Paulie didn’t use a key as the door was seldom locked during daylight hours. He opened it, shouted, “Hiya! The conquerors have arrived!” and dropped to one knee to receive the embraces of his offspring, who came storming towards him. Yells accompanied the pounding of their feet. “Dad’s here!” “Mummy! Gran!” “Granddad, Dad’s here! So’s Uncle Boyko!”
Mark looked for his godchild among them. His niece, Esme, was his favourite. She was also his wound. Two weeks younger than Lilybet, she offered a contrast between them that had always been a rapier to his heart.
Chaos tsunamied round them as the kids demanded “something special from the shop, Dad!” This would be the odd item never redeemed by its owner and, as it happened, not particularly sellable either. Today there was only one object, a dull-edged and tarnished cigar cutter. Paulie handed it to his oldest boy. He told all of the children that they each got one guess as to what it was. Write it on paper and deliver it to your dad, were the rules. Whoever got it on the money would also get to keep it.
His and Mark’s own dad was in the sitting room, watching telly with an enormous set of earphones on his head to save the rest of the household from whatever headache the telly’s intense volume would otherwise cause them. He waved a hello at his sons; they waved in turn. They went on to find their mother in the kitchen. Paulie’s wife, Eileen, was stirring something in a large pot on the stove while their mother, Floss Phinney, was engaged in tossing a salad.
Eileen came at once across the room and wrapped her arms round Paulie’s neck. Paulie squeezed her bum as they shared the kiss of lovers who’ve been apart years instead of ten hours. Mark looked away. Floss was watching him. She smiled fondly. Paulie and Eileen broke it off and Paulie went to the stove and lifted the lid of the pot steaming there. He sniffed. He said, “Jesus in a handcart, Mum. You’ve not let our Eileen do the cooking, have you? This smells like something she’d make.”
Eileen slapped his hand away, saying, “We’ll have none of that, you,” while Floss turned her attention to Mark. “Pietra’s not with you, Boyko?”
“She may be along later,” Mark told her. Paulie went to the refrigerator and did what he’d done since childhood: opened the door and stared into it like someone divining the future from the various leftovers of previous meals. Mark said to his mother in a lower voice, “She’s interviewing.”
“Is she indeed?” Floss asked. “Well, that’s good, eh? We can hope things turn out a bit different this time.” She looked past him to where Paulie was still inspecting what was on offer inside the fridge. She said, “Paulie, fix us a beverage, there’s my boy. Eileen, make sure he’s not stingy with the ice this time round. I hate a beverage that’s overwarm, I do.”
The kids were raising a ruckus in another part of the house and Paulie shouted at them as he went to the sitting room’s drinks cart to make his mother her favourite, gin and tonic, very light on the tonic. The kids’ voices lowered—it wouldn’t be for long as it never was—and during the relative peace and semi-quiet, Esme slid into the room. She came to Mark and slipped her hand into his. She leaned her head against his arm. She said just above a whisper, “Passed my maths test, Uncle Mark.” She was the only family member, aside from his wife, who didn’t call him Boyko.
“That’s grand, that is, Esme,” he told her.
“Lilybet would pass it if she could,” Esme replied. “She’d prob’ly do better’n me.”
He felt a tightness round his eyes. “Yes. Well,” he said. “Perhaps someday, eh?”
Floss asked the girl if she wouldn’t mind laying the table for everyone. Esme pointed out that her mother had already done it, Gran. “She did, did she?” was Gran’s response. She smiled fondly at the girl and said, “Then c’n you give me a moment with your uncle?”
Esme looked from Mark to his mum, back to Mark. She said, “That’s why you asked me to lay the table, Gran. It would’ve been okay for you to ask me direct.”
“I stand corrected, darlin’。 Sometimes I forget you’re quite the big girl now. I’ll be d’rect with you from now on.”
When Esme nodded and left them, Floss said to Mark, “How many this time?”
“Applicants?” He shrugged. “I’ve not asked her. She does her best, Mum.”
“She needs time to herself now and then.”