She ascertained by the hair and the shoes it was a male with its head stuck into Jimmy’s middle, but never having seen anything the like of it, she left as swift as she’d arrived, shaken, shaken to the core, then disgusted and unsure what to do about it. If it was an animal, you’d put it to sleep. Or give it a kick.
Mainly she had wanted to hit him about the head and shout these aren’t the things I have planned for you.
She did nothing. Only the washing up. Angrily.
*
An hour or two later Jimmy came in, happy, for his dinner, suggesting the wall in the barn needed a lick of paint. Had he noticed the wall while getting his ploughing? How could he concentrate on these small details amid the wave of what was happening below? He remarked on how well the pork chops tasted, and even though she longed to slap him repeatedly around his face, she found herself locked into a silence she could find no way out of. To the cooker and back she walked, lifting and replacing pan lids. She considered spitting it out at him, let him know all she’d seen, but he was tall now and she couldn’t dress him down, hissing at him like you would a six-year-old.
— What do you think you’ll need to paint that wall? She said finally. Shift him out of the kitchen. Think straight again.
Immediately she felt she must exhale him out of here, he must go and stay away. Yet later that night, as she lay in bed, she recalled the light and the way the two fell on each other unabashed, and she could not lose that repeated caressing motion of those hands on her son’s backside.
*
— Mam.
It had been years, and by the time the day came, she was ripe for it. Off the bus from college this Friday evening, home he was to her, stood in her kitchen, looking helpful — helpful was the way Jimmy looked.
— Mam. I’ve something to tell ya.
A silence brewed that she swiftly interrupted. It might be his moment, but it was her moment too and she was going to have it her way.
— I know you’ve something to say to me, she began briskly, I’ve been expecting it. Indeed I’ve been waiting for it. It isn’t blind I am. I’ve a good strong feeling I know what it is. So we can make this easy. I’ll give you my response right now plain and simple and there’ll be no need for you to say it at all.
He nodded. Nervously. Good, she liked him nervous.
— Fellas do have companions, she started.
He nodded affirmatively. Ha! She was right on the track. She wasn’t born yesterday. She’d let him have it.
— Lookit, Gerry and Joseph back the road there.
Less certain. Another short nod.
— You’re going to make life very difficult for yourself if you continue with it. I imagine you’ll have no wife.
He agreed quietly and politely.
She delivered her verdict in sleek, clipped sentences, like ham coming off the slicing machine.
— It’s not that I didn’t wonder. I want one thing understood. I’ll say it the once and you won’t hear it from me again. If there’s no way round it, don’t bring it home to me here ever. I can’t have it across my door. It’d kill your father. But what you do is your business, d’ya hear. You can come anytime. But just you. And if there’s any of the girls having weddings or the like, you’ll come with a girl. I don’t care where you find her. I don’t care if you’ve to pay her. But for your father’s sake, you’ll be alone or with a girl.
She paused, briefly trying not to think of two of them holding hands. The flatness of two fellas against each other or them rubbing each other made her fierce uncomfortable. She wondered could two of them be together without touching each other. Finally, after a long pause between them, her speaking.
— I’ll see you get a little extra in the will on account of you spending your life alone. I’ll keep an extra cow for a few years to prepare for it.
He stood, smiled, and embraced her. You’re remarkable.
She brushed him off, telling him, Go way outta that, put on the kettle and make yourself useful.
Later when she was within, adding turf to the fire, he called out from the kitchen, Mam, I’m off.
She knew it then, she knew she’d lost him, she’d lost him in a whole new way and she hadn’t been prepared for the foreignness of this feeling. It didn’t agree with her at all.
*
Of course she worried tall that it was off to Patsy’s boy he was. If there was a way to separate them, she’d build a wall for the sake of it. She’d to steady herself into the chair as it came back to her again. She pulled the cushion, the strange one with off-colour ducks on it that one of the girls had embroidered for her and now she couldn’t recall who and she wanted to recall who because she wanted her mind cleared of what was rolling in to remind her of that night. It was Jimmy. All Jimmy. She couldn’t blame the other boy for he was the younger. If she’d turned away she could have saved herself, but she did not. Every time she saw a cup or glass of orange squash, it would come back to her. She was in it now.
*
It’s the time of the day when you cannot be sure of what you’re seeing. You might see a neighbour, think him one man, and when he approaches find him to be another. I catch movement in the next field and wonder of it. No one would be in that field at this hour of the day, for my husband’s beyond in the house and won’t head out for another hour. Jimmy has the car. I pull close to see what’s the person at over there.
It’s a young fella alright, he’s against the far wall where the field dips in a funny old way. He’s at an angle, bent over a medium-sized boulder of stone that’s embedded into the land there, the grass below eaten right under it by the goats. Something there, he has, mebbe coats it is, rolled up between his ribs and the stone. I crouch low where a length of briars there will shield me and shuffle along. Fella, he’s more of a boy, for his head lifts up a few times, and I’d know that boy, it’s Patsy’s boy Martin, I’d nearly be sure. And I see the other boy with him, who’s less of a boy and more of a young fella and I know that young fella anywhere because he’s my Jimmy. Maybe Patsy’s boy is stuck? Wait now ’til we see.
I’ve to scout along the way, tucked right down for fear they’ll see me and panic, so I keep down ’til I can get a better view.
Then I see it, the bareness.
Was he going to the toilet? That would be unusual. Is that why his trousers are down? The Lord save us he’ll catch his death: he’s out in the rain with his trousers down. He’s up to something. I don’t like it. They’re up to something. Hard to see. I must see. I must be sure.
*
For once she’s glad of the brambles and the height of them, and that her husband never gets round to tearing them away. And God again there it is, there’s the head on the bundle of jumper, it’s Patsy’s Martin, the boy must be two years younger than Jimmy, is he in eighth class or ninth class? But now she’s his face directly in view, a face registering something, whatever Jimmy is doing, the boy doesn’t shout out. She wonders if the boy, has he fallen, is Jimmy helping him? So she’s back from the briars, skirts along the wall, returned to her other angle. She’s to understand why are their trousers down if the fella is just stuck. She considers interrupting, but the poor face on the younger boy would take a stroke. Whatever they’re at, it’s taking a while. There’s a bit of rustling and rummaging, a slow manoeuvring. Jimmy’s hugging him with one of his hands, but the other is missing. Wherever it is, it must be below the waist.
Until no. Now it’s clearer, she can see exactly what they’re at: her Jimmy, the boy she raised so well, her quiet caring Jimmy moves up and down on his tiptoes and both hands are at the boy’s hips, bringing himself to and fro a small bit, like he’s hunting for something lost in there. One glimpse confirms it, swift but unmistakable. There it is, two sets of hips, firmly interlocked, there’s only one place her son can be, he is inside that boy.