Two Alone in Dublin: A Lesbian Love Story

by Lucy Carey

  Susie intensified her gaze to a glare at Paul.

  “Oh sorry,” he said. “Did I not mention? Liz doesn’t really like horrors.”

  Liz laughed. “Jesus, I didn’t sleep for a week after The Exorcist. Never again.”

  Susie smiled graciously at Liz, her lips bolted together to suppress the sentence threatening to trip out. Well that’s just fucking great.

  Surprisingly, Susie discovered, watching a hackneyed romantic comedy did absolutely nothing to distract her from her Marianna obsessing. Liz and Paul whispering and giggling to each other beside her did even less to help.

  She couldn’t be too mad at them—they were actually kind of cute as a couple and every so often, they did try to include her. For a minute or two, anyway, before reattaching to each other’s face when the screen dimmed dark enough to be at least semi-private.

  Sitting in a nearby chips and burger place after the cinema, she had full view of them pawing at each other. Susie did her best to ignore it, gazing around at the Americana-inspired signs adorning the walls, at the waiting staff in their 50s-inspired white shirts and white paper servers’ hats.

  She wondered whether a marketing team had designed it all to tap into some misplaced sense of nostalgia—from the retro uniforms to the red pleather booths to the little jukeboxes playing classic hits affixed to the walls. Ireland in the 1950s and 60s had been nowhere near as colourful and vibrant as this place; it had been firmly under the grip of Catholicism, which denied freedoms and identity to people like her: as both a woman and a gay person. Maybe the popularity of this kitsch American-style diner was the Irish people’s way of ignoring that past, she thought. Or maybe, she was just so bored and ignored that she was overthinking things…

  She was grateful when the waitress brought their food and she had something knew to concentrate on. It forced Paul and Liz to tear themselves away from each other for a few minutes, as a bonus. She might even get some real conversation out of Paul for the first time in a long while.

  Instead, Liz took the conversational reins. As Susie was contentedly shoving a greasy forkful of garlic-cheese chips into her gob, Liz asked the question that makes all single people lock up in dread: “So, Susie, are you seeing anyone?”

  She smiled awkwardly through a mouthful of cheese and mayo and covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Nope. Nobody at the moment.”

  “There’s a girl on the scene,” Paul interjected helpfully.

  Susie choked down her chips.

  “There’s no girl, thank you.”

  Paul shook his head and turned conspiratorially to Liz. “There is a girl.”

  Liz swivelled to face Susie and tilted her chin inquisitively. “So who’s this girl?”

  Susie glared at Paul—“That ‘girl’ is seeing someone else.”—and Paul’s face paled slightly.

  “Oh shit, Suze. I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, well you wouldn’t, would you?” Susie snapped back. She immediately felt guilty. Paul hadn’t been serious about anyone at any time since she’d first met him and he seemed to be smitten with Liz. Logically she knew she needed to cut him some slack for having abandoned her lately…but being stuck as the third wheel all evening had really worn out the last of her patience and goodwill with his flakiness of late. She tried to bite back her irritation, but it kept bubbling up in her stomach, threatening to spill out. She didn’t want to be pissed off with Paul. She didn’t want to be pissed off with life in general. She especially didn’t want to be pining over Mariana. And she didn’t want everything these days to feel like such a big deal because her lack of sleep made her feel like the walking dead. But that was where she was right now.

  “I’m sorry, Suze,” Paul said quietly. Liz, for her part, had become uncharacteristically quiet and was studying the back of the menu intensely.

  Susie willed herself to be gracious, to be calm and respectful. It was taking all of her energy to maintain that façade. “Yeah, me too,” she managed to say with just a hint of bitterness. She sat quietly for a few moments, then scrunched up her napkin and threw it into her half-eaten meal. She stood up. The façade would crack if she stayed and she didn’t want to say something she would regret immediately.

  “Listen, I’m gonna go.” She turned to Liz and said sincerely, “Good to see you again.”

  “Um, you too,” Liz said sheepishly.

  Paul clambered over Liz and squeezed out of the booth. Susie could hear his steps quickening to reach her as she got to the door.

  “Why are you going?” he asked irritatedly. “Look, I’m sorry that I didn’t know about the Brazilian one going out with someone else but that’s no reason for you to be so dramatic and rude. You’re acting a tad hysterical here.”

  Susie took a deep, ragged breath. She hated that word and he knew it.

  “Hysterical?” she said at a volume barely higher than a whisper. “Hysterical?” she hissed at him. “If you want to see ‘hysterical’, Paul, I can do hysterical.”

  She edged in closer to him so that he had to lean his ear in to hear her.

  “Number one, you brought your new girlfriend with you on what was supposed to be a catch up for us, seeing as, you know, I haven’t spoken to you for longer than five minutes in more than three weeks. Unless it’s about said new girlfriend and then you can’t shut up.”

  She pulled back to look at him, her lips set hard against his quibbles. In the back of her mind, she knew she was being unfair. He was usually a good friend, someone she could rely on and she should be cutting him some slack. She really was happy that he had found someone and if she wasn’t so tired and pissed off with everything, she wouldn’t be reacting this way. She knew she’d calm down in a few days. But right now she couldn’t tamp down the hurt that she felt from his lack of contact for the past few weeks.

  Paul opened his mouth to say something but Susie raised her index to stop him.

  “Number two, I haven’t slept soundly in months, which you already know is a problem, but given that it’s coming up to the Christmas break, the animals I live with have decided to intensify their partying because, ye know, tis the season. So I’m getting less sleep than ever.”

  The impulse to cry threatened to overwhelm her and she waited a moment to hide the catch in her throat. She took a deep breath again.

  “And number three, that ‘Brazilian one’’s name is Mariana, which you would know if you ever listened to me, and her relationship status has nothing to do with you being a shitty friend right now.”

  She swung the door open a little more violently than she meant to.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home to catch up on some sleep before the animals escape the zoo again.”

  She stepped out into the cold night sky and strode the three steps out of sight of the takeaway’s glass door. As soon as she was sure Paul hadn’t followed, she leaned against a brick wall, the shuddering breaths escaping through her stream of tears turning to fog in front of her.

  * * *

  “So there’s a new nightclub opening tomorrow night that my friend, Kirsten, says will be jammers with celebrities.”

  Mariana looked up from the printed-out article she had been circling words in red pen.

  “Jammers—spell that, please?”

  Tara pulled herself up from her slouch on the couch. “J-A-M-M-E-R-S.” She reached over and stroked Mariana’s cheek. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m studying,” Mariana explained. “See, I mark the words I do not know and then I check them in the dictionary or ask my teacher to explain them.” She held up her small red pocketbook dictionary as evidence.

  “So ‘jammers’…” she traced her finger down the relevant page. She squinted at the page. “No results. What does it mean?”

  Tara looked at her in surprise. “Eh, jammers? Um, it means “packed”…you know, really busy, like. Like when you’re in a pub and you can’t move for all the people.”

  Mariana nodded. “Ah, jammers. The pub
was jammers? Right?”

  Tara returned to her slouch and turned her attention to the TV. “Right.”

  “Okay,” Mariana said. “Jammers.” She turned back to her page. It was an article about a musician who had taught herself the violin and was now playing concerts in some of the biggest venues. Imagine, Mariana thought. That’s what can happen when you work very hard. You don’t need a lot of school or money to do it.

  From the TV, Mariana could hear the blare of an American couple having a fight on a reality show. Tara cackled as the woman berated the man. She drowned out the sound by concentrating harder on the article. “Precocious”, it described the musician as being when she was a child. That was a good word. Mariana circled it with her ballpoint pen. She must ask Susie how to pronounce that one.

  Tara turned down the TV slightly but kept her eyes firmly glued on the unfolding drama.

  “God, I’d hate to be doing that again.”

  Mariana looked up, perplexed. “Fighting?”

  Tara laughed. “No, silly. I mean homework. I was delighted to finish school and get away from all that shite.”

  Mariana shook her head emphatically. “No, it’s not like that. I want to learn. I think it is good for our brains to have new things to think about. Don’t you?”

  Tara scrunched up her nose. “I suppose,” she said, but Mariana didn’t think she looked too convinced. She put down her pen and smoothed the paper out on her lap.

  “It’s like… When I was younger, my parents didn’t have a lot of money. So even though I loved to read and was very good at my studies, I could not afford to keep going to college. I went for a year and I liked it, but I needed to earn money for my family so I started to work. And the more I worked, the less time I had for my studies until I could not keep going.

  “It is different in Brazil in these last few years—they are trying to make it easier for people like me to get into and stay in the universities and my city is getting very rich now—but I was not so lucky.”

  Tara looked baffled. “But that’s your parents’ job—to make sure you have money to go to college. They should have saved up more money for you to go. That’s pretty crappy of them to expect you to pay for it.”

  Mariana stroked Tara’s wrist and palm lightly with her thumb.

  “No, gatinha, you misunderstand. My parents are very good people. They work very hard. And they only wanted the best things for their children. But they could never work hard enough to have all the money they needed to help me. We were more fortunate than a lot of people, but still we struggled.” She entwined her fingers with Tara’s. “So I worked very hard to save some money and to find a better life in a new country. And I send some money to my parents every month so that my sisters can have even better things than I had. And that is how I came to be in Ireland.”

  Tara squeezed Mariana’s hand briefly. “Well it’s very nice to have you here anyway.” She smiled brightly at Mariana, and then abruptly let go of her hand. She stood up.

  “Do you want a cup of tea? I’d murder one.”

  So that was it, Mariana thought. Conversation over just like that. With each day that they spent together, Mariana was beginning to realise just how different they were from each other. Tara was really lovely and funny and fun to be around—but she and Mariana were two very different people. Tara liked to party and gossip and drink; Mariana enjoyed those things too, sometimes. She’d made an effort and gone to a few parties with Tara and tried to socialise and chat to the endless conveyor belt of friends Tara introduced her to, but most often, they had nothing to say to each other past the initial niceties. At most of the parties, she ended up sitting by herself, smiling as convincingly as possible, and waiting for Tara so they could leave. Tara had yet to notice that every time she found Mariana at one of these parties, she was waiting alone.

  Mariana looked up at the beautiful blonde in front of her, who was shaking her mug in front of her. Mariana was conscious of the feeling of her empty hand, aching to be held again. She shoved it under her leg to quell the sensation. She shook her head, gently this time, and flashed a quick sad smile at Tara.

  “No thank you,” she said. She picked up her sheet of paper to read it again but found she couldn’t begin to concentrate.

  * * *

  She counted six rings before the phone was picked up on the other end.

  “Dad, I want to come home.”

  It felt like an age before her father replied, but when he did, his low, rumbling country accent was comforting.

  “Hello, Susan. What, ah… What seems to be the problem? I thought you liked it up there?”

  “I did, Dad. I mean, I do. Usually. It’s just… It’s just everything’s gone to shit. I hate my life right now. I hate”—she motioned around the room to no one in particular—“this fucking house. And all the gobshites that live in it. I just…”

  She stopped, her chest starting to heave with sobs, hot angry tears rushing down her face.

  “Ah now, pet, mind the language. You know I don’t like you swearing.”

  Susie sighed, cursed again under her breath in silent rebellion, and her father cleared his throat for an inordinately long time. She held the phone slightly away from her ear until he’d finished.

  “Susan? Susan, are you there?”

  “I’m here, Dad.”

  He cleared his throat again.

  “So, what’s going on? Why do you want to come home?”

  A wail escaped her and she willed herself to woman up. She took a moment to compose herself before answering, “I’m lonely, Dad. So very lonely.”

  He scoffed. “Sure, you’re a lovely girl. You should have loads of friends? You just need to get out there and mix with people a bit.”

  “No, Dad, that’s not what I’m getting at.”

  He wasn’t listening to her. “I don’t understand it at all, Susan. When I was your age, I was out at all hours, getting up to no good. You’re working too hard.” He sighed. “And I know that’s our fault, really. If we had the money…”

  “Stop, Dad. Really. That’s not the problem.”

  “But if you didn’t have so much pressure on you for fees and rent and things like that… If we could help more, you know we would.”

  Susie managed a watery smile. “I know ye would, Dad.” She lied, “I’m fine for money anyway. That’s not why I’m upset.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

  “So is it, then…” He took a very deep breath. “Is it girl trouble?”

  “No, Dad.”

  He hesitated. “I don’t mean, like, ‘time of the month’ problems.” She could almost see him doing the bunny-ear air quotes with his fingers. “I mean, like”—his voice lowered to a whisper and she wondered whether he was afraid Mrs. Ryan next door might hear—“is it lesbian problems? That kind of girl trouble.”

  In spite of her horrible mood, she had to struggle to hold in a snort. Gay people weren’t something her parents were used to—they came from a town and a time where things liked that were kept secret and clandestine—but despite that, they had been incredibly supportive of Susie, even if they didn’t always know exactly what to say. She couldn’t have asked for more caring parents.

  “Will I go and get your mother, pet?” her dad asked. “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll go get your mother.” He didn’t wait for an answer. “June!” he yelled.

  “Dad,” Susie started. She loved her mother but she couldn’t handle her asking twenty questions right now, interrogating her in a manner the KGB would be proud to include in their training manual.

  “JUNE!” he yelled louder, his panic at his complete lack of competence in this area carrying in his voice.

  “Dad!” Susie tried again. “It’s alright. You don’t have to go and get Mam. Seriously.”

  From the muffled exchange in the background, she knew she was pretty much talking to herself at this point. She heard her mother’s voice.

  “For God’s sake, Derm
ot, what? You’d wake the dead with all the feckin’ roaring out of you. Sheila Ryan will be out telling the whole neighbourhood about you, if you’re not careful. What’s wrong?”

  She heard a scraping, the sound muffle, and Susie figured he’d covered the mouthpiece with his hand. It made little difference to the boom of her mother’s voice.

  “It’s Susan. She’s crying and wants to come home.”

  “Is it girl trouble? Ask her is it girl trouble.”

  Her dad scoffed. “I already asked her was it girl troubles. Not ‘time of the month’ ones either”—Susie wondered was he air quoting with his free hand—“the other kind.”