by Helen Cullen
I don’t know, but I’ll make it up to her.
I always do.
And we’ll forget anything ever happened.
Or at least never mention it, and that’s the same thing in the end, isn’t it?
I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t write these lines into the ether. My mother used to warn me never to write anything down you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the newspaper, but I’m not worried. No one is interested enough in what mothers think for it to make headline news.
As long as nobody starves and the children turn up for school, nobody asks any questions.
It’s okay for women to starve, though, a little bit, enough to be as skinny as possible without getting ill. The purpose of the body has nothing to do with their own health or well-being, as long as it pleases others and works as an incubator. I try to teach my daughters the opposite, but I am no advertisement, I know.
I must try harder.
What lessons am I teaching them through my very existence?
Eat well but don’t get fat, be slim but not too skinny.
Follow your dreams but prioritize your family.
Dress well for your own esteem only, but never leave the house without your makeup on.
Be confident but not aggressive.
Be sociable but not loud.
Celebrate your talents but don’t be arrogant.
Don’t settle for less than love but don’t have unrealistic expectations of love.
I don’t know how to advise them to be a woman of the world because what can I honestly tell them? You will never get it right, so please yourself?
I wish someone had told me that once upon a time.
Then maybe I wouldn’t be filled with so much white noise.
If I wriggle my toes, I can hear it crackling, running on a power grid throughout my body, accumulating in this screaming inside my head.
Harmonizing with that flock of seagulls from the schoolyard into a vicious cacophony.
Dancing on that easterly wind, whispering in my ears.
I’ll try to sleep, close the curtains, cover my head with the heaviest blankets.
In my dreams, sometimes I am deaf to the noise.
If I am ever so quiet, the wind might blow past me instead of through me.
If I make myself very small.
Inis Óg: October 2001
AFTER CHANGING OUT of her school uniform, Nollaig slipped quietly out of the house to avoid an interrogation about where she was going. Just in case, her story was straight: maths tutoring at Dervla’s; nothing suspicious there, but she’d rather not fib if possible. Lying contravened the high ethical code against which she measured herself at all times. The truth, and resisting the temptation to hide snacks in her room, were the principal pillars of her virtues, although she upheld the former more successfully than the latter; it was hard to binge in front of a mother whose nose twitched when any food packaging crinkled.
Meeting Aindí O’Shea at the back of the boathouse didn’t strictly fall in line with her morality guidelines either, but it was okay, she decided, as long as nothing untoward happened. Agreeing to meet him there implied nothing. She would make that perfectly clear and, if need be, he would just have to reconsider his expectations, disappointing though that may be for him.
The handle of her hairbrush protruded at an awkward angle from the pocket of her cardigan and hit her right knee with every step. Maybe bringing it had been a mistake, but she wanted to wrestle her mop into submission once she reached the pier after walking in the wind. Her new white jeans were splashed with mud before she made it to the end of the lane, but she hoped he wouldn’t notice. It was hardly her fashion sense he was interested in—that was never her forte—although she struggled to think what it was he did see in her. Before leaving the note in her school locker, he’d never paid her any attention at all, much as she’d tried to attract it. The sporty girls were more his speed. Wasn’t that the way it always worked? The GAA football lads with the camogie girls, the arty girls with the grungy boys, and the kids whose parents socialized at the golf club drawn together by the sheer magnetism of their genes. Nollaig wasn’t sure where she fitted, but maybe it was her individuality Aindí liked. Maybe. She pulled her shoulders back and walked taller.
Nollaig paused on the pier, brushed her hair vigorously with exactly one hundred strokes, and wiped her clammy hands on her jeans. The sandals were a mistake, too, she thought, too childish, but it would have been a bit much to clamber down here in her mother’s high heels. She pulled in her stomach and tried to walk nonchalantly around the cliff edge toward their meeting point. It was difficult to know from how far away he could see her approaching and eager was never a good look. She rubbed her teeth with a handkerchief in case they’d been stained by her orange-red lipstick and wished she had thought to bring a little mirror. One more deep breath, and it was time.
When she looked around the edge of the boathouse, she was surprised to see that Aindí was still in his school uniform. A black T-shirt peeked out from the open collar of his school shirt, the gray tie hanging from his pocket. This was taking casual to a whole new level. He was sitting with the GAA gym holdall the lads all used as a school bag open beside him and frowning in concentration at a yellow notebook. He didn’t stand up when he saw her there, but smiled out from under his long brown hair, parted in the middle like a pair of curtains. Disappointingly, the roots were greasy.
“Nollaig! Thanks a million for coming. Sorry if it all seems a bit weird—asking you to meet here like this.”
Nollaig perched on a boulder close to him, conscious of how her top rose up a little over the waistband of her jeans, exposing her lower back and what Dervla called her cute little muffin top.
“It’s not weird,” she answered, with a wink. “Sure, isn’t this what all the kids are doing these days?”
He looked a bit bewildered but gave a half-hearted laugh.
“The thing is, Noll—”
He paused as she slid down the side of the rock and inched a little closer.
“The thing is,” he continued, “I failed maths in the midterm, and Pat says if I don’t get at least a C at Christmas he’s going to drop me from training. I can’t let on at home or my da will fleece me, so I was hoping you might be able to give me a bit of help? Just between ourselves, like? Dervla said you’ve saved her life.”
Nollaig drew little circles in the sand with her finger then brushed them away.
“Dervla? Are you two friendly?”
“Did she not tell ya we’re seeing each other? Don’t tell her ma, though, or she’ll hit the roof. She has it in for me big time since we had that end-of-summer party at her house. Terribly sensitive about her gladioli, it seems. You were there, weren’t you?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
With some effort, she stood up, so her shadow fell across him.
“I can do Tuesdays after school—if we meet in the library. We can catch the later ferry home. Okay?”
He punched her in the leg. “You’re a legend, Noll. Thanks a million. And you won’t tell anyone, will you?”
She shook her head.
“Are you walking back to the village?” she asked.
“No, go on ahead there. Derv is meeting me here at seven. It must be nearly that now.” He pulled out his mobile and squinted at the screen. “See ya Tuesday, so.”
Nollaig gave him a little wave, but he was so engrossed in texting that he didn’t look up to see it. As soon as she turned from the pier, she started to run. The hairbrush fell from her pocket, but she didn’t bother picking it up.
She wouldn’t cry. No way. Why would she cry over that snake in the grass and that big eejit getting together? It was his loss.
* * *
While Nollaig had been beautifying herself for her pseudodate, Sive had been busy preten
ding to do her homework at the back of the St. Francis’s School music room. She was so elated to be in the boys’ school that it was difficult for her to concentrate. It smelled different from her own convent school on the other side of the river; after only two months as a first-year at the Brigidine, she still hadn’t become indifferent to the new-school odor that assaulted her every time she spun through its blue revolving doors: fresh paint, bleach, the stew of fried onions, cheese and milk that lingered around the home economics kitchens, the chemicals that crept under the door of the science lab, and an underlying scent of dust and damp that she decided was the aroma of nuns. In St. Francis’s, however, all she could smell was boy: a low hum of body odor, rubber footballs and Lynx deodorant.
She had been to the dentist after school, so Mossy and Dillon had reluctantly agreed to her sitting in on their band rehearsal so they could catch the last ferry back to the island together. As long as she “stayed out of the way” and “didn’t make a show of them.” Babysitting your little sister, Dillon proclaimed, “was not very rock and roll.” She sat with her back to a freezing-cold radiator and stretched her legs out on her schoolbag. With her French folder open unconvincingly on her lap, she watched her brothers laboriously arrange their gear on the little stage at the top of the classroom. Mossy tuned his Sunburst LA electric guitar while Dillon helped their new drummer, Podge Harrington, set up his kit. “You know how many times bands have covered ‘Johnny B. Goode’?” he shouted over at Mossy. “Like, three hundred or something. Mr. McEvoy told me—we should be doing something different.”
Mossy ignored him, nodding at Barry Ramsbottom, who had arrived with his bass guitar wrapped in a black plastic bag.
“No case yet?” Podge asked, and Barry shook his head. “No, I’m still paying for the new patio window, so I’m broke. Ma said she might get me one for Christmas—if there’s no more trouble.”
He plugged his bass into the amp and caught Sive’s eye. “Who’s this, then? Our first groupie?”
Dillon threw an apple core at him. “Leave it out, Barry, that’s our kid sister—ignore her.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to play in front of an audience,” he said, plucking each string in turn, each note ringing clean.
Dillon laughed. “She’s not an audience, she’s not even listening to us. C’mere, have you thought about any names? I was thinking Slime or Thunk, ya know? Something short that will look big on posters?”
Podge snorted, hitting his snare drum absentmindedly. “What posters?”
“For our gigs, stupid. We have to be gigging by the summer. That’s the plan.”
“Well, no one’s going to go see a band called Slime, are they?” Barry said. “I wouldn’t want to go, and I’m in the band.”
“I had an idea,” Mossy said. “What about Night and Day?”
Dillon sighed, shaking his head. “You mean like Mam calls us? No way, Moss. Why not just call ourselves The Twins and be done with it?”
Podge jumped in. “Well, because there’s four of us, for a start. I like it. I’m with Mossy. It sounds like a Smashing Pumpkins song. We could do cool artwork with moons and suns and stuff. Barry, you have the deciding vote.”
Barry shrugged, guzzled half a bottle of Lucozade and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his school jumper. “It’s better than Slime, I suppose.”
Podge high-fived Mossy with more gusto than was returned, and scrawled Night and Day across the whiteboard behind them in blue marker.
“Sive, will you take a picture? For the archives.” Mossy pulled out a Polaroid camera from his army-surplus schoolbag. She walked toward them, pausing halfway to pull up her stockings, then looked at them through the lens of the boxy black camera.
Dillon sat on the front of the stage, legs spread wide in the uniform slacks that his mother had transformed into skinny drainpipes for him. He was still sulking about their name, but tilted his head expertly away from the camera so his curls fell across one eye, like she’d seen him practicing at home.
Podge pulled his blond ponytail over his shoulder and held his drumsticks in a cross over his head.
Barry posed with his bass balanced on one raised knee, his head of fuzzy ginger thrown back so the acne on his Adam’s apple was exposed.
Mossy lurked beside his amp, turning his head at the moment of the click so that his face became a blur of blond hair and black bobble hat.
The photo whirred out of the camera, and Sive shook it gently between her fingers while they clumsily launched into “Johnny B. Goode.” Each band member seemed completely oblivious to what the other three were doing, and Dillon just made up his own words. His performance was predominantly swagger, but what he lacked in talent he more than compensated for with attitude.
Sive sat back down and discreetly twisted little rolls of tissue paper into her ears. She wrote Night and Day, October 25, 2001 on the white strip at the bottom of the Polaroid picture with a purple metallic pen and watched them run through the song for the third time.
She wondered how long it would be before they realized that Mossy was the twin who could sing, and if she could convince him to give her guitar lessons.
She considered how good she could be by the time she was sixteen if she started practicing now, started listing band names in her notebook, and soon Night and Day did lose her attention as she dissolved into her interior world. It seemed there were more interesting things than boys after all. It was a relief.
Just before six, the janitor stuck his head around the door with a five-minute warning and the rehearsal wound down. Sive saw Mossy slide his lunch box on the floor over to Podge, where he sat packing his drums. Without a word, and without meeting his eye, Podge took out Mossy’s leftover sandwiches and a Twix and shoved them in his schoolbag.
On the walk to the pier, Dillon trailed his bag along the street, listening to Fugazi at full volume through his headphones. His siblings ignored him and talked about Sive’s art project for her school’s upcoming exhibition.
“I’m thinking about selkies,” she said. “I’m wondering if I can use the photos I took of the seals but try to draw the metamorphoses on the prints themselves. Do you know what I mean?”
Mossy thought about it for a moment. “It might work if you scratched out the ink on the photos with a needle? And then drew over them? Have you talked to Mam about it? You know she loves those selkie stories. I’d say she’d have some ideas.”
She stopped to tighten the laces of her Doc Marten boots. “No,” she said, without looking up at him. “Don’t mention anything, will you?”
Dillon tuned into the conversation as a song ended. “Why don’t you want Mam to know?” he asked, giving her shoulder a nudge so she lost her balance.
“It’s no big deal,” she said, walking now. “I just don’t know if I can cope with her coming to the school yet, that’s all. None of my new friends have even met her.”
The brothers strode along on either side of her, Mossy attempting to catch Dillon’s eye to gesture for him to calm down, but he was too slow. Dillon grabbed his sister’s arm and turned her toward him. “Sive!” he shouted. “That’s so lousy. You sound like you’re ashamed of her. I’m so telling her what you said. I bet you’ll want Dad there, though, right?”
Mossy pushed him away and walked between them. “It’s okay, Si,” he said. “I know she can be a bit...unpredictable, but she’d want to be there.”
“I know,” she replied, her eyes growing wet. “But I just don’t want to be worrying if she’ll make it and then be disappointed when she doesn’t show. I’d prefer to not have her involved at all, and then I don’t have to worry about it.”
Dillon shook his head at his sister then sprinted off down the street, headphones restored to his head, drowning out her voice as she called after him.
Mossy picked up Sive’s schoolbag and slung it over his shoulder.
“Don�
��t worry,” he said. “He won’t say anything. You know he hates any chat about Mam. The Unmentionables.”
* * *
On the ferry, Dillon stood on his own on the top deck, seemingly oblivious to the bitter wind that blew threw him, while Mossy and Sive huddled against a radiator in the cabin.
Dillon’s eyes stayed fixed on the mainland; Mossy’s searched for the island.
Mossy thought about what he had said; why there was so much silence around the topic of their mother. Her unknowable state of being lingered over every future plan: would they go on holidays this year? Could friends come and stay during the summer? Would Dad finally visit Japan with Jeremy? Their daily lives were consumed by temperature-taking: listening as they came through the door for her voice; catching a whiff of whiskey from her breath as she kissed them good-night; seeing the curtains drawn in her bedroom. Their father refused to discuss it, but when did children ever need to have what they witnessed explained? Even if they couldn’t name the truth, they could feel it in their bones.
He remembered one day as Sive ate fish sticks at the kitchen table how she had asked their father if Mammy was mad. “That’s what the kids say in school,” she said. “‘Psycho Mammy,’ that’s what Kitty Malone said. What’s a Psycho Mammy?”
Murtagh had swiped her plate away, snatching a piece of fish from her hand, and pulled her up off her chair. Mossy watched him lean in close to her face and say in a terrible voice he’d never heard before, “Kitty Malone is a wicked girl. Don’t ever let me hear you say such things again. Your mother gets poorly sometimes, all right? Just like we all do.”
Sive started crying. “Am I in deep trouble, Daddy?”
He gave his daughter a hug. “Of course not, love, but remember what I said. Okay?”
A few minutes later Mossy followed his father out of the house and saw him striding off in the direction of the Malones’ farm.
He wondered now if that’s how adults ended up so insecure; so often children are told not to trust their instincts by parents who think the truth is too blinding. It had happened to the Moones, and now they were all committed to a family narrative that could never be unraveled. They could say their mother was embarrassing, exhausted, eccentric even, but never mad. They had learned not to ask where she was at times when she should be there, to pretend not to notice how she drifted into herself sometimes when they were all together, or to be surprised by finding her sitting alone on the stairs, staring into space. And Dillon was the greatest advocate for that story; he wouldn’t—he couldn’t—see the truth. Could only hold one image of his mother in his mind; as if to accept her troubles was to negate her love.