“Sean, go downstairs and play with Ollie.” Mam’s familiar voice drilled through my mind and I stiffened, body coiling tight with tension. “I need to talk to your brother.”
Sean had another three good bounces on my back before obliging our mother and toddling away.
“Don’t start,” I grumbled, rolling onto my back. “Whatever it is, just leave it out.”
“I wasn’t going to start anything.” Closing my bedroom door, Mam walked over to my bed and sat down beside me. “I just wanted to see if you are okay?”
Sighing heavily, she reached a hand out to brush my hair off my face, and that small act of affection had me scrambling to the far end of the bed and as far away from her as possible.
“You wanted to see if I was okay,” I repeated flatly, as I leaned my back against the wall and glared at her. “Since when did you give a fuck about how I am?”
“Since the day you were born.”
“Huh?” Confusion furrowed my brows. “Is there a social worker lurking downstairs or something that I’m not aware of?”
“No, Joey,” Mam sighed, blue eyes full of sadness, as she watched me watch her with wary mistrust. “It was a genuine question.”
“That I’m genuinely confused about,” I deadpanned. “What do you want?”
“What makes you think that I want something?”
“Because you’re in my room, asking how I’m feeling,” I replied, shoulders tense. “So, come on, out with it.”
“I don’t want anything from you, Joey.”
I remained silent and waited for her to get to the point.
This was not a spontaneous check-up on my emotional welfare.
“You haven’t been to school this week,” she finally said. “Mr. Nyhan phoned twice.”
“So? Neither has Shannon.”
“Yes,” Mam agreed. “But Shannon has stayed home from school this week to help me.”
“As opposed to me, the prick who’s never helped you a day in his life?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“Then what are you saying?” I shot back. “What do you want?”
“I’m worried about you.”
Bullshit.
I folded my arms across my chest. “Since when?”
“Since what happened the other weekend,” she replied, tone weary.
“Oh, you mean when my father tried to rape my girlfriend?” I bit out, trembling with anger again. “No, no, I’m grand, Mam. That didn’t fuck with my head one bit.”
“Oh, Joey.” Mam choked out a shaky breath. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” I deadpanned. “I wasn’t aware that you tried to fuck my girlfriend, too?”
“Joey.”
“Oh, wait, that’s right, you didn’t try to fuck Aoife. No, you just took her would-be rapist into your bed instead.”
Mam flinched. “How is Aoife? Is she alright?”
“I have no idea,” I replied tightly. “I haven’t seen her.”
“Why not?”
“Because she can’t stand the sight of me,” I told her. “I remind her too much of my father, the rapist bastard himself.”
“He didn’t rape her.”
“He raped you.”
Another flinch. “That’s different.”
“Because he put a ring on your finger when you were still young enough to play with dolls, and that gives him automatic dominion over your body?”
“Joey.” She blew out a pained breath. “I wish you could understand.”
“If you’re referring to the perverted fixation you have with that man, then you can forget about it,” I told her. “Because I will never understand.”
“I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Who’s fighting?”
“You are, Joey,” she said with a sigh. “Every time I try to reach out to you, every time I try to pay you any sort of attention, you immediately go on the attack.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t if the experience wasn’t so fucking foreign to me.”
She shook her head sadly. “There you go again.”
“Jesus Christ, I can’t do right in your eyes, can I?”
“Do you want to know something I don’t understand?”
“Not really.” I shrugged. “That list is so long we’d be here for weeks.”
“I don’t understand how a boy, who despises his father as much as you despise yours, can follow him right down the garden path to addiction.”
“I’m not an alcoholic.”
“Worse, you’re a drug addict!” she cried out hoarsely.
“No,” I bit out, shaking my head. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” she cried, reaching for my hand. “You have a problem, baby.” Exhaling a shuddering breath, she added, “Yes, I know you’re back to your old tricks. I found the empty bags in your jeans.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You are way off the mark.”
“Bullshit, Joey,” she snapped. “I can smell the weed on your clothes.”
“So, I had a smoke. Big fucking deal.”
“And?”
“And nothing,” I snapped. “So, get off my back, Mam.”
“Then what’s this?” she demanded, reaching inside her pocket to retrieve the cracked plastic casing of a pen.
My stomach sank, but I schooled my features, too fucking ashamed of myself to admit anything, and never to this woman. “Looks like a broken pen to me.”
“Really? Because it looks like a makeshift straw to me!” She threw it down on the bed. “And I might not be the world’s smartest person, but I know damn well that you don’t need one of those for weed.”
I shrugged noncommittedly. “I don’t know what to tell ya, Mam.”
“How about you start by explaining where my medication has been going?” she urged, tears filling her eyes. “You have been so good for so long. Months, Joey, months! And now we’re what? Back to square one? Why would you do this to yourself, Joey, why?”
“When have I ever laid a finger on you?” I demanded, heart gunning in my chest, as I snatched my hand back. “Or Shannon? Or the boys, for that matter?”
“I’m not talking about whether or not you would harm other people, Joey,” Mam replied. “I’m talking about the harm you’re doing to yourself. I don’t understand how you can throw your life away on a habit that you know ruins lives.”
“What do you want from me, huh?” I demanded, at my wits end. “You let that bastard stay, knowing what he tried to do to my girlfriend, so I leave. Then you text me, three days later, begging me to come back and save you from him, so I come back and do exactly that. Now, you’re in my room, grilling me on being absent from school, accusing me of being cold to you, and calling me a fucking addict?” I shook my head. “I’m here when I don’t want to be, when I would rather be anywhere else on this planet – and that includes a coffin – but I’m here because you called. Because you need me. Because they need me. Even though being inside this house makes me want to peel my skin off. I’m fucking here. If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, then I don’t know what to say, I really don’t.”