Thanks for the Memories (19 page)

As I slide the key into the lock, the phone sitting just inside the hall begins ringing. I look at my watch. Seven a.m. Who on earth would be calling so early?

Fran’s car beeps again, and I turn round angrily and see Dad leaning over Fran’s shoulder, pushing his hand down on the steering wheel.

“There you go now, Fran. We’ll hear you the next time. Come on, love, we’ve a plane to catch!” He laughs uproariously. I ignore the ringing phone and hurry to the car with the bags.

“There’s no answer.” Justin paces the living room in a panic. He tries the number again. “Why didn’t you tell me about this yesterday, Bea?”

Bea rolls her eyes. “Because I didn’t think it’d be such a big deal. People get wrong numbers all the time.”

“But it wasn’t a wrong number.” He stops walking and taps his foot impatiently to the sound of the rings.

“That’s exactly what it was.”

Answering machine. Damn it! Do I leave a message?

He hangs up and frantically dials again.

Bored with his antics, Bea sits on the garden furniture in the living room and looks around the sheet-covered room and at the walls filled with dozens of color samples. “When is Doris going to have this place finished?”

“After she starts,” Justin snaps, dialing again.

“My ears are burning,” Doris sings, appearing at the door in
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a pair of leopard-print overalls, her face heavily made up as usual.

“Found these yesterday, aren’t they adorable?” She laughs. “BuzzyBea, sweetie, so lovely to see you!” She rushes to her niece, and they embrace. “We are so excited about your performance tonight, you have no idea. Little Buzzy-Bea all grown up and performing in the Royal Opera House.” Her voice rises to a screech. “Oh, we are so proud, aren’t we, Al?”

Al enters the room with a chicken leg in his hand. “Mmmhmm.”

Doris looks him up and down with disgust, and then back to her niece. “A bed for the spare room arrived yesterday morning, so you’ll actually have something to sleep on when you stay, won’t that be a treat?” She glares at Justin. “I also got some paint and fabric samples so we can start planning your room design, but I’m only designing according to feng shui rules. I won’t hear of anything else.”

Bea freezes. “Oh, gee, great.”

“I know we’ll have such fun!”

Justin eyes his daughter. “That’s what you get for withholding information.”

“What information? What’s going on?” Doris ties her hair up in a cerise pink scarf and makes a bow at the top of her head.

“Dad is having a conniption fit,” Bea explains.

“I told him to go to the dentist already. He has an abscess, I’m sure of it,” Doris says matter-of-factly.

“I told him too,” Bea agrees.

“No, not that. The woman,” Justin says intensely. “Remember the woman I was telling you about?”

“Sarah?” Al asks.

“No!” Justin responds impatiently.

“Who can keep up with you?” Al shrugs him off. “Certainly not Sarah, when you’re running at top speed after Viking buses and leaving her behind.”

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Justin cringes. “I apologized.”

“To her voice mail,” Al chuckles. “She is never going to answer your calls again.”

I wouldn’t blame her.

“Are you talking about the déjà vu woman, Justin?” Doris gasps, realizing.

“Yes.” Justin gets excited. “Her name is Joyce, and she called Bea yesterday.”

“She may not have.” Bea’s protests falls on deaf ears. “A woman named Joyce rang yesterday. But I do believe there’s more than one Joyce in the world.”

Ignoring her, Doris gasps again. “How can this be? How do you know her name, Justin?”

“I heard somebody call her that on the Viking bus. And yesterday Bea got a phone call on her emergency number, a number that no one has but me, from a woman in Ireland.” Justin pauses for dramatic effect. “Named Joyce.”

There’s silence. Justin nods his head knowingly. “Yep, I know. Spooky, huh?”

Frozen in place, Doris widens her eyes. “Spooky, all right.”

She turns to Bea. “You’re eighteen years old, and you’ve given your father an emergency number?”

Justin groans in frustration and starts dialing again. Bea’s cheeks are pink. “Before he moved over, Mum wouldn’t let him call at certain hours because of the time difference. So I got another number. It’s not technically an emergency number, but he’s the only one who has it, and every time he calls he seems to have done something wrong.”

“Not true,” Justin objects.

“Sure,” Bea responds breezily, picking up and flicking through a magazine. “And I’m not moving in with Peter.”

“You’re right, you’re not. Peter”—he spits out the name—

“picks strawberries for a living.”

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“I love strawberries.” Al offers his support. “If it wasn’t for Petey, I wouldn’t get to eat ’em.”

“Peter is an IT consultant.” Bea shrugs her shoulders in confusion. Choosing this moment to butt in, Doris turns to Justin.

“Sweetie, you know I’m rooting for you and the déjà vu lady—”

“Joyce, her name is Joyce.”

“Whatever, but you got nothing but a coincidence. And I’m all for coincidences, but this is . . . well, it’s a pretty dumb one.”

“I have not got nothing, Doris, and that sentence is atrociously wrong on so many grammatical levels, you wouldn’t believe. I have got a name, and now I have a number.” He walks over to Doris and squeezes her face in his hands, pushing her cheeks together so that her lips puff out. “And that, Doris Hitchcock, means that I got something!”

“It also makes you a stalker,” Bea says under her breath.
You are now leaving Dublin. We hope you enjoyed your stay.
Dad’s rubber ears go back on his head, his bushy eyebrows lift upward, as we reach the airport.

“You’ll tell all the family that I said good-bye, won’t you, Fran?” Dad says a little nervously.

“Of course I will, Henry. You’ll have a great time.” Fran’s eyes smile at me knowingly in the rearview mirror.

“I’ll see them all when I come back,” Dad adds, closely watching a plane as it disappears to the skies. “It’s off behind the clouds now,” he says, looking at me unsurely.

“The best part.” I smile.

He relaxes a little.

Fran pulls over at the drop-off section, busy with people conscious that they can’t stay for more than a minute and quickly unloading bags, hugging, paying taxi drivers. Dad stands still and t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
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takes it all in, like the rock thrown into the stream again, as I lift the bags from the trunk. Eventually he snaps out of it and turns his attention to Fran, suddenly filled with warm affection for a woman he usually can’t stop bickering with. Then he surprises us all by offering her a hug, awkward as it is.

Once inside, in the hustle and bustle of one of Europe’s busiest airports, Dad holds on to my arm tightly with one hand and with the other pulls along the weekend bag I’ve lent him. It took me the entire day and night to convince him it wasn’t anything like the tartan rolling suitcases Fran and all the other older ladies use for their shopping. He looks around now, and I see him registering men with similar bags. He looks happy, if still a little confused. We go to the computers to check in.

“What are you doing? Getting the sterling pounds out?”

“It’s not an ATM, this is check-in, Dad.”

“Do we not speak to a person?”

“No, this machine does it for us.”

“I wouldn’t trust this yoke.” He looks over the shoulder of the man beside us. “Excuse me, is your yokey-mabob working for you?”

“Scusi?”

Dad laughs. “Scoozy-woozy to you too.” He looks back at me with a grin on his face. “Scoozy. That’s a good one.”

“Mi dispiace tanto, signore, la prego di ignorarlo, è un vecchio sciocco e non sa cosa dice,” I apologize to the Italian man, who seemed more than taken aback by Dad’s comments. I have no idea what I’ve said, but he returns my smile and continues checking in.

“You speak Italian?” Dad looks surprised, but I haven’t time to consider my new skill while an announcement is being made.

“Shhh, Gracie, it might be for us. We better hurry.”

“We have two hours until our flight.”

“Why did we come so early?”

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“We have to.” I’m already getting tired now, and the tireder I get, the shorter my answers get.

“Who says?”

“Security.”

“Security who?”

“Airport security. Through there.” I nod in the direction of the metal detectors.

“Where do we go now?” he asks once I retrieve our boarding passes from the machine.

“To check our bags in.”

“Can we not carry them on?”

“No.” I walk us toward the counter

“Hello,” a woman immediately greets us, then takes my passport and Dad’s ID.

“Hello,” Dad says chirpily, a saccharine smile forcing itself through the wrinkles of his permanently grumpy face. I roll my eyes. Always a sucker for the ladies.

“How many bags are you checking in?”

“Two.”

“Did you pack your own bags?”

“Yes.”

“No.” Dad nudges me and frowns. “You packed my bag for me, Gracie.”

I sigh. “Yes, but you were with me, Dad. We packed it together.”

“Not what she asked.” He turns back to the lady. “Is that okay?”

“Yes.” She continues, “Did anybody ask you to carry anything for them on the plane?”

“N—”

“Yes,” Dad interrupts me again. “Gracie put a pair of her shoes in my bag because they wouldn’t fit in hers. We’re only going for a couple of days, you know, and she brought three pairs. Three.”

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“Do you have anything sharp or dangerous in your hand luggage—scissors, tweezers, lighters, or anything like that?”

“No,” I say.

Dad squirms and doesn’t respond.

“Dad”—I elbow him—“tell her no.”

“No,” he finally says.

“Well done,” I snap.

“Have a pleasant trip.” She hands us back our IDs.

“Thank you. You have very nice lipstick,” Dad adds before I pull him away.

I take deep breaths as we approach the security gates, and I try to remind myself that this is Dad’s first time in an airport, and that if you’ve never heard the questions before, particularly if you’re a seventy-five-year-old, they might indeed seem quite strange.

“Are you excited?” I ask, trying to make the moment enjoyable.

“Delirious, love,” he says sarcastically.

I give up and keep to myself.

I collect a clear plastic bag and fill it with my makeup and his pills, and we make our way through the maze that is the security queue.

“Just do what they say,” I tell him when we get to the security gates. “You won’t cause any trouble, will you?”

“Trouble? Why would I cause trouble? What are you doing?

Why are you taking your clothes off ?”

I groan quietly. “Dad, you don’t understand. I really have to get to London. I can’t explain it to you now because you won’t understand, I barely do, but I
have
to be there, so please, please just comply. This is what we’re supposed to do, okay?” I give him a forced smile as I take off my belt and my coat.

“Sir, could you please remove your shoes, belt, overcoat, and cap?”

“What?” Dad laughs at him.

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“Remove your shoes, belt, overcoat, and cap.”

“I will do no such thing. You want me walking around in my socks?”

“Dad, just do it,” I tell him.

“If I take my belt off, my trousers will fall down,” he says angrily.

“You can hold them up with your hands,” I snap.

“Christ Almighty,” he says loudly.

The young security officer looks round to his colleagues.

“Dad, just do it,” I say more firmly now. An extremely long queue of irritated seasoned travelers who already have their shoes, belts, and coats off is forming behind us.

“Empty your pockets, please.” An older and angrier-looking security man steps in.

Dad looks uncertain.

“Oh, my God, Dad, this is not a joke. Just do it.”

“Can I empty them away from her?” Dad nods at me.

“No, you’ll do it right here.”

“I’m not looking.” I turn away, baffled.

I hear clinking noises as Dad empties his pockets.

“Sir, you were told you could not bring these things through with you.”

I spin round to see the security man holding a lighter and toenail clippers in his hands, as well as the packet of cigarettes in the tray with the photograph of Mum. And a banana.

“Dad!” I say.

“Stay out of this, ma’am.”

“Don’t speak to my daughter like that. I didn’t know I couldn’t bring them. She said scissors and tweezers and water and—”

“Okay, we understand, sir, but we’re going to have to take these from you.”

“But that’s my good lighter! And what’ll I do without my clippers?”

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“We’ll buy new ones,” I say through gritted teeth. “Now just do what they say.”

“Okay, okay”—he waves his hands rudely at them—“keep the damn things.”

“Sir, please remove your cap, jacket, shoes, and belt.”

“He’s an old man,” I say to the security guard in a low voice so that the gathering crowd behind us doesn’t hear. “He needs a chair to sit on to take off his shoes. And he shouldn’t have to take them off as they’re corrective footwear. Can you not just let him through?”

“The nature of his right shoe means that we must check it,”

the man begins to explain, but Dad overhears and explodes.

“Do you think I have a
bomb in my shoe
? What kind of eejit would do that? Do you think I have a
bomb
sittin’ behind my belt?

Is my banana really a
gun,
do you think?” He waves the banana around at the staff, making shooting sounds. “Have you all gone loony in here?”

Dad reaches for his cap. “Or maybe I’ve a
grenade
under my—”