Dad always said 'look for the third
possibility'. In situations where there seem to be only two terrible
options, look for the third possibility. I would go to him with a
problem, something one of the other girls had done to me in school,
and he would take off his glasses, and ask me to describe the
problem.
He would listen, he would stop to ask
detailed questions, and he would want to understand who had done what
to whom. And it seemed that no matter what way I described a problem,
he would still, in his mongrel accent (Polish, with twenty years of
Cavan) come back to his refrain; 'What is the third possibility'.
I think about this now. Ronan is
sitting at the table, crying. He hasn't been home for almost six
months, and he looks different. It's hard to see your son's eyes in a
junkie's scabbed body. We lived through the cliches. He's lied to
us, he's stolen from us. I've borrowed money and I sold my jewellery.
When Eoin died, I noticed that his watch went missing. You can't
close your door to your son.
I want to reach over and hold him. I
want to be his Mammy again. I want to give him a wash and some new clothes, make him a hot milk and
tell him a story. That's not going to help him. He's crying,
switching between shivering, pleading, and asking me to
help.
We're at our kitchen table, again. It
feels like we've sat here for years, since the first time the guards
brought him home. While Eoin got sick, bald and thin. Then just me. I
started to try to make the kitchen nice. I dried strings of peppers.
I hung cheerful lights, but there was Ronan, in trouble, slumped at
the kitchen table.
It gets boring, after a while, the
apologies, the pleas. This time, the story he told me frightened me,
but didn't surprise me. He had borrowed money, again – he said he
had a way to make it back, but the money was taken from him. Of
course it was, the fool. He could never hang onto anything.
I have almost ordered everything around
the house. I can get a few thousand euro for my car. It'll be a
hassle, but one of the others will be able to give me a lift here and
there.
When they came to get the money, he
tried to save himself – He must have been crying and screaming,
like he is now. He told them a secret, something he shouldn't have.
He knows what'll happen now. There'll be two men coming for him.
They'll put him in a car, and we'll never see Ronan again.
They don't want the money anymore. It's
about the secret he told – something terrible he did, for someone
else.
He keeps crying that he doesn't want to
end up in a mountain. He's so specific about this – the mountain –
that I know he's been that man, driving people up to the mountain.
We can't call the guards – they
aren't going to rush to help Ronan. They know him, and
they've arrested him enough times. And what can you say? My son is going to be killed, because he told someone about a man he murdered for a pittance?
Ronan can't get in their car, when they
come. My son will not end up buried in a mountain, even if he might
deserve it.
My other two sons arrive – family
men, pudgy around the waist, in cars strewn with toys and cornflake
crumbs. When Ronan told me about the men, I called them, they understood. They
brought rolls of plastic sheeting, and cans of petrol. Eoin's shotgun
is by the door, loaded and oiled.
When the two men come, and realise just
how far into the country we live, they'll understand that there's
always a third possibility.
