That’s the problem, to an extent. He’s not a baby, really. Not any more. He used to be, obviously. But he stood up about a year ago, without bothering to crawl first. Up he gets, using the couch and my leg to hoist himself, and he’s been flying around the place ever since, except when he falls over asleep. We just call him the baby. He’ll probably be the last, so he’ll be the baby for a while yet. Even though he’s built like a shit-house and he’ll probably be shaving before the end of the year, the speed he’s growing at. He’ll be the last, I’d say. She swings a bit but I’m fairly certain.
So, on with the gloves. Yellow marigolds, way too small for me. I have to force them on but the only alternative is picking him up with my bare hands and that possibility doesn’t even occur to me. So, I’m all set. I turn to face him. Gloves, bag, the works. But, God, I feel very exposed. I’m only in my dressing gown – this one here is a new one, from herself for the anniversary. Eighteen years. I got her a brooch. Doesn’t sound like much but it’s very nice.
Anyway, the old one was a bit threadbare. To put it mildly. I was virtually naked. That wasn’t so bad, though. It was the feet. I was in my bare feet.
He holds up a foot, to reveal a slipper.
I hadn’t bought these yokes yet. Anyway, look it, I know the rat was dead and not particularly interested in biting my toe or having a goo at what was under my dressing gown. But, still and all, I didn’t feel ready for battle. Even if the enemy was dead and stiff. I hated myself then – that was the lowest, really. It’s the thing now that really stands out. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do what I was supposed to do. I stared down at your man on the floor. In under the pull-out. He was lying on his side. No teeth showing, no grimace, you know, nothing like agony or anger. He was just quietly dead. But I couldn’t bend down and pick him up. I just couldn’t do it.
I let myself down. My home, my pull-out, my family, my little son next door in the sitting room, this bastard had come into my home – how is another story – and I couldn’t just bend down, pick the cunt up and throw him in a bag.
I really let myself down.
Then I did it.
Just like that. I bent down. I put my hand around him. He was stiff, solid, like wood or metal with a bit of weight in it. Or one of those transformer toys, but heavier. And he was big. And I could feel him, even with the gloves on. Cold. Cold and hard. I couldn’t feel the hair, thank God. I dropped him into the first plastic bag. And I tied it at the top. Into the next bag, and the next one, and the next one, and then into the black bag. Then out the back door. The temptation was there, just to throw him out. But I didn’t. I took him to the shed. It was cold out there, and still a bit dark, like now. But I still did it, in my bare feet. Just to have him properly out of the way. Then I shut the shed door and came back in here.
And then – and I’m a bit proud of this – I decided to go ahead with my coffee. ‘Why not?’ I said. I even rubbed my hands together.
He rubs his hands.
Like this, you know; mission accomplished, the worst was over. I’d just carried a dead rat from here to there. I’d sorted out the problem, done what I was supposed to do. I deserved a reward. So, I opened the kitchen door again, so I could keep an eye and an ear out for little himself in at the telly. I could hear The Rugrats, and I realized that I was still wearing the rubber gloves. And I was taking them off and deciding what was the best thing to do with them when he came in looking for his breakfast.
And that, I suppose, is what got me really thinking. Really thinking. Not just reacting to the crisis, getting rid of the rat. It went beyond the rat. The rat isn’t really involved.
That’s my arse, of course. Of course the rat’s involved. The rat’s to blame. But, it’s hard to explain. Look.
He lifts a foot and shows us his brown leather slipper.
I never owned a pair of slippers in my life. Until, you know. Now, I won’t get out of the bed if I’m not certain they’re right beside me. I fuckin’ need them. I got these ones in Clery’s. They’re all right. I didn’t mind, as long as they weren’t tartan. They’re grand. Warm if I wake up before the heat comes on, and I usually do. So, they’re fine.
But I never wanted them; d’you get me? I never fuckin’ wanted them. I never wanted to be a man who wore slippers. I always liked the feel of the house under my feet. I could have told you which room I was in, just by reading the floor with my feet. No bother. I just never wanted to wear slippers. Get into a pair of slippers and you’re fucked; your life is over. That’s what I’ve always felt about them, since I was a teenager and my father got a pair from our granny and he put them on, sat down in his chair in the corner and never got up again. I mean, he did get up – he went to work, he went into the kitchen and up to the jacks – but that was it: he was old. Tartan – I don’t blame my granny, by the way. It’s just, I always saw them as a trap. Put them on and that’s it, finished. It got to the point where he wouldn’t say hello until he had them on, after he came home from work. He wouldn’t acknowledge the family, my mother, the works, until after his feet were safe inside the slippers. We weren’t getting on at the time. A bit like me and my eldest now, actually. And everything I hated about him, about myself, about everything, I aimed at those slippers. And now here’s me, after buying my own slippers. I’ve no one to blame but myself. And the rat.
Funnily enough – but it’s not really funny at all – he’s given up on the slippers. He’s getting wild in his old age. He says things now he’d never have said when I was a kid. Last Sunday there – I go most Sundays, bring the kids – he waited till my mother went into the kitchen and then he told me he was thinking of getting the Internet. It turns out, he’s been spending hours in a pal’s house, the pair of them looking at pornography on the net when the pal’s daughter is at work. Downloading, or whatever the fuck it’s called. Whether there’s a link between slippers and porn I don’t know; I probably doubt it. All I do know is: I’m wearing them now and there’s nothing I can do about it. I need something on my feet and socks just aren’t enough.
Anyway, your man, my da’s friend. His daughter got her phone bill a few weeks ago and she freaked out. So they have to go easy on the wanking – there’s a disgusting thought; a few months ago I’d have laughed. So he’s thinking of moving headquarters to our house. My old bedroom, actually. But fair play to him. I see nothing wrong in it, as long as it’s just Playboy birds or Page 3s he’s looking at. Even if he is seventy-four. I just hope he doesn’t start making my mother dress up in rubber or something. I’m a bit jealous, I suppose. He knows what downloading means, and I don’t. He’s taken off his slippers and discovered that he can still have an erection. He has a life. We get on well these days. We’re never lost for something to talk about.
So can I, by the way. Have an erection.
He clicks his fingers.
Not a problem.
But getting back to the rat. It’s not the slippers. Not really. Look it, I’m forty-two. I don’t mind. I was forty-one last year, I’ll be forty-three next year. I’m not the worst-looking man in the world. There are lads that work with me ten years younger than I am, more, and they’re in bits. I’m Leonardo DiCaprio standing beside some of those cunts.
He points at the book.
And I read. I’m interested in the world. I like some of the kids’ music. I never call it noise. I’ve never given out about it, except now and again when it’s too loud, but that’s nothing to do with the music itself. I like Fat Boy Slim. I genuinely do. I don’t think he’s a chancer. And I like Macy Gray. We’ve her CD here at home. Because I bought it. Because I like it. I still get excited about things. I still love watching herself brushing her teeth, for example. I still want to go over there and clean her mouth out with my tongue, just like I wanted to, and did, from day one. And she still knows it. And the other things too.
But I’m forty-two. I’m middle aged. That’s a mathematical fact. In fact, more than half my life is over. So my eldest told me, which was fu
ckin’ charming. The last time she said anything to me. Something about statistics they were doing in school. But, really, it was because I won’t let her watch Trainspotting. It’s a good film but she’s still too young. In a few years’ time, grand; that was what I told her. Just not now. Next year, probably. Which I thought was reasonably fuckin’ reasonable. It’s a very good film, like I said. But there’s too much in it that’s not – OK, suitable. Unfortunately, that was the word I used. ‘Suitable.’ Her face, Jesus. It hurt, I’ll tell you that for nothing. Maybe I’m just being stupid; I don’t know. She’s nearly seventeen. Anyway, that was when she informed me that my life was more than halfway over.
But that’s not the point. Middle age. The midlife crisis. Whatever you want to call it. That’s not it at all, really. I was forty-two when I saw the rat. And I’d still be forty-two if I’d never seen it. OK, I’m after getting myself a pair of slippers because I’m afraid of being in my bare feet, but I don’t believe that they have evil powers, that they’ve made me grow old all of a sudden. It’s not the slippers.
No.
What has really rattled me, what has changed my life, to the extent that it’ll probably never be the same again, is the question that came into my head when the little lad came into the kitchen wanting his breakfast.
‘Cry-babies,’ he says. That’s what he calls Rice Krispies. It’d break your heart. As bright as a button. ‘Cry-babies, dada.’
And me there trying to take off the rubber gloves.
‘What if?’
That was it.
What if. What if he’d been the first one to come into the kitchen? What if he’d picked it up? What if it hadn’t been dead? And it goes on and on, backwards and forwards, right through everything. And there’s no end to it. What if? What if? And it won’t go away and it’s not going to go away, and I don’t know if I can cope.
Fade to black.
Come up on Terry, again in the kitchen, sitting at the counter, but dressed this time. It is night. He has a mug of tea in front of him, and the same book.
I’ve never been what you’d call a great sleeper. I don’t know about when I was a kid, I don’t remember. I suppose I was normal. But since then, especially in the last few years, I’ve got by on very little. I’ll often go up with herself and come back down after she falls asleep, and I’m always first up. Even in the days when I drank a bit, I still got up early, even when my head was hopping. I never liked lying in bed. I’d go down to the kitchen and stick my mouth in under the cold tap until I could feel the water negotiating with the hangover. That was as much of a cure as I ever needed, until a few years ago and I began to feel it a bit more. I’ve always managed on four or five hours’ sleep. And I rarely feel the lack.
And that hasn’t changed.
I don’t drink at all now. I gave up a couple of years back. I just gave up; nothing dramatic. I’d no real taste for it any more. Not that I was a big drinker. Just the three or four pints. That was what I settled down to after I got married and the kids started I arriving. Not every night either; a couple of times a week. Then, gradually, once a week. And then I stopped going altogether. I got lazy, I think, and more and more often I’d go down to the local and the lads I knew, the ones I really liked, wouldn’t be there. They’d gotten lazy like me, I suppose, and there was one of them died. And I was never a great man for drinking at home. Some of the lads on the job talk about getting the few cans in for the football, but I’m not that fussed about football either. So, I just gave up. If we go out for a meal, when we do now and again, I’ll have a glass of wine but I’m just as happy with a 7up. The hangovers, with the kids and that, they just weren’t worth it any more. Especially when there was no more crack to be had in exchange, when the lads stopped coming down – after Frankie died, really. I’d be standing there, looking around for someone to talk to. So, enough was enough.
But, to get back to the sleep thing. Even the night after I found the rat, even after all that, I slept as much and as well as I usually do. I just slept. I didn’t dream about rats, as far as I know, and I didn’t wake up screaming. I just woke up. As usual. I felt a bit robbed, as usual, with the feeling that I could have done with an extra half-hour. I grabbed the book from beside the bed and got up. Everything as per usual. I went through the whole routine, exactly as I’d done the morning before and every morning before that, going back years.
But it was different, of course. There was the world of difference. I turned on the lights as I came down – landing, hall, in here – which I usually wouldn’t have done. But you’d expect that, after the shock I’d had the day before. I gave the door over there an almighty clatter before I came in. Again, that’s only to be expected. Even though, in my heart of hearts, I knew there were no more rats. The pest control lads had given the place a right going over the day before. I’d had to go to work but she told me all about it when I got home and, before that, when I’d phoned her during the day.
‘They’re up in the attic, looking for droppings,’ she says when I phoned her the first time. ‘Nice enough fellas.’ As calm as anything. It annoyed me a bit. The thing didn’t get to her the same way it got to me. Mind you, to be fair to her, she never even saw the fuckin’ thing. And, to be fair to me, I did. Anyway, by the time I got home she was an expert on rats and mice. The world’s foremost fuckin’ expert. No, that’s not fair. Anyway. ‘They’re neophobic,’ she says when I said I’d go up to the attic to see if the poison had been touched yet. ‘They’re scared of anything new,’ she says, even though I could have worked it out myself. ‘So there’s no point going up. They won’t touch it for a few days, until they’re used to it being there.’ All I’d wanted to do was prove that I wasn’t too scared to go up; I just wanted to do something useful, after running off to work earlier and leaving her flicking through the Golden Pages.
‘Did they take the rat with them?’ I said.
‘What rat?’ she says.
‘The rat,’ I said. ‘The fuckin’ rat I found this morning.’ And I pointed at the floor, at her feet, not exactly where I’d found it. I just wanted to point out, to hammer home the point, the difference in our situations. The reality of it. The fact that I’d been the one who’d had to pick it up.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘No.’
So that’s what I did. I got rid of the rat. I put my coat on and went for a walk. With the black bag. No bother. As casual as you like. I went looking for a skip. And I didn’t have far to look. There are skips on every street around here. This area is on the up, apparently. We’re always getting cards from estate agents in the door, inviting us to sell. There’s even one crowd who drop in a little letter every week, every Thursday with a different story each week. ‘Colm and Deirdre have returned to Ireland after fifteen years in Seattle. They have fallen in love with this part of Dublin. Can you help them?’ Something different every week. We enjoy it. She makes up her own versions. ‘Julius has been forced to leave his country after imprisonment and torture. He has fallen in love with this part of the city.’ ‘Packie and Mary’s caravan has fallen off its bricks. Can you help them?’ Anyway, into the skip with your man in the black bag. I even shoved the bag down under some of the rubble, to make sure no kids pulled it out and started messing with it. No bother to me. I could feel it under the layers of plastic and I didn’t mind a bit.
But that’s not the point. The point is – I don’t know, exactly. What I used to take for granted, the feel of the floor on my feet, that kind of thing, I can’t take for granted any more. The rat’s gone, on a dump somewhere, eaten by other rats, and I’ve been up to the attic a few times since – the poison’s still there, untouched – and I lifted the manhole outside – the poison’s there, too, not touched, and that, now, is unusual. You’d expect them down in the sewer. You’re never more than ten feet away from a rat, they say. Grand. Down in the pipes, no problem. Eating our shite. Grand. I’m all for it.
Anyway. I’m straying off the point again. Which is, I don’t know what.
It’s hard to find the words that fill the thing.
Right. I used to be able to walk across the floor here without giving it a moment’s thought. It was my floor, my kettle, every morning. My quality time. And now I can’t. I have to think about it. I have to prepare myself. I have to casually search the floor every step of the way. I have to get down on my knees and check under the presses, knowing full well I’ll find nothing, but – every morning. My mornings are ruined. It’s as simple as that.
But there’s more to it than that. It’s the what if thing. That’s the real point. What if. What if, say, it had been Sunday morning early and Match of the Day had been on when I turned on the telly. I’d have sat down to have a goo because I hardly ever watch it on Saturday nights any more. It’s hard to get worked up about millionaires half your age; d’you know what I mean? Not that I begrudge them the money. Anyway, I’d have sat down and the little lad would have strolled on into the kitchen. It doesn’t bear thinking about. But I’ve thought about nothing else. And it goes way beyond that. Way, way beyond. Everything. Fuckin’ everything is, is polluted by it.
I wait up now every night when the eldest goes out, till she comes home, and I was just getting used to it before, you know. I was well capable of falling asleep before she came home. I’d wake when I’d hear her key in the latch, but I was tucked up in bed, not an embarrassment to her, and asleep again before I’d hear her feet on the stairs. Now, Jesus. Now – this is true – last Saturday I sat on the stairs in the dark, in my dressing gown, so I could dash into the bedroom when I heard her outside. It sounds funny, I know, just like any normal father, but it isn’t. It’s desperate. I had to nearly nail myself to the stairs to stop myself from going out to the street, or driving to the disco – or whatever they’re called these days – the club – she said she was going to. It’s not that I don’t trust her – I don’t. But I do, if that makes sense. It makes perfect sense. I trust her – I’m happy, was happy to let her out, to have her own key and the rest of it. And I’m absolutely positive she abuses that trust – she drinks the Red Bull and the fizzy vodkas. I know it. And she might be even doing the ecstasy or whatever, and, yeah, yeah, sex, I suppose – and I don’t really mind because that’s part of the package as well. It’s part of the contract, giving her a longer leash. And as long as she doesn’t stroll into the house with a smell of drink on her and say, ‘Sorry I’m late, I was riding a chap with a car and a ponytail’, I don’t mind. What isn’t said didn’t happen. She knows; we know. She’s finding her feet. We’re here if she needs us.