Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

The counsellor smiled as Ryan detached himself from the wall. There were two chairs left: one beside Tony, the other between Cian and Kelly. He took the one between his siblings, and Tony looked at them, sitting in a row as if ordered to file into the formation most likely to bother their father’s conscience. When you haven’t seen your children in weeks, and for so long before that only through a medicated haze, to have them organised so neatly was a bit of an eye-opener. All three had shot up like weeds.

‘Our focus today isn’t on mediation or family therapy,’ intoned the counsellor. ‘We have a specific task and that is to deal with the addiction. So what’s helpful at this juncture is for each of you to tell Tony, honestly, how his drinking affected you, and that will provide a solid foundation on which to build a strategy unique to this family. Yeah? This family. Everyone has a different story.’

‘I can start,’ said Fiona.

‘Oh. Yeah. Yup. Sure.’

The charade took each of them in turn. Fiona spoke about losing her connection with her twin, conveniently leaving out her globetrotting and how her resulting affectations made her as popular as a Guinness fart in a snug. His mother said something about the shame of having birthed a professional noodeenaw. Tony watched his children. Kelly feigned boredom, but she was all ears under that leonine mop. Cian kept patting his pockets. Ryan hunched over, staring at his shoes. Black rubber dollies with the thick white sole; there was a name for them, but Tony couldn’t remember it. The lad was never out of them. God knows where he got them, because they weren’t a brand Tony had the money for.

It could have been Tara Duane. The bitch had always maintained she didn’t have a bob to her name but with only one kid and a frame that suggested she only ate on Thursdays, it was obvious she was hawking the poor mouth. She could have been spending her money on fancy footwear for his son; he wouldn’t have guessed. How would he have guessed? The concept was too fucked up to take a decent run at. He cast back to see if he could hit on a time when Ryan had had anything but those fucking plimsolls on his feet but nothing came. He’d been a runt of a thing till he was fourteen. Maybe then. Tony’s fingers hooked under his seat. His nails scraped off plastic.

Cian looked mortified but managed something about homework and bedtimes and proper breakfasts.

But sure what could you do about it? Fucking nothing. If you called the guards what were they going to do? Arrest her? They would in their shit. They’d have come stomping in all over him, as if he had been the one offering cause to the child to run to that bitch’s flapping teabag bosom.

Kelly launched into a gleeful speech about how she had to do everything around the house, and got a dig in too at her older brother for having left her there up to her elbows in the ware and the washing, and Ryan ignored her and Tony ignored her too until it came down to it, when the counsellor turned in his chair to face the boy.

‘Ryan?’

He didn’t look up. ‘I don’t have anything to say.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘No.’

‘Your father’s drinking didn’t affect you at all?’

‘I can’t think of anything.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Kelly. ‘Like, seriously, Ryan? Fucking seriously?’

Her grandmother said, ‘Kelly! Watch your language.’

‘Are you for real, boy? Oh, it didn’t affect you at all, is it? Just the rest of us and we’re all making a fuss. You’re such an enabler!’

‘Well,’ said the counsellor, ‘that may well be an avenue worth exploring when we talk tactics, but right now it’s an unhelpful label.’

The girl was on a roll. ‘I bet I’m not supposed to know that word, like. Enabler . Yeah, I couldn’t possibly be able to look this shit up on the Internet before I get here. Fine, I can spill the beans on his behalf. My dad’s drinking has affected my brother in the following ways: he doesn’t rat him out and he doesn’t hit him back and he sure as shit doesn’t take responsibility when he drives my dad so crazy he smashes our neighbour’s windows. Do you know…’ She made a great show of lowering her voice. ‘… why my brother can’t live—’

‘How my dad’s drinking affects me,’ Ryan said, and he stretched back in his seat, instantly claiming his due space in the room as if by a magician’s trick. ‘I can’t remember a time my dad wasn’t drinking so I can’t tell you.’

‘Oh my God, such bullshit,’ sang Kelly.

‘So if my dad’s always drinking, how am I supposed to tell you how it affects me? How would I know?’

The counsellor shrugged to concede the point, but Kelly snorted, and the cretin let her wade back in.

‘He’s just changing the subject,’ she said, ‘because he knows it’s his fault Dad’s here.’

Her brother snapped, ‘Will you ever mind your own business?’

‘This is my business, Ryan. This couldn’t be more my business.’

‘I don’t make my dad drink.’

‘You make him break Tara Duane’s windows.’

‘We could frame this a lot more constructively,’ tried the counsellor.

Tony’s mother folded her arms. ‘What’s all this about?’

‘Ask your grandson,’ Tony said.

‘That’s right, Dad. It’s all my fault. It’s always my fucking fault.’

Tony’s mother made to say something but Fiona gripped her arm, and by no small miracle the damn woman shut her trap again.

‘Ne’er a truer word,’ Tony said. ‘I’m not in here because the guards found too many empties in my bins, am I? I’m in here because I smashed Tara Duane’s window. I’m in here on the tack because that’s a hell of a lot easier for the State to deal with than your gallivanting.’

‘I didn’t ask you to put her fucking windows in, Dad!’

‘I wasn’t going to wait for you to fucking ask me. Don’t think I don’t know what went on.’

‘Nothing went on.’

‘Didn’t you tell me yourself?’

‘I told you nothing.’

‘Just to interject here,’ said the counsellor. ‘Tony, you’re not here at Solidarity House on criminal charges, only as a condition of your parole, because the judge felt that alcohol was a considerable factor in…’

It was drink. Oh, look, no denying that. Course it was drink, but it was drink because circumstances required saturation, and again, this bullshit chatter was only blaming the medicine instead of rooting out the tumour.

Ryan looked at his father now with an off-kilter malice Tony wasn’t used to seeing from him.

‘You told me half a story,’ Tony said. ‘Why won’t you tell me the rest of it?’

‘Coz you’re dangerous enough with half a story, aren’t you?’

‘And you think telling me lies is the answer?’

‘I’m not lying.’ Even in the lie he offered the truth. He shook his head, then bowed it, and started on his nails.

Tony heard his mother hiss What in the name of God? at Fiona, who shushed her yet again as the counsellor cleared his throat and Cian folded in on himself like a paper fan.

‘You’re lying to me because you’re a fucking liar, Ryan. Brought up in two fucking languages; of course you are. So what were you up to with her, then? Teaching her Italian? Or selling her smoke? Ah, that’s it and part of it,’ off his son’s set jaw, ‘dealing drugs at your age. You should be in here, not me. Eh? D’you want to tell your grandmother that?’

‘I knew this was going to happen,’ Kelly chanted at the counsellor.

‘I knew it too,’ Ryan said, and up he sprang, making his sister jump. ‘I knew nothing would have changed and still I let them talk me into it. Like drying you out would make a blind bit of difference.’