Free My Oedipus Complex by Frank O'Connor Page B

right hand arranging her hair at the back. It was not carroty as Mother described it, though it had red lights when the sun caught it.
    â€˜What is it, little boy?’ she asked coaxingly, bending forward.
    â€˜I didn’t really want anything, thank you,’ I said in terror. ‘It was just that my daddy said you lived up here, and, as I was changing my book at the library I thought I’d come up and inquire. You can see,’ I added, showing her the book as proof, ‘that I’ve only just been to the library.’
    â€˜But who is your daddy, little boy?’ she asked, her grey eyes still in long, laughing slits. ‘What’s your name?’
    â€˜My name is Delaney,’ I said, ‘Larry Delaney.’
    â€˜Not
Mike
Delaney’s boy?’ she exclaimed wonderingly. ‘Well, for God’s sake! Sure, I should have known it from that big head of yours.’ She passed her hand down the back of my head and laughed. ‘If you’d only get your hair cut I wouldn’t be long recognizing you. You wouldn’t think I’d know the feel of your old fellow’s head, would you?’ she added roguishly.
    â€˜No, Mrs O’Brien,’ I replied meekly.
    â€˜Why, then indeed I do, and more along with it,’ she added in the same saucy tone though the meaning of what she said was not clear to me. ‘Ah, come in and give us a good look at you! That’s my eldest, Gussie, you were talking to,’ she added, taking my hand. Gussie trailed behind us for a purpose I only recognized later.
    â€˜Ma-a-a-a, who’s dat fella with you?’ yelled a fat little girl who had been playing hop-scotch on the pavement.
    â€˜That’s Larry Delaney,’ her mother sang over her shoulder. I don’t know what it was about that woman but there was something about her high spirits that made her more like a regiment than a woman. You felt that everyone should fall into step behind her. ‘Mick Delaney’s son fromBarrackton. I nearly married his old fellow once. Did he ever tell you that, Larry?’ she added slyly. She made sudden swift transitions from brilliance to intimacy that I found attractive.
    â€˜Yes, Mrs O’Brien, he did,’ I replied, trying to sound as roguish as she, and she went off into a delighted laugh, tossing her red head.
    â€˜Ah, look at that now! How well the old divil didn’t forget me! You can tell him I didn’t forget him either. And if I married him, I’d be your mother now. Wouldn’t that be a queer old three and fourpence? How would you like me for a mother, Larry?’
    â€˜Very much, thank you,’ I said complacently.
    â€˜Ah, go on with you, you would not,’ she exclaimed, but she was pleased all the same. She struck me as the sort of woman it would be easy enough to please. ‘Your old fellow always said it: your mother was a
most
superior woman, and you’re a
most
superior child. Ah, and I’m not too bad myself either,’ she added with a laugh and a shrug, wrinkling up her merry little face.
    In the kitchen she cut me a slice of bread, smothered it with jam, and gave me a big mug of milk. ‘Will you have some, Gussie?’ she asked in a sharp voice as if she knew only too well what the answer would be. ‘Aideen,’ she said to the horrible little girl who had followed us in, ‘aren’t you fat and ugly enough without making a pig of yourself? Murder the Loaf we call her,’ she added smilingly to me. ‘You’re a polite little boy, Larry, but damn the politeness you’d have if you had to deal with them. Is the book for your mother?’
    â€˜Oh, no, Mrs O’Brien,’ I replied. ‘It’s my own.’
    â€˜You mean you can read a big book like that?’ she asked incredulously, taking it from my hands and measuring the length of it with a puzzled air.
    â€˜Oh, yes, I can.’
    â€˜I don’t believe