Two Saturdays ago, shortly after breakfast, a shoeless Jack McGrady walked into his mother’s kitchen holding a cream cheese sandwich and the severed head of a tramp’s cat.
The scene in the kitchen was calm up until that point. It was peaceful. Exactly the scene you’d expect to walk in to after a hearty morning meal.
“Well.” said the mother. She was leaning over putting dishes into the sink. “I see you finally caught him.”
The boy Jack nodded.
“Yes, mum. I did. Finally.” Half questioning himself, he’d say to his mother “I think it’s a girl though?”
Jack’s father Donald got up out of his chair, and scraping a cloth through his thick moustache he said “Well, it’s about frickin time. Whether it’s a boy or a girl doesn’t matter at this stage. Hopefully you can get a decent night of sleep for yourself now.”
“No more clawing and whinging outside of your window.”
“No more inconvenience.”
“Isn’t it brilliant?”
Jack took the small and bloodied head then and lobbed it up onto the breakfast table for everyone to see.
“I know.” he said. “Can you believe it? I’m almost going delirious with the excitement. The prospect of sleep, and good sleep, has me well and truly energised.”
“Good for you, son.” said the father. He was smiling now. “All you had to do was apply yourself. Haven’t I been saying it to you for years.”
Jack nodded at his father, both of them happy, and stepped into the kitchen.
“I never realised it either until today.” said Jack. “That a cat’s skin could be so brittle. It’s real brittle stuff. Sort’a like cardboard.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. If you pull on it hard enough, for long enough, just like I did – it’ll eventually come away from itself. I know.” he said. “I couldn’t believe it either.”
Jack’s Mother had heard the thud of the cat’s head on the table and said she’d be right over for a better look as soon as she could. All she had to do first was finish soaking the plates and saucers in the basin. After that, she said she’d be ready to talk all day long, if he wanted to, about dead cat stuff.
As he was leaving, the father caught sight of Jack’s bare feet and said “What happened your shoes?”
“Oh.” said Jack, pulling out a chair. “The tramp got them in the scuffle.” Sitting himself down he said “Not to worry pops. I don’t mind. They were actually starting to get real tight around the heel so I guess the old geezer can have them.”
The father paused at this, and with a hand on Jack’s shoulder he said “You’re such a good lad, Jacky boy. Do you know that? One of life’s real gentlemen.”
Jack chuckled at the remark from his father and looked down at his toes.
“Thanks pop.” he replied. Smiling now as well, he said “Any man who lets a tramp keep a good pair of shoes for himself is undoubtedly, in my opinion, on the side of the angels.”
“Well that’s a fact.”
Moments later, when Jack’s father left, he banged the door so hard after him it sent a shimmering echo throughout the whole house. The poor man, he didn’t mean to do it. He knew that. What happened was, a strong gust of wind had come in, caught the handle and ripped the whole thing clean out of his hand.
“Ah fuck.”
Of course, he would apologise later for this. To all the family. Almost profusely. Only because the man really detested sudden bursts of sound like that.
Always has done.
And as he says himself, his famous motto “If you’re not ready for something like that, and it happens to you, just like what I did, you could very well end up like my dear mother Agnes, and die suddenly of a massive heart attack. Alright, Slán.”
Back in the kitchen, after everything had gone real quiet again, the mother sat with Jack for a while. And she got real close to him so she did. She’d pull up a chair, right in, up close to his, and the rotten sound it made over the floor, only because all she had really wanted was to see him properly.
And you could see it from the stars so you could, the dear affection she had for the boy in that moment.
The way she silently loved him.
Pumping all that love out of her own soul and into his heart, and the sheer immediacy of it all, would’ve made anyone stand up to this very hard task of simply living.
It was her reason.
Her life.
She asked him then if he was going to eat that gammy oul sandwich. Wondering, like any good mother, if he had wanted to maybe throw it away altogether and have something proper for himself. She said
“I’ll fix you up anything at all, love. Anything at all. I’ll put hairs on your chest.”
Jack was looking up at his mother now. Not at his dirty toenails. As good and all as the offer was, he would still say no to something more substantial, insisting that the cream cheese sandwich was
“Just enough.”
especially for that time of the day.
“You know yourself mum.” he said. “I do have an awful weak stomach in the mornings.” He said “More than anything, I wish I could sit here every day with you and dad eating delicious bacon, runny eggs and caramelised sausages but. . .I can’t. Not with this chronic acid that does fester in my stomach. So this morning, instead of having a proper good breakfast for myself, I said I’d go out and kill that little rodent for once and for all.” He said “Hopefully now I’ll have a bit’a peace in my life.”
Jack looked over at the table then and saw just how bloody a mess the cat’s severed head had made across his mother’s brand new linen tablecloth. For her, to get the thing looking any ways good again, she’d have to take it to a real good dry cleaning place, where they hang onto things for days, and the nearest one of those was miles away.
But Jack wouldn’t apologise for this inconvenience. Staring at the bloody mess on the table, and at the head, all he’d say was “I think its name was Muzzo or something. Or Mizzy. Magda. I don’t know, something perfectly cat(ish) anyhow.”
