Beyond the Rage

by Michael J Malone

  It was intoxicating.

  ‘Actually,’ said Aunt Vi, ‘it was more than one letter.’

  ‘What?’ Kenny sat straighter.

  ‘He sent one on your birthday, each year from your eighteenth. They stopped when you were twenty-one.’ Vi chewed on the inside of her cheek. ‘I’m sorry, son. You weren’t ready for... I’ll go and get them for you.’

  She was gone for a couple of minutes. Kenny could hear her footsteps up the stairs and across the ceiling. His Uncle Ian stuck his head in the door.

  ‘Is she...?’

  Kenny nodded.

  His Uncle Colin looked at him, thought about speaking and then listened to his wife returning.

  ‘S’pose given where you came from it couldn’t be helped,’ he said, shrugged and then returned to his spot in the kitchen. What was that, thought Kenny. Understanding? Was he being excused? Or written off? Like he could give a shit.

  Aunt Vi handed him a green shoebox with the legend Clarks on the outside. Her expression was unreadable.

  Kenny accepted the box from her and resisted the urge to open it straightaway. He needed to be alone.

  Aunt Vi walked to the front door, knowing exactly what was in Kenny’s thoughts. Gratefully, he followed. At the door she stretched up on tiptoes and grazed his cheek with a kiss.

  ‘Whatever you’re feeling is right, Kenny. Don’t doubt yourself, just process it.’

  ‘Christ on a bike,’ sounded from down the hall. ‘Somebody’s been watching too much Oprah.’

  • • •

  Kenny placed the box on the passenger seat, turned the key in the ignition. Before he drove off he had a look at the screen on his phone to see if Alexis had left a message. Nothing.

  There was a knock on the car window and his Aunt Vi’s face loomed before him.

  ‘Sorry, son,’ she said when he rolled down the window. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Kenny, wondering if this was something about his cousin.

  ‘Let’s drive.’ She opened the door, picked up the box and sat down. She offered him a smile in lieu of explanation. ‘My nosey old man will be at the window. He thinks I just popped in next door.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Wherever.’

  Kenny put the car in gear and drove off. Minutes later a giant superstore hove into view and Vi gestured that they should go in there. Thinking that this was all a bit strange, Kenny did as she asked. He found a parking space close to the entrance and turned to her.

  ‘Good,’ she said, ‘I need to get something for tonight’s tea.’

  ‘Eh?’

  She laughed. ‘Only joking, son.’ She tapped his shoulder with her fist. ‘You got to laugh, don’t you?’ She paused and looked out of the window. ‘Or you’d never stop crying.’

  Kenny said nothing. She’d get to the point in her own good time. He looked down at the box she was cradling on her lap. He really needed to see inside.

  He felt her hand on the side of his face.

  ‘You must laugh when you hear people say that childhood is the best years of our lives,’ Vi said softly. Kenny turned to face her and saw that her eyes were shaped with regret, apology and any number of unnamed emotions. He felt his throat tighten in response.

  ‘You have nothing to be sorry for, Aunt Vi.’ He heard the emotion in his voice and coughed. ‘You did your best.’ Mentally he gave himself a shake. Normally he had all the emotions of a breezeblock. What was happening to him?

  ‘You had so much anger in you, Kenny. I used to think that if I touched your skin I would get burned.’

  Kenny smiled as memories of teenage tantrums filled his head. ‘God, I was a little shit. Don’t know how you put up with me. No wonder Uncle Colin was always threatening me with an orphanage.’

  ‘Over my dead body, son. Nobody was putting my sister’s child in a home,’ Vi said and patted his hand.

  They settled into silence for a few moments. Kenny looked out of the window at shoppers going in and out of the superstore and wondered what dramas were being played out in each of these people’s lives.

  ‘This note arrived addressed to me. It was on the floor of the hall the morning of your birthday.’ She handed him a small piece of card. The front bore a painting of flowers in a vase. The colours were pastel, the arrangement generic. It was the kind of card old women would send each other, Kenny thought. He opened it up. Three words were typed in the middle.

  Does he know?

  Kenny read it. He held it up. ‘What the hell is this all about?’

  ‘I think it’s from your dad.’

  ‘Really?’ Kenny sat and stared at the card. ‘Know what?’

  ‘That your dad is still alive, is my guess.’

  ‘If he wants me to know that, why doesn’t he pay me a visit?’ Kenny was stung. ‘Fuck.’ He looked out of the window and everything he had been ignoring all these years crashed in on him like an articulated lorry.

  Silence.

  ‘Do you remember much about that night, son?’ Vi asked eventually.

  Kenny didn’t need any clarification. He knew instantly what night she was talking about.

  ‘I remember going to bed and then waking up when I heard my dad wailing. Then when I walked downstairs... there they were.’

  ‘Exactly where were they?’

  ‘I must’ve gone over this with you countless times over the years, Aunt Vi,’ Kenny said.

  ‘Bear with me, son.’

  ‘Right. Well...’ And Kenny explained how his father was on his knees at his mother’s feet and how she was collapsed over the table.

  ‘What were your impressions, Kenny? From an adult looking through the child’s eyes.’ She stared into his eyes, desperate to hear what he had to say.

  ‘They haven’t changed over the years, Aunt Vi. Mum was dead. The pills and the drink suggested how... and Dad sounded like he wanted to join her.’

  ‘Was he saying anything? Did he speak?’

  ‘It was mostly just an inarticulate noise. Or...’ – he reconsidered – ‘…a long “no”.’

  ‘Anything else, son? Think.’

  Kenny looked at her face and saw for the first time what his mother’s suicide had done to her sister. All those years later and still she was haunted by it. Kenny was sure it would never leave her.

  He cast his mind back. He was there in the room again. His heart was thundering against his ribs; his stomach twisting as realisation crept up on him. His twelve-year-old self was frightened more by the out-of-control grief from his father than the still shape of his mother. His father’s torment was present, an energy that caused a vacuum of thought around him. The shape of his mother was distressing but one where the full implications had yet to strike home.

  Again, he could see his dad. The moment when their eyes met. His father’s expression formed an apology. It was like he was taking full responsibility. He mouthed a single word.

  ‘Sorry.’

  There was no volume in the memory and that was how it presented itself to Kenny now. His father’s open mouth forming two syllables. The sound gone, sucked into the black hole of his grief.

  ‘It was like Dad was apologising to me,’ Kenny said, the sound of his voice sounding too gravelly in the confined space. ‘Do you think’ – Kenny turned to face Vi – ‘that, knowing what kids were like, he was trying to tell me not to blame myself?’

  ‘No,’ said Vi. ‘I think he was telling you he was blaming himself.’

  ‘What?’ Kenny looked at her. Where was she going with this?

  ‘I’ve been worrying at this for the last seventeen years, Kenny. I knew your mother better than she knew herself and if she was the type to commit suicide then my name is Shirley Temple.’

  Kenny looked at the steering wheel. Examined the dashboard.
Looked out of the window. Then he turned to her and spotted the tear that was sliding down her cheek. ‘Are you sure you’re not just looking for something else, Vi? Nobody ever completely knows someone else. Your sister, my mother, died and yes it was a tragedy.’ He gripped her knee. ‘Suicide is such a betrayal. The grieving process is never quite over. I know that better than anyone. ‘

  Vi shook her head. ‘Your mother and I lived in each other’s shadows. We were closer than peas in a pod. Our dad used to call us The Twins. Here’s The Twins, he’d say, even though we were born three years apart. So don’t tell me I didn’t know my sister, Kenny. I knew her and what you’ve just told me has convinced me more than ever...’ She pulled a paper hankie from her handbag and dabbed at her cheek.

  ‘Your mother didn’t commit suicide, Kenny. She was murdered.’

  9

  The water was dark and deep and frothing, rushing below and under him from his position on the bridge. He fancied the water was angry, surging towards the next obstacle content in the knowledge that nothing could withstand its power.

  The riverbanks were a steep tangle of brambles, broom and nettles. Here and there it looked like the local youth had gone in for a spate of ornamental gardening and their ornament of choice was the ubiquitous supermarket shopping trolley.

  He leaned forward, the wall of the bridge reaching his midriff and planted his elbows on it. He looked into the brown depths and at the memories trapped under its shifting surface.

  The first letter was a disappointment. The writer was tentative, frightened even, subsumed by the need to make friends. The information was scant, the apology brief as if they were afraid to mention the reason for the writer’s absence and that any mention of it would have the reader reaching for a match and an ashtray.

  Kenny learned nothing about the writer of the letter and was so confused by its blandness he almost refused to believe that it was written by his father.

  The next two letters, which would have arrived when he was nineteen and twenty, were equally as nondescript. If they had been food, they could have been compared to watered down consommé.

  Kenny threw the letters back in the box after he had finished reading them. They offered him nothing. It was as if the writer was going through the motions. As if the act of writing the letters was some form of punishment. Like he was only writing them to please someone other than himself and the intended recipient.

  He dropped his aunt back at her house. She was tripping over herself to apologise. He was tired, numb and counting the minutes before he could be on his own again. Emotions too many to number were crowding his mind, demanding attention and an emotional articulacy he didn’t possess.

  His answer was to drive to the spot where his he had spent many evenings as a teenager contemplating death and whether the cold would kill him before the water swamped his lungs.

  The fourth letter was different, reflective and if you knew where to look, layered with meaning. It was also quite clear that when he wrote it his father was drunk.

  The first three letters had been addressed to Kenny. This one was headed Dear Kenneth, as if now that he was twenty-one he had outgrown the boyish air evinced by the derivative, Kenny. As far as he was concerned it was patronising. A poorly penned attempt by a stranger to reconnect with his son.

  He recognised his impatience and decided that as this was the last letter he should read it as if coming to the whole experience fresh. He exhaled sharply, sought his centre as he did when he was about to fight someone. A relaxed mind was a more receptive mind, he told himself.

  He read.

  Dear Kenneth,

  Happy Birthday, son. 21, eh? Time for you to get the keys of the house and all that.

  Then there were some lines that had been scored through so harshly it made them illegible.

  …Sorry about that, this is only my ninth attempt at this letter and I’m running out of paper. And booze. And booze is needed for this, I’m thinking. You know, typical Scot. Emotion can only be examined in a state of inebriation and the problem is that once pissed you overdo it, don’t you?

  So, you’re 21 and I haven’t seen you for ages. It was just weeks – or was it days? – before your thirteenth. I always remember your mum kidding you that you were turning into a man. Just like your dad. Some dad I turned out to be. So that’s the last time I saw you. Apart from that one time I stood by the school gates when you would have been in fourth year at the academy. You looked so well and strong and confident striding among a group of your mates that I didn’t dare come over and speak to you.

  Kenny broke off from reading at this point. His eyes were misting and he could no longer see the print. He coughed. Fuck, my dad was close enough to speak to me. Why didn’t he? He would have given anything for that moment to be returned to him. What would he have said? He saw his father before him and his stomach shifted and surged.

  ...I just stood there like a big lump. Desperate to say hello. I even practised for the moment when we faced each other. ‘Hi, Kenny. I’m your dad.’ I said it over and over again. Like it was a prayer. But when I saw you it all vanished and I could no more walk or talk than I could fly. I got a wee bit emotional that day. So much so, some woman came over and asked if I was okay. She even handed me a hankie. I told her to piss off. That’ll be the last time she speaks to a stranger, so I’ve done her a favour, eh? You looked like you had my height and your mother’s good looks.

  Does it hurt you to mention your mother? She was an amazing woman. Softened my rough edge and made me more of a man. Cliché but true, it was a privilege to be married to her and I’ve missed her every day since.

  And you. I’ve missed you...

  Oh fuck off, thought Kenny.

  ...You probably don’t want to hear it and who can blame you? A boy needs his father and I abandoned you when you needed me most. The change from boy to man is a difficult time and if you were anything like me – a cocky, aggressive bastard – it can’t have been easy.

  If you’re as bright as I think you are, well, you are your mother’s son...

  Turn it down, Dad, for crying out loud.

  ...you’ll have noticed a change in this letter from the previous ones. Well, it’s because I’ve been given another chance. I met a lovely woman just after I sent your last letter. We’ve had one baby, a girl, and there’s another one on the way. Having these other kids has me thinking about you more and more. I’m older and wiser and full of what might have been.

  Kenny felt a hot spike of jealousy score his gut. He realised that this was the wee boy of twelve who still lived at his core. The grown man felt a vague sense of happiness. He had a sister and perhaps a wee brother?

  …The thing is I have to stay away. Two reasons. One is my new wife has no idea of my past and it needs to stay that way or she’s gone and I can’t lose another family. The other is that your life may depend on it.

  Oh, come on tae fuck, thought Kenny. Somebody’s been watching too many TV soaps.

  …That probably sounds a bit too dramatic, but it’s true. It’s no secret that I was involved with some unsavoury types and one of them and me had a serious fight. Unfortunately, and I will take the guilt of this to my grave, people died. A mother and a son. It was a horrible accident but no one believed me. The family of the deceased told me that if I didn’t vanish then you would too. The threat was unmistakeable. My choice was to stay and you’d be the one to suffer the consequences. Or run and you would live. This man was determined I would lose as much as he did.

  I’ve said enough. My difficulty here was to explain without telling you too much. I don’t want you to go looking for revenge. These are people that no one messes with. Let me repeat that – no one.

  I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me, or at the very least think that I’m not all bad.

  Yeah, right, Kenny thought. He read over the last few paragraphs time a
nd time again. He struggled to take the information in. His dad was responsible for people dying. He was a killer.

  The letter was signed simply.

  Dad.

  10

  The way he saw it, Kenny had two choices. When faced with news that involved a possible surfeit of emotion either he exercised until he dropped or he got pissed. He’d already had his daily dose of the first and he couldn’t do the second on his own.

  He picked up his phone and dialled one of his contacts. A deep voice answered in a familiar manner.

  ‘What the fuck are you wanting?’

  ‘Detective Inspector Ray McBain, you are cordially invited to an afternoon of debauchery.’

  ‘If I knew what it was, I might be tempted.’

  ‘Booze and lots of it.’

  ‘I don’t know, Kenny.’ McBain’s tone grew serious and Kenny could hear him walking. ‘There’s stuff going on here.’

  ‘Delegate, m’man, and tell them you’ve an important suspect that needs to be waterboarded with whisky.’

  ‘That serious?’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘Okay, consider me a willing debauchee.’

  ‘If that’s not a word,’ said Kenny, ‘it should be.’

  • • •

  People who have a wont to launder their falsely earned money quickly realise that few methods are more effective than washing their money through businesses that deal mostly in cash. When people buy a round of drinks they rarely do so with a credit card or a cheque. In the drinking business, cash is the ermine-cloaked asset and therefore the bar becomes a handy place to integrate your pennies.