Free The Onion Eaters by J. P. Donleavy Page A

nice. And I was hoping my father wouldn’t get another.Servants, all of whom had been frightened away came back to work for us. To get a stifled laugh one Sunday dinner when my father’s rage weakened chair collapsed beneath him and he got showered with a bowl of boiled potatoes. Which Rose might have preferred to the long gone to seed spud she snapped at in her eager hunger. Needed to feed her frenzied energy she uses to grind it right off me. Hold her steady by the great white rear globes. Smooth as mushrooms. Heaving with the remarkable neoarciform described by Erconwald. On her webbed feet she cruised right in to borrow a toiletry. Now she’s calling me Joseph. Might be walking in her sleep. Teeth in my neck. Sinking in. One has that terrible feeling there are eyes in the ceiling. Clarence peeking between the stone vaulting. And yesterday one moment as I turned to go back in a hallway which headed far beyond my curiosity, I thought I saw someone skip into a room. Any door you might open now could be a snakepit. Auntie would have a fit. Even if she is arthritic in the legs. When I graduated from high school she was the only one who came. And when I stood under banners on the gymnasium steps with the wind blowing through my hair, great aunt clapped for me long after everyone else stopped. Till a man said shush and she took her parasol and clonked him one. On childhood Sundays she took me in her big car, telling Peter the chauffeur through a microphone which way to turn. To reach my mother’s tomb round a lot of curving cemetery roads. Under a great stone canopy she stood. As a big white piece of chiselled marble in long flowing robes. My aunt said my mother was the most beautiful woman in the midwest. That fine fine profile. And you my boy are going to make something of yourself. Take no nonsense from inferiors and less from superiors and count on being surrounded by crass stupidity for most of your life. And I knew she wanted to add, instead of beating the shit out of innocent pedestrians, motorists and bystanders like your father. Rose groans. Long and nearly agonized. Flapping around like a fish. On the end of this pole.
    ‘Ah Joseph, Joseph what is it you’ve got up in me.’
    Do I speak. When I’m not Joseph. Best to wait for recognition. And meanwhile plan tomorrow’s events. Lick the place into shape. Before some more of it falls on me. Rose digging in her fingernails. She’ll be drawing blood. A little pain drives out the doom. Which after high school, college expulsion, naval training and sales careers, finally closed in on me. My slow suitable decline sent me on a stretcher from auntie’s gabled house in the shady street. And for the first time I saw her quiver. Just as the moon faced grandfather clock clanged three over her white head. And I passed by supine attempting the merest contorted grin. I was all she had left. And she was all I had. In the form of a very small weekly allowance. She sent me fresh fruit each day to the hospital. Tightwad as she was she kept me in a ward. In a wing the other side of the grey pebbled roof top where my mother died. Windows looked out over a canal. Two a.m. was the greatest stillness. When we all lay. wondering who was next to go. Wheeled out under a sheet. Before dawn came and gave us another day. Stare up now at the ceiling beaded with moisture. This castle like a vine entwining. Rose is off me and taking a rest. I’m in an awful state of worry. What if she’s afflicted with something not nice and catching. Which could send me down again only weeks after I’ve got up.
    Elmer asleep. Big shadowy head curled around on his paws. New fiercer winds are lashing cannon ball raindrops. Rose on her back, hands behind her head and elbows sticking in the air, whistling. Elmer wakes, his ears cocking in all directions.
    ‘I needed that. I fancy you.’
    ‘My name’s not Joseph.’
    ‘Ah God that’s a scream. When I’m like that I can’t get the name Joseph out of me