The Incredible Life of Jonathan Doe Page 9

  She met his gaze and, in that moment, it seemed she knew that he had found out about her past. She looked out of the car window and in the fading light he could see small tears in the reflection of the glass.

  The three rode home in silence and, when they pulled up, Eileen got out and closed the car door quietly. She walked up the driveway past her father who was watering his flowerbeds in the cool evening air.

  Brendan got out and leaned into the passenger window to Pilar.

  “Thanks for the lift.”

  “You need to talk to her,” she said.

  Brendan nodded. “I know.”

  He stood back and, as her car drove slowly away from the kerb, he heard his uncle’s voice.

  “You’re wasting your time thinking it’s a regular date that girl is waiting on!”

  Brendan looked back at Pilar’s rear lights and shrugged.

  “Oh, don’t give me that look. I see how you brighten up when her name’s mentioned in this house. You got to get to the brother. Those Puerto Ricans, that’s how it goes. Used to be like that at home too and here, one time.

  “You mean I have to ask her brother if I can ask her out?” Brendan asked as he walked up the driveway. He laughed loudly. “I’m not doing that!”

  “Well, then you won’t be going out with her. Your choice.” Frank emptied the last of his water onto the rose-bed.

  Brendan looked up as Eileen’s bedroom light came on. He would have to talk to her. He would have to find out what had happened to her and he wasn’t looking forward to it.

  Chapter 10

  When Brendan arrived into Coleen’s kitchen the following morning, Eileen was not sitting at her usual place at the table. She had not come down for dinner the previous evening, saying she had a headache which Coleen had taken her up some aspirin for. He went to the hallway to look for her but the house was abnormally quiet. He returned to the kitchen and poured himself a coffee. Beside the pot was the usual small plate of pastries that Coleen left out for him. As he ate, a gnawing feeling that something was wrong grew stronger with each tick of the loud kitchen clock that hung over the doorway. It was a souvenir from Ireland and had a large map of the island painted green on the inside of the square ceramic plate. On each corner of the plate, a leprechaunwith a ridiculously long pipe smiled a toothy grin. It was the type of clock that no one in Ireland would dream of hanging in their house but that Irish-Americans spent small fortunes on while on holiday in the homeland.

  When he couldn’t stand the quiet any longer, he climbed three steps of the stairs and called Eileen’s name as quietly as he could.

  He had rarely been upstairs in Frank’s house. When he had first arrived he was offered Orla’s old room which was beside Eileen’s bedroom in the front of the house but he had opted for the granny flat where he could be alone as much as he wanted to, which back thenwas most of the time. More recently, he had taken to sitting in the house a little longer after dinner, talking to Coleen in the kitchen while Frank dozed on a chair by the empty fireplace. He also spent his time in a futile search on the internet for more clues on Jonathan or would retire to his apartment to mull over what he knew so far and what leads he would look into next. His life was fuller than it had ever been and he was happy, but this morning the quiet overhead had awakened an anxiety in him that he had almost forgotten about.

  He called Eileen’s name a few more times, raising his voice a little louder until he heard feet on the landing. He relaxed but his relief was short-lived when Coleen arrived downstairs in her dressing gown. She had dark lines under her eyes as though she hadn’t slept a wink the night before.

  “Frank’s still asleep,” she said.

  Brendan raised his eyebrows at her. It was Eileen he was waiting on, not Frank.

  “She’s not feeling well, honey. Maybe you should go on ahead without her,” Coleen said.

  Brendan swallowed. Eileen never missed a day at the shelter and she hated the weekends as much as he did. Something was very wrong. He looked at Coleen and wondered if he should tell her what he now knew but she reached out and hugged him. This time he did not draw back as he normally would but placed his strong arms around her thin frame and drew her to him.

  “Now, darling, don’t you worry about Eileen. She’ll be fine in a couple of days. She gets like this sometimes. You’ll see.” She patted his back.

  Brendan moved away from her and nodded as he walked out the door. It felt strange going to the shelter without Eileen. He wondered how his cousin felt last night when he looked at her the way he did, with pity. It had obviously affected her deeply. Perhaps it was because he was the only one who until that point hadn’t known about what happened to her. Not that he knew even now what that was, but he suspected that his cousin wanted people to look at her the way she was before she had tried to take her own life and that, until last night, he had been the only one in her life who didn’t judge her by that one event, by that one action that had since defined her in the eyes of everyone who knew her. If only he hadn’t turned to look at her in the car. If only she hadn’t met his sympathetic gaze. If only.

  When he arrived at the centre, Jonathan was standing in the garden, waiting for them. Brendan could see him push his glasses back further into his eyes as though to do so would suddenly bring Eileen into view.

  Jonathan moved forward and looked down the street as if to see if Eileen was straggling behind her cousin.

  Brendan looked at the ground.

  “Eileen’s got flu,” he lied.

  “In summer?”

  “Yeah, well, flu . . . or something like that. She had a headache and she was coughing, I think . . .” He trailed off as he looked furtively at the disappointed man’s face. “It’ll give us more time to focus on your stories.”

  Brendan set off up the drive, then glanced back to see if Jonathan was following him.

  Jonathan’s eyes were still fixed on the street.

  “Okay, I guess,” he replied, dejected, as he followed Brendan.

  “What do you want to know today?” Jonathan asked.

  Brendan tried to focus on his apprentice but his mind was on Eileen. He looked up from his saw horses where he was attempting to repair some of the bedside lockers in the dorms.

  He couldn’t remember what he had decided to ask Jonathan about when he got to the shelter that day and said the first thing that came to mind. “Mmm . . . eh, tell me about your father,” he said.

  “Well, he was a tall man, about my height, and his people went way back in Virginia. Some of them were well known. I think . . . I think something to do with politics.”

  “Politics?” Brendan asked, surprised.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think so. One time, there were election boards all over our house and a lot of people coming and going. I remember the photo of . . .”

  Jonathan moved his gaze away from Brendan and stared into thin air.

  “I think there was a man on them. I . . . I think I didn’t like him much.”

  “Can you remember who he was?”

  Jonathan shook his head.

  “Seems kind of funny for an apple farmer to have relatives in such – well – I’m not being disparaging to your father, Jonathan, but . . . relatives with that kind of position in society.”

  Jonathan ran the handholding the brush nervously across his brow. A small blob of paint flew off the brush and landed on the scar on his temple.

  Brendan stood and offered him a cloth to wipe it with but he seemed oblivious to the offer. Brendan wiped the sticky paint from his face.

  “You’ll have to get turpentine for the rest,” he said.

  “I don’t see too well out of that eye,” Jonathan said.

  Brendan looked at the scar that ran across Jonathan’s temple and into his hair line. The injury seemed to have narrowly missed his eye.

  “Because of that scar?”

  Jonathan nodded.

  “How’d it happen?”

  Jonathan looked out of the window
and into the distance.

  “I liked it better when we were working outdoors. I can see things clearer in the open,” he said.

  “We can bring these outside,” Brendan replied, gesturing to the lockers.

  They moved outside and, as they settled down to work in the sunshine, Jonathan gazed yet again into thin air. He cleared his throat then and ran his brush lightly over the cheap wooden furniture.

  “Seems like I have two memories of how I got that scar and I don’t rightly remember which is the right one.”

  Brendan’s interested heightened and for the first time that morning he was able to put Eileen to the back of his mind.

  “I remember being maybe four years old and Cassie and I were walking down by the creek that ran at the bottom of our property. Nella was with us too. I don’t think my daddy trusted me to mind Cassie on my own and, anyway, Cassie was maybe six and she didn’t want a baby taking care of her. That’s what she used to say. She didn’t mind if it was Nella watching out for her though. Those girls were so close. I remember Daddy looking close into Nella’s face and telling her that she was responsible for Cassie and that if anything happened to her he’d skin her hide.”Jonathan smiled to himself.“Course, he was only joking. He’d never hurt a fly, my daddy wouldn’t. He often said that he knew that if anything ever happened to him that he’d die happy knowing Nella would watch out for Cassie. Made her promise that one day. I just remembered that this instant!” He shook his head in amazement.

  “Why didn’t he think your mother would care for her?” Brendan asked.

  Jonathan thought about this for a moment.“I don’t know,” he replied.“A lot of things I remember don’t make any sense. Guess that’s why Dr Reiter said I shouldn’t stake too much on them and to put ’em out of my mind. Anyway, at the boundary of our property, someone was cutting down trees. That took us by surprise because it wasn’t the season for cutting with the birds and all. I remember Cassie saying that. She knew all sorts of things because she could listen to things better than anyone else. Before we knew it, a small sapling camedropping from the sky towards us. Nella ran towards Cassie and threw her down into the creek. It was shallow there so she only cut her knees on some small rocks where she landed and she sat there in the water, hollering. But I don’t remember anything because that tree hit me clear on the side of my head and cut into my eye.”

  Jonathan stopped talking and a serious expression washed over his face.

  Brendan could see him shaking his head and moving his lips as though he was trying to make sense of something.

  “Then I remember a part where Virgil and Clay were setting to cut some wood in the woods near the house. They were younger than me so I was in charge but Virgil, he wasn’t the type to take orders, and Clay, well, he just followed Virgil’s lead with everything. So he picked on this tree. It was too big for chopping but he swung and swung. Hardly made a dent in the trunk. He kept at it though until the old axe gave up and clear came off the handle and flew through the air. Darn thing cut my head open and went into my eye. Daddy just took me inside and poured homemade whisky on it and sewed my flesh there and then. Well, I yelled and yelled. Momma, she couldn’t sit still until it was over. It was like she felt every bit of that needle going through my skin. When he was finished, Daddy tanned Virgil’s hide good and that boy didn’t sit down proper for a week.”

  Brendan recounted both stories in his head and decided that there was something amiss. It was like Jonathan was describing two different fathers. One who worried incessantly about his blind daughter and whom Jonathan said wouldn’t hurt a fly and the other who beat his errant son and sewed his other son’s head without an anaesthetic.

  “How old were you then?” he asked.

  “Oh, I guess about eleven or so.”

  “So your mother was there but you don’t mention herwhen you were four. Four years before Virgil cut your head, your father was worried about leaving Cassie alone but four years on your mother is there. I don’t understand it.” He looked questioningly at Jonathan but he didn’t respond. “What did he look like?”

  “Virgil? He had blond hair and bright blue eyes, like me. We all looked the same. Except Cassie. She had long brown hair with auburn through it. She had brown skin and big brown eyes. She was real pretty.”

  “No, not Virgil, your father. What did your father look like?”

  Jonathan moved his eyes upwards again, as though he was trying to picture the man. Then he moved his gaze back to Brendan.

  “He was real tall like me and he wore a hat. No, he didn’t . . . he didn’t like hats. Just in the sun, that’s all. He had . . . b-b-brown hair and blue eyes . . . or maybe he had fair hair . . . curly, I think . . .”

  Brendan noticed Jonathan raising his fingersto massage his temples. He was beginning to see a pattern developing with Jonathan’s headaches. It was usually when he had remembered something from his past. Something real.

  “And your mother?”

  Jonathan looked away again.“Em . . . she was tall too and skinny with white-blonde hair tied up messy like she had no time to fix it and clear blue eyes, almost white in parts. She had a narrow chin that stuck out and she was real pale like me.”

  “That’s two blue-eyed parents you described.”

  “So?” he replied, somewhat defensively.

  “Well, I don’t know much about genes and I guess it’s not impossible but isn’t it strange how your parents had five blond, blue-eyed children and one brown-eyed, brown-skinned daughter?”

  Jonathan looked away and frowned like a chastised child.“Now, I just knew you’d go and get like Dr Reiter on me!”

  “No. I’m just trying to piece it together, like I promised.”

  Brendan sawed a broken leg off a bedside locker and threw it behind them. He picked out his tape and began measuring the length of the remaining legs to make a replacement.

  “And, Jonathan, you never mention your mother when you mention Cassie. Think back . . . can you see your mother standing beside your sister?”

  Jonathan looked away again and kept his eyes trained way above Brendan’s head. “No,” he repliedand seemed amazed, as if he had never realised this himself.

  “You said Cassie was older than you, and that Virgil, Clay and the twins came after. Is that right?

  Jonathan nodded.

  “Well, could it be that your mother died and your father remarried and then all the other children came along? Or maybe your mother remarried?”

  Jonathan shook his head. About a minute passed before he answered.

  “My momma . . . I don’t see her with another man. It doesn’t play that way. No, sir!” he replied definitely.

  There he goes using that term play again, Brendan thought. It was as if he saw his memories like a movie that he’d take out and play from time to time.

  “And your father?” Brendan asked.

  “I don’t know. I know that he loved me and my sister . . . all of us. I know he worked hard. I know he had a wooden bureau that I wasn’t allowed to touch but apart from glimpses of him – small memories – that’s all I can remember. Do you know what that’s like, Brendan? Can you imagine what it would be like if you didn’t remember much about your own father?”

  “I don’t know anything about my father.”

  “Anything? How come?”

  “I never met him. He was gone before I was born.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jonathan replied sincerely.

  “Don’t be. I’ve never thought about it. I suppose you find that strange?” He looked up from his work.

  Jonathan nodded. It was very strange. “What was his name?”

  Brendan looked to the ground and snapped his measuring tape back inside its case. “Something Martin. I never knew his first name.” He leant back and fingered the mole on his face. “I never asked her. I never asked what myfather’s name was.”

  “Didn’t you see it on your birth cert?”

  Brendan thought about this for a moment. H
e had never seen his birth certificate. When he needed a passport, his mother had insisted on applying for it herself.

  She said he had enough to do studying for his final exams at college and he hadn’t given it any thought.

  “Where was he from?”

  “Ireland, but I don’t even know what part. They met here when my mother was young and it didn’t work out. Period.”

  “You’re not hurt by him not staying around?” Jonathan asked.

  “I can’t see like it would have made any difference. If he left, he can’t have been much good,” he replied flatly as he began to cut a spare leg off a locker that he couldn’t salvage.

  “Still, it would have been nice to know his name.” Jonathan stared into Brendan’s face for a reaction but there was none visible. His new-found friend was already lost in his work.

  “Right, let’s get some of these ready for tonight,” Brendan said.

  Jonathan nodded but kept his eyes on his friend. Brendan’s flat expression reminded him of Eileen. He had seen the same look on her a thousand times, the expression of hurt so deeply buried that it strangled a person from within, cutting them off from even knowing what their true feelings were. For once he felt lucky. He knew how he felt. He knew everything about his feelings. He just didn’t know to whom those feelings belonged or where exactly he had felt them. But he would know soon. He could feel it in his bones. He was going home.

  Chapter 11

  The front door of Frank Dalton’s house, which was rarely used, was Brendan’s preferred entrance when he arrived home from the shelter that evening because he wanted to climb the stairs to Eileen’s room quietly and preferably unnoticed by his aunt and uncle.

  Upstairs, he tapped twice on the wooden door and heard Eileen turn in her bed.

  “Eileen?” he said but his cousin did not answer.

  “Eileen. I need to talk to you. Please open the door. I’m sorry if I did something to upset you. Just . . . please let me in.”