Improper Order

by Sullivan, Deirdre; Slattery, Fidelma;

  Also, I am no one’s favourite person any more. Joel has his family and Ciara has Syzmon, Ella has Mr Cat (and maybe, a bit, Caleb?), Dad has Hedda. (He would deny that Hedda is his favourite person, but she is. He tries to get me out of the way so they can have as much alone time as possible — this is not what one does to one’s favourites.)

  I forget about how changed the world is now sometimes when I am living life and amn’t thinking. But the world is very different and there was no way in hell that I was going to dance in the same circle as the boy whose father killed my mum. Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t explain to anyone either why I couldn’t do it.

  I was really worried I would start to cry and I didn’t want to cry because I don’t want people to think that I’m sad all the time or to always associate me in their heads with death and tears and sorrow. I want to be able to have fun, and I am, but just not constantly. Or not without feeling slightly ashamed afterwards.

  Mum would have loved to hear about tonight. Ciara could have come over to our little house and Mum would have helped do our make-up. She wasn’t very good at make-up, but she enjoyed the ritual of putting it on before a night out, especially blusher, because she liked the feel of the brush against her cheek. She would have stayed up late to pick us up and make us tea and listen to all the gossip, what people wore and who said what and who kissed who and everything. Sometimes, after she came home from a night out, she’d wake me r) up and we’d have biscuits and chat. She actually liked talking to me. She listened to my opinions and so on. This is a rare and wonderful quality in a parent. Mum was a rare and wonderful woman.

  I decided to get the Nitelink bus home because it was late and I didn’t want to have to make awkward conversation with a taxi driver. Also, I felt like walking. The kind of walking that’s like swimming, where you go at a rhythmic pace as fast as your two little legs can carry you until the cold wind makes your ears hurt and your mind goes slowly blank as worries ooze out into the air. Suddenly, someone grabbed my elbow. Hard.

  As I yanked it away, squaring my shoulders and pulling my arms close to my body, I realised that it was actually Felix. Which was lucky for him, because my next move would have been to scream, ‘Fire!’ and kick him somewhere vulnerable.

  Two options were open to me at this point. I could either burst into a river of snotty tear-gasps or get irate. The latter seemed the safer of the two. Also, I don’t appreciate profanity. I have never acted anything but nice to him and also it is SO not my job to mind Ella. So I told him so, brushed him off and kept on walking and was really snippy and monosyllabic when he followed me and tried to make conversation.

  He was on his way to find Ella, whom he was supposed to be minding. Mary was gone to Carlow for the weekend and he really didn’t want to disturb her. Ella wasn’t replying to his texts, which is probably the best course of action if you do not want your night cut short by an overprotective older sibling. Anyway, Felix said he was sorry for calling me a bitch and I said that I accepted his apology. I did not say that it was OK, because I don’t think it was OK. I think it was rude and uncalled for, as it happens. I understand that he was upset about Ella; I do. But that does not give him the right to insult me.

  ‘I have to go get her,’ he said, meaning Ella, of course.

  He was pretty worried about her, and now that he had ascertained that I wasn’t going to hold a grudge over the bitch thing he wanted to go to the club and get Ella and take her home by any means necessary.

  ‘You can’t do that. She’s with a boy.’

  It was out before I even thought that maybe I would want to censor it — I mean, it’s not any of his business really. Also, it made him even more worried, especially when he heard it was Caleb. I may have ranted a little about Caleb, back around that time he spat at me. I tried explaining that if he followed through with his stupid plan, he would completely humiliate Ella.

  ‘No, I won’t. She won’t care,’ was his incredibly naive response.

  I laid out the facts: she is a teenage girl. At her first disco dancey-type affair. With a boy she may or may not be interested in. Then I simply repeated his plans: to go into the club, collect his sister and, in front of everyone, tell her she has to go home because she is not supposed to be out this late.

  He nodded and said, ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just text her and tell her that there was something wrong with Mr Cat? She would have been home in a flash.’

  Felix looked at me with respect in his eyes.

  ‘That is EXACTLY what I am going to do. Want to share a taxi home?’ (Their house is on the way to my house.)

  At this point, I remembered that my house keys were in my overnight bag at Ciara’s. I didn’t feel like going back but what else was I going to do? It isn’t like Mac is a murderer or anything. Just related to a manslaughterer. (Is manslaughterer even a word?)

  I wanted Joel. He has an amazing ability to make things seem a little bit better, even when they really, really aren’t. I rang him and asked if he wanted to go for chips. But he had gone home already because I had gone and then Kevin had gone and then everyone was kissing everyone else and it was a whole big thing that he wanted no part of. I explained that I had run into Karen in the bathrooms and that she had said something (at this point I teared up) really mean. He was sympathetic but could not come back into town to get me, seeing as how we do not yet have cars of our own or money for endless taxis.

  Speaking of money for endless taxis, Joel suggested I ring the moustachioed one, who would no doubt be delighted by my snivelling interruption of his hot date. Only the way he put it was, ‘Why don’t you ring your dad?’

  That made a kind of sense, so I rang Dad and organised that he would pick me up at Ella’s house in forty-five minutes or so. He was at Hedda’s and had to organise a taxi of his own, seeing as how they like to sip red wine and gaze into each other’s eyes as their teeth become stained and their speech becomes emphatic.

  Felix and I ran to the taxi rank. We had to run, because if Ella got home before we did and saw that Mr Cat was perfectly all right, her rage would be great.

  ‘How do we make a cat look sick?’ asked Felix, poor innocent fellow that he is.

  I told him it was pretty much the same as a human: smear some goo around its mouth, press it to a hot water bottle and dampen its brow a little. Also, Mr Cat has a terrible fear of carrots, so if we brandished a carrot or two at him he would probably act all cringey and not himself.

  We got home with time — but not much time — to spare. Mr Cat was in his basket, being asleep. He was not best pleased when we woke him up. One look at his grumpy, arrogant little features and I was feeling a little guilty.

  ‘I don’t think I can go through with this, Felix.’

  ‘Me neither. He’s just too whiskery and aristocratic.’

  ‘Meow,’ said Mr Cat, complaining mildly.

  ‘Maybe if we wrap him in a blanket and feed him delicacies that would be a better plan.’

  ‘Yes, let’s wrap him in a blanket and feed him delicacies. She will think we are taking care of him.’

  And therein lies the power of the cat. No matter what you intend to do, somehow or other it always ends up with delicacies and ear-scratching.

  Beef, salmon, chicken. But, weirdly, not ham. Mr Cat hates ham almost as much as he is frightened of carrots. He hisses when he smells a slice.

  Catnip. Ella grows her own in a pot in her room. Mr Cat loves that pot. He will sometimes rub himself against it for what to him probably seems like minutes, but to us is actually, like, an hour and a half to three hours. Mr Cat has a problem.

  Cream. Mr Cat loves cream. He gets disappointed when given a saucer of milk because it is not cream. He will stare at it endlessly, wondering why it is not cream, give it one cursory lick in case he was wrong and it was cream all along, and then stalk off disappointedly, possibly to Ella’s room to nip his sorrows in the bud with a visit to his special pot of drugs.

 
Cheese. Mr Cat enjoys a variety of fine cheeses. Especially when cut into chunks. If you hold a chunk of cheese in the air, he will go on his hind legs and do a little ‘give me cheese’ dance of shame. It is the least dignified activity he engages in and this shows how much he values cheese. ‘He will not do a dance for meat/he will not wobble on his feet/but if you take a cube of cheese/then he will do the dance of please’ is a song Felix, Ella and I have made up especially for the cheese dance.

  Cream cheese on a cat treat you get in a shop. Mr Cat likes cream. Mr Cat likes cheese. The marriage of the two entrances him on a whole new level. If someone ever comes up with a way to put cream cheese into cubes, I think he would die from an excess of wonderment.

  When Ella got home, I was dozing on the sofa beside Felix, who was also dozing on the sofa. Mr Cat was on the kitchen counter, quickly working his way through an entire block of cheddar that he was only supposed to be given a bit of.

  Ella put the cheese away, conducted a full physical examination on Mr Cat, woke us up and told us that the rest of the night had been fun, that Dolphin Laura and Mac had left early to go to a house party of some description, and that Ciara was sad because she thought I was mad at her. (I texted her on the way home to say

  Not mad at you. Sorry for leaving early. Long story involving Karen and drama. Didn’t punch her, though. Will chat soon xoxo p.s. make me a hat.

  Hopefully that’ll do the job.)

  Also, Caleb held Ella’s hand on the way to the taxi rank. They walked there with Ciara and Syzmon.

  I was all, ‘That’s exciting!’ because even if I disapprove of Caleb, I approve of Ella being happy.

  Felix was all, ‘I don’t like this Caleb fellow.’ I told him to stop sounding like a forty-year-old. At this point in time, the phone rang. It was Dad. He was in a taxi, and so I hugged them both goodbye (Ella doesn’t really like hugs but I wanted to hug Felix so I pretended like I was a huggy person in order to get what I wanted. and headed off.

  Fintan, Lord of the Realm, Member of the Golf Club, Grower of the Moustache Joel Once Considered Cool, Owner of the Huge House in Which I Live, was not best pleased that his date had been cut short. He had been trying to convince Hedda not to have doubts about moving in together or something. I didn’t care, I just wanted to be at home, home where nobody ever uses the word ‘smoosh’ in an inappropriate manner.

  ‘How was the disco?’ asked Fintan. (When he was young, club/dancey events were called discos and shoulder pads were the new hotness.)

  ‘OK,’ I said, aware that the taxi driver was listening.

  Anyway, we got home, stopping (oh, my!) for chips on the way. We finished them at the kitchen table.

  ‘Why didn’t you stay at Ciara’s?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Urrrgh. Long story.’

  ‘Did you two have a row?’

  ‘No. It was Karen. She said some things.’

  ‘About your ridiculous ballerina skirt?’

  Dad hates my tutu. Because he knows nothing about what is or isn’t pretty.

  ‘NO! My skirt is awesome. About Mum.’

  ‘Oh. That’s much worse.’

  ‘Mmmm;

  And so, in an uncharacteristically open and honest move, I told Dad what Karen had said, leaving out the part about me fancying Mac and feeling like a big dirty betrayer for my lustful thoughts.

  He was appropriately irate with her and called her ‘a little wagon’. Also, he suggested that she was jealous of my ‘intelligence and beauty’, which is such a sweetly deluded dad-ish thing to say that I burst out laughing and promptly felt a little better.

  He also wanted to go into school and tell Ms Cleary about Karen being the Devil, but I told him not to bother. It would just give her more of a reason to hate me. Sigh.

  Anyway, after about an hour of chatting about Brian McAllister and how it’s not his family’s fault he did such a dreadful thing but how they should still stay the hell away from us, because being reminded of the circumstances of Mum’s death sucks as hard as a barnacle on a ship’s hull, we toddled off to bed.

  But I couldn’t switch my brain off so I scribbled and ranted a bit at poor sleepy Roderick, who is hiding under his fleecy blanket in a manful attempt to drown out the music I have on in the background. It’s about four in the morning now, so he is right to want to get some rest. I might have to emulate the little furry grumpus, or else my hot water bottle will get cold and I’ll have to make a new one all over again. And that would NEVER do.

  ACCOUTREMENTS: Bits ’n’ bobs, paraphernalia, stuff that goes along with other stuff. Accoutrements are usually related to a specific thing. For example, accoutrements that go with Ciara’s GHD include a misting bottle full of water and a special serum for hair smoothening. Accoutrements that go with her sewing machine include bobbins of thread, needles, pins, a foot pedal, a box full of cloth and a special scissors that came with its own sharpener.

  ASSIDUOUS: Caring, mindful. I would like a boyfriend who was assiduous about being nice to me. But I would not like a boyfriend who was assiduous about pointing out my physical imperfections. Sometimes I worry that when I finally do get kissed, whoever kisses me will swoop in and then notice the blackheads on my nose and be all ‘eww’ and run away. Ciara does not share this fear because she has Syzmon and no imperfections.

  CRANDES DAMES OF THE THEATRE: A grande dame of the theatre is a fancy old actress who is very important and wears fur coats and jewels she got from admirers in her gilded youth. In my head, a grande dame of the theatre has a British accent, but I suppose a Russian or French one would also be acceptable.

  PLATEAUING: Levelling out. A plateau is a flat surface up high, so if something goes flat for a while, while being up high it is plateauing.

  ADJACENCE: The state of being near to, just around the corner from. My adjacence to Felix often causes me to break out in tingles and fantasies in which I am the lead character in a romantic comedy where he will do anything to win my heart. It’s pretty pathetic how needy fantasy-Felix can be. He is lucky fantasy-me puts up with him.

  LENIENT: Lax, permissive. Parents who say things like, ‘I’d rather you drink/smoke/take speed at home than out on the streets like a delinquent,’ are permissive. Also parents who let their kids get LOADS of piercings and tattoos. But the second way to be permissive is better than the first because piercings and tattoos are lovely. If I were allowed to, I would get my lip pierced and also get a tattoo of a cowslip on my ribcage, just under my heart, in memory of my mum. People called her ‘Bláth’, which means flower, and cowslips were her favourite bloom of all.

  PROMISCUOUS: Sexually free-spirited. Getting a lot of play. Sometimes the word ‘slutty’ is used to describe promiscuous women but only by haters. I think that people should be allowed to get with each other as much or as little as they like, unless they are hurting someone or endangering their health. **WARNING: Excessive promiscuity can lead to HIV or putting your back out.**

  INCLEMENT: Not clement. Wet, cold, rotten Irish weather is inclement. Which is weird, because I have NEVER heard someone exclaim, ‘Ooh, look how clement the weather is today! Not a cloud in the sky. Yay for clemency in terms of weather!!!’

  CONTRABAND: Things you are not supposed to have, for example alcohol, drugs and firearms. I think that half the fun of drinking when you are too young to do it legally is the fact that it is contraband and therefore terribly bold behaviour altogether.

  VOYEURISM: The ‘ism’ of the word voyeur. Voyeur is basically a tarted-up way of saying peeping Tom. If you get off on looking at up-skirt videos on YouTube, you are a voyeur. If you have a peephole that goes into a changing room and you look through it like a dirty pervert, then you are a voyeur. If you walk into a room and two people are hooking up and don’t notice you and instead of walking away like a normal human being you take a seat and stare at them with watery bulge-eyes, then you are a voyeur. Who engages in voyeurism.

  EMPHATIC: A potent mixture of definite and enthusiastic. The way people talk whe
n they are trying to convince you of their deeply held beliefs or telling you that you are not allowed to get a facial piercing.

  A NAME: SOMETHING FISH HAVE, SOMETHING SUNNED-ON SKIN DOES (6)

  Dad is letting me transfer to another swimming club because I don’t really want to be around Laura the Human Dolphin.

  I wonder if she knew who I was. If she did, I think it was a bit insensitive of her to be all friendly and stuff. I mean, she is going out with the boy whose dad killed my mum and that is a decidedly side-taking move.

  I can’t believe I didn’t cop about Mac earlier. I mean, the clues were there, even if they were more cryptic than simplex. The dad-not-being-able-to-drive thing was a big clue. Also the Mac bit of his name.

  I can’t believe Brian McAllister has such a handsome son. It surely is nature’s way of compensating for being the offspring of a drunken killer. He’d probably rather be ugly and have a dad who didn’t go to prison, though.

  Although I doubt Laura the Human Dolphin would go out with a boy who wasn’t good-looking. Not that she’s shallow, it’s sort of that she’s so pretty herself that it would just look wrong.

  Karen was very smug at school on Monday. But then Caleb, in a fit of kindly disloyalty, told me that she waxes her neck. Her hairline starts at the top of her back, you see, so if she didn’t wax it regularly she would resemble some sort of human/chimp hybrid. I know that this is nothing to be ashamed of and has nothing to do with her being the Devil, but it did make me feel a bit better.

  I told them about Mac on Monday. I kind of needed the weekend to mull it over and decide how I felt about it. And how I feel is this: I don’t hate Mac or Laura, but I don’t want to be around them any more than is absolutely necessary, because of the negative associations with a man I think I am perfectly justified in hating.