of the earth. It didn’t get any better or purer.
Eyelids flickered open, eyes cornflower blue. “Hello, Danny,” she said, as though she’d seen him only a short while before.
“Hello, Auntie.”
“My goodness, you look awfully good. Handsome as ever. It’s so nice to see you home again.”
The sentence must have exceeded her lung capacity, because Dan heard the intake of breath, the sharp rasp behind the words.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. “Is Leyla doing a good job of looking after you?”
She spoke a little slower, pacing herself. “Oh, don’t you worry — she’s doing a good job. You know what she’s like.” She took a long pull on her oxygen.
There was a peaceful sound to her voice. Or maybe it was resignation — he’d never known her to be a fighter. She would just as easily go along with whatever Death had in store for her as a request for supper to be made for visitors. Compliance — her greatest virtue — was one and the same with her.
They spoke for ten minutes before Dan felt her tiring. She wouldn’t let him go, hanging onto him as long as she could. “I’ll come back again tomorrow,” he promised.
She shook her head. She needed more of him right now. “Will you go out to visit his grave while you’re here?” she asked, squeezing his hand as though encouraging a small boy about to tackle a very big task.
“Sure.” He turned his eyes to hers. He hadn’t intended to go to the cemetery and knew he probably wouldn’t keep his word, but she wanted him to say yes. “And maybe hers, too.”
“You haven’t been out for a long time,” she said, heaping on the reasons to go now that she’d got him to say he would, just as she’d once made him promise never to drink, smoke, or swear.
“No,” he said. “I haven’t.”
“You weren’t so lucky when it came to parents,” she said.
“I had you,” Dan said, resting his hand on her arm.
“Still do.” Her eyes teared up a little. “He loved you too, you know. Even though you thought he didn’t.” She took another pull on the oxygen.
Dan shook his head. “I don’t know.”
With all the presence she could summon, she gazed directly at him. “He did,” she insisted.
Dan smiled indulgently. “Maybe I didn’t understand him. It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Doesn’t it matter to you?” she asked. She was silent for a while. “I think you’re right. Maybe you never understood your father.” Her eyes carried a look of well-worn sorrow.
“You knew him better than I did,” Dan managed. Don’t, he told himself. Don’t argue with a dying woman.
“It broke his heart when you left.” She smiled pityingly, as though she knew she would hurt him by saying this. “You didn’t know that, did you?”
Dan went on as though he hadn’t heard her. “I had to go. He always seemed so angry. I never knew why. At the time, I thought he hated me.”
“Yes,” his aunt said, her eyes a long way off. “He was an angry man. But it wasn’t you he hated.” She sniffled. “She was no angel either. Your mum, I mean. She went out and drank and hung around with god knows who half the night. No, she was no angel herself. You wouldn’t remember — you were just a little kid, Daniel.”
Something boomed in the distance, a prelude to doom, that well-worn fiddler’s march to the scaffold. There was a worn quality to her voice, water rushing against a shore. The memories were returning, like some half-forgotten love affair. Only the story ended in death — the first by pneumonia, the other through self-destruction.
“It broke my heart watching him drink himself to death. Though for a few years he tried hard not to — for you.” Dan gave her a sharp look, but she caught him. “Yes, for you. Maybe to make it up to her, too,” she allowed. “But you can’t change the past. I just wish you’d known he loved you, no matter what he felt about himself. No — it wasn’t you he hated. It was only himself.”
Her voice had gone quiet. Dan leaned in to hear her better. He saw his father as a thoughtless man who destroyed the things he loved. Then he saw himself kicking at Ralph and screaming at Ked in his impatience, wondering again what drove him to do those things.
“They were arguing over you,” she said. “He said, ‘Christine, you shouldn’t be going out with a small child in the house.’ And him working till all hours, and it being Christmas too, but your mum was drunk and he couldn’t stop her.” She paused for a long time before she continued. “She went out somewhere — the bar probably — we never found out. But she went out. He locked the door, as he did every night, and went to bed. I guess he thought she had a key. Or maybe he thought he’d wake up and let her in, but he didn’t hear her … if she knocked.” She was looking off now, not talking to him but to the past, the people she saw there. “We found her nearly froze to death on the doorstep in the morning. He was never the same after she died. Never the same.”
Dan could hardly breathe. The dream came back to him, the one with the Christmas ornament and the glittery tree and the strange scratching sound at the door. The door his father had locked when his mother left and not opened for her in time. He looked at his aunt folded into the covers, vanishing before his eyes, into sleep, into time. “He locked her out? In the cold?”
Her eyes turned to him. “He locked her out of the house. Maybe he thought she’d go and stay with her sister, but she didn’t.”
She finished her tale of old sorrow and lay back on the pillow, eyes pleading with him to let her be, as though she’d finally done her work and might now go to a much-deserved sleep, forever to forget what she had told him.
Dan glanced up at the dancing neon of girls kicking up their legs and waving top hats while a floating martini poured itself endlessly onto the sidewalk. He’d promised his aunt he’d visit his father’s grave, and perhaps this was it. He caught his breath and ducked inside.
The interior smelled of litter and broken hearts. It was a commoner’s pub, but the noise was an uncommon racket. As taverns went, the Colson lay between a back alley asylum for life’s unwanted-unwashed and one of those annoying modern-day wonders bent on fusing good cheer, good times, and good friends by invoking the holy trinity of Darts, Karaoke, and Trivia, with quizzes about dead Motown artists and quick-time sports statistics that interested no one but the poor sods who surprised themselves silly by knowing the answers in real time: Hey, Bernie! Next round’s on me!
This one was a simple watering hole for the working men and women looking for a chance to put up their feet, catch their breath, recount the day’s troubles and have a cold one, two, four or more, to help shorten the hours as best they could. The camaraderie was cheap, and for the most part you got what you paid for. As for gizmos and gadgets, the condom dispenser outside the “Gents” took first prize over the ATM affixed to the “Ladies.”
Jukeboxes had gone out of style long before the compact disc killed vinyl, but this one boasted an impressive relic, an antique by any standards, sitting over in the darkened corner behind an unused bar. Now
