Mrs. Tubridy,” he said.
Mrs. Tubridy smiled and placed her smooth, moistened hand on his cheek. She used Pond’s Cold Cream.
“More than your mother was able to do, Pat, at the end of the day!”
Two things happened in between Mrs. Tubridy making this statement and Pat making a reply. A small bird landed on a twig above Mrs. Tubridy’s head and a blue Fiat went by on the road. They had distracted Pat for a moment. Then he heard himself saying, “What?” to be greeted with the short, not quite peremptory but certainly cursory response: “Oh—and would you clear out the coal house too when you’re finished, Pat—I meant to say that to you.”
The taste at the back of Pat’s throat was sickly as he obsequiously slouched toward the flapping door of the coal house.
It was the following day when he was doing the vacuum-cleaning that he looked up to see Mrs. Tubridy putting her head around the door. “Pat? Are you there?” he heard her say.
“Yes I am, Mrs. Tubridy,” he replied, scooping up some dust which had gathered in behind the armchair close to the leg of the sideboard.
“I have a surprise for you-oo!” he heard her trill.
Pat jerked ever so slightly as the older woman entered the room bearing a tray upon which stood triumphantly a bottle of Taylor Keith lemonade and two glasses.
“Now, Pat!” she said. “Put that vacuum cleaner down and come over here to me! Put it down now, Pat!”
Pat could hear various acids coursing about deep within his stomach as Mrs. Tubridy raised one of the glasses in a toast and declared, “For all your hard work!” Her eyes seemed to dance as she gazed toward him, eagerly eliciting a reply. Which, eventually, he supplied, to wit, “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy.”
At which point the older woman frowned.
“Pat—there something wrong?” she said. “Aren’t you pleased?”
Yes, Mrs. Tubridy. I’m pleased,” said Pat.
You don’t look pleased to me, with that long face on you like a donkey. Is there something wrong with it? Is there something wrong with the lemonade I got specially below in Kinch’s for you?”
Pat’s eyelashes drooped.
“No, Mrs. Tubridy. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Well—drink it, then!” she insisted. “Drink it like a Christian, can’t you!”
Pat’s lips advanced and began to apply themselves to a tentative sip of the sparkling liquid. But this apparently did not satisfy the older woman, and to his horror Pat found the glass flying out of his grasp as her small pudgy hand hit it, and her words bit into him.
“No!” she barked. “It’s not good enough for you when I do it but if it was her you’d be gurgling away there like a half-wit till it choked you, wouldn’t you?”
“If it was who, Mrs. Tubridy?” Pat replied, almost shamefully, although he had nothing to be ashamed about.
Her response was astonishing as she faced him with an expression blank as the mirror on the bedroom wall.
“If it was who! If it was who! I’ll put a stop to your gallop yet and make no mistake, if you don’t stop playing the flyboy with me! I suppose you think you’re going to sneak bottles back in behind my back—I suppose that’s the little plan you have in mind!”
“No!” cried Pat. “No, Mrs. Tubridy—it’s not true!”
But she was having none of it.
“Just like him and every one of them!” she snapped inexplicably. “Pack of useless God’s cursed crowd of wasters, ne’er-do-wells, and gangsters! Stay away from the Tubridys, they have the hand out for everything they can get! I should have listened to my poor mother, God rest her! Rue the day! Rue the day, you will, she said! God but how she was right! Beat me black and blue he did! I’ll give it up, alanna, on my mother’s grave I’ll never touch another drop! Bruises the size of that on my back and on my legs! But you wait! You needn’t think you’ll get up to the same tricks, Mr. Pat McNab, for you won’t! Do you hear me, you treacherous litde pup, you?”
Out of nowhere, her hands began to beat Pat about the head like small, out-of-control birds. He pleaded in vain. “No, Mrs. Tubridy! Stop, stop!” he cried.
“You’ll not do what he did to me, nor any of your crowd!” she continued. “For I won’t give you the chance—I’ll do what I should have done long ago! Do you hear me? Do you hear me, Pat McNab?”
Fearfully, Pat replied, “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy!”
“Now get up them stairs and do