Dinner Party

by Sarah Gilmartin

  ‘She’s a bit wild.’ Ray drained his can. ‘Always out, and those skirts.’

  Kate kicked him under the table.

  Her mother started a story about Marise Murphy’s daughter, the one who used to wear nothing as a teenager. At the mention of pregnancy, Kate tuned out. In the kitchen, Peter was singing the very same pop song she’d been listening to earlier in the car. He had a fine melodic voice that she hadn’t heard in years.

  ‘Seriously? The big house after Myshal,’ Ray was saying now. The conversation had taken a twist, and Kate tried to catch up. There were none of the usual words, no wantons or hussies, not even a cursory unmarried.

  ‘Yes,’ her mother said. ‘The mansion. Did the whole place up while she was pregnant no less. She’ll have five children under the age of ten. Five children. Can you imagine? She deserves a medal.’

  Ray tipped Kate’s foot, but she didn’t engage.

  ‘And to think,’ her mother said. ‘Marise Murphy’s house was always a kip. She never cleaned, never went to mass, smoked and drank like a sailor. And all her children have turned out so well.’ Her mother propped her elbows on the table and looked accusingly at Ray. Kate was relieved he was there to take the brunt.

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ her brother said. ‘You should give her a medal so. Organize a ceremony.’

  ‘All of them,’ her mother said to Kate. ‘Success stories. Even Phillip. Could you credit it?’

  ‘Maybe it’s because they were just a regular family who loved each other in their big godless pigsty,’ Ray said.

  It was a brave, dangerous move, and Kate couldn’t help smiling.

  Her mother turned sharply, losing one side of the cape. ‘There’s nothing funny about your brother and his situation,’ she said. ‘Don’t encourage him—you.’

  Kate glanced at the door to the kitchen.

  ‘Tell us, please,’ said Ray, opening a new can. ‘What else has Marise been up to?’

  ‘Oh, she has me withered,’ her mother said. ‘That woman never shuts up about her grandchildren. Twelve she has, with Phillip’s three, and Brendan’s. His wife had a new one just last week. Marise always has the phone out, lording her photos over everyone.’

  Her mother continued to talk for the next five, ten minutes, maybe longer, time had been leeched out of the room. Kate looked at her animated face across the table and for once she didn’t feel like screaming. It was sad that her mother was so afraid of silence, or of the words of her own children, the horror and love that might slip out if she gave them a chance.

  ‘Maybe she’s just happy to be a grandmother?’ Ray said eventually.

  ‘Maybe, maybe,’ said her mother. ‘You can stop your maybes. It’s all show with Marise Murphy.’

  ‘Can’t you show back?’ said Ray. ‘Send her pictures of the twins. God knows Liz takes enough of them. Lainy is a monkey for the camera.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ her mother said. ‘She’s adorable, Raymond. They both are. But they’re six now—it’s not the same. It’s all about babies these days.’

  She looked at Kate and closed her mouth, pressing her lips together so that she suddenly seemed like an older, toothless version of herself. The silence had a heft to it. The light beamed on the table like a message from heaven. What could her mother possibly want her to say? There was no right answer. Perhaps she could just steal a baby before coming down the next time. Perhaps she could ask one of the sales girls if she could borrow one from the photos on their desks, whichever tiny bald creature was the quietest and most pliable. Though any of them would do, really. Her mother wouldn’t care.

  ‘I’ll go and see if Peter needs help,’ said Kate, rising. She’d taken off her blazer in the kitchen but she felt too exposed now in her work dress and its flimsy sleeves.

  Ray looked like he might bolt with her. She nodded at the can of beer. If she was the designated driver, he had to pull his weight somehow. He sat back and gave a peaceable smile, asking their mother whether anyone had recently died. As Kate left the room, she caught two bridge deaths and a cousin of the vegetable man.

  In the kitchen, Peter was still humming, tapping a yellow desert boot on the tiles. He jumped as she passed. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ve the willies.’

  She put on her blazer and smiled. ‘Halloween.’

  ‘I didn’t mean,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’ She approached the cooker. ‘Can I help with anything?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s all done bar the rice.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ She stuck her head in the chilli to see if he’d gone overboard with the beans.

  ‘No help needed,’ he said. ‘Definitely not with dessert, anyhow. Not after last year.’

  She looked at him, offended. It was so unlike him to be mean. But his bright, wide face was as friendly as a cartoon dog, and she realized he was joking, that he didn’t realize she’d thrown the Alaska in the bin on purpose. He smoothed his grey-blond fringe over to the side, the way he’d started to wear it to hide the triangles of flesh in his hairline.

  ‘Shut up or I’ll take the chocolates back,’ Kate said.

  ‘Thanks for those. You know she loves truffles.’

  ‘I do,’ she said.

  ‘And you’re very good to get her the cardigan. You saw how thrilled she was. She’s very grateful these days—for everything. She’s changed, you know. Changing.’ He leaned against the counter. ‘If we could just see you a bit more.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I do. OK?’

  ‘You’re flying it though,’ Peter said. ‘Whatever it was last year.’ He gave her a lopsided, meaningful look and she thought for one dreadful second that he knew about Liam. ‘Whatever it was,’ he said. ‘You’re doing so much better now.’ His eyes scanned her like one of those X-ray machines at the airport.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said tetchily. ‘I’m all good.’

  ‘Just a few times a month,’ he said. ‘Come down here. Come and visit us. We’d love to see you for a full weekend.’

  ‘OK, Peter. Watch the rice.’ She pointed to the bubbling pot. ‘I’m going for a wander.’

  Up in their old bedroom, Kate left off the light and lay on the springy double bed. Her mother had bought it years ago, for guests she’d said, though Kate couldn’t think of one person outside their immediate family who might use it. Still, her mother had done up the room. She’d replaced the peach paint with a striped gold wallpaper and matching cushions. The bedspread was a soft pink, with gold leaves that looked like teardrops from afar. It was a beautiful room now, worthy of a hotel, and it was a shame to think of it vacant. But what did she know, really? Peter was right. She wasn’t part of Cranavon any more, didn’t know what went on here between her visits.

  So Marise Murphy had seven hundred grandchildren—so what. Her mother’s response was typical. She was always so competitive about these things. But no, Kate sat forward on the bed. That was a narrow-lens view of things. If she was to survive this evening—this life—she had to go wider. Her mother didn’t like to win, she needed to win. It wasn’t really a choice. In therapy Kate had talked about her mother’s childhood, not the poor-me tale they all knew by heart, but the facts of the situation, which were brutal and difficult to argue with, as facts usually are. There was no need to go into the details. It was a fact: her mother had been afraid for most of her life. And if there was one thing Kate understood, it was fear. For years she’d sought safety in food, in her anorexia, to name it, which had little to do with how she looked. It was an emotional illness, a symptom or rather a solution, a way to deal with all the feelings she wasn’t entitled to. Her mother, when it came down to it, was just afraid too. The strangest part of this realization was the rage Kate had suddenly felt at her father, her poor dead father who had married a difficult woman and done so little to help her, a woman whose crime was not being a field, a cow or even a tractor. There had been no manual in the box.

  A flat, solid beam of light shone from the landing
onto the back wall, almost reaching the window. Outside, the dark sky had pockets of brightness. When she came home, she always noticed the stars, so many more than in Dublin. She knew it was to do with light pollution, but some childish, romantic part of her liked to think of her father and sister, up there, floating in trillions of happy particles across the dark-bright folds. We are all alive somewhere.

  On the ceiling of the bedroom, the occasional bump of plaster was the only reminder of her glow-in-the-dark planetarium. Kate missed getting lost in the patterns. She missed the posters on the walls too. She tried to remember the room as it had been—a space so familiar to her, so tangible and imprinted in her brain that as a child it seemed impossible she would ever forget. The old furniture was still in her memory—the number of drawers in the pine dresser, the way they split them, every second one, the way Elaine’s stuff spilled over into her own. Their two single beds, flush against the walls, the pine locker between them. All gone. Even the wardrobes were different now. She remembered the peach one with the double doors; how they’d written the songs they wanted at their funerals on the back of it, behind their hanging clothes. A secret in a house where secrets were forbidden. Kate hadn’t been brave enough to tell Peter or her mother before the funeral. It had been a private game, a dare between twins, not something that was supposed to be aired, or shared, or ever needed in real life. The only song she could remember was ‘Everybody Hurts’, and she wasn’t even sure which of them had picked it. She would love to see their lists again now. But the wardrobe was gone, taken away and dumped, she supposed, along with everything else.

  Kate closed her eyes and tried to picture other, smaller details. Smells, feelings, conversations, jokes. It was no good. The room was foreign to her now, like the dimensions themselves had changed along with the furniture. There was nothing for her here, not even a faint memory of her sister, or herself. Suddenly she realized that the only voice from the past left inside this room, this whole house, seemed to belong to her mother. She felt older than she had in years, a good feeling, like she was finally becoming the age she was meant to be. All her life time had played tricks with her, making her grow up too soon, then turning her back into a child when she needed to be an adult. Downstairs, Peter was calling her name. She got off the bed, straightened the covers and went to the landing. Two moths were frantic at the lampshade, batting their wings against the material, a soft thudding noise like an early morning rain. She switched off the light and left them motionless, suspended in the dark air, resting.

  In the centre of the table, the rice was in a ceramic bowl with a clear glass lid. Peter lifted it as she ducked in behind his chair and a sweet, doughy smell filled the room. Beside the rice, there was a shallow bowl of spinach in a pool of green juice.

  ‘Where were you?’ her mother and Ray said within seconds of each other—a high-pitched fugue.

  Ray had taken off his jumper and looked ready for a match in his stripy sports top.

  ‘Upstairs,’ said Kate, sitting down beside him.

  Across the table, her mother was fidgeting with her hair. Her hand went to her neck, touching the skin around her collarbones. There were more wrinkles than Kate remembered, a diamond pattern criss-crossed in the hollow above the bone.

  ‘Can we start?’ Ray trowelled his mince, dropping his head as he took a bite, protective.

  Kate peered at her own plate. Peter had served a large portion of chilli, bigger than she would have given herself, but she was hungry again and happy to eat. She turned up the cuffs of her blazer.

  ‘What were you doing upstairs?’ her mother said.

  ‘Bathroom,’ Kate said instinctively.

  ‘What’s wrong with the downstairs bathroom?’ That voice again, the blunt insistence.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Humph,’ her mother said.

  Peter took a seat at the head of the table, to the right of their mother, making an uneven party. Her mother gave a lonely sniff towards the empty chair on her left.

  ‘Can you hold off a second, Ray?’ Peter joined hands and rested them on his stomach. The pink shirt she’d gotten him last Christmas was loose at the shoulders. ‘We’ll just take a second.’ He bowed his head. It was a dignified way to acknowledge the occasion, and she followed suit.

  ‘You need to say something, Peter,’ her mother broke the silence. ‘A prayer.’

  ‘All right, Mammy.’ He spoke a few lines about Elaine, and then about Daddy, said he was thankful the family were here together to remember them.

  ‘Amen,’ said her mother.

  ‘Amen,’ said Ray, the fork already back in the chilli.

  ‘Will I serve you, Mammy?’ Kate stuck the silver spoon in the cake of rice.

  Her mother nodded. She gave her a careful spoonful without spilling a grain, then went to serve herself.

  ‘That’s far too much,’ her mother said. Using a fork and her fingers, she put most of the rice back in the bowl. Some of it fell onto the serving spoon. The others were watching, waiting for their turn. Kate put some rice on her plate and nudged the bowl towards Peter. He served himself and Ray, and the pair of them began eating. Kate took a mouthful of mince, washed it down with water. Across the way, her mother was moving the fork through her food in a painfully slow snake. The cardigan, Kate noticed, was no longer around her shoulders. Leaning across the table for the spinach, she saw a coral heap on the carpet beside her mother’s chair. Peter was wrong. Her mother was not a grateful person. It was not in her nature to be thankful for the good things in life; rather she seemed only to notice them when they were gone.

  ‘Where’s your cardigan, Mammy?’ Kate said, sitting back down.

  Everyone looked at her in surprise.

  ‘It’s…’ her mother said, patting her shoulders helplessly, ‘it must have fallen. Peter.’

  Peter retrieved the cardigan. Her mother made a fuss of fixing it over her shoulders, and Kate was sorry she’d said anything. Why couldn’t her mother just wear it like a regular person? Why did she need to act like a superhero in a cape? Perhaps it was too small, Kate realized, but the next size up would have surely caused offence. Oh, it was so hard to get anything right. She took a large helping of spinach and tried to pass the bowl to Ray, who made a face like he was sucking a lemon. She took another bite of her chilli, the meat dry and tangy. It caught in her throat and she coughed.

  ‘More water?’ said Peter, holding up the tinted glass jug.

  ‘What about a beer?’ Ray said, though it was clear he was not talking to her. He would be raging if she left them stranded here for the evening.

  ‘Go on, so,’ said Peter. ‘You’ve twisted my arm.’

  Ray reached over the side of his chair and yanked the remainder of the six-pack off the ground. He gave a can to Peter, took one himself and left the spare can with the plastic rings in the middle of the table.

  ‘Could you take that off the table, please?’ her mother said.

  It was not an unreasonable request. Kate reached for the can, the empty rings jutting from it like tiny plastic nooses.

  ‘Leave it,’ said Ray. ‘It’s doing no harm.’

  ‘It’s no centrepiece,’ said Peter. ‘I should have got the candle out. The fat yellow one. I forgot.’

  Her mother’s face softened. ‘No, Peter,’ she said. ‘That was my job.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ray. ‘Now we have the can. It even sounds like candle. Perfect.’ He let a crazed laugh loose on the room.

  ‘Put it on the ground,’ her mother said.

  ‘Sure, it will be gone in a minute. Relax.’

  Her mother’s cutlery clattered on her plate.

  They waited.

  ‘Are you an alcoholic now, Raymond, as well as everything else?’ she said.

  In the silence, only the sound of Peter chewing. Kate wondered if the old CD player still worked. Even loneliness at Christmas would be better than a fight on the anniversary. She ate more rice without mince and left her fork to the side. She could
n’t handle a meltdown. Approach with caution wouldn’t get her far in a thunderstorm. It wouldn’t get you over a puddle, really.

  Ray tilted the can to his mouth, smacked his lips.

  ‘Cop on, Ray,’ Kate muttered.

  ‘Raymond,’ her mother said.

  ‘Yes, Mother? Mother dearest.’

  ‘Are you a drunk? A boozer?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Ray. ‘I just like to give you something new to complain about each time I come home. I know how much you need that.’

  ‘Do you hear that tone?’ Her mother challenged Peter, who in turn eyeballed Kate.

  ‘You’re never happy, Mammy,’ said Ray. ‘It’s like you need something to worry about.’

  ‘I care,’ her mother said. ‘All I’ve ever done was care about my family. And look—’

  ‘He’s only having a can or two, Mammy,’ Kate smiled. ‘That cardi is lovely on you. It’s definitely your colour.’

  ‘A can?’ said her mother. ‘There’s five of them gone. I might be old but I’m not blind.’

  ‘Blind? Not you, Mother,’ said Ray.

  ‘Peter!’ The colour came up on her mother’s face.

  ‘Leave off, Ray,’ said Peter. ‘Do ye not like the chilli, or what?’ He pointed to their plates.

  Her mother wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Perfectly fine.’

  Ray left down the can and began to shovel huge forkfuls of mince into his mouth, barely pausing to swallow. ‘Delicious,’ he said, still chewing. A chunk of meat hit the table runner with an oily orange mark. ‘Scrumptious, Peter.’

  ‘Look—’ Her mother stood, pointing. ‘You’ve messed on the runner. Liz’s runner. The beautiful runner from Africa.’ She made it worse with her napkin.

  ‘An antique!’ said Ray, still shovelling food.

  ‘Stop it, Ray,’ said Kate. ‘You’re not a child.’ She nudged him with her elbow and a grain of rice flew off his fork, high into the air.

  ‘Oh, but it’s delicious,’ said Ray. ‘We’re having such a nice meal. Isn’t that right, Mother?’