Read Online The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Donal Ryan
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have to send you over to Doctor Lonergan. You’ll have to get something to keep you together. I couldn’t bear it if you fell to pieces the way your father did.
My father split in two, and then fell to pieces. That’s what I think schizophrenia is: splitting in two and then falling to pieces. Am I a schizophrenic? Is it hereditary? I could find out, but I don’t want to. Like I needed only to open the wardrobe door to find out if there was a monster waiting in there to kill me, but I never did. I might have woken him if I did. I’m not waking a monster. No way.
I WONDER if that girl that lives near Dorothy has a boyfriend. She has no husband anyway, Dorothy says. Dorothy obsesses about her. Three different men call to her. A scruffy-looking character who seems to be the child’s father; he takes him walking by the hand up and down the road. An older man who must be her father. He mows grass all up and down her road. He tidies up that whole road by himself. He’s a respectable-looking man, too, Dorothy says, very straight-backed and just handsome enough to not be too aware of it. He must be pure solid ashamed of that one, Dorothy says, with her brazen chest and her bastard child. And a tall, fair-haired chap with muscles and sunburn started to call to her a few weeks ago. He’s called at least three times now. He marches in and out with tools and pieces of wood. He could be just doing jobs for her, Dorothy says, but they’re very familiar with each other. She always touches him. There’s no knowing what way she pays him for his work. She has no job, that one. She probably was given that house by the County Council. Imagine that, Dorothy says, you get rewarded handsomely these days for being a little hussy!
I’m going to paint Dorothy’s window sills very, very slowly indeed. I need to see this tall, sunburnt, muscle-bound person for myself. I need to know what kind of relationship he has with the girl. He is a bogey, an unknown quantity. I can’t think of her without him creeping into my mind’s eye. She was wearing a denim skirt one day. Does he put a big, rough hand up her skirt? I’d like to think he is respectful of her, but there aren’t many respectful men in the world. He probably asks her to do things for him and she feels she has no choice, because she is afraid he won’t finish the jobs he has started. That’s what those fellows are like. I would have to intervene if I happened to see him forcing himself on her while I painted Dorothy’s upstairs window sills. I would kick in her front door and he’d turn towards me and I’d hit him with the heel of my hand full force into his solar plexus, killing him instantly. It’s okay, I’d tell the girl, while she sobbed in my arms. It’s okay, the monster is gone, the monster is gone. I hope my heart doesn’t stop before I get to save that girl. I don’t feel very well. I think I’ve been thinking too hard again.
Bridie
I ALWAYS SWORE I’d never again set foot in County Clare. I don’t even like to look across at east Clare from the low shore at Castlelough. Ton Tenna mocks me from the Limerick road: it hides Clare behind it. We had a meal in a lovely restaurant in Ballina one time, but I kept my back to the river, because Clare was on the far bank. My second son went fishing with his uncle Jim and his brothers in Clare nearly twenty years ago and was swept off of a rock and drowned. I can’t bear the thought of that county since. I think every hour of every day about him still. I think mostly about the last moments of his little life: the shock he must have got when the wave grabbed him; the way he must have felt as he was dragged out and out and under. Could he hear the roars of Jim and his brothers? Could he feel the ocean tightening its hand around him? I know I shouldn’t think these things over and over again, but you may as well ask a bee to leave the flowers alone.
The day it happened, our neighbour John English drove us out as far
My father split in two, and then fell to pieces. That’s what I think schizophrenia is: splitting in two and then falling to pieces. Am I a schizophrenic? Is it hereditary? I could find out, but I don’t want to. Like I needed only to open the wardrobe door to find out if there was a monster waiting in there to kill me, but I never did. I might have woken him if I did. I’m not waking a monster. No way.
I WONDER if that girl that lives near Dorothy has a boyfriend. She has no husband anyway, Dorothy says. Dorothy obsesses about her. Three different men call to her. A scruffy-looking character who seems to be the child’s father; he takes him walking by the hand up and down the road. An older man who must be her father. He mows grass all up and down her road. He tidies up that whole road by himself. He’s a respectable-looking man, too, Dorothy says, very straight-backed and just handsome enough to not be too aware of it. He must be pure solid ashamed of that one, Dorothy says, with her brazen chest and her bastard child. And a tall, fair-haired chap with muscles and sunburn started to call to her a few weeks ago. He’s called at least three times now. He marches in and out with tools and pieces of wood. He could be just doing jobs for her, Dorothy says, but they’re very familiar with each other. She always touches him. There’s no knowing what way she pays him for his work. She has no job, that one. She probably was given that house by the County Council. Imagine that, Dorothy says, you get rewarded handsomely these days for being a little hussy!
I’m going to paint Dorothy’s window sills very, very slowly indeed. I need to see this tall, sunburnt, muscle-bound person for myself. I need to know what kind of relationship he has with the girl. He is a bogey, an unknown quantity. I can’t think of her without him creeping into my mind’s eye. She was wearing a denim skirt one day. Does he put a big, rough hand up her skirt? I’d like to think he is respectful of her, but there aren’t many respectful men in the world. He probably asks her to do things for him and she feels she has no choice, because she is afraid he won’t finish the jobs he has started. That’s what those fellows are like. I would have to intervene if I happened to see him forcing himself on her while I painted Dorothy’s upstairs window sills. I would kick in her front door and he’d turn towards me and I’d hit him with the heel of my hand full force into his solar plexus, killing him instantly. It’s okay, I’d tell the girl, while she sobbed in my arms. It’s okay, the monster is gone, the monster is gone. I hope my heart doesn’t stop before I get to save that girl. I don’t feel very well. I think I’ve been thinking too hard again.
Bridie
I ALWAYS SWORE I’d never again set foot in County Clare. I don’t even like to look across at east Clare from the low shore at Castlelough. Ton Tenna mocks me from the Limerick road: it hides Clare behind it. We had a meal in a lovely restaurant in Ballina one time, but I kept my back to the river, because Clare was on the far bank. My second son went fishing with his uncle Jim and his brothers in Clare nearly twenty years ago and was swept off of a rock and drowned. I can’t bear the thought of that county since. I think every hour of every day about him still. I think mostly about the last moments of his little life: the shock he must have got when the wave grabbed him; the way he must have felt as he was dragged out and out and under. Could he hear the roars of Jim and his brothers? Could he feel the ocean tightening its hand around him? I know I shouldn’t think these things over and over again, but you may as well ask a bee to leave the flowers alone.
The day it happened, our neighbour John English drove us out as far
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