Little Black Book

LITTLE BLACK BOOK

“You must take it... just take it! This is your last chance, our last chance! NOW TAKE IT!!! FOR YOUR SAKE TAKE IT!!!

The biblical roar cuts through his stomach and instinctively jolts him awake, the crumpled pillows providing insufficient support, his neck cricks slightly, he gives it a rub and sits up.

The scent of clothes drying on radiators permeates his nostrils as he makes sense of his surroundings and the sounds rising up from below…

“ROAR!” his wife and son playing dinosaur rescue missions…

“She’s let me lie in,” he smiles to himself.

Billy McQuaid is in his early 40’s, youthful with an abundance of hair, narrowly shirking the impending middle age. Married with a five-year-old son, he thrives as a dad, but has struggled in recent years to comprehend his own place and purpose, buckling into a slow breakdown and rebuilding process.

Reaching over for his journal, a new morning ritual that had provided great catharsis and comfort in recent months…. He begins to write…

Another anxiety dream about dad, he looks about my age now, he’s holding something for me to take, demanding that I take it, he seems desperate, agitated, it feels important, it feels like love, but it’s an exasperated, impatient love…

As he writes he gazes out at the glowering skies, his mind wanders to the writing competition his wife Emma had mentioned.

“You’re so good! People need to hear your voice!”

Yet he’d held back from entering… Something had stopped him…

“Why don’t I share my writing? It’s liberating yet daunting, it comes so naturally and yet there’s a fear”…

His phone rings, yanking him from his ponderings…

“Hi Billy, how are you?” without waiting for an answer the next question fires through… “When do you want to come and have a look through your Dad's things? I’m having a clear out today can you help? You’d really be doing me a favour”

Billy’s Dad had passed away ten weeks ago, he’d been severely ill for six months prior, diagnosed two years previous and slowly succumbing to death through the vessel of Alzheimer’s.

Watching a person slowly fade, like aged ink vanishing, receding into a series of behavioural quirks, basic skills unlearned; memory, speech, movement, eating, and finally breathing.

Nothing prepares the mind for death. You watch it descend, rolling over hills like a morning mist, you think you’re ready, you brace for its imminent arrival. Devotions, songs, stories, kisses, last words all lost in the void of the space left behind.

Growing up the youngest of four boys, Billy had a difficult relationship with his father Jack. A brusque, angry man from Belfast, low on patience and blunt as a hammer does not bond easily with a sensitive, thoughtful, light-hearted dreamer.

Governing the house with the air of self-righteous indifference, and sarcastic humiliation, at times giving way to downright bullying, demanding respect on sight, shutting down resistance with vitriolic bellows of “Because I say it is!” and “That’s the end of it!”

So the dawn of his dying brought a new chapter, a chance to rectify, to forgive and complete the circle. To parent his father the way he had needed to be parented. So many questions, so many resentments all folded away as autumn succumbs to winter. Days become weeks of waiting. Carers, nurses, doctors, reassuring yet sinister, close family and friends offering their standard take on death, not specific to his father, just their version, their perspective of death, like utterances in the distance, whispered over the white noise of TV, watched through a foggy lens.

To begin as new requires accepting the past.

Arriving at his mums house to the usual hive of activity; washers washing, tumble dryers tumbling, kettles boiling, TV on maximum volume as the phone rings… he helps himself to a cuppa while his mom gets irate with a tradesman, still the TV is at maximum volume…

He walks into the spare bedroom, and sees the compact pile of clothes neatly stacked on the bed.

It’s jarring how small your parents become near death, memories of the giant man shrunken and hollowed to a spectre. His clothes resemble the accessories of a toy action figure.

Billy crouches down to investigate, his mom explodes into the room full of incandescent rage about the stupid man who was supposed to come and fix the windows today, not coming until tomorrow now! She always goes to Aldi on a Thursday! “Bloody useless”

His Mothers tendency for hysterical outbursts, and anxious regurgitations had reached fever pitch since his Father died, every interaction another opportunity to rage against the world for being so brutally unfair.

A tiny, angular woman with electric turquoise eyes sunken behind bags of anguish and hurt that dominated the last two years, Maggie was a powerhouse of determined, anxious energy, hard to get near, hard to hold.

“Your brothers have taken all they want, anything you don’t take will go to the homeless shelter now.”

“Ok”

Billy picks up a jumper, soft knit, Marks and Spencer Maroon pullover, holds it close to his face and inhales deeply, drinking in his dad, his later years still hanging in the air; E45 cream, Brut cologne with a hint of decay.

Resistance to the ageing process is futile yet inevitable.

At the bottom of the pile sits an item he hasn’t seen for decades, a navy-blue boiler suit. It was the ubiquitous uniform of his father during Billy’s formative years.

Ever-present ciggie dangling from his mouth, pencil tucked behind his ear, furrowed brow as he toils with the latest DIY challenge, impatient and barking instructions. Fun was furthest away.

“WOW! I haven’t seen these for years Mom!”

“Oh, his plumbers overalls! He looked so handsome in those, jet-black hair and piercing eyes, they always brought out his blue eyes...

…Oh I do miss him so much.”

The phone rings in the living room; Maggie dashes off and grabs the receiver before the second ring…

Billy smiles as he listens to her regaling the caller about ‘the man doing the windows!’

Holding the boiler-suit up to investigate, the sizing is about right for him, he slips it on, it is a perfect fit, almost tailor made, soft cotton, made in Belfast, saggy and threadbare at the elbows and knees, slightly musty… and then, suddenly… an obnoxious aroma of cigarettes envelopes the area, the freshly lit, sulphur tinged match smell…

“How is this possible?” he thinks…

“The air is clear, the room is empty, no windows open?”

Yet the distinctive burning tobacco scent engulfs him. He looks in the mirror. His eyes flinty just like his dads, for a split second he looks just like his dad at his age. Anxiously plunging his hands into the pockets, he pauses and takes three deep breaths to ground himself…

Noticing a heaviness to the left leg, a weight resting against his knee, Billy thrusts his hand deep into the cavernous pocket, it’s empty, but there is a tear to the lining, he can’t quite reach, so rather than make the tear worse he takes the boiler suit off, gently lays it on the bed and feels the area… making out a small, flat, rectangular shape… “Could it be a tobacco tin? That would explain the smell, or maybe a box of fuses? Dad always carried small DIY utensils about his person just in case of emergencies.”

His finger brushes a smooth texture, a small notebook, reaching in he carefully removes his new discovery. A black leather notebook, frayed at the edges with yellowed pages, it resembles a mock-up artefact from Dickensian London.

Tentatively opening it up, expecting to find a directory of contacts and building suppliers… he instead finds a journal?

The prose is gentle, with humorous observations, part diary, part historical document, Billy slumps onto the bed and transports back in time to meet his dad, through the years growing up in a tough working class city, his own father not being around because he was “a highly respected war hero” his ambitions and aspirations, then he meets mom, they get married, have their first child, he’s so excited its a baby boy… wonder if I get a mention?

He flicks forwards, suddenly the words just stop dead…

“Huh?”

As he slowly scans back he notices the beginning of a story… setting, plot, characters… a young man with dreams of a fulfilled life, trapped and lost in his obligations, begins to write poems and stories, dreams of becoming a full time writer… “A writer who doesn’t write?”

The final words written in the book are “THIS IS OUR LAST CHANCE! NOW TAKE IT, FOR YOUR SAKE TAKE IT!”

Then the words abruptly stop.

Billy’s heart races… “This is about him! This is his life! The Dream!” he exclaims.

Dropping the book to his lap, his head rolls back and tears fill his eyes.

“Dad was just really sad he’d never got to realise his dreams and he couldn’t share that with anyone, he was too scared to let anyone down, that’s why he was so angry all the time”

At that moment his mom shouts into the room… “Billy, I’ve got to go and see your Aunt Maureen, she wants to book us on a cruise and needs me with her, better go now, she’s stressed, you alright seeing yourself out? Love you”

“Yep, yep no worries Mom” Billy sniffs, wiping away the tears.

He sits for a few minutes contemplating his discovery… grabs the book and the boiler suit and leaves.

Walking home the glowering skies dissipate to patchy blue, early spring air slices through the traffic fumes. Thoughts tumble in Billy’s head,

“Who was my dad?”

“Why did he stop writing?”

“Why didn’t he share this side of him with us or with mom?” …

“Oh my god, we are exactly the same!”

“Why do I stop myself?”

“Why don’t I share this side of me?”

The blaring car horn shocks him from his thoughts; he looks up to see a crimson contorted face followed by a vivid extended middle finger.

A young mom passes by pushing a buggy, “You alright love? Some people are just full of anger aren’t they?”.

Billy notices he’s stood in the middle of the road.

He makes the choice there and then to complete the circle, to fulfil his own dreams, and to fulfil his father’s dreams…

“What if I finish this book for dad!” he exclaims.

“What if we enter his story into the writing competition? I’m going to help him to realise his dreams of being a writer!”

He races home and deep dives the notebook, great empathy washes over him for Jack the person. Not the husband, the dad or the plumber, Jack the young man with dreams, struggling to find his own voice, who got busy being busy, earning respect from his parents and peers. A young man of great courage, and fierce resilience in times of challenge, who would fight tooth and nail for his family. Yet a man who never saw any value in himself, never invested in his life with any purpose, desperate and paralysed by the fear of rejection and humiliation.

Billy finishes writing Jack’s story, and clutching the notebook to his chest, he whispers,

“Thank you Dad, I love you, I miss you”

A week later…

As Billy prepares his son Frank’s breakfast and navigates the routine chaos of the school run, his phone vibrates…

it’s an email about his entry to the writing competition...

Dear Mr McQuaid, we absolutely adored your story, you write with such fearless energy, encapsulating the human spirit and heartache so eloquently. We are delighted to congratulate you on winning first prize of $20’000...We look forward to reading more Jack McQuaid adventures very soon…

Billy stands in his kitchen and softly cries warm, salty tears as the noise around him recedes…

“We did it Dad, now we really are writers.”