Mayflies
by Eamonn Furey
For days now, Ned had been receiving messages from his siblings, informing him that his mother was dying. He remembered reading that the dying often linger, waiting for a last visitor, in order to finally let go. With this in mind, he decided not to rush things and instead spent the morning by the lough fishing the mayfly hatch, before taking the evening train.
By delaying, he thought that he might be the last to see her and then become part of the story of her death.
“She was waiting for her Ned,” they might say.
But he knew this would only be viewed as selfishness, a selfishness his mother had always marked him with. She had marked him in other ways, too; her discipline imposed upon him with the cruelness of a widowed headmistress.
As the train departed, a vain hope possessed him that he also might finally accomplish something, a more temperate state of mind, perhaps. Was it selfish to seek resolution now, coming as it would when her guard might finally be lowered?
Maybe she would apologise for her harshness or lack of warmth towards him. But, maybe, he thought, as the older child, he needed to bear this weight as an example to his younger siblings, despite it going unnoticed by them. Lately, the burden of this, he concluded, may have been the origin of his estrangement from them and the source of his self-exile.
Attempts at atonement from her should be met with dismissal, he decided, or played down at least.
“Sure, didn’t you do your best?” He could say.
These things no longer mattered, he lied, as the train rattled towards their collective past.
The house was silent when he arrived, except for the muffled drone of the rosary which crept down the stairs, unsettling him momentarily. He entered the kitchen and made himself tea, then enjoyed a cigarette. His mother had always hated smoking, making it more difficult for him to quit.
The bedroom emptied awkwardly upon his entrance, his siblings tumbling over one another to exit, each of them dressed in black, already in mourning. Another demonstration of their mother’s insistence on perfection, he thought, a perfection he found unattainable.
“She hasn’t spoken in days,” his sister imparted, pausing briefly in passing, “but you always wore silences well.”
How could he be anything other than silent, when they always spoke of their mother with a reverence unbefitting of the woman that he knew, the tyrant they did not see. To reveal her true colors now would be deemed as inappropriate, futile even. He would undoubtedly be disbelieved anyway, as the suffering inflicted upon him occurred in the hours when they were asleep, and their father was absent, intoxicated.
Ned settled on the chair closest to his mother’s side, then placed his hand on the knitted blanket covering her wasted form. Her shallow breath exposed a frailness that he had not recognised before. A religious candle brought an orange hue to her sunken cheeks and illuminated the photographs adorning the walls.
For a moment, he considered holding her hand, but the unnaturalness of it repelled him, so he sat with arms folded instead, pondering how to begin. But he could not bring himself to say anything, and his lack of words made him contemplate singing a favourite ballad like those his father would whistle, or reciting something by Kavanagh, about her home place. Something profound, something secular. He remained silent.
This silence presented to him a premonition of future regret, a regret for the words he would leave unsaid. A conversation he could not initiate, with a woman who was barely conscious, barely alive.
“Once it’s said its dead,” she used to say, but he could not find words.
The weight of this prompted him to stand, and as he unfolded his arms, the fingers of his right hand lightly brushed against her wrist, causing her to stir. He stood above her as she moved her head slightly to face his presence.
“I took the… money,” she said lowly, her eyes remaining closed.
Ned sat back in the chair before finally breaking his own silence.
“What money?” He asked.
“From your father...” she continued.
“The money he saved during Lent, from not drinking, the money for my new fishing rod?” He asked.
“Your sister’s shoes…”
“The communion shoes?”
“Yes.”
“You beat me black and blue for a pair of white shoes?”
“Yes.”
“Knowing I didn’t take the money?”
She weakly turned her head away from him, her eyes now slightly open, staring towards the ceiling.
Ned wasn’t sure if this confession was meant as an apology or a final taunt. Whatever the motive, slivers of remembrance began to seep through the floorboards and the green flock wallpaper surrounding him. It was in this room, he recalled, that his mother’s barbarity piqued, and a false confession was extracted from him. A confession which forever defined him to his siblings as a thief, a ne’er-do-well. This branding would eventually lead him to doubt his own innocence, also. It was easy to become a miscreant after that.
Why would I steal money that was to buy something for me?
For a moment, Ned felt a ripple of redness in his cheeks, and he suppressed the need to release a long, primal roar. Instead, he left his mother’s side and stared at the treasured photograph of his sister’s holy communion, which hung above the dresser, the communion he was prevented from attending.
To either side of it hung a painting of the Holy Family and a photograph of Ned and his father, smiling beside some silver trout they had caught in the estuary where he first learnt to cast. His mother had always resented their closeness, a closeness his father could not extend to the others, or indeed to her. Ned placed the photograph into his jacket pocket, then removed his sister’s communion photograph. He stared momentarily at the patch of fresh green wallpaper its removal had revealed, offering him a glimpse of its original state, a glimpse of the past. A quiet realisation enveloped him that his role as an outsider was ingrained, impossible to change. He let the thought linger briefly before turning the photograph so that it now faced the wall, then went to leave.
“That will be the end of it,” he lied.
Eamonn Furey is a short story writer from Ireland. He has previously been published in All Your Stories Magazine, The Argyle Literary Magazine, The Galway Review, The Bath Flash Fiction Anthology, and Close to the Bone Magazine.