Making Waves
Niall
“ITHOUGHT YOU said you were ‘dying’?”
I glare suspiciously at my younger sister as she jumps from the couch cushions to the floor, eager to switch out my movie for The Little Mermaid. She’s only been bugging me about when it would be over for the entire one-hundred and thirty-six minutes it lasted.
“I’m feeling better!” she chirps. Liar.
She had choked down the cherry medicine Ma had given her, and I knew she was coasting on a temporary medicinal high. But she wasn’t sick at all, she just didn’t want to go because she hated the water.
Claire has just got the tape shoved into the slot when a knock sounds from the front door. She leaps up—her illness forgotten entirely—calling for Ma and sprinting for the hall before I can tell her to sit her arse back down. Da has always been paranoid about us answering the door.
By the time I extract myself from the four legged weight over my legs—our golden retriever, Comet, who’s quickly becoming more dog than puppy—I’m the last to make it to the hall.
“Hello,” I hear Claire say in her polite-for-strangers voice, before Mam can get to her. I stop myself by the banister of the stairs, watching her with an uneasy feeling in my gut.
I glance over my shoulder at Mam, who’s stopped a few steps away, and then back to the front door.
The man at the door is kneeling so he’s eye-level with Claire. He’s wearing the dark, unmistakable uniform of the Gardaí. The silver buttons glint like cold stars in the gray afternoon light. “Hello, love. Is your Mammy about?”
Lunchtime has past, Da should be here by now.
“Yeah, she’s making us sandwiches—oh, she’s right there. Mammy! There’s a man!”
Mam seems to snap out of whatever trance had frozen her in the hallway, shaking her head. She moves forward, gripping Claire’s shoulder and steering her towards me. Mam’s eyes never leave the officer’s face.
“Niall, take your sister up to your room,” she whispers, her voice sounding like it’s coming from the bottom of a very deep well. “Take out a board game. Go on now. Don’t come down till I say.”
I don’t want to go. I feel this cold, oily dread pooling in my gut.
Claire starts firing off questions—Where’s Da?
Is he coming home? Did he catch the big fish?
—so I grab her hand. I make her promise to be quiet, and we sit on the top step of the stairs, peering through the banisters like criminals behind bars.
We hear the Garda tell Mam that Dad had drowned.
Drowned. The word felt too small for the hole it left in the house.
He says it was quick. A slip on the slick deck, a bang on the head against the gunwale, and then the Atlantic had simply claimed him when he fell over the side.
He says people in a nearby boat saw him go over, but couldn’t get to him in time. They say he never suffered.
He might not. But the rest of us, we suffer.
We hear the sound of Ma crying, which of course sets Claire off.
She starts sobbing into my shoulder, even though it takes days after the fact for her to truly grasp that “not coming home” and “dead” means forever.
But I don’t cry. I just sit there on the stairs, watching the light fade in the hallway.
Still as the waves that took him.
??ˋ ?? ?ˊ?
September, 2007
“I AM GOING to make one thing very, very clear to everyone on this pitch,” Coach O’Shea barks.
The turf under our feet is still soggy from the previous night’s lashing, and a low mist clings to and shrouds the goalposts.
I stand at the front of the pack of the returning lads, my arms crossed tightly over my chest and my knee brace biting against my skin since I’d wrapped it on as tight as I possibly could.
Everyone who wants to be on the Saints, even the returning players from last year, is required to re-earn their spot; O’Shea doesn’t believe in tenure, only what you can do with the ball today.
He and my Da went way back. I know there was more to his past than Da ever told me, but what I do know makes me sick enough to my stomach to not want to know more.
O’Shea had been the one to convince Da to join the footie team in his fourth year—O’Shea was the equipment manager before he was coach—and he was the one to kickstart Da’s passion.
Da would’ve gone pro if he hadn’t done his knee in during sixth year.
History repeats itself.
“If any of you have a problem with the person standing next to you, based on anything that is not related to their skill on the field—meaning if you grumble, mock, or I hear a single disrespectful word about what is or isn’t “between the legs” of a player—I will have no problem sending you off my pitch.
I will cut a senior player or deny a new spot.
We are a team built on discipline and merit; not hormones and idiocy. Do I make myself clear?”
A ripple of nervous silence runs through the group. O’Shea is legendary for being zero tolerance, and everyone knows when he makes a rule he’s not bluffing. Whatever reservations he’d had about Molly yesterday have clearly been crushed by his hatred for a lack of discipline.
Speaking of the devil—Molly herself is standing only a few feet away from me, twisting the end of her caramel-coloured ponytail around her fingers.
She doesn’t look nervous, her face set in a look of cool determination, but I wonder briefly if playing with her hair is a nervous tick I ought to look out for.
You know, just to make sure she’s comfortable here and everything. No other reason.
The way she’s biting her lip is kinda cute, though
“Do I make myself clear?” Coach shouts again, making me break my stare. Shit, am I staring?
“Yes, Coach!” the chorus rings out, mostly in fear. Those of us from last year know Coach doesn’t like being ignored, and everyone else has either heard or picked up on it already.
“Wonderful. Let’s begin. Line up, lads!”
??ˋ ?? ?ˊ?
“A GIRL ON the Saints? It’s a joke, lads. We’re going to be the laughingstock of the league.”
I’d like to punch Seamus O’Malley in the face, but unfortunately I don’t think that’d be very good for my reputation. Punching your teammates doesn’t build respect, because I don’t consider respect built on fear as real respect. You have to earn that type of thing.
That being said, if Fitzy wants to do it, I’m not going to stop him or anything—which is communicated between us by a single look and a nod.
I’ve known Joey Fitzpatrick since before he moved here when we were ten, and that’s because his father (the ever famous footballer Patrick Fitzpatrick, who played for Ireland in the World Cup in ‘94) grew up with mine.
When his oldest sister Shannon got cancer, their family (which included their mom, Fitzy and his other sister) moved back from Dublin, right into a place on Alderbank a few houses from JJ, the Marshalls and I.
Finn Marshall was my other best mate, the oldest of four (and a half) kids. His house has been right across the street from mine for my entire childhood, and both his parents grew up with mine too.
This is just one of those towns that no one ever really leaves.
“How d’ya think Maxie did?” Finn asks me, pulling a shirt over his head. Maxwell is Finn’s younger brother, who’s in second year and tried out for the first time today.
“Lad’s doing killer,” I say. “I really think he’s got a chance on the starting line next year. But Coach’ll definitely make him a sub.”
Finn grins, patting me on the shoulder and going over to talk to his brother.
Maxwell wasn’t the only one who did great at practice—I saw plenty of potential in quite a few of the returning third years. But Molly Lockhart had been something else.
She’d excelled in all the drills O’Shea put everyone through, blowing me and the rest of the lads out of the water.
Her only hangup was during the scrimmage, when no one except for JJ and I (Fitzy and Finn were on the other team) seemed to be playing footie with her, while everyone else was playing a game of Don’t Pass To The Girl.
“What’s going to be the deal with the locker rooms?
” Gary, who’d done shit in the trials himself and is probably getting cut, goes on.
The lad’s never had a proper thought to himself, so I’m not surprised to hear him piggy-backing off of O’Malley’s rant.
“We’ll have to keep our towels wrapped tight, eh? ”
“Keep my towel wrapped? I’d enjoy giving a free show.”
“I’d rather get a show, mate.”
I’m just about ready to open my mouth, but JJ beats me to it.
He’s standing completely starkers, no care in the world for who does and doesn’t see his goods.
He just rolls his eyes with his hands on his hips.
“Oh, yeah, lads. Because I’m sure that girl is just dying to see your tiny little pricks flopping around.
Better hand her a magnifying glass so she can actually find yours, huh, O’Malley? ”
The room explodes into raucous laughter, Seamus turning an impressive shade of tomato red.
“What, am I wrong?”
“Fuck off, JJ. No one wants to know what the virgin thinks about girls.”
JJ clutches his chest as if he’d been shot. Always melodramatic, that one. “Virgin? Oh no, I’m so offended. Whatever will I do now that you’ve insulted me in this way? I’m saving myself for your mother, lad.”
Most people can’t out-talk JJ. It takes a lot of skill, one that even Finn and I—knowing him since nappies—haven’t fully mastered. The only ones who have ever been fully proficient in the task were Fitzy and my dad.
So it’s no surprise Seamus just scowls. “Whatever, lad. Truth stands, she won’t last. One hard tackle and she’ll be crying for her Mammy.”
I slam my locker shut with an echoing bang that makes all the first time lads hugging the wall jump.
“She’s not going to be crying, O’Malley, because you’re not going to be a prick to her.
If she gets on the team, she’s a Saint. Treat her like one, or you can go play for Ballymore. I’m sure they need a new water boy.”
“You going to stop me from doing something, Blue?”
I am already slinging my gear bag over my shoulder. “You going to make me have to?”
I don’t wait for him to answer before I walk out.
I reach the parking lot, where Claire is waiting for me, playing with one of Da’s old cameras that she’d dragged out of the attic the other day.
She looks so much like him in that light—taking pictures of the pitch, leaning on the bonnet of my car—that it hurts to look at her.
Claire has Mam’s looks but is Dad through and through. His sunny side up attitude, hearts on their sleeves, and never thinking twice about someone’s intentions. I’ve gotten a few of his bad habits, but I am much more like Mam in the long run.
Funny, how things like that work out.
“Take any of the trials?” I ask her, dumping my stuff in the back.
“Oh, yeah, I was up in the stand, didn’t you see—ah!” She gets cut off by JJ picking her up from behind, trying to spin her around. He must have been right behind me coming out of the changing room—naturally, since I’m his ride everywhere. I swear his umbilical cord is attached to me.
“Did you get my good side?” JJ asks her, once he’s finally let her feet touch the pavement.
“Which side is that, again?”
“You’re right, who am I kidding. Every side is a good side.”
I’m sure he’d like to think so.
JJ throws his bag in the back by mine, Claire’s eyes tracking his every move like she’s locked in a trance.
It isn’t anything new—she’s had a crush on him since she was four years old.
He used to pick every wildflower and weed, stuff them in his pockets, and bring them to her. She’s been smitten ever since.
I drive us all home, planning to drop my stuff off inside and head back out to the bakery.
I like to help Mam out there as much as I can.
I change in my room, and then stop in Claire’s doorway as I leave to make sure they know to get themselves supper.
She and JJ are on the floor with the kittens, holding them up and inspecting between their legs.
What the fuck?
“Oi. What are you lot doing?”
They both look at me, and JJ holds up the little orange and white one. “We’re just trying to figure out if they’re boys or girls. Ya know, so we can name them.”
The first time Claire and JJ brought home a broken animal—this bird they’d found while riding bikes with Finn, while Da and I had been baking together in the house—Dad had told them that they should always name them.
Mam thought it was a terrible idea, since she didn’t want them getting too attached to this bird that was probably going to die, and future animals that were bound to not make it either.
Da’s logic was that if they named them, they would take better care of them.
“You don’t want them to die if you name them,” he’d said, ruffling Claire’s hair while JJ nodded sagely, as if he was the expert on animal rearing.
The bird didn’t die by the way. We released it at the park a few weeks later, letting it fly off into the sun. Whatever the animal equivalent of a green thumb is, Da had it.
“Alright, give ‘em here.” I get down on the floor, my knee not giving much protest. It’s been alright the past couple days, which I hope is a good sign for the future. JJ hands me his kitten, and I flip it around for inspection. “Yeah, this one’s a girl.”
Claire leans closer. “How do you know?”
“You just—look.” I point. “See? No tackle.”
“Ohhhhh,” JJ muses, looking over my other shoulder. We must look terrifying to this poor wee thing. “So if it’s got a little slit—”
“Oh my god, ew, don’t say it like that!”
“Like what?” JJ looks perplexed by Claire’s reaction. “That’s what it is!”
I shake my head, handing the kitten back to JJ. He kisses its head, grinning at it. “Aww. I’m gonna name her Shannon. Like the river.”
“That’s idiotic. Cats hate water. And I want to name them.”
“It’s ironic, is what it is, Claire-Bear. And you don’t get to name them all. They’re my babies, too. I have rights.”
I leave them to their little custody spat, shutting the door on them as they launch into a ridiculous debate on water-based cat names and dictatorship over cat parenting.