MARCH 4TH 2004
JOEY
I ENDED up being almost a half an hour late for work on Thursday evening, the fourth time I’d been late in the past five weeks, because I was too weak to resist stealing an extra twenty-minutes under the sheets with Molloy.
Obviously, I couldn’t tell her father that, so when he asked about what kept me, I reeled off some bullshit about hurling.
Tony didn’t bat an eyelid when I fed him the line that I’d rehearsed all the way from his daughter’s bed to his garage.
It was similar to the line I fed him last time, and the time before that – and the time before that.
Tony never questioned me because he trusted me.
And I was the lying piece of shit going behind his back, and against his wishes, by messing around with his daughter.
For the past five fucking weeks.
Jesus, I was a piece of shit.
For the rest of the evening, we worked alongside each other in mostly companiable silence.
I didn’t have the stomach to pretend with him.
No, because lying to this particular man was something that could never sit well with me.
“Are you alright there, Joey, son?” Tony finally breached the silence when he found me out back having a smoke after I had finished up work.
“Yeah, Tony,” I muttered, kicking gravel with my boot, as I stood in the rain.
His eyes flicked to the butt in my hand and a look of resigned disappointment washed over his features. “I hope that’s a rollie you’re smoking, boyo, and nothing stronger.”
“Isn’t it always,” I lied, exhaling deeply.
“How are you supposed to hurl when you’re poisoning yourself with those things?”
The question wasn’t how I was supposed to play hurling; it was how was I supposed to survive if I didn’t.
“Ah, you know me, Tony.” Stubbing it out, I quickly slid the joint back into the pocket of my work trousers before my boss lost his shit on me. “You can’t kill a bad thing.”
He looked at me for a long moment and then shook his head. “Well, it’s almost nine. You better get on home, lad, before your mother sends out a search party for you. You’ve school in the morning.”
It didn’t matter what time I stayed out until.
Nobody was coming to search for me.
“Tony?”
“Yes, Joey, lad?”
“I just…” I blew out a breath, as I wrestled with my conscience, with the tsunami of guilt inside of me. Because I knew exactly where I would go when I left him, and it wasn’t home. No, I was heading straight for his daughter. “I just wanted to say thanks.”
He smiled. “For what?”
For everything. I shrugged. “Just thanks.”
“Anytime, boyo,” he replied, waving me off.
Sliding my phone out of my pocket, I smirked as I re-read the text Molloy had sent me earlier.
Molloy: I’ll see you and your hand (and your fantastic fingers and your gifted tongue) after work. I finish at 9. See you then, stud.
Grinning like a dope, I began to tap out a text to let her know that I was on my way, when my phone decided to ring.
My stomach sank into my ass when Shannon’s name flashed across the screen.
I didn’t want to answer her because I already knew what it was she needed, and I didn’t want to be needed tonight.
Skin crawling, I forced myself to press accept and put the phone to my ear.
“Joe,” she sobbed down the line. “Can you come home? We need you.”
Exhaling a weary sigh, I closed my eyes and let my head fall forward. “I’m on my way.”
I was rounding the corner at the bottom of the hill to our road when I saw her.
The minute my eyes landed on her face, my hackles rose, and my blood ran cold in my veins. “What happened?”
“Hi, Joe.” She offered me a small wave, as she stood under the streetlamp in the pissing rain. “H-how are you?”
“I’m grand, Shan.” On high alert and poised for danger, I closed the space between us, not stopping until I had her chin tipped up. “Jesus Christ.”
Her left eye was swollen shut and darkening at a rapid pace.
“I’m ok-kay,” she strangled out, shaking from what I presumed was a mixture of fear and the cold. Her teeth chattered violently as I inspected her face with a horrified expression. “It’s n-not as b-bad as it l-looks.”
“It’s not okay, Shan,” I choked out, feeling like I was physically inhaling her pain in this moment.
Because she might be wearing the bruises tonight, but I was wearing the shame, along with the absolute fucking guilt of not being here to stop this from happening to her.
Again.
“I know I sh-shouldn’t be o-outside this late,” she sobbed, throwing her arms around me. “But if I d-didn’t get out, he w-was g-going to k-kill me.”
“You did the right thing,” I assured her, body rigid, as I tried and failed to comfort her. “You absolutely did the right thing. If he puts his hands on you, and I’m not here, then you run, Shannon. You fucking run, ya hear me?”
Sniffling, she looked up at me and nodded. “I h-hear you, Joe.”
“Where is he?” I demanded then, striding past her, in my bid to get my hands on the piece of shit we had the misfortune of calling dad.
“D-don’t, Joe,” Shannon cried out, chasing after me. “I’m n-not w-worth getting h-hurt over.”
“You are worth it,” I roared back, shoving the front door open. “Of course you’re fucking worth it, Shannon. You’re worth a thousand of that piece of shit, and don’t you ever let him make you feel anything less!”
“Joey, wait!” Mam hurried to intercept me at the front door. “He didn’t mean to hurt her—“
“Move,” I snarled, stepping around my mother, as I barreled inside, breathing flames of fury. “Get the fuck out here, old man. Come out and hit someone your own goddamn size!”
“Joey,” Tadhg cried out from where he was hiding behind the banister. Cowering at his side were Ollie and Sean. “He’s after losing it.”
Yeah?
Well so had I.
“Where’s the fire?” Dad barked, when he stalked out of the utility room that housed the toilet. He fumbled with the zipper of his jeans and then hissed sharply. “Jesus Christ, boy, pack in the roaring, will ya? I nearly cut my cock off.”
“Pity you didn’t!” I roared, livid, as I stalked towards him, feeling the blood rush to my hands as they clenched into fists of their own accord. Even if my mind wasn’t ready for this man, my body sure as hell was. “You put your hands on my sister,” I seethed, not stopping until I was in his face. “Did it make you feel like a man?” Shoving his chest with everything I had in me, I watched as he staggered backwards.
“You little bastard!” my father roared, his face reddening with rage.
When he lunged forward with a swinging right hook, I was ready.
Ducking sideways, the bone in my nose narrowly avoided another break.
“Joey, please,” Mam wailed.
“You’re getting slow, old man,” I sneered, as my fist made contact with his jaw. “Or else I’ve just learned all of your moves off by heart.”
“Teddy, please don’t.“
“You think you can beat me?” He staggered forward, both arms swinging with fists that felt like concrete blocks when they made contact with your flesh. “I’ll fucking end you, boy.”
“Oh my god, stop it now, both of you!”
“Not if I end you first,” I roared, spearing his huge frame to the kitchen tiles. Not an easy thing to do when he outweighed me by at least five stone. “Prick!”
“Yeah, Joe, fucking kill him!”
“Shut up, Tadhg!”
“D-don’t, Joe. He’s not w-worth it!”
“Shut up, Shannon!”
“Tadhg, go up to your room now!”
“Mammy…make it stop!”
“Dada ow-ow.”
“Can you hear them?” With my hands around his throat, I squeezed with every ounce of strength I had inside of my body. “That’s your family, asshole. And they’re scared shitless of you.“
“Little cunt!” Reaching up, the bastard fisted my hair and dragged me roughly off his chest. “Think you’re a full-grown man?”
“Joey!”
Now it was my turn to have my airwaves restricted when my father’s beefy hand clamped around my throat.
He didn’t need to use two hands to strangle me, either.
Not when his hands were as big as shovels.
Throwing one good punch, he connected with my eye-socket so hard that I felt the vibration down to my toes. “How’s that for a taste of your own medicine, pretty boy?”
“Teddy, please stop!” That was Mam. “He’s your son.”
“You might have come from my prick, but you’re no son of mine, boy,” he sneered, and then added insult to injury when he hacked up a phlegm ball and spat right in my face. “Little fucking mammy’s boy is all you’ve ever been!”
“Teddy, please!”
“Shut up, whore!” Dad roared. “Or you’ll be next.”
“Fuck you!” I tried to scream, but it only came out as a strangled whisper.
Sitting on my chest with his full weight pressing down on my already deflated lungs, my father continued to taunt me.
“Come on, tough man, fight back.”
Bucking wildly beneath him, I tried to throw him off me, but I knew in my heart that I never could.
Dizziness began to engulf me then, joining the burning in my lungs, as my muscles spasmed erratically.
I was losing consciousness, I realized, and then, all of a sudden, the pain just dwindled away.
The pressure in my eyes and the fire in my throat evaporated.
Just let go, a voice in my head urged, it’ll all be over if you just let go.
I let my fists fall to my sides and did just that.
“Joe?”
When I came to, a little while later, it was to the sight of my sister’s face, as she lifted and pulled at my eyelids.
“It’s me, Shan!”
Another finger in the eye.
“Can you hear me?”
Feeling like I was about to hack up a lung, I grabbed at my throat, as I coughed and spluttered violently.
Drawing air into my lungs, I quickly dragged myself into a sitting position, and leaned against the fridge for support.
“Oh, thank god!” Kneeling beside me, Shannon leaned in with a tea-towel and pressed it to the piece of skin above my left eye. “Are you okay?”
Still coughing and spluttering, I held up a hand to ward her off, while I focused on dragging air into my lungs. “Where…is…”
“He’s gone to bed,” she whispered, shuffling closer so that her small knees were pressed to my thigh. “I’m so sorry.”
“No…your…fault.”
“Oh, god, Joe.” Sniffling, she leaned forward and wrapped her small arms around my neck. “I love you so much. I’m so sorry he did this to you again.”
I didn’t return her hug.
Couldn’t if I wanted to.
Worn to the bone, and breathing ragged, I took my time catching my breath before I asked, “Where’s Mam?”
Shannon looked down at the floor.
“Shan?”
“Upstairs,” she squeezed out, pulling at a thread on the side of my pants. “She had to coax him off you.”
With sex.
Yeah, I needed to get out of here.
I couldn’t be in this house tonight.
If I had to endure the sound of him grunting and groaning from behind a closed bedroom door, I was going to crack.
“Joe, don’t go,” Shannon begged, hurrying after me, when I climbed to my feet and staggered to the front door. “Please don’t go anywhere.”
“It’ll be grand, Shan,” I choked out, not looking behind me, as I bolted out the door quicker than I’d come in it. “You’ll be safe.”
Now that he got his pound of flesh.
