She drinks her tea and I lie down next to her. ‘What will happen if you can’t ever sleep again?’ I ask.
‘God help me, if that happens.’
‘So, we’ll go on the train to the sea today?’
She puts her arm around me. ‘My darling, I think at the moment there’s more chance vampire bats will take up drinking hot milk.’
She laughs at her joke, but I don’t want to laugh. ‘Are you saying no?’
‘That’s not what I said,’ she says. ‘This isn’t a good time. It’s a very bad time.’
She has cold blood like my father. And her hair, it’s not only grey at the front, near her temples and her ears; grey strands hang down near her eyes, and it’s greasy and dirty hair too. Dirty and grey.
I wait for her to finish her tea and when she puts the cup down on the bedside table I take a pillow from behind my head and rest it on my knee. I don’t talk, and neither does she. I put the radio on to drown out some of my thoughts.
‘Turn that off,’ she says and, like most of what she says, it is as though she hardly cares, as though what happens next is none of her business.
I turn the radio off, get back into bed, and hold the pillow on my lap.
‘You’re taking up too much room there, John. Can’t you move to the other side of the bed?’
I move across and, without my weight in the middle of the mattress, her body rises up, as though it were something light and plastic in the water. I must be much heavier than she is.
‘That’s better,’ she says as she presses her fingers to her temples. ‘But I’ve got a rotten headache. If only I could sleep. If I could sleep then we could be happy again.’
‘You’d be yourself again? You’d be happy again?’
‘I don’t know, but I’d give anything.’
I wait for her to take two sleeping pills and, when she lies down on her side, I lie down too, and stroke her back.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘It soothes me to have you here. Maybe I’ll sleep now.’
I leave her and go to the living room. I want to be calm, but I don’t know how. I sit, then stand again. I fidget and pace. I try to sit but I can’t. At three o’clock I go back to her, to see if she is sleeping. But she doesn’t sleep. She is sitting up, fiddling with the seam of her torn nightdress.
‘Come and sit with me,’ she says. ‘I feel shattered. I’m in pieces.’
She lies on her back. I get on the bed and lie next to her. She is quiet and her breathing is soft. I take her resting hands and fold them across her chest and I look at her. She is still and peaceful now. But I know she’ll soon wake.
I climb on top of her. My legs straddle her stomach and hips and I want to stay here and look down at her calm face, but she moves and groans.
To stop her moving, I take the pillow and put it over her face and then I lay down on her, on top of the pillow, and I make myself heavy. When she stops moving, I put my head on the pillow. We are both sleepy now.
Suddenly she kicks. She kicks against me and her arms fly at my face. I am surprised by her violence, surprised by her strength. The pillow muffles her cries and moans but still I wish the radio could be turned on to drown out the awful noise.
With all my strength, I press down hard on the pillow and I hold her arms down with my hands and fight against her kicking. When, at last, she stops struggling, I take myself off her body and look at her: She is calmer again; she is prettier.
I get up off the bed. It is over.
* * *
But my feet are cold. Why are they so cold? I need socks. Something to keep them warm. Why are they so cold? What is wrong with my feet? I go to the drawer to find some socks. I must think about what I will do next, but my feet are so cold. I search in the drawers for warm socks. I cannot think.
I hear a rattle, a scraping noise, a faint but constant sound, somebody outside running a coin along the wall? I stop still and now I hear it, louder and clearer, the sound is in the bedroom. I close the drawer and as I straighten to stand I realise she is coughing.
I turn to face her. Her eyes are open and her hands are on her neck. I watch until she stops spluttering. I watch until she looks at me.
‘Mammy?’
She lifts herself from the bed, puts her feet over the side, and stands, her arms held out, her hands up as though to stop me coming towards her.
‘Did you try to smother me?’ Her voice is uncaring, calm. ‘Is that what you tried to do?’
‘No, Mammy. You just went to sleep. You had a nightmare.’
She doesn’t look at me, takes her dressing gown from the back of the chair and leaves; out to the hallway.
I follow her.
‘Get out of my sight,’ she says.
She walks into the living room and I follow her.
‘Get away from me,’ she says, her hands held out in front of her breasts.
‘But why? What’s wrong?’
I move towards her, but she backs away and stands hunched in the corner.
‘Holy Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.’
‘Why are you praying?’
‘Because my son tried to smother his mother. Oh, God. Smother his mother! Smother his own mother!’
‘You said you wanted to sleep.’
‘I didn’t say I wanted to die. You could have killed me.’
‘But you didn’t die. I love you, Mammy. Won’t you stop crying?’
I move towards her and she backs away.
‘But I didn’t,’ I say. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Get out of my sight!’ she shouts.
I go to my room and lie on my bed and listen to my mother on the telephone to the Gardai.
She gives our address. She repeats it three times and then she says, ‘I think my son tried to murder me in the bed.’
34
My mother walks into the living room with two guards; a man with red hair and a short female guard with a big nose. They’re both shorter than I am and they look at me but say nothing. I want them to go. I walk to the front door and open it. This is not their home and they should not be so casual about coming here.
‘The front door’s open,’ I shout. ‘You can go now.’
But nobody comes.
I go back to the living room and watch my mother. She stands behind the female guard as though for protection and wipes her nose with the pink handkerchief I gave her last Christmas. There is another knock at the door. My mother goes to answer it and I am left alone with the guards.
Nobody speaks and I am annoyed when the female guard looks at the photo on the mantelpiece of me making my first Holy Communion: I’m holding the white prayerbook against my leg and I’m not ready for the camera.
My mother is at the front door, crying and telling somebody what happened.
A man in his early twenties comes in, with his hand on my mother’s shoulder. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘You must be John Egan. My name’s Kevin McDonald. I’m a social worker.’
‘Yes,’ I say, looking at my mother while she wipes her eyes with the handkerchief.
I don’t feel anything except tired, and annoyed with having strangers in my house.
‘I’m going to take you into another room for a while,’ says the social worker. He wears an earring and he has a tattoo of a bluebird on his neck. ‘Shall we go to your bedroom?’ he asks.
He reaches out to put his hand on my arm.
‘You don’t have to touch me,’ I say.
We go to my room and he sits cross-legged on my bedroom floor.
‘Your mother has made it very nice in here,’ he says. ‘These flats can be awful depressing.’
I lie on my bed and stare up at the ceiling and listen to the ambulance siren outside.
After a few minutes there’s another knock on the door. I can hear the voices of the ambulance men and my mother who says, ‘I’m feeling fine now, thank you.’