Colum McCann - Songdogs

‘Right,’ he said, dangling his arm out the side of the tub, like it didn’t belong, a pantomime prop. ‘So tell me about all this travelling,’ he said. ‘Ya almost gave me a fucking heart attack yesterday.’

‘I just wanted to know some things.’

‘Like what things?’

‘About the past.’

‘Christ, couldn’t I have told ya that, Conor? Didn’t I tell ya everything? And you wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Isn’t that right? Didn’t I tell ya everything?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, I did.’

‘Maybe.’

‘No maybes about it.’

‘Let’s not fight.’

‘I’m not fighting. Am I fighting? Do I look like I’m fighting?’

He raised his hands from the bath and turned his palms in the air. I turned away and picked his trousers up from the floor, placed them on the radiator to get them nice and warm. She used to do that for me when I was very young, five or six, clacking her way through a hum or a rhyme, neatly folding them first in the crook of her brown arm, weaving out a hand underneath them, smoothing them out, placing them on the radiator, always very precise, afterwards reaching in the cupboard for special soaps, leaning over.

‘I mean,’ he said, ‘it’s all so long ago now.’

‘It’s not really.’

‘We make our mistakes.’

‘We all do,’ I said.

‘Then we move along.’

‘We do.’

‘You learn finally that some things aren’t meant to heal.’

He said it without sentimentality. His voice was as slow as syrup. He let his head loll against the back of the bath and clacked his teeth together, sighed. Outside, through the hazy bathroom window I thought I could see the movement of some birds. I turned back to the bath. I must have looked at him too long and hard, because he turned his head away and then looked back at me again.

‘Conor,’ he said after a moment, raising one hand to scratch at his forehead, ‘d’ya think there’s any way you could put some of that shampoo on me hair?’

‘What’s that?’

‘My arm is sore here. Can’t reach up properly. Gives me a bit of a stab here.’ He rubbed his shoulder. ‘Maybe just help me wash it, you know.’

I stood.

‘What’s wrong with ya?’ he asked.

‘Nothing, nothing.’

‘Ah, it doesn’t fucken matter,’ he said, putting his hands back down into the bathwater.

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘sure I will.’

‘Good man.’

I reached into the cupboard, fumbled around, and got out the shampoo, my hands shaking. He laid his head underneath the water, a boat of bones sinking, got his hair wet, resurfaced, reached his fingers up and ran them through it, still greasy and tangled. ‘Phhhhfffff,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Are ya right?’

‘Right so. Go easy on it, there’s not much of it left, for fucksake.’

I put a small dollop of shampoo on my hand, told him to wet his hair again, rubbed my hands together. ‘Ya look like a bloody executioner there,’ he said as he rose slowly out of the water. I sat on the edge of the bath and leaned over. ‘Out with the electricity, son.’ He hunched himself up, held on to the handrail, the veins stark and blue. The hairs on his back ran all the way down to the red togs.

The soap piled up at the back of his neck and he gave out a little contented hum as I massaged my fingers into his scalp.

‘She wasn’t in Mexico.’

‘No,’ he said. It wasn’t a question, the way he said it.

‘I thought she’d be there.’

‘Well, now, you can never be sure of anything.’

‘And she wasn’t with Cici.’

‘Why would she be?’

‘Why not?’

I kept massaging the soap into his scalp, around the age spots.

‘I miss her,’ he said.

‘I know ya do.’

‘No, no, you don’t understand, I really miss her. I honestly miss her.’

‘I know, I can tell.’

‘Ya can’t change the past. You know, you try to change the past, but you can’t.’

He let out a long whistle and closed his eyes, and my fingers worked themselves into the soft spots on his head and he almost pushed his head back into my hands and I thought how easy it would be to hurt him, just by mashing my fingers into his head.

‘And Cici, what’s she doing with herself?’ he said after a while.

‘This and that. Nothing really.’

‘Like the rest of us. Still writing poems?’

‘Says it’s not worth a damn.’

‘She’s dead right.’

‘Why did ya give up the photos, Dad?’

‘Jaysus, now, that’s a stupid question. Don’t be rubbing my hair away, now! For fucksake!’

‘Take a dip.’

He took a long time to position himself so that he could go down into the water again.

‘Once more,’ I said. ‘One more shampoo.’

‘Christ, it isn’t that dirty!’

‘Hold still there, now.’

‘And yourself, I mean, are ya making a living?’

‘A few bob.’

He closed his eyes: ‘Ah, this’ll do me for years. I’ll have the cleanest hair west of Waterloo.’

I had put too much shampoo on, and some of the soap fell down from his hair and on to his neck. I reached to scoop it up, left my fingers there, began to wash his neck. His head went forward at first, a little shocked, then laid back into my hands. I felt curious knots in his neck. It was like rubbing cheese. It had that peculiar texture, not hard, not soft. He didn’t budge while I massaged, and maybe his body was relaxing, maybe he was calling things back, because I could feel some sort of melting-away, washing along his neck tanline. The soap bubbled over on to his shoulders and I rubbed it down and over the top of his back, along his shoulders, until I was using both my hands, my fingers converging on his spine — thinking that if I pushed too hard I could crack his whole nervous system — and time seemed to be effortlessly drifting from us, rolling along, until he pulled away and bobbed down into the bath.

‘Soap was getting in me eyes,’ he said.

But I knew what it was and he turned his face away from me, said: ‘I’m grand, so. Leave a man in peace so he can take off his fucken togs.’

I pursed my lips together and nodded: ‘I’ll be outside if ya need me.’

He pulled at the string of his togs as I closed the door and moved as if he was going to take them off.

‘Conor,’ he said.

I peeped back through the crack in the door. ‘What?’

He still had his hand on the string of his togs.

‘I really have no idea.’

‘What?’

‘About your Mam.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘For all I know she could be in Timbuktu.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be going there.’

He made an attempt at a little laugh.

‘Just walked out from there,’ he said. ‘Didn’t even know she’d left until Mrs O’Leary came around and told me. I was knocking the rest of the darkroom down with the big hammer. Turning it to mush. Played it over and over in my head ever since. Thought she’d be back. Swore it to myself. Didn’t give it much thought until a few hours later. Then a day. Then two days. Three. Sometimes I even think she could have walked her way down to the river beyond. She was awful depressed, you know.’

‘The river?’

‘I don’t know. Anything’s possible, isn’t it?’

‘You mean she walked her way into the river?’

‘Maybe.’

‘When?’

‘Maybe that night.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Ah, you can’t be sure of anything, can ya? You can be sure of nothing. That’s the only thing you can be sure of. Nothing. But I miss her. I miss her more than anyone thinks.’

He picked up the washcloth from the shelf and dunked it in the bath, lifted his armpit in the air and began to scrub as vigorously as he could. The water must have been getting a little cold because he shivered a little when he did it. Droplets were dripping from his hair on to his shoulder. The rims of his eyes were red.