No Patrick Now

I came downstairs and sat heavily in a kitchen char. She was at the counter, fussing with dishes, her back to me.

Her back was slightly broader, perhaps, than twenty-five years ago. But I swear, it was even the same dress that she had on. And the sound of the dishes hitting each other- the same sound.  

At any moment now I almost expected Patrick to run in.

Something welled in me. Poor boy.

I know, it was my fault. The authorities wrote up how I was clearly remorseful for what I had done- that’s why I was a free man now, sitting at home my wife making me a brew, rather than in prison where I should have ended my rotting days.

The square of sunlight on the floor was exactly the same- I remembered that square throughout the past twenty-five years. The cells I spent most my time also had a tiny square of sunlight high up by the ceiling. I would stare and stare at it, remembering light falling across Patrick’s face after he received the blow meant for his mother, and the tiny trickle of scarlet blood snaking out from beneath his gold sunlit hair.

He would have been just over forty. With kids of his own.

She put the thick steaming mug before me. “Milk?”

Stupid, stupid stupid. She knows I don’t take milk, ever. The welling inside me grew hot.

Why is she still here, big and broad, moving the dishes around calmly- why didn’t she walk away, why did she stay, how is she not dead of a broken heart- her son is dead, why is she giving me a mug of hot tea rather than splashing it in my face and screaming at me?

Patrick – oh my son, my son. I wanted to roll up in a ball and lie in that square of sunlight and howl to the sky. Why had he gone, and this stupid thick woman stayed? She was supposed to be gone!

Patrick had entered the kitchen – he had heard our voices raising - he saw me grab a bottle from the table, lunging at her.

He had cried out and stepped between us. The bottle caught his temple.

Oh my son.

We stared at him, crumpled and still on the floor, the square of sunlight on his face.

I don’t remember anything she said to me, after that. She came to visit me in prison, along with the other wives and girlfriends. I never asked her to. She brought me things- things to eat- and she looked much the same, all through the years, this woman I hate, this woman who has turned me from a normal man into a monster who murdered his own son.  

And then it was time to go home.

My fingers tighten around the hot mug. There is no Patrick now to protect her.

She will die, and pay the price for what she has done to me, to my son.