I never told you that Ma blamed you for us coming to America.
She said it the night before we left. You were asleep, burnt out on booze and excitement. It doesn't happen often that one of us sleeps without the other, but that night, I sat up, taking in all I could before we left, while you slept in your bed.
She came in and sat down, disturbingly sober. Stared me in the eye and asked me if I wanted to go or if I had been dragged into it by you, just like always.
I also never told you why Ma was cold to us that next morning when we left. She was never the most demonstrative mother in the world, but you knew she was angry that morning, I think you just assumed she was upset that we were leaving her, like Da did.
Maybe we did, but that wasn't why she was mad.
"Ye always blame him, Ma! It ain't his fault. We're in it together."
"Yer always in it together, that's the problem! Ye jus' like me, and 'e's jus' like ye good fer nothin' Da! He'll leave ye broken in a pile one day, and ye'll never know why, jus' that he's gone."
"Don't ye dare! Jus' because ye can't love him for lookin' like Da doesn't mean I have to be the same. He's not Da. And I ain't ye, Ma."
"Don't ye walk out, Connor MacManus!"
But given a choice between her and you, there never was one.