Improper Order

by Sullivan, Deirdre; Slattery, Fidelma;

  Joel is coming too. And Ella. I rang them both. I didn’t ring Syzmon, because I don’t know him as well and he belongs to Ciara so she probably rang him herself.

  CHIPS

  Kevin rang this afternoon and wanted to take me to the cinema. That’s what he said. Take me to the cinema. Like a proper date. I said yes, because I wanted to see him. And then I wrote three text messages backing out and deleted them. Life is short, too short to not kiss boys because of drama. But on the other hand life is short, too short to screw over your best friends by kissing the boys they like. It is a tough one. But the general consensus is that life is short, and you can use that to justify various courses of action.

  After the film, we went around the corner of the cinema and kissed and kissed and kissed and it shoved all the death and drama to the back of my mind and I was just a mouth and he was just another mouth and we were kind of exploring each other in this really lovely way and it was so fascinating. You wouldn’t think that something so repetitive could be so fascinating. And his arms were around me and my head was bent right back. I have a terrible crick in my neck now, but it was worth it.

  I wonder would it be kinder to Joel if Kevin and I were friends with benefits, as opposed to boyfriend and girlfriend? My seduce-Felix plan has kind of gone out the window, because:

  It is highly impractical.

  I wouldn’t know how to go about it.

  Mary and Ella would cop what I was up to pretty much right away, long before Felix did, and

  The humiliation. It would be great.

  Also, I kind of like fancying Felix from afar. He is the one I will never have. And I kind of value the crush I have on him more than the relationship or kissing I could have. My crush on Felix is comfortable and familiar, like an old hoodie. I can pull it on when I am by myself and think about the adventures we would have if I were just a little older and just a lot cooler.

  One of my favourite daydreams involves being secretly really good at electric guitar and he finds me one day, playing in the garage. Neither of our houses has a garage, but this is why it is a daydream. And he is all, ‘Wow, I must have you as a bandmate,’ and I have no idea that he has a big crush on me but he does and then we get a record deal or something and he brings me a big bunch of daisies wrapped in sheet music and we make out all over the place and eventually move to Paris where we have little messy-haired babies who we dress in gender neutral clothing, like cream Aran jumpers and little red cords and tiny little boots. Also our babies are all really good at music, and Fintan comes over several times a year and teaches them the zither.

  Another one involves me being secretly really good at growing organic vegetables and ends with us opening an eco-café that is extremely cool and also famous for its soups. Chefs come from miles around begging for the recipes, but I am too busy making out with Felix and running a successful and beloved eatery to share it with them. I like my daydreams. And I don’t think that I would be able to daydream about Felix half as well if he were my real boyfriend.

  I have to stop kissing Kevin. I really do. But also I have to do a lot more kissing of Kevin and possibly be kissing him right now. I really don’t want to grow up like Dad and hurt the feelings of people I care about, like my mum. I don’t want to be that person. Maybe if we only hook up when we’re in character? But that would be really sleazy and weird and could lead to the sort of latex nurse costumes that you see in the window of Ann Summers on O’ Connell Street and are highly impractical, because how could you attend to a patient in something that tight and low-cut?

  Ciara thinks they are dreadful as well. Sometimes we worry as to what will be expected of us when we are older. Not that we will have to do what men expect or anything, but there’s just so much world and so many people and they all want different things and some of those things are really weird and some of those things are perfectly fine but don’t tally with the sort of stuff we want for ourselves, and between friends and parents and boyfriends it would be really easy to get lost in pleasing other people and end up a very sad and lonely girl indeed. And the worst kind of lonely of all, lonely for yourself because you have forgotten who that is because it has been so long since you thought about what you wanted.

  That is one of the things that is wonderful about Hedda. She lives for herself and not to please people.

  I think Dad might have asked her to marry him out of people-pleasing, in a way. Like, she was lovely and he loved her and also he wanted some sort of relief from parenting me all by himself, and maybe now that he has a kid living with him and has had to settle down anyway, marriage didn’t seem like such a big and scary step?

  Ciara is especially worried about the whole ‘changing her life to be what other people want’ thing, because her parents have already decided that she is going to be a teacher or a psychologist — a teacher because she is good at babysitting and liked primary school (‘Not enough to go back there for ever, Primrose!’) or a psychologist because she used to eat her own hair and she could help others like her (‘Why would I want to do that? My psychologist was no help to me. It is enough to make me nibble my plaits off.’).

  Ciara wants to study art or fashion design, and especially wants to be a milliner, but that is not practical so she needs to find something else that she wants to do and then millin in her spare time. Is millin a verb? I don’t know. It sounds like the verb of milliner but maybe it isn’t. It isn’t as if dentists go around denting things all day.

  I now need to do the job that Grandma Lily was doing and encourage her as much as possible. Because I would like to see her ridiculous hats on a minor celebrity someday. Or even a major celebrity, only you hardly ever see them wearing hats. Not at the Oscars anyway. Maybe the Queen of England could wear one to the races. There is a really lovely one that has a big round base with a netted veil made of the tiniest cut-out felt horses in red and mustard and purple and pink and blue. The Queen could wear that one because she probably likes horses if she goes to the races. It would be in keeping.

  INVOLVES THE WORD FUN BUT IS NOT FUN, REALLY (1)

  Dad wants me to go to something called cognitive behavioural therapy. It is not about going over stuff that has happened but about looking at ways to change bad behaviour patterns. Bad behaviour sounds like I am some sort of juvenile delinquent, and I really want to say it in a pretend dominatrix voice combined with some sort of whipping sound effect, but I suppose being sad and angry almost all the time to the point of screaming and other stupid things isn’t really good behaviour, is it?

  The things we do to cope with life can be positive or negative, Dad says. He also told me Mum used to see a therapist too, once upon a time, because she had ‘dark moments’. (Would they have anything to do with the fact that a much older man went and got her pregnant? is what I wanted to say, but didn’t. I’m kind of too tired to have a row about it.)

  ‘You’ll know more when I give you her diaries, Prim.’

  ‘Can’t I have them now?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  He is waiting until my sixteenth birthday, because on that day I will be magically mature enough to handle all of Mum’s deepest, darkest secrets.

  I don’t know what they are. All I have is this: she grew up in the country, moved to Dublin for college, where she studied English and philosophy and met my dad on a night out at the beginning of her second year. They were together for about six months but it was on and off and on and off and during one of the ‘on’ periods (presumably) she got pregnant with me, and they tried to make it work because of that, only they couldn’t and he broke her heart but she did not break his and they found it difficult at first but they had to see each other because of me and so they ended up civil, but never really friends. There was always a little bit of something brewing there. Resentment, I suppose. Remaindered heartbreak or the memory of pain.

  I loved my mum more than my dad because she was the one who tucked me in at night. I think that now I know him better I am on my way to loving them both
the same. It is hard for him to compete with a memory, though.

  We visited her grave and I told her about Grandma Lily and Joel and Kevin and how worried I am about Ciara and also how I sometimes worry about myself as well and how I think I might need to do something, something like what Dad suggests. And I wish that I could talk to her and find out what she thinks would work the best.

  If I were sad and in her house, Sorrel would come over and Reiki me. ‘Reiki the head’ Mum used to call it — she didn’t really give it that much credit but still found it relaxing. Also, Sorrel likes to feel useful in a crisis, because other people are so frequently useful to her during her many crises. I wish I could fill in the blanks of Mum and Dad, paint a picture that’s all colours and no spaces.

  Mum’s grave is clean and I pulled out the weeds that will not flower. Mum liked wildflowers: primroses for me, cowslips for her, daisies for happiness, bluebells for beauty, dandelions for bravery because they look like the manes of little lions. I leave the flowers Mum would have liked and pluck out Japanese knot grass, herb Robert and nettles. Herb Robert has a little flower to it, but Mum didn’t like it because of the saying ‘Never trust a man with two first names’ and also the way it doesn’t have a smell.

  ‘Did you love Mum?’ I asked Dad, my hands wet with earth and sap.

  ‘Of course I did, because she gave me you.’

  That’s not an answer, more of a placatory soundbite. I need more than that from him today.

  ‘But what about before?’

  ‘I liked her, Prim, and I was attracted to her. But she was young, and there was too much drama in it and …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I kind of lost interest. I couldn’t help it, and I knew that I was hurting her, and I felt terrible about it. When I found out about you …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I tried. I did try. Your mother and I were very different people. And not the kind that complement each other. But I think that we were meant to be together, because the two of us together made you.’

  I don’t really like the idea of being made. Like a cake or a salad. But I understood what he meant. We stayed there talking for a while, the three of us: Mum, Dad and me.

  It was one of those days where I felt, instead of ‘Oh, she can’t be gone,’ that maybe she wasn’t gone, not fully. Maybe, somewhere, a vestige of the love she had for me was listening and watching out for me. I rubbed the letters hewn into her gravestone,

  BELOVED MUM OF PRIMROSE

  and felt lonely and not lonely at the same time. Things have a way of working themselves out, Dad says. Today it didn’t feel like a big fat lie from a hairy-lipped liar. Today it felt like maybe it was true.

  FUNERAL

  Grandma Lily is in the ground now. I wore my black sheath dress with the three quarter length sleeves and a pair of tights that didn’t have a hole in. Appearances are important to Ciara, and I wanted to show respect. Joel had black cords and a dark grey jumper. He doesn’t fit into his confirmation suit any more. Can’t believe that was two years ago. It feels like yesterday or a lifetime ago. One or the other; not two years.

  The funeral was lovely. Ciara met myself and Joel and Ella, Caleb and Dad outside the church. She had dark circles around her eyes and had three boxes. She produced three fascinators from them, each of them with a lovely big fresh calla lily on the side. Mine was blue and had a scissors, a ball of wool and a tiny bottle of gin stuck onto it, Ella’s had an armchair, an old-fashioned radio and a paintbrush. Not the full things, you understand, little cut-out versions, but so accurate you knew just what they were.

  Ciara pinned them to our heads and ignored the looks that all the people bustling in were throwing. I helped her put hers on last of all, just as her mum called for her. It was rosary beads entwined around a broken heart, covered in tears. She made them out of little beads of glue, the tears.

  ‘I was up all night making these, for her,’ she said dully. Her mum grabbed her elbow and looked at us as if we were insane. She didn’t get it. Lily would have got it. Lily would have been so very proud of Ciara, of what her granddaughter’s clever hands were capable of doing.

  ‘I feel a little silly,’ whispered Ella.

  So did I, but I held my head high as I walked down the aisle and sat in a pew with bits of someone’s life balanced on top of my head, saying more about Lily than the priest who didn’t even know her to begin with. He called her Lillian, which wasn’t right at all. Everyone who knew her called her Lily. Rising and kneeling, the hour passed like tides.

  And back to the graveyard we went and watched as the coffin was lowered into the ground. Ciara was in floods. She almost doubled over at one point. Her mum had a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it. Her dad’s mouth was a straight line. He looked off into the horizon. Maybe he was trying not to cry. I went over to Ciara and held her hand. I was crying too, because of Lily, but also because of Mum. She was in that same ground, fifty feet back and about five minutes over.

  I hadn’t been to a funeral since Mum’s. And it was hard, but not as hard as I thought it would be. I don’t think that my eyes will ever be dry, though, when the shovels come and cover up the coffin with the earth. It feels like rubbing out a life, removing the evidence, making them untouchable and so far away, too far away to reach. There is a body, then that body becomes a body in a box and then that body in the box becomes a body in a box in a hole and then the body in a box in a hole becomes a body in a box under the ground. Under the ground is not an easy place to get to, unless you are a badger or a mole.

  Everyone went back to Ciara’s house for sandwiches, but Ciara and I stayed. She told her mum she’d get a lift with Dad. She got the eyebrows but she didn’t care. Ciara’s mum has the most expressive eyebrows of anyone I know. She blackens them with kohl.

  They were not happy. Dad went to the car and Ella and Caleb snuck off to kiss behind some yew trees, which are poisonous and practically immortal. The teacher who told me about birds told me that. I have been a bit suspicious of the yew tree ever since.

  Ciara, Joel and I were hand in hand in hand. It began to rain and Joel said he’d meet us in the car and wandered off. Our lilies drooping, we walked and talked about Lily, who she’d been and how she would be missed. And then we were there.

  ‘I want you to meet someone,’ I said, and Ciara looked at me.

  ‘This is my mum, Bláthnaid. Mum, this is Ciara. She’s one of my best friends.’

  ‘Hello, Bláthnaid,’ Ciara said and knelt down by the grave.

  We said a prayer together, holding hands. She asked my mum to keep an eye on Lily, seeing as she’s new to the area and all. She plucked the lily off her fascinator and put it in the middle of the grave. On the way back to the car, I did the same for Lily. The damp, dark sky made all the specks of green on tidied graves seem brighter, pushing up and fanning out. Soon they’d grow through Lily’s black earth too.

  My ballet pumps were soaking by the time we piled in to my dad’s back seat, two wet girls together being sad but also kind of close, her head on my shoulder. We dropped her at her house and stayed there for a while, eating sandwiches and trying to comfort and be comforted.

  The hat is on my desk now, drying slowly. It doesn’t really work without the lily. But that is probably the point.

  SOMETHING MISSING, SOMETHING MISSED. (3)

  THANK YOU

  OK, so a lot of people helped me make this book by being awesome. Particularly the LITTLE ISLANDERS, whose energy, enthusiasm and dedication to making sure children have engaging things to read is an inspiration:

  SIOBHÁN PARKINSON (without whom Prim would never have been born) needs no introduction so I am giving her an acknowledgement instead - she is amazing and wildly talented as well as being incredibly generous with her support and advice.

  The incredible ELAINA O’NEILL, managing editor and all round lovely person, who juggles so many tasks with such inspiring precision that she makes it look effortless. I know it isn’t effortless,
Elaina, and I really appreciate all you have done for Prim. Thank you.

  My PARENTS got a mention at the start of the book, so I’m leaving them out.

  TADHG, my little brother, who read and liked Prim Improper in spite of being a tired young doctor and not a teenage girl. Thanks for being supportive and clever and hilarious and for giving my guinea pigs lifts from time to time.

  DIARMUID O’BRIEN, ex-batman and current gang member, who listens to everything I write before anyone else. I love you. Hey-ho.

  CIARA BANKS, SUZANNE KEAVENEY, CAMILLE DEANGELIS and SARAH MARIA GRITHN for offering writerly advice and warm friendship. I am so glad of you all.

  My godmother, CARMEL KING, who taught me that you don’t have to be loud to be brave.

  My godfather, JOHN L. SULLIVAN, who is as generous and kind a man as you could hope to meet.

  My grandmother, ALACOQUE SULLIVAN, because visiting her house is like walking into a hug.

  To the brave, strong and cool as ice MIKE GRIFFIN, who inspired a bit of this book and also taught me how to hold a knife properly.

  And finally, someone I forgot to thank the first time: FIDELMA SLATTERY, who made Prim Improper look so pick-uppable and and has done the same for Improper Order. Like. A. Boss.

  PRAISE FOR DEIRDRE SULLIVAN AND PRIM IMPROPER

  SHORTLISTED FOR THE BISTO CHILDREN’S BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS 2010-11

  ‘…the best children’s-fiction debut I’ve read in a long time … Few authors can write hilarious books about serious subjects without awkward shifts in tone, but Sullivan pulls it off brilliantly … an impressively assured and hilarious debut novel’

  Anna Carey, The Irish Times

  ‘[Prim] records with wit and style the highs and lows of her complex existence’

  Robert Dunbar, The Irish Times top 30 children’s books of 2010