can’t say nothing.

I’m paralyzed, like I told you.

She ain’t a bitch.

She ain’t a bitch no way.

No, I didn’t touch her there.

No!

Yeah, just the armpits. Not anywhere else.

I never touched that. Not the nipple.

Just around there.

I didn’t—

She was just a child.

Just a child, Angie. Just a child.

I didn’t mean nothing by it.

I never even saw her once after that. Dancesca, she took her from school and went to her folks and she won’t listen to anything I got to say when I try to phone her and then she disappears altogether; they say she’s not around, both of them gone, they say she’s in New York, doesn’t want to talk to me, but I know where she is, I know she’s in Chicago.

I been thinking about goin’ up there, yeah. Sometime.

Angie.

Angie!

No. No way. I never touched her there, I swear, I never did, I swear on it, and that’s the truth, never there.

It wasn’t that, it wasn’t a hard-on, it was nothing like that.

I wasn’t touching her like you think.

No.

Listen!

I mean, it’s what I been trying to say. I’d be there in her room and I’d be touching her shoulders and my head’d be spinning and I’d be out of control and thinking something else. I mean, it wasn’t a hard-on, you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, it was something else, but Dancesca wouldn’t listen and nobody would listen; I guess I didn’t listen myself, I was pretty fucked up in the head it was going thump thump thump thump like I told you.

I been thinking on it more and more. I ain’t never told anybody this before. I mean, we all got a history in us, yeah? A man is what he loves and that’s the reason he loves it.

That ain’t shit.

No.

Ah, Angie, no.

No, Angie.

Don’t do that.

I mean, look.

Out there.

Can’t you see? See, I told you the sun’d come up. See. Now you can see it. It’s gray and all, but ain’t it nice? Hey. Angie.

Shit, I mean that’s what I meant. You said you hadn’t seen it before, Angie.

Angie.

You said you wanted to see the sea.

Fuck candy.

Yeah, that’s my goddamn candy. I ain’t got any goddamn candy. And I ain’t gonna get any either. Fuck candy.

Fuck candy!

Angie.

Hey, Angie. You can’t go there.

He’ll kill you. Angela!

You dropped my goddamn sock.

Angie.

Angela.

It wasn’t like you think.

Damn, Angie. Angela. An-ge-la!

I was lifting him out of her.

* * *

For weeks after Dancesca leaves, Clarence Nathan sleeps out in other parts of the city. His hair is short, and he can feel the cold bite at his ears. In Riverside Park he stuffs a red-haired man with his Swiss Army knife. He has seen the man before; he is homeless too. Clarence Nathan is sitting on the park bench by the Hudson, and Redhair taps him on the shoulder—“Spare a cigarette, bud?”—and Clarence Nathan asks him to tap him on the other shoulder for balance. Redhair laughs and reaches forward and steals the lit cigarette from his mouth. The blade is small and pathetic, but it slides in and slides out and Redhair stands there as a small patch of blood spreads on the stomach of his T-shirt. Clarence Nathan runs off and later stabs himself while on a bus. He sees Redhair a few weeks later and Redhair says he is going to kill him, but Clarence Nathan tosses him two packs of cigarettes and that is it; he never sees Redhair again. He wanders around the city in an ache. The sole of his construction boots undoes itself and he sticks it with glue that he steals from a drugstore. One afternoon he sees Cricket in the distance, walking through the park, and he hides in weeds down near the embankment. Junkies and male hookers are in abundance in the park, but they don’t ask him if he wants a blow job anymore; he is broken down and head-hung and dirty and covers his muscled torso with long shirts so he doesn’t have to stare at his scars.