It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 22: Chapter VI (Cont'd)

Coarse, Offensive, and Xenophobic Language. Descriptions of Domestic Abuse. Reader Discretion Advised.

There was absolutely nothing planned about the arrival of Alfonso Ignatius (the Second) Carr. To say that he was an afterthought, or even a replacement for the most recently lost child, would be, frankly, to give his parents too much credit. The days of plans and dreams were long gone in the Carr household by the time the surviving son came onto the scene. So was the marriage, but Niamh, debilitated by an involuntary dependence on her wayward husband, still held out hope for some version of reconciliation, some sign that her life hadn't become one, inconsolable lie.

When her water broke, two months early, at 11:17 on the stifling morning of July 13th, 1957, a fraught Niamh tried to reach the Specter. She called every bar he frequented, every club, every number of every mistress she had sneakily gathered, before tracking him down to an East Boston apartment.

'That's early, right?' her husband asked, sounding skittish as a woman's voice screamed from behind him. Apparently, the lady of the moment hadn't known that there was a Niamh.

'Just get here! I need you to drive me to—'

'Yeah, yeah—SHUT THE FUCK UP!' There was a loud clatter as the Specter struck out at the other woman. 'Yeah...I'll try to make it over.' And he hung up.

Hours passed and contractions intensified. Alanna, home alone with her mother, and increasingly disturbed by what she was witnessing, urged Niamh to go to the hospital without the Specter, but each time was rebuffed.

'He'll show,' said Niamh, and she waited.

And waited...

And waited...

She even scolded her doubting daughter from her prone position on the living room floor for trying to call her grandparents.

'I don't need their car. Your father is on his way.'

And still she waited until it was too late, at which time, she was forced to spread her legs, back arched against the couch, her eldest child the only possible help.

'Oh my God!' panicked Alanna.

'What?! WHAT?!' Where children were concerned, Niamh was already down a trinity, so an hysterical 'Oh my God!' shouted by a highly overwhelmed 10 year old, staring at her mother's expanding private areas, did nothing to calm the laboring woman.

'There's a head!'

'Good! That's good! We want one with a fuckin' head!'

'W-w-what do I do?!'

'PULL HIM OUT! PULL HIM OUT!' which was followed by an extended bout of caterwauling.

No stars shone in the sky for wisemen to follow. There were no shows of goodwill from doctors and nurses, who would have told Niamh that she was now the 'proud mother of a beautiful, baby boy!' There was only pain and agony, until, with a final, 'FUCKIN' PULL HIM OUT!' Alfonso Ignatius (the Second) Carr came into this world at 12:50 AM, on Sunday, July 14th, 1957.
He was a slimy thing in his sister's arms, eyes screwed shut against the light, and—

'Ma—Ma!'

'What? WHAT?!'

'He's—he's—'

'WHAT?!' but then Niamh heard it too.

Silence.

No cries. No gasps of first breaths. Only morbid silence. 'Why isn't he cryin'?'

'I dunno. I dunno. Ma, he's—he's—'

'HE'S WHAT, ALANNA?!'

'HE'S NOT BREATHIN'! WHAT DO I DO?! WHAT DO I DO?!'

'SLAP HIS ARSE! SLAP HIS FUCKIN' ARSE!'

Alanna did as she was begged. She slapped at her brother's rump, but still...he was silent. She slapped harder then...but nothing. Her body trembled as the slaps turned to WHACKS! Niamh was hollering and trying to stand, but it's not so easy to stand with an umbilical cord caught at your ankles, and your feet slipping on blood and afterbirth.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

But all was quiet on the Alfonso front.

WHACK! WHACK! and on the final WHACK! Alanna hit the babe's rosy cheeks so hard that he squirted out of her hands. He pitched through the air, rising like an uncoordinated and blubbery swan, before gravity took hold, and he fell to the carpet, landing head first with a loud THUD!
A most sickly silence filled Apartment 33 as the infant lay motionless on the floor. Neither mother or daughter knew what to say or do. They just stared at the portly infant curdled up on the—

And with a hacking cough, the fluid that had lodged in his throat spurted from the infant's mouth, and with pained screams, Alfonso Ignatius (the Second) Carr, colloquially know as Bud, and beloved as Alan, took his first breaths.

The indignation of his birth, the resentment of his secondhand name, the sheer lack of care that he perceived from then on, fostered in the young boy a perpetual self-pity, and a constant need for approval en masse that was barely held at bay by the derision from those closest to him. It started at his birth with Alanna and the infamous 'drop', a story told and retold over family dinners, always accompanied by gales of laughter that would set Bud's teeth on edge. She, in his mind, had tried to kill him—fat bitch!—and he would never forgive. He hated 'the fat one' for it, and that hatred would only grow as the years went on. Someday, she would feel his wrath, he told himself. He'd get her back. Not just her, but all those who ever laughed and attended to the Great Carr with superficial and distant love!

Still, the ultimate wrath, no matter his age, the type of wrath reserved for violent fantasies with broken bones and pleas of mercy, were solely reserved for the Specter, who arrived to meet his son on the 17th of July, and who, when offered the babe for the first time, glared at his wife and said, 'is this one gonna die too?'

'No, Tony. He's perfectly healthy. Here. Hold your son.'

'Why the fuck I gotta hold him if he's not dying?' and he went to the kitchen and fixed himself a drink.

The Specter, though known to Alfonso Ignatius, would not be nearly as visible a figure as he had been for Alanna, and by the time of Vera Constance Carr's birth, ('Not a hint of an A-L in her goddamn name!' the legend shouted at the Author), his presence had diminished significantly. He only returned when the other woman from East Boston tired of him. Once a month at best, but always taken back by his wife, who convinced herself with every appearance that this time would be different. Self-deception at its finest. But all for the better in the end. Without his continued malignancy, stable routine swept the family. Some version of life worth living.

Yet in this, a more potent, latent jealously blossomed in Alfonso Ignatius (the Second). Vera Carr did not carry around the same bludgeoned weariness as that of her siblings. Bud didn't in comparison to Alanna, but the difference between him and Vera was night and day. 'What I could have been,' he would complain to the Author, 'if I'd been born last? Imagine the things I really could have done! I would have been great. Truly, fucking great!'

One thing is for sure: Whatever he would have been, whatever he could have done, it is a fact to say that not one of those things would ever have amounted to what became Alan. Above wrath, above hatred and jealous, Alfonso Ignatius (the Second) needed care, and yearned for love. Such desires never manifested in either sister. Such desires came from neither a sole predator or prey, but some combination of the two. Desires that were born to the average, most forgotten, indignant, middle child. Desires that, for now, would have to wait in the dark gloom of his soul, feasting and festering in silence, until all at once they emerged, fully formed and conscious one day in The Woods...