Afterwards, I hang out in the car until I muster up the courage to call my dad. I could go around the corner and let myself into the house, into his office, but I would rather avoid looking right into his face.
There is a click as he picks up the phone.
“I need more money,” I say flatly, then stare at the air freshener, swaying side to side as he shouts at me for about five minutes and smacks his hand repeatedly against the desk. I say that I am sorry at various intervals, which is a meaningless thing to him. He doesn’t care about it. Eventually, the side of my face gets hot from the battery, so I lay my phone on the dashboard and let him assassinate my character on speaker while I peruse the car manual.
I have decided to invent a story about my car breaking down, about smoke billowing cinematically from the hood by the gate to some farmer’s land, and having it towed to a garage on the back of a truck. I tell my dad I don’t know what’s wrong, maybe the radiator, or, I flip to a new page, the battery or the oil, or all of them, or something, I was too traumatised to absorb what the mechanic was telling me.
“It’s a brand new car. How has this happened?” He splutters. He sounds a bit maniacal, and I’m glad I’m not in his office wiping frothy beads of spit off my face and having him wave his fists at me in hollow threat. “How are you like this? What has gone wrong in my life for me to have a son who messes up so consistently? How is this fair to me?”
“Dunno. It’s a bit of a lottery, isn’t it?”
I offer to pay the money back, which he takes offence to like it’s an abnormal suggestion to make, and he says something vaguely ominous about speaking to my mother about this, which I’m certain won’t happen. He might try if he can catch sight of her during one of her rare appearances in the house, but the conversation will meander back to Fergal, and, as always, devolve into another tiresome screaming match across the kitchen island.
“How is Ivy?” I say in the middle of a rant, and he seems surprised by the irrelevancy of my question.
“Ivy?”
“Yes, my sister. Remember her?”
“She’s fine.”
“Can I say hi?”
“She’s not home. She’s with that friend again.”
“Ella?”
A scoff. “I don’t know.”
“Sorry, yeah, an extremely stupid question. Can you tell her I called when she gets home?”
“Are you visiting soon?”
“No.”
“Well, if you want to see your sister…” I zone out as soon as he starts talking like a dastardly Scooby Doo villain embroiled in a kidnapping scheme, let my mind drift away like paper on the wind, and tug two chewing gums out of a packet with my teeth.
“The money,” I say, “You’ll send it today?”
“Yeah, but you better listen up, because-”
“Deadly,” I stab the decline button with my finger and cut him off.
Later, when I return to the beach house, I check my online account and find another thousand euros successfully deposited. I send him a message.
i laughed bcos i love characters that suck. i’d fist fight anakin irl bcos he sucks. i’ve written for mordecai and he sucks. i take flawed characters and i shrink em down and shove em in my pants and shimmy em around
christopher has a paul walker charm about him that makes me wanna write reader shoving his head down between your legs to shut that mouth up. he’s tall and he’s got that leather jacket and that wit that you’d have to keep up with if you’re not occupying his tongue with yours. he’s a piece of shit for so much of his life and tries to get it together when he’s pushing thirty, and you know him when all he rides around in is a motorcycle and he lives like a pig in a bachelor pad with old panties left behind from past flings
Domino had known Christopher would call. He'd had so much to say at the bar, all he seemed to need was professional provocation. The transparent relationship he had with his deep emotional wounds was an underrated gift given the right circumstances, and Dom knew that. So, here she was, creating the absolutely perfect circumstances for such a gift to be cultivated.
Dom unpacked a few personal items from her home in the office. At first, it had only been a square, empty room so obviously manicured to seem prestigiously modern that it could only actually be that--a room. Not a comfort. Not a safe place. Perhaps all rooms are like that without the presence of humanity. But these types of buildings, the huge ones downtown with the floor to ceiling windows that show the world moving without you, were all in desperate need of warmth and feeling she had concluded. So she brought a few of her most eclectic possessions to steepen the mood, added a few succulents all around them, and wore a classic brown powersuit as a nod to her own humanity.
When the knock to the door came, Dom straightened a hand down the pants of the very same suit. She expelled the air of a steady inhale as she opened the door for the man.
“Chris. Welcome,” she greeted and immediately took to her seat. From underneath that seat she pulled a bottle of the same vodka she bought him at the bar that day and sat it on the table beside her.
“First, I want to say that I am happy you called,” she stared into him with warm eyes, “Secondly,” she brought her hands together and pointed them at the bottle, “I must warn you my methods are a little unorthodox, and this due to the fact that therapy and healing are very different. Therapy can be anything, drugs, alcohol, perpetuated bad habits. But healing? Well, that has nothing to do with me, your father, or anyone else. Only you. It’s hard and nonlinear.” Here next words she spoke clearly, “I am your therapist here to facilitate that healing.” She released her hands and sat them on the arms of her chair, visibly getting comfortable.
look it has been many years, three in fact, since i received this ask. since that time, christopher has shown himself to be a sack of garbage
how do i even begin this
first of all, man works in the intelligence field and we believe acab
also refuses to use nepotism in said field, and then when he actually manages to try he uses it wrong and still doesnt get his way
for a genius he’s an idiot
always h*rny
we’re not gonna touch on him and maia bc he was 15 after all but -- boy don’t try to talk ur gf out of an abortion like.
says he is republican tho has thankfully never voted that way and is a registered dem which is ??? ok dude, are you trying to stir shit here? do u just want to get beat up??? i don’t understand
has a clear thing for pretty blondes
*pointing at lacee* you ruined a perfectly good child, look it has anxiety
viola is obviously his favourite child
gets banished to the Attic of Shame when he comes home from a job bc he has Trauma Brain and is probably on Drugs
met hannah and then was ready to marry her a month later
“i can do what i want, i have a permit” permit is going to confession and also buying your way into heaven
A sliver of light hovers above the horizon. A glow, hardly even there, rests atop the sea as waves drag rounded pebbles along the shore with a soft shh. I can’t sleep. I crawled out of bed after three and walked straight to the water's edge without shoes, to find the sand cool and white beneath the glow of the quarter moon. I sit watching the sun graze the bottom of the sky like paint bleeding onto tissue.
Sleep evades me sometimes for reasons I cannot explain. Insomnia arrives like this. It's like all those intense feelings and urges in my body. I can't verbalise them. I sit in boxer shorts and a hoodie on this final spit of beach before the coast turns to a cliff, and try to think of some poignant reason for my lack of sleep, only to come up with everything. There are a million reasons why. All the time, all at once, but then why only sometimes? And why tonight in particular?
Sometime around four, I change into a pair of shorts and run the length of the beach as the sun rises, pushing myself until sweat rolls from my body and there is fire in my lungs. I return to my end of the beach on shaky legs and take my clothes off, all of them, because the beach house is quiet and nobody is watching. Then I wade into the sea and float there with the waves lapping under my chin until the early birds sing and my hands and feet go numb.
After a shower I collapse on my bed and sleep until close to midday, when I wake up to an empty house, starving, and with no food in the fridge. There is a message on my phone from Jen.
Good morning lazy bones
Gone to the tennis court and then we’ll be on the beach, probably
See you around later?
I forage the cupboards for something, but by the looks of it, the last of the food has been ravaged by the others, leaving nothing behind but crumbs and dirty plates, stacked up in the sink as usual. Someone should clean that eventually.
When I locate my wallet among the random books and electronics heaped on the kitchen table, I zip open the coin pocket to find just a twenty-cent piece and a few useless coppers. I used the last of the money on my debit card at the petrol station yesterday. I know because I tried to buy some snacks and the only thing I could afford was cherry cola Tic Tacs which were rationed out between the three of us. I swear under my breath and call my dad.
He’s already pissed off when he picks up.
“Jude, what is it? I’m in the middle of something.”
“I need more money.”
“Already? What are you doing down there? I bet you’re putting it all into those stupid arcade machines, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m eighteen years old. I’m not doing that.” I’m also banned from the arcade, which he should know after the interminable speech he gave me about decorum and respect in the aftermath.
“I put five hundred euros on that card.”
“Yeah, I dunno, I used it.”
“It was supposed to last the entire summer.”
I sigh, “It didn’t.” As he’s ranting in my right ear, I begin to wonder what I really did do with all the money. I suppose there was all of the alcohol, the takeaways, the junk food, that PlayStation game I bought, and the earphones for my iPod since I was careless with my old ones on the beach. Oh yeah, and I bought those running shoes too. I suppose that wasn’t a necessary purchase, I just wanted them.
Yesterday I bought everything for Jen and Evie, all of their tickets, food and drinks… I have a vague, passing thought that I might not be very good at managing money and that maybe I should have done accounting or something at school like my mom suggested instead of randomly choosing geography. I’m also aware that it’s completely fine. Once Christopher has finished going on about it he’ll simply send more. We just have to go through this charade first.
I wait for a gap in his mad diatribe and say casually, “So can you send me some?”
There’s a clatter in the background and I imagine him tossing his little weighty engraved silver pen across his desk. He grits his teeth, “What do you need?”
“I dunno, another few hundred. I want to book tickets to this festival in August, too, I think they’re, like, two-fifty, so.”
“A festival?” He really doesn't need to act like we’re discussing satanic rituals, but I continue as though I'm talking to a normal man.
“Yeah, I want to enjoy my last summer in Ireland and all that.”
He makes some flabbergasted sound in response, which is obviously stupid because he has all the money in the world, and this whole thing is an exercise in control and power.
“So, a thousand?” I venture, resting my phone on my shoulder so I can pick some dirt out from under my nails.
“Yes. Later.”
“No, I need it now, there’s no food in the house and I’m hungry.”
He taps furiously on the keyboard of his computer, “Fine.”
I shoulder through the front doors into the fresh spring air, still a little breathless with adrenaline, to where Michelle is waiting for me. She looks unhappy.
“How did it go?” I say.
“Oh, awful, they were like robots, so intimidating. I didn’t know what they thought of my work, you know? I really thought I’d start crying at one point.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, and that woman was so cold. She was pulling all of these faces at my self portraits and saying they were naive.”
“Oh, God,” In an attempt at reassurance I start rubbing her arm, “I’m sure they liked plenty things about your work.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I sensed they hated all of it.”
“They couldn’t have, it’s probably just your perception, they… I bet they’re harsh to everyone, you know? They probably don’t want to get anyone's hopes up with there being limited places and all…”
She looks at me, “Was yours bad too?”
“Awful,” I say without missing a beat, “Same as you, they gave me nothing. It was hard to tell what they really thought of my work, but they didn’t seem overjoyed by any of it to be honest.”
“Oh,” her shoulders relax, “well if they were like that with you then they must be just playing hard ball.”
“I think so.”
“What if we don’t get in?”
“Well fuck ‘em,” I grin, “We don’t need them. NCAD? Who cares, right? It’s not exactly at the top of our list.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“I usually am.”
“Something else will work out, right?”
“Of course it will! C’mon, let’s just grab a coffee and chill out,” I drape my arm over her shoulder and walk her around the corner to where I parked the car.
The car, the brand new, shiny, blue Volkswagen Polo that my parents got me for my eighteenth birthday, is gleaming under the afternoon sun, one tyre wedged awkwardly against the kerb because I haven’t yet mastered the art of parallel parking when there are two other impatient drivers beeping their horns at me and gesticulating wildly out their windows.
“He just got his fucking licence, you spas!” Michelle screamed at them from the passenger window as I manoeuvred myself into a gap big enough to house an articulated truck but somehow felt the width of a water closet as soon as I tried to fit my 1.0 litre hatchback into it. I could have told her that firing middle fingers at other drivers left and right wasn’t really doing much to diffuse the situation, but it seemed she was reaching some sort of catharsis from it. She likes that. Screaming, I mean.
This car has been a point of contention, not because I can’t park it well, but because it was an extravagance I neither needed nor desired. “We live in the city,” I protested when my parents handed me the keys, “I can just take the bus.” But they had this idea that I might like to drive it into school and be the envy of all the other students, poverty stricken losers without parents who can buy them vehicles worth half the average national salary. I told them I can just walk like always, and they didn’t like that.
“This is a good present,” said my dad, as though insisting could make it so, “You can drive all over, you won’t have to rely on public transport any more.”
“Did I say I didn’t like public transport?”
“Well, you could get mugged on the bus, someone could pull out a knife and take your phone and all of your money! That kind of thing is happening all over the city lately.”
I showed him my Nokia from 2004 and asked him what kind of person might like to risk prison for it, but he didn’t appreciate that, and it just escalated the argument further.
“I’m not going to even live in Ireland in a year, not if I can help it!” I cried with exasperation, after a further ten minutes of his dramatics, “What’s the point?”
“Sell it then!” he bellowed back, “I don’t care what you do! It’s yours!”
“I just don’t need it! It’s too much. You can use that money for something better.”
“Money? Money is not an issue.”
“Well that car will be wasted just sitting in the driveway.”
“You’ll figure out what to use it for.”
And I did. I still walk to school, I still take the bus into town most days (when I’m not hauling two A1 portfolio cases along with me), but sometimes, late at night Michelle and I drive up and down the coast. We get ice cream at the drive through, we talk, but mostly I park it in the darkest corner of some car park, sea facing for maximum romance, and we fuck in the passenger seat. Not that I’ve kept track of it by any means, but I’m almost certain I have spent more time having sex in my shiny, blue, Volkswagen Polo than actually driving it. I’m sure it wasn’t Christopher’s intention for it, and it might affect the resale value, but the car has become a haven of sorts, a place where we can go to be alone, at a safe distance from my nosy sister, from Michelle’s anxious father, and perhaps most vitally, from Jen, who has never quite stopped being weirded out by our relationship, even with nine full months to get used to it.
He’s moving around in there, I can hear him. Closing browser tabs, maybe. Shuffling around and rearranging things, in a blind panic trying to look like he’s doing something important. I huff out a tiny laugh at the thought of him hurrying to close the minesweeper window before someone can come in and catch him doing something unserious. I don’t really know what he does in his pokey little study all evening, but one of Jen’s crazy theories is that he’s chatting online to his twenty two year old YouTuber girlfriend, to which I need to remind her, once again, that my dad is too boring to have an affair. Mom says he’s writing reports and even that sounds too exciting for him.
“Come in,” he says eventually, and I let myself into his lair where he is sitting stoically at his computer, a stack of paper, no doubt with exceedingly dull information on them is right by his side, and his hand hovers over it so I'll know he’s especially busy, and whatever it is, I had better make it quick.
I close the door behind me and approach him while his eyes settle curiously on the stack of soft cover books in my hands. “What are those?”
“I spoke to the guidance counsellor at school this week. She gave me some college prospectuses, and I thought we could... um, look through them together”
He heaves out a sigh and gestures to the second chair. The guest chair, I suppose, not that there’s ever guests in here to sit on it. It’s uncomfortable like a lot of furniture in this house, all style but no substance, and I perch on its edge, my knee doing that annoying anxious jerking thing while dad takes off his glasses and swaps them with another pair. “Show me what you have.”
I pass the stack to him and he drops it onto his desk with a thud, picks up the first and immediately flips the front cover towards me with a completely uncalled for attitude. “What’s this?”
“A prospectus.”
“Rhode Island School of Design?”
“Yes.”
He tosses it aside without so much as a glance inside it and grabs the next, “School of the Art Institute, Chicago,” Then reads the blurb incredulously “‘Art and design change the world.’ Alright…” He raises his eyebrows and puffs out a breath as he chucks it into the discard pile. “CalArts, nope.”
My face gets hot.
He snatches another and flips over to the back, “‘Studying here is different,’” He reads, “‘It is about making a better world, about becoming a creative force and learning to change the world through bold and curious thinking…’” He mumbles the rest and then scoffs at it as if it’s some political argument he disagrees with inside the Sunday Times, and he goes on and on in this manner while the rejection pile builds and builds and so does the feeling inside me.
“What is this?” He says eventually. “These are all American schools. American art schools.”
“Yes.”
He scrutinises me like he believes I have gone mad yet says nothing because he doesn’t need to. I already know what he’s asking.
The words come out of me in a rush. I rehearsed this in the hall for five minutes before having the nerve to knock, “Because I think I would get a chance at a really great education there. It’d be good for me to be away and independent and to learn a lot of new things, not just education and art, but also travel and culture. I’d really like to go to college somewhere that’s exciting and dynamic and… and…” Damn, I forgot the other adjective I’d chosen, “...Um, fun, I guess. It’s just that whenever I think about college I imagine myself in the US. I really think that’s where I should be.”
“That’s because that’s what you see in those movies.” He says movies like one might say hardcore pornography, because Christopher doesn’t waste his time with such things as movies. Christopher works, and studies, and reads endless, endless books about World War II. “You’re not going to college in the states.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a waste of time and it’s a waste of money. Do you know what it costs to attend just a year of college in the US? Before your living expenses?”
“I know, but I spoke to the counsellor about it, and she explained that there are scholarships.”
He laughs, “You’re not going to get a scholarship,” and switches back to his other glasses and shakes his mouse to wake up his PC, which has some kind of thrilling spreadsheet open on it. This 2009 financial report must be rapturously exciting if he’s more interested in it than the future of his only son and firstborn child.
I inhale sharply, “But why couldn’t I get a scholarship?”
“Because,” He types some numbers into the sheet, “You’d have to have a pristine academic record, a long list of extracurriculars and a very persuasive personal statement,” he peers briefly at me over the rim of his specs, “I’ve been through the US education system, and I know the standard that these colleges expect of their scholarship students. You’re just not up to it.”
“I could be, if I worked hard. I’m already doing pretty well in all of my classes, like, I get Bs in most things-” I stop myself before unhelpfully adding, without even trying, “And I have extracurriculars, like, I play rugby and help out Jen with her maths work…”
“You have to understand that the kinds of people who earn these scholarships do a lot more than that.”
“Well I would do more things if I had more time to myself in the mornings, or in the evenings, or after school, or at any other point in my day when I have to ferry Ivy back and forth from-”
Dad barrels on as though he hasn’t registered that I am speaking, “And you know, as well as the extracurriculars, all of these scholarship students have exemplary records. They're well mannered, well behaved, they never get into trouble, never get detention, never mind suspension. Twice.”
I snap my mouth shut.
“Honestly, if I was the dean of one of these,” he plucks at the limp corner of one of the prospectuses, “Art college places, and I saw an application from someone with your record, I would simply toss it out. There’s not a chance, and before you ask, I am not paying for art school when you could easily do that here. For free.”
“Okay, I understand that, but I don’t really want to go to college here if I can avoid it.”
He doesn’t ask me why. He already knows but doesn't want to acknowledge it, and it’s easier, as it always is, just not to discuss feelings. Any feelings, especially mine, which are the most irritating and irrational feelings of all. “Why art school?” He hums, idly poking around with something on screen. “Couldn’t you choose a more academic course?”
I’m surprised he thinks I’m capable based on all the things he just said about me.
“You could apply for something in Trinity. Math, maybe?”
“Maths.”
“Or if you want something more artistic you could try English. Literature. That would be interesting, don't you think?”
“Or I could just… do art.”
“I would just hate to see you become one of those arty types. One of that NCAD crowd loitering around Thomas Street with their facial piercings and crazy haircuts.”
Oh no, a haircut. I sigh, “I’m not going to NCAD. I was kind of hoping you’d be more enthusiastic about my choices, but if you don’t think they’re right, I mean… what can I do.” I loathe the laugh that comes out of me, this strange, nervous titter that I didn’t even realise I was capable of.
I get up and begin to gather the stack of prospectuses laying forlornly on my father’s desk, my hopes and dreams bound for the recycling bin. “I’ll speak to the guidance counsellor again about my options, I suppose, and then I’ll try and choose something that’s more realistic for me.”
Before I let myself out I force myself to pause and turn to him one last time, “Do you… um, if I come up with more choices for colleges, do you think you’d want to sit down with me some evening and go through them? Like, I mean, really look over all of the options and help me decide what the best thing is?”
There is a lengthy pause.
“You know, Jude, I’m really busy, and-”
“Okay.” I leave the room and shut the door with a gentle click.
