Page 102 of Finding Him
AFTER MYDAgot injured in sixth year—blowing out his knee and blowing up his footie career—he hadn’t known what to do with his life.
This was one of Ma’s favorite stories to tell, so I recite it to Molly as we sit on the couch in the sitting room, eating the steak and kidney pie that she actually admits is delicious.
“Told you,” I say. Comet is begging at our feet (acting as if he’s been starved his whole life) and the TV is playing some rubbish game show that mostly serves as background noise for our conversation.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re the genius, I was wrong,” she rolls her eyes in that fond way she always does, and then asks me to continue on with the story.
When Da got injured, he thought there was nothing left for him. There was this whole other drama involving his Da, and his little sister (who died), and his Ma (who lived until I was two years old or so and don’t remember), but I don’t really get into that. I just skip to the part where Ma’s parents—Granny and Pop Kavanaugh—offered up my Da a deal.
He didn’t like handouts—never did—but Granny and Pop wanted to move to the midlands, and they were leaving Ma their house. They said if my Da redid his leaving cert year the nextyear while Ma was at Uni, they’d help him with whatever it was he decided to do with his life. Da’s only job was to pass his leaving cert and figure it out.
“How’d he pick the bakery?” Molly asks, scraping her fork along her plate to gather up the last few bites of the pie.
“He didn’t pick it, not really,” I say. “Ma did.”
Da had been really struggling, Ma told me. He wanted to play football—that was all he knew how to do, it felt like all he was—and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do without it. Ma knew he was having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that he’d never play again, but she didn’t push him.
Instead, she’d just taken him to this old bakery that had been owned by the nicest old couple in town, and they were retiring and selling the place. Ma had known Da her whole life, and even though they'd only recently started dating around that time, she knew plenty about him, like his baking (and cooking) skills, for example. And of course that he was a people person. Everyone in town knew Patrick Blue, and most people liked him a lot, even if he was a Clover. He was just the kind of person everybody knew, and most of them liked him enough to do things for.
So Ma told Da—without forcing him or anything—that he should let her parents’ help him buy the bakery, and she’d help him run it when she was home from Uni on breaks.
And that’s how Bluebird Bakery was born. In the simplest of ways to say it.
“That sounds a lot like you, you know,” Molly notes when I finish the story. I take the empty plate from her ends, giving her a wide smile.
“Yeah, I know. I’m a great cook.”
She laughs, shaking her head, getting up and following me (and Comet, who’s still pretending to be starving) to the kitchen.
“No, I mean like—what you said about your dad. Him being the kind of person everybody knew and liked,” she says.
“I told you before,” I remind her. “People’re only like that with me ‘cause—”
“Cause you’re his son, I remember what you said. ButIthink that people just like you.”
“Like me?”
“You’re a likeable person,” she says, her fingers hooking in my belt loops as I come closer. I can see the rise and fall of her chest underneath her school shirt that she still has on (her jumper is tossed on the back of one of the dining room chairs).
I don’t much want to get into my likeableness with her. I can’t make her understand what it’s like, having to live in the shadow of Mr. Social-body. Claire fairs better with it than I do, she was born to be a ray of sunlight. Me? I’m shite at it. Every ounce of grace I’ve ever been given is because of my last name.
So I switch subjects—fast.
I kiss her lips lightly, offering to put on a movie for us to watch in the sitting room. I think about offering to give her some of my clothes to slip into, so she doesn’t have to stay in her uniform, but that feels like a bit much. Then again...
No, no, I’ll save that hat trick for the next movie night.
I let her pick the movie, and Molly doesn’t mention my obviousness about steering away from the subject of me versus Da when it came to community approval.
We end up watching ‘The Princess Bride’—a movie Claire’s forced me into watching enough times that it’s grown on me enough that I don’t groan—and it’s actually nice, lying on the couch with Molly in my arms. Things feel so peaceful, unbreachable, like I could just stay here forever and just be happy.
At some point I start tracing idle, mindless patterns on her knees—which were in skin coloured tights and draped over my lap—not even taking my eyes off the screen. Okay, I do look ather a couple times, but only to gauge her reactions to be sure I’m not making her uncomfortable or anything.
The one time our eyes finally meet, she gives me a soft smile, her face illuminated by the television. I take it as my go ahead that this is permitted.
I have this strange feeling about her. That there’s something she’s keeping inside herself, that she’s holding back. I don’t even have an inkling of what it could be, it just feels like it’s there, huge and invisible between us.
She’s allowed to be hesitant without some big reason, I remind myself. However amazing she is at kissing doesn’t mean she isn’t totally inexperienced. I’ve never asked—should I ask?
