Kathryn Lacey

Extract from Danny: Dad

A glorious splash of sunlight broke through a hole in the clouds, aggravating Willa as she was heading inside. She pressed the doorbell. The long wait for someone to answer was unsettling. She didn’t know what went on inside an old people’s home, she’d never been in one before. A tut of discomfort escaped her. 

“Yes?” someone wearing a tabard enquired from behind the door.

“Hello. I’ve come to see Danny Wilson. I booked an… appointment?” Willa said, fidgeting on her feet.

The tabard-person broke into a smile of remarkably straight teeth, Willa noted, hers were crooked even though she’d had braces as a teenager.

“Danny, yes, please come in.”

“How is he?” Willa asked, moving through the doorway. “Does he know I’m coming? He might not recognise me… I mean, it’s been a while and we all change, don’t we?” Willa paused. “I’m his daughter, Willa.” Saying the word daughter in relation to her dad scratched inside her lungs. 

“Daughter! We didn’t know, you haven’t been. Please sign the Visitors Book.”

Trying to ignore what she supposed was a barbed remark, Willa picked up a satsuma from the fruit bowl sitting on the front desk, gently squeezing into the fruit before dropping it into her handbag. She signed the book and followed the tabard-person through a corridor of voices grumbling from behind closed doors: STOP IT. STOP. IT HURTS. I DON’T HAVE A BOOK. HELP. WHEN’S GEORGE COMING?   

“Please may I use the Ladies, before…” Willa asked, a slight tremor in her voice. 

The tabard-person pointed the way, past a fish-tank with depressed looking goldfish half-heartedly floating at the bottom of the tank. The bathroom looked dated: it had a pink bathroom suite except for a black toilet seat that had been left up. Willa tore-off some toilet paper to put the seat back down without it touching her skin. She pulled down her knickers and hovered over the seat. It’d been a long journey; and she’d been drinking bottled water on the way, but only a disappointing trickle spluttered into the pan and dribbled to a stuttering halt. She thought of the time, when she still wore teeth braces, that someone shouted over from the next cubicle that she sounded like a horse peeing; she wasn’t sounding like a horse that day.

Willa wiped, flushed, reassembled her clothes and washed her hands. She checked herself in the mirror – practised a smile, scruffled her hair, and squeezed in her stomach. She peeked in the cupboard under the sink which stored: a spare toilet roll, a tub of Johnson’s baby powder, a shrivelled-up cleaning cloth and a tube of Anusol. Willa sieved a small mound of talcum powder into the palm of her hand and deeply inhaled the smell – it made her want to bury her face into the hand towel and scream; but instead, she washed her hands again and left. 

Back along the corridor, behind an open bedroom door, Willa noticed a thin-skinned lady propped-up in a chair too big for her. The lady slept with her head falling uncomfortably low, with the television playing and an open magazine on her lap. There was a hoist over the bed and very little else in the room. In that moment Willa wanted to run away from the home and from having to see her dad. She was determined she wouldn’t cry, not then. 

 “Mo is going to take you to the communal room to see Danny,” said the tabard-person, handing her over. Mo looked sour: maybe not sour, maybe harassed, at least he didn’t smile when he greeted her. As she walked behind the man with Brylcreemed hair swept immaculately over his scalp, she didn’t make small talk as he didn’t seem the type. She followed him into a room with several large televisions bolted onto walls. The overbearing sound of them bit into her. Two lines of highbacked armchairs hugged the walls facing each other. Mo stopped by someone sat in a wheelchair, they’d found their man.

“You have an hour,” Mo said, with an impassive voice.

Disguising as best she could a sudden doubt over seeing him, Willa looked over the person in the wheelchair. His hair was surprisingly full, the eyebrows unruly. The face etched with deep creases across the forehead and cheeks. A thin mouth faced downwards. He wore clothes she suspected he wouldn’t have chosen, and looked thin beneath them, especially the slope of his once-broad shoulders. He didn’t frighten her. 

Danny raised heavy purple eyelids towards her: was he going to recognise her? He waved a dismissive hand, a hairy hand with neatly trimmed fingernails.

“No tea for me.”

“That’s good, because I haven’t brought you any,” Willa said. “I’m a visitor, Danny.” 

“Who for?”

“You,” Willa paused. “For you, dad.” She let the word hang there between them for a moment. “I’m Willa, your daughter.”

“That’s a stupid name.” 

Willa straightened her spine.  “I like my name,” she said, “it’s different. You and my mum chose it together. My lovely mum, Ellen, you remember her?”

Nothing from Danny. 

Neither spoke for a moment as the air spun awkwardly between them. She needed to escape the warm, noisy room.

“Am I allowed to take you outside?” Willa broke through the unease. “Okay, I’m going to take you into the garden.”

Willa hunted around the wheelchair for brakes. She’d manoeuvred enough baby buggies in her time to work out how a wheelchair worked. She pushed Danny into the garden and parked the wheelchair on the patio, taking an uncomfortable seat beside him. He didn’t respond to the change of surroundings. 

“It’s turned out to be a lovely day,” Willa said, turning her chin towards the warming sun.

“For what?”

For murdering you and leaving you to rot in the sunshine, she didn’t say. “For weather. For sitting in the garden having a chat.”

“Is it?”

“How’ve you been?” 

“What do you think?” Danny stared at her with alarming directness.

“I don’t know, that’s why I asked.” Willa said, squirming a little. “Are you being well looked after?”

“You’ve a lot of questions.”

“Oh, I do… so many questions.” Willa said, trying to keep her voice even. “So many…”

“What do they say about things?” Danny asked.

“Who’s they? Do you mean the staff?”

“Forgotten.”

“Is there anything you’d like to know?”

“Like what?” he mumbled, almost unintelligibly.

They both stared into nowhereness until Willa turned her gaze and noticed some butterflies dancing over a flowerbed, delicate and skittish in their movements. That freedom to flutter with gay abandon disconcerted her. Danny seemed not to notice the playful butterflies: seemingly, he failed to notice very much at all; not now nor long ago, he seemingly failed to notice she’d been absent from his life for decades, at least he never tried to make contact. When Danny walked away from her and Ellen they hadn’t spoken again. A rage fuelled inside her, itching her bladder.

“When was the last time you had a visitor? Who comes to see you?”

Danny stared towards his hands, apparently forgetting to answer, or maybe just ignoring her.

Insulted by the fossil of a human sitting next to her in that wheelchair, she remembered the time she’d wanted to skewer his head on a pole: wanting to ridicule him for all the hurt he’d caused. But, seeing him as he was that day, she didn’t want his head on a pole anymore, she didn’t even want him to die. Death would be too simple; it would take him away from that miserable existence. Over the years Willa had run and re-run the moment she’d be reunited with her dad, had imagined various incarnations of how events would play out; but the moment lived was anticlimactic. The man was pathetic. Useless. He couldn’t send an email, or decide which political party to vote for, or bounce on a trampoline, or choose the flavour of his jam. He wasn’t even capable of putting on his own socks. 

“Danny…”

“Hmm?”

“I asked if you remember Ellen?”

“What are you talking about?” Danny grumbled.

“I’m talking about the beautiful woman you married. A woman with a flawless face and body whose flesh you used to make use of as a punchbag. You hit her so hard once, you dislocated the retina from her eyeball.” That made Willa’s heart sting. “Not so flawless then.”

Danny tilted his chin as though considering what she’d said but spoke no words.

“I’m visiting you today because there’s something I think you should know about Ellen.” 

Willa looked straight at him, eyes welling. Danny remained still.

“We all lived together, you, me and Ellen. We had a home on Sherbourne Road where I wet the bed. In the back garden you built me a Wendy House.” Willa noticed his fists clench. “It was the nicest thing you ever did for me. You made a space for me and my dolls. After a while the roof leaked, and everything got damp and covered in spiders’ webs, and I didn’t want to play inside anymore. That made you cross.” Willa hadn’t moved her eyes from him the whole time she spoke. “Anyway, the reason I came to see you,” Willa paused to steady her breathing, “is because I’m sad to say, Ellen died. Last week. So, I came here to see if you might like to…” Willa stopped abruptly. 

Danny was fidgeting. Fumbling stiff fingers around his trouser flies.

“You alright, dad? Do you need the toilet?”

“Eh?” Danny griped. There was something mean in his expression, he squinted as though suspicious of her.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

And then she saw what was happening, and something inside her snapped. Years of rage that had festered beneath her skin leaked as yellow heat through her pores. 

“Take your hands away from your trousers you fucking…fucking, dirty old man.” Willa watched the fabric of his trousers deflate back into place. “You’re disgusting,” Willa hissed so close to his face, she spat globules of saliva on his skin.

She stood up, moving her body towards him with purpose. She was aware there might be surveillance cameras, or that staff would be able to see them, so she moved calmly. She climbed onto Danny’s lap, carefully shuffling the skirt so it wouldn’t crease. She snuggled her spine against his chest. Her groin was deliberately positioned over his. She deftly removed her knickers and slipped them into the handbag slung over her shoulder, as though they were a hanky. She turned around to face him, and for the first time that afternoon he seemed to recognise her, or the smell of her. Together in a rare moment of unison, she realised he was smiling at her, and she smiled, too, and took a piss into his lap. She felt the rush of wee flowing deep into the crutch of his trousers, her bladder emptying as it hadn’t been able to earlier. When she was finished, she stood and smoothed down her skirt, before patting his shoulder as though with affection.  

Willa moved back through the building looking for the tabard-person to explain that Danny had wet himself, and as it was time for her to leave, would the staff kindly sort him. She signed the register on her way out and didn’t look back once the door closed. 

“Bye, dad,” she said once back in her car. Rifling around in her handbag, she found and opened the satsuma. An easy peel.