Primperfect

by Deirdre Sullivan

  I texted him to let him know that wolves were a huge part of Ireland’s postglacial fauna. I think he knew that meant that things were OK.

  It’s weird to think of Ireland under ice. Like Snow White in a coffin, waiting to wake up and be a living breathing bit of world again. A world with wolves inside. A world with ringforts.

  Dad picked me up and when I asked him how his date had been he said OK and then went straight to bed. Maybe she unleashed her crazy on him. Sorrel has a wealth of benign crazy. She owns like seven scrying crystals. I’m still not sure how to feel about two people, both of whom I want to see happy, being together in that way. I mean, it is gross to think about Dad having a romantic life. That’s just a given. But I’ve seen him mess around so many women, and I’ve seen Sorrel on both sides of romantic messes. They knew each other way back when, and that is kind of difficult, you see, because they have so much ammunition. And Mum can’t not be hanging there between them, like a spectre. I wish she were a spectre. We could hang out. She could give me guidance and things. Maybe we could even solve some mysteries together. Or she could get to know the me I am today, instead of the child I was. I mean, there are a lot of things the same about me. But also a lot different. I have new friends and hair and like new music. I fancy boys and sometimes even kiss them. I think about sex. And not like it’s a thing that grown-ups do. Like it’s a thing that I might one day do. That I am curious about. I probably wouldn’t tell that to ghost-Mum, but I could ask her certain questions about boys and girls and life and things.

  Mum wasn’t judgemental. She was a great listener. I can imagine her haunting me. The night of my debs, putting on mascara and I’d get a whiff of her orangey-lilac perfume and I’d turn and there’d be no-one there. But when I turned back to the mirror she’d be in there behind me, her hand stroking my hair and looking proud. She’d mouth, ‘I love you Primmy,’ or, ‘I love you Pose,’ and then she’d fade but I’d know she was there, still watching and caring.

  I don’t think there’s an afterlife at all. And I think the reason I still turn it over in my mind and question it is because I want there to be one so badly. I want the end of things to not be the end of all things ever. But only of corporeal things. I want the spirits, live and shimmering somewhere fabulous, to linger and reach out towards our world and maybe touch. Ghost Mum. Ghost Roderick. Ghost Granny and Grandads. I didn’t really know them, though, so while I’d like to have had the chance to know them properly, like Ciara did Lily, I don’t feel the lack of them, pulling at my stomach in the night. Missing them never stops me sleeping.

  Red bumpy lines turn to purple bumpy lines turn to pink bumpy lines. I haven’t thought about cutting myself in ages. And I’m not thinking about it now. I’m just smoothing myself. Taking stock. Accounting. Everything’s in ledgers in accounting. Debit. Credit. Dad says it’s a life-skill. He wants me to take it for the Leaving. I don’t really like it. Do I need it? I wonder if all my sins and kindnesses would balance. If there was a heaven – and there’s not – but say there was a heaven, would I get in or just be left behind? I don’t think that I’d go to hell, not really. But I could be left. That would loop in nicely to my life. Would snugly fit.

  Everyone is always leaving me behind. It’s a good thing I like my own company. A blessing. I don’t feel blessed, though, endowed with special favour by the gods. Can you be blessed if you don’t have a god? You can probably be lucky? I wonder if everyone who’s lucky believes in God. If you made a graph of that, it would be interesting.

  No, it wouldn’t. Why does Dad not want to talk to me?

  He arrived and I dilated. Those two things are COMPLETELY unrelated. ‘Holding on for Daddy,’ the doctor said, and Fintan gave an ‘Aww’. I gave a snort. I am mad at him. And in a good deal of pain. ‘What are you writing?’ he wants to know. I glare at him. SELFISH MAN is what I’m writing, Fintan. Guess who it applies to?

  Quote from Prim’s mum’s diary

  ad sat me down to have a talk with me this morning. He did that thing – you know, in books, when someone clears their throat and it’s written as ‘HARRUMPH’? Well, he basically cleared his throat but also said

  ‘Did you just say “HARRUMPH”?’ He had. But I wanted to make sure.

  ‘I did, yes. I was about to tell you something.’ He cleared his throat again, but in a less showy manner.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I have something to tell you.’

  ‘What sort of something?’ I asked.

  ‘Something big. I’m not sure how to broach it with you, really … I mean …’

  His face went a bit pale and all his features contracted a little. My heart began to eat itself.

  ‘Are you dying, Dad?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because you have to tell me if you’re dying. Like, as soon as you know yourself, you have to tell me. It’s like a rule.’

  I was pretty close to crying at this stage. I had him gone through a range of unsuccessful treatments, wasting, dead and buried.

  ‘There is no such rule. Dying people are above rules.’

  ‘No, they aren’t. They have to tell their daughters right away. And also not die. Is it bowel cancer?’

  ‘What? No.’

  ‘Testicular.’ I nodded. I had read things on the Internet about older men, letting their scrotal lumps go by unnoticed. ‘You really should get regular checks at your age.’

  ‘I don’t have testicular cancer, Prim. I don’t have any type of cancer at all. I am healthy. Very healthy. It’s just. I want to tell you something else. Something positive. Something good, in fact. A surprise. A lovely surprise.’ He was poking at his nail beds and smiling without blinking.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘WE’RE GOING ON A HOLIDAY!’ he exclaimed, as though he were a chat-show host and I a studio audience.

  ‘Oh.’ This was a surprise. Were we going to Paris?

  ‘A lovely holiday.’ He nodded his head, agreeing with himself.

  ‘And you’re sure you’re not dying? Of any type of cancer or heart disease or any type of older human male thing?’

  ‘I am definitely not dying, Prim.’

  ‘Because the way you’ve presented this holiday to me feels an awful lot like a sort of a consolation prize for bad news.’

  ‘I don’t give consolation prizes for bad news.’

  ‘You TOTALLY do. You gave me a new phone when Roderick died,’ I pointed out.

  ‘That’s, like, one time. And it was your birthday.’

  ‘When you mess up, you always get me stuff. Like caramel squares or vouchers that you get in fancy work hampers and never use.’ (I love backing things up with evidence. It’s like a super-power everyone can have, All you need are FACTS.)

  ‘I’ll stop,’ said Dad.

  ‘Don’t – it’s kind of nice. A blow-softener, if you will.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘HA.’

  Sometimes, when people say things that don’t make me actually laugh, but are funny none the less, I find myself actually saying ‘ha’. Ha is my harrumph. My real laughter cannot be transcribed phonetically. It’s a kind of soft cackle that gets increasingly brittle as it escalates. Ciara and I and Joel sometimes cackle in tandem and it is a beautiful thing indeed. A beautiful, ugly thing as our laughter blends to make sounds that no human thing should make at all. The sound of ridiculous, helpless laughter makes things funnier. It amplifies the fun and sucks your agency, until you are a collection of wobbles and nerve endings. Mum had a ridiculous laugh as well, the kind of laugh that you would hear and laugh at.

  But, in fairness, Dad’s retort was not that funny. So I just said ‘HA’ and left it at that.

  We are going to London. Which isn’t that far away. And it is a bit of a business trip as well. But the good thing is because it is a business trip, and Dad won’t be around all the time, he is going to see if Joel can come over for a few days too, and be my holiday fri
end. If Joel can’t come he’ll ask Ciara. Isn’t it funny that he assumed that’s where my preferences lay, and I suppose they do lie there traditionally speaking, but Joel being cold to me for so long has kind of brought me and Ciara closer and also made me aware that Joel can do that. Turn his back on thirteen years of friendship for an idea that he’ll later admit was wrong and a backlog of unimportant slights.

  I know the Kevin thing was important at the time, it was. But now it’s water under the bridge. Horrible, sewagey water that should not be allowed to dally with girls again until it has had some hardcore sensitivity training.

  I’ve been to London once before, with Mum. We went to see a ballet of The Secret Garden. It was one of Mum’s favourite books when she was a little girl and she read it to me and then I read it by myself and it was one of my favourites too. We couldn’t often afford big holidays, like the kids in my class had. Mum couldn’t pay and I don’t think it ever occurred to Dad that I would like to go abroad with him. I’d like to go to Spain some time. Spain is such a normal place to have visited, but I’ve never been. I’ve only been to places Mum had friends that she could stay with. Berlin. Vienna. London. Belfast. Meath. Dad and I are going to be staying in a big hotel. And I’m going to have my own room. There’ll be, like, a door between the two so he can keep an eye on my drinking, but that’s still very cool in my book.

  Dad drove me to my Caroline appointment. I was texting Robb about Bengal tigers for a bit. It’s not that I fancy Robb per se. But I have been turning him over in my mind like he was a peculiarly shaped piece of stone I’d picked up on the beach. Maybe a denim-coloured limestone with marble bits striated in. Or granite. I think he’d make a very handsome quartzy granite pebble. I think about him at the oddest times. Like, with Felix, I’m always thinking of things that I could do to impress him.

  Become a world-class musician.

  Become a beauty, in a cool indie-music magazine kind of way. The kind of beauty that’s always a millimetre away from having a face on her. Dark hair. Pale skin. Red lips. Possible vampirism.

  Offer to sleep with him.

  I don’t think number three would actually impress him, as it would be very desperate and creepy of me. But he is a teenage boy who hasn’t had a girlfriend in a year and a half, so maybe he thinks about sex. And I am a girl, so sex is technically something he could have with me. If he wanted to. He totally wouldn’t, though. I think he’d think that he was taking advantage of me or some such nonsense. When in reality, it would be the other way around.

  Anyway, recently, like since the party, when Ciara wanted him, I think Robb has been entering into my maniacal thought-patterns. He is a bit easier to impress than Felix. I think number three would probably appeal to him, but obviously, he’s not going to get near that level of intimacy until I’m good and sure I fancy him. By which time he’ll have gone back to his wonderful boarding school where everything is peachy keen and forgotten all about me. Oh my God, I’M HIS SUMMER GIRLFRIEND. As Caleb is to Ella, so am I to Robb. It’s like those word association things Ms Griffin sometimes gives out in CSPE.

  I hate CSPE. It seems like a doss subject, but then it isn’t and so you only do half-assed work for it and find yourself struggling during revision week because everything that was said in class got filtered out.

  I could impress Robb by:

  Trolling him with animal facts.

  Kissing him and smelling his neck.

  Offering to sleep with him.

  Solving a notable mystery.

  Being a boarding school.

  Numbers one and two are the easiest. I think a combo of them and number four would be amazing. I know he likes me fine right now and that is positive. And it isn’t that I want to marry him or anything, I’m just worried he’ll find out the kind of person I am and change his mind. Because people do change their minds all the time in relationships.

  Caroline was asking me about the party. She got me to tell it to her, and I had to go back through everything again, only with me playing the Steve role, because I don’t want to be, like, committed or anything. I wonder can a therapist have someone committed? She is a doctor as well as a cognitive behavioural therapist. I mean, she has her medical degree up on her wall. I can see the grain of the paper and I think it is unlikely that she just printed up a fake one off the Internet to impress her patients. I don’t think it’d be legal for one thing. So maybe Caroline could have me committed if she wanted to. I wonder what it would take. Like, a suicide attempt? Or maybe hearing voices? People with schizophrenia do that sometimes. Hear things that aren’t really there. Only they sound as if they are there, right in their ear. Telling them things. And when something seems that real, it’s hard to know who to listen to. Sometimes I worry about my brain. All the stuff I’ve gone through since Mum’s death has made me aware of all that can go wrong.

  Before Mum died, I thought of illness as a body thing. Like cancer or pneumonia or a broken leg. Some of them kill you, some of them get cured. But now there’s this whole other side. Your brain can get broken and if it’s only cracked a little, you can try to fix it yourself. But you mightn’t have the tools to do that or, because there is a crack in your brain, you mightn’t be able to recognise what the tools you should be using are. And so you try things that aren’t helpful. Like I did with the cutting. Some people make themselves sick or don’t eat or take drugs or have ill-advised sex in nightclub toilets.

  There is a whole slew of things you can do to try to fix yourself that actually sand the edges of the crack, so it feels less broken, smoother but actually it’s getting bigger, bigger all the time, and if it gets too big you might die from how big it is, how insurmountable the space between one side of the crack and the other has become. If the crack is big, you mightn’t be able to help doing dangerous things. They might seem increasingly sensible, given the circumstances. People kill themselves. They are alive and then they aren’t any more, and that’s a choice they’ve made, a desperate lonely choice. To destroy themselves because it genuinely seems like the most sensible option, given how unfixable things have become; how full of sad or angry or both they are.

  I think it is yourself that makes you decide to kill yourself. Because not everybody likes themselves, but some people actually hate themselves, hate themselves the way I hate Karen, or the drunk man who killed Mum. More even. I don’t want either of them dead. I just don’t want them near me. But if you hate you that much, and have to be near yourself all the time, then maybe you would start to hate yourself more and even more until you’d kill yourself.

  I think about it sometimes. I used to do way more. But I don’t hate myself enough, I think. There’s always, like, this little chink of hope. I’m never empty. Mostly I was just tired. I wanted a break from all the life I had. Because it is exhausting, living when you’re sad all the time. You get so little out of it. I’m glad I’m better now. I mean, I still have my moments. But they don’t expand and bleed into the other moments, until it’s rarer to be happy than sad. Sad is not my normal now. And I don’t think that’s completely because of Caroline. A lot of it’s to do with me, and growing up and getting used to things. Things like hormones. And mothers being dead.

  Not that, were she around, she’d have fixed everything. But I wonder how much of it would have been broken to begin with. Caroline makes me think things sometimes. After I leave her office, I get all introspective and walk around, listening to music and formulating thoughts like they were potions. Trying to decide what I think. Because a lot of the time I don’t know. She said I could always just drink Diet Coke and say that it was vodka and Diet Coke, if I felt weird about not drinking. I kind of don’t, though. That’s not what it was. I’m comfortable enough to say no to things, but I might have forgotten to be for a while. Or just forgotten that drinks weren’t sweets, that you can’t gorge on them and know that it’s unhealthy but think that they have no real side-effects.

  I have to make a list of things I do. Like, activities each da
y. She wants my weekly leisure time-table to analyse. Or written out, for me to analyse myself while she listens and judges in a way that seems like she isn’t judging. But she is, she totally is. I mean, everyone makes judgements about everyone else all the time. We can’t help it. We’re human. It’s our thing.

  I have a funny feeling about this holiday. Like somehow there is something more to it. I don’t think he has cancer, but I’ve got the weirdest niggle, not in the pit of my stomach but kind of in the corner of the pit. And the niggle is telling me that Dad is, if not up to something, at least not telling me the full story. But it’s a week in London, so what mystery can there be, really?

  I already know he’ll have to work for some of it, so that’s out there. I don’t know. I’m probably being over-analytical. The scar where my brain-crack used to be sometimes lets a bit (or a lot) of negative spill out all over a day or a person or an interaction.

  But what’s the deal with London? We’re leaving in three days. It seems quite sudden. My pit-niggle is shaped like a question mark but there’s very little I can do about it.

  I wonder if I’ll get to see Robb before I leave. I’ve been turning it over in my mind. The night of the party. When he didn’t want to kiss Ciara. Just me. His pillow-mouth. His eyes. I think I’d like to. I think looking at him might make things in my head stay put or fall apart, like sexual attraction Jenga.

  My little girl is here. She is a human being. She has eyes. They’re shiny and they blink. I can’t stop looking at her. Everything about her is so perfect. I’m going to do my best for you, I’m thinking as I look at her. I’m going to try so hard to make you happy. She looks like herself already. I mean, she looks like Winston Churchill after he’s gone through a hot-cycle wash as well, but she has features that don’t belong to me or Fintan. They’re all her own. At 0 years of age.