A Mother’s Letter

Jimmy O’Connell

My dear Mike,

I know you are surprised to find this letter on the kitchen table, and you are wondering where I am. Obviously, I knew you would be here to help me with my Saturday morning Tesco shopping. Be reassured, I am alive and well.

You are wondering why I didn’t wait until you came over to tell you what I have been trying to tell you for many years but have been afraid to. Instead of telling you face to face I have decided to write it all out. I think it’s better this way.

As you know your father left us when you were only a few months old. I told you that your father was a doctor from Galway and his name was Charles McMurrow, in fact he was from India, who came over to study medicine. His real name was Chakli Munduru. I have always explained your sallow skin colour by claiming that the McMurrows were descended from sailors of the Spanish Armada that landed in Galway and that your good looks came from that side of the family.

But that is not all that I have to tell you.

As you know you have an aunt in America, Aunt Michelle, or Auntie Mike as you called her, because you said she looked like one of the actresses in the film, Yankee Doodle Dandy,

The truth is that Michele is not your aunt. I met her soon after your father and I broke up. She worked for Intel in Leixlip when they first set up here.

We met at a party when I was working for an Irish computer company. We became friends and that friendship grew more intimate. We have been conducting an affair for the last 20 years.

I am not going into the details of our relationship, but, as you know, she has been working at Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California as a vice-president there. She has asked me to come live with her.

As you read this letter, I will be in Santa Clara with her.

You know how I feel about your right-wing Irish-Maga wife. You are welcome to come out to us in California whenever you want, but neither I, nor Mike, have any intentions of inviting those two slutty gold digger daughters of yours, who obviously took after their mother. I warned you about them, but as I told you many times, it was your bed of roses with many hidden thorns.

In case that family of yours turns you against me for being a lesbian, well, I couldn’t give a tupenny damn, and it’s up to you whether you tell them that your father was an Indian immigrant.

As for what you say to that wife of yours and the girls about my whereabouts, you can tell them that I died and that I didn’t want them to attend the funeral.

Your loving mother,

Juliet

PS

Don’t forget to lock the front door.

PPS

Never let your family into my house. I have willed nothing to them. You get the house and whatever is left in my bank account.

PPPS

You know as well as I do that you are gay and that you are better off divorcing that wagon and dumping those scroungers before they bleed you dry, and come on out to California. You’ll be much better off.

Aunty Mike says hi.

Jimmy O’Connell is a member of Inklings Writing Group, meet who on Tuesdays at 11am and on Wednesdays at 7.30pm in the Annebrook House Hotel. Mullingar. Aspiring and fun writers welcome.