‘What are you watching?’ asked Dan.
He couldn’t quite make out his cousin’s reply. It was almost as if he were coughing out the words. They seemed disconnected from one another, as if each syllable took an effort to articulate. Was he retarded? wondered Dan.
‘Big. . Big. . Broth. . Brother is starting,’ Dennis finally managed to stutter.
There was a sudden clamour of shouting from the kitchen. Bettina was yelling and Dan’s mother was screaming back at her. Dan leapt up from the sofa.
His aunt stormed into the room, tears streaming down her face. ‘Get up, Dennis,’ she shouted to her son. ‘Get up! We’re going home.’
The man’s head was turned away from her. He hadn’t budged.
‘Come on, Dennis,’ she roared. ‘We’re leaving!’
The man slowly rose from the armchair, eyes down.
Shaking, Bettina turned to Dan. Her eyes were red and she rubbed a hand across her nose. She tried to keep her voice steady but didn’t quite manage it as she said, ‘I’m sorry, Daniel, but you shouldn’t have come. Take your mother home, take her home tomorrow.’
He brushed past her into the kitchen where his mother was weeping, her body racked with sobs. Joanna was bent down behind her, rubbing her arms, her neck.
‘Is she ever going to forgive me, Jo? Is she ever going to let it all go?’ His mother forced out the words between her sobs and gulps for air.
‘Mum, what can I do? Do you want to go?’
His mother looked up at the sound of Dan’s voice, grateful for his presence. She reached for his hand, and held it to her cheek, kissing it, and drenching it in her tears.
‘Oh Christ, mate,’ she said, ‘I need a drink.’
‘Shh.’ Joanna put a finger to her lips. But the front door slammed, they heard the sound of a car’s ignition. Bettina and Dennis had gone.
‘OK,’ said Joanna, no longer whispering, ‘now we can have a fucking drink.’
His mother and cousin drank but Dan stayed sober. The peaty, heady aroma of the whiskey was enticing but he wanted his senses clear, he was tired from driving, from meeting these new people, he couldn’t trust himself to drink. His mother was on her second glass when Joanna’s husband, Spiro, arrived. He had round dimpled cheeks, an unkempt salt-and-pepper beard, gentle, shining eyes, and silver-streaked hair that fell around his collar. He and Dan’s mother embraced warmly.
‘How’s work?’ she asked him. ‘How is the restaurant doing?’
‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ Spiro answered nonchalantly, welcoming Dan with a tight, unembarrassed hug.
Dan responded to him immediately, as he had done to his cousin Joanna, but he couldn’t wait for them to go to bed so it could be just him and his mother, just the two of them. He begrudged the man the whiskey he poured himself, the cigarette he rolled. Go to bed, go to fucking bed, repeated in Dan’s head like a mantra.
‘How was your mum tonight?’ Spiro asked Joanna.
‘She was Mum. She was everything you said she’d be.’
Spiro winked. ‘Sorry, Steph, sorry, Dan. Was it awful?’
‘It was no worse than it has ever been.’ Crestfallen, his mother turned to Dan. ‘I’m sorry, mate, that you had to see all that.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s alright.’ And it was. Now that Bettina had gone, his mother’s anxiety had disappeared.
Spiro winked at him next. ‘Bloody Joeys, eh, Danny?’
Dan hated that they thought that was an excuse. ‘I don’t get it,’ he snarled. ‘Why does she have to be so mean? What’s her problem with Mum being christened once?’
The outburst of laughter that greeted his question surprised him. Joanna had to wipe the tears from her eyes. ‘Oh Danny,’ she finally managed to say, ‘don’t ever use that word around my mum. Jehovahs don’t get christened — that’s what filthy heathens do. Your mum got baptised, she didn’t get christened.’
‘Same difference, isn’t it? So she got baptised.’ He spat out the word as if it were an obscenity. ‘So fucking what?’
The swearword worked. The laughter stopped.
Spiro threw back the last of his whiskey. ‘Come on, you,’ he said to his wife. ‘It’s bedtime.’
Then it was Dan and his mother alone. She poured herself another glass. This time Dan indicated that he wanted one as well.
He sat patiently, every now and then taking sips from his glass. His mother was quiet for the longest time. He didn’t mind. He knew silence, he understood it. He waited, listening to the sounds of his cousin and her husband preparing for bed.
His mother had knocked back her drink and poured herself another. She sighed and took his hand across the table. ‘I know it’s hard to understand all this, baby, but I kept it from the three of you because I wanted to protect my children from all this poisonous shit.’
‘I don’t get it. Isn’t Joanna a Jehovah’s Witness? Isn’t Spiro?’
‘Your cousin Joanna is no longer a Joey — she left it a long time ago. But she never got baptised. That was my sin, Danny:
I accepted God and then I renounced Him. Your aunt Bettina is making a great sacrifice even talking to me — even being in the same house as me.’ His mother tilted back her head and swallowed the last of her whiskey. ‘I’m damned, mate. I broke my promise to God. She couldn’t forgive me even if she wanted to. For her, for my parents, I am exiled from them forever.’
She indicated for him to refill her glass. He should have stopped her, he should have got her to bed. Her hand was still clasped tight around his, it was clammy, uncomfortable. He could feel her shame burning through her skin.
He wanted to tell her so much. About Carlo and prison, about what he knew of disgrace and shame, about what it took to emerge from out of the earth and be able to look up to the sky again. There was so much he wanted to tell her, but he was scared that he did not yet know how to. He needed the silence, he needed to learn how to use words, how to have faith in words again, so he could tell his truth without fumbling and without failing. But he couldn’t, not yet. He had to trust the silence between them and trust her patience.
‘I forgave my father,’ she said flatly, her face half in shadow, her profile severe and stark and old in the lamplight. ‘I forgave him before he died. But I can’t find it in me to forgive my mother. I can’t forgive her for staying silent, for never defending me, for being weak, for being so fucking weak. For never stopping him.’
So Dan was not the first to fail her, to betray her.
‘Don’t ever trust the righteous, Dan, no matter how convincing their words may seem. You’ll never be good enough, no matter how much you try. You’ll never be perfect and they’ll never forgive you for that.’
She was looking down the well of her glass, then she took another long draw from it, spilling some liquid down her chin, onto her white top. Her next words were lost, she spoke them into the whiskey, the sounds unintelligible.
‘What did you say, Mum?’
She held the glass away from her lip, and whispered like a child, ‘He scares me. Sometimes he scares me.’
‘Who?’
Her eyes were searching his. ‘Neal. Your father can be righteous — he frightens me when he’s like that.’ She dropped his hand, put her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, Danny, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s OK.’
He rubbed his cold hand on his trouser leg, stretching his fingers to get the blood flowing again. He took the glass from her, ignoring the reproach in her eyes. ‘No more, Mum, you’re exhausted and upset. You need to get some sleep.’