Page 19 of A Miracle on Hope Street
‘He was the homeless man from Hope Street. I can hardly believe it.
I was in such a state of despair that night, yet out of that despair, and as my father left the world, someone else was getting a new start and a new chance just by a random act of kindness that I did without a second thought.
In some strange way, learning of Michael’s identity feels like an unexpected ghost of Christmas past, a reminder that there is good in the world, even when around us there is so much pain. I imagine how he must have felt on that bitter cold night, when all hope was gone and how he picked himself up and made use of that money to better himself while, at the other side of town, on a hospital ward, I was getting the worst news possible about my darling father.
I think of how, right now and for the twelve months since that, I have let time stand still, drifting further and further into a sense of hopelessness, yet somewhere out there, in this very city, while I am going through my own personal hell, there are others suffering much more and, on the contrary, others doing positive day-to-day things that makes the suffering around them just a little bit easier.
My mind is racing as I stand in the cool of the old-fashioned wallpapered hallway and lift the mail that lies on the tiled floor. Letters still addressed to my father, stuff that I still have to deal with after all this time are amongst a flurry of Yuletide offers and charity longings for some Christmas cheer. A Catholic Church annual collection for Third World countries, a free calendar from a supermarket for my loyalty and a list of suggestions from a homeless charity who I learned at university made their biggest plea around Christmas time. A museum of my father’s life sits in words and print for me to sort out and yet I just can’t get round to telling cold callers from phone and television companies that he is now officially permanently gone and no longer on their target list for upgrades or donations.
The photos that align the narrow hallway and lead your eye to the staircase straight ahead are stamped in my memory as they’ve been there for as long as I can remember. She is in those dusty frames somewhere, but I dare not look. I can’t see her in my head any more and I don’t want to see her with my eyes so I’ve trained myself not look right or left when I walk into my own home. I’ve trained myself to ignore her as best I can.
She left us. She left the three of us for the pull of another life and I don’t know any more what she does or where she does it and I keep telling myself that I don’t care but inside it’s tearing me apart. Counsellors told me different ways to deal with her rejection and, through my own training, I’ve learned to live with the choices she made. And when she sent a card after my father died I thought it would change my world, but to me it was from a stranger who didn’t really know or care what we were going through and never, ever would understand just how much she hurt us with her gradual disappearance.
Someone said she was there at the funeral for a very short while, minutes maybe, standing at the back of the church like a ghostly figure. To be honest, I could sense she was there, but I was too fragile to try to find her in the crowd. She said in her card that she would like to call me some time to explain what happened, and she left me her number. She said she would like to see her grandsons some time if it’s okay. Of course it’s not bloody well okay, Elena! How could it be just okay for her to turn up now and play happy families, now that all the damage is done and my dad is gone? No. No thank you, Elena. Stay in Europe or wherever you are living now, doing whatever it is that you are doing and with whomever you built your life around when you left us. No.
I take off my shoes and lie on the cool of the black leather sofa in the living room and I allow my tired eyes to close. Images of Michael, so pathetic and cold on Hope Street and now with a fresh start and a new life fill my mind. It’s time that I had a fresh start and a new life.
Everything in this house is old. The bookshelves, the TV, the coffee table, the fireplace. It’s a house where time has stood still since my father passed away but I will change it soon and I will take her pictures down once and for all. I will never let her in here again, even though it’s what I want to do more than anything else in the whole world.
I am tired, and my belly is full. I am exhausted. I will sell up after Christmas. I will start anew then.
‘Ally, yes, no, I wasn’t sleeping. Yes, I’m working. Yes, I’m at the computer,’ I lie. ‘What do you mean am I okay? Why wouldn’t I be okay? All right, you caught me. I was napping when I should be working.’
My sister laughs. She knows me too well.
I am in that hazy, in between dreams and reality state and I’m trying to find my shoes even though I don’t need my shoes. I go to the kitchen and run the tap then take a drink from it. There now, I’m awake again.
‘What were you saying?’
‘I was telling you about Christmas dinner plans?’ my sister says to me. ‘David’s parents will be here and his cousin James – you know, the one I told you about whose fiancée called off the wedding because she was in love with her best friend—’
‘Don’t even think about it,’ I jest. ‘No matchmaking, please.’
‘Ha, I think you can sometimes read my mind,’ she laughs. ‘But anyhow, I’m just making sure you’ll definitely turn up. You will definitely turn up, won’t you, Ruth? Please don’t be on your own this Christmas?’
I picture the scene in my sister’s cramped, overcrowded house, almost a hundred miles away, as I lean on the kitchen worktop and contemplate my big festivities. It’s not like I have any other offers, is it? And Ally is my only family member left so of course I’ll be spending Christmas there.
Maybe it’s because I haven’t properly woken up yet or maybe because I was dreaming of him, but Michael the waiter, the man from Hope Street, the once homeless man flashes through my mind. I feel his cold hand on mine again, sending a shiver through me, then a warm glow, when I think of how I helped him with just a small gesture to turn his life around.
‘Ally, maybe I should be doing something different for Christmas Day,’ I tell my sister, telling myself too for the first time. I gulp. ‘Something that . . . I’m not sure what I’m trying to say but I’m just wondering if I should do something totally different. Something to help others get through it. Something, perhaps, to help me too.’
I slide into one of the kitchen chairs. My sister pauses. I can almost hear her think out loud. I can barely think this through for myself.
‘Are you thinking about going away somewhere for Christmas?’
‘Not really. Well, maybe. I don’t know yet. I haven’t really thought it through.’
‘Like, somewhere hot and exotic where you don’t have to do the whole Christmas thing and barbecue on the beach or something?’ she continues. ‘Oh, Ruth, are you going to go to Australia or somewhere? I’ve always wanted to do something like that. Imagine Christmas on a beach.’
My sister always did get carried away with big ideas and she is really not getting my train of thought. I laugh a little. Not my normal laugh, but a nervous giggle at the very thought of barbecuing shrimps on the beach as men with glistening bodies wax up their surf boards at the hottest time in their calendar year, when life as I know it here is under a blanket of white, gleaming, bloody freezing snow or pelting rain and a time for stuffing your face with chocolate and giving presents to people you don’t even like.
‘No,’ I say to her. ‘No, don’t be so silly, as if I could just pack up and go to Australia for Christmas! Gosh, Icouldactually just pack up and go to Australia for Christmas . . .’
I let out another nervous giggle and my sister does too.
‘So?’ she says to me, calming down at last. ‘Are you really going to do it?’
‘Oz for Christmas?’ I pause. ‘No.’
