Free My Oedipus Complex by Frank O'Connor

things about history. Father and Mother both loved to talk about it but in different ways. She would only talk about it when we were together somewhere, in the park or down the Glen, and even then it was very hard to make her stick to the facts, because her whole face would light up and she would begin to talk about donkey-carriages or concerts in the kitchen, or oil-lamps, and though nowadays I would probably value it for atmosphere, in those days it sometimes drove me mad with impatience. Father, on the other hand, never minded talking about it in front of her, and it made her angry. Particularly when he mentioned May Cadogan. He knew this perfectly well and he would wink at me and make me laugh outright, though I had no idea of why I laughed, and anyway, my sympathy was all with her.
    â€˜But, Daddy,’ I would say, presuming on his high spirits, ‘if you liked Miss Cadogan so much why didn’t you marry her?’
    At this, to my great delight, he would let on to be filled with doubt and distress. He would put his hands in his trousers pockets and stride to the door leading into the hallway.
    â€˜That was a delicate matter,’ he would say, without looking at me. ‘You see, I had your poor mother to think of.’
    â€˜I was a great trouble to you,’ Mother would say, in a blaze.
    â€˜Poor May said it to me herself,’ he would go on as though he had not heard her, ‘and the tears pouring down her cheeks. “Mick,” she said, “that girl with the brown hair will bring me to an untimely grave.” ’
    â€˜She could talk of hair!’ Mother would hiss. ‘With her carroty mop!’
    â€˜Never did I suffer the way I suffered then, between the two of them,’ Father would say with deep emotion as he returned to his chair by the window.
    â€˜Oh, ’tis a pity about ye!’ Mother would cry in an exasperated tone and suddenly get up and go into the front room with her book to escape his teasing. Every word that man said she took literally. Father would give a great guffaw of delight, his hands on his knees and his eyes on the ceiling and wink at me again. I would laugh with him of course, and then grow wretched because I hated Mother’s sitting alone in the front room.I would go in and find her in her wicker-chair by the window in the dusk, the book open on her knee, looking out at the Square. She would always have regained her composure when she spoke to me, but I would have an uncanny feeling of unrest in her and stroke her and talk to her soothingly as if we had changed places and I were the adult and she the child.
    But if I was excited by what history meant to them, I was even more excited by what it meant to me. My potentialities were double theirs. Through Mother I might have been a French boy called Laurence Armady or a rich boy from Sunday’s Well called Laurence Riordan. Through Father I might, while still remaining a Delaney, have been one of the six children of the mysterious and beautiful Miss Cadogan. I was fascinated by the problem of who I would have been if I hadn’t been me, and, even more, by the problem of whether or not I would have known that there was anything wrong with the arrangement. Naturally I tended to regard Laurence Delaney as the person I was intended to be, and so I could not help wondering whether as Laurence Riordan I would not have been aware of Laurence Delaney as a real gap in my make-up.
    I remember that one afternoon after school I walked by myself all the way up to Sunday’s Well which I now regarded as something like a second home. I stood for a while at the garden gate of the house where Mother had been working when she was proposed to by Mr Riordan, and then went and studied the shop itself. It had clearly seen better days, and the cartons and advertisements in the window were dusty and sagging. It wasn’t like one of the big stores in Patrick Street, but at the same time, in size and