Eleven years ago that day, Malachy was born. Being premature, he was immediately wrapped in a cocoon of blankets and attention. Amidst his wails, Debra looked curiously at her son, a wry smile forming as she remarked to no one in particular, “Though he looks human enough, he’s a creature that’s had the luxury to be carried in two wombs and be born on two occasions.” She’d no idea, neither of them had.
He was a troubled child, the full extent of his nervous energies made apparent by the cutting of his teeth, an emergence of misery that spread throughout a house already tormented by disrepair. His mother would hold him at length, her fingers stroking his curling hair, her lap the one place where he would calm even as he burrowed. Those moments were her reward; his eyes would light up with mirth, his restlessness overcome for those precious seconds by the warmth and affection of her tender touch, before the relentless tears began that accompanied his inevitable abandonment.
His tears only stopped with his first steps, an instance promising relief, but those steps soon engulfed her in despair. Within a few short years she would be cursing. “I swear to good God, Toddy,” she admonished her husband one day as her son returned from one of his adventures, “Can you not keep an eye on him when he’s out there with you?” She ground her teeth as she surveyed his torn and soiled clothes that promised too many hours of scrubbing and stitching for her to tolerate.
Toddy looked at her askance. He was short, dark and wiry, and with a rugged-set face. His knotted forearms and strong greasy hands betrayed his profession. “I’m busy in the garage,” he grunted. “Besides, he shows no interest in what I do,” he said, his humour as petulant as his son’s.
“Of course not. He’s a child,” she snapped. “He’ll show interest only when you show interest in him.”
Sitting down to lunch, he narrowly stayed inside the confines of the sheet she sprawled over his chair to keep the oil from his overalls from infecting the house. The basket of laundry, filled with grease-stained clothes, invariably sat nearby.
She watched him eat, and observed his disinterest. Malachy wasn’t like his two older brothers, that much she knew. Both Toddy and Cathal were their father’s sons. Both older, both fascinated by mechanics, both at school, preparing to leave in a few short years like Anita Grady’s girls. It was a bitter thought.
When the time came, and they left for England, she blamed herself; herself and Toddy. Nonetheless, she carried on as though nothing was amiss, her frustration and sorrows pouring into what remained of her family; her stoic acceptance, a mask that barely hid her shattered nerves. Searching in the mirror, she saw only ugliness. “Tell me you still want me?” she pleaded with the darkness of her room, already aware of the gentle snores that promised a sleepless night.
During the day she would stare at her son. She was drinking heavily, caught in a spiral of depression that only lifted when she danced, the glide and whirl and music’s rhythm emptying her mind, relieving it from the hollow space that, like an addict, left her in a state of permanent withdrawal. Reaching for the bottle, she would glance at Malachy running about, the pang of guilt, less for the shot of spirit that caused her to shudder, but for the accusation that rose from deep within, adding a twist of bitterness to the liquor’s bite. She felt detached from her child, the vitality that had filled her life drained into a numbing stupor. Taking a gulp, she would wait for the cold kick to ignite before taking in his now slumbering form, an awareness of his dependence stirring nervous emotions. Tenderly brushing his soft blond hair, her hand would tremble, her moistening eyes threatening her composure. “I mustn’t cry,” she would whisper to herself. “I mustn’t cry.”
°
It was in her childhood home that they lived. The whitewashed house was always damp, though its two-foot thick granite walls gave it a sturdiness that would withstand all events, but the passage of time and the progress of subsidence. An old house of at least a hundred years, it leaned almost imperceptibly from south to north; the natural consequence of the thirst of the willows and birches that grew by the pond that formed in the hollow each winter. Although the house had always suffered from subsidence, its effects went unnoticed for the first half-century of its life; that is, it was assumed, until the mighty elms reached an age of maturity and began demanding a toll. So when the first and slightest of fissures appeared, they cemented over it, only for it to reappear with greater girth and vigour somewhere else.
Toddy had always wondered at his wife’s loping gait and thought her side-to-side movements exaggerated, but within a few short years he’d developed the exact same manner of walking. In effect, depending on which direction he walked, he found himself dropping his hip in the slightest of inclinations, so that at first he didn’t even pay it any attention. Soon, however, it began causing some discomfort, for the alignment of his body was altering in a slow but steady manner. Not surprisingly, it was his lower body that produced the most distress, for when he walked east through the house, so that his left leg would consistently be lower than his right, he found the pressure in his right knee and ankle would increase. Understandably, this also resulted, however relative the difference, for that same movement that affected his right knee and leg, in an ever so slight stretching of his left side beneath his ribs. The outcome of this compensating equilibrium was that by the time his first son was born, he had unintentionally developed a gait that had loosened his stiffness and removed all traces of the pain that had surfaced in his lower back. This led others to assume he was a man of the utmost balance, for he would find to his surprise that his new manner of walking provided a sturdiness and stability that served him well when Tom O’Malley, emboldened by the ease with which he had conducted his last robbery, ran from the post office with the post master in pursuit, only to find an immovable Toddy Blair in his path.
Another side effect of this corporal transformation was that where he had always been reticent to dance for fear of treading on his wife’s toes, now he could confidently waltz across the floor, and with some ease it might be added, so that Debra more and more enjoyed a good night out. So strangely knew was this physical ease that he would often be seen lying on the floor looking at his spirit level, marvelling at the slight degree to which the house tilted.
But subsidence proved a progressive disease, and as the years passed it grew worse. His marriage suffered. They argued constantly, the house becoming the issue around which every irksome detail revolved.
“Good God, Toddy,” Debra snapped one day. “Can you not fix the plaster, at least? Or lime the cement you’ve added to the walls. I don’t care that they’re cracked anymore, just that it’s so bloody obvious.”
“Here we go again,” Toddy groaned. He stayed on his knees, checking the tilt of the floor outside the kitchen.
“Don’t turn your eyes up to heaven. It has to be said. You know what they call Malachy in school? ‘Slanty.’ And I won’t repeat what that old gasbag Teresa Canning was saying to Aine Dunne, and in earshot too, as though neither of them have problems. Always spitting at the sky that one is.”
Toddy held his temper in check. “Debra, look about. We’re not the only people with subsidence.”
“But we’re the worst, Toddy. We’re the worst.”
He left her with the last word. She’d already turned back from the kitchen door and was busy banging the kettle on the stove. He sighed and listened as the pots clanged in temper. Her moods had gotten worse since the boys had left. If only they’d send a card or a letter. If only. But she was right he supposed, even if her complaining made him cranky. “Can we have less of Peels Brimstone tonight,” he shouted into the kitchen. The banging increased. He immediately regretted his words.
Yet as he returned to his task in hand, he quickly forgot his wife’s humour. He was puzzled. Increasingly curious about the geometric forces at work, he found that the house only barely tilted so that the bubble in the level sat, but slightly outside its guide. In fact, the inclination was so slow in forming that it was almost impossible to observe. Adding a protractor to his tool kit, he began noting angles. Yet thorough as he was, the proof that he was looking for increasingly showed, not in the angle at which the house tilted, but in his physical condition that once again deteriorating, now appeared as a pain in his neck.
He was sitting on the floor with his notebook open, rubbing his hands over his shoulders whilst rolling his head from side to side, when Malachy arrived back from school. He looked at his son. Not at all like his brothers, he thought. Where they’d always been rough like himself, Malachy was beautiful like his mother. Both women and men were compulsively drawn to him. Most often they would be unaware and would find themselves waking from a mesmerizing stupor. He knew. He saw them looking at his son. It bothered him. He would see him stand in front of the mirror flicking his hair as his mother did, see his fascination with all things cosmetic, his obsession with how he looked. Whereas his friends and brothers had spent the money from their first communion, or saved it at their mothers’ behest, Malachy had insisted that Debra buy him a full length mirror in front of which he would preen. He would run one hand across his belly, whilst the other traced delight through the curls that fell across his brow. “I am beautiful,” he’d heard, as Malachy pursed his lips and gazed at his reflection. Just thinking about it made Toddy shiver.
Having heard her son come in, Debra joined Toddy in the hall. She saw Toddy’s face and knew what he was thinking. Malachy dropped his bag and entered his room. Moments later he reappeared. With the rise and fall of his hips and with his coquettish curls, he exuded feminine grace. “You must have had some sweet milk,” he commented to Debra, as they watched him weaving through the house like some cat on the prowl.
°
One evening after dinner, Toddy went out. Arriving home later, all muddy and wound up – he’d been to see a fist fight – he punched the air as he shouted, “A boxer they call him? A boxer? He beats the air and they call him a boxer?” He was drunk and sat heavy in the seat. Grabbing Malachy roughly, he messed his hair about.
“Leave him alone, Toddy,” Debra snapped. “You’re drunk.”
Malachy squirmed. “You’re hurting me, Da. Let go, will ye.”
He let him go. “You’re doing him no favours, ye know. He’s gotta grow up sometime and stop being such a pansy.”
“I’m not a pansy.”
“Shut up, kid.”
“Don’t talk to him like that.”
“I’ll talk to him how I want,” he hiccupped.
“And what about our money? Gambled and drunk, I imagine. And with the state of this house.”
“Oh, yer a fine one to talk about drinkin’.” He could barely speak his speech was so badly slurred. Unsteady, he used the wall for support as he rose. Staggering into the hall he ignored his wife’s taunts.
“And what about the money for the house?” Debra shouted after him. She waved her arm in the air to clear the lingering smell of cheap whiskey. “What about this house?” she repeated, her words trailing in resignation. But the state of the house aside, she knew she had a problem. “Just what am I going to do with you?” she snapped at her son, who having sensed the turn of mood, made his way quickly to the door. He ran.
Alone in the kitchen, she stood with her fists bunched on her hips, surveying the walls. She noticed another crack. She ground her teeth. What to do? What to do? Other problems had long since surfaced. There was the leak that sprang from the pipe that led to the sink in the kitchen, and the progressively more precarious position of her mother’s antique furniture. Even sitting in a chair was a dilemma, for depending on the direction faced, she either wanted to lean back, which on antique furniture was a risky venture, or she faced the uncomfortable proposition of constantly sliding forwards. But whatever about the problems faced during the summer, in the winter they fared miserably worse. Every crack caused a problem. The roof leaked. Drafts increased in severity, and a large gaping fracture in the chimney sent the smoke from the fire throughout the house.
Having had enough, she finally, and only after delivering a barrage of abuse, convinced her husband to take a saw to the elms. But, as Toddy had warned, little to no improvement was observed, for as it was explained to him, the weight and tilt of the house was now a contributing factor. And as if to demonstrate, they walked around to the front of the house that faced the southern sun, and sure enough, as though turning on a longitudinal axis, the house was rising on that side.
°
Malachy would often observe his mother staring at the walls or floor of her home, her hands clenching with rage, her tears causing her to blink and look away. He would watch as she prayed to one of the many images of Mary adorning the walls. Standing at the door of the kitchen, he would stare with eyes full of curiosity. He noticed everything and watched her constantly, an activity that was only interrupted by the desire to join Brian Dunne playing football, a fact that irked his mother for he was always coming home filthy.
“Could you not roll about in the mud,” she would scold. “Do you think I enjoy scrubbing your clothes?”
At times she would take him walking. They would stroll along the lane at the side of the house, and she would teach him about wild flowers like celandine and shepherds purse, vetch and furze. She would point to neighbours’ gardens, explaining how they were each a canvas where interpretations of the world were open to being viewed. Some gardens were tidy, maintained with a discipline that spoke of a strict and righteous bearing. Others grew so wild they were amorphous, disturbed by man and open to all manner of influence that drifted on the currents or got caught and carried by the birds and animals that ventured past. On occasion she would stop and speak a kind word or two with Frank Dunne, who would offer her some rhubarb stalks, along with a basket of blackberries and raspberries, or some Elderberry wine fermented over the previous year. “You can have both wild and cultivated,” he would tell Malachy, winking to the young lad, whose short stature gave lie to his age. But she wouldn’t stay long. Though she enjoyed her neighbour’s company, and the thoughts of the wine whetted her palate, her house was visible from his gardens, and her delight would sour upon an appraisal of the gable end of her home.
“The cheek of that one,” she shouted on the day the final elm was cut. “The cheek of her to give out to me when she can see the state of our house.” She was shaking. She began searching for her gin.
“Lily Conlon didn’t like us cutting her elm?” Toddy asked.
“Didn’t like it? Didn’t like it… Arghhh!” she fumed in frustration. She rifled through the press, searching for her bottle.
“For God’s sakes, Debra,” Toddy said to her. “You told me you’d asked her permission.”
Her anger grew when she saw the empty bottle sitting on the counter. “God damn it,” she shrieked.
“Don’t ignore me, Debra. You said you’d asked her.”
She glared at him, but remained silent. Moments later she stormed out of the kitchen.
Toddy watched from the kitchen window. He knew where she’d gone, that he’d soon see her staring up at the wall of the house as though with her will alone she could repair its structure. He sighed.
°
Being the consummate opportunist, Nature spared no time planting thistles and dandelions within the fissures created by their tectonic misfortune. And as if to add insult to injury, She was not only wasting no time, but in seeking flattery in self-image, was projecting Herself with that chaotic combination of uncertainty and probability that defines all living things. Staring at the side of the house, Debra would notice how the cracks and splits resembled the architecture of the elm and holly. A central tear reached from the ground to the roof at its apex and was joined by fine surface fractures branching towards both the front and back of the house. It was as though in cutting down the trees, they had merely reappeared in the cracks that lined the building’s walls.
Inside, the house split down the centre of the hall so that one side lay at a greater inclination than the other. When it rained, tributaries formed on both the plaster and the floor, channelling the water that leaked through the broken tiles, so that the dry bed of the house’s centre became a stream that flowed and ran beneath the skirting. No one ever knew where the water went after that. In the evenings, the flickering lights cast shadows that shimmered like the ghosts of lightning, so that the eye would trace the outline of crookedness, unable to return to where it began. Later, discussing their growing problem over a slanting table, Debra groaned, for though Toddy earned a reasonable income, business was infrequent enough to make him worry, and nothing she could say would make him spend what was required for repairs.
°
It was whilst cleaning Malachy’s room that Debra found the jar. She was sweeping along the rim of his bed when she knocked it over so that it rolled out to her feet. Dropping her sleeves over her hands, she picked it up, her disgust overwhelmed by curiosity. Curiosity was soon replaced with confusion. “Now what do I do about this?” she groaned. She thought of Toddy and then thought better. Getting down on her knees, she placed the jar back beside the leg of the bed.
The wasp that buzzed past her ear shattered her attempt at ignorance. So sudden was its approach, it appeared as if from nowhere, a speck in her peripheral vision that quickly vanished leaving only a mild irritation in her ear. Panicking, she swung wildly and leapt back against the mirror, knocking it into the wall where it crashed, but mercifully didn’t break. She sighed in relief. “There’s enough bad luck in this house already,” she growled.
Watching the wasp fly about, she wondered where it had come from. The window was closed, as was the door to the room. Unaware of the hive in the wall, she moved hurriedly to open the window. The curtains billowed. She stepped back and watched as the wasp dutifully made its way to the outside world.
It was as she sought to close the window that she saw him, making a mad dash through Lily Conlon’s garden towards the clothesline. “Ah, Malachy,” she groaned, as he snapped a pair of underwear from the line. “Lily Conlon of all people. Damn,” she cursed in an almost silent exhortation. Forgetting about the wasp, she stepped back from the window and bit her lip. She shook her head. Silent contemplation. A surge of anger.
°
The first blow sent Malachy reeling. Up by the old fort, he’d been heading straight for the Dublin Road when he felt her palm strike the back of his head. “I’ll kill ye, ye little pervert,” she shouted, her slaps sending him to the ground where he curled. He yelped in terror. “I’ll kill you,” she repeated, in thorough disgust. “My own son, a clothes thief,” she hissed, when she finally stopped hitting him. She was panting hard. She never would have figured.
Just a few minutes later he was flailing about as she dragged him through the streets by the ear.
“Let go, will ye? Let go of me,” he yelled, but to no avail. They marched onwards, past Connolly’s Books and The Four Swans pub from which laughter erupted. Past the credit union and the post office. Past O’Malley’s grocers where the women clucked and muttered disapproval. On through the village she dragged him, grabbing his arm even as he fell into the dirt. He was crying, the tears smearing his complexion as they ran from his perfect eyes down his still cherub cheeks. And past all the stares and amusement, the eyes that quizzed and accused, for surely he had done something wrong, “the little divil.” He feared them, feared those eyes, feared those judgments, the taunts and slags and the endless teasing he endured that would now only escalate. And with his fear came anger, and hatred, for at that moment he despised one and all. And as he was hauled through the streets, he turned cold and ceased yanking. He was shivering, sweating with despair. The church steps rose before him for confession.
“Stop cowering and stand up,” she snapped as he whimpered. He looked ahead, fear stemming his vision along with his tears. He felt sick. He wanted to puke and excise the bile that assaulted him. His eyes pleaded with his mother. “Get in there and confess your sins,” she shouted, “so I don’t have to punish you myself.”
°
What relief the darkness of the confessional, this routine appraisal of worth and need for penance. None for him, he knew, only the silence and stillness of the dark as he awaited Father Donoghue. He’d seen the old man shuffle, his severe and unforgiving expression lent to his indication for Malachy to enter. Trepidation as he waited for the hatch to slide and reveal the man robed in shadows, the dispenser of indulgences. “Bless me, Father,” said Malachy, before delving into a litany of petty sins. But Father Donoghue wasn’t forgiving.
“Sins don’t pass, do they, Malachy?” he said to him through the wire mesh.
“No Father, they don’t.”
“For some sins there is no penance, is there, Malachy?”
“No, Father.”
“You were born guilty, Malachy, weren’t you?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Do you know where hell is, Malachy?”
“No, Father.” He began to cry.
“Well, let me tell you where it is, Malachy. Let me tell you where it is. It’s in you, Malachy. I see it in your eyes, in your body. I smell its stench on you. It’s the darkness, Malachy. It’s the darkness. It’s all the horrors of the darkness, all its perversions. You think you’re innocent, but you’re not, Malachy. You are walking a path long chosen for you, a path of evil. You are the centre of a vortex, an aberration of humanity. Oh they all think you’re beautiful, with that face of yours, but I know what you are, Malachy. You’re repugnant!” the priest declared, his words like a slap. “You’re a golem of hell, here to act out the desires and fears of this town. Just watch. You’ll see. You’ll learn your own nature.”
Malachy stopped crying as he fled from the church. Always drawn to him, it seemed women now followed him everywhere, whilst men looked on with pity and disgust. He walked quickly, almost running to his home, his naked vanity turned to pure self-consciousness, the public gaze that bore down on him subduing his confidence that he could no longer even express in the privacy of his room before his mirror. It was the one smooth surface in a house he considered old and ugly, and the only thing with which he’d found sympathy. And as he stared at it and saw his effete posture, he felt rage and smashed his fist hard into the glass.
°
“You know we forgot his birthday,” Debra said to Toddy.
Toddy removed the poker from the fire, his moment of relief that she hadn’t brought up the house quickly overtaken by realization. “Ah, shit,” he cursed, drawing a sharp breath between his teeth. He couldn’t quite believe it. “We didn’t, did we?” he asked, the question coming as a soft groan. He looked up at her. Silence ensued. “No wonder he’s in the mood he’s in,” he eventually said. They both stared at each other.
If forgetting Malachy’s birthday said anything to Debra, it was that she had little notion of just what her son meant to her. She was at a loss. She felt curiosity and confusion. Anger and desperation. But a glimpse of happiness. She felt nothing but guilt now for the day’s anger.
“You know, Toddy, we have to do something. Really, we have to. There’s a wasps nest in the wall of Malachy’s room. There’s mould growing everywhere. It’s not right, Toddy. It’s not healthy.”
Toddy remained stubborn, and instead poured her a drink. He opened a bottle for himself. “Have you seen Con off with mad Cassandra?” he asked her, knowing that such gossip would distract her from the house.
She smiled. “Aha. I wonder what Kevin Clony will do about that. He’s gotta know by now.”
A broad grin formed as he noticed her smile. It had been too long. “Con the loon. Aye, Con the loon and mad Cassandra. Crazy old man, he is.”