in the world, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes, Mrs. Tubridy.”
Mrs. Tubridy coughed—politely again, Pat noticed—and he caught the reflection of her raised eyebrow in the looking glass.
“Pat,” she continued, “would you mind if I called you something?”
“Called me what, Mrs. Tubridy?”
He caught a long strand of her hair between his fingers and removed it from the teeth of the brush.
“Paudgeen, Pat. Would you mind if I called you that?”
Pat perceived the blood coursing decisively in the direction of his cheeks.
“Mrs. Tubridy,” he said, “I’d rather you didn’t.”
Her expression in the mirror remained motionless.
“What?” she said and he jerked a litde.
“It’s just that,” he said, “it’s just that I’d rather you didn’t. It’s not my name!”
Mrs. Tubridy’s reaction shocked him.
“O it isn’t your name is it not!” she snapped. “Well—what name would you rather have? Pat McNab? You’d rather have that than Tubridy that everyone would look up to! You’d rather have that, after what you’ve done!”
At this, Pat’s left temple began to throb.
“After what I’ve done?” he ventured agitatedly.
“Yes! After what you’ve done!”
She eyed him with a stare of great significance, at that very moment lowering her voice as she said, “You know what I mean.”
Pat felt his cheeks turn from red hot to dough pale as she smirked and placed her hand on his and said, “You know what I mean—Paudgeen.”
Far off in the hallway, the grandfather clock ticked heavily.
“You do, don’t you?” she repeated.
“Yes, Mrs. Tubridy,” as he saw her smirk anew.
“No,” she said, “don’t call me that. Call me Mammy. Just for a laugh, will you call me that?”
A look of pain flashed across the countenance of Pat McNab.
“I can’t,” he pleaded, “please, Mrs. Tubridy. I can’t.”
There was nothing tender or considerate about the stare with which she fixed him, her voice cold as steel.
“Call me it!” she demanded.
Pat’s head fell upon his chest as though he had somehow been transformed into a pathetic nodding dog.
“Yes, Mammy,” were the words that passed his lips.
It is difficult to determine, certainly with any degree of exactitude, the significant occurrences in the life of Pat McNab which eventually led to his becoming the person he was, but it is unlikely that it could be contested that that incident and what had passed between them during it ought to be considered as one of such; for, almost as soon as she left the room, it became clear that Mrs. Tubridy had rendered Pat McNab into such a state of high dudgeon and perspiring, overwhelming confusion (indubitably a consequence of the self-hatred and malignant shame that were themselves the results of his pitiful inaction) that his entire surroundings began to assume a startling, sharp-edged clarity, unsettlingly closer to the states of distorted hallucination familiar to habitual drug users than any feasible notion of tangible, empirical reality. Which explains, no doubt, why, when later that—again moon-washed—night, whilst in Mrs. Tubridy’s bed (for her instructions now extended to include his sleeping arrangements), he awoke to find himself staring directly into what could not possibly have been—but to all intents and purposes, clearly now was—the face of his own mother!
An enormous wave of sorrow swept through him as he touched his cheek and felt the moonlight play upon it. His mother’s smile too was sad.
“I know she did a lot of things, Tubridy. But this. This makes me sad, Pat.”
He repeated each word after her and every syllable that passed his lips was as a rusted fishhook drawn painfully and indulgently from his throat.
“Sad, Mammy?” he said then.
“Her lying there. Telling you lies. Because that’s what she’s doing, Pat.”
His throat dried up hopelessly.
“Mammy?”
It was a struggle to utter the word.
“Telling lies. Once, you know, a half-crown went missing on me. I asked her did she see it. And do you know where I found it?”
Pat was close to the edge of hysteria now.
“Where, Mammy?”
“In her handbag. Hidden inside her handbag behind her prayer-book. What do you think of that, Pat?”
Pat found himself instinctively grinding his teeth.
“It’s terrible!” he heard himself say.
“Not terrible compared to some of the other things she’s done. Did you know she put her husband Mattie in the mental hospital?”
“Mental hospital?”
“Poor Mattie Tubridy that was one of the handsomest men ever walked the streets of the town. Couldn’t let him be himself, you see. Why if you didn’t like him the way he was, you didn’t have to marry him, I said to her. And she did not like it! Because it was the truth! What harm if Mattie took a drink, God rest him.