An Unravelling

by Elske Rahill

  ‘Hello!’ calls Molly. ‘Hello, are you there?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Kearney,’ says the girl. ‘Yes, I am here. I am just saying goodbye to Aoife, your daughter. I said we will phone when you are more awake.’

  ‘Is it Polina?’

  ‘No, Sally. I am Sally, Mrs Kearney…’

  ‘Yes. Do you like coffee, Katie? Stick on the kettle there, will you. Make us two cups of coffee, if you don’t mind… Sit with me awhile?’

  33

  JEM STAGGERS BACK FROM the toilet bowl, the fright of it whooshing into his ears. It’s there again – a bright blue wee glowing right there in the toilet. He holds his breath, afraid of its smell.

  Someone in this Big School does blue wees and they leave it there for him to see. They want him to know. They want to see what he will do. The scariest part is, it might be a grown-up doing it. Last time Jem saw the blue wee, Sharon-the-class-helper had just been in here. Her hair is a wrong colour too – pink-orange like paints.

  What will happen if he does a wee on it? Blue and yellow makes green. Green fizzing up out of the toilet like a can that’s been shook.

  *

  Out in the yard, Jem stands by the wall. In Big School the children wear tracksuits instead of shorts, and runners that twinkle like Christmas lights when they run or stamp. When his mammy bought him light-up runners off the computer, Jem thought she was the only one who knew about them, but when he started Big School he saw that the other mammies must know about them too. Some of the runners here are shinier than his, and some have lights at the front as well as the back.

  His friend Lucy won’t play with him today because of boy germs. She’ll be out of the pink club if she gets boy germs. Most breaktimes the pink club makes him really sad, but today he is glad he has no one to play with. He needs to keep very still or the wee will come out.

  After breaktime, Jem sits in his seat and he folds his legs together and he must be jiggling a bit because his teacher asks him three times does he need to go to the toilet. He holds it. He holds it all through the story about Jumping Jack. He holds it while he colours in the picture of Jumping Jack. He even holds it while he traces J J J.

  At going-home time they have to find a partner and hold hands and make a line before the teacher opens the door. Lucy holds his hand and he wants to ask her what if Cliona sees but he is trying too hard to hold the wee. They are waiting so long for the door that their hands get slimy and they have to let go and wipe them on their tracksuits. When they go out Jem looks around for his mammy. The first thing he will tell her is that he has a wee and she’ll bring him somewhere to do it. There are lots of other mammies waiting, but not his mammy. There are daddies as well. Dylan’s daddy puts his hands out wide and when Dylan runs to him he snatches him up by the hands and twirls him around and around and then he throws him up and catches him and Jem can’t see if Dylan is laughing or crying but he knows he would be crying if that happened to him.

  It’s only when he feels it go down into his shoe – warm and then cold, that Jem knows it’s happened. He looks at his teacher but she hasn’t seen. If his mammy comes soon, no one will see. It’s in both shoes. His socks are wet. He looks down and he’s happy that you can’t really see any wee.

  His daddy liked Jem’s shoes. He knelt down and squeezed the toe. He sat down very close to Jem’s mammy at their table and Jem wanted to cover his mammy with a blanket and cosy up with her.

  His mammy is here and she’s kneeling beside him and he’s crying. He’s crying and crying. His whole head is full of tears. There’s tears coming out of his nose and his eyes and his ears and he can’t stop but at least he’s not making any sound. She keeps kissing him and saying what’s wrong Jem what’s wrong my little man I’m sorry I’m late my baby what’s wrong.

  34

  IN ONE YEAR, AOIFE will be sixty.

  It has been there on the horizon, something she had hoped to hide, to cover over. It has been there like an icecap beneath the crash and swirl, the hiss of the white seafoam. It is a year away. Who will throw her a party? And who will come? Already, she can feel the sense of failure that will settle on everything; the politeness of her guests, their quiet irritation, the dreary obligation to attend. They will be pulled from every brittle thread of her life – someone she knows from church, someone she used to share the school run with, someone she was friendly with when she did that accountancy course. None of them will know her very well, none of them will like her very much; and the fact of that will be undeniable amongst the pavlova roulade, the princess-warmed chicken fricassee, the balloons in tastefully muted shades – only two colours, three, at most. She knows this, because she has attended two sixtieth birthday parties already this year.

  Valerie. It will have to be Valerie who throws the party. That will take the vanity out of it. That will excuse the tenuousness of the guestlist.

  *

  This year’s birthday is slipping quietly by. This morning, she got a card from Valerie via email. It took a while to load – Valerie’s face on the body of a tango dancer, the little tat-tat- tat of the music, the words ‘Happy Birthday Mum’ jangling on the screen. Valerie went back to London with no excuse. No audition or profit share. No boyfriend. Soon, Valerie will be thirty. Last night, Brendan took Aoife for dinner at a restaurant they used to frequent when they were first married. She realised how rarely they do that, these days. The restaurant has since changed hands – there’s a new menu. The chips came in a wooden bucket with silver handles, like a miniature coal scuttle. Brendan drank three beers and a cocktail and ordered too much wine. He seemed bored, impatient for her to reach tipsiness. When her dessert arrived, it had a cocktail umbrella in it, and a single candle: red and white twirled together like a barber’s pole. Two wait staff stood by while she blew it out. One of them clapped after; the other walked away. She understood, like a revelation, what the candles meant: another year snuffed out. The wax melted onto the icing and hardened there.

  Afterwards, Brendan fell asleep lying diagonally across their bed in his shoes. She removed her earrings in the mirror, and she didn’t look away from the bagginess of her face and the ugly dissatisfaction of her mouth. She kept looking as she undressed, and would not let herself pull in her stomach as she released it from the band of her tights.

  *

  She will be prepared for her sixtieth birthday. She has booked a Botox consultation, and joined the new gym. She bought the Canadian leggings Valerie recommended – very expensive, but worth it, with special elastic in them to flatten her tummy and lift her bum. The girl in the shop said she looked ‘fab’ in them. Today is her first Zumba class. She’s left them in their trendy bag, wrapped in silver paper. She will enjoy opening them; a little birthday present to herself.

  *

  She is rolling up her special lightweight sports towel, trying to ignore the churn in her bowels, trying not to wonder who will be at the class – if they will be younger than her or thinner than her, if they will sneer at her efforts – when she hears her phone downstairs on the hall table.

  It’s Davitt Dunlin.

  ‘Davitt.’

  ‘Aoife, hi. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fabulous, thanks. Really well.’

  ‘I forwarded you an email there.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Now, I don’t want you to worry – it’s your niece. I know you thought she was trying to interfere with things, and you’re right, but I don’t want you to worry.’

  ‘Freya?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure. No, I don’t think it was Freya… let me see now… Cara. That’s the elder one, is it?’

  ‘Yeah. Hang on. I’m switching on the computer now. Bloody thing.’

  ‘Aoife?’

  ‘It’s very slow. Hang on now…’

  ‘Aoife, I’ve another call coming in. Let me know how you want me to reply, will you? Give me a call when you’ve read it.’

  Aoife settles herself in her husband’s swivel chair, logs into her account and
waits with agitation for the emails to load. As she reads, she swallows again and again. Her mouth is stubbornly dry.

  ---------- Forwarded message ----------

  To: davittd@dunlinson.com

  From: carakearneyillustrations@gmail.com

  Date: 20 October 2018 at 6:04 PM

  Subject: RE: Molly Kearney

  Dear Mr Dunlin,

  I am Molly Kearney’s eldest granddaughter, Cara Kearney. We have met on occasions when you called to my grandmother’s house.

  I know that my grandmother holds you in very high regard and trusts you completely. She still talks of the way you were as a young boy. I have no doubt that you practise your profession with the highest of ethical standards. Some days my grandmother tells me, ‘I can trust Davitt Dunlin’ a dozen times.

  However, some recent events have led myself and my sister to believe that our grandmother’s funds are being tampered with. She speaks of people telling her to sign things, and being unsure of what those things are.

  Some days she is in utter panic about money and says over and over, ‘I need to speak to Davitt Dunlin alone.’

  She is sometimes very distressed because family members have, she says, been ‘giving out’ about the will, but that it will be sorted out.

  What has kept me from acting so far is a fear that distress and humiliation might be caused to my grandmother were the issue to become an area of open dispute. Unfortunately, it has become too obvious a problem to ignore. While I understand that the measures we will need to take may not be your concern, I believe that the first step is to, at the very least, contact you to inform you that these concerns exist. An incident that my grandmother, in great distress, told me about some weeks ago, was one in which ‘a very large sum’ was transferred to a family member.

  She said that you were involved in this transaction. This may or may not be the case, but it has occurred to me that you may not have been informed of my grandmother’s mental state at this time, and that she may have seemed lucid to you. However, at time of writing, there are days when my grandmother does not know where she is. She also sees people who aren’t there and is in a state of extreme confusion much of the time.

  I feel it is necessary, at the very least, to make you aware that, while my grandmother is doing much better, she is often unaware of where she is, saying, ‘When will they let me go home?’ She speaks to my grandfather, who is not there, and some days believes that he is still alive. Sometimes she believes that she has just attended my five-year-old nephew’s wedding, and speaks to him about it. In short, since she broke her hip she has been in no fit state to transfer money or alter her will, and, while I am still in the process of investigating the legalities, I am quite certain that altering a will is not something that can or should be done by other family members. I do not know whether this has happened, but I do know that she believes she has been ‘told’ to sign things changing the will.

  I am hoping that I might meet with you to discuss these concerns.

  I hope you are not offended by my correspondence. I wish only to make you aware of the complexity of the current situation, and that I am seeking legal advice. I wish also to have it on record that I have expressed these concerns.

  I am, however, concerned that my grandmother would feel humiliated were she aware that I was stating that she has not been of sound mind since her fall. I would ask that you deal with it sensitively and that my letter remain confidential.

  I can be contacted at this email address.

  Regards,

  Cara Kearney

  35

  ‘JEM.’

  His mammy stands at the door. Her hands are on her hips and she is making a sad face. It hurts him: her squishy face.

  ‘Jem.’

  He is lying on the blow-up mattress and he looks up at the ceiling again. At home with Mimi there is a grey patch on his ceiling that sometimes looks like a dragon. But here the ceiling is very white and it has glow-in-the-dark stickers on it shaped like sheep. At night they are an evil jellyfish green. This room used to be Baby Peig’s room but now Baby Peig sleeps in-with-Megan. It’s not his room, really. It’s only-for-now. There are bears on the curtains, as if he’s a baby, and a strip of bears doing somersaults around the wall.

  ‘What have you done with them, Jem?’

  Her voice. When she says ‘Jem’, it’s like she has no air left. His heart is broken. He can feel it under the bones, like something being ripped apart; like a big cry that’s stuck. He did the bad thing and now nothing will ever be right again. The sad in his mammy’s voice is new but it is like Jem has always been afraid of it. Like the worst bit of a nightmare, he knew it was there all along. He tries not to think of what he has done with his runners. If he thinks of them buried like that in leaves and muck, he might tell.

  ‘Jem. What’s the problem with your shoes, Jem? I thought you liked them. You wanted them. They were expensive. I can wash them, you know, and they’ll be better than new. I can’t just keep buying you new shoes, Jem.’

  ‘Mammy, I know you can wash them. You washed them before.’

  The shoes might blink out there in the dark, but no one will see them under the wet leaves. His daddy liked his shoes. They got wee in them that day too. His mammy is still standing there but he won’t look at her. She sighs, and shifts about, and keeps standing there until his Aunty Cara says, a little crossly, ‘Freya, can you help me please, with Peig. I can’t be carrying her.’

  *

  He stays looking at the wall, pretending not to see Den as she comes in and crouches on the floor beside his mattress.

  ‘Jem, do you want to do Lego with me?’

  Den is his cousin and she is sometimes nice, but sometimes she is cheeky-and-bold.

  Downstairs, her daddy, Uncle Pat, is trying to make his little cousin Megan eat her peas. Megan is making a fuss. Jem can hear her screaming and shouting and coughing: ‘They make my froat itchy! I can’t breave! They make my froat sore!’ From the landing, Aunty Cara shouts down, ‘Leave it, Pat. I haven’t the energy, just leave it. She ate her carrots, it’s fine.’

  Denise taps him on the head. ‘Do you want to do Lego with me, Jem?’

  Jem should answer no if he wants her to go away but he can’t say it.

  ‘Jem, do you want to do Lego with me? Jem? Are you sad?’

  Jem turns around so that Den can see his sad face. He wants to show her the ripping heart feeling he has. Den is holding a really good Lego boat in both hands.

  ‘Don’t be sad, Jem. Knock knock.’

  Jem shakes his head.

  ‘Jem! Knock knock… Come on, Jem! Say “who’s there”, Jem!’

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Dunap.’

  Jem knows it’s a trick. She’s done this joke before and he knows it’s rude-and-not-nice but he can’t remember what happens.

  ‘Come on, Jem, it’s funny!’

  ‘Dunap who?’

  ‘Done a poo! Jem done a poo-hoo! Jem done a poo-hoo!’

  ‘Go away! Go away go away go away!’ Jem is screaming now. His heart hurts. His Uncle Pat is in the doorway.

  ‘What’s going on here, Den? Why is Jem crying? Why are you shouting, Jem?’

  ‘I told him knock knock who’s there Dunap.’

  ‘Ruuude!’ shouts Jem, as loudly as he can. He is a good boy. He is a good and well-behaved boy and it’s not fair for Den to be like this and for no one to mind. ‘Ruuuuude! Ruuuude!’

  ‘Dry up, Jem,’ says Uncle Pat, and Jem’s voice goes from him just like that, as though Uncle Pat has just snatched it away.

  ‘Go on, Denise, leave Jem alone. He’s not in the mood. Have you brushed your teeth?’

  Out on the landing his mammy is using bad words. ‘For fuck’s sake, Cara, I know you’re not obliged to collect him. I never said you were obliged, but you said you would and now you’re not and I’m fucked for this tutorial now, that’s all. You could have told me before, and now you’re telling me I have to collect your
kids, too.’

  ‘It’s not a lot to ask, Freya. It’s not like I ask anything of you, it’s not like you even contribute…’

  Jem is not in his pyjamas and he knows he should be.

  Den told that joke to Mimi one time before, and Mimi started play-acting – she made a sound like a scream, but happy, and then she smiled and sighed, and shook her head and said, ‘Oh my DenDen you’re a gurrier of a girl…’ That time, Jem climbed onto Mimi’s knee and he could see that Mimi knew Den was bold and Jem was the best boy. But now sometimes he is not sure anymore what his Mimi knows.

  *

  When she comes to tuck him in, his mammy has her own voice again but her face is a bit tired. One of her bottom teeth has got dark. It’s ugly. She says he will have to wear his wellies into school tomorrow. Jem doesn’t care. He lets her kiss him and he turns on his side and closes his eyes. His ‘Our Planet’ light is working again. At last his mammy got the right lightbulb. It took her ages. She kept saying, ‘Sorry Jem, I forgot.’

  His cheek is very hot, so he turns on his back but he hates this ceiling. The green of the sheep is like the eyes of bad guys.

  It was Aunty Cara who put his pyjamas on him and no one has made him brush his teeth. He can hear his Aunty Cara downstairs and he doesn’t know if it’s his mammy or his Uncle Pat that she is giving out to. ‘What are you talking about?’ she says. ‘We did not agree on a limit – you told me. You tell me how much I can spend. How much of my own money I can spend and you have no idea. You expect the girls to go around in rags. You think pyjamas are a waste of money – pyjamas! You have no idea, no idea…’ There is quiet and then a shout. It’s Uncle Pat. Uncle Pat is shouting at Aunty Cara. ‘You STOLE! You stole from our family.’

  ‘Shoes! I bought the girls shoes. How is that stealing from our family…?’

  ‘It’s not what we agreed! Fifty quid a month we said, on extras, no more.’