Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

Lizzie didn’t dance. She had proclaimed herself off the drink. She and Wullie had tried to set a good example for the family. It had made her a bad Catholic to be tut-tutting at Agnes while enjoying a wee can or two herself. So she had stopped with the sweetheart stout and haufs of whisky, almost.

When other men went to the pub, he brought home his wages every week, the brown envelope still sealed, and handed it to her without argument. She had never respected that gesture. The contents of the envelope had never felt like enough.

Big Shug Bain had seemed so shiny in comparison to the Catholic. He had been vain in the way only Protestants were allowed to be, conspicuous with his shallow wealth, flushed pink with gluttony and waste.

It was too much to be trapped in your mother’s front room and judged by her, too much to have her be a front-row spectator to every ebb in your marriage.

Shug had seen it before, those with least to give always gave the most.

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

She was in the dangerous in-between place. Enough drink to feel combative but not enough to be unreasonable yet.

“Why the fuck did you bring me here?” Shug pushed his plate away. His moustache was heavy with a congealing pink sauce. “I had to see.” “Had to see what?” she asked, her voice cracking in anger. “I thought this is what you wanted.” “I had to see if you would actually come.”

She had loved him, and he had needed to break her completely to leave her for good. Agnes Bain was too rare a thing to let someone else love. It wouldn’t do to leave pieces of her for another man to collect and repair later.

New Year’s in Scotland was a legendary two-day party. New Year’s in Agnes’s Glasgow was endless.

Joanie had become like a villain in his mind; her reality and her legend were mixed deep inside him. Agnes’s hate for her was as ingrained in him as knots in wood.

Shuggie picked up the schoolbook again and, like a loyal dog, sat at Agnes’s feet and listened to her heavy breathing.

Each time he held her he was less like a child. He was becoming something else, not yet a man, something like a stretched child, waiting to be inflated into adulthood.