Jack
‘WELL, MAMMY, I DIDN’T KNOW what to think!’
Anna says, facing our only framed photograph of Mammy and Daddy.
She is telling them about her day, the Brigid’s Cross that Peggy brought home and the fruitcake she had with Betty Nevan.
Not in prayer, or even in a conscious way.
It was like she just thought of something that Mammy would have found entertaining and started talking to the photograph.
I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, really.
Sure don’t I spend every minute talking to you?
But there’s something about the way that she does it.
Losing herself to these conversations. Pausing as though she can actually hear Mammy responding.
I wonder sometimes if she sees Mammy before her, wiping down the side and sweeping the floor.
It makes me uncomfortable. Once more, I feel consumed with the want to put a stop to Anna.
It builds up from the pit of my stomach until I am close to trembling.
I sit up. Moving to stand. To strike her.
With one blow, surely I could end her. One fine crack of my knuckles against her delicate little jaw.
A tooth in the sink, marbled drool and blood.
A mess I would happily clean up. But then as I close my eyes, I see you, sudden and gentle and good.
This fleeting thought of you is all that stops me from catching and throttling her.
The flashing promise of meeting you in heaven.
The most rational feeling I have had in months – the strongest feeling I have had in months – stopped by something brutally irrational.
If heaven is there, I’m sure, it’s nothing but a disappointing party full of the plainest people I know. And yet I am doing all that I can to get there, back to you. So before I do something I will regret, I get up and leave the house, and take myself down to evening Mass.
Before all this, it wasn’t often I’d find myself pulled down to the church more than once a week.
Now, I find it’s one of the few places I can go to escape from everything.
There’s something about the routine of it, of being spoken at without the expectation to answer with an original remark.
The anonymity of worship, melting my thoughts away.
Converting them into a manageable cluster within me, that I can put aside for a little while.
What’s more, today the first day of the month came to me again.
I pretended not to feel each second of it grinding against me, but it was there, undeniably.
Cruel. Sure what else am I to do but go down to the church, saying prayers I know by heart but don’t understand.
Talking to a god who may or may not even be there. Cruel alright.
’Tis all cruel like, but here is the true cruelty: whatever I feel about it, and however it has damaged me, I must carry on believing in God.
That He is good, and that He loves us and is merciful.
Because if there is no God, then you’re not safe in Heaven.
You aren’t anywhere at all. You would really be gone, and I would be talking to myself.
So I’ve to keep on praying, believing in Heaven and its many beasts.
It’s a dark evening. Aren’t they all dark evenings?
I go down through the town on my own. A bit of quiet, thanks be to God.
Already, I have my hands thrown into a lazy prayer at my crotch.
And for now, I am nothing but a man walking down to Mass.
It’s alright. It’s nice to just be a passerby, without thoughts or a history.
Just somebody walking past somebody else.
The black night reaching its arms out, every star a wild eye pointed down at me.
The light of them swallowing my shadow, until I am entirely alone.
The steep stone steps up to the church. The burning just beginning to bloom at the bottom of my lungs as I reach the top.
And as I enter the church I have to wonder, why don’t I have any original ways of processing my feelings?
Why do I always turn to prayer? Perhaps it’s a custom ingrained too deep in me to ignore.
Perhaps it’s something to do with being under the surveillance of Himself; old ‘holy God’, and feeling I have to share everything with him.
Whatever the reason, I’m here now. Take a seat, Jacky.
’Tis a rare thing now that I get a moment to myself.
Ah darling, tell me, are you sitting with me?
Tell me why you never sit with me. For months now I have been waiting for some sort of sign that you are here.
The cold of your ghost. A hallucination.
A delusion. Anything just to keep me going.
I search and search for a sight of you, for the smell of your hair, the smell of your sweat.
For anything. Going mad with the vision of you before me would be far better than going mad without you here at all. My angel, torn from my side.
Often, like right now, I fake the feeling of your hands on my shoulders, the click-clacking of your shoes on the ground.
I might as well fake that you are here with me, since you don’t seem to be calling down on your own.
If I could only reach up to the awful, endless navy sky and tear through it.
To put my wondering to rest. To reveal Heaven, or its absence.
I have to laugh at myself. Heading down to Mass, on a Monday, on my own. Imagine. If the boys could see me now. The church is quiet. A good handful here. Enough people to fit into the hand of God, I suppose, if your scale of Him is the same as mine.
Out comes Father O’Brien to kick us all off. I must say I’m dreading the vernacular Mass. ’Tis better in Latin, when none of us know what the priest would be saying. I fear that soon, I will be the only one who doesn’t understand.
When he starts to sing, I am lifted.
‘A Thiarna Dean Trocaire.’
Now that’s something new. I never once heard an Irish song in Mass.
It seems Father O’Brien is trying to get ahead of the game.
And we respond, exact mimics of every crack in his voice.
I fall into it all. Sitting, standing, kneeling.
Something about it is so wonderfully automatic.
And while the people around me are no doubt receiving immense comfort and joy from the experience, I am almost moved to tears by the emptiness of it all.
I don’t understand it, I don’t know if I ever will.
And that is fine. A palatable way to feel nothing at all.
Something I can cope with. Something that means so little to me and yet I know so well.
Nothing, everything. How sweet it is. A Chriost Dean Trocaire. I have found my flow state.
Lillian, if you’re anywhere, you’re probably not here.
Do you know what, I really hope you’re not here.
I don’t want you ever coming to a place as dreary, as empty as this, watching as I find semblances of comfort in nothing.
Communion commences, and I find I want to take the chalice and bite it.
I want to put my teeth through the eucharist. I want to hurt god and his son the way that they have hurt me.
A thiarna dean trocaire, you merciless fucker.
Leaving, walking home, I catch a glimpse of something glorious in the night.
My heart, at once soaring and plummeting, when I lose my breath at the sight of Teresa Doyle, emptying the bins beside her father’s pub.
I walk faster, hoping she hasn’t seen me.
It isn’t that I don’t want to talk to her, it’s just she would be too much right now.
I’m supposed to be missing you, I can’t handle the creeping interest I have in Teresa.
‘Goodnight, Jack.’
She calls after me. As I ignore her, I feel the sort of shame I often felt after making love, or shouting at Anna, or doing anything to express myself. It’s embarrassing, to embrace the feelings so intensely.
At home, Peggy sleepily strokes the chicken, Anna is boiling eggs.
Tom sits up against the wall, and I sit in alongside him.
I let my head fall on his shoulder, and he welcomes me.
No questions. No worries. This unusual proximity is no hassle to him at all.
Just a brother minding his brother. I let myself relax, and smell the tobacco off him, and remember a time when I smelled like that.
Maybe I’ll take up the smoking again. Maybe that would put me back in touch with who I once was.
It might at least take the edge off evenings like these.
I’m alright, amn’t I? I’ve my brother and a familiar smell. I’ve a place to put my head down. It’s more than I had back in the church. It’s more than some people have in their whole life.
‘Roll me a fag there, will you?’
I ask, lifting my head just long enough to see the hair in his nostril twitch, and he puts on a stern face and shakes his head.
‘Not a hope. You’ve fine clean lungs now.’
And while I drop a big, heavy sigh on his shoulder, I feel such great love in his denial. He’s looking out for me. For a moment, he puts his arm around me, squeezing and slapping my shoulder, reassuring me.
‘You’re alright, boy.’
I suppose he knows where I’ve been tonight. He doesn’t bother plastering on a smile, but he is here for me now. From this angle, he is the spit of Daddy. In more than many ways, he is just like Daddy. I suppose, in many ways, he is my daddy now.
‘I’m alright.’
And I let myself sink further into his shoulder, forgetting the cigarette and the embarrassment I felt walking home.
Forgetting the sting of your absence, and the sting of Teresa’s presence.
Feeling only the fire before us and his rough geansaí on my cheek.
If Tom wants to look after me, I’ll let him.