The Breezes by Joseph O'Neill Page B

might be and when it comes down to it, well, when it comes down to it I do not care. ‘Look,’ I say finally, ‘don’t worry, Rosie, he’ll be back. He’ll show up sooner or later.’
    She is weeping now, but she still manages to say, ‘You’re heartless, John. I’ve always said that about you. You just don’t give a damn about anybody.’
    â€˜Rosie,’ I say, ‘Rosie, listen, Steve will be– ’
    But then she hangs up.
    Heartless? What does she expect me to do, go out into the rain and find her boyfriend for her? Set up a search party? Spend an hour on the phone commiserating? Bang my head against the wall just because I’m her brother?
    I light a cigarette. Maybe I am heartless; but what choice have I got?
    Look at what happened on Friday, for God’s sake. She came home at about midday and bolted straight past me and Steve to her room, slamming the door behind her and falling on her bed with a dead thud. Two things were shocking. First of all, she seemed to be liquefying: teardrops were travelling over her cheeks down to her chin, her lips shone with run from her nose, and even her fingers were dripping. Then I registered the second thing about her: her hair.
    Ah, Rosie’s hair … Rosie’s hair is a family legend. It is packed securely in that suitcase of Breeze myths that is clickedopen from time to time at family gatherings, its hand-me-down contents familiar and sentimental and orienting. Rosie’s hair is in there with the story of Grandma Breeze’s radical feminism as a young woman and the time when she granted asylum in her bedroom cupboard to a suffragette wanted for vandalism; of the number of languages (six: English, Irish, French, German, Italian and Spanish) which my mother’s mother, Georgina O’Malley, spoke fluently; of the invention by great-grandfather Breeze of an egg incubator, and of how he failed to patent the invention and missed out on millions.
    Rosie’s long Irish locks, which when gathered and braided dropped from her head in a thick, fiery rope, have made her stand out like a beacon at baptisms, Christmases and weddings, and be recognized and kissed and admired by distant Breezes who have never met her but who have received word of her flaming head. If I should have children, no doubt they too will learn of the two-foot mane that Aunt Rosie once sported and how one day, the day before yesterday to be precise, Friday, she came home with it cropped down to her skull, dashing past me like a carrot-topped soldier late for parade.
    Rosie barricaded herself into her room for the rest of the day. When Steve occasionally emerged from it to fetch her something from the kitchen and left the door ajar, I could hear muffled sobbing. I did not say anything; what was there to say? Pa, though, could not restrain himself when he came round yesterday morning on his way to visiting Merv Rasmussen in hospital.
    â€˜Rosie … Your hair.’
    She said nothing. She was in the kitchen with her back turned to him, busying herself with dishes in the sink. Pa was stock-still, his head tilted sideways, rooted in the hallway like a nail badly hammered into wood.
    After a moment he looked up at me. Then he looked at Rosie again and then he looked at me again. He rubbed his face with one hand. He was lost for words, that was obvious. He wanted to say something, but as usual could not think what. No matter what he says or does not say, no matter how gently he treads, his words always seem to snag on Rosie’s tripwire sensibilities and blow up in his face. To her chagrin, Rosie, who is alwaysbuying him presents and sending him cheerful and amusing postcards from around the world, simply cannot talk to him face-to-face without something going off within her. When that detonation happens, she instinctively produces a wounding remark, retaliating for some nameless injury which my innocent father has caused her to