The Glorious Heresies (14 page)

Ryan let the scene play through his head—the sand, the beers, the sunshine, the flat tummies and the perky arses and necks flowing into shoulders and shoulders pouring into soft curves—and was sorry for it as soon as it faded away.
No harm in perusing the goods,
Joseph might have said, if Ryan had confessed the periodic crises that turned him from red-blooded man to cowering penitent. Or maybe he'd have said,
What the fuck is wrong with you, boy? Are you that whipped?

Once his pause weighed what reverence Joseph's suggestion demanded he gave his cousin a joyless smile and opened the car door.

Tony waited in the meeting room, chewing his knuckles. His mother was due down to catalogue her myriad disappointments. His father had been invited, of course, but wouldn't Fr Mathew have made the trek before him? And then there was Fiona, who had arrived in the world seven minutes before him and so was very saddened she was so frequently dismissed as a font of knowledge. She lived in Dublin, but had driven down for the brouhaha and Custard Creams.

Tony's counsellor had recommended his older children attend, and so Fiona had roped in Cian and Kelly, and vowed that she'd track down Ryan. On the face of it that wouldn't have been hard; the boy and Fiona's own son were thick as thieves. In reality, Tony knew that getting Joseph to divulge such a touchy secret would have been like asking the Pope where the bodies were. And yet when the door opened there he was, the brat, bringing up the rear and then, when the door was closed, hanging by the wall as if welded to it.

His mother asked Tony how he was. Fiona positioned herself directly across from the counsellor. Cian smiled at him because he was a generous kid—always had been. Kelly smacked her arse onto the chair nearest the door. Ryan stayed by the wall, his hands behind him and his fingers flexed on the brickwork, not meeting his father's eyes, not meeting anyone's.

“Do you want to take a seat?” the counsellor chanced.

The boy said, “I'm grand.”

“If you take a seat we can get started.”

“I'm all right a minute.”

The counsellor was stumped.

“Yeah, keep standing there,” said Kelly. “G'wan, make everything about you.”

On any other day her barb may have been snatched mid-air and flung back in her face, but the surroundings had sucked the fight out of the lad, just as it had Tony, who late at night stood staring for
sídhe
and willing them to whip the skin from his bones.

The counsellor smiled as Ryan detached himself from the wall. There were two chairs left: one beside Tony, the other between Cian and Kelly. He took the one between his siblings, and Tony looked at them, sitting in a row as if ordered to file into the formation most likely to bother their father's conscience. When you haven't seen your children in weeks, and for so long before that only through a medicated haze, to have them organised so neatly was a bit of an eye-opener. All three had shot up like weeds.

“Our focus today isn't on mediation or family therapy,” intoned the counsellor. “We have a specific task and that is to deal with the addiction. So what's helpful at this juncture is for each of you to tell Tony, honestly, how his drinking affected you, and that will provide a solid foundation on which to build a strategy unique to this family. Yeah?
This
family. Everyone has a different story.”

“I can start,” said Fiona.

“Oh. Yeah. Yup. Sure.”

The charade took each of them in turns. Fiona spoke about losing her connection with her twin, conveniently leaving out her globetrotting and how her resulting affectations made her as popular as a Guinness fart in a pub snug. His mother said something about the shame of having birthed a professional noodeenaw. Tony watched his children. Kelly feigned boredom, but she was all ears under that leonine mop. Cian kept patting his pockets. Ryan hunched over, staring at his shoes. Black rubber dollies with the thick white sole; there was a name for them, but Tony couldn't remember it. The lad was never out of them. God knows where he got them, because they weren't a brand Tony had the money for.

It could have been Tara Duane. The bitch had always maintained she didn't have a bob to her name but with only one kid and a frame that suggested she only ate on Thursdays, it was obvious she was hawking the poor mouth. She could have been spending her money on fancy footwear for his son; he wouldn't have guessed. How would he have guessed? The concept was too fucked up to take a decent run at. He cast back to see if he could hit on a time when Ryan had had anything but those fucking plimsolls on his feet but nothing came. He'd been a runt of a thing till he was fourteen. Maybe then. Tony's fingers hooked under his seat. His nails scraped off plastic.

Cian looked mortified but managed something about homework and bedtimes and proper breakfasts.

But sure what could you do about it? Fucking nothing. If you called the guards what were they going to do? Arrest her? They would in their shit. They'd have come stomping in all over him, as if he had been the one offering cause to the child to run to that bitch's flapping teabag bosom.

Kelly launched into a gleeful speech about how she had to do everything around the house, and got a dig in too at her older brother for having left her there up to her elbows in the ware and the washing, and Ryan ignored her and Tony ignored her too until it came down to it, when the counsellor turned in his chair to face the boy.

“Ryan?”

He didn't look up. “I don't have anything to say.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No.”

“Your father's drinking didn't affect you at all?”

“I can't think of anything.”

“Oh my God,” said Kelly. “Like, seriously, Ryan? Fucking seriously?”

Her grandmother said, “Kelly! Watch your language.”

“Are you for real, boy? Oh, it didn't affect you at all, is it? Just the rest of us and we're all making a fuss. You're such an enabler!”

“Well,” said the counsellor, “that may well be an avenue worth exploring when we talk tactics, but right now it's an unhelpful label.”

The girl was on a roll. “I bet I'm not supposed to know that word, like.
Enabler.
Yeah, I couldn't possibly be able to look this shit up on the Internet before I get here. Fine, I can spill the beans on his behalf. My dad's drinking has affected my brother in the following ways: he doesn't rat him out and he doesn't hit him back and he sure as shit doesn't take responsibility when he drives my dad so crazy he smashes our neighbour's windows. Do you know…” She made a great show of lowering her voice. “…why my brother can't live—”

“How my dad's drinking affects me,” Ryan said, and he stretched back in his seat, instantly claiming his due space in the room as if by a magician's trick. “I can't remember a time my dad wasn't drinking so I can't tell you.”

“Oh my God, such bullshit,” sang Kelly.

“So if my dad's always drinking, how am I supposed to tell you how it affects me? How would I know?”

The counsellor shrugged to concede the point, but Kelly snorted, and the cretin let her wade back in.

“He's just changing the subject,” she said, “because he knows it's his fault Dad's here.”

Her brother snapped, “Will you ever mind your own business?”

“This is my business, Ryan. This couldn't be more my business.”

“I don't make my dad drink.”

“You make him break Tara Duane's windows.”

“We could frame this a lot more constructively,” tried the counsellor.

Tony's mother folded her arms. “What's all this about?”

“Ask your grandson,” Tony said.

“That's right, Dad. It's all my fault. It's always my fucking fault.”

Tony's mother made to say something but Fiona gripped her arm, and by no small miracle the damn woman shut her trap again.

“Ne'er a truer word,” Tony said. “I'm not in here because the guards found too many empties in my bins, am I? I'm in here because I smashed Tara Duane's window. I'm in here on the tack because that's a hell of a lot easier for the State to deal with than your gallivanting.”

“I didn't ask you to put her fucking windows in, Dad!”

“I wasn't going to wait for you to fucking ask me. Don't think I don't know what went on.”

“Nothing went on.”

“Didn't you tell me yourself?”

“I told you nothing.”

“Just to interject here,” said the counsellor. “Tony, you're not here at Solidarity House on criminal charges, only as a condition of your parole, because the judge felt that alcohol was a considerable factor in…”

It was drink. Oh, look, no denying that. 'Course it was drink, but it was drink because circumstances required saturation, and again, this bullshit chatter was only blaming the medicine instead of rooting out the tumour.

Ryan looked at his father now with an off-kilter malice Tony wasn't used to seeing from him.

“You told me half a story,” Tony said. “Why won't you tell me the rest of it?”

“Coz you're dangerous enough with half a story, aren't you?”

“And you think telling me lies is the answer?”

“I'm not lying.” Even in the lie he offered the truth. He shook his head, then bowed it, and started on his nails.

Tony heard his mother hiss
What in the name of God?
at Fiona, who shushed her yet again as the counsellor cleared his throat and Cian folded in on himself like a paper fan.

“You're lying to me because you're a fucking liar, Ryan. Brought up in two fucking languages; of course you are. So what were you up to with her, then? Teaching her Italian? Or selling her smoke? Ah, that's it and part of it,” off his son's set jaw, “dealing drugs at your age. You should be in here, not me. Eh? D'you want to tell your grandmother that?”

“I knew this was going to happen,” Kelly chanted at the counsellor.

“I knew it too,” Ryan said, and up he sprang, making his sister jump. “I knew nothing would have changed and still I let them talk me into it. Like drying you out would make a blind bit of difference.”

He went for the door, and Tony would have gotten up and knocked his head clean off his shoulders if it wasn't for the fact his mother was there, and the counsellor, a right old man's arse in a skinny shirt and a nose only just long enough to look down.

“That's your answer when I say you're no angel, is it? Walk away?”

Ryan turned back. “You didn't even ask me where I was, boy.
Where're you staying, Ryan? Who are you with? What're you up to?
Nawthin'. Is it that you couldn't give two shits or you're afraid I'll start talking about what drove me there?”

“You think I don't give two shits? I'm in here for you, you little bollocks.”

“You're in here and you're supposed to be getting better when you're still damn sure there's fuck all wrong with you.” His eyes were shining; the chin was starting to go. “And d'you know what? I never told no one. About you. And if I had done, where would you be? Not in here complaining coz you're sober; you'd be behind the fucking high walls.”

The door rattled on its hinges as he slammed it.

“Does anyone want to go after him?” asked the counsellor.

“Oh, trust me,” said Kelly, “he won't be part of the recovery.”

Back out into the car park, one foot after another and blinking desperately, as if every drop squeezed was poison. Ryan had just cleared his vision when he reached Joseph and the car, but he was still sniffing salt and slime back down his throat as if his life depended on their sustenance. Oh fuck, that was no good at all. Not when the very act of leaving home was meant to cure him of that childish weakness that only his father could twist out of him. He could build a customer base whose appetite for smoke, coke and yokes was matched only by their inability to keep their wallets shut; he could live on his own and trick sales assistants into giving him naggins of whiskey; he could strip his girlfriend gently and fuck her hard but for the life of him he couldn't figure out how to move his triggers so his father wouldn't know how to yank them.

“Jesus Christ,” Joseph said, as he got back into the car.

Ryan took the spliff out of the glove compartment and stuck it in his gob.

“He'll never change,” he choked. “He'll never fucking change.”

Joseph is on Paul Street, busking. That lad has balls, like. He just toddles down there with his guitar and lays the case on the ground in front of him and off he goes, belting out anything from rebel songs to shit that's in the charts. I don't know how he does it. I'd be mortified just singing in the shower.

It's Saturday lunchtime and town is thronged. I go in with Karine and we get milkshakes in Maccy D's and then slink round the corner to watch him. He's doing a cover of “Gold Digger.” He's got a daycent voice and there are a couple of girls shaking their arses and giving the air the old sexy one-two. The sun's out. One of the girls removes her jacket and whoops, provoking the evil eye in an ould fella shuffling past. If I was being a prick I'd tell her that Joseph's ould doll has just had a baby girl and that there's no point waving her tits at him coz he's too fucking tired to notice.

Leigh, they called the baby. The christening's next month. I'm gonna be the godfather. Joseph swears he didn't just ask me because I'm half Italian.

Karine stands in front of me and backs her arse right up against me so I take my hands out of my pockets and join them round her waist.

“He gets better every time I hear him,” she says.

There's a bunch of people sitting outside the pubs and outside Tesco. Some of them are singing along. There'll be a few bob made today.

“Did y'ever think of coming down with him?” Karine says, and she twists in my arms to stare at me.

“Me?”

“No, the fella behind you. Yeah you!”

“With Joseph? Busking? G'way outta that. All I play is piano and I don't think they'd let me drag one of them out into the square.”

“You could sing. You're way better than he is.”

“I am in me shit.”

“You're really good. You're a proper musician, like. I don't know what you're doing selling dope. You could go for
X Factor
.”

“You're shaming me now,” I tell her.

“Hasn't he asked you?” she says. I slide my hands up along her arms and down again and press up against her arse in a fit of gall; I'm wearing trackies, though, so it's probably not a good idea to think too hard about her arse.

“He's said it a couple of times, like.”

“And what did you say?”

“What d'you think I said? I said what I'm saying to you now.”

“You were really good at music at school, is all.”

“Can you imagine me?” I tell her. “Caterwauling away and lads I do business with rubbing their eyes and wondering who put what in their weed? Imagine what Dan Kane'd say to that?”

The joke flatlines. “I like to think there's more to you than Dan Kane.”

“There is,” I tell her. “Loads more.”

“Oh, you reckon so too, do you? For a while there I was thinking it was only me.”

“Well it's not, all right? I'm just…” But I can't think of what to say. Joseph finishes the song. People cheer. He catches my eye and I give him the thumbs up and then quietly I go, “There's no choice, like. I either do a bit for Dan or I go home, and I can't go home.”

“Jesus, Ryan, d'you really think you need to explain that to me? I know that, like! That's not what I'm saying.”

“You're saying I don't fucking sing enough?”

“I'm
saying
I didn't start going out with you because you could get yokes.”

There's frost now. It's like I've said the wrong thing and it's like she's said the wrong thing and we're just a bit out of whack, just enough to notice but not enough to fight over. She folds her arms. I move my hands back down to her belly but I don't let go; there'll be a real fight now if I let go.