The Fortunate Brother by Donna Morrissey Page A

sat at the table and looked through the window at the sea, rippling greyish away from him. A southerly wind. Least it was warmish outside. Likely somebody driving along had picked him up by now.
    He grasped his mug of tea and blew tepidly onto its scalding rim. His mother hurried from the washroom and across the hallway into her room. She hadn’t mentioned anything about police being there the day before, asking questions. He never brought it up, nor did his father. Neither of them wanting reminders of both their shame that night. A dresser drawer scraped open. Another. She emerged with an armload of folded blankets, bustled into Gran and Sylvie’s room, and within a minute was coming down the hallway again and into his room. He heard the dull thud of his pillow and blankets hitting the floor as she stripped his bed. All her activity took him back to the summers they’d spend in the old Cooney Arm outport where they’d once lived, helping Gran tend the vegetable garden she planted every spring. There was a cliff near their house and he’d watch his mother, those times she became dispirited, climb a steep path to the top. Couple of times he followed her. It was vicious up there, everything swept bald by the winds and the cliff face dropping several hundred feet straight down into the swirling mass of ocean. He could see his mother now, hunched like an old woman, gripping onto tree roots and brambles and dragging herself up that steep path. Scarcely enough energy to stand.
Low-minded
they called it back then. She’s
got down.
She’d be gone for hours up on those cliffs some days. But when she got back she’d be upright, shoulders squared, a steadiness to her hands as she took up her cooking and scrubbing in the house and then weeded in the garden till the flies or the rain or the dark drove her in. He felt the same energy consuming her now as she scraped open one of his own drawers and shut it and then her shoes
tap tap tapping
to the washer in the back room.
    He noted her small suitcase by the door. Her good raglan was folded across it and in one of its pockets he saw a glimmer of red. Her little book of prayer. She read it all the time after Chris wasburied.
It’s what keeps me going when I get scared,
she said to him once. Scared. His mother scared. She was scared now. He pushed aside his breakfast plate and went to the door, hauling on his boots.
    “Kyle,” she said, coming into the kitchen, “you haven’t eaten a bite. Kyle!”
    He held himself erect by the door frame as she came up behind him.
    “As well to take your father with me if you’re going to act like that,” she said sharply.
    He picked up her suitcase, took it to the truck, and started the engine, warming it for her. He rubbed his bruised ribs, rubbed them hard just to feel the pain of it over the angst in his guts. The morning chill leached through his clothes and he shivered thinking about Clar Gillard splayed out in the icy seawater. His mother climbed inside the cab beside him and was quiet as he drove and he wanted to puncture that growing solitude between them, wanted to ask her about the cliffs of Cooney Arm, but the words stuck like sawdust in his throat.
    “You talking with Bonnie?” he asked, thinking he might mention his seeing her sitting at their table the night of the killing and that he knew about her car. Get her mind off this thing waiting ahead. She gave a dismissive shrug. But she was choking with words, he could tell. Just like Sylvie. Choking with words. Wanting to talk about
things. Things
about Chris and the accident.
Things
about him, Kyle.
Things
about themselves. And he never knew what
things
they wanted to tell him or have him tell them and he bloody didn’t care about them things. Just leave it alone, leave it the bloody hell alone. Christ, he was working on getting
things
out of his head, not shoving more in.
    He flicked on the radio. “See what the weather is,” he said, and half listened to some broadcaster