Short Story Winners 

2024 inaugural Ennis Book Club Festival Short Story Competition – 2nd place 

How to Make a Glass of Water
by Eamon Doggett

My father had come home. Even if it meant losing a few extra days, he wanted out of the hospital and into his own bed. My two brothers stayed to help my mother, sister and me look after him. We each settled into different jobs. Mine became making my father glasses of water.

First Step: Choose a Glass

A glass is a good vessel for water.

Above the cutlery drawer, the toaster, the chopping board, the bread bin, and the food processor was the cupboard where we kept glasses. There were glasses for beer, wine, champagne, spirits and whiskey.

I knew it couldn’t be a big glass. My father was frail, and it could be a struggle for him to hold one to his lips[1].

But this need not be emphasised – he was very proud. The light plastic cups in pinks, oranges and blues that we gave to the grandchildren – my brother’s children – were not an option.

The middle ground was the medium-sized glasses we drank beer from while watching a football match, a golf tournament or a nature documentary in the study on evenings with the sun gone and the curtains closed.

The best option was one of the small glasses from which he drank his morning juice – three or four good mouthfuls brought you to the bottom. It was held easily too. You could grip the length of its body with your fingers and feel you possessed the strength to crush it into pieces. 

Second Step: Add Ice

Ice makes the water around it cooler, and my father wanted the water as cold as possible[2].

For many years we had a hard, plastic ice tray that you had to bang off the kitchen counter to release the ice cubes. Inevitably some cubes slid across the counter and fell to the floor. And you rarely released however many you needed.

But, without my knowing, we had upgraded some time ago to a soft rubber ice tray that, with a bit of manipulation, you could prise out one to ten cubes.

I put two cubes in the glass and the tray under the tap to fill the two empty moulds with water[3].

There was another rubber tray of the same size that I put above this tray in the freezer so that with every rotation, there was no reason that he couldn’t have ten solid ice cubes on demand.

Between the ice trays and cardboard boxes of food in this freezer drawer, it was all a tight fit requiring careful stacking and a degree of patience. There was no room in the other drawers. To resolve the issue, I took out a box of ice creams with only one ice cream left. Its plastic skin flaked ice as it brushed off the drawer.

I’m going to sacrifice this ice cream, I said to my sister, who was passing through the kitchen. She agreed[4].

I closed the drawer on the ice tray and trusted the freezer wouldn’t let us down.

Third Step: Pour Water

Next up is the essential resource: water.

            He wanted maximum coldness, so we had several bottles of spring water cooling in the fridge at every moment.

            Some of them were Scottish water, and others Irish. Both had a picture of mountains. Both were the same colour.

It became my sister’s job to buy water and shop for food. Whatever my father expressed a fancy for was bought in bulk: grapes, cheese puffs, barley water, chocolate bars, ice creams. Then there was only one thing that his body would accept: water.

She bought several bottles and, regardless of his consumption rate, kept buying them – the most expensive she could find. The bottles that couldn’t fit in the fridge were stacked beside it in plastic wrapping.

            I felt important pouring the water, and I was sure the water felt its importance, too[5]. With only a slight squeeze of the bottle’s sides, it gushed and settled over and under the ice cubes, filling all the available space.

            It didn’t take much water. I estimated the bottle could fill another ten, twelve, maybe fifteen glasses. Plus, there was a shop where you could buy more of it—gallons.

            My brother said you could survive on water for a long time.

Fourth Step: Serve

Only serve when needed. Don’t overwhelm.

I patrolled the hallway, up and down, up and down, listening for the sound of interrupted sleep or approaching death.

Stopping at the end of the hallway, between my bedroom and my parents, I looked through the gap in the wooden door at him nested on his side of the bed[6].

He had a lamp on his bedside locker whose light fell delicately on his face and funnelled down his body.  

For times when we weren’t watching him or didn’t hear his call, my brother attached the doorbell button to the side of the same bedside locker. When it rang, we shot towards his room, eager to repay his hard work, hungry for his gratitude.

Sorry, I’m fine, he said as we rushed in. I just wouldn’t mind a glass of water.

There you go, my brother said to me. That’s your job.

We all laughed nervously.

I held the glass of water for him to get a firm grip before I let go.

He took a few gulps and handed it back to me to place on the table.

That’s so nice, he said.

He talked, and we listened.

I have been dreaming a lot, he told us. I was on holiday in Bettystown. My father was sitting at the bar with pale white legs. My mother was talking with a group of women.

He paused then to get his breath.

Don’t fight it if you want to sleep, my mother said.

No, I’m fine, he said. It was so vivid. I was drinking red lemonade and walking to the amusement arcade with Ann to hear ‘Lola’ on the jukebox. We both had towels wrapped around our torsos after swimming in the sea. My mother, later, is mumbling under her breath as she bangs our shoes off a wall to remove the sand.

We stared at him, straining to retain his person to memory.

That was over fifty years, he said, and I was dreaming it just then.

We said it was incredible.

Actually, he said, trying to sit up. I might have another sip.

I held the glass up for him to hold and take a small sip. The ice rocked awkwardly about the glass, making a keen sound.

That’s lovely, he said, handing it back.

            Soon his head fell back onto the pillow and into a sleep.

We stared at him some more before leaving the room. He’d drunk half of the water, leaving enough for when he woke.

Fifth Step: Tidy

There are only so many glasses in a cupboard and so much room atop a bedside locker. It doesn’t take long for a mess to accumulate. Best to tidy as you go.

            The doctor, who was also a neighbour and family friend, offered to tidy away the medical paraphernalia and remove whatever needed removing. It was late afternoon and pleasant weather.

            My father’s mother, sister and brother arrived. I poured them whiskeys.

            There were lots of jobs to do. People had to be called: the funeral directors, the night nurse, the newspaper, relatives and friends.

            When we went back in, he looked peaceful. We all said it.

            Someone, at some stage, must have removed the glasses of water from his bedside locker to wash and tidy away[7]. Maybe I did.

            Toasts were made. A life was thought of in its entirety. A beginning and an end.

[1] The doctor said his body was shutting down. He hadn’t eaten anything in two weeks or more. There was a tube that came out of his nose and took anything he swallowed out of his middle and into a bag that lay fattening on his bed until needing to be emptied.

[2] I had the idea that he had become hypersensitive to temperature, and that the deterioration of certain body functions was accentuating others. His idea of coldness—a cold glass of water—had changed with his changing body. It’s gone a bit warm, he told my mother of one drink. She felt the glass. It still feels cold to me, she said. No, it’s a bit warm, actually, he said, sorry.

[3] As a child, the change from one state to another – a liquid to a solid – fascinated me. In the winter months my brother and I would use the hose pipe to soak our tarmac driveway with water and then drive on its icy surface the following morning on our bikes and go-carts. The fear of losing control, of our wheels sliding, excited.

[4] We weren’t eating much ourselves to the concern of my mother – the worst offender. Dinner was away from the kitchen table and my father’s empty chair to the living room and its television. The furniture in there – the couch, the coffee table, the lamps, the mirrors, the picture frames – seemed rapt in anticipation. 

[5] I knew the water would be listening when the doctor said my father’s skin torpor was better than expected, suggesting that he must still be taking some nutrients from the water despite its quick exit. I tried to imagine the water clinging onto my father’s insides, wanting to impart some goodness, eager to help.

[6] I don’t remember when I stopped leaving my bedroom door ajar. The hallway let in a slant of light enough to allow me to feel safer and read the children’s books that ruined my eyesight. Through the same gap between door and doorframe, my father appeared one night when I was a child to tell me that his father had died. I heard him hanging up his suit in his wardrobe and sitting on the edge of his bed to take off his shoes.

[7] I see a sink of warm, soapy water and can smell rubber gloves. When the plates, glasses, bowls, knives, forks and spoons are cleaned, they are tidied away for the next time.