I Am the Messenger

"No, thanks."

I refuse all drinks at restaurants because I figure I can buy a drink anywhere--it's the food I can't cook that I'm here for.

She leaves and I survey the restaurant, which is half full. The

re are people gorging themselves, others sipping wine, while a young couple kiss over the table and share their food. The only person of interest is a man on the same side of the restaurant as me. He's waiting for someone, drinking wine but not eating. He wears a suit and has wavy combed-back hair, black and silver.

Soon after I get the meatballs and spaghetti, the night's significance comes to fruition.

I nearly choke on my fork when the man's guest arrives. He stands up and kisses her and puts his hands on her hips.

The woman is Beverly Anne Kennedy.

Bev Kennedy.

Otherwise known as Ma.

Oh, bloody hell, I think, and I keep my head down.

For some reason, I feel like I'm going to throw up.

My mother's wearing a flattering dress. It's a shiny dark blue. Almost the color of a storm. She sits down politely, and her hair actually flanks her face very nicely.

In short, it's the first time she's ever looked like a woman to me. Usually she just looks like foulmouthed Ma, who swears at me and calls me useless. Tonight, though, she wears earrings, and her dark face and brown eyes smile. She wrinkles a bit when she smiles, but, yes, she looks happy.

She looks happy being a woman.

The man is very much the gentleman, pouring her some wine and asking what she'd like to eat. They talk with pleasure and ease, but I can't hear what they say. To be honest, I try not to.

I think of my father.

I think of him, and immediately it depresses me.

Don't ask me why, but I feel like he deserved more than this. He was, of course, a drunk, especially at the end of his life, but he was so kind, and generous, and gentle. Looking into my meatballs, I see his short black hair and his nearly colorless eyes. He was quite tall, and when he left for work, he always wore a flannel shirt and had a cigarette in his mouth. At home, he never smoked. Not in the house. He, too, was a gentleman, despite everything else.

I also remember him staggering through the front door and lurching for the couch after closing at the pub.

Ma screamed at him, of course, but it lost effect.

She nagged him all the time, anyway. He'd work his guts out, but it was never enough. Remember the coffee table incident? Well, my father had to put up with that every day.

When we were younger, he used to take us kids places, like the national park and the beach and a playground miles away that had a huge metal rocket ship. Not like the plastic vomit playgrounds the poor kids have to play on these days. He'd take us to those places and quietly watch us play. We'd look back and he'd be sitting there, happily smoking, maybe dreaming. My first memory is of being four years old and getting a piggyback from Gregor Kennedy, my father. That was when the world wasn't so big and I could see everywhere. It was when my father was a hero and not a human.

Now I sit here, asking myself what I have to do next.

My first order of business is to not finish the meatballs. I only watch Ma on her wonderful date. It's quite obvious that the two of them have been here before. The waitress knows them and stops for a brief exchange of words. They're very comfortable.

I try to be bitter about it, and angry, but I catch myself. What's the point? She is, after all, a person, and she deserves the right to be happy just like everyone else.

It's only soon after that I understand exactly why my first instinct is to begrudge her this happiness.

It's nothing to do with my father.

It's me.

In a sudden wave of nausea, I see the absolute horror, if you will, of this situation.

There's my ma, fifty-odd years old, hightailing around town with some guy while I sit here, in the prime of my youth, completely and utterly alone.