11. Words With Jack

Trying to remember the  date of THE ACCIDENT. Late December last year. Early Saturday evening I remember. Lasagne baking in the oven. Ballgame on TV.

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A couple of hours ago, after dinner in the living room with Jack, I had the longest, most meaningful conversation with him since… how many months ago… Five? Six? Math isn’t one of my hottest subjects - never been good with numbers. If there’s such a thing as ‘mathlexia’, I have it. Looking at numbers or trying to keep track of them in my head is harder than Chinese Algebra. Codes on locks. Credit card numbers. Phone numbers. Pin numbers. But dates, they’re the worst, they really mess me up.

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‘So, Dad,’ I asked, ‘what’s with this shipping out and shaping up business you mentioned the other night? Did you actually say we’re going home?’

‘Absolutely bloody right,’ he assured me, standing by the coat rack wrestling the Mac from his back. He’d apparently stopped off on his way home from Winn-Dixie for a bevy or two.

‘But…’ I countered, looking around the room, hands palm up, shoulders hunched. ‘Check it out: We are home.’

‘Home’s where the heart is,’ he said dismissively. ‘All going ‘cording to plan, we’ll be on home turf in time for your eighteenth.’

He peered around the room and I could detect a look of fondness in his eyes as they lit momentarily upon Mom’s portrait above the mantelpiece.

‘You mighta spent more years here in Miami, but, Godwilling, you’ll become a man - an Irishman - back in the old country, the place of your birth… where your roots are.’ Voice trailed off and eyes went drowning again.

You can count on Jack to get overstimulated whenever the topic turns to Ireland. Slips into what he (and almost all Americans – but never the Irish themselves) call a ‘brogue’ (which, in Ireland, is a type of man’s shoe!). 

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It’s not his original way of speaking but a bizarre hybrid - part memory, part Hollywoodized Irish Accent. I’ve been to Dublin, Galway, Kerry, Donegal, Limerick – and passed through all the counties between - and have never come across anything remotely resembling this artificial American romanticized idea of the way Irish people speak. But Jack’s ‘brogue’ is kind of funny, though – if you’re alone with him, that is. When other people are around its just plain embarrassing, especially if the people around are Irish. Thing is, he can’t do the accent for Jack - and, worse still - doesn’t even know it. He was born in Dublin and all (a ‘Jackeen’) and spent his first 19 years there, but as far as I can make out, he’s as redwhiteandblue as the next guy. Or the guy next door. Family, football, beer, office politics, bar-b-q’s, lawn mowers, bottle of Jack Daniels in the fridge, apple-pie ’n’ ice-cream.

On second thoughts, recalling the current state of Mr Stevens, scratch that.

Scratch the apple pie, too.

I asked why we’re moving all of a sudden and what all this is about anyway (pinching myself to make sure I hadn’t nodded off in front of the TV and was dreaming all this).

‘I’m not under the alfluence of incahol like some tinkle peep I am!’ Smiling a twinkling wink, he negotiated his way in the direction of the stairs. ‘Off to bed now. Beauty sleep calls.’ He started singing lines from Homeward Bound again as he made his awkward ascension:

Tonight I’ll sing my songs again

I’ll play the game and pretend

but all my words come back to me

in shades of mediocrity

like emptiness in harmony

I need someone to comfort me…