15
I wake up to a message from Yiv. Rather, I wake up to a screenshot of my father sitting opposite Alice Hoolihan, host of On The Record , Ireland’s leading current affairs show. Dad’s arms are crossed in indignation, his nostrils flared to the size of donuts. Yiv has captioned the photo, Yer da tho , scream emoji, gritted teeth emoji, head exploding emoji.
A few years after the world went into financial meltdown and my father saddled the country with a billion euros of bad debt, he moved to the UK, where he could declare himself broke and be back in business a year later. (The bankruptcy period in Ireland at the time was twelve years.) One of his last blowouts – widely deemed a two-fingered salute to the Irish public – was his lavish wedding to Gillian O ’ Donoghue, a former Rose of Tralee winner and brand ambassador for a chain of beauty clinics in Dublin. I met her once. She gave me a twenty-five-euro voucher for laser hair removal. I read in the paper that they got married in Italy, in the same castle Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes hired out for their nuptials, and that the cake had been flown in from Paris by private jet. Their first dance was ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’.
It never affected Dad, losing the money, because he didn’t lose it. Not all of it. He still has his hefty pension pot, protected by EU law. And since returning to Ireland, he’s been operating under the radar, quietly investing in various deals, rebuilding his fortune. Until recently. Over the past few months, he’s been back in the media attempting to restore his public image. He seems to think the best way to do this is to do what he’s always done – deny any wrongdoing. Claim he’s the real victim.
Dad used to say that the reason people had it in for him was down to jealously and resentment. The Irish disease, he called it. A result of eight hundred years of being ruled by the English. Now, I’ll admit, the English have a lot to answer for and I’m confident you could trace the majority of the world’s current problems back to colonialism, but what would be the point? It lets us off the hook when we place the blame squarely on the system, when we tell ourselves our actions are preordained, that ‘it’s not personal’. It’s always personal.
I remind myself of this, of Dad’s role in what happened, of the last time I saw him at the funeral – defiant, unwillin g to accept the slightest hint of responsibility for what went down. I remind myself of how he strode down that aisle with Gillian, shoulders back, chest puffed out, and sat in the front row like nothing happened. I remind myself of all of it during the moments I’ve wavered over the past decade, wondering if I made the right call, cutting ties with the only family I have. Moments like the day Ari was born. Cillian went out to get us burritos from Pablo Picante and it was just Ari and me on a ward with other new mothers and doting grandparents. Ari looked at me with Dad’s slightly upturned nose, and suddenly I wanted my father there so badly I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to show him this perfect thing I’d made and for him to tell me I did good. And it was only the smell of refried beans and jalapeno sauce that stopped me from texting him to let him know he had a grandson.
I apologised to Jack for what I said in the Jardin des Paradis. I wouldn’t describe his response as particularly gracious. (In fairness, I wouldn’t describe my apology as gracious either. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head as I acknowledged my wrongdoing through gritted teeth. ‘You’re always giving with one hand and taking with the other, my girl’.) He said not to worry about it, but has barely spoken a word to me since. He didn’t even mock my baking, and I surpassed myself this morning – I forgot to grease the tin and the madeira cake disintegrated into a dozen pieces when I took it out of the oven and flipped it over. I joked, as I was serving Jack breakfast, that I was going for a deconstructed approach. He thanked me tersely and returned to his book. I’ve only got another couple of days before he heads off to his next location for Jack Hamilton’s Real France . My sparkling personality hasn’t won him over and it’s becoming clear that my cooking isn’t going to clinch it either. Maybe I should just come clean about my situation – tell him I’m broke and desperate, and hope to appeal to his better nature? (I immediately dismiss this plan. The man doesn’t have a better nature.)
I need a distraction – from Jack, from running a vacant guesthouse, from Dad and the holy show he ’ s making of himself back home. It seems as good a time as any to start Ari ’ s death education. I’ve yet to form a coherent philosophy on the afterlife, and bees – dead or otherwise – have been notably absent from the garden in recent weeks. Leonard has a beekeeper friend, who says honey production in France is set to be half of what it was last year, as bees are having a rough old time of it thanks to air pollution and pesticides. Einstein once said that if bees disappeared from the planet, humans would only have four years left to live. It’s mad, isn’t it? How hellbent we are on self-destruction.
I figure the best way to introduce Ari to loss is to rent The Lion King . I saw the film for the first time the day it came out. Dad picked me up after school and took me to the multiplex in Stillorgan. Afterwards, we went for burgers and Dad said Scar reminded him of Uncle Declan. Given half the chance, Dad’s brother wouldn’t hesitate to push him off a cliff into the path of stampeding wildebeest. He’d always been a ‘begrudging aul bastard’.
Myriam joins us for the movie. She’s been with us almost a month now, and I think she’s warming to me, as she’s started to use multiple sentences in conversation. I found out she was born in Oran to an Algerian father and French mother, who struggled to conceive. Her mother told her ‘Myriam’ means ‘wished-for child’. Myriam says it also means ‘rebellion’, so her parents really shouldn’t have been surprised each time they were summoned to her school to discuss their daughter’s latest challenge to authority. I like Myriam. She reminds me of me – a lifetime ago.
We set up camp in the living room with bowls of popcorn. I’m excited to share this seminal childhood experience with the pair of them and prepare Ari for what he’s about to witness.
‘Now, this film can get quite intense at times, little man. You’ll probably feel very sad and have a lot of questions. I’ll be right here. You can ask me anything.’
I curl up on the sofa beside Ari. Myriam installs herself on a beanbag in front of the TV. The movie starts, and the songs, the visuals, everything is a joy – just as I remember it. Here’s Mufasa, wise and majestic, sharing his kingly insight with baby Simba. Damn, I’d forgotten how hot Mufasa was. An image of Jack pops into my head. He’s coming back from one of his morning runs, a light sweat on his skin, a subtle flex in his arm muscles as he checks his fitness tracker.
That’s weird. Where did that come from?
I return my focus to the film, belting out ‘I Just Can’t Wait To Be King’ at the top of my lungs. Myriam looks disturbed. I feel a little choked up when Mufasa tells Simba that everything exists together in a delicate balance and that as king, Simba needs to understand that balance and respect all creatures, from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope.
‘But Dad, don’t we eat the antelope?’ says Simba, all big-eyed innocence.
‘Yes, Simba,’ says Mufasa in his deep, sexy voice. ‘But let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the grass and the antelope eat the grass. And so, we are all connected in the great circle of life.’
And then Scar kills his brother and Simba is poking at Mufasa’s lifeless body with his tiny paw. I look over at Ari and wonder how he feels about Simba being all alone in the wilderness, thinking his father’s death is his fault. And what about the antelope? Before long, the pride lands will become desert, so there’ll be no grass for the lions to turn into and what are the antelope going to eat then? The circle of life is broken. It’s too much reality for a Sunday afternoon.
I head into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. When I return, Ari is grazing on his popcorn contentedly, unfazed by the death scene. He has no questions. There’s not the slightest hint of fear on his face. Am I raising a sociopath? Myriam is equally unmoved. She wants to know why the hyenas are voiced by minority actors and sound like they’re from the ghetto. It’s a fair point, I tell her.
We continue watching the movie. Simba has teamed up with Timon and Pumbaa, and for a while it’s all swinging on vines and eating grubs and moonlight singing. Eventually, Mufasa’s ghost will appear in the sky and tell Simba to look inside himself, remember who he is, that he is more than what he has become. But for now, there are no worries.