short story: stirred

Something old stirred in me yesterday. My son came home with a black eye. A real shiner, my dad would have called it. Still grazed bloody and darkening around the socket, still a night's sleep away from the bluey-purple any hard whack will transform the flesh into. He let himself in and sat down by the kitchen table. No attempt to hide it. Likely the result of an anxiety-ridden half hour walk home, no ideas forming in his head how he'd hide such a mark. Maybe friends telling him how long a bruise like that will stay imprinted into the skin. His mother yelled and yelled - not at him but for him; asking who had hit him - and later after the boy went to bed she cried and cried. I stayed quiet at first. I felt guilt, the guilt of any parent with a child who has been harmed, and anger, the ape in me wanting to hunt down the boy who had hit my son, steadying fantasies of pounding the child's face with adult fists. But my wife's out spill had let it be decided that I would be the rationale parent. And in time I talked of phone calls to teachers and school boards and yes this was unfair and no the kid shouldn't get away with it. Eventually the loudness of emotion acquiesced into silence and the three of us sat watching TV. Nobody speaking just watching. The room's atmosphere taken up by the mourning of some emotion that we had made dead by never mentioning it, having not even put thought as to what it might be. The colours and shapes on the TV screen changed to white noise as my mind shifted elsewhere. Something stirred up inside me by the black eye began to take form. It was a memory from when I was a boy of about my son's age. A memory of a man crying in the landing of my home, my parent's home that is, me watching through the cracks in the banister on the stairs. A cold December early-morning; it was an image that had haunted me for a long time then lay forgotten for years. The man's name was Brenan. One of my dad's closest friends. Another memory of Brenan, a much warmer memory, was linked to this one: a birthday party, years before the night on the stairs, me just a babbling child. I don't remember whose birthday party it was. Brenan sat on one of the tables making all the kids laugh. He was a somewhat gruff looking man - scraggly stubble, thick accent, skinny, but always dressed smart. He'd left the other adults to do balloon tricks for us. He must have noticed me standing further back than the other kids, sour faced, over what I don't remember, and gave me a knowing wink. After the other kids left he'd slip me two five pound notes rolled up and tell me to put them in my pocket without counting how much money was there. "That's a mark of a gentleman" he said. Another memory too, from about the same age: I was sat at a restaurant table with my parents and their friends. I'm the only child there. The night dragged on, the adults getting drunker and drunker, my boredom enhancing my soberness. I imagined myself at home playing my Atari. The adults began to slur their words; one of them, a port bellied bald man, lurched over to a table of women across from us, the women about half his age. He told them the depraved things he'd do to them if he got them alone. He chucked phrases at them I wouldn't understand until a few years later. Brenan laughed uncontrollably at this, at the absurdity of the situation. From what I remember Brenan had a comfortable love of everyone at this table. He sat caressing his wife's, Mary's, hand, laughing. He'd been with his wife since university. If he, or her, were ever with other people I'm not sure. Their coupling, like my parent's coupling, seemed like one of the indisputable facts of the universe. At the table he must have noticed my disinterest, my misunderstanding of the situation, because he again gave me a knowing wink and walked round the table to chat with me one-to-one. He was the only one to pop my bubble of being a child among adults, and for that seemed the most adult of all the people there. And another memory, too: me a little older in this one. My dad had taken me to the local pub with his friends. My dad walked me to the bar to buy a coke; two men walked over to the table we had been sat at and picked up my father's coat. They turned around to leave but my father darted over. He was a man quick to anger - he yelled to them asking what they were doing like a dog awoken with a kick and now biting his kicker. They turned and returned the coat to the chair and said they weren't doing anything. But my dad continued on "I just saw you trying to steal my coat, so don't fucking say you weren't doing anything. What the fuck do you think you're playing at?" This angered the two men and an argument began to brew. They were big men, bigger than my dad; the way they slowly edged towards him frightened me. My dad kept yelling which made the men increasingly riled up. A fight was about to ensue. From the toilets, where he'd missed all the action, Brenan walked out, assessed the situation, then calmly walked over to beside my father. Brenan was a smaller man that the other three, not small exactly but shorter than the others and without much muscle. But in that moment his presence filled up the whole room. "Come on boys, lets not start a fight here" he said with self assurance. He put his arm around one of the men to no reaction. "You tried to steal my friend's coat. You're in the wrong. Now I think you should leave." And they did. Brenan sat back down and started shuffling cards on the table for the game him and my dad had been playing. It didn't occur to me until much later that these men might have known Brenan, or recognized him at least, known him for some reputation he had that I didn't know about. Later on, before leaving, while my dad was in the toilets, in a moment of vulnerability unlike any I'd ever be able to share with my dad, I asked Brenan: "weren't you scared of getting hit by those guys?" "Terrified" he replied with a grin gleaming from one cheek to the other. Brenan was wrapped up in a part of my identity I didn't yet comprehend. I looked up to him and idolized him without realizing it. Because surely as a child realizing I idolized someone destroyed this person in my eyes, because the emotion became so wrapped up in jealousy or fantasy. But Brenan loomed so large in my view I hardly noticed it. But there I was in bed, a few years after this, when I heard a man weeping downstairs. I tried to ignore the sound of two voices going back and forth but they kept me awake. I creeped out onto the landing and observed the scene below. It was Brenan, weeping into his hands, my dad's hand rested on his back. "I can't fucking believe it. That bitch. How the fuck? That stupid little cunt". Each sentence snapped from his mouth. The words hit me like a gust of wind. "Just calm down" said my dad. "How the fuck.." Brenan screamed and trailed off. He was overcome with tears. "How did you even find out?" my dad said. It took a while for Brenan to form an answer. I peered in closer - Brenan had long strands of snot gooing from his nose. The tears had made his eyes bloodshot. He tried multiple times to speak but the words wouldn't form. "It's alright, you don't have to tell me" said my dad. Maybe it was a drive to prove my dad wrong that propelled the words from Brenan's mouth: "It was one of my daughter's friends. Just a kid. Big muscley fella. He came round the house while they were revising. I knew Mary was funny about him. I walked in the room once and I'm sure she was feeling his muscles. She darted away from him as soon as I walked in. Well I guess that's not the only thing she's been touching" he let out a whimpering cry, like a scream, and tears flooded out again. My dad comforted him, hugging Brenan close while he (Brenan) cried into my father's chest. Eventually he composed himself and continued: "They fucked in our bed. Our fucking bed. I... I... She told me they didn't even use condoms. Some eighteen year old shit has came in my wife" He started wailing again. This time stamping his feet up and down like a toddler and bashing his hands off the walls. It was... pathetic. The guy was a sniveling wreck. "I'm gonna fucking kill him. I will. I'll kill him." he kept shouting. "You're not gonna kill him Brenan" my dad said. My dad was calm. As if he was observing Brenan, not reacting to him. My dad walked him into the living room but I could still hear the sobbing. I just sat there. Staring down into the empty landing. I don't remember how long I sat there. Hours maybe. It was light when I went back to bed. I just sat there. A little piece inside of me melting. The world seemed scarier than it had before. And then I sat there watching TV, my son by my side, the skin around his eye turning black. I was sat back on the stairs, watching something I wish I'd never seen.