The Ballad of Mo and G

by Billy Keane

  Mikey played Dermo and Mo’s wedding DVD in the Intensive Care Unit on Monday night. The background music was ‘Every Step You Take/ Every move you make/ I’ll be watching you,’ sang by Sting, which if you think about is a stalkers’ anthem.

  Mo was interviewed by the luder who was doing the horror show DVD on the morning of the wedding as she was getting into the car to go to the church. Mo couldn’t remember the script. She thought it might have been something like ‘the happiest day of my life’ as she sucked in to try to make her baby bump look smaller.

  (Mo wasn’t exactly replaying that DVD night after night.)

  Then Mikey put on the highlights of the Isle of Man trip.

  No one can tell whether it was the psychos on their bikes or the love words of his bride on the way to the altar that revived the dead man, but Dermo bucked up considerably.

  It wasn’t as dramatic as Jesus or Lazarus leaving the tomb but the doctors noted a definite improvement in his vital signs and he spoke, or tried to. His date with death was put back and the doctors put another coin in the meter.

  Dermo came back from the dead. On the third day after he rose, Dermo was talking to the family about dog-fighting.

  He was a new man. Born again. Vowed to change his ways. A priest heard his confession.

  ‘This could be the answer to all my prayers. I never seen him so relaxed. He sat up in the bed and swore to God, he’d never do no more dope or drink again.’

  Maureen was back as a believer in the Law of the Wish. She was certain and sure if the wedding video saved Dermo, then the marriage could be saved too. The book’s ‘semi-main premise’ is: ‘There is a reason for reasons. Connections connect.’ Which was most profound of Dora.

  Dermo also swore his second chance was a sign from God. He took Holy Communion every morning and swore ‘swear to God’ before every sentence, so as to emphasise he was telling the truth. ‘Swear to God I’ll never bate no one never again.’ ‘Swear to God I seen God when I died.’ ‘Swear to God he said “Dermo you’re sound out. Sound out.”’ ‘Swear to God I dunno what med me take dem drugs.’ ‘Swear to God I’m a prayin’ for dat holy nun every day.’

  Maureen was delighted.

  ‘I wasn’t listenin’ to his confession, but I overheard him sayin’ “Bless me father for I have sinned.”

  “Tell me your sins my son.”

  “Swear to God faaader but I done it all.”’

  Yes he did and the old priest forgave him immediately, on the spot. Dermo was given a penance of fifty Hail Marys but he couldn’t remember the words or keep count, so his mother did the penance for him.

  Marriage counselling was mentioned. A second honeymoon in a sunny place. The buying of a car for Mo. Dermo knew a man who could do deal on a cheap, trendy Mini Cooper. I’ll bet he did. If Dermo was eating deep-fried hitchhikers and promised to stop, Maureen would have hallelujah’ed, ‘Great news, our Dermo’s gone vegetarian. He’s after eating a big feed of quorn and fricafuckacee of sweet potato.’

  My head is wrecked from the Dermo Lazarus story and his ascent into virtue. I had to spell check if there was an e after potato. Wouldn’t that just be my luck? Dermo turns out to be a really nice fella after the bang in the head reconfigures his personality. I could see it all in my brain’s screen.

  Mo and St Dermo live happily ever after with heart-shaped flower beds and six kids and a swing. His loving wife washes his blond locks in the shower with jojoba and elderberry shampoo infused with camomile extracts. He sings in an Abba tribute band, being a Viking and all that. Then they all go to mass and sit up in the front pews, which would from then on be known as the Olsen Seat. Dermo gets up from the Olsen Seat at the consecration – the part of the Mass where the priest blesses the body and blood of Jesus Christ into the little slip of communion wafer. He takes the gold chalice from the priest, lifts it up as if he won a match and gives out communion to the congregation. Dermo who came back from the dead is a Eucharistic Minister and it’s Easter Sunday.

  Maureen kept up the prayers as a fallback position, but she was convinced her constant wishing as advised in the wish book – Chapter 13: Wishes Really Do Come Through (sic) – was working. Maureen told Mo the flow of positivity from mother to child, along some kind of cosmic umbilical highway, resulted in Dermo’s resurrection and conversion. She wrote to Dora, who didn’t write back. But Dora’s theory explained all. It was in the book. The book was the word. Blessed is the book.

  ‘The umbilical cord may be physically severed between mother and child at birth but the unseen energy remains and is a ready-made conduit for wishes.’

  The Law of the Wish describes ‘the phenomenon’ as being similar to ‘the phantom neuropathic pains an amputee feels in the toes he doesn’t have’. The theory is, according to Dora, if pain can travel down invisible ducting, so too can mothering.

  Maureen said Dermo would have to spend another month, ‘at the very least’, in the hospital but then he would be ‘as good as new if wishes come true and they do’.

  Dermo was, ‘sittin’ up an’ aten a bit.’

  Mo wasn’t impressed. She knew only too well how quickly her husband could change from dormant to eruption.

  Then, one wet morning, Dermo refused communion because the police and the nurses wouldn’t let a newborn Doberman puppy into the ward. Dermo explained, ‘That pup’s grandfather and father was personal friends of mine.’ Dermo told the priest he should have been wearing gloves for hygiene during communion time. Told the nurse who gave him the news about the pup she had small tits. Went on hunger strike for a dinnertime. Pissed in his bed to mark territory. And drank aftershave for kicks.

  Dermo called Mo from a phone his mother smuggled into the hospital in her knickers.

  ‘Why didn’t you come in to see me?’

  Mo knew she should hang up but Mo being Mo couldn’t help but reply.

  ‘I don’t like it when people beat me up.’

  ‘That’s over. I was on dem drugs.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re off them but the Barring Order still goes on.’

  His voice turned squeaky as it always did when he was off his head.

  ‘Your barrin’ order is a bit of fuckin’ paper. Try stoppin’ me with paper. You only kill flies with paper and I’n not no fucking fly. I need to get into the house. Now.’ Fore my fucking head explodes.’

  She could hear him inhale. The temper and badness had him out of breath. Mo didn’t reply. She was about to cut him off. Dermo revived while Mo was figuring out her next move. The rant continued.

  ‘They wouldn’t let me see my dogs what is fallin’ away to nottin without me. I need to get in the Den. I’m gettin’ what’s mine, barrin’ orders be bollixed. It’s my house. You only came in with the clothes on your fat arse.’

  Mo wasn’t afraid.

  ‘If you come near the house, I can have you picked up by the cops if you so much as look at me.’

  Dermo laughed hysterically.

  ‘Oh yeah an’ are they after openin’ a cop shop on the Compound specially for you like the president with twenty-four-hour guards with guns? It’s gonna take dem twenty minutes to get to the house, bombin’ it, and breakin’ lights. By then I’ll be in and out and you will know what’s it’s like to fuck with me. I’ll do the time. I swear to God and I swear on my poor faader up in Saint Sepulchre’s. I’ll do the time with a smile on my face.’

  Mo pressed record on her iPhone.

  ‘Don’t expect me to visit,’ she said, deliberately egging him on.

  ‘The solicitor told me I’m goin’ down over drivin’ doped up and killin’ that psycho nun. If I kick the shite outa you, they’ll just put it alongside the other sentence and the two will run at the same time as wan anudder. I’ll get bail. I will. It’s the law, I’m comin’ home the minute I’m able, whether you like it or not. Sergeant Matt promised me he’ll speak up for me and I might be out in a couple of years.

  ‘And your wishin’ me dead don’t work no more. Cos I was d
ead but I came from the dead back like Jesus and whatshisfuckinface in the tomb. ‘Cept I’m a fucking vampire now and I’ll suck every drop of blood outta you until you have no more periods.’

  She pressed red, deleted his number from her phone and blocked all calls from him.

  Mo told Maureen of Dermo’s short-lived conversion.

  ‘He’s had a bad bang on the head. There’s bound to be setbacks.’ But Maureen was clearly, deadly shocked and said hardly anything for a little while.

  ‘Did you say something to upset him?’ asked Maureen, umbillically.

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether I did or not. I just told him he couldn’t come into his house. You can’t threaten people and I’m not puttin’ up with it anymore. No one does Maureen. I should never have given him a second chance after he killed my baby.’

  Mo played the recording.

  For a while there was a silence between them. Maureen left for her own house without a word but she returned after an hour or so with a hot water bottle and a blanket. She swaddled Mo.

  ‘Do you know what I was just thinkin’, love as I was talkin’ and don’t kill me for sayin’ this, Mo.’

  ‘I won’t kill you for sayin’ anything.’ They laughed.

  The tension between them broke. The women were left to pick up the pieces. Mo and Maureen knew they were in a world not of their making and so they had to make the most of that world. Mo knew too Maureen could never turn against Dermo, simply because she was his mother. Mo had a mother for the first time ever and Maureen made Mo into the daughter she wished she had, as some sort of a counterweight to all the men.

  Maureen held Mo’s hands as she spoke. To emphasise the seriousness and the truth of what it was she was going to say.

  ‘I was only just thinkin’ if the poor little babby got born. Well … well a little babby takes two to make and even if you split up, there’s never ever really gettin’ away from the Dada. You and the Dada will still be halves in a babby. Do you know what I mean, Mo?’

  Mo nodded.

  ‘And he would never let you keep it. He would just break you up in the head. Dermo wouldn’t ever be able to bear the thought of someone else bein’ the babby’s Dada.

  ‘And if the babby was a boy he’d get him on his side so that your son would go off with his Dadda when he was fourteen or fifteen and have some other woman for his mammy and I don’t hold no truck with that but that’s the what’s what. Sure as I’m sittin’ here. Dermo would bring him up so he’d always be in trouble and he’d never get to college like you even if he had your brains.’

  ‘But,’ said Mo, ‘surely you can help. Please Maureen. You know he’s crazy, but he is your son. He might do what you say.’

  Maureen spoke as if she was whispering a secret.

  ‘The Olsens won’t break the chain. The way they says it is “don’t break Momma’s chain”. Don’t break Momma’s chain. The sons has to keep on bein’ Olsens, taking up the father’s cause and if the father is wronged or the grandfather is wronged, the little boy has to carry on the cause forever. It’s like the very same as if they’re the king of England’s son and has to be the prince even if they don’t want to cos it’s part of their duty and their breedin. And, Mo, there’s no escapin’ for us ader.’

  Maureen didn’t rightly know whose side she was on. She was always hoping Dermo would come good. Maybe that’s what mothers are for. Everyone needs somebody who sees the good through the evil. But does that in some way give the bad son the impression that whatever he does, his mammy will still be there for him? It’s not easy is it? Trying to figure out how to strike the right balance.

  Maureen went on.

  ‘Dermo died in the hospital, so your wishin’ him dead is over. He went and died, so he did, and came back from the dead, so he did, and that means our Dermo’s not going to die again no more, until he’s old.’

  Mo knew there and then Dermo learned of his death-wish escape from his mother.

  ‘Don’t mind the call and the hard ould talk,’ continued Maureen. ‘He don’t mean none a dat. His ould head is still addled after the accident.’

  Mo didn’t reply. She didn’t want to take away Maureen’s sense of hope or her mother’s dream of a rehabilitated Dermo. Maureen was always going on about how seemingly hopeless cases came good in the end. She prayed and prayed at her shrines. She prayed on her swollen, arthritic knees, through the terrible pain without any painkillers, for Dermo. Like an old saint living in a stone hut on an island who suffers so others will be forgiven. Maureen had been to the shrine at Knock seventeen times. She had great faith in Our Lady who was a mother. Our Lady and Dora Seerly would save her Dermo.

  The problem was Maureen so believed in a happy outcome, she would fit Mo’s silence into the fix as some sort of tacit acceptance there was hope for Dermo and Mo as a couple.

  ‘If it’s alright, can I stay over?’ Maureen asked. ‘I hate being on my own. Mikey is gone off on the lorry to Belgium for chocolate and burger mate.’

  Mo was happy to have the company. She asked Maureen if she would make gravy with tomorrow’s dinner.

  ‘Can I ax you a favour?’ asked Maureen.

  Mo nodded.

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Take a peep down at me slippers.’

  Maureen pulled both legs of her pink pyjama pants up to beyond her knees. Her tree trunk thighs were silky smooth. From there on down she was very hairy.

  ‘I can’t bend far enough with the old arthritis … to shave. It’s being growin’ for years and I’m too embarrassed to go to the beauty parlour in case they are all laughin’ at me.’

  Mo pulled up her sleeves.

  ‘I’ll be your beautician,’ volunteered Mo.

  She squirted the last of Dermo’s shaving foam on Maureen’s calves and shins. As Mo was shaving away, Maureen said, ‘Do ya know what he used to call me – Jimmy John – my hubby. Dermo’s Da. Do ya know? No you don’t. Ah God. Wait’ll ya hear this wan, Mo. His romantic nickname for me when we was goin’ well?’

  Mo stopped shaving so as to concentrate on what Maureen was going to say.

  ‘What, Maur? Go on tell me. I’m dyin’ to know,’ said Mo as she took the top of another of the pink disposable razors when the first one silted up.

  ‘He used to call me his oul’ Clydesdale.’

  I got to thinking of Dad and the master class he gave us in the last few months before he died. I used to think, well, they had us, so now it’s up to our parents to look after us. It was like, why didn’t they just do their jobs? What was all the arguing about? Our parents should be happy together, for us.

  I was lying in bed with Dad watching a football game on TV. It was always like this between us. There I was with his arm around me. We never quit on that when I grew up, unlike other Dads who seemed to think it would stop their sons from being manly. Dad was still cramming advice into me now that he had so little time left.

  ‘G, you know why parents sometimes make such a mess out of bringing up kids, is because we had parents ourselves. It’s not a job you can ever rightly master. Just tell the kids the truth, is about the best advice, when you’re talking to them. If there’s truth you feel you need to keep from your children keep it away, if you think it’s best. Not for you, but for your children.’

  I grew up a lot in those last few months. My maturing was rushed. I know there should have been more sinking-in time.

  Dad never bossed the remote but this one time, in the last week of his life, he turned the TV down. There were tears in his eyes. ‘Hey, G. How did I do as a Dad?’ It was my Dad looking for his end of term report from me, his boy.

  We knew this was one of our last big talks before the rest of the family came back into the room.

  ‘Dad. you were great. You did mess up sometimes, a little bit, but I always knew you loved us and that was good enough for me.’

  ‘Thanks old pal,’ said Dad.

  I always loved it when he called me old pal because he was my oldest and my first
pal. I knew he meant every word because my Dad always told me the truth when he was talking to me. I always told him the truth when I was talking to him.

  Mo and Dermo would’ve been fine, if they had a Dad like mine.

  The fer-de-lance was an angry little snake.

  Perhaps it was down to the fact he was only 1.2 metres in length and suffered from some sort of small snake inferiority complex. The biggest of the fer-de-lance can grow to nearly 4 metres.

  We had something in common, that snake and I.

  The man on the banana plantation in St Lucia was angry too.

  His beautiful wife had run off with an American tourist. The cheated husband threw the mad snake from a moist cloth sack into the banana box and sealed it several times over in strong plastic wrapping. The angry man thought for a second and, mindful of the snake’s welfare on such a long journey, he pierced the wrapping several times with a knitting needle. Or maybe it was a pointy knife, as you would imagine there wouldn’t be much call for jumpers in the heat of St Lucia.

  The angry man would have his revenge even if the odds of killing the American who stole his wife was a billion, billion to one. The snake smuggler didn’t even know if the wife stealer liked bananas, but someone somewhere would suffer.

  Maybe that was how it happened. Who knows, but what we do know for certain is there was an angry fer-de-lance in the banana box exported from St Lucia.

  Mo was in the newsagents. She glanced downwards at the paper.

  It was page one. The headline caught her attention. SNAKE KILLS SOCIALITE. Mo read the story standing up.

  The socialite died within seconds. She had already died socially. Her husband, who was nicknamed 3.4, was broke. He was given the handle 3.4, the paper said, because back in the boom, he was in the newspapers for buying this plot for 3.4 million and that house for 6.3 million and so on.

  3.4 owed the banks 397 million. Lent for a development in Greece, which is even more broke than Ireland. And another mad scheme in some mountain ski resort in a remote part of Bulgaria where it only snowed diarrhoea snow for a month a year and was within a few hundred kilometres of a nuclear power plant with a slow puncture.