excerpt
“ I’ve been through hell. So that you could grow up in some kind of sanity.
Now, as far I’m concerned, hell is deep-frozen, packed away, and that’s that.”
“Well, you may have packed him off, but it would help me if you were more
open about things.” Does he need help? Katie had told him he ‘needed help’,
his tutor told him he seemed helpless, quite hopeless, faced with choosing the
right questions . . . Fuck them all, he doesn’t need ‘help’—he needs an input of
strength, a power-base in this world. From minute to minute he doesn’t know
what he needs. “If you’d kept the lines of communication open, it might have
helped Dad.”
“Your father is beyond help. He’s an old sixties drug casualty . . .”
“So what’s new? You’ve fed me all that before, it’s meant to explain everything.
‘He was on drugs . . .’” Lucas mimics the solemn baritone of a government
health warning.
“Will you let me explain? He was a mystic junkie. A junk mystagogue. Mystic
and mystifying. Who wouldn’t come to terms with the politics of everyday
life. Especially other people’s everyday living. He was willing to believe just
about any kind of second-hand warmed-over lunacy you could think of, but he
stopped believing in my autonomous existence, he refused to hear me, to
respect my rights as a human being . . .”
The rage, the outrage is still there, but she’s already saying too much, no
bloody tears please, she can’t risk resurrecting Nicholas Oscar Beardsley’s
monstrosity, not now when it’s under strong wraps.
Now Lucas is staring at her as if she’d become the buttoned-down maniac.
How can she force him to abandon this suicide probe? Only by risking the use
of deadly force, a maximum deterrent. For his own good.
“He didn’t even want to accept your existence, Lucas. Not at first. Not until
later. When he thought you might have your uses . . . Listen, Lucas, just listen
. . . You don’t need to watch the tape, I can give it to you right now, live.
He doesn’t live in the same world as the rest of us. Fundamentally, he doesn’t
give a shit for you. And never will. Isn’t that obvious?” This is megaton overkill,
she hates herself, nevertheless it’s true, surely.
Lucas starts to exclaim—but the hazardous sky flashes a warning, thunder
rumbles over their heads as if gigantic iron spheres were rolling through channels
of concrete—the gods play pinball like wanton boys—so Lucas, negative
status zero confirmed, the Rancid Boy, the Lost Youth, Daddy Bogey’s Reject,
can only make a secret act of will: this fake rustic nest, the whole tottering
shite-house, must collapse on his mother’s head, must fall in and crush the pair
of them, mother and son, once and for all, get it over with . . .
For a few minutes he’s a nameless nothing in the middle of the floor, head
between knees, rocking to and fro.
Hellenic Canadian Literature 