Where I Went Wrong

You're your Mother's spit, he would say whenever he felt like sharing words with me and it was not untrue. When drunk, he would hold dialogue with himself, declare that people should beware their own blood. It was their own that would do for them in the end. And he would nod in agreement to his whiskey as though it were the whiskey itself which had made this pronouncement. Perhaps it was.

He returns home from work, some hours late, unsteady on his feet, red-eyed, malt-perfumed and smiling. His smile is not one of self-contentment but rather some doubtful species which he himself has concocted in his heart as a measure taken against the fact of his own misery. But he does not have the name for this misery. He knows it more clearly when he sees my face and listens to my knowing silence. You have few traits of mine, right enough, he says. He favours my sister whom he thinks to harbour his own commonsense.

He bought me a football at Christmas and hoped that we could make use of it; father and son at play in the Elysian Fields. Hoped that we might be brought together by its bounces and its feeble arcs around the back garden. Give it a good kick, son, I imagine him advising. No, not like that, a reproach to be followed by instruction and various gestures of enthusiasm and exasperation on his part.

He killed the idea himself when he ran over the ball on the morning succeeding Christmas Day. He looked at it then, deflated and ruptured, as though it were an important sign for something of which he had once had great knowledge but which had now not even the substance of a dream.

Once when he was drunk he said:

I know there is something gravely wrong going on here, something terribly wrong, but I can't make it out.

He looked at me for a long time, a pitiable, fearful look that a father should not bear for a son and even so I could not tell him what he wanted to hear. I could not tell him that I was the thing that had gone terribly wrong.

******

I sat amongst the nettles on the brook's edge, twirling a foot in the water. My sister stood behind me, unsure of what I was doing or what she should do. Our father had sent us shopping to get his cigarettes. I was five years older than her and yet he had given her the money and the responsibility for the purchase. I had led her straight from the house to the brook and she was confused, not being accustomed to disobedience of any kind.

Shouldn't we go to the shops?

I didn't respond. I could feel tension affecting her. She was prone to easy confusion, her world as yet a simple one. I dropped some stalks of wild grass into the brook. She scratched her head and exhaled deeply behind me.

I've something to show you, I told her.

I got up, took her by the hand and lead her through the outgrown grass, avoiding the broken glass and the nettles which attended the brookbank. My sister was a sweet girl, quietly mannered, sensible for her age and deferential to me. Alone together, she seemed to mimic my mannerisms, with the result that few words were said between us but no unease took root. We reached the bend in the brook. Oversized rocks were clustered there, dwarfing the surroundings, perhaps positioned as a barrier to prevent children from falling into the brook at its deepest point. Perhaps the rocks were there of their own volition and had some unknowable plan which required gathering by a vermicular river in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps, perhaps not.

At the foot of the largest rock lay a small black dog, a terrier perhaps. My sister squeezed my hand upon noticing it amongst the seared black strands of partly burned grass which abutted the rock. The dog was dead, mottled, riven with weavels. The flesh around its head had been slowly digested and the architecture of its skull lay exposed. The maggots moiled about its flesh, pixellating and transforming its appearance. It looked much like the dog in a dream I had once had. The dog was becoming some dreadful thing which it had never thought to be, had never asked for. Nothing harbours an ambition to be transformed like this. I had found him some weeks before on one of my lonely wanders. I did not know what had brought him to such an end; why he had come here to die or why he was lead here to rot. This ignorance formed the mystery that brought me back to look at him.

My sister pulled at my hand, wanting to leave.

Is there anything we can do for him?, she asked.

I'm afraid not.

She was a little upset and I spoke some soothing words to her. We made our way back to the point on the road from which we had descended. I asked her for the cigarette money and sent her back home, telling her I'd follow soon after. I watched her safely cross the road and move out of sight. I retraced my steps to the rocks and knelt beside the dog.

When I returned home an hour later my father was waiting for me. I made to give him his cigarettes but couldn't find them.

I would never harm my sister or let her come to harm but he couldn't know that and that is why he beat me about the head. He was trying to communicate something to me. I didn't cry nor did I make any noise and that is why he hit me again. Communication is important to him. My sister watched and began herself to cry. I could tell she was feeling guilty for telling our father about the dead dog. I smiled at her and told her not to be upset. My father told me what I inflicted upon my sister was unnatural and disgusting and spoke at some length about my unhealthy interests and where they would lead. He told me again that he didn't know where I got my interests from, it certainly wasn't from him. A blessed dog, he said to himself, in differing pitches, as though trying the idea from different aspects to see if he could make any sense of it. He tired himself out in this manner and told me to get out of his sight. I did this by going to my bedroom where I lay on my bed and thought about the dog and what was happening to it.

I put my hands in my pockets and discovered the cigarette money was still there. I had no idea how this had happened as I distinctly recalled going to the shops, exchanging small talk with the girl behind the counter and putting the pack and change away in my trouser pockets. How this process had reversed itself without my knowing I could not reckon. Such things happen, I supposed.

*********

When I was younger, there used to be four of us in the family. We were nuclear. But then our mother disappeared, like the magician's assistant, like tears in rain and so forth. We became unstable: one of our atoms span of its axis and into the cosmic soup, looking for a new structure with which to bond. She disappeared soon after I had befriended a neighbourhood boy named Kenneth. Kenneth was over six feet tall, never said a word to anybody and had an endless supply of apples which were sweeter than any I had tasted before and which had the added attraction of making strange things manifest. The first time I ate one of Kenneth's apples I found myself in deep conversation with a field mouse in a tweed jacket, discussing the finer points of the poitical situation in Haiti or some place. Soon after I was introduced to the apples, Kenneth disappeared. And then so did my mother.

I sometimes think that neither my mother nor Kenneth have actually disappeared but rather that I have developed a blindspot which precludes me from seeing or hearing them. As though they have simply become invisible to me and are going about their day-to-day business as before. This is highly possible: nobody seems to mention the absence of Kenneth or my mother. I am loathe to draw it to their attention for fear of causing strife. I am no great fan of strife. Sometimes I forget that my mother has dissappeared and hold lengthy conversations with her. She is a fine speaker, my mother. She could speak for Ireland.

********

My father was hungover the next morning when I got up. He was not going to work that day. That much was evident from his appearance. He was sitting on the front doorstep with the door open and called me to him when I passed by. He told me he had been thinking about me all the night long and had reached some conclusions. I needed guidance which he, for reasons he couldn't grasp, was not capable of providing. He paused here to register my reaction. There was none to register. He rummaged in his pocket and took a slip of paper from it. He showed it to me - the name of a priest was scribbled upon it - and told me that this man was a good man and would talk to me and I could talk to him. My father said he would appreciate it if I went to see this priest. It was up to me, he said, but if I didn't do this one thing I could fuck off out of the house. Nice sophistry. He often made such threats. I took the paper from him and stepped over his legs into the garden. I kept the paper in my pocket and walked to school, trying to picture this priestly sage, the vessel into whom I was to pour my troubles and from whom wisdom would spring forth in bountiful return. I imagined he had a bulbous nose matrixed by a reticulation of inkblue veins. His breath would smell of altar wine and carious teeth. He would be a dissolute Cartoon-of-God beplagued by chronic gout. This was the picture I had of priests in general, informed by I-don't-know-what as I hadn't seen one in years. I did not intend to test my assumptions. The priest could wait another day or week or year or epoch for my confession.

I wondered what my father would do with the day, having given up on going to work as he often had in the past year. I had these images of what he does when alone. In these imaginings he is static except for fidgetting hands, looking tiny in his roughed-up armchair, staring vacantly into the distance at a framed photo of my mother. He is looking at the past, or some variety of it of which he is fond. He chases good memories out of the past even though they are fleeting and never worth the trouble of chasing. The truth is that he hasn't a past worth celebrating.

Sometimes he replaces my mother's photo with that of another woman, a red-headed woman whose name I don't know. This seems a sinister practice. Both women, perhaps, are united by the fact that neither of them loved him, neither would stand by him. Perhaps they have a secret relevance for him beyond their shared rejection of him. This is speculation. I can't discern his reasons for doing this.

But that is enough of that. I can only think for so long about my father before my mind tires and blanks. It leads nowhere. It can do no good.

I went to school, stared out the window, told lies, received rebukes, thieved pencils, suffered retribution, borrowed pens and left for home at the appointed hour. On my way home I anticipated further rebukes from my father. He would ask me had I seen the priest. I hadn't made up my mind what to say. But this did not happen. Instead he had something else worrying him.

What did you do with the photo of your mother and who is this blessed woman?

He held the picture-frame towards me. I looked at the red-headed woman. I had no idea who she was and shrugged my shoulders. It was one of those photos he used to put in the frame from time to time. He had no business asking me about it just as I never asked him why he did such a thing. He was still looking at me for an answer. I had none.

This is madness, he said. What are you trying to do to me? Are you in your right mind?

This went on for a while, his histrionics rose and abated, peaked and troughed until he hit me roughly and stood awaiting a reaction.

Do something!

He was pleading with me so I did something: I went to my room. I could hear him cursing me on my way up the stairs.

It was a strange development. What reason would he have for asking me about the photo of some woman of his? I worried for him, which I do not like to do. Just as I do not like him worrying for me. That is not the basis for a proper relationship. My sister came into my room shyly; cautious of me. I hate to see her in trepidation. She is wary of me because of my father. This is not right. She asked me if I had taken care of the dog. I said I had. I thought this would comfort her. I told her we would go back to the brook this evening, after dinner. That would give me time to get out, cover the dog and erect a gravestone somewhere along the brookbank

********

A memory of a dream, being a recollection of incidents which may or may not have happened, meaning that one can't be sure one way or the other:

I am in a field over-run with the sprouting of fibrous grass. The grass shimmers, makes, lewd serpiginous swivels, the way that dreamgrass will. Some of the grass-stalks have little cephalous blossoms and each of these heads look like mine. Hello me, I say.

For reasons unknown (it must be a dream) I am playing croquet with my father. He is authoritative, competitive and a poor sportsman. He misses his shot and his face turns red, grows, mutates and he swings his mallet at me. I look at his face sternly, as though to communicate that this is unseemly behaviour for a father and then I realise that it is not my father. It is me. And I am also me. I run from myself and find my mother waiting to embrace me-myself. I smother my head into her breast and cry. When I look at my mother again I realise two things: she is also crying and she is not my mother. She is the other woman, the other one. For some reason, I am not surprised by this revelation.

********

The dog was not there and there was no sign of it. There was no dampness where he had been, no residual weavels. The grass was long and unblemished. I looked at the base of the other rocks but there was nothing there. Perhaps it had been removed by someone else, perhaps thrown into the brook and carried away. Perhaps, perhaps not. I didn't know. At least, I didn't have to lie to my sister. I could tell her he was buried at sea and was at rest. I would have liked to be sure but I was used to these things in a way that she was not. Such things happen and there is no explanation for them. That was what I knew that she as yet did not.

I met her on the roadside later and helped her down the bank. I took her to the rocks.

Where is he? she asked.

I pointed to the river and said I had buried him and said a prayer. She looked confused.

Buried him? When did he die? You said you'd taken care of him.

I turned to her and examined her face. It was unlike her to ask fatuous questions like this.

He's been dead for weeks. You saw him dead, here.

I pointed to the butt of the rock and she looked at it. Her puzzlement did not abate. I began to doubt myself. I looked at my sister for validation.

You remember the dog with the weavels on it?

She shook her head.

He was caught in a trap, she said.

What trap? He was decomposing. There was no trap.

She began to cry and turned to walk away.

Hold up, I said, What trap? Trapped under a rock? One of these rocks? This rock?

She was properly crying now and she ran from me.

There was no trap in my remembrance. The dog I remembered was not trapped. Perhaps there were two dogs? We had each seen a different dog? But where were they now? They were gone, these two dogs. Someone or thing had taken them. This was the only explanation. I chased my sister and explained this to her.

There was only one dog, she said. He was alive. He was caught in a trap.

Are you sure?

She cried again and walked up to the roadway. She did not know as much about the world as I did. She did not know that a person can see one thing but that one thing does not necessarily correspond to the truth. The truth can be evasive like that. You do one thing, but history corroborates the opposite. History elects another truth outwith your experience. Something or someone intervenes to change the facts and then disappears without sighting. The more I thought about the dog in the trap the more I remembered seeing it. Perhaps she was right after all, I chased after her and told her. She stopped but did not stop crying. She said some things to me which a sister should not say to a brother.

*******

I was in my room looking for my diary, looking for some chronicle of what I had seen that night by the brook. How many dogs were there? I would have recorded it in my diary, I felt sure. I would find the corroboration in my diary. I disregarded the dog in the trap. There was no such dog.

But I couldn't find my diary and instead I found another thing which I had not thought would be there. A photograph of my mother. I hadn't put it there. There was something sinister going on to which I was not party. My father's strange behaviour of late suggested to me that he was behind it. A photograph of my mother. I thought it should mean something to me, but it did not. I took the photo and went to my sister's room. She was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. I had forgiven her for the cruel words she spoke. Her eyes were still red and she still looked at me in a strange way. I showed her the photo and told her where I'd found it. She asked me who it was in the photograph. I did not know what to say. I turned the photograph and looked at it, as though it might have changed through some process of mischief or alchemy. It had. It was no longer a picture of my mother but a picture of the red-headed woman whose name I didn't know. I couldn't say anything.

Is he at it again? I asked.

She looked dumbly at me.

You know what I'm talking about. Is our father at it again? Trying to confuse me?

It's not him, she said.

Then who? If not him, then who?

You know who, she said. You know.

******

The Priest.

I waited, kneeling on the pew in a posture of repentance, thinking up bad deeds to which to confess. Petty theft, dissolution, erroneous information, fecklessness, the sin of friendlessness: these are the kinds of things which priests expect and can tolerate. Sodomy, gougings, live evisceration, incest: these thing are not well received by the priest brethren, unless my catechistic knowledge is well out of date. I robbed a pound, I didn't bugger a cat. So long as I stuck to this line of admission I would be okay.

The Priest.

My sister had set me thinking with her words - you know who. It had to be the priest. She was intimating as much to me. When you think about it, who else could it be? The priest, with his arthritic fingers probing through the stuff of my life, mismanouevring things, fiddling about, trying to confuse me. Nice try, priest. He'd be fairly taken aback at my sudden appearance in the confessional. A reversal of roles awaited him: So, Father, have you anything you'd like to confess, you bastard.

I pictured the look on his face.

Behind me the boxdoor opened. A wheyfaced sinner emerged, bearing a look of confused contrition, like someone who'd received the penance of two hail marys for the crime of genocide or was to undergo flogging for robbing a carrot, or whatever. It was time to meet my adversary. I rose from my knees and entered the confessional.

Hello, father.

He wasn't expecting that.

Hello yourself.

I expect you know what this is about.

A pause on his part as he realised who I was.

Well. Why don't you tell me about it.

Yes, I said. I'm sure you'd love to hear all about it. And I told him that I knew what he was up to, moving the dog and my mother's photo and all the other things. I told him I knew he was not to blame as it was my father had put him up to it.

He was stumped now.

Who's this your father is? he asked.

That was a bastard of a question.

What do you mean who's my father? He's my father. That's who he is, father.

Of course. But what is his name?

I don't know. How should I know what his name is? How could I know that?

This is most unusual...

Do you deny it, father?

This is not the confessional procedure...

And what is the procedure? Should I stick my arse up to the grille?

You should begin by asking for my blessing and then proceed to recount your recent failings, to repent for those occasions in the past where you went wrong...

Where I went wrong?

*******

I went home wrong and went wrong every other way. I took the wrong turn off the main road and ended up in a filthy housing estate which looked just like the one I live in. And I went wrong when I went into a house which looked like my own and embraced a red-headed woman who looked like my mother.

*******

When I got home I found my father drunk on the doorstep, his key was in the door, the door was half-open, and his trousers were soaked with the whiskey of his bladder. I patted him on the head and whispered to him that he was forgiven, that he couldn't have known what he was doing to me. I had learned about forgiveness. I told him I still loved him and I resolved to help him sort himself out when he felt he was up to it. It was what a son should do for his father. I had learned about christianity. I had learned about my failings. I had recognised where I went wrong. In the chiarascuro of the shade falling upon him as he lay fallen on the doorstep I could see how much he resembled me and, if I hadn't my wits about me, I would have sworn that I was looking at myself passed out pissed on the threshold.

^

Biography

Patrick Martin was born in Dublin in 1974 and lives there still. He recently finished a postgraduate thesis and is writing a novel concerning monstrous beings, vulnerable souls and the illicit production of psycoactive condiments.