I don’t know why he chose that moment to tell me. What really kills me is that while we were messing around with gingersnaps and giggling over the movie, he had known this all the time. At least, I assume he must have. He hardly heard it yesterday morning and came right home and told me at lunchtime. Anyway, it ruined everything for me. I felt let down, like a balloon somebody has just let the air out of.
Friday 19th September
I am still stunned. I can hardly believe this. How can grown-up people let this sort of thing happen? And to think they have the nerve to tell us how to behave! They are always rattling on in our school about how an unplanned pregnancy (they won’t say unwanted pregnancy, because that goes against the Catholic ethos) can really mess up your life. And she’s a guidance counsellor, not just any old teacher. There is a pro-adoption policy in our school. When anyone gets pregnant – I don’t mean it happens all the time, but it has happened – she is advised (a) not to marry the father, on the grounds that (i) they are too young and (ii) a pregnancy is a very bad reason for marriage, and (b) not to try to bring up the child herself, as that is supposed to damage her career propects. Well, they don’t put it like that, they say something like interrupt her education, but that’s what they mean. How can Milly-Molly-Mandy possibly go around giving out the party line on that one with her belly sticking out into the middle of next week, and a brand new wedding ring on her finger? How come pregnancy is a bad reason to get married if you are sixteen, but really the only reason if you are forty? And is forty not too old to be getting pregnant anyway? This situation has irresponsible written all over it. I bet she did it on purpose, to snare him, the cow.
She’ll have to resign. Not that the nuns would make her. That would damage their liberal reputation. But her credibility is going to be zilch after this one.
Saturday 20th September
I have to sit down very carefully several times a day and tell myself that we are going to have a baby in this house, and it’s not just any old baby, this is my half-sister or -brother we are talking about. Not to mention the other additions to this family – a stepmother and two stepsisters. That is four new people in my family virtually at the drop of a hat, just as I am getting used to being two people instead of three. It’s not fair. Especially when you think how obnoxious the other three are. Not that they’re mean or horrible or anything, just plain boring and neurotic and silly and, oh, just not like us. Of course, we’re neurotic too, everyone is, but I do think our neuroses are more creative.
Oh Mum! I wish you could come back from wherever it is dead people go to and tell him this is your house, he is your husband, you are my mother. That is the way things are meant to be, not this awful mixed-up mess of a botched family, all steps and halves. I wouldn’t ever sneer at your Colour me Beautiful theories or your wine-tasting evenings or any of your silly, oh-so-Mum-like pretensions ever again. I’d stop telling you not to be so American. I’d never correct your spelling or your table manners, I promise I wouldn’t. Why is this all happening to me? What did I do to deserve it? I know I am not the nicest person in the world, but I’m not actively evil, am I?
Monday 22nd September
I told Lisa at the weekend. She put her hand across her mouth and let a yelp, to show how amazed she was, but I don’t really think she was all that shocked really. She was just doing it for effect. She admitted then that she has suspected all along. It’s easy to say that afterwards, but she pointed out that Milly-Molly-Mandy had skipped assembly every morning so far this term, and that she had started to wear looser clothes, and her skin had got blotchy. I stared at that, but she said she read it in a book. I had a funny feeling listening to her. She made it all seem so clinical. I suppose she’s lived through a lot of her mother’s pregnancies. Maybe it’s thickened her skin. Still, I found myself doing the same thing, adding up the wine Margaret didn’t have at lunch that day, her pale complexion, Dad’s preoccupation in recent weeks. It all began to make sense, horrible, twisted sense, but logical all the same.
I don’t know how far gone she is. I don’t want to know when this calamitous event is going to happen. And I particularly don’t want to know, don’t want even to think about, when this wretched child was conceived. Was it before or after Lisbon, for example? Why do I even ask myself that? I don’t want to know. Yet I can’t stop wondering, poking at it they way you keep passing your tongue over a new filling in one of your teeth, or you can’t help picking a scab off a cut or zapping a zit. Even her hair going limp like that is supposed to be a sign, according to Lisa. Very worldlywise is our Lisa.
It’ll be lovely, though, said Lisa slyly, having a new baby in the house. I’ll come over and help you to mind it if you like. With friends like that… and you know the rest.
Monday 29th September
The wedding is in three weeks time. In three weeks I will have a stepmother, not a wicked stepmother, but rather a stupid one, which is probably worse. In three weeks I will have two unbearably stupid stepsisters. And in five and a half months I will have a new half-sibling. I don’t know how I am going to cope with all of this. Is there a book out there that tells you what the protocol is in these situations? Not that I really want to know the protocol. Protocol is what you follow when you want to behave well. I don’t. I want to behave horribly badly, but I probably won’t. I’m just too well brought up.
I haven’t met the terrible duo, A and A Magee, since the dreadful news, but according to Dad they are ecstatic about the baby. I’m sure he said that to make me feel bad that I’m not over the moon about this whole stinking situation too, the ratbag.
Tuesday 30th September
They’re all busy planning the wedding – Dad is on the phone every evening – but does anyone actually think about what it is going to be like afterwards, in this newly forged family? (Forged is a strangely appropriate term, now I come to think of it.) How on earth are we all going to get on together?
I made Dad sit down last night and tell me his plans in detail. I actually made an appointment with him, as otherwise I felt he would just go around avoiding the issue. It is only going to be in the registry office – the wedding, I mean – because of her being divorced, I suppose, and he promised there won’t be a big fuss. They aren’t going in for bridesmaids in taffeta and a tiered cake and all the bit. At least, Dad says they aren’t, but I can’t see that Ashling and Alva passing up a chance to wear floral headbands and white gloves. Well, if they do turn this into a ProNuptia circus, I will just refuse to go. I did consider refusing to go anyway, but Imelda says that would be too hard on Dad. Still, I reserve the right not to go if it all gets too awful, and I told him so.
Then I went on and said that when I wanted to know about his plans, I wasn’t really thinking about the wedding, I was thinking about life. I asked him who was going to live where, and how it was all going to work out in practice. He looked very uncomfortable when I asked him this. That was rather satisfying. I’m beginning to think that making appointments is more beneficial in the long run than throwing tantrums. I realise this is a mature approach on my part. Somebody has to be mature around here. Anyway, the most I could get out of him was that the Magees are going to move in with us. She is going to put her house on the market as soon as the wedding is over. I reminded him, very soberly, very unemotionally, very factually, that he said a few weeks ago that this was my home and he wasn’t going to move people into it unless I agreed. He looked doubly uncomfortable at this and he actually said he was sorry. That was a deeply satisfying moment, but that sort of satisfaction doesn’t last. The situation remains the same. He said lamely that the circumstances had changed, and that he couldn’t very well do anything about it now, after all there is a baby to think of. Very convenient this baby is turning out to be.
Wednesday 8th October
I’ve been trying to imagine what it’s going to be like, and I don’t much like what I imagine – her cooking in our kitchen, watching our TV, talking – swallowing – on our phone, her sl
ippers under Mum’s side of the bed, her brats sprawling on our sofa, her Tampax in our bathroom cupboard, the hairs from her hairbrush nestling in our bin.
I think I’d better sort through Mum’s clothes right away. It’s bad enough to think of her home being defiled, but at least I can protect some of her things. I couldn’t bear to think of Margaret opening a drawer and shoving Mum’s blouses and things to one side to make room for her horrible polyester things.
Thursday 9th October
I have just been struck by a most pernicious and awful thought. This baby will be their half-sibling too. Gross! ‘Stepsisters’ has a comfortingly remote sound to it, but stepsisters who are half-sisters to my half-sibling are practically family. Oh Mum! I don’t wish you were here, because that would be just too complicated, but I wish I had a mum all the same. I need one just now. Lisa is practically useless – I think she is just so titillated by the whole business that she can’t function as a best friend is supposed to, and anyway, she has her own mum to worry about – and even Imelda doesn’t really understand. No, that’s not fair, I think she understands all right, but there isn’t much she can do about it really, except be there. And she’s being there all right. She rings me every day, and we spend a lot of time together at weekends. Sometimes she comes over here for dinner, and sometimes I go and stay the night at her place. I’m glad she’s there. At least somebody in this family is dependable.
Friday 17th October
She’s really starting to show. You’d think she would get a corset or something. It’s embarrassing at school. Some of the girls are starting to notice. Somebody said fifth year have opened a book on who the father is. Mr Gravy is even money, and Fr Egan is three to one. That’s really mean. Fr Egan isn’t like that. They’re just doing it to be daring, and because it’s fashionable to accuse priests of that sort of thing. If only they knew! Well, I suppose they will soon enough. I’m not going to be able to keep hidden the fact that one of the teachers has married my dad and is about to have his baby.
It’s all very well for Ashling and Alva. They’re in a different school. Probably nobody at their school suspects a thing. Sometimes I wish I could just crawl away and hibernate and then when I woke up it would all have unhappened. I don’t mean Mum dying. I know that’s not going to unhappen. But the rest – maybe it will all turn out to be a horrible mistake. Maybe Dad will get sense. Maybe there’ll be a blue moon.
One thing for sure, I am never going to get pregnant unless I am well and truly happily married. Or maybe I’ll just be a nun and not have anything to do with that scum known as the male of the species.
Tuesday 21st October
The wedding was yesterday. Ashling and Alva weren’t actually bridesmaids. Dad said it wouldn’t be fair if I couldn’t be. Margaret said I could be, it was just that I wouldn’t, and Dad said that it came to the same thing. That was the first time he stood up for me for ages. Maybe he is beginning to regret this whole affair. Well, it’s too late now. Ha! I could make a sage little remark about making your bed and lying in it, but that would be just a little bit too literal in the circumstances.
I didn’t go in the end. I promised myself I wouldn’t if Ashling and Alva were going to go as geisha girls, and they did (Ashling actually wore a string of pearls), but it wasn’t that really. I just couldn’t face it in the end. I told Dad so at breakfast, the day before the wedding. I said I was sorry, but I didn’t think I could make it. He went white. For a moment I forgot how cross and upset I was and that this is all entirely his own doing and his own fault and I almost felt sorry for him. But I went on spooning up my cornflakes (yes, cornflakes – Dad’s been too preoccupied lately to bother with his elaborate breakfasts) and I didn’t say anything for a bit. Then he sighed a very long, elaborate, planned sort of sigh, and said it was up to me, he couldn’t force me. I said I wasn’t doing it to be mean (though a tiny part of me knew that wasn’t true) it was just that I couldn’t face it (that part was true, though – feelings are so complicated aren’t they?), and he said that was OK, and then I went around to his side of the table and stood behind his chair and gave him a little backwards sort of hug. He patted my hand and didn’t say anything, but I think that meant he forgave me for not going, which is only fair – after all it is my prerogative. I don’t have to actively participate in this whole sorry affair. It’s bad enough having the Magees thrust into intimacy with me against my will, without my having to be there, cheering them all on at the signing of the contract.
Imelda was one witness, and Fr Egan was the other. He went along, even though it was a registry office wedding, which I think was pretty sporting of him. I could never truly respect a man who spends every Saturday of his life polishing his Toyota or Mazda or whatever it is, but still, he’s decent enough. Maybe I really will be a nun.
I thought about going to school yesterday, treating it like any other day, but then I thought why give up the chance of a perfectly good day off, so instead I stayed in bed until Dad had left the house in his corduroy jacket and second-best shirt – he was careful not to overdo it, so as not to offend me more than strictly necessary. Big deal.
Then I got up and sort of mooched around for a bit, but I couldn’t get it out of mind what was going on in Molesworth Street. In the end I hopped on a bus and went and stood around outside the registry office. (I know it’s correctly the register office, but nobody actually says that, and I am working on not being pedantic. I think it is important to recognise one’s faults and work to eliminate them. If everyone took that attitude, the world would be a pleasanter place.)
I felt a bit goofy hanging around, and for one wild moment I thought I might pop down to Read’s on Nassau Street and buy a packet of confetti, but then I thought that would be a bit inconsistent. I sort of kicked my heels for a while, and in the end I decided it was a bad idea to have come, so I went off to Waterstone’s and had a good poke around the poetry section, which is usually very consoling. But it wasn’t all that consoling yesterday, and at one point when I was trying to read a poem about Seamus Heaney’s mother dying I couldn’t read it properly, the words kept getting fuzzed up and sort of sliding around the page, and then I realised that the reason was that I was crying. I slid the little book back between the others on the shelf – poetry books are always so elegantly slim – and slunk out of the shop before someone saw me and tried to be kind. I didn’t think I could bear it if anyone asked what was wrong. Not that it was very likely really. People don’t. Grief embarrasses people. They pretend they don’t want to embarrass you by not letting on they’ve seen your grief, but really it is themselves they don’t want to embarrass.
I reckoned they must be well and truly married by then, so I went to catch the bus home. But standing there at the bus-stop in the cold, I had a sudden impulse and I caught another bus instead, hardly knowing what I was doing. I sat on the top deck all by myself and blew my nose privately, and looked out of the window at all the people scurrying around, shopping as if their lives depended on it, as if shopping was a valid thing to do with your life, but instead of feeling superior to them as I usually do when I notice the shallowness of other people (which is quite often, I have to admit), I just felt immensely sorry for them all, imagining that they were probably all shopping so they wouldn’t have to do anything more real. Which is a load of sentimental hogwash, I know. Half of them probably weren’t shopping at all. They were probably just buying stamps or running out of the office to snatch an early lunch or rushing off to a dentist’s appointment.
It was really only when I caught sight of the high grey walls and the rolling green sward with all the neat little markers that I fully realised where it was I was going. I stumbled off the bus, my long rust-coloured scarf that I always wear once the weather turns autumnal nearly catching in the doors. I snatched it from the rubbery jaws just in time, the bus yielding it up with a dramatic sigh, and wound it several times around my neck, like some sort of comforting talisman, and then I headed through the big iron gate
s.
I couldn’t find Mum’s grave at first. We haven’t been for ages, and anyway, we usually approach it from a different entrance because we take a different route in the car. For a few awful moments I thought I wasn’t going to be able to find her among all these dead people, dead strangers, Byrnes and Campbells and O’Connors and Murphys and Langrells and Ryans and O’Hallorans and O’Dowds and Cogans and Hutchinsons. Dead people have all the same names as live ones. Well, obviously they must have, but still, it’s sort of unexpected. I think it would be sensible if they arranged cemeteries alphabetically, like in a telephone book or a sort of gigantic Who Was Who, but I can see there would be practical difficulties. Still, it would make it much easier for visitors. As it is, it’s like those supermarkets where they assume people are illiterate and don’t alphabetise the fruit and vegetables at the weigh-point. (I know they think the people are illiterate, because they show helpful little pictures of the produce.)
Mum’s grave had got sort of run in, you know, like a pair of shoes you’ve got used to. It doesn’t have that sharp, pinched, forlorn, new look any more, and looking at it, almost middle-aged now in grave terms, I realised that by now there were other new girls and new boys, other families whose loss was more recent, and I felt almost envious of them, with their fresh, raw grief. The relatives of the people in the brown graves were still at the stage where people pressed their hands and murmured condolences, and their daughters and sons, if they had them, were probably still not expected to turn in their homework with alacrity. Whereas my friends, my teachers, my neighbours have all got used to my not having a mother any more. But I haven’t got used to it, and I don’t see how I am going to get used to having a stepmother instead.
Sisters ... No Way! Page 6