He's Got to Go

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  The two younger sisters dissolved into laughter at the outrage in Nessa’s voice.

  “What upsets you more?” asked Cate. “The smaller bum or the bigger tits?”

  “The smaller bum, I suppose,” said Nessa. “Since Jill my tits have turned into Tom’s dream chest.”

  “What about you, Cate?” asked Nessa. “Did you have a boyfriend-free zone in your life?”

  “Oh, sure,” replied Cate. “When I was at college, much to my regret. I know I should’ve had loads of them then but I went through my very serious phase. I was thinking about starting my own business and making pots of money so men would’ve been a distraction.”

  “You were really into it at one point, weren’t you?” asked Bree. “Are you still?”

  “Into what?”

  “Starting your own business? Making pots of money?”

  “Oh, I’m happy doing what I’m doing now,” said Cate dismissively. “And as for making money, everyone thought you should be coining it in a few years ago and that there was something wrong with you if you weren’t. Times change.”

  “Have you?” Bree picked up the last slice of garlic bread.

  “I think so,” said Cate. “I’m mellower.”

  Nessa snorted.

  “Don’t you think I’m mellower?” demanded Cate.

  “Mellow is a state of mind,” said Nessa. “I’m not sure you’ve reached it yet.”

  “I must be mellow.” Cate sounded anxious. “I’m engaged to be married.”

  “And that’s mellow?” Nessa laughed.

  Bree refilled their wineglasses while Nessa and Cate continued to debate whether or not Cate was a more relaxed person than she used to be. They were both more relaxed than her tonight, thought Bree. She’d always believed that she was the relaxed one, the chilled-out one, but right now she didn’t feel like that. Tonight she felt like the left out one although she told herself over and over again that she was being ridiculous. She was only twenty-five, for heaven’s sake. She was young. She didn’t need to be engaged or married. She needed to do exactly what she had been doing for the past five years. Living her life. Having fun. Being single.

  Nessa pushed her almost empty plate to one side and sighed. “I’m stuffed. It’s so good to get out and eat something without having to worry about washing up.”

  “You have a dishwasher, don’t you?” demanded Bree.

  “That’s not the point,” Nessa told her. “The whole cooking, cleaning, tidying thing is a package. Even stacking plates in a dishwasher takes away the enjoyment of a good meal.”

  “Unstacking the dishwasher is just as bad,” Cate pointed out.

  Bree looked at Cate in disgust. “You sound married and settled already! It’s as though your entire lifestyle has changed in a week! And you haven’t even danced up the aisle yet. What’ll you be wearing?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” said Cate. “Something stylish, though.”

  “You couldn’t be anything but stylish.” Nessa tried and failed to keep a note of envy out of her voice.

  “So have you decided on a definite date?” asked Bree. “What’s the delay? Given that you two have been shacked up for three years why don’t you just pop into the registry office and have it done right away?”

  “I want to make a day of it,” said Cate.

  “And does Finn want to sell the exclusive rights to a gossip magazine?” asked Bree.

  Cate flushed. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Maybe the TV station will pay for it,” continued Bree. “Turn you both into an item.”

  “That’s even more stupid,” said Cate uncomfortably. “It’s a private thing.”

  “All the same,” mused Nessa, “I suppose there’s a temptation…”

  “No, there isn’t,” said Cate. “Nobody’s paying for the wedding and nobody’s selling photos and it’s not some bloody media event, Nessa!”

  “Keep your hair on,” said Nessa mildly. “We’re just having a bit of fun with you.”

  “Well, don’t,” snapped Cate. “It’s my wedding day we’re talking about not some bit of fun.”

  “It’s supposed to be fun,” Bree pointed out.

  “It will be.” Cate stood up. “I’m going to the loo. I’ll be back in a minute.” She walked across the room while Nessa and Bree watched her.

  “Touchy,” said Bree.

  “Very.” Nessa raised her eyebrows. “She doesn’t seem in the slightest bit relaxed about it at all, despite what we were saying about being mellow.”

  “Cate’ll never be mellow,” Bree said.

  “D’you think she’s doing the right thing?” asked Nessa. “I mean, I know she’s been living with him for ages but maybe it’s just not right for them to get married.”

  “Maybe.” Bree shrugged. “How does anyone know?”

  “I knew,” said Nessa.

  “Oh, you.” Bree shrugged again. “You were always going to live happily ever after with Adam Riley, weren’t you?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Nessa. “We didn’t rush into it.”

  “Come on!” exclaimed Bree. “I remember the day you brought him home, Ness. You were like the cat with the cream. You positively oozed proprietorial charm.”

  “Yes, well, I knew he was the one really,” admitted Nessa. “Once he phoned me, I knew.” She signaled the waiter and ordered another bottle of wine. “How about you?” she asked Bree. “Anyone on the horizon other than gay friends?”

  “Oh, you know me,” said Bree dismissively. “They’re on the horizon for a day, they’re in sight for a day and then they’re on the other horizon.”

  “You’ll find someone.”

  “Please!” Bree made a face. “Don’t sound so patronizing, Nessa. I may find someone. I may not.”

  “What may you not do?” Cate sat down at the table again.

  “Find someone,” Bree told her. “Now that you’re about to get hitched, Nessa’s turning her attention to me.”

  “I’m not,” said Nessa. “I just asked.”

  “And have you found someone, Bree?” asked Cate.

  “No!” Bree waved her hands in exasperation. “But I’m sure we’re going to discuss it. Or Nessa will lecture me about it.”

  “I’m not going to lecture you,” protested Nessa.

  “You don’t need to settle down,” said Cate. “You’re only a kid.”

  “I am not!” cried Bree.

  “But you’re still living in a grotty flat and staying up till all hours.”

  “I like my grotty flat,” said Bree. “Honestly, you two are going to be impossible if you gang up on me.” She sighed. “Look, maybe one day I might want to be with someone for a while but not yet. OK?”

  She groaned as she saw the sympathetic looks that her sisters gave her.

  “Don’t look at me like that!” she cried. “You’re making me feel like a total failure!”

  “Bree!” Nessa’s voice was shocked. “I don’t think of you as a failure.”

  “Neither do I,” said Cate. “I always envied you, Bree. Footloose, fancy-free and not chained by some mad notion of being a career woman like me.”

  “I didn’t think you felt chained,” said Bree. “I thought you were happy.”

  “I am happy,” Cate told her forcefully. “I really am. But sometimes I feel pressurized.”

  “How?”

  “The company depends on me,” she said. “I’m an essential person there. If I don’t perform, we lose sales. I think about it all the time. And sometimes it makes me feel sick.”

  “If it’s bothering you, you should leave,” Bree said. “Nothing’s worth feeling sick over.”

  “Absolutely,” agreed Nessa. “Cate, you’ll get an ulcer or something if you worry too much. No wonder you look pained and thin sometimes. Does Finn know?”

  “You’re blowing it up out of proportion,” said Cate. “I like feeling this way. All I’m saying is that sometimes it’d be nice not to have to care. I’m not saying that I
don’t want to. Besides, we got the shoe order last week. The pressure’s off again.”

  Bree looked at her doubtfully. “If you’re sure…”

  “I think I know what you mean,” said Nessa. “Sometimes I’m rushing around after Jill and I wish that I had just a minute to myself only I don’t because I know Adam will be home soon and that he’s had a stressful day and he’ll want to unwind and I suppose I feel pressurized too.”

  “I thought you lived an idyllic life,” said Bree.

  “I’m very happy,” said Nessa. “It’s simply that occasionally it goes wrong. And you feel stressed by it.”

  “So,” Cate said. “Both Nessa and I get stressed in spite of the fact that we’re both doing exactly what we want to do. Yet you don’t, Bree. Why? What have you got that we haven’t?”

  Bree looked at them and scratched the back of her head. “Actually, it’s what you both have that I haven’t,” she told them.

  “What?” asked Nessa.

  “Men in your lives,” said Bree.

  They ordered another bottle of wine and their conversation became more giggly. Bree told them more about Steve and they said he sounded really nice and very sweet. Nessa related a story about the night that Adam had come home out of his tree with drink from some office function and had pissed onto the gas fire. Cate told about the day when she’d really and truly lost it in the office and had screamed and roared at everyone and then one of the guys had muttered “time of the month” and she’d hurled a bottle of Tippex at him. The bottle had split open and covered him in the sticky white solution and she’d been horrified. She’d also footed the cleaning bill.

  Nessa talked too about having to accept that she’d probably never have another child and how hard that had been. For Adam’s sake, she told them, she didn’t want to make a big issue of it and so she never had, but sometimes it got to her. Rarely, now, but sometimes.

  Cate said that the thought of being pregnant absolutely terrified her but that she and Finn had already agreed that children weren’t on the agenda for quite a while. Especially not with Finn’s great new job.

  And Bree said that it was OK being twenty-five and a mechanic without a permanent love interest except that people were so bloody judgmental and that she was certain that some men thought that she was a lesbian only she absolutely wasn’t. She knew that she wasn’t. And just because she preferred jeans to Dolce e Gabbana it didn’t mean that she had any problems with her sexuality. And, to set the record straight in case they needed any reassurance, she wasn’t a virgin.

  They left the restaurant after midnight, drunk and silly, their arms around each other.

  “Will you be OK in a taxi on your own?” Nessa asked Bree.

  “Of course I will.” Bree tried to look witheringly at her but only succeeded in squinting. “I’m grown up.”

  “I know,” said Nessa. “It’s just that when you’ve changed someone’s nappy you have a certain view of them.”

  “You sure do!” Cate giggled and got a fit of hiccoughs.

  “Here’s a cab.” Nessa stood out on Amiens Street and hailed it. She bundled Bree into the backseat. “Take care. See you soon.”

  “Cheers.” Bree sat back and gave her address to the driver who headed south of the river.

  It was another five minutes before Cate and Nessa managed to get a cab going northside.

  “I enjoyed myself tonight,” Nessa told her sister. “We don’t get out much, do we? We used to meet at Mum and Dad’s but that’s not an option anymore.”

  “I was thinking that myself,” said Cate. “We definitely should do it more often.”

  “Once a month maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll organize it,” said Nessa. “We could come to my house next time.”

  “No!” Cate’s tone was more vehement than she intended and Nessa looked at her in surprise. “When we go to your house it’s different,” said Cate. “It’s you and Adam and Jill and you’re a family. Being out tonight, it’s the three of us who are the family.”

  “I never thought of it like that,” said Nessa. “But you’re right.”

  “That’s me.” Cate yawned. “Philosophical after a few glasses of wine.”

  “Aren’t we all,” said Nessa ruefully. “I’m really glad about you and Finn, Cate.”

  “So am I.”

  “Though surprised that you were the one who asked.”

  “You shouldn’t have been,” said Cate. “Don’t you always say I’m the one who gets what she wants?”

  “I wasn’t sure that was what you wanted.”

  “I wasn’t sure myself,” admitted Cate. “Not until I asked.”

  “At least he said yes.”

  “I know.” Cate sighed and closed her eyes. “But for one horrible minute, Nessa, I thought he was going to say no.”

  8

  Sun in Cancer, Moon in Libra

  Generous of time and heart.

  It was a long time since Nessa had woken up with a hangover. In fact, as she opened one eye and tried to focus on the alarm clock, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had a hangover. She’d been surprised at the amount she’d managed to consume in Il Vignardo’s last night but it had seemed right at the time because they’d been having so much fun. Now she wished she’d been a little less girly and a little more motherly because Jill’s voice, calling her from outside the bedroom door, was like a dentist’s drill going through her head.

  “Get up, Mum!” Jill hollered. “It’s really late.”

  Nessa blinked a couple of times then dragged herself upright in the bed. It was nearly ten o’clock—very late in Jill’s scheme of things. She looked at the empty space in the bed where Adam should be. He didn’t normally get up before her, but she was usually out of bed by nine at the latest on Saturday mornings. And awake long before then, listening to Jill getting her own breakfast and pottering around the house.

  “I’m awake,” she called out and Jill pushed open the bedroom door.

  “Dad said not to wake you,” she told Nessa. “But someone knocked on the door. I didn’t answer it ’cos I’m not allowed but I thought it was time you got up anyway.”

  “Where’s Dad?” Nessa couldn’t even remember him getting out of the bed earlier. Either she’d been even more zonked than she’d thought or he’d been especially quiet.

  “He got a phone call,” explained Jill. “He said he’ll be back for lunch.”

  “Oh good.” Nessa moved her head experimentally from side to side. The bricks she felt were inside it slithered around and banged off her skull.

  “Dad said that you went out with Bree and Cate and got drunk,” said Jill accusingly.

  “We had a few drinks,” Nessa admitted. “Cate was celebrating.”

  “Because she’s going to marry Finn. I know,” said Jill.

  “That’s why we had a few drinks,” Nessa told her.

  “Dad said that you were senseless when you got home.”

  “I wasn’t,” said Nessa crossly. “I was tired. It was late. And your father has no right to say I was senseless.”

  I never tell him he’s senseless, she muttered under her breath as she eased herself out of the bed. Even on the nights when he’s been out with the lads and comes home absolutely rat-arsed. Those nights were few and far between, she conceded, but that wasn’t the point. They had a rule that they never criticized each other in front of Jill.

  “I was watching One Hundred and One Dalmatians on video,” said Jill. “But it’s finished. I want to go out and play with Nicolette.”

  “You’re speaking to Nicolette again, are you?” asked Nessa.

  “I was always speaking to her,” said Jill.

  “I thought you’d dumped her for Natalie in Galway,” Nessa said.

  “Oh, Mum!” Jill looked at her pityingly. “You’re so not with it.”

  Nessa laughed and groaned as the pain ricocheted around her head.

  “Do you feel really awful?” a
sked Jill. “Are you totally hungover?”

  “It’s not that bad,” said Nessa. “I’ll survive.”

  “Miss Fitzgerald says that alcohol is a drug. And drugs are bad for you. Like cigarettes,” Jill informed her piously.

  “Yes, drugs are bad for you,” said Nessa. “So are cigarettes. Sometimes people do things that they know are bad for them anyway. Too much alcohol is certainly bad for you.”

  “So why do people do it?” asked Jill.

  “Why do you eat two ice creams one after the other even though you know it’ll give you a tummyache?”

  “Because it’s nice,” said Jill.

  “So’s wine,” Nessa told her. “But not the morning after.”

  She went downstairs and watched from the porch as her daughter crossed the road and knocked on Nicolette’s door. Jean Slater opened the front door, waved at Nessa and ushered Jill inside. Nessa was relieved that Jill was playing in Nicolette’s right now and not the other way around. She couldn’t have coped with two eight-year-olds running around the house today.

  God, she felt dreadful. There had been a time, she knew, when she would’ve been able to drink wine and not feel utterly wrecked the next day but that time belonged to a different Nessa, the unmarried Nessa, Nessa before she became a mother.

  Being a mother changed everything. Even though everybody told you how different things would be it was impossible to absorb the enormity of it. The way your life suddenly became someone else’s. The way nothing was more important than the welfare of your child, no slight to them too small for you to be up in arms about, no concern of theirs too trivial for you to ignore. And, of course, it was impossible to have hangovers with children because you didn’t have time to wallow in pain and misery in your bed when someone was demanding your attention.

  It had been good of Adam to get up so quietly and to have ensured that Jill was washed and dressed all without waking her. Nessa considered making him his favorite meal, chicken dopiaza, for dinner that night but the thought of the spices made her feel ill.

  She made herself a cup of tea and sat down at the kitchen table. He’d left the newspaper open at the horoscopes page, which amused her. Like everyone, he laughed at her for reading them and, like everyone, he loved it when they were right.