Fergus before the stroke, she visits him regularly and they talk like the couple they both wish they’d been. About what’s happening in the news, about the garden, the seasons, the weather. It’s comforting chat. I think what angers her most is the fact that she likes him now. This sweet, caring, gentle, patient man is a man she could have remained married to.
What has happened to Dad has been difficult, but we haven’t lost him. He is still alive and in fact what we lost was the other side of him, the distant, detached, sometimes prickly side of him that was harder to love. The one that pushed people away. The one that wanted to be alone, but have us at the end of his fingertips, just in case, for when he wanted us. He is quite content where he is now; he gets along with the nurses, has made friends, and I spend more time with him now than I ever have, visiting him with Aidan and the boys on Sundays.
I never know what exactly Dad has forgotten until I bring something up and I watch that now all too familiar fog pass over his eyes, that vacant look as he tries to process what I’ve just said with his collection of memories and experiences, only to find it coming back empty, as if they don’t tally. I understand why Nurse Lea didn’t bring the boxes directly to him; an overload of too many things that he can’t remember would surely upset him. There are ways to deal with those moments. I gently sidestep them, move on from them quickly as though they never happened, or pretend that I’ve gotten the details wrong myself. It’s not because it upsets him – most of the time it goes by without drama, as if he’s oblivious to it – but it upsets me.
There are more boxes than I remember and, too impatient to wait until I get home, I stand there in the corridor and use a key to pierce through the tape on the top of one of the boxes and slice it open. I fold back the box, curious to see what’s inside. I expect photo albums, or wedding cards. Something sentimental that, far from conjuring beautiful memories, starts Mum spouting about everything that was taken from her by her own husband. The dreams that were shattered, the promises that were broken.
Instead I find a folder containing pages covered in handwriting: my dad’s looping, swirling letters, that remind me of school sick notes and birthday cards. At the top of the page it says Marbles Inventory. Beneath the folder are tins, pouches and boxes, some in bubble wrap, others in tissue paper.
I open some of the lids. Inside each tin or box are deliciously colourful candy-like balls of shining glass. I look at them in utter shock and amazement. I had no idea my dad liked marbles. I had no idea my dad knew the slightest thing about marbles. If it wasn’t for his handwriting in the inventory, I would have thought there was a mistake. It is as if I have opened a box to somebody else’s life.
I open the folder and read through the list, which is not as sentimental as it first seemed. It is almost scientific.
The pouches – some velvet, others mesh – and the tin boxes are colour-coded and numbered with stickers, to save confusion, and adhere to the colours on the inventory.
The first on the list is a small velvet pouch of four marbles. The inventory lists them as Bloodies and, beside that, (Allies, Fr. Noel Doyle). Opening the pouch, the marbles are smaller than any others I can see offhand and have varying red swirls, but Dad has gone into detail describing them:
Rare Christensen Agate ‘Bloodies’ have transparent red swirls edged with translucent brown on an opaque white base.
There is a cube box of more bloodies, dating back to 1935 from the Peltier Glass Company. These are appropriately colour-coded red and are listed together with the velvet pouch. I scoop a few marbles into my hands and roll them around, enjoying the sound of them clicking together, while my mind races at what I’ve discovered. Pouches, tins, boxes, all containing the most beautiful colours, swirls and spirals, glistening as they catch the light. I lift some out and hold them up to the window, examining the detail inside, the bubbles, the light, utterly enchanted by the complexity within something so small. I flick through the pages quickly:
… latticinia core swirls, divided core swirls, solid core swirls, ribbon core swirls, joseph’s coat swirls, banded/coreless swirls, peppermint swirls, clambroths, banded opaques, indian, banded lutz, onionskin lutz, ribbon lutz …
A myriad of marbles, all of them alien to me. What is even more astonishing is that in other pages of his handwritten documents he has included a table charting each marble’s value depending upon how it measures up in terms of size, mint, near mint, good, collectable. It seems that his humble box of bloodies are worth $150–$250.
All of the prices are listed in US dollars. Some are valued at fifty dollars or one hundred, while the two-inch ribbon lutz has been priced at $4,500 in mint condition, $2,250 in near mint, $1,250 in good condition and collectable is $750. I know next to nothing about their condition – all of them appear perfect to me, nothing cracked or chipped – but there are hundreds of them packed away, and pages and pages of inventory. What Dad appears to have here are thousands of dollars’ worth of marbles.
I stop and think. All around me are the sounds and smells of the care home and it transports me from the parallel marble world back to reality. I was worried about him being able to pay for his hospital costs but if his pricing is correct, then he has his nest egg right here. I’m always worried about those bills. We have no way of knowing when he might need another operation or new medicine, or a new physio. It’s always changing, the bills are always climbing and the proceeds from the sale of his apartment didn’t go far after paying his mortgage and numerous debts. None of us had known that he was in such a bad financial state.
His writing is impeccable, a beautiful flowing script; he hasn’t made one mistake and if he did I imagine he started the page over. It is written with love, it has taken great time and dedication, research and knowledge. That’s it: it’s written by an expert. It’s the writing of another man, not the one who now grasps the pen with great difficulty, but neither does it fit with the father I knew, whose only hobby seemed to be watching and talking about football. Wanting to take my time to go through the boxes at home, I pack everything away again and Gerry, the porter, helps me carry them to my car. But before locking them in the boot, I hesitate and take out the small bag of red marbles.
Dad is sitting in the lounge, drinking a cup of tea and watching Bargain Hunt. He watches the show every day: people searching for items at markets and then trying to auction them for as much as possible. Maybe there have been hints of his passion all the way along and I missed them. I think of the inventory and wonder if I should go back for it. As I watch him staring intently at the pricing of these old objects, I wonder if in fact he does remember exactly what is in those boxes after all. He sees me before I have time to think about it any further and so I go to him, to his smiling face. It breaks my heart how happy he is to receive visitors, not because he’s lonely but because he could often be so irritated by others before, unless it was to convince them to buy something from him, and he now can’t get enough of people’s company, for nothing in return.
‘Good morning.’
‘Ah, to what do I owe this pleasure?’ he asks. ‘No work today?’
‘Eric let me off early,’ I explain diplomatically. ‘And Lea called me. She said it was an emergency, that you were revving up the inmates, trying to organise a breakout again.’
He laughs, then he looks down at my hands and his laughter stops immediately. I’m holding the bag of red marbles. Something passes on his face. A look I’ve never seen before. As quickly as it arrived, it’s gone again and he’s smiling at me, the confusion back.
‘What’s that you’ve got there?’
I open my hand, reveal the red marbles in the mesh bag.
He
