Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

She watched her son, jealous of his talent to disappear, to float away and leave them all behind.

Shuggie wilted away from them. He felt something was wrong. Something inside him felt put together incorrectly. It was like they could all see it, but he was the only one who could not say what it was.

She would have loved a house full of grandchildren. She would have loved a house to be full again of her own children.

There was a tangle of emotion. The desire to jump into the cold fridge and shut the lid on himself wrestled with the need to tell her he loved her and that he was glad she was better. He wanted to crush her with his secrets the way she had once done him with hers.

Halfway there he saw that on his little table sat a heaped plate of shortbread and some fizzy juice that still rolled with bubbles. Somebody here loved this other little boy. Shuggie turned away and went back to looking for Agnes.

He knew now that he couldn’t keep his promise. He had lied to Agnes as she had lied to him about stopping the drink. She would never be able to get sober, and he, sat in the cold with a lovely girl, knew he would never feel quite like a normal boy.