You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here

by Frances Macken

  ‘Good,’ she says resolutely. ‘That’s it, so.’

  ‘That’s it decided.’ The dream is underway. I had thought the day would never come.

  ‘You won’t be troubled leaving Aidan,’ she says, snickering.

  ‘I won’t be one bit troubled.’ There’s no use getting into the long story now. Aidan’s irrelevant, and Peadar too.

  ‘I don’t know what you were thinking. You must have been lonely. You must have been missing the French lad from the coffee shop.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty more French lads in London. And Australian lads, and American lads. We can take our pick, Evelyn.’

  ‘I’ve always felt like an American on the inside. Maybe an American lad would suit me. I’m finished with Irish lads, that’s for certain.’

  I laugh, and begin pulling up items of clothing from the mound, holding them out before me. I sniff the armpits of the clothes to see if they need washing, and it’s quickly apparent that everything needs washing. ‘What’s the weather forecast for New Mexico?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’ll be hot anyway. Don’t forget to pack my gladiator sandals. They’re under the bed.’

  I go down on my hands and knees searching for the gladiator sandals. I’m crouched down, the blood rushing to my head. I see there are old canvases and paintbrushes and stumps of pencils under the bed. Remnants of the art career that never was. ‘Will you be alright going to the film festival on your own?’ I call out. I wonder how much would it cost to change the name on Peadar’s plane ticket.

  ‘I’ll be well able for it.’

  I lob the sandals into a suitcase, and a pair of flip-flops too. I pull out a yellow sundress from the mound and shake it out and Evelyn rises up off the beanbag. She takes hold of the sundress from me and scans it with distaste. ‘I hate all my clothes,’ she says. ‘I might dump the whole lot. Put them all out in the field in a pile and set fire to them.’

  ‘Could I go through them first? I might find a few things for myself.’

  She throws me a funny look, screwing up her eyes. ‘No. That’d be weird. You going around in my old clothes, like you were trying to be me.’

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘It’s just I have a distinctive style. I don’t like people wearing the same kinds of things as me.’

  ‘Alright. They’re your clothes. You can do what you like with them.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ she says, suddenly pressing her fingertips to her temples.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m having a déjà vu.’ She perches on a free corner of bedspread and blows out her cheeks. ‘It’s taking me over.’

  ‘It’s alright. It’s normal. It’s a sort of illusion. It’s electrical impulses misfiring in your brain.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she says, gawping at me like I’ve said something moronic. ‘Déjà vu is a sign that you’re on the right path. It means it’s the right thing, the two of us going to London. It’s all predetermined.’ It’s predetermined. It’s fate. Everything has aligned in a particular way to have brought this about. I’ll be on the up from here on out.

  ‘What do you think’ll happen Maeve, Evelyn? What’ll happen her when we leave Glenbruff?’

  ‘Who cares. We’re not bringing her anyway. She’d drive us soft.’

  ‘I know. She’s deficient or something.’

  ‘She’d bring us bad luck. She’s cursed.’

  ‘Still and all. We’d better call over and tell her.’ I bite my lower lip. ‘Break the news.’ I’ve a feeling she’ll take the news badly, but there’s no room for Maeve in the dream. She’s no good to us in the long run.

  ‘Jesus. Do we have to?’

  ‘Come on. We’ll go up to her now and get it over with.’

  Myself and Evelyn traipse in the small gate, up the path glittering with mica stones, and stand in under the hood of the porch. There’s no doorbell, only a wire hanging out of a hole. I rap on the door and Mary Lynch opens it straight away. She has a red face, like her blood pressure is sky high, and she clasps her hard red hands together. ‘Aren’t ye good girls calling in. I knew ye’d come.’ She’s wearing dense tan-coloured tights, a lilac housecoat and shoes with Velcro snaps. You wouldn’t know what age she is, and you wouldn’t see any resemblance between herself and her sister Alma.

  Mary fusses over us, filling up the kettle and asking if we want a piece of cake. ‘We’re grand, Mary. Ah no. We’re grand.’ She goes rooting around in the press and takes out an aluminium box with porter cake inside it. We’re handed two wedges of the cake in grease-stained paper doilies. ‘Thanks very much, Mary.’ I put the piece of the cake inside in my pocket. It’s as hard as a rock. It could be decades old. A relic.

  ‘Maeve is down in her room. Let ye go on ahead. I’m only holding ye up.’

  Maeve has a simple room with magnolia walls. She has a single bed, a tallboy wardrobe and a dressing table. She has a Glenbruff football jersey hung over the headboard, and a novena to Saint Jude stuck with a thumb tack on top of it. There’s a pot of moisturiser on the dressing table, a hairbrush with a nest of wild hair caught in the bristles and three pairs of shoes lined up at the end of the bed. A daddy-long-legs scampers along the window sill next to a gilt-framed ‘Footprints in the Sand’.

  Maeve’s sitting on the neatly made bed. She’s puffy in the face, like someone who’s slept hanging upside down from a tree. She has burst blood vessels around her eyes from crying, and a facial expression like she’s trying to solve the world’s most perplexing brainteaser. ‘I don’t know what’s the point of anything,’ she says, and the big wet eyes slowly roll round to us. ‘Is life worth living at all?’

  Amanda’s stopped taking her calls, she tells us. She’s said that Maeve’s phoning her too frequently. She can’t talk to her every day, and she’s up to her eyes with the sailing, going to events and managing her investment portfolio. ‘You’d think she’d be falling all over herself trying to make up for the lost time.’

  ‘You’re expecting too much, Maeve,’ I say. ‘Don’t you think she’s had a hard life herself, putting you up for adoption and coming off the drugs.’

  ‘What drugs? What are you on about?’ Maeve mightn’t have been told about the drugs. ‘I gave Amanda and John all my savings to invest in a block of apartments and now I’ve nothing left and the apartments can’t be sold. I gave them everything. A deposit for a house. More than that, and I gave it all away to them and now they won’t talk to me.’

  ‘Did you sign something? Is there paperwork or anything?’

  ‘No. I thought I was helping them out. I thought I’d get twice the money back. They came down to Glenbruff and said they’d make me a director of the company if I transferred the money, but they didn’t, and now they’re pretending I don’t exist.’

  ‘Go to the guards, Maeve,’ I urge her. ‘Get a solicitor.’

  ‘I can’t do that. She’s my actual mother.’

  ‘You fool, Maeve,’ Evelyn says sternly, folding her arms. I’d say she’s fit to be done with Maeve altogether, and who could blame her.

  ‘I know. I know I am. I can’t help it, girls. I am who I am.’

  ‘Some eedgit is who you are.’

  ‘All I’ve ever wanted is what everyone else has. Why is it never me?’

  ‘Jesus,’ Evelyn huffs. ‘You’d think you were the only person who’s ever suffered. Who’s ever had a bad thing happen them. I’m after ending things with Peadar and you don’t see me feeling sorry for myself.’

  ‘Oh.’ Maeve looks sheepish. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He’s let me down badly. I’ll never forgive him.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t know. How would I have known?’

  ‘Well, you know now. Anyway. Myself and Katie have come to tell you that the two of us are moving to London.’

  Maeve’s mouth drops open. She clutches the side of the mattress and her knuckles flush white. ‘What about me? I’ll be here on my own, girls. I’ll have no one.’

  �
�What about Mags Moynihan,’ Evelyn says, indifferent. ‘Aren’t ye good pals?’

  ‘I hate Mags Moynihan. I’ve nothing in common with Mags Moynihan.’ Mags Moynihan runs everywhere instead of walking. She smells things. Door handles. Trees. Her own hands. ‘Why can’t I go to London too?’

  ‘You’re not like us, Maeve,’ I tell her gently. ‘We’re different to you. We’re artists and you’re not.’

  ‘So what. The three of us are friends and that’s all that matters,’ she cries, rising to her feet. ‘Ye won’t go to London without me. I won’t let ye.’

  ‘Why would you want to go somewhere you’re not wanted.’ Evelyn makes for the door. ‘I’m off. I’m bored of you. You’re boring.’

  ‘You’re not going to London without me. I won’t allow it. I’ll put a stop to it.’

  I follow Evelyn out to the front of the house, feeling somewhat disturbed. ‘What’s she on about, not letting us go to London?’ I say, pulling the front door closed behind us. ‘What can she mean?’

  ‘Never mind her. She’s mental.’

  I stall at the small gate. ‘Maybe she could move to London but live far away from us. Maybe she could come and visit us once a week on a Sunday.’

  ‘No. Absolutely not.’

  ‘What if she does something stupid, Evelyn? What if she swallows tablets and kills herself?’

  ‘You’ve no idea how happy that’d make me.’

  Evelyn’s gone to New Mexico. She’s gone two full days. I wonder how is she getting on. It can’t be all it’s cracked up to be, going to a film festival. Everyone wearing black and taking themselves seriously, and carrying on like the film festival is the centre of the universe and nothing else going on in the world matters at all. Of course I’d love to be there too, and taking myself seriously, but I’ve London to think of now. It’ll be a whole new life in London. It’s what I’ve wanted, and I don’t have long to wait.

  I take my hefty old college laptop and bring it into Nancy’s Café and set myself up at a table way in at the back. I’ve a story in my head about a girl who doesn’t have a name but I can worry about that later. This is a girl with an ordinary life, a lonely life, and one day she passes a bookshop she’s never noticed before, and she’s drawn to a book on a shelf inside. It happens that she has just enough money to buy the book and take it home with her. The book is enchanting, with lively characters, and the girl can hear their voices in her head. Funny enough, some days afterwards she meets one of the characters from the book, and she can’t quite believe it but this character befriends her, and some days after that, the same thing happens again. The girl’s been so lonely her entire life that this is the best thing that’s ever happened to her, all of these new-found friends materialising out of a book. When she returns to the bookshop to make further enquiries, she finds that it’s just an old building shuttered up and scheduled for demolition.

  I’m all stirred up and energised with writing the screenplay, so much so that I forget all about Evelyn in New Mexico. I don’t know what time it is when I raise my head and the place is emptied out and a teenage girl is mopping round the table legs and over my shoes.

  I pack up my things and come out the door when I observe Aidan standing over the road. He’s swaying back and forth, and pissed out of his head. He shoves his hands in his pockets and rummages about in them, and there are papers and coins and cash falling out on the path. He staggers onto the road and an oncoming driver brakes to a halt and blares their horn at him. ‘Mam,’ he shouts, waving sloppily at me, his eyes glassy and bloodshot. ‘Mam. When are you coming home?’ I turn about quickly and walk at a brisk pace. ‘Mam. Mam. Come back.’

  ‘You gave poor Aidan the heave-ho,’ Robert says at home while I’m clattering around with the printer and trying to get it to work.

  ‘Where’d you hear that?’

  ‘He was chewing my ear off in Donovan’s last night. He was chewing everyone’s ear off. He was found asleep in the old phone box this morning.’

  I shiver, feeling repulsed. ‘Will you do me a favour and tell Aidan nothing about me and what I’m doing. I want to steer clear of him. I don’t want to see him.’

  ‘He wants to see you. He was sure of that. He wants to make it up to you.’

  ‘Will you keep him away from me, Robert. I want nothing at all to do with him.’

  ‘Everyone wants to work with me, girls. They’re saying I’m an original.’ She’s wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses from the duty free and I can’t see her eyes, only my own bobble head. ‘There was a panel discussion about guerrilla film-making and it ran over time because everyone was asking me questions. There was an actual queue at the microphone. I had them eating out of the palm of my hand.’

  ‘Aren’t you great,’ I murmur, looking down to see the access-all-areas neon wristband she’s wearing. How is it that Evelyn makes me feel superior and insignificant all at the same time.

  ‘We got free tickets to a pool party on a rooftop and it didn’t finish up until eight in the morning. I was in bits after it. I even did two whole lines of cocaine. Hands down I’d do it again.’

  ‘Cocaine,’ says Maeve, sucking in. She’s scuttling along the road beside us like a crab on the ocean floor. ‘You’re gone wild, Evelyn. You’re like a real celebrity.’ I haven’t been to America even the once, and now Evelyn’s been to a real pool party on a rooftop and snorted cocaine. It’s far from cocaine and pool parties we were reared.

  ‘It was everything I thought it’d be and more. I made a hundred new friends. I’d the kinds of conversations I’ve wanted to have my entire life.’

  ‘What kinds of conversations?’ I ask her, and she ignores the question. Dickhead.

  ‘It’s, like, you go through life knowing that you’re different, and you’re on a whole different level to everyone else, but I actually met people on my own wavelength in New Mexico. They actually exist.’

  ‘Is that so,’ I say flatly, making no effort to sound enthusiastic. I’m beginning to wonder about how it’s going to go in London. There’ll be no point in me going to London if it’s to be all about Evelyn. It can’t be all about Evelyn all the time. Can it?

  ‘So what have you been up to?’ she says to me. ‘It must have been quiet for you.’

  ‘I wrote a screenplay. I had an idea and I just stuck with it and wrote it over a full day.’

  She yanks up the sunglasses and embeds them in the thick dark hair. ‘A screenplay,’ she says in a suspicious tone. ‘What’s it about?’ Maeve looks to Evelyn and then to me.

  ‘It’s about a girl with no friends who’s reading a book –’

  ‘A girl with no friends reading a book. Sounds like a laugh a minute,’ she snorts, looking purposely at Maeve, and Maeve laughs on cue.

  ‘Hold on until I finish,’ I say in a hard voice, flaming with irritation. I could whip the sunglasses off her head and stamp on them. ‘She’s reading a book with really interesting characters, and then she starts dreaming about them, and then the characters start showing up in her actual life and become her actual friends. It’s magic realism.’

  ‘Or boring and shite,’ Evelyn snorts, and Maeve throws her head back with laughing. I can see her teeth have begun separating after having the braces taken off.

  ‘What are you being like that for?’

  ‘I’m joking. Jesus. Give me a read of this screenplay anyway. See if it’s any use.’

  ‘Have you been on to Peadar since?’ I hope Peadar hasn’t been plamásing Evelyn, telling her what she wants to hear and foiling our plan. I hope he hasn’t been sending her the long, winding text messages laden with cajoling language. I hope he hasn’t written her another song.

  ‘Peadar. Peadar’s great. He has an agent now. He wasn’t even searching for an agent, but he was approached in the green room at the festival and signed on the spot because he has the look they’ve been looking for. He has three meetings lined up. Over in London.’

  ‘Oh. Peadar went with you in the end, did he,�
� I say coolly, masking the burgeoning fury. I suppose he’s coming with us now, is that it. Is that the latest. You’d think she’d have consulted with me about Peadar coming to London. How will we end up making any films at all with one relationship crisis happening after another. ‘It’s back on with Peadar, is it. After all the trouble.’ It’s supposed to be me and Evelyn, not Evelyn and Peadar. It’s supposed to be me and Evelyn going to London and no one else along with us.

  ‘It is. I sent Daddy over to him and he put him straight.’ It’s all I can do to hold my tongue. ‘He has a screen test booked for a film. It’s a biopic about a troubled musician who died in a romantic way.’

  ‘What’s this talk of London again,’ Maeve says crossly, her barrel body taut, her arms stiff beside her. ‘I said I don’t want ye to go and ye’re still going on about it.’

  Evelyn titters, but I have the sense that something’s passing between herself and Maeve, a sort of telepathic dispatch, and Evelyn shudders from her legs up through her torso. ‘I’m moving on from Glenbruff, Maeve. Whether you like it or not. I have to move on.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ says Maeve under her breath. It seems that Evelyn’s right, and Maeve’s actually mental, but it’s something new to me to witness Maeve standing up to Evelyn, let alone to see Evelyn rattled by it. It’s almost like she’s afraid of her.

  I go up to Evelyn’s house with the screenplay and roll it up and shove it in the letterbox. I can hear bare feet slapping along the tiles and the sound of pages being gathered up. I can see the flash of peach-coloured dressing gown in the swirled glass panel by the door.

  Robert has work now in Amperloc, helping Daddy. He went up to see Des a few days ago to talk about the new living arrangements, but there was no one there and the house was up for sale. People are saying Des has resigned from the job following on from the letters controversy. They’re saying he’s fled to a commune in the States and he’ll never again come back.