AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mrs Cohen was Matty’s curtain twitching neighbour. We’d met her the day we stopped by on his return from Ireland. Mrs Matzo Ball Soup, my mother called her afterwards, on account of her Yiddish accent, stronger even than the gefilte fish balls she knocked on the door insisting we try. My bubala’s recipe.All the way from Hungary.
‘Mrs Cohen has early onset Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t know what she’s seeing.’
‘Is what we have together not enough for you? Is that what all this is about? Why you’ve been so. . .’ She grappled for the word, left it hanging.
Matty didn’t answer straight away.
I tiptoed to the door, opened it just enough to see into the hallway.
‘I never told you. . .’
He sounded so flat, so unlike himself. My mother dropped her shoulders. Through the gap, I watched her put a hand on his arm, move closer.
‘Never told me what?’
Another pause, the sort you don’t rush to fill.
‘My father isn’t my father.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My ma had a one-night stand. Some random buck. Didn’t even know his last name.’
Matty wasn’t a churchgoer like my mother and Nanna G, but I could hear the disgust in his voice. The dark depth of his shame.
‘All those years I was calling that man “Dad”. Only that’s not what he was.’
‘He brought you up. Loved you. That’s what makes him your dad, not whether he shares your blood.’
‘Maybe,’ Matty scoffed. ‘But what does it make her?’
