Joan

I wanted him so much when I found out. I truly did. Of course I had no idea then that he was even a boy or what he'd become, but I loved him right from the first moment I knew that he was growing inside of me.

I wanted him.

I know he's never believed that, but it's true. I did. I wanted him and I loved him.

It was different with Claire. I didn't want her. She was an accident and she was why Jack and I had to get married and she turned out to be so—clingy and whining. But Brian—I wanted him right from the start.

I had always dreamed about having a son, especially one like him. I knew right from the beginning that he would be tall and handsome and smart. I knew that he'd be strong and I thought that—finally—someone would be there to take care of me and care about me.

I thought, I honestly though that he would be that person.

I had prayed so long and so hard and then when my prayers were answered, I was so—overjoyed and accepting of God's Will.

Jack wasn't, of course. He wanted me to have what he just always called an "operation'. An `Operation'. I knew what that meant. An abortion. Murder. Killing our child, killing our son. My son. That's what he wanted.

He kept after me for months, saying that it was legal and done in a nice clean hospital, that no one would ever have to know about it and I told him, in no uncertain terms!—that I would know about it and so would Jesus and the Holy Mother. Then he started trying to make me feel guilty about it—saying that another child was more than we could afford, but I told him that the Lord would provide.

He laughed at that. He said he'd never seen God down at the Union Hall.

He always was a blasphemer.

Then he tried to get my sister to talk me into it and then his brother and his parents. They all said the same thing; they all said that Jack was unhappy.

Unhappy?

He wanted me to commit murder, kill my own child, my own baby and HE was unhappy.

Well.

Well, I wouldn't do it. I just wouldn't.

How could I?

Oh, I knew that he was angry and I knew that he wouldn't have anything to do with the baby after it was born—he'd made that clear enough, but I just wouldn't get rid of it.

It would have been murder and I have to live with myself and face my Lord on Judgment Day, as will he.

I thought though, that he would love it after it was born, especially when it turned out to be a boy to carry on the Kinney name. I really did think that Jack would soften then, and maybe if Brian had been a little different he would have.

But Brian was stubborn from the day he was born, and smart, too.

I guess there's no doubt that he's Irish.

A smart, stubborn Mick, just like his grandfather.

He's always been like that.

And I loved him so very much at first.

I swear, I never could do a thing with him and God knows that I tried with that boy. I tried for years and nothing I ever did made the slightest impression. I could have beaten him like a gong and it wouldn't have mattered.

If I said it was day he'd say it was night. If I said it was red he'd say it was blue. If I said it was a nice day he'd say it looked like rain.

Brian—I named him after my father, you know, Brian was stubborn and contrary from the beginning.

There were times I was ready to just throw up my hands and give up with him, and I'm talking about when he was still around seven years old, mind you. Then he would come home with another perfect report card or win another blue ribbon for something, he would look up at me with those eyes of his and he's be shy and embarrassed and pull some little medal he'd won at the spelling bee out and show it to me, pretending that he didn't care what I thought, though I know that he did.

I would tell him not to be boastful, that he might be smart and he might have won that particular day, but there was always tomorrow. I always told him that there would always be someone who was smarter or faster or better, I always told him that. I was so afraid that he would become conceited, you see—these things all came so easily to him, the awards and the fawning looks from the other children, the good grades.

I was worried that he would think that his little victories were his own doing and not the Lord's.

One year, I think he was about eight, he asked me if he could have a birthday party. We had never bothered before, either with him or his sister with that sort of thing. I just dreaded the thought, just absolutely dreaded it—all that mess and extra work and then all those noisy children running all over and their mothers snooping through the house making comparisons with their own homes.

But this was Brian, he was as stubborn as the day was long and he just kept at it in his way until I just gave in and told him that he could have no more than eight children on Saturday since his father would be out with his bowling team and the party would have to be over by the time he got back.

Well, Brian—I've never seen that boy as excited before or after. He must have gone through the house twenty times making sure that everything was perfect. He looked at the decorations and the food, he checked and rechecked the table and the games out in the yard. He went over the list of what the children would do when and even Claire seemed willing to lend a hand.

At two the children started arriving with the presents in their hands and it all seemed to be going well. I had the grill going for hamburgers and one of the other mothers was taking care of that. The boys were running around on a treasure hunt and it had turned out to be a sunny day after a threat of rain.

Brian was just starting to open his presents when Jack got home earlier than expected, drunk as usual.

I knew that there would be trouble as soon as he came around to the back yard. He just stood there, swaying just enough for me to gauge just how many beers he'd had, then he walked over to where Brian was opening a box—some toy, one of those action figures. I think that's what they call them. Jack looked over his shoulder and said, "A fucking doll? Who would give a boy a fucking doll? You think my kid's a pansy?"

He wouldn't stop, of course. He just kept at it. "Did you give my son a fucking doll? Was it you? What the Hell were you thinking?" After he managed to insult and frighten everyone of the guests, he looked at the cake, ready on the table. It was chocolate chocolate chip, Brian's favorite.

He looked from the cake to Brian. "You eat that you'll turn into a tub of fag lard." Thankfully, he decided that he'd had enough by then and retreated into the house to pass out.

The other mothers took their cue from me, pretending that nothing had happened as I handed Brian the next present. I looked at Brian, trying to see if he was upset, but he had that frozen, "I don't care" expression on his face that I'd been noticing more and more.

The party ended shortly after that and was never repeated. That summer we moved to McKeesport and didn't see any of those people again.

Later that night, though, when I went into his room after he was in bed to make sure he was alright. I sat on the edge of the mattress and he put his arms around me, thanking me for the party. Jack, of course, chose that moment to appear in the doorway. "You don't mind him touching you in bed, but I get near you and you scream holy murder. You wanna fuck him, go right ahead."

Brian looked at his father for a long second and though I don't believe he understood what his father had said, he turned over and away from me. He could be such a sweet child. But I think that was the last time he ever willingly touched me.

That was the last time Brian ever wanted to celebrate his birthday.

Three day later he came home from school with a `B' on a History test. Jack hit him so many times that I was afraid that he'd break bones before I could get him to stop.

A month after that it was half a dozen kicks to Brian's ribs because he had gotten into a fight at school and the principal had called.

Later that summer Jack took his fist to Brian again because he had tripped and broken a six pack of beer he had been bringing in from the garage for his father.

It became a pattern and no matter how many times Jack would beat him or humiliate him, Brian's skin seemed to get thicker and thicker until it seemed that nothing would touch him. There didn't seem to be anything that would get a reaction from him.

I also saw that there seemed to be a hardness about him, even as young as he was. He became wary, expecting insults and always ready with one of his own. He was defiant and rude, he stopped going to Scouting, which he had loved. He was still an Alter Boy, but I really forced him into staying with that as long as he did.

By the time Brian was eleven or twelve I knew that there was something off about him, something odd though it would be years before I would find out what it was. All I knew then was that he was distant, secretive and that he would never bring any of his friends home after school or on a weekend.

Actually that was probably for the best since we would never know what state of mind Jack would be in when he walked though the door.

After the last move when Brian was fourteen he did almost anything he could to be anywhere other than at home. He would be at school for most of the day, of course, then he joined a couple of the sports teams, there were weekend jobs and if all of that didn't give him enough excuse to not be home, he had that friend, Michael.

I never understood just what the attraction of that boy was. I still don't understand it, but there's so little about Brian that does make sense to me. Even then he was a closed book. I don't know why that was and I prayed to the Lord almost daily for guidance for what to do, how to handle my son—but the Lord chose to let Brian turn from the true path and I know that it will have to be one of my crosses to bear.

Jack never understood and he stayed to what he told me he would when I was still carrying Brian—when he told me that he'd have nothing to do with the child and that he'd be my problem, that as far as he was concerned the child was unwanted and he had washed his hands of him from the beginning.

Except when he was drunk.

It tore at my heart to see what he would do to that little boy and the look on Brian's face when he would ask for help, to make it stop would break my heart—but the man is the head of the household and the woman must submit.

I had promised to obey my husband and I had promised in front of the Monsignor and the Holy Trinity. There was nothing I could do. I think that Brian came to understand that eventually.

By the time he was in high school he would be gone as much as possible then angry and surly when he was at home. He would come in late, claim he'd already eaten, go directly up to his room, close the door and stay there until he was ready to leave for school in the morning.

Later, years later, I learned that he had been studying up there, and I have to admit that I never could complain about his grades.

He applied for scholarships to various colleges, all of them at least a hundred miles from Pittsburgh. From what I understood, that was one of his criteria. It turned out that he had gotten a copy of our tax return and used that as a guideline for the financial aid package he was trying to get. He even forged his father's signature when he sent the paperwork in. We knew nothing about it until about a week before he was to leave for his first year at Penn State.

We knew nothing about it. I knew nothing about it. My own son didn't seem to think that I had a right to any of his plans. He'd even had all the correspondence sent to that Novatny woman's home. I can imagine what she must have thought.

I had assumed that he would continue his summer job into the fall, maybe pick up a few courses at Allegheny County, but it had never occurred to me that he would go behind our backs the way he did.

He was the first member of our family to go to college, you know. In some families that would be cause for celebration, but Brian managed to corrupt that.

Selfish. He always was selfish.

He always did think he was better than the rest of us.

The night he left his father went up to his room, gathered whatever he had left—posters, clothes, books, tapes—everything, piled it all into plastic garbage bags and threw it away. If Brian ever noticed, he never said a word. Of course, he almost never set foot in the house after he started at that university, so he couldn't really complain.

On the rare occasions he would come back it would always turn out badly; there would be arguments and unpleasantness. Brian had a few inches on his father, but Jack was still heavier, stronger and they would usually end up bloodied until Brian simply refused to set foot in the door.

There were times, though—I would look at Brian when he was still in high school, when I still saw him almost daily—I would look at him and my heart would swell the way it did when he was little. He had gotten so tall, six foot three the last time I had reason to measure, and was so handsome and so smart—he made me so proud. Sometimes he would still go with me to Mass and when we would walk in I could see heads turn just to look at him. He was such a beauty.

Vanity is a sin, of course, but I never stopped being amazed that I had produced someone like him. He was all I had dreamed of having in a son. He truly was if I didn't look too closely.

And later, when I found out about the other thing, my heart broke.

I tried to reconcile what he had become with what he had once been and what I hoped that he would be and I simply couldn't. I tried, I prayed about it and I talked about it with Reverend Tom, but despite what he told me about accepting God's will, I simply couldn't, not after seeing that young man in Brian's home, the two of them half naked and reeking of—what they had just been doing.

That boy who was there, Claire told me that he and Brian had been living together; she even referred to him as Brian's `boyfriend'.

Dear God. That child couldn't have been more than about sixteen and Brian was using him as if he was a…I can't even say it.

The anger Brian had at his father's funeral, the anger he decided to use to try to hurt Claire and me. He was so bitter, so…he was so, he was so like his father.

I loved him so much when he was little. I prayed for him—I still do, but I can't accept what he is, what he does. The way he chooses to live is an abomination and a slap in the face to God. It is unnatural, a crime against both the Church and the State. I've begged him to get help, I've prayed. I even asked my prayer group to add their prayers to mine but it's all been for nothing.

He is a sinner. I told him that and it's true.

He is a sinner and he is going to Hell.

I still pray for him. I think that I always will, but I can't bear to be in the same room with him. I can't look at him and know what he does and how he lives.

He says that he told Jack before he died. It must have hastened his death, knowing what his son was.

He's still Brian. I will always love him and pray for him.

But I have no son.

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