Dr. Naughton had been Christmas shopping. A little kid’s tricycle sat in the corner of the room. She’d tied pink ribbons on the handlebars, secured them with a big bow. I couldn’t stop staring. On my last case, a mother had told me of her murdered young child’s love for such a tricycle. I couldn’t believe that the sight of such an innocent object could be a trigger for so much misery. My demons were forever with me.
‘It’s safer away from prying eyes,’ said the doctor. ‘I’ll take it home on Christmas Eve.’
I tore my gaze away, nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘Would you like to sit down?’
I removed my coat, hung it on the stand. I didn’t know what to say; Michael had been the one with all the small chat. I smiled. Prayed we wouldn’t delve into baby talk. I’d been frozen out of that subject a long time ago. I even stopped looking at small children as people — they seemed like accessories that the more successful adorned themselves with. I might have felt differently if I was a father, but the older I got, and the more I found out about the world, the more relieved I was to be childless.
Dr Naughton put on her professional tone; she had her clipboard back: ‘How do you feel today, Gus?’
It seemed a totally meaningless question, even as an opener. ‘Fine. I feel fine.’ Was I nothing. I burned inside. In the last few days I’d replayed a million and one scenarios that might have led to Michael’s murder. Every one was possible, and every one twisted in my gut like a bolt.
She made that face of hers, one that says Trust me, I’m a doctor. I wondered if she practised it in the mirror. ‘Do you think we made any progress in the last sessions?’
I nodded. She seemed a good person and I didn’t want to upset her, but I thought it would take more than a few hours of chat to see any progress in my life.
‘That’s good.’ She sounded pleased, one of her Kicker boots started to tap on her chair leg. ‘Maybe you’d like to tell me some more about your upbringing.’
Or maybe not. I looked out the window. There were icicles on the railings. They’d thaw before I would, but I played along, said, ‘What would you like to know?’
‘Can you tell me something you remember from your adolescence?’
I had a store of memories from this time. The one I thought of first was when I met Debs. I toyed with telling her about that, about how she thought I looked like I’d been hit with a brick. The memory spiralled on to the time I took her home to meet my family, and it ended with another first: my raising a hand to my father. I decided against telling the doc.
‘I, erm, went to university at seventeen,’ I said. ‘I was the first in my family to go. It was quite an achievement. My mother was just rapt…’
She sensed an opportunity to probe. ‘And your father… How did he react?’
I huffed, ‘He didn’t.’ My father was hacked-off — anything that took the sheen off his accomplishments was worthy of frowning upon.
She pressed: ‘He never commented?’
I remembered his face, wanted to punch it yet. ‘He did, yeah, about six months later… when I bailed.’
It must have been in her middle-class programming to attack me for that decision, but she held it back. Her face held firm, she let some distance settle between the years then continued, ‘Do you want to tell me what he said?’
My palms itched. ‘He laughed and said I had shown myself up. Not him, because he had told everyone I’d be back like a whipped dog before the end of the first year. Bastard knew exactly how to get me back as well — it was all his fault. He ruined my chance.’
Dr Naughton looked impassive. She kept a hold on the level of emotion in the room by remaining so calm herself. She said, ‘What was the subject you studied at university?’
She never asked the questions I expected, the logical ones. ‘Don’t you want to know why I left?’
‘Only if you want to tell me, Gus.’
I leaned forward in my chair, planted my elbows on my knees. ‘He beat my brother so badly that he ended up in hospital. He’d duffed us all up for years but this was something else, this was savage. He’d kicked him about like a football.’ The memory set off a tick in my brow; I smoothed it away with my fingertips. But the image still burned. ‘He was so black and blue, his face such a horrific sight, that my mother woke up screaming in the night for months.’ It wasn’t the physical beating she’d upset herself over — it was the damage it had done him inside his mind. ‘Michael was so ashamed, knew he couldn’t hide his bruises like we were supposed to, that…’ I wondered if I should tell her this. I had never spoken of it before, it was Michael’s business and no one else’s, but now he was gone. ‘He put a clothesline around his neck and jumped from the back dyke. If the line hadn’t been rotten through he’d have made a job of it.’
The doctor lost her composure — her hand jerked on her clipboard. ‘My God.’
I had gotten to her, broken that steely reserve. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you.’
My words helped her gather herself. ‘You came home to protect your brother?’
I had been used to protecting Michael — this one incident aside, he had fared better than all of my father’s children. ‘I wouldn’t want you to feel I resented him for that…’
She spoke softly, ‘It’s what you feel that matters here, Gus.’
I didn’t know what to feel any more.