A Word for the Old Woman

by Richard Gibney

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There’s an issue with one of my friends, Hector. He has a tendency to introduce me to gangsters and dealers. It’s only after the fact that he’ll say: “Here’s the scoop. That guy runs the heroin out of Darndale to the whole of North Dublin.”

By this stage, I’ll have already offered the dealer some kind of assistance, or perhaps he me. We’ve become acquainted.

When I go to any stranger’s home with Hector, I look around the place for weighing scales or any other signs of measuring out illicit substances. Evidence of paraphernalia, or drugs themselves, or sleeves of counterfeit cigarettes, or whatever else.

But often, Hector will impart the information after the fact, once we’re alone again.

“Pawel is the Polish contact for stolen cars in Ireland. I mean, all of Ireland.”

“You’re telling me this now?” I ask him.

“You’ve never heard the old adage ‘Keep your friends close…’?” he’ll respond with a chuckle.

I don’t think Hector understands the meaning of the expression.

He introduced me to the seventy-two-year-old mother of a gangland criminal yesterday. A man whose story I’d read about, his death was quite an event in the city centre, witnessed by dozens. His ovate, clean-shaven skull cracked open like an egg with a shotgun blast, brain matter and bone fragments all over the street beyond his fallen body. I didn’t know who she was when my good buddy asked me to come with him to the garden centre to pick up some compost for an old lady’s garden.

She didn’t look seventy-two, this old lady, in her low-cut blouse and pleated miniskirt when I saw her for the first time, emerging from her townhouse to join us in the car. Just the hint of crows’ feet around her eyes, and her skinny frame suggested that she might be a little older than a half-century. When we arrived at the garden centre, she scrambled out of the back of the car, and Hector placed his hand over my hand on the gearstick as we watched her begin the walk towards the garden centre from the car park.

“What?” I asked.

“She’s Mick Kennefick’s mother.”

“The guy who was killed last week?”

My pal nodded, his eyes not leaving her as she disappeared through the garden centre’s main entrance.

“Apparently, she’s had to come out of retirement since his murder.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked my friend. Hector looked at me, winked, and touched his index finger off his nose.

We got out of the car and followed her in, past the two lines of lawnmowers of various shapes, colours, and sizes that stood sentinel outside the shop.

She hovered over the massive packages of lime and fertiliser halfway down the central aisle, examining them carefully, a pair of spectacles plucked from her handbag now sitting on the bridge of her nose. Hector and I lugged four bags of compost out to the car for her, put them into the boot, and then set off back for her place.

The three-storey townhouse, of which I’d only vaguely been aware, although I lived about a half mile from it, had no laneways leading to its modest back garden, and steps led up to the elevated front door, so we had to lug the compost bags through the house itself and down the steps into the garden.

The nineteenth-century floorboards creaked under the weight of our burdens, my pal and I bounding through the hall, into the kitchen, and out to the raised patio and the backyard beyond.

It was there I saw half a dozen grave-like trenches, dug deep into the lawn, alongside the mounds of earth that had been displaced by the work.

We set the bags of compost down on the paving in front of the lawn. Mrs. Kennefick appeared on the elevated patio above us, a large, big-eared man with curly hair, buck teeth, and a prominent scar stretching from his forehead to his lips, grazing one eyelid, standing alongside her. He seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

“Gentlemen, this is Kevin Dennis,” she announced.

“Ah, I know Kevin!” Hector stood back on the grass, wiping his palms off his shirt and staring up, and I joined him, watching the two above us. “How are you doing, Kev?”

Kevin grunted, bobbing his head slightly, and adjusted himself, steepling the fingers of both hands over his belly. Anxiety intensified, manifesting itself as unsettling discomfort in my bowels as Mrs. Kennefick addressed us again.

“Kevin says you told Roderick Chambers where he would find my Michael last week, Hector.”

“No,” my friend said immediately. “It’s common enough knowledge that Mick would go into town and play pool in the Gamer’s Haven. Sure, I played a few games with him there myself now and then. But honestly, Margaret, I didn’t tell anyone anything.” Hector glanced at me, his forehead peppered in beads of perspiration. I’d never seen someone break out in a sweat on sight like that. Its novelty gave me no comfort. My returning look was laden with resentment at being placed in this predicament.

“There’s a word for a woman who’s lost her husband. ‘Widow’ has a very strict definition. I’m a widow myself, of course.” While still addressing us, Margaret Kennefick threw a quick glimpse at Kevin Dennis that may as well have been a detailed and specific order. Kevin promptly drew a pistol from the back of his belt and cocked it, aiming it at my friend. “Again,” Mrs. Kennefick continued, “if you’re an orphan, it means you’ve lost your parents. I’m at that age where that would be expected,” she shrugged. “But we don’t have such a word for a woman who loses her child. So harrowing and unnatural an event is the experience that perhaps even suggesting that we should have such a word, a word as common as orphan or widow, is taboo.”

“Agreed. I couldn’t agree more.” Hector nodded once. “Although, historically, such bereavements were common enough. I mean, even my granny’s generation was dealing with a lot more infant mortality than we have today.”

“Shut up, you fucken moron,” I hiss-insisted at him.

“I’m sorry. I–” Hector offered an apology to us both, aloud. “I’m sorry for going on. I just babble when I’m nervous.”

“What have you got to be nervous about?” Mrs. Kennefick asked.

“Nothing. Nothing I’ve done. It’s just Kev there’s pointing a gun at me, and you’ve accused me of ratting the late-lamented Mick out to Roddy Chambers. Which I would never do. In a million years.” Hector gulped audibly. “Look, Mrs. Kennefick, Margaret, if we’re done here, I need to get home. I’m very sorry for your loss, but my mother’s looking for some bacon bits from the supermarket to sprinkle into the dog’s dinner,” he said, voice laced with both a definitive authority and a pleading uncertainty over everything. Hector stepped forward and began mounting the steps up to the patio. After not being shot when he reached the top, I quickly followed him as he continued his speech. “I’m very sorry for your loss, as I say, but Fletch won’t eat his kibble without the bacon. I’ve to pick that up on the way home.”

Hector stood stock still, holding her gaze until she finally nodded. He turned back at me and uttered a casual:

“Let’s head on, so.”

We paced quickly through the hallway and out to the front door. Departing down the front steps to the car awaiting us at the roadside, we got in, and I slipped the key into the ignition, threw the engine in gear, and slammed my foot down on the accelerator, pulling away from the kerb without as much as a look around to ensure I could drive off without causing an accident.

“That’s the last good deed I’m doing that involves you and your mates,” I roared at Hector, sitting beside me. He was bent over, his head between his legs. “Do you hear me?”

“What would you call her anyway?” he asked finally, gasping. He raised his head to look at me.

“What do you mean? A psycho bitch?”

“No. I mean the fact that Mick is survived by his mother. What do you call that? Here, can we stop at the supermarket before you drop me home? I need to pick up some stuff.”