Page 59 of The First Time I Saw You
His words are ricocheting off my skin. I feel their small nips and bites, but I know that he doesn’t mean them. I place the plate in front of him, but he takes his hand and swipes it to the floor. The sound does more than shatter the silence; the silence implodes. ‘Get out,’ he says.
‘I’ll just clean this up—’
‘I don’t want you to clean it up. Can’t you see how difficult it is for me to see you, to see you talk about your bump in the same way that Olivia did? You’re not her; why are you forcing your way into my life? Do you think I don’t know how you used to watch me in school? Don’t you know what everyone in school used to think of you? You think that by leaving and getting a ball-breaking career that it changes who you are? You’re still the fucking same: a leech. You attach yourself to whoever will take you and just won’t. Let. Fucking. Go. I bet Samuel sighed a breath of relief when you left Washington. I bet he couldn’t believe his fucking luck. I bet he—’
I don’t let him finish his sentence because my hand has slapped his face. My hand stings and my insides are crawling; they want to escape me; the anger that I have always said could be contained has broken free. Is that how Ian felt? Like he couldn’t contain it? Maybe I’m just as damaged as he was.
‘Get. Out.’
He needn’t have said the words because I am already leaving, backing out of this house that I don’t belong in, a life that I don’t belong in.
My whole body is shaking. Bean is still; is Bean scared of me?
I slam the door behind me, my back sliding down its ridges as I sink to the floor. My palms turn over and I look at them as if they are holding a knife, as if they belong to someone else. The sun is beginning to sink, the blood-red sky seeping through the windows, staining the clean surfaces, tainting everything I have tried to create with doubt.
Week Twenty-Four
Samuel
‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ I ask Da, who is sitting in the passenger side of his car. Da seems to think that the old dirt track we used to go tobogganing down when we were kids never gets used, so it’s OK for a blind man to drive down. It leads on to the field that we used to make dens in and where I popped my cherry on a very cold night with Carol; I can’t say the ground shook for either of us unless you count the herd of cows that wandered past us after my cherry had been very quickly dispatched.
‘Ah, will you stop complaining, Sammy, and turn the key?’
‘I’m just saying that as I can’t even see you, or the steering wheel, this might not be the grandest of ideas, you know?’
‘Stop being a wet blanket and turn the fecking key.’ My head shakes in response while I feel for the key and turn on the ignition. The car splutters and coughs rather than the purr that my car in DC gives out.
My vision through the window is small and filled with the bumpy lane stretching in front of me and the green grass of the field up ahead, but I can’t see through my passenger window and I can’t see through the side mirrors either; I know that this will be the last time I drive a car. ‘What are you waiting for?’ Da asks.
My foot feels the resistance of the accelerator pedal beneath my sole as I add a little pressure, the car beginning along the bumpy track. ‘Jesus! You’re driving like my Great-Aunt Nelly.’
‘I’ve never heard of a Great-Aunt Nelly,’ I tell him, pouring all my concentration into the small hoop of fields and mud in front of me.
‘Well, if we did have one, this would be how she would be driving.’
I press my foot down a little harder and feel around for the gear stick, sliding it from first gear into second; it grinds in protest as Da swears under his breath. From the black hole where my peripheral vision should be, a growling sound starts up; I hear something pass us and it takes a moment for it to swerve into my vision: a teenage boy on a quad bike veers in front of me.
My foot responds by hitting the brake and we lurch forward, the seat belts tightening sharply across our bodies.
‘For Christ’s sake, Sammy, you’re not going to let that little shite Timmy from down the road overtake us, are you? Put your foot down, you great Jessy.’
‘I could have hit him! You need to tell me if something is coming from behind me, Da, I can only see what’s in front of me! I can’t see if Little Timmy or Little Tommy or anyone comes from the side, OK?’
‘As long as you don’t make me the laughing stock of Ireland. Now put your foot down on the accelerator – do you want to feel like you’re driving like a man or my Great-Aunty Flo?’
‘We don’t have a—’
He grabs Michael and pushes him down on to the accelerator, and we hurtle down the track.
‘That’s more like it! Ha, ha! Off we go, Sammy boy!’
‘Da! Move Michael away from the pedals!’ I screech as we bump our way down the lane, the tyres dipping into potholes, with the sound of mud splashing up the sides of the doors.
‘Michael? Who the feck’s Michael?’ The image of the open gate is sucked closer towards us as the car jolts and bounces its way through the dirt towards the field.
‘The cane, Da, move the cane!’ We speed through the open gates and on to the field, splashing into a deep puddle that sprays mud on to the window. I need to look down to find where the wipers are but I daren’t look away from the little greenery of the field that I can see.
‘Wipers, Sammy!’
