Davie sighed and passed from the hallway into the next room. His mother was sprawled on the couch in her nightshirt and slippers, trying to pull herself up to a sitting position but failing pathetically. Davie moved over to help her up.
She declined his hand and continued to struggle. Eventually she made it upright and immediately began to glower at him. “Where have you been?”
“I was out with Frankie.”
His mother spat. The drool landed on her nightshirt. “Frankie! I told you to stay away from that boy.”
“I know,” Davie admitted. “I will from now on, mum, I promise.”
His mother stared at him some more, trying to focus her eyes as she swayed to and fro. She seemed totally unaware that a bandage adorned Davie’s head. “Lies!” she shouted in his face. “Don’t you lie to me, boy.”
“I’m not. I saw what he’s really like last night. I want no more to do with him.”
“Why? What happened? What did you boys do? I best not have the police around here. I have enough to cope with.”
“Nothing happened, mum. I just found out that he wasn’t a very nice person.”
His mother took a swig of beer and laughed. “Could have told you that long time ago. He’s been no good since the day I birthed him.”
Davie was weary and his usual tolerance of his mother’s vitriol seemed somehow absent. “Maybe he wouldn’t have turned out so bad if you’d been a better mother.” The words escaped Davie’s mouth before he even realised he wanted to say them. Now that he had, though, he felt a cloying pressure release itself from his bones.
Predictably, his drunken mother went nuclear. She threw her empty beer can at Davie, hitting his face above the eyebrows and spiking the pain in his head. “How dare you! You…you little swine. I give you a home and feed you and this is how you repay me? Twenty years of my life down the pan for you boys. I’ve a right mind to kick you both out.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Davie said calmly.
“Oh, wouldn’t I? We’ll see about that, you ungrateful brat.”
“You won’t throw us out,” Davie said, “because you’d lose all your benefits and wouldn’t be able to drink yourself stupid every day. As for putting a roof over your head, the government only gave it to you because of me. You’d be in a skanky flat somewhere if I were to ever leave, so I don’t want to hear any more of your selfish complaining, you alcoholic, hate-filled old witch. The only person to blame for your terrible life is you, so deal with it.” Davie reached down to the floor and picked up the empty beer can that she had thrown at him. He stood up and tossed it back onto her lap. “And you can get your own beer from now on. Go outside and let the whole street see what a pathetic waster you are.”
Davie’s mother unleashed a tirade of abuse at him, but he was already out the door and halfway up the stairs before she managed to complete her first slurred sentence. It was just background noise now. The things he had said to her should’ve left him feeling elated, yet it hadn’t. There was too much on Davie’s mind to enjoy the moment and the confrontation with his mother was not enough to shift the growing numbness that was seeping through his mind. After what he and his brother put Andrew and his family through, Davie felt unworthy of any emotion other than shame and regret. He wished he could put things right, but there would never be a way.
Nothing will ever make up for what we did.
Davie entered the cramped space of his bedroom and hopped up onto his unmade bed. Thoughts turned to his brother and then, unexpectedly, to sympathy. What Davie had said to his mother was indisputably true: what chance did Frankie have growing up with her as a moral guardian? Ending up in a young offender’s home had probably been inevitable from the moment Frankie was born.
And that’s exactly where I’ll be heading too.