All Our Hidden Gifts

by Caroline O’donoghue

  We watch one another for a moment. Wary, like two wild animals trying to see if the other will attack first. His eyes look darker in the wintery light, free from the emerald glint they flash in the day. We make eye contact for so long that I start wondering what he sees in mine. Does he watch for the grey-blue of my eyes, noticing their shift? Is that too much to expect from someone who hates me as much as he does?

  I turn to go, clicking my tongue at Tutu nervously, uttering a “C’mon, boy,” under my breath.

  “No, Maeve, don’t go,” Roe says. “I’m sort of glad you’re here.”

  My heart thumps like a grandfather clock being kicked over. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I feel terrible for blowing up at you like that on Friday. I was way out of order. You didn’t deserve that.”

  “I did. Everything you said was true, y’know?” I say, digging my hands into my jacket pockets. “I should have been a friend to Lily. And to you. But believe me, the only reason I wasn’t in touch was because the school and my parents kept saying not to. You give families privacy at times like this – or something.”

  Roe frowns. “So I heard. Do you know, I think people only say that to make themselves feel better for not phoning or texting or whatever. I keep hearing that this is a time ‘for family’ but I have far less to say to my Aunt Jessica than I do to you. Frankly, I wish you were the one staying in the spare room.”

  “Thanks,” I reply, uncertain and flustered. A genuine warmth bubbles through me, picturing myself back in the O’Callaghans’ house. Not as Lily’s friend, but as Roe’s girlfriend. A sudden image of myself appears in my head, sitting up in the guest bed, his body sliding in next to mine.

  I look at the floor, certain that he can see me thinking this, that I have turned his innocent comment into a fantasy about sharing a bed with him. My fingers wrench at the lining of my pockets, tearing at the string.

  “Sorry,” he says, “I, er … I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “No, not at all,” I bring my cold, chapped hands to my face, and realize that my cheeks are burning red. “Have you met Tutu?”

  “I haven’t,” he says, bending down to scratch the dog’s ear. “What is he, labradoodle?”

  “Or cockapoo. I can’t remember which.”

  I can remember, obviously. He’s a cockapoo. But to contradict Roe at this point, even on the breed of my own dog, feels too dangerous. It’s like I’m defusing a bomb, and one wrong tug on a wire could send us both sky-high.

  “He looks more like your family than you do.”

  “Yeah,” I laugh. “Another effortlessly charming blond Viking, aren’t you, Tutes? Maybe I’ll get a gnarly old tomcat so I feel like I have a friend in the house.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Hey, I don’t want to complain about family problems in front of you.”

  “Ha! Wow, you’re right. I am Mr Family Problems.” Roe’s grimace is edged with a smile. “No, but seriously. Tell me about it. Give me something to think about that isn’t Lil.”

  “Well, fine. It’s my sister. Joanne? Do you remember her?”

  “Of course I do. She took us to that marriage-equality rally a few years ago.”

  I had completely forgotten about Roe being there. I remember standing with Jo, yelling at the idiot with the “family values” speech, but I had forgotten that Roe was sometimes adjacent to my Lily memories. He was always her gawky, moody brother. Quiet and pale. Behind his back, we called him Colin, as in, the awkward shut-in from The Secret Garden.

  “Oh yeah. I forgot you were there.”

  “It meant a lot to me, that day.”

  I say nothing. It feels like he’s about to say something else, and I want to give him a chance.

  “Anyway…” he continues. “You’re having issues with Jo.”

  “Yeah. She’s just always trying to be my parent, y’know? She thinks she can tell me what to do.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose she probably feels weird about living at home still, even though she’s in her twenties. Maybe she feels … inadequate and that her life should have started by now. So she’s trying to find some weird sense of purpose by being overbearing with me. Or something.”

  “It doesn’t sound like it’s ‘or something’. It sounds like that’s the whole deal.”

  I shrug. “Yeah.”

  “You’re pretty smart at reading people. I can see why your tarot business went so well.”

  “Until it didn’t,” I finish.

  “Yeah. Until it didn’t.”

  I clasp at the cards in my pocket, wondering if now is the time to tell him. About the Housekeeper, about the dream, about who took Lily.

  “I want to talk to you about something,” he says, just as I’m about to fish out the cards. “I have … a theory about what’s happening with Lil.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek hard, and my hand clasps even tighter on the cards.

  “OK. Tell me.”

  “Can we walk and talk? I feel … weird staying in one space. It’s better when I’m moving.”

  “Sure.”

  So we walk, and he talks, and Tutu sniffs around us. Every so often I look up at him, his skin bluish, our heads almost level with one another. Girls in my class are always talking about height. All the boys from St Anthony’s, regardless of how unbelievably average or boring or stupid they are, get a free pass if they’re tall. They automatically become fanciable. Maybe that’s why Roe has never cropped up in conversations before, when games of Who Has a Hot Brother? spread through lunchtime discussions. As a non-tall non-athlete, he was probably disqualified from the jump.

  But surely I can’t be the only person who noticed that he’s gorgeous? When did that happen, and where was I when it did?

  “So, on Friday. You saw that weird protest, right? At Basement?”

  “Yeah. Fiona and I were there when the Children of Brigid guys showed up. We were trying on dresses when they came in to complain about the window display. Then a couple of hours later, they’ve managed to summon this huge crowd. It was bizarre.”

  “Right, so, you saw that everyone was really, really young, right?”

  “Yes. It was crazy. Like our age. Fiona and I tried to research them but hardly anything came up.”

  “Right? For some reason, Children of Brigid have managed to keep their name out of the papers, but there have been all these weird reports lately about a spike in young people going religious. Joining ‘organizations’.”

  Roe puts the word in bunny ears. This literally stops me in my tracks. Organizations. Where have I heard that before?

  “It’s like … it’s like there are journalists who either want to find something but can’t, or want to say something and they’re not allowed to.”

  “Like Scientology? Aren’t those guys famously into hounding people with their lawyers?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Anyway, they seem to be really good at attracting young, vulnerable teenagers. I’m thinking that maybe they managed to … to lure Lily away.”

  “Oh,” I say, genuinely dazzled by this reasoning. I fidget. Yes. This sounds reasonable. Far more reasonable than, say an evil child-snatching witch summoned from a tarot card reading.

  I suddenly feel very silly, and very young.

  “What do your parents think? And the Gardaí?”

  “They ignore everything I say.” He shrugs. “They keep talking about ‘minimizing my trauma’, as if that’s something you can just … decide.”

  “It must be really lonely for you at home right now,” I say, and the urge to touch him on the arm is so strong that I have to pinch my right hand to stop it from happening. “Have your parents gone crazy strict, like everyone else’s?”

  “The opposite. Weirdly enough, it’s like they’ve stopped seeing me entirely,” he says. “The funny thing is that they used to be so strict. Family dinners every night, no hanging around town after school. Homework
done before TV. All that. Now, it’s like they’ve realized that none of it … mattered.”

  Roe stops walking and scoops his hand in the dirt. He picks up a stone and smooths it between his thumb and forefinger. It’s so small and black that it almost looks like the necklace Dad got me from Portugal.

  “I think they’re still in shock. Like they’ve forgotten they have another kid. Last night, I just walked out of the house at 10 p.m. and didn’t come back until after one. I don’t think they even noticed. My mum was just sitting in her armchair, staring at nothing.”

  Turning to face the river, he unleashes the stone and lets it skim on the water’s surface. It bounces once, twice, then sinks.

  “And where were you?”

  “Just walking. I actually went down to the Salvation Army to see if they knew anything about CoB. They didn’t. Then I just walked around for a bit. Listened to music.”

  “If you really think there’s something to this CoB story, you should join their Facebook group. That seems to be where they do most of their organizing. Fiona and I tried to join it, but as far as I know they haven’t replied. I think they’re … choosy.”

  I show it to him on my phone. He pulls out his own, finds the group and clicks “join group”.

  “I’m going to go to one of their meetings,” he says. “I’ll play the vulnerable artsy teen card. Make them think I need help or whatever. Maybe it’ll get me closer to Lily. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s at some Jesus Camp somewhere, wearing a sack dress and picking beans.”

  “Sure,” I reply. “Finding the Virgin Mary’s face in a carrot. I can see it.”

  We laugh, and it feels good. Good to imagine a different outcome for Lily. Good to think of this as a story that could be funny some day, a thing we all look back on and laugh about together.

  And that’s how we spend the evening. Walking the length of the river until we’re on the outskirts of the city centre, talking about who we are, and who we were when we first knew each other, as sibling-of-friend, as friend-of-sibling. We dig out isolated moments from our adjacent childhoods. Snatches of time where we were briefly aware of each other, our lives like planets whose orbits could only briefly synch with one another.

  I get two texts, one from each parent. Both of them are frantic, as if suddenly conscious that they haven’t seen me in a few hours. I message back, and tell them I’m on a dog walk with Fiona.

  DON’T BE LATE, Mum messages back.

  “There was a birthday party,” Roe says. “Lily was going through some kind of Enid Blyton phase and she’d read about that stupid game. That reverse hide ‘n’ seek English kids played.”

  “Ah, how charmingly Protestant of her,” I nudge.

  “Hey,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I get enough of that in a Catholic boys’ school.”

  He wrinkles his brow. “Anyway, what was that game called again?”

  “Sardines?”

  “Yes!

  “I remember.”

  “We were under my parents’ bed.”

  And then, suddenly, I really do remember it. Lying stiff under a cast-iron bed, my limbs rigid, lolling my head sideways to look at him. Him. Shrimpy and black-haired. Buck-toothed, with his pointer finger on top of his closed mouth. “Ciúnas!” he whispered. “Ciúnas.”

  “You told me to shut-up in Irish,” I tell him. “You told me, ‘Ciúnas!’ Like you were my teacher. I hated you so much for that.”

  “Oh my God, I was such a prissy little kid,” he says, rolling his eyes at the memory. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, don’t be. It was great that there was someone to feel cooler than.”

  “Y’know, sometimes I forget what a cow you are, but there you go and remind me.”

  Mum phones to ask where I am. I reply that I’m still out with the dog and she says, “Still?” in a suspicious way, so we turn back.

  We have to walk through the tunnel underpass again, a place so devoid of light that I can’t even see my hands when I wave them in front of my face. It’s narrow: about the width of a wardrobe. Tutu charges through it, preferring to sniff at the riverbank on the other side. Roe and I have to plod. It’s too narrow for both of us to walk through comfortably side by side, so I fall in behind him. I try to keep my pace up to match his, but my foot catches on a beer bottle left rolling on its side.

  I stumble forwards, arms flailing in front of me, crashing into Roe’s shoulder in the darkness.

  “Hey, hey!” he says, catching me. He puts his arm around my shoulder to steady me.

  He leaves it there.

  We stand, for a moment, in total darkness. My left side against the clammy stone wall. My right side wedged into his warm frame. I can feel his ribcage softly, silently moving with his breath.

  I don’t move. I don’t think.

  A lie.

  I do think.

  I think: if he were going to kiss me, now would be the moment. All he would need to do is turn his head slightly, to angle his body just a couple of inches, and we would be nose to nose, lip to lip. A movement that, if you rounded it down, would be hardly a movement at all, but would change everything.

  I feel his body turn. Now we are facing each other. I still can’t see anything, but can feel the slight huff of his breath on my lower lip. He places a hand on each of my shoulders.

  My skin is screaming to be touched. Pleading with me in a way my body has never pleaded before. Making its case like a lawyer in court. Miss Chambers, I think you’ll see, based on the evidence provided, that this boy wants to touch you, and you should respond by jumping on him, wrapping your legs around his waist and kissing him until he falls over.

  Someone driving on the road must be using their headlights, because in an instant, we are shot through with the electric white light that fills the tunnel.

  The light breaks something. It gives him sense. He takes half a step backwards, and lets his hands slide from my shoulders, to my elbows and then away altogether.

  “Well,” he says, finally, “look who’s playing sardines again.”

  And for the second time in our new friendship, Roe O’Callaghan leaves me, rejected in a tunnel.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I DREAM ABOUT THE HOUSEKEEPER AGAIN THAT NIGHT. A cold snap hits and I wake up with clouds of my own breath hanging in the air.

  I’m following the Housekeeper along the Beg, but she is perpetually a step ahead of me. I snatch at her gown, her wet hair, her icy, sculpted fingers, but I can never get a grip on her. When we reach the underpass, she turns around to face me. That’s when the water comes. The muddy river water that fills up my stomach and lungs, spilling out of my mouth, dirty and tasting like copper.

  Sometimes I get a sense that Lily is there, watching somehow. It’s not something I can explain or point to, just a general feeling that only makes sense in the slippery dream logic of the Housekeeper’s world. Lily is there, but not visible.

  On Monday morning, I see Roe on the bus.

  “Hey,” he says, moving aside to make room for me. “Wow, are you OK?”

  “Yeah,” I reply abruptly, scanning my uniform for stains. “Why?”

  “You look like you haven’t slept. And believe me, I know what that looks like.”

  “I haven’t,” I say, and for a moment I consider telling him about the dreams, and the Housekeeper, and the sense that Lily is close but unable to show herself. But it’s too much. Too weird. Too silly. And his theory about CoB is solid, even if it doesn’t exactly ring true in my head.

  “I’m just worried about her,” I say, truthfully. “And … I don’t know, I just have this feeling that she’s near by.”

  Roe nods, looking relieved to have a partner in melancholy.

  “What are you doing tonight?” he asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “There’s a CoB meeting in town. They approved my Facebook request. Do you want to come?”

  “Uh … sure. If you think it’s safe.”

  “What? Are you
afraid of getting brainwashed, Chambers?”

  Oh God. He’s used my last name. Lord protect me from beautiful musicians who call me by my last name.

  “No,” I reply, my voice a whole octave higher than I want it to be. “Let’s do it.”

  “The meeting is at eight. Meet you at the river around seven? We can walk in together.”

  “Sure.” Great. The river. The site of nightmares and constant sexual rejection.

  That day, the story of the woman with Lily is around the whole school. It sours the glamour for people, I think. Running away with a strange man, or even being kidnapped by him, has a hot tinge of danger to it. Running away with a strange woman is a different proposition.

  “Huh,” I hear one girl say. “I guess it makes sense she was a lesbian.”

  “Oh, come on,” says another. “Everyone knew Lily O’Callaghan was a lesbian.”

  “Have you seen her brother?”

  “I know. Clearly it runs in the…”

  I walk out of the room. I don’t think anybody notices.

  At lunch, I tell Fiona about the almost-kiss in the underpass. She is furious, which is comforting.

  “You can’t just do that,” she rails. “You can’t just… What did he do, again?”

  “Sort of … nothing. He steadied me from falling over and then his face was, I don’t know … very close to mine.”

  “Huh. It sounded sexier the first time. Go through it again.”

  So I do. The darkness. Our bodies touching. The slight warmth of his breath on my lower lip. The way he said we were “playing sardines again”.

  “Ughhhhhhh, kill me. Kill me dead.”

  “Why do you think he’s being so … I don’t know, such a tease?”

  “Wow, problematic.”

  “You know what I mean. He seems to really like me. And he wants to spend all this time with me. And…”

  “Maeve. His sister is missing. Can you imagine how screwed up his head is right now?”

  I don’t have to imagine it. I’ve had the nightmares, felt the guilt, hung on to the desperate, cosmic pull of the tarot cards. I still can’t banish the idea that the cards have something to do with Lily’s disappearance.

  But Roe is smart. I keep reminding myself of that. Much smarter than me – and he might be onto something with his CoB lead.