Blue Mercy

An act of mercy that has unanticipated and injurious consequences.

An act of revenge that turns out to be a mercy.

[slang: Irish]

*

Star

2009

Shando pokes his head around the door, his duty check, and immediately is caught by the sight of her pages scattered across our bed. “How are you doing, hon?” he asks, dragging his gaze back up to me. “You okay? How far have you got?”

“Just to her arrest.”

The head nods, solemn. “Well done. The beginning will be hardest.”

“You do know it’s a sham?”

“Star… Please…”

“It is. Already it’s contradicting itself, twisting things up.”

“Honey, you’ve only read one chapter.”

“She begins with…” I falter over the date we never name. “She says nothing about my arrival that day.”

“Arrival?” he asks, face blank and solemn as a priest. “What day?”

“That Christmas. When Granddad died.”Thatday, my husband, dear, the one that almost destroyed us all.

“There’s loads about that, Star. And there’s loads about you. That’s why you need to read it.”

“You do know it begins with a letter from her —”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupts, not wanting me to say “boyfriend”. Stupid word for the lover, yes,lover, of a sixty-something-year-old woman. “I know it’s hard, hon, I do. I do. But trust me, you’ll be glad once you’ve read through to the end. ”

Wake up, I want to shout at him.You’re being an idiot. Can’t you see what she’s doing?

As always, words fail me. Words were her tool; they never come out right for me.

“I think you could do with a nap now,” he says, in his husband-knows-best voice. “Don’t you? Read a bit more later on?”

I let silence answer that suggestion.

“Take it in small bites, y’know?”

“I don’t have to read it at all.”

“Would you prefer to go down to the sitting-room? I’ve lit the fire down there.”

She’s brainwashed you! But has she? Or is it me who’s got it all wrong?

Doubt drags the words back down, unsaid.

“Look,” he says, “I’m going to take the kids out for an hour so you can get some rest. You’ll feel better after a nap.”

He makes his escape.

I don’t blame him, not really. If I could get away from myself, I’d be out of here too.

Time has sliced itself up since my mother died five days ago, and keeps shuffling itself like a deck of cards in my head. Two days in particular keep turning up on top: Christmas Eve 1989, the day Granddad died, twenty years back. And the day out I had with Mom at the end of last year, in Glendalough, when she tried — yet again — to pus