The Language of Remembering by Patrick Holloway

Author:Patrick Holloway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: époque press

The July sun is just lovely. Your Nina is making coffee while Nina Simone’s wispy voice oozes around the kitchen. It makes me see what I want to see and be what I want to be. Saturday mornings have their own routine now. You both wake only when Ailish does, which sometimes can be gone nine. Then you get up, take her from bed, flattening her bed hair. You let her watch your phone while you change her nappy. Then you bring her into your bed and she lies with Nina while you drive to the local Italian cafe and pick up croissants and cannoli.

Nina puts your coffee on the table and you smile at her as she sits down. This is the best of the weekend and you both know it. So far away from Monday. Now that you are both working, Sundays have become something else – hours of increasing anxiety. You sit at the table with Nina while Ailish watches Peppa or Paw Patrol or Baby Shark on repeat in the other room. You do not even dislike your job, but do not like it either. You take one sip of the coffee and open the notebook from your Irish classes and go over the words written on the page. Your mind drifts quickly back to that lunch with Rebecca, lunch that was only supposed to be coffee.

It was a few weeks after that night in Fio and Brian’s, and after the hospital. In the midst of looking at nursing homes, visiting, pricing, trying to not feel sick at the patients, trying to not feel like you were killing her by putting her in one of those little rooms with a chair and a cushion that came off and acted as a pissing pot. Looking back, you were searching for something destructive. Something that would give reason to all the grubby thoughts, all the unkempt feelings that made you look at the world and your life with aridity. You met her in Carrigaline Court at 11 a.m. You were already sitting at a table by the window when she arrived. You saw her speaking to the waiter, the ease of her; then she saw you and pointed over, and touched the waiter on his shoulder and laughed a little as she walked towards you.

‘Punctual, that’s a good sign for someone wanting a job.’ She laughed as you stood up and hugged her.

‘Punctual or bored, I’ll let you decide.’

‘Ha! I didn’t see you leave that night at Fiona’s. Was everything ok?’

‘Oh, grand yeah. You looked busy with Leon, didn’t want to disturb.’

She smiled. The waiter arrived and you both ordered flat whites.

‘So,’ you said, looking at her, trying to act professional now, as if sitting with her were already an interview, ‘how is life as a headhunter?’

‘Ah, it’s grand. Grand like. Hunter is a silly word. I spend my time scrounging through LinkedIn and making phone calls promising things I can’t give.’

‘Oh balls, not looking good for me then.

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