Thanks for the Memories (26 page)
song.” He punches him playfully on the shoulder, but it knocks him back a few steps.
“Okay, Al, but I actually meant Justin.”
“You can call me Mr. Hitchcock.” Justin looks at him like there’s a bad smell in the room.
“We don’t have to sit with Laurence and Jennifer, you know,”
Al says.
Laurence. Laurence of Ahernia, who has elephantitis of the—
“Yes, we do, Al, don’t be ridiculous,” Doris interrupts. Al sighs. “Well, give Petey an answer. Do you want us to bring you back a drink?”
Yes. But Justin can’t bring himself to say it and instead shakes his head sulkily.
“Okay, we’ll be back in fifteen.”
Al gives him a comforting brotherly pat on his shoulder before they all leave him alone in the box to stew over Laurence and Jennifer and Bea and Chicago and London and Dublin and now Peter. Over how exactly his life has ended up.
Two minutes later and already tired of feeling sorry for himself, he looks through the opera glasses and begins spying on the trickles of people below him who’d stayed seated for the intermission. He spots a couple fighting, snapping at each other. Another couple kissing, reaching for their coats, and then disappearing quickly to the exits. He spies a mother giving it to her son. A group of women laughing together. He moves to the boxes on the opposite side. They are empty, everyone choosing to have their preordered drinks in the nearby bar. He cranes his neck up higher. How on earth can anyone see anything from up there?
He doesn’t see anything unusual, just a small number of people, like everyone else, sitting and chatting. He moves along from right to left. Then stops. Rubs his eyes. Surely he is imagining it. He squints back through the opera glasses again, and sure enough, t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
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there she is. With the old man. Every scene in his life is beginning to seem like a page from
Where’s Waldo?
She is looking through her opera glasses too, scanning the crowd below them both. Then she raises her opera glasses, moves slowly to the right, and . . . they both freeze, staring at each other through their respective lenses. He slowly lifts his arm. Waves. She slowly does the same. The old man beside her puts his glasses on and squints in his direction, mouth opening and closing the entire time.
Justin holds his hand up, intends to make a “wait” sign. Hold on, I’m coming up to you. He holds his forefinger up, as though he’s just thought of an idea. One minute. Hold on, I’ll be one minute, he tries to signal. She gives him the thumbs-up, and he breaks into a smile. He drops the opera glasses and stands up immediately, taking note of where exactly she is sitting. Just then the door to the box opens, and in walks Laurence.
“Justin, I thought maybe we could have a word,” he says politely, drumming his fingers on the back of the chair that separates them.
“No, Laurence, not now, sorry.” He tries to move past him.
“I promise not to take up too much of your time. Just a few minutes while we’re alone. To clear the air, you know?” He opens the button of his blazer, smooths down his tie, and closes his button again.
“Yeah, I appreciate that, buddy, I really do, but I’m in a really big hurry right now.” He tries to inch by him, but Laurence moves to block him.
“A hurry?” he says, raising his eyebrows. “But intermission is just about over and . . . ah.” He stops, realizing. “I see. Well, I just thought I’d give it a try. If you’re not ready to have the discussion yet, that’s understandable.”
“No, it’s not that.” Justin looks through his opera glasses and
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up at Joyce, feeling panicked. She’s still there. “It’s just that I really am in a hurry to get to somebody. I have to go, Laurence.”
Jennifer walks in just as he says that. Her face is stony.
“Honestly, Justin. Laurence just wanted to be a gentleman and talk to you like an adult. Something, it seems, you have forgotten how to be. Though I don’t know why I’m surprised about that.”
“No, no, look, Jennifer.” I used to call you Jen. So formal now, a lifetime away from that memorable day in the park when we were all so happy, so in love. “I really don’t have time for this right now. You don’t understand, I have to go.”
“You can’t go. The ballet is about to begin in a few minutes, and your daughter will be onstage. Don’t tell me you’re walking out on her, too, because of some ridiculous male pride.”
Doris and Al enter the box, Al’s size alone completely crowding the small space and blocking the path to the door. Al holds a pint of cola in his hand and an oversize bag of chips.
“Tell him, Justin.” Doris folds her arms and taps her long fake pink nails against her thin arms.
Justin groans. “Tell him what?”
“Remind him of the heart disease in your family so that he might think twice before eating and drinking that crap.”
“What heart disease?” Justin holds his hands to his head while on the other side of him, Jennifer drones on and on in what sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher’s voice.
Wah, wah, wah,
is all he hears.
“Your father, dying of a heart attack,” Doris says impatiently. Justin freezes.
“The doc didn’t say that it would necessarily happen to me,”
Al moans to his wife.
“He said there was a good chance. If there’s a history in the family.”
Justin’s voice sounds to him as though it’s coming from somewhere else. “No, no, I really don’t think you have to worry about that, Al.”
t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
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“See?” He looks at Doris.
“That’s not what the doctor said, sweetheart. We have to be more careful if it runs in the family.”
“No, it doesn’t run in the—” Justin stalls. “Look, I really have to go now.” He tries to move in the crowded box.
“No, you will not,” Jennifer blocks him. “You are not going anywhere until you apologize to Laurence.”
“It’s really all right, Jen,” Laurence says awkwardly. I call her Jen, not you!
“No, it’s not, sweetheart.”
I’m her sweetheart, not you!
Voices come at him from all sides,
wah wah wah
, until he is unable to make out any words. He feels hot and sweaty; dizziness grips him.
Suddenly the lights dim and the music begins and he has no choice but to take his seat again, beside a fuming Jennifer, an insulted Laurence, a silent Peter, a worried Doris, and a hungry Al, who decides to munch his chips loudly in his left ear. He sighs and looks up at Joyce.
Help.
It seems the squabble in Justin Hitchcock’s box has ended, but as the lights are going down, they are all still standing. When the lights lift again, they are seated with stony faces, apart from the large man in the back, who is eating a large bag of chips. I have ignored Dad all throughout the last few moments, choosing instead to invest my time in a crash course in lipreading. If I have been successful, their conversation involved Carrot Top and barbecued bananas.
Deep inside, my heart drums like a
djembe
, its deep bass and slap reaching down into my chest. I feel it in the base of my throat, throbbing, and all because he saw me, he wanted to
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come to me. I feel relieved that following my instincts, however flighty, paid off. It takes me a few minutes to be able to focus on anything other than Justin, and when I calm my nerves, I turn my attention back to the stage, where Bea takes my breath away and causes me to sniffle through her performance like a proud aunt. It occurs to me so strongly right now that the only people privy to those wonderful memories in the park are Bea, her mother, her father . . . and me.
“Dad, can I ask you something?” I lean close to him and whisper.
“He’s just after telling that girl that he loves her, but she’s the wrong girl.” He rolls his eyes. “Eejit. The swan girl was in white, and that one is in black. They don’t look alike at all.”
“She could have changed for the ball. No one wears the same thing every day.”
He looks me up and down. “You only took your bathrobe off one day last week. Anyway, what’s up with you?”
“Well, it’s that, I, em, something has happened and, well . . .”
“Spit it out, for Christ’s sake, before I miss anything else.”
I give up whispering in his ear and turn to face him. “I’ve been given something, or actually, something very special has been shared with me. It’s completely inexplicable, and it doesn’t make any sense at all, in an Our Lady of Knock kind of way, you know?”
I laugh nervously and quickly stop, upon seeing his reaction. No, he doesn’t know. Dad looks angry I’ve used Mary’s apparition in County Mayo during the 1870s as an example of nonsense.
“Okay, perhaps that was a bad example. What I mean is, it breaks every rule I’ve ever known. I just don’t understand why.”
“Gracie”—Dad lifts his chin—“Knock, like the rest of Ireland, suffered great distress over the centuries from invasion, evictions, and famines, and Our Lord sent His Mother, the Blessed Virgin, to visit with His oppressed children.”
“No—” I hold my hands over my face. “I don’t mean why did t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
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Mary appear, I mean why has this . . . this thing happened to me?
This thing I’ve been given.”
“Oh. Well, is it hurting anyone? Because if it’s not, and if you’ve been given it, I’d as soon stop callin’ it a ‘thing’ and start referring to it as a ‘gift.’ Look at them dancing. He thinks she’s the swan girl. Surely he can see her face. Or is it like Superman when he takes the glasses off and suddenly he’s completely different, even though it’s as clear as day he’s the same person?”
A gift. I’d never thought of it like that. I look over at Bea’s parents, beaming with pride, and I think of Bea before the intermission, floating around with her flock of swans. I shake my head. No. No one is being hurt.
“Well, then.” Dad shrugs.
“But I don’t understand why and how and—”
“What is it with people these days?” he hisses, and the man beside me turns round. I whisper my apologies.
“In my day, something just was. None of this analysis a hundred times over. None of these college courses with people graduating with degrees in Whys and Hows and Becauses. Sometimes, love, you just need to forget all of those words and enroll in a little lesson called ‘Thank You.’ Look at this story here.” He points at the stage. “Do you hear anybody complaining about the fact that she, a woman, has been turned into a swan? Have you heard anything more ludicrous in your life?”
I shake my head, smiling.
“Have you met anyone lately who happens to have been turned into a swan?”
I laugh and whisper, “No.”
“Yet look at it. This bloody thing has been famous the world over for centuries. We have nonbelievers, atheists, intellects, cynicists, even him”—he nods at the man who shushed us—“all kinds of what-have-yous in here tonight, but all of them want to see that fella in the tights end up with that swan girl, so she’ll be able to get
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out of that lake. Only with the love of one who has never loved before can the spell be broken. Why? Who the hell cares why? Do you think your woman with the feathers is going to ask why? No. She’s just going to say thank you because then she can move on and wear nice dresses and go for walks, instead of having to peck at soggy bread in a stinky lake every day for the rest of her life.”
I have been stunned to silence.
“Now, shhh, we’re missing the performance. She wants to kill herself now, look. Talk about being dramatic.” He places his elbows on the balcony and leans in closer to the stage, his left ear tilted more than his eyes, quite literally eavesdropping.
u r i n g t h e s t a n d i n g o vat i o n , J u s t i n spies Joyce’s D father helping her into a red coat, the same one from their Grafton Street collision. Together they begin to move to their nearby exit.
“Justin—” Jennifer scowls at her ex-husband, who is more busy spying through his opera glasses up at the ceiling than at his daughter bowing onstage.
He puts the glasses down and claps loudly, cheering, then has an idea.
“Hey, guys, I’m going to go to the bar and save some good seats for us.” He starts moving toward the door.
“It’s already reserved,” Jennifer shouts after him, over the applause. He holds his hand up to his ear and shakes his head. “Can’t hear you.”
He escapes and runs down the corridors, trying to find his way upstairs. The curtain must have fallen for the final time as people begin to exit their boxes, suddenly crowding the corridors and making it impossible for Justin to push past.
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He has a change of plan: he’ll rush to the exit and wait for her there. That way he can’t miss her.
�
e t ’ s g e t a d r i n k , l o v e , ” Dad says as we slowly amble L behind the crowd exiting the theater. “I saw a bar on this floor somewhere.”
We stop to read some directions.
“There’s the amphitheater bar, this way,” I say, looking out constantly for Justin Hitchcock. Today is the day, I can feel it. We are finally going to meet face-to-face, and I’ll explain all these coincidences and memories I’ve been having. I’m excited, as if it’s our first date. Now I just have to find him.
When we reach the bar, an usher announces that it’s open only to cast, crew, and family members. Perfect.
“That’s great, so we’ll have some peace and quiet,” Dad says to her, tipping his cap as he walks in. “Oh, you should have seen my granddaughter up there. Proudest day of my life,” he says, putting his hand on his heart. The woman smiles and allows us entry.
“Come on, Dad.” After we’ve bought our drinks, I drag him deep into the room to sit at a table in the far corner, away from the growing crowd.
“If they try to throw us out, Gracie, I’m not leaving my pint. I just sat down.”
I wring my hands nervously and perch on the edge of my seat, looking around for him. Justin. His name doesn’t stop rolling around in my head.
