by Ciara Smyth
“Yeah, obviously, love. How did you get on?”
“Nothing exciting.” I wondered how she’d react if I said I’d enlisted a ragtag bunch of misfits to break into school in the middle of the night and got a boy suspended.
She stood absently with a pair of pants in her hand that had nowhere to go. There was no room on my makeshift washing line and no more room on the radiator. She hung them off the door handle and threw her arms round me.
“I’m sorry I left you alone, love. I’ll make it up to you. Do you want to watch a movie and have a crisp bowl tonight?”
I breathed her in, relaxing. She seemed fine. Maybe everything was okay. Maybe I was only imagining the worst, thinking Dad was around.
“Sounds good,” I said.
“Good. Because I already bought these.” She broke away from me and went to the cupboard, pulling out three sharing bags of different pickled-onion-flavored crisps. The greatest and most underrated crisp flavor.
We put on our favorite film, Dating Amber, and put all the crisps in a mixing bowl. We pulled throws around us for the cozy factor. Mine was the red one, worn but so soft. Hers was the green-and-blue one, bobbly but toasty.
However, even before Amber and Eddie started fake dating Mam was back texting. I tried giving her a few pointed looks and loud sighs. It’s no fun watching a film when the person you’re with is on their phone. You might as well be watching it on your own. Holly did it all the time and I hated it.
“I’m going to the loo. You don’t have to pause it though,” I said about half an hour in.
“All right, love.”
Mam’s room was dark and I knew she’d see the light if I turned it on, so I used the flashlight on my phone. Her red sports bag was on her bed, along with three folded tops that she must not have worn when she was away. I shone the light into the bag. It was empty except for half a pack of gum and a crumpled-up receipt. I flattened it out and sighed when I saw she’d spent €5.10 on a garage coffee and the pack of gum. What a waste of money. I looked around, wanting some other clue to jump out at me. I had my suspicions, but I needed confirmation.
I’d just given up on finding anything incriminating when I spotted it. In a ceramic dish I’d made her in primary school. It was painted red and said Best Mam EVER in clumsy handwriting. You couldn’t see the words now, though; they were obscured by the pile of tangled-up necklaces and silver rings from eBay that turned your finger green.
But on top of it all, glinting in the flashlight, a gold ring. My heart sank. I knew that ring and I knew it lived in the back of my mam’s sock drawer in a little gauzy pouch most of the time. I picked it up and inspected it, somehow hoping it was an identical but different ring. One that didn’t have the engraving I saw when I picked it up and held it to the light.
LISA & AIDAN ♥
I spent the next two days on high alert. After school I’d walk the whole length of the street, past our flat, and double back again before I went upstairs. I didn’t know what I’d do if I saw his car. I had imaginary conversations with him in my head, where I’d take him aside and tell him clearly and firmly that his presence was unwanted and that he should go back to his real wife or I’d tell her that he was coming around here again. In reality, if I did see his car I probably wouldn’t go home. I’d turn right around, turn off my phone, and find a cave to live in instead.
Mam always worked late on Thursday, but then she said she was also going to stay late on Friday because the other girl who normally did Friday night was sick. A fine story. Friday evening, I pulled a pile of cushions over to the windowsill, draped myself in my red blanket, and watched for her to come home. If she was really working she’d leave around eight. I only relaxed when I saw her walking up the street around eight forty.
Unless she knew I’d be watching and she got him to drop her one street over.
Well, as long as he wasn’t coming up here, that was something for now. Still, I wondered how I could get Mam to see that he wasn’t worth having around. If she dumped him for a change then surely she wouldn’t be so badly affected. On TV the characters are always having deep realizations about their own lives when they perform in the school play. I couldn’t sign Mam up for a local drama group, but maybe a different kind of narrative kick up the butt?
Saturday night I could feel some kind of calm. Mam stayed in with me and Holly came round and I made us all watch a really awful film called The Other Woman about three women who team up to get revenge on the same cheating man. I kept giving Mam side glances through the first ten minutes, but then Holly and Mam began talking about hairstyles for curly hair, and halfway through Mam started giving Holly a bloody updo and going on about how Holly could probably go blonde if she wanted to but why would you ruin your gorgeous red hair for that. I huffed and stuffed Oreos into my mouth and made very relevant remarks about the film. Like, “People who cheat are just really selfish. They only want to have their cake and eat it too.” Both of them ignored me and I realized I should have told Holly what was going on so she could have been in on it. I didn’t know why I hadn’t told her yet. I felt embarrassed.
Sunday morning I made Mam breakfast in bed. I bet Dad never did that. He never could because he would never live with us. Because he would never leave his wife.
I climbed into Mam’s bed with her and sipped on a cup of tea.
“This is nice, isn’t it? The two of us on a Sunday morning,” I said cheerfully. “How’s your eggs?”
“Perfect, love. What’s brought this on?” she asked, with a mouthful of toast.
“Just wanted to spend some time with my favorite . . . mother.” I almost said parent, but I thought that would be a bit too pointed. “Remember the time we went on holidays to Galway?”
If anyone ever asked me a time in my life when I was really happy, that’s what I’d pick. It was hazy, but I remember me and Mam washing sand from between our toes and skin that smelled like coconut sunscreen. I remember feeling peaceful. There was no drinking that week, she didn’t need it. And I wasn’t worried; it was back when I believed her when she said there’d be no drinking ever again.
“I don’t know if staying in your auntie Jacinta’s house while she was in Spain really counts as a holiday.” She gave me an apologetic smile. “I promise I’ll take you on a proper holiday someday.”
“It was proper,” I protested. “We went to the beach. We got ice cream. We had barbecues. Just the two of us. It was brilliant.”
“I remember getting you ice cream from the corner shop because the ice-cream van on the beach was twice the price. And you cried because you really wanted to get one from the van.”
This was not going the way I’d envisioned. I tried not to show my hurt that she kept batting away my good memories like they were nothing. I needed to keep things upbeat. Mam was always so blue whenever Dad was gone and she didn’t appreciate that we could be happy, just the two of us. If she’d only see how much we already had.
“We don’t need money to be happy, Mam. I cried because I saw a dead crab, too. Like let’s not put too much emphasis on what an eight-year-old cries about.”
“You’re right, love, money doesn’t buy happiness.” She pulled my head toward her and kissed my temple and I could smell a faint whiff of her perfume. Her Mam smell. “Family is what’s important.”
“And we’re a perfect family,” I said. “Just the way we are.”
There. I’d said it. I’d let her know I knew, without saying the words. Maybe we could at least talk about it. It was up to her now. If she said anything, even if she just asked me why I was being weird, I’d take it as a sign to tell her how I felt.
She didn’t meet my eyes. Instead she took a long sip of her tea. Then she frowned and opened her mouth. I held my breath.
“Did you forget my sweetener?”
12.
Somehow only a week had passed since the day I’d pushed Meabh Kowalska down the stairs. On my way into school on Monday morning I saw Orla get out of her dad’s car. There was a
beat between when she saw me and when she waved. I waved back.
“Who’s that?” her dad asked. He was a handsome man with a shaved head and dark skin like Orla. “I’ve not seen her before. Did she join your dance class?”
Orla sighed and cut her eyes to me as if to say, See what I mean? It made me feel like I’d done the right thing, even if Kavi had had to sacrifice his phone for a few days. A bit of pride swelled in my chest like a balloon inflating. I wasn’t used to that, but I’d helped her and it felt great.
She made a “come here” gesture at me and I actually did that thing where you look around to see if the person is gesturing at someone else. She wasn’t.
“Uh, hi,” I said meekly when I reached the car. I never knew how to act around parents. Holly’s mam thought I was bad news and I wondered if there was something about me that gave that impression.
“This is my friend Aideen. Aideen, this is my dad.”
For some reason I blushed.
“Hi, Mr. . . .” I trailed off, realizing I didn’t know Orla’s surname.
“Nice to meet you, Aideen,” he said, his lips quirking. “You must be new friends?”
“Yes, Dad, new friends. And now we have to go to class.” Orla pulled me away by the elbow and I waved goodbye to her dad, feeling a pang, wishing just for a second that it was real.
Holly and I bounced on our exercise balls during registration. I would have abs of steel soon. You wouldn’t be able to see them because of the comfortable layer of squish on top, but that was fine with me.
“Do you think if you were rich and famous and you gave loads of cash to charity, you’d tell everyone, or would you keep it a secret because then everyone would ask and you’d have to say no to some people?” I asked Holly seriously.
“I’d definitely tell everyone,” she said without missing a beat. “And I’d say I was telling them to ‘raise awareness’ and encourage other people to donate. Win-win.”
“Good point. So you don’t think there’s any secret philanderers?”
Holly stared at me for a minute.
“I think you mean philanthropists,” she said.
“Oh, what did I say?”
“Philanderer.”
“What’s that mean, then?”
“Someone who does loads of affairs.”
“Definitely not the same as doing loads of good deeds, then.”
“Not unless they’re really good at it,” Holly said.
“Like they want to make sure as many people as possible get to experience their mind-blowing moves.”
We both laughed and Ms. Devlin hmphed.
“Anything you’d like to share with the class?”
“We were wondering,” I started. Holly elbowed me to tell me to shut up. “How good you’d have to be at sex for it to be considered a public service to bag as many people as possible?”
There was a ripple of laughter.
“If that level of talent exists, girls, I haven’t yet encountered it,” Ms. Devlin drawled, neither scandalized nor particularly annoyed.
Ronan shuddered. “Miss, you cannot be telling us you’ve had sex.”
“There are a few nuns wandering the halls of this place, Ronan. I am not one of them. I’m sorry that comes as a surprise to you.”
Before he could reply, Ms. Devlin clapped her hands together and pressed on. I heard him mutter, “Devlin has the clap,” to the boy next to him. I really judged Holly’s friend Jill for going out with him. He was handsome, in a bland-white-guy-with-blond-hair-and-blue-eyes kind of way, but he was such a knob. There was a moment when the whole class realized that Ms. Devlin had heard him say it. I think every single person held their breath.
Ms. Devlin looked at Ronan like he was a spider and she was considering whether or not to squish him.
“Ronan. My sexual health is none of your business. However, chlamydia is a serious infection with long-term consequences, and is often undetectable. If any of you are concerned about sexually transmitted infections, I advise you to visit your doctor for regular testing. There’s no shame in that and you can talk to me anytime.”
We all exhaled. Ronan’s shoulders relaxed. He’d gotten away with it. I was a little disappointed. I knew Ms. Devlin liked to make things into a teachable moment, but still. Ronan was a worm.
Ms. Devlin smiled, and then added, as though she’d forgotten, “Oh and Ronan, go to Mr. Kowalski’s office and tell him what you said, please.” Ronan paled.
Ms. Devlin clapped her hands together. “Now, anyone in Mr. Walker’s geography class first period, you’re in luck. He is not in this morning and there was no sub available at short notice. So! You’re with me in PE with the third years.”
“Aideen cannot take part in PE today because she is suffering from hysteria.” Ms. Devlin sighed. “Aideen, tell me, what is hysteria?”
“Um, you know, when bitches be crazy?” I said.
“This is your most offensive illness yet.”
“Tell me about it.” I nodded my head vigorously. “Of course my doctor is a man. He was all like, you should stop reading and having opinions. So maybe I shouldn’t do any homework either?” I tried to look simply curious about her thoughts on the matter.
“Unfortunately, this note only covers PE. Perhaps you could use the time to get some homework done? I believe the cure for hysteria is overthrowing the patriarchy, and you won’t get much of that done if you’re held back a year.”
We both knew I couldn’t be held back in transition year, but I saluted her anyway and skipped off to the balcony.
Meabh had dragged her leg up the same stairs that had aided in her deliberate downfall, and she was sitting on the floor of my balcony surrounded by papers, highlighters, and an expensive laptop. She wore a strained expression. Her booted foot was stretched out to one side, which looked very uncomfortable. I couldn’t help but notice how in her awkward position her skirt had ridden up her thighs. She was wearing tights, of course, but they were sheer, and I felt strange about even noticing such things about Meabh. She was not my type, after all. My type was . . . I didn’t know, but it wasn’t Meabh. Her face was scrunched up in concentration. It was kind of sweet.
Not a word I’d normally use for the likes of Meabh Kowalska.
“How are you tits deep in work and it’s only nine fifteen?”
“I’m always tits deep,” she said absently. “I walk around brushing work off my nipples on a twenty-four seven basis.”
“Sounds chafey,” I said.
She murmured an affirmative noise and I took to the far corner of the bench that ran the perimeter of the balcony. I leaned against the wall and opened my Maths book. Might as well start with the thing I was failing most, if there were degrees of failing, and go from there.
We worked in near silence for half an hour, except for her exuberant typing and the sound of me gnawing the inside of my cheek hoping that my mouth would fill with blood and drown me because nothing in this book made the slightest bit of sense.
“Do you mind?” Meabh said after a while, sounding irritated.
“What’s your problem?”
“You keep sighing.”
“Do I?”
“Every thirty seconds. It’s distracting. What are you working on?”
“Maths.”
“I can see that,” she snapped. “I mean what topic specifically.”
“Trigonometry.”
She lugged herself off the floor with exactly zero grace and lumbered over to me. The boot was throwing her off balance.
“Are you gonna do it for me?” I said, brightening. “That would really help.”
She gave me one of her Meabh stares. The one that was half teacher, half international despot.
“That would solve your problem for five minutes. Would it help you actually improve in Maths?”
That felt like a rhetorical question.
She scanned my work with a frown on her face that deepened as she turned the pages.
“This doe
sn’t make any sense,” she said, looking up.
“Right? That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“No, I mean, I think you’ve missed something somewhere. Were you off sick at the start of this unit?”
How to answer that? No, I was not off sick. Yes, I was often off and had definitely missed something. Multiple somethings.
“Wow, I’m offended you don’t keep track of my attendance.”
Meabh and I hadn’t actually shared a lot of classes since we were in primary school. It didn’t surprise me at all that she didn’t notice if I was absent a lot, but I sort of assumed Mr. Kowalski had my photo stuck to a dartboard in his home office and maybe she’d have asked about that. So self-involved of her not to have bothered.
“All right, come on, then. We find the hole, we fill it up.”
“Yeo,” I said.
“Fill the hole in your knowledge, you degenerate.”
“With the fingers of information?”
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. And then I saw it. She wasn’t exasperated. She was trying to look exasperated, but she wanted to laugh.
“Hah! You think I’m hilarious,” I said, poking her in the side.
“I do not.” She swatted my hand away.
“You do.”
“I absolutely don’t.”
“You do. You do. You do.”
“I do not. I think you need help with Maths, so let me give it to you.”
I opened my mouth but she cut me off before I could say what I was going to say.
“—Don’t even dare.” She pointed an accusing finger.
“I was going to say thank you,” I lied. “Get your mind out of the gutter. Jeez.”
Meabh looked skeptical.
Just as I had budged up to make room for Meabh beside me, a girl I recognized from the choir, Laura, appeared at the top of the stairs. She had long, wispy blonde hair and pale skin. Her eyebrows were so white they almost disappeared on her face.
Laura glanced awkwardly between me and Meabh. I’d barely ever spoken to her so I assumed she wanted to talk to Meabh and I wondered if I was meant to give them privacy. Laura hesitated before striding over purposefully and then seeming to lose her nerve again. She began wringing her hands.