Bright Burning Things(26)

‘So, no visitors?’ he says.

I shake my head.

‘You probably deserve it. We all do. Try to see it as a blessing, a way of getting you “on your knees”.’

Not this false-humility stuff again. What loving God would want a little boy separated from his mother? He watches me struggle with all the conflicting impulses I know are playing out on my face. I’m completely see-through, which may have made me a very fine actress, though not such a fine player at real life.

‘The Man Above has a Higher Plan for you. You don’t know what it is yet, but there’s a reason they didn’t come today.’

I find my head doing a crazed upwards, downwards, side-to-side motion. Yes, no, yes. Higher Plan, Man Above. Yes. I blink and swallow, looking towards the ceiling. And I want so badly to fall to my knees, but don’t want it witnessed, and it isn’t a worshipping, it’s annihilation.

His face and voice soften. ‘They’ll get over it in time. Actions speak louder than words, and action takes time to prove.’ He wipes his eyes with his frayed, yellowed cuffs, then squares his shoulders, checking himself. ‘Ah, would ye look at the cut of this little one?’ A marmalade tabby, tiny, is nuzzling into the palm of his hand. ‘I shouldn’t admit to favourites, but by God…’

For the first time since I arrived, I feel like I’m in the presence of someone like me. I’ve heard him speak in meetings about his flashes of temper, his extreme emotions, and this: his maudlin love for animals. This is real. I sit in silence and watch him stroke the tiny creatures between the eyes with his thick fingers. He kisses the kittens on the same spot on the tops of their tiny heads.

‘Do you treat them for fleas and worms?’ I ask.

‘Contraband,’ he says. ‘First thing on my list these days. Some of the lads say the worming tablets give them a great high. None of them want to try the fleas stuff. Side effects too serious. Like blindness.’

Laughter flies out of my mouth and it’s not caustic or judging, not a front for something else.

‘Can you get me something for the jangles, to help me sleep?’

‘No, I don’t mess with any of that stuff in here. The cold-turkey approach is best. These sisters know what they’re doing.’

There doesn’t seem to be a sniff of irony in how he delivers this. And yet, how many times has he been back in? The rumours go: dozens. He is the most common reoffender.





14


At the meeting that evening Linda surprises everyone, including herself, by speaking out. ‘I know he’s my heroin, but at least he doesn’t make all my teeth fall out.’ She laughs, over-bright and shrill. No one takes the bait. ‘I’m not me when he’s in my life, but I’m not me when he’s out of it either. Know what I mean?’

The rest of the room falls silent; a few of the men look shame-faced, knowing this is exactly the effect they have on their women. A few of them look angry. Why would you go throwing your love at idiots like that? She deserves what’s coming to her. The women look away. The silence is heavy and loaded, a latent violence clinging to its contours.

Another voice claims the space, making no allusion to Linda’s comment. The conversation is steered expertly back to comfortable territory: ‘It had me in its grip, every waking moment obsessed.’ This is Linda’s story too, only the ‘it’ in her case is a ‘he’. Her sunken cheeks are puffed up and purple-puce, like little plums.

I wait until the last speaker rounds off his familiar tale with ‘but God has me in his hands and in his sights now. God knows what’s good for me.’ There is a sanctimonious piety to this statement that infuriates me and prods my sleeping creatures. I can feel their wings beat against my ribcage, desperate to be let out. Disturb and disrupt.

‘This is my first time sharing.’ So far, so polite. A big clap erupts. I breathe deeply. ‘I often wonder at our capacity for self-delusion.’ The perfect pitch, the lowered voice: come into my orbit. All my acting skills are coming into play, and a rush is released. I am holding the space, my audience entranced. ‘I’ve heard a lot of honesty around substance abuse and our pasts forming us, yet very little about the havoc we wreak on other people’s lives.’ The swarm flies free from my mouth: ‘The stuff our parents did to us we’re repeating. It’s not all about what was done to us, it’s what we’re doing to those around us, particularly our children.’ The air is sucked from the room. Noisy thoughts float and collide, clogging the airwaves. A static hum reverberates in the silence. I have done it, poked all their darkest places.

I don’t like how exposed I feel. That was not all about performance.

‘Thank God I’m not a parent,’ one auld fella pipes up, blessing himself. ‘Thank God this will all stop with me.’

Another guy says, ‘Speak for yourself, missus. Enough of the “we”!’

At the end of the meeting Linda finds her way through the hugging men and stands in front of me. ‘Brave.’ She blows on her own hot cheeks, flapping the stale air in front of her face with an ineffectual tiny hand.

‘You too, Linda. You too. Not sure it’s entirely true, though, when you said yer man Mark couldn’t make you lose all your teeth.’

She snorts. ‘Did anyone come for you today?’