by Elske Rahill
Freya should go to the door now, but instead she turns towards the stairs.
‘It’s locked, Freya, I told you. Don’t make a drama. I’ll give you the key now in a minute. I just want to talk to you for a bit, come here.’
And she does. She fucking does. She comes and sits on the couch beside him, and she lets him slide his hand around the back of her neck, and she lets him slide the gluey tongue between her lips and between her teeth. He takes her hand and he presses it to the swell in his jeans, holds it there a minute. ‘Remember this?’
The quicker she does it the sooner it’ll be over. Her mouth recognises the silky penis. She carries out the task from muscle memory, doing everything she can to hurry the thing to its conclusion – massaging his soft testicles until they tighten, rubbing at the little ridge behind, opening her throat so that the long, thin dick slides all the way down and her lips and nose crunch into the piss-and-laundry smell of his pubic hair. He holds her ponytail. ‘Good girl,’ he says. ‘Now you get it. Good girl. I knew you wanted it.’
And she can hear Jem upstairs, the surprising calm in his voice. ‘I had an accident. Hello? Is my mammy coming soon?’
She moves her tongue hard against Dermot’s penis, circles it, slips her tongue-tip into the raw little opening at the top, and gives one last thrust with her throat, massaging the cum up out of his balls.
‘That’s it,’ he says, ‘drink it all up. Don’t waste a drop.’
*
Dermot smirks as he tousles Jem’s hair. ‘Nice wheels. Granny’s, is it?’
‘It was, yeah.’
‘What’s the reg?’ He bends his knees, leaning forward to look, hands in his pockets. ‘Ha! 1989. Vintage. Vintage Mercedes.’
‘Into the car, Jem, quick now, good boy. Let’s shut the door. It’s cold.’
Dermot stands smiling as the car pulls away. She goes slowly so that she doesn’t go too quick. She stops and waits for a gap in the traffic. On the wheel, her hands are trembling. The figure of a child shoots across the road. She angles the rear-view mirror so that she can see Jem. ‘Fold that over your knees,’ she says, ‘great boy.’
Jem sits bare-bottomed on her cardigan in the back of the car, his skinny thighs pale and his little penis hiding with cold.
‘Jem, put the sides of the cardigan over yourself.’
‘But the seatbelt.’
‘Unstrap the seatbelt, put the cardigan around yourself and strap in again.’
‘Like this?’
‘Yes. Well done. Now strap in again. Well done.’
‘Did you hear the click?’
‘Yep. Well done. Best boy.’
‘I like our car.’
‘Me too, Jem. I like our car.’
She likes the way it is posh and scruffy at once; elegant and cumbersome with its beige leather seats and slabs of faux-marble plastic on the inner doors. She likes the outrageously unfashionable colour of it – school-jumper navy.
‘Mammy?’
‘Yes, Jem.’
‘Is it night time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it the middle of the night?’
‘It’s the beginning of the night.’
‘Is Mimi asleep now?’
‘Oh, I’d say so.’
‘Oh. Mammy?’
‘Yes?’
‘Em… we didn’t get ice cream.’
‘Did you not? Sorry, baby, I thought you would. I thought he said he’d take you for ice cream.’
‘But we got crisps.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes, and red lemonade – do you know what that is?’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s like 7Up except orange colour.’
‘Oh. And was it nice?’
‘Yep. And he has a big television and you can play games on it. Racing cars games.’
‘And was that fun?’
‘Yes, but I was playing that for a long, long time. And then the accident.’
‘Well, don’t worry about that, little man. You can have a bath now when we get in. Put the cardigan over your lap, baby, it’s cold.’
15
SINÉAD USED TO BE the type to refuse a paracetamol, clip her nails so short that her fingertips were tender, tug the brush impatiently through her hair, but these days pain frightens her. The sting of a paper cut, a knock on the elbow – the tiniest thing can send tremors through her.
She creeps her fingers up along her matted ponytail until she finds the elastic. Though she’s careful unwinding it, some solitary strands snag and snap, making her wince. How long has it been since she’s combed her hair? Or washed it?
There’s a special brush her mother bought from someone at a promotion stand. It’s a gimmicky thing – bright pink and yellow, like a child’s toy, and the plastic bristles all different lengths. It’s supposed to ease out the tangles. Her mother is always buying crap from people at those stands. She says she feels sorry for them.
She squeezes conditioner onto the spikes of the brush. She spreads the split ends across her palm, and crunches the bristles into them. Blobs of conditioner go sliding down her wrist, flecking the bowl of the sink, smattering her chin and neck. She’s not even sure she hears the phone at first – a little beep under the sound of the hairbrush. But when she stops and listens, she is suddenly aware that it’s been ringing for some time.
‘Terence! Terence, can you get that?’ Then she remembers – her husband is out by the woods, watching for the fox cubs.
On the landing, the cold sweeps over her arms and feet, slinks up around her bare knees and in under her nightie. Even the carpet feels cold. It is such an effort now, walking down the stairs. Her hips and pelvis still ache with loss. She is fat now – it took some time for her to realise that – she has become a fat woman. She takes the steps slowly, holding the banister, her breath high and loud, thighs easing past each other like great bags of liquid. The doctor didn’t tell her she would grow so fat so quickly. It’s to do with being bed-bound for so long, and something to do with hormones too. They explained all of this afterwards, when there was no going back. One of the nurses said she should try to eat sweet potatoes, for her hormones.
Sinéad stops on the turn of the stairs, places her forehead on her elbow and breathes. The ringing seems to grow shriller before cutting off mid-cry. There’s a tug of pain pulling down into her groin. Could she be imagining that? They told her it would stop hurting after a few weeks.
The phone starts up again.
She moves quicker this time. The pain is probably normal. There is so much they didn’t tell her. They didn’t even mention the hysterectomy until they had already taken half the cervix. Then, before they discharged her, the doctor explained that he’d need to schedule her in. ‘Nothing to be alarmed about,’ he said, crinkling his eyes as though in kindness. ‘Just a preemptive. A uterus isn’t much use to you now, anyway, is it? At this stage of life.’ She was still bleeding and bleeding and when the painkillers wore off it was too much and too deep– a shriek all through her, like her waters were boiling. They say childbirth is terrible, but it couldn’t be worse than that; the sensation of wrongness, of having been looted.
She lifts the receiver just in time.
‘Your mobile is off.’
In the dim hallway Sinéad lowers her head like a shamed child. ‘Oh, is it? Sorry, Aoife… it must be out of battery.’ She scans the hall for her slippers.
‘Well. How are you?’ There is an eye-roll in the tone, as though the idea of Sinéad being well or not well is a ridiculous notion that must be politely indulged.
‘Okay. Still sore…’
‘Oh, it’s probably in your head at this stage Sinéad – it’s been, what? Three months? More?’
‘Em… let me think—’
‘Well anyway I was with Mammy today – having lunch with her, getting her shopping for her and all that. She was asking about you. The place is a state, you know. I don’t think Freya does a tap. She has these dying tulips on
display in the hall, pollen everywhere…’
The band on Sinéad’s wrist is tinselled with broken hair. She plucks at it with short, dirty fingernails, holding the phone with her shoulder.
‘Mammy says she hasn’t heard from you in a long time, Sinéad. You’ll have to get over this hysterectomy nonsense. It’s only a little op, you know. Miriam Brennan had one last year and she was out for dinner the next evening. You’re going to have to start thinking of others a bit now. I can’t look after Mammy all by myself.’
‘Oh,’ says Sinéad, taking the phone in her hand now – her neck hurts. ‘I’ll call her tomorrow. Or this evening. I’ll call her later—’
‘It’s nine o’clock Sinéad, what time do you think she goes to bed?’
‘Oh, well, in the morning, then.’
‘What time did you think it was Sinéad?’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Do you not have a clock?’
‘I was about to have a bath.’
‘No, Brendan is just off the phone to her. She’ll be gone to bed now.’
‘I’ll call her in the morning.’
‘Will you now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anyway, she was asking if I’d heard from you and I said you were busy gardening. I didn’t mention your little op. Still top secret is it?
‘Yes, I – yes.’
‘How is the garden?’
‘Oh, well – hard work and all, but the tomatoes have been amazing Aoife – too many for me, I’ve lots in the freezer. I’ll give you some – but then the other day they started to get this little grey patch on the bottom of them—’
‘Well I’m glad you’re enjoying it, but Mammy says she hasn’t heard from you. She’s looking for her chives.’
‘Okay, well I’ll ring her in the morning… I’ll try to get over to her. They said I could drive now, but really it’s sore…’
‘Well, it’s psychosomatic then, Sinéad. You’ll have to overcome it.’
‘How are you?’
‘I’m fabulous thank you. Great. Valerie’s coming back on Wednesday so I’ve just been getting everything ready for her. I got Daria to spruce up her room… There’s something else I need to talk to you about. Brendan has sorted it out for now, but we need to keep a better eye on Mammy.’
‘Why’s that?’ Sinéad’s knees are starting to stiffen with the cold.
‘Well, I was early to Mammy’s today – my appointment was cancelled – she wasn’t expecting me till later, but in I come, and who do I find drinking tea in the good room? Davitt Dunlin.’
‘Oh?’
‘He’s aged a lot. Anyway, lucky I did because guess what I found out? The Ladies Muck are sniffing about, trying to wheedle money out of Mammy…’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you know Mammy – completely evasive, talked in riddles, wouldn’t disclose anything. She got passive aggressive when I asked her so I just let it go. But I called Davitt this evening and it turns out she summoned him to the house to talk about her will.’
‘He told you that?’
‘He told me without telling me, “sometimes elderly people want to take another look at their will…” that sort of thing. Anyway, she had some idea about providing for the grandchildren and their children – completely ridiculous – but I had Brendan call her and explain that it’s completely unjust…’
Sinéad examines her hands under the murky glow of the lampshade. Her hands are the only things that haven’t fattened and fallen loose in the last months. The skin is weak though, and easily torn, the veins running too close beneath. She turns them slowly under the watery light; the hulking grace of big, sad sea creatures.
‘Well, it’s her choice, Aoife. It’s her money.’
‘No,’ says Aoife sternly. Sinéad can see her now – poor Aoife, with her top lip pulling unpleasantly tight and her cheeks trembling – but she can’t rise to her sister’s outrage, she can’t think beyond tomorrow, the orangery, the garden wall. All she can worry about is the tomatoes and how to save them. She planted them on a whim – three trays of ‘Organic Medley Heirlooms’ from the market. She didn’t know what to expect, but when spring came, they tumbled out big meaty globes with yellow and pink mottled flesh; small sweet ones full like little capsules of fragrant blood that popped in the mouth; great crimson ones streaked with navy blue, pleating in on themselves, dew gathering in their folds, bending the whole plant over with their weight. Until those tomatoes ripened she didn’t know such pigments could exist – a yellow that is also pink; a black that is also red and green at once. It defied what she knew of colour. They were the wordless stuff of matter.
‘No, Sinéad,’ says her sister, ‘It’s not actually. It’s not her money – it’s Daddy’s money and our inheritance.’
‘I’m not sure you should be putting pressure on her Aoife, I’m sure it will work itself out. I don’t think Mammy would disinherit us… you might have the wrong end of the stick—’
Yesterday she noticed little patches of black blossoming just under the skin of the beef tomatoes, and she decided to order in some copper spray. But the invisible threads moved swiftly in the night; a ghostly breath that reached all the way down to the core of the fruit and rotted it in the dark. She went in this morning to find them all shrunken into rows of sticks, their spindly shadows thatching out the morning light. Armies of slugs had come in through the open door – was that a coincidence? While the green fruits rotted, the ripe ones were turned to mush by great orange slugs that sucked fast to the flesh – even against the force of her fingers – and left a layer of slime that she couldn’t wash off. This afternoon she cut open one of her rosy little bell tomatoes to find it hollowed out; three pale, speckled slugs nestled like raindrops in the papery shell.
‘Oh, Sinéad, don’t be ridiculous! It’s obvious what’s happened here… it’s what I’ve always told you but you won’t listen. Obviously, it’s Freya. She’s a manipulative little bitch and always has been. She’s always had Mammy wrapped around her little finger. Always. I tried speaking to Mammy myself but you know how she is. That’s why I got Brendan to call her. She respects him…’
‘But we can’t change it, Aoife, if it’s what Mammy wants…’
‘What Mammy wants, Sinéad? What Mammy wants? So, we should let Eileen’s kids rob us of our birthright? Just because they have Mammy twisted around their little fingers, is that it?’
Our birthright – where did they get her from? Where does she even pick up these phrases? Sinéad lifts one foot up off the floor and reaches her hand back, making her shoulder creak. She squeezes the toes to warm them. Even at the height of summer, the nights are cold in this house.
‘And you know, if she gives everything to the Ladies Muck, who’s going to be left paying for Mammy’s Shady Acre years?’
‘What are Shady Acre years?’
‘You know what I mean. She’ll need to go to a home eventually, it could be years of costs. And who will pick up the tab? Me. Me and you. How much did you tell me it costs for Terence’s Aunt Toots?’
‘Oh… I can’t remember now, Aoife. But, you know, his cousin helps.’
Poor Aoife. Even as a child she had that anger in her. She was competitive with everyone, a little bit begrudging, very quick to take people down a peg – but it was all because of the sickening feeling in her, the sense of never being quite right, or quite good enough. Daddy was difficult to please – was that why?
Perhaps as children they were close. There is so much that gets forgotten, but Sinéad and Aoife have been, for years, like strangers sharing a mother. Aoife has never had any interests, really, or any talents. She attends exhibitions because she thinks she should, reads books so that she can say she has read them… Maybe she is lonely now. She’s started telephoning more and more often.
‘Well,’ Aoife lowers her voice, ‘one thing’s for sure. We have to sell the properties – the one in Monkstown and the one in France now and maybe even the house
in Enniskerry. The warehouse too—’
Sinéad can hear the back door bang as a cool night wind rushes through the hall. Terence must be in. The blood is stagnating in her ankles. What has she done with the hall chair? It’s in the orangery; the grapes. The grapes are a disaster – small and all pips. There’s a reason no one grows them in Ireland. It was a silly idea. It’s only that the leaves looked so beautiful and romantic, and the stalks with the little tendrils. And she thought that maybe, if they once grew oranges in there, then grapes might be possible too.
‘There’s four of them—’ Terence is still in his garden boots. Sinéad frowns at them, and he looks down at his feet. She covers the mouthpiece and whispers, ‘Aoife.’ He grimaces, bearing his teeth, and whispers, ‘There’s four of them! I wish you’d seen them, they’re beautiful!’
Sinéad uncovers the mouthpiece and makes listening noises for Aoife.
‘… I mean, put it this way, Sinéad, it’s not like she’ll be going back there – and we can get her to divide the proceeds fairly and above board, because at least then it won’t all go to the Ladies Muck!’
Terence stands there, waiting for her response, and Sinéad just rolls her eyes and shakes her head, pointing to the phone.
‘Tell her you have to go!’ whispers Terence.
‘I know what you mean, Aoife, I do, but—’
If she tried, Sinéad could share in her sister’s rage. Because it does hurt her, the way those girls soaked up her mother’s love. Freya’s son gives Mammy junk like ladybirds made from stones, with wobbly eyes glued on, and her mother displays them around the house proudly, something she never did with the things her own children used to make her. The daisy chains lying in the bin that evening after supper, and Mammy not even trying to conceal them, scraping the gravy-sodden gristle and bones in on top of them.
Terence is growing impatient. ‘Bye bye, Aoife,’ he mouths. Sinéad scowls at him and he mimes a glass, wobbling it in the air, whispers, ‘Whiskey?’
Aoife is getting carried away now, her voice coming faster and louder down the phone. ‘She owes a big sum to Valerie too – don’t forget how she gave Cara a deposit for her house that time! They think we don’t know about that. And I’m nearly sure she paid Freya’s repeat fees for college! No, she owes Valerie a good sum of money to even that out…’