All Roads

by Peter Murphy

  “Tell me about it. I shit horseshoes every morning.”

  “Why would you say something like that? I just think you’re lucky because you have so many friends.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Danny agreed as he decided to go along with it all. He knew about Joel and, even though he could be such a morbid fecker, Rachael was the only connection he had left to his son and he wouldn’t mess that up.

  He would go along with him and get something to eat. It would soak up some of the alcohol so he’d be less likely to fuck it up. And he could still get himself back in the mood when he got home. But he hadn’t eaten all day and wasn’t sure if he was able. Solid food was getting so hard to keep down. Still, he could have soup. “C’mon then, let’s go to The Pickle Barrel.” He hailed a passing cab and they tumbled in.

  “So what’s happening over in Ireland,” Joel asked after they’d ordered food and settled down over two more beers. Danny assumed he was just trying to take the piss and was about to tell him to feck-off, but decided that maybe Joel was just trying to be friendly. He had sad eyes and long shaggy eyebrows. His skin was sallow and his mouth was tight. He was the type that drink had the worst effect on—one of those that opened up and tried to share their feelings. Danny hated guys like that, but he couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him too. They were both outcasts, and while Danny could always convince himself that he could handle it, Joel seemed so helpless.

  “They had to go and beg money from the Germans.” He paused to see how Joel was going to react. Jewish guys usually did whenever anything German was mentioned—not that it stopped them from driving Audis and BMWs, though.

  “What happened?” Joel ignored it. “Everything seemed to be going so great for them.”

  “Ya know when George Bush said that Wall Street got drunk? Well, the Irish banks went on a total fuckin’ bender and wiped the whole country out—them and their buddies in the government. And now the whole country is going to have austerity rammed up their arses. It’s all a fuckin’ scam, ya know? They’re just rolling back all that the people gained over the last hundred years. My old man was always going on about stuff like that and everybody said the old fecker never knew what he was talking about. Even me.”

  “Yeah,” Joel agreed. He seemed in awe and Danny liked that. No one else took him seriously anymore. “Hey, you don’t think we could have problems like that over here?”

  “No.” Danny leaned back and laughed. “Haven’t you heard? We’ve the best banking system in the world, or at least that’s what those lying bastards in Ottawa would have us believe. It was Paul Martin, you know?” Danny waved his fork at Joel who sat transfixed. “He was the one who saved the banks from themselves—back in the nineties. And the first chance we got—we gave him a good kick in the nuts.

  “Personally, I think it would be a good thing if we all went down in it. That way we might get up off our knees. Even the Arabs are rising up but over here—we’re far more concerned with our jobs and our house values.”

  “You don’t really mean that,” Joel argued softly. “It would be so hard on our kids and their kids.”

  “Yeah,” Danny agreed as the waitress placed his soup in front of him. “I suppose there is that.”

  They talked about what they both agreed was wrong with the world while they ate, Joel munching away on his burger while Danny struggled with his soup, leaning over his bowl so his hand didn’t have so far to wobble. And they agreed on a lot. Joel was a lot like Danny—except for the drinking. He was just as twisted by life and Danny was beginning to enjoy being with him.

  “You know,” Joel enthused when their coffees arrived—he’d insisted they finish the evening with a few and Danny went along with it. He still had a bottle of Bailey’s waiting for him in the fridge and could get another buzz going when he was alone. “It’s so good to sit down and talk with someone who’s not afraid of telling it the way it really is.” He had become a little more relaxed as the evening had worn on, and Danny couldn’t help but smile at that.

  “It’s the curse of the Irish. We’re burdened with the need to speak out—except when it is our own who are fuckin’ us. Then we pretend there’s nothing goin’ on and that the whole world is just pickin’ on us again. And being Catholic makes it even worse. We bow and scrape to the biggest mafia in the world, even while they’re buggering our children. And do you know why?”

  He paused long enough for Joel to look up again.

  “Because they sold us shame. The moment we were born they slapped us with Original Sin.”

  He was still feeling a bit drunk but the soup had gone down so well he was almost enjoying himself. “And if you dare stand up to them, they send all these bleeding-heart do-gooders around to work on your guilt.”

  His mother was still bothering him about going to Rome with her, and while the idea of having to see Fr. Reilly again didn’t sound too bad, the thought of Miriam put a shiver through him. She was probably still going around bitching about the way everybody else was trying to live their lives. It was easy for people like her who had no idea what it was like in the real world where people had to do real work to get by.

  “I suppose,” he finished as Joel just sat smiling at him, “that you know a thing or two about guilt, too.”

  “Yes.” Joel nodded and kept smiling. “We’ve made a culture out of inflicting it on ourselves and everyone else. In our tribe no one can speak about the truth anymore and we have lost all sense of right and wrong.”

  “Not my crowd,” Danny enthused as Joel signaled for the check. The bottle of Bailey’s was getting closer. “We know what’s right; it’s just far more fun to do what’s wrong—even when it’s not fun anymore.”

  *

  “What harm was there?” Rachael asked as off-handedly as she could.

  She always got up to have breakfast with Martin before he rushed off to the office. It was one of the few times they could have some time to talk and she didn’t want to upset him. She sensed that since the baby, he was softening toward his father, but there was still some way to go before they could ever be cordial again. “They just had a few drinks to celebrate.”

  Her father had told her all about his evening with Danny and how much he had enjoyed himself, having never done anything like that before in his entire life. He had called her the following morning and kept her on the phone as she pushed the stroller along through the park. She didn’t mind. It was a warm, bright morning and the world was coming back to life.

  Martin, however, seemed less impressed. He looked up for a moment as he sipped his coffee. “I’m not sure we should be encouraging them,” he commented before going back to his phone.

  She didn’t want him to shut her out so soon and laughed at that. “They’re our parents, Martin, not our children.”

  “And if my father ever starts acting like an adult, I will treat him as one.”

  He tried to look stern but Rachael could see past that. Whatever change he was feeling toward his father, it would take some time before he could admit it. Rachael let it go at that. He already had too much on his mind.

  Things were tight at the office and he was spending every free moment dealing with calls and texts. She might have complained, but they both knew it was going to be hard and that sacrifices had to be made. Sometimes, she felt they should lower their expectations and have a simpler life, but he would never go for that. Martin was out to conquer his corner of the world. He’d always been like that. It was one of the things she loved about him.

  “Grainne and Doug want us to go over on Saturday night.”

  “Can we get out of it?”

  “I don’t think so. We’ve been putting them off since the baby.” She understood that he needed a break from Grainne—parenthood was bringing out their old sibling rivalries—but he’d always been able to relax and enjoy himself with Doug. “And I’ve already agreed.”
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  “Great, there goes the weekend.”

  “It won’t be that bad. Besides, your mother will be there.”

  “How did she get roped in?”

  “She said that Grainne needs this right now. She called right after to make sure we would be there.”

  “Great. Why don’t we invite our fathers ,too, and really wallow in our collective miseries.”

  “Oh, Martin, can we?”

  He did smile at her before draining his coffee. “I got to go.”

  “Here.” She pointed to her cheek and waited for him to kiss her. “And come home at a reasonable time. Your son is beginning to feel fatherless.”

  “He should be so lucky.”

  She knew he was joking, but there was something hanging over him—something he wasn’t ready to tell her about. Maybe she could get Deirdre to help extract it. She went upstairs and carried their infant to the window where they could both wave as Martin backed out the driveway. Sometimes it felt as though he hardly lived with them anymore.

  *

  “Fianna Fáil were well and truly paid for their sins,” Jacinta said with more than a flutter of anger in her voice. “And nothing more than they deserved. Wasn’t it the biggest crime the country has ever seen? It’s a good thing that Bart and Nora weren’t around to see it.”

  She and Danny were having lunch in Scruffy Murphy’s. She’d come over to see her great-grandchildren but took time out for her son. She was shocked by the change in him. He looked older than a man of fifty-three and had a terrible shake in his hands. They’d ordered fish and chips but he hardly touched his, sipping on his pint instead, spilling some of it at first.

  “And Gerry Adams got elected too. I’m not sure about him but at least he might stop Enda from ruining what’s left.”

  Danny nodded but she could tell he wasn’t really interested. Deirdre had warned her that he was getting worse, but Jacinta was still shocked and saddened. But at least he was spending a bit of time with Grainne again. They had him over to meet his new grandson and Grainne could get a bit of dinner into him. “And you know the Queen came for a visit?”

  “I heard that. I wonder what Bart and Nora would’ve made of that.”

  “I think they would’ve been delighted. We all have to learn how to apologize, and forgive, again.”

  “Do you really think that’s what she was doing?”

  “Danny, she made a point of going to the Garden of Remembrance. Even if she just stood there and took pictures—it meant everything.”

  “It might to you, but I don’t forgive so easy.”

  “And that, son, might be why you’re all twisted and bitter. Hate is the greatest poison in the world and it will be the death of us all.”

  “At this stage, Ma, death wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen.”

  “Oh, don’t be talking like that, son. You still have so much to do and see.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well,” Jacinta seized the moment. “You could come to Rome with me. You know what they say about all roads . . .”

  “When are you going?”

  “Next summer, if I’m spared ’til then. Will you come with me? Will you, son?”

  *

  As May gave way to June, Rome grew warm again and filled with tourists who made getting around a little harder. But the warmer evenings were nicer for wheeling John around and Miriam didn’t have to swaddle him in his blanket. Since Davide Pontecorvo had passed away, quietly in the bosom of his much-extended family, reconciled with all that life had put him through, John had become more taciturn, speaking to fewer and fewer people. And being a bit more terse whenever he did speak.

  The staff at the home put it down to the grief of having lost two good friends in a short time, but Miriam knew him better than that. Here, at the end of a life spent spreading hope, John had grown very tired. And a bit cynical, often snapping at Patrick when the poor man tried to cheer him up with some heartfelt platitude or other. “Do not waste what time I have left with your nonsensical idiom,” John would say in his iciest voice, almost bringing Patrick to tears. Miriam told him to pay it no mind—that John was just preoccupied with what was going on in the Spanish Court.

  After three years of deliberation and hearing the evidence of an anonymous eye witness, they had finally issued a verdict on what had happened that night so long ago in San Salvador. She had printed out everything she could find on it before she came out and was waiting for the right moment to bring it up.

  John was still reciting the litany of Imperial crime—from Rome, Pagan and Christian, right through to America—working himself up as he did. Miriam used to try to deflect him until she realized it was how he kept conviction pumping from his scarred and battered heart.

  “And now we have slain the Bogeyman,” he had included since the death of Osama bin Laden, “who made the fatal mistake of forgetting whose creature he was.”

  Miriam waited to see if there was any more. Each month there was a new addition or two, and when he had been silent for a while she stopped and locked his chair by the parapet that overlooked the Piazza del Popolo. She, too, had grown tired of the ways of the world and now found her happiness bringing comfort to her oldest friend in his last days.

  She still saw Patrick, too, whenever he could be coaxed out, having become very reclusive himself. He’d never admit it but she knew: he was second guessing his own life choices. Not becoming a priest; she hoped he was content with that. What was probably getting to him was the type of priest he’d become—a hermit scholar, retired now but still sought out for his deep and compassionate insights into the written warnings from the past.

  “They have sold us a new brand of fear.” John nodded toward the open space where convicts were once publically executed, killed by hammers to the head. “To keep us in line so that the truly evil can do what they will.

  “When I was younger we were taught to hate communists. Back then they told us they were the greatest threat to all that was white and decent in the world. Television had so much to do with it. After we all came home from the war, we sat down each evening and learnt how we were supposed to think, act, and live. It was a black and white world back then and always in the shadow of the mushroom clouds we had just learned to create.

  “But we got to see Vietnam in color. We saw the angry orange of our napalm and the red, red blood of our dying young men. I thought back then that we had seen enough to change the world but, as Nietzsche teaches, ‘Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’

  “I was so full of pride back then, and while I resisted the urge to become the all-American Second Coming, I would have settled for nothing less than being one of his more favored apostles.

  “Not a Peter, and certainly not a Judas. But look at me now, Miriam. What type of disciple have I become?”

  “If I had to pick one,” Miriam decided when she was sure he wanted an answer, “I would say that you are somewhere between a John and a Thomas.”

  She pushed the printed articles back into her bag; the news of overdue justice could wait. For a little while they would enjoy the warm breeze that drove the shadows of clouds across the streets below. And, when the street lights began to glow, all that was old and time-worn would become beautiful again for a while.

  *

  Deirdre lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. She couldn’t put it off any longer; she had to change the color. It was time to redecorate the whole place anyway—and maybe change some of the furnishings. It was a bit indulgent, given that the whole world was still shivering in fear of contagion.

  At work, everybody rushed to reassure themselves. “The Canadian banks,” they all repeated, “are the envy of the whole world.” But as the European debt crisis spiraled down and down, and the Americans opened the vault and greased sym
bolic gears with imaginary dollars, even that seemed insignificant as a financial tsunami surged across the world.

  She decided there was little point in worrying about it though. The foundations of everything they had might be damaged but they would be repaired. It would take time and probably a few false starts, but ultimate disaster would be averted. And, hopefully, long before it reached anywhere near her.

  Only after all those on the lower rungs are washed away. Miriam would have chided her for feeling a little smug.

  She was right, but Deirdre’s first responsibility had always been to her immediate family. She didn’t have to worry about Martin, though. He was well able to thrive in times like these. And he’d look out for Doug too. And, if anything did go wrong, Deirdre could help out for a while.

  “Besides,” she decided aloud for Miriam’s sake. “We have responsibilities to the economy. We need to show our consumer confidence.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” She laughed as she stretched from her warm wide bed and stepped into her satin slippers—another indulgence. “Why am I explaining myself to an ex-nun?”

  She enjoyed mentally bantering with her old friend. It helped her get ready to face another day, and today was going to be a difficult one. Grainne was hosting Thanksgiving and, if past experience was anything to go by, a day of family dramas beckoned.

  *

  When she got home she poured herself a larger glass of wine. She had earned it. She had spent the day indulging Grainne as she directed the preparations in her recently remodeled kitchen. She could hardly be expected to do it with a baby on her lap.

  Deirdre had bitten her lip and accepted assignments and instructions without complaint or comment, except for some mock grumbling with Rachael when Grainne was distracted by the pestering of her toddler.

  When she did redecorate, Deirdre would try something more Zen. Something clean and uncluttered to allow for more organic flow through her private space away from it all.

  She sipped her wine and kicked her shoes under the coffee table. She loved her family but her life had changed, and now she had to wait for them to catch up to that. Martin and Grainne still wanted to involve her in everything that happened between them—looking for her approval and using it as an endorsement when she gave it.