Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

‘Hey, you don’t have to explain it to me.’

‘Remember that day we spent with him on the front lawn? With the sprinklers? Just hours before Mom found him … Well, remember the whole family playing around?’

‘They were good times,’ Justin smiles, fighting back the tears.

‘You remember?’ Al laughs.

‘Like it was yesterday,’ Justin says.

‘Dad was holding the hose and spraying us both. He seemed in such good humour.’ Al frowns with confusion and thinks for a while, then the smile returns. ‘He’d brought Mom home a big bunch of flowers – remember she put that big flower in her hair?’

‘The sunflower.’ Justin nods along.

‘And it was real hot. Do you remember it being real hot?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And Dad had his pants rolled up to his knees and his shoes and socks off. And the grass was getting all wet and his feet were all covered in grass and he just kept chasing us around and around …’ He smiles into the distance. ‘That was the last time I saw him.’

It wasn’t for me .

Justin’s memory flashes through the image of his father closing the living-room door. Justin had run into the house from the front yard to go to the bathroom; all that playing around with water was almost making him burst. As far as he knew, all the members of his family were still outside playing. He could hear his mom chasing and taunting Al, and Al, who was only five years old, screeching with laughter. But when he was coming downstairs, he spotted his dad coming out of the kitchen, walking down the hall. Justin, wanting to jump out and surprise him, crouched down and watched him from behind the banister.

But then he saw what was in his hand. He saw the bottle of liquid that was always locked away in the cabinet in the kitchen and only taken out on special occasions when his dad’s family came over from Ireland to visit. When they all drank from that bottle they would change, they would sing songs that Justin had never heard before but that his dad knew every word of, and they would laugh and tell stories and sometimes cry. He wasn’t sure why that bottle was in his dad’s hands now. Did he want to sing and laugh and tell stories today? Did he want to cry?

Then Justin saw the bottle of pills in his hand too. He knew they were pills, because they were in the same container as the medicine Mom and Dad took when they were sick. He hoped his dad wasn’t feeling sick now and he hoped he didn’t want to cry. He watched as he closed the door behind him with the pills and bottle of alcohol in his hands. He should have known then what his dad was about to do but he didn’t. Thinks of that moment over and over and tries to force himself to call out and stop him. But the nine-year-old Justin never hears him. He stays crouched on the stair, waiting for his dad to come out so he can jump out and surprise him. As time went by he began to feel that something wasn’t right, but he didn’t quite know why he felt that way and he didn’t want to ruin the big surprise by checking on his dad.

After minutes that felt like hours, of nothing but silence from behind the door, Justin gulped and stood up. He could hear Al screaming with laughter outside. He could still hear Al laughing when he went inside and saw the green feet on the floor. He remembers the sight of those feet so vividly, Dad lying on the floor like a big green giant. He remembers following those feet and finding his dad on the floor, staring lifeless at the ceiling.

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t scream, didn’t touch him, didn’t kiss him, didn’t try to help him because though he didn’t understand much at that time, he knew that it was too late for help. He just slowly backed out of the room, closed the door behind him and ran out to the front lawn to his mom and younger brother.

Five minutes they had. Five more minutes of everything being exactly the same. He was nine years old on a sunny day with a mom and a dad and a brother, and he was happy and Mom was happy and the neighbours smiled at him normally like they did all the other kids, all the food they ate for dinner was made by his mom and when he was bad at school the teachers shouted at him, like they should. Five more minutes of everything being the same, until his mom went into the house and then it was all completely different, then everything changed. Five minutes later, he wasn’t nine years old with a mom, a dad and a brother. He wasn’t happy, neither was Mom, and the neighbours smiled at him with such a sadness he wished they didn’t bother smiling at all. Everything they ate came from containers carried over by women that lived on the same street, who always looked sad too, and when he acted up at school the teachers just looked at him with that same face. Everyone had the same face. The five extra minutes wasn’t long enough.

Mom told them Dad had suffered a heart attack. She told the entire family and anybody that came by with a home-cooked meal or pie.

Justin could never bring himself to tell anyone he knew the truth, half because he wanted to believe the lie and half because he thought his mother had started to believe it too. So he kept it to himself. He hadn’t even told Jennifer, because saying it out loud made it true and he did not want to validate his father dying that way. And now, their mother gone, he was the only person who knew the truth about his dad. The story of their father’s death that had been fabricated to help them had ended up hanging like a black cloud over Al and a burden for Justin.

He wanted to tell Al the truth right now, he really did. But how could it help him? Surely knowing the truth would be far worse, and he’d have to explain how and why he’d kept it from him all these years … But then he would no longer have to shoulder all the burden. Perhaps there would be finally some release for him. It could help Al’s fear of heart failure and they could deal with it together.

‘Al, there’s something I have to tell you,’ Justin begins.

The doorbell rings suddenly. A sharp sting of a ring that startles them both from their thoughts, smashing the silence like a sledgehammer through glass. All their thoughts shatter and fall to pieces on the ground.

‘Is someone gonna get that?’ Doris yells, breaking the silence.

Justin walks to the door with a white ring of paint around his behind. The door is already ajar and he pulls it open further. Before him, on the railings, hangs his dry cleaning. His suits, shirts and sweaters all covered in plastic. Nobody is there. He steps outside and runs up the basement steps to see who has left them there, but apart from the skip, the front lawn is empty.

‘Who is it?’ Doris calls.

‘Nobody,’ Justin responds, confused. He unhooks his dry cleaning from the railing and carries it inside.

‘You’re telling me that cheap suit just pressed the doorbell itself?’ she asks, still angry at him from before.

‘I don’t know. It’s peculiar. Bea was going to collect this tomorrow. I hadn’t arranged a delivery with the dry cleaners.’

‘Maybe it’s a special delivery, for being such a good customer because by the looks of it, they dry cleaned your entire wardrobe.’ She eyes his choice of clothes with distaste.

‘Yeah, and I’ll bet the special delivery comes with a big bill,’ he grumbles. ‘I had a little falling-out with Bea earlier; maybe she organised this as an apology.’

‘Oh, you are a stubborn man.’ Doris rolls her eyes. ‘Do you ever think for a second that it’s you who should be making the apologies?’

Justin narrows his eyes at her. ‘Did you talk to Bea?’

‘Hey, look, there’s an envelope on this side,’ Al points out, interrupting the beginnings of another fight.

‘There’s your bill,’ Doris laughs.