45STORY COMP
see why not. She wasn’t normally worried by heights. She’d been
adamant, though. If they’d wanted to go up the thing and swish
down, they’d be doing it without her.
Liam had needed to be coaxed. Whether he was genuinely scared
of the towering corkscrew or if he was picking up on Jeanie’s
unease, Eamon didn’t know. But it had become important that they
went together. The word ‘they’ had delighted him. They: him and
Liam.
One of the blank-faced teens took his money without comment
and pointed at the coconut mats stacked at the foot of the stairs. He
had to carry both their mats, Liam was sullen and insistent his was
too heavy for him.
When they rounded the inal twist of steps, Liam sighted the
empty panel of sky at the exit and yelped with fright. Only the
promise that the slide was the fastest way down got him to sit on
the mat.
Caught in secondhand paranoia, Eamon had made his heels ache,
digging them into the sides of the helter-skelter; slowing his decent
so he wouldn’t crash into his son at the bottom of the ride. Liam’s
emotions had always been contagious. Jeanie described them as
like a bomb. Whatever his mood, people were caught in the lash.
The memory of that description bothered Eamon.
When he touched down at the bottom, Liam wasn’t there. But
Jeanie was, unsmiling until she saw him. The smile was huge and
unconvincing and, still riding on secondhand paranoia, he imaged
something terrible.
Still with the frightening smile on her face, she pointed at the
short queue. Liam was at the end of it, jigging with excitement and
clutching his coconut mat as if it was a lifebelt.
‘He loved it,’ she said, the tone of her voice lat against the plastic
smile.
Liam had another seven goes on the helter-skelter. He’d have had
another seven if they’d have let him. And another seven after that.
Eamon had gone with him for the second and third rides, pleased
with himself at having found something they could share. At the
fourth descent, he stopped fooling himself that he was included.
He’d wondered about Jeanie’s smile that day. For a long time,
right up until she died, he had assumed she was put out because,
however leetingly, he’d pulled Liam into his orbit. The thought
that he’d made her jealous gave him a glow of pride and shame for
years. Then just shame.
But now, he wondered if Jeanie had seen the way Liam left the
foot of the slide and guessed what it foreshadowed? Possibly she’d
had some inkling of what lay ahead.
Liam didn’t have the capacity to store the good feeling. He wasn’t
running to the stairs with the anticipation of the next ride, just the
sheer desperation of knowing the last was over.
When he told him the story, Liam smiled. His smile wasn’t cast in
plastic, the way Jeanie’s had been, but there was no more comfort
to be taken from it.
‘The helter-skelter was so simple. No decisions, no control, just...
whoosh. I loved it. Then... ’ He trailed of and left the sentence
hanging, waiting to see if Eamon knew the end.
‘Then it was all over.’
Liam nodded his head, then changed his mind and shook it.
‘It wasn’t that it stopped; it was that everything else started again.
The world came crowding back in. Stay, go, left, right, what do I do
now? If I could only keep that feeling of... whoosh,’ – he animated
the word with a sweep of his hand – ‘it would all be simple again.
No decisions, no complications.’
He didn’t falter over the words and didn’t resort to charming
grins or cow eyes. Eamon wondered if he’d rehearsed the speech,
then decided it didn’t make it any less true if he had.
‘So, instead of the helter-skelter, you got high.’
‘I never wanted a diferent life, Dad,’ Liam said. ‘I was trying to
change who I was. I wanted to be someone who wanted the life
I had.’
‘I don’t know what that means,’ Eamon told him.
‘As you said, “life can get too simple”.’ He tried smiling again.
Since he’d last been in the house, he’d taken to smiling without
parting his lips. Some glimmer of self-consciousness about the
toll his life had extracted. ‘Some complications might do me some
good.’
He couldn’t cover his voice: the syrup-thick monotone. His
sinuses and palate had fared no better than his teeth. Before Liam’s
problem, another touchstone point, he’d hear people on TV docu-
mentaries using the same delivery. He’d never made a connection
between the voice and the physical toll of their stories; always
assuming the dull nasal tones were a barometer of intelligence.
‘So, what’s the problem?’ he asked.
It had become a standard question over the years. Habitual, the
same as checking pupils and changing locks. Precaution made
habit, made relex. Something that didn’t touch the mind.
Again, not true.
Because no matter how much he tried to keep it out, there was
always a trace of hope. Maybe, maybe this time, the problem wasn’t
just a variation on needing money for the helter-skelter.
‘Neive. She...’ Liam hesitated and smiled again, forgot himself
enough to show the discoloured edges of teeth. He wasn’t meeting
Eamon’s eye. ‘She thought it was time we grew up, had some
responsibility.’
Something opened in the pit of his stomach. Like the swirl of the
helter-skelter, it was beyond control.
‘Planned?’ was all he could think to say.
Liam didn’t answer and stared past him for a few moments.
‘Yes. Well, Neive planned it. I played a small part.’
‘Is that what you meant about touching down?’
‘Yeah, something like that; no more simple. I wanted you to
k n ow.’
He stood. There was an abrupt departure with barely time
to shake hands before he left. In a movie or a novel, they’d have
hugged, but their life wasn’t like that.Neive had called two days later. The sound of the phone had
shocked him and he answered with a question, ‘Hello?’
Neive had the same monotone as Liam but without the hollow
resonance of crumbling sinuses. Her voice was rough. She wanted
to know if Eamon had seen Liam and he told her about drinking
cofee together. She didn’t answer, and he sensed they were both
waiting for something more.
To ill the silence he said, ‘Liam told me, about the happy event.’
The words sounded stupid even as he said them. A line delivered
by caricature fathers in seventies sitcoms. The thought allowed
him the luxury of a moment’s embarrassment before realisation
dawned.
‘When?’ he asked.Continued overleafThe thought that he’d made her
jealous gave him a glow of pride and
shame for years. Then just shame.