17
How Easy It Is To Break Things Apart
Amma Neary’s father likes to make something beautiful and then break it apart. His quizzical eyes sit beneath a mess of red hair, giving him a wild look, so it seems that he takes pleasure in the breaking apart. Amma cannot stop the visceral pull at her heart when it happens.
‘You can’t do this,’ she cries, each time it seems, her hands up to her mouth, though it is her eyes she needs to cover. ‘How can you bear to do this, Papa?’
John Neary laughs, because what else is there to do? Irritation patches through his veins—he feels it bubbling, around his heart, at the side of his head. He pats her twisting black hair down with calloused hands.
‘It is my job, child,’ he says.
He has tried to gift his daughter one of his creations, boxed and fancily
