Not My Problem

by Ciara Smyth

  How had I not remembered it was child support day? She didn’t mention Dad by name, though. She wasn’t going to tell me about how he’d gone on holidays with his real wife or how he’d most likely not even told her that he was going. His name wouldn’t come up again until the next time. I hoped there would never be a next time again. I hoped that every time. When was I going to learn to stop hoping?

  “Last night,” I said.

  “It was a slip. You know they happen, Aideen, but I promise it doesn’t mean I’m off the wagon. I went to group this afternoon. I called the doctor and I’m going to get him to put me back on the Antabuse.”

  Mam’s support group was run by the place she did her detox in last year, when I had to stay with my auntie Jacinta for four never-ending weeks. You could go to the group anytime. It wasn’t quite like AA. At least not the AA I’d seen on TV. There weren’t any doughnuts or sponsors at Mam’s group and there was no God bothering. People didn’t get up and tell stories and no one said, Hi, my name is Betty and I’m addicted to drinking Lambrini and scrolling Instagram or whatever. There was an actual therapist there and they chatted as a whole group. Antabuse was a pill that was supposed to stop you drinking because the side effects of drinking on it were awful. But it didn’t stop you wanting to drink.

  She was looking at me like she was praying and I was God. I could wipe away her sins with the sign of the cross. Or I could smite her into damnation.

  “What about your job?”

  “I told Jacqui I had a bug but I was fine now and I’d be in, in the morning. And that I’d do extra shifts next week.”

  “She bought that?”

  Mam flinched and I felt bad. Was I being too hard on her? She had been sober for a long time. Maybe this was a slip like she said? Slips happened. I remembered that from one of the social workers. There was one who took me bowling and tried to be my friend. She said stopping drinking was not a straight line. It was a cycle. People sometimes had to go back to the start again but it didn’t mean that all the time they’d been sober was worthless.

  “I’m normally a pretty good employee,” Mam said, and I got the feeling she was trying to impress upon me that she was normally a pretty good mam.

  I didn’t say anything else and the tension grew thick.

  “I paid the lecky bill,” she said after a bit.

  “Aye, and left the lights all on to celebrate,” I grumbled.

  “I got you a present,” she said.

  I wanted to say it was a waste of money, but she was trying so hard. I didn’t smile, though.

  She rolled her eyes and got up and went to the hall. She returned with a gift bag. She held it at arm’s length away from me.

  “Now, you only get this if you promise to stop being mad at me,” she said. “I know I’m the worst mam in the world but I’m the only one you’ve got and I love the bones of you so you can’t stay mad. I can’t take it.”

  “So needy,” I said, shaking my head.

  She grinned and handed me the bag. Inside was an advent calendar. Not a chocolate one but one of the ones that had things like nail polish and lip balms in it. She started getting me one of these a couple of years ago. The first year it had taken me two days to crack, and one day when she was out I opened all the little doors in one go. Mam walked in on me surrounded by tiny samples of bath oil and night cream. Since then she’s kept the calendar on lockdown and presented me with it on a daily basis.

  “I found it in the sale bin,” she said pointedly, “so it wasn’t even that dear. You can stop panicking. And you can open all the doors at once!”

  I looked at her. She was so excited. She looked really proud of herself. Truthfully I still felt really hurt and angry. But I could see what kind of gesture she’d made and if I reacted in any way other than pure joy she’d feel rejected. Though I didn’t know how she could think that something like this would make me happy after everything she’d put me through. Still, I did my best smile and made excited noises as I opened all the doors. There were little face creams and lip glosses and nail polishes behind each door. Mam watched me closely, wanting to soak up my joy, so I did my best to give it to her.

  When I’d opened them all I gave her a big hug and she squeezed me tight.

  “That was brilliant,” I said, and, though I did my best to hide it, I didn’t know how she couldn’t hear the hollow note in my voice. “I’m going to put these in my room. And you can’t use any of them,” I warned playfully.

  She crossed her heart.

  With my bedroom door closed I let my smile drop. I arranged all the little bottles and jars in a row on my dresser where she would see them and think I was really pleased about it. I knew she’d done it to make me happy but all it felt like was that she’d taken something that made me happy in the past and tried to use it as a bandage for my pain now. Pain that she caused. It tainted the good thing. I knew instantly that next December when I got another advent calendar I’d only be able to think of this moment.

  First thing Saturday morning my phone dinged. And I mean first thing. I hadn’t voluntarily got up this early on a non-school day in my whole life.

  KAVI

  You ready for tonight?

  AIDEEN

  You don’t have to get involved.

  KAVI

  I’m so excited! I want to!

  AIDEEN

  You might get caught.

  KAVI

  So might you! It’s better if I’m there.

  AIDEEN

  Why?

  KAVI

  At least you wouldn’t be alone.

  AIDEEN

  I’ll be fine. Seriously. I don’t need any help with this.

  Almost like she could tell I was planning something stupid, Meabh’s name popped up on my screen.

  MEABH

  Are you still going through with this ridiculous plan?

  I’d cracked and told Meabh about my plan for Daniel. I hadn’t mentioned any names but told her the gist.

  AIDEEN

  Yes I’m

  MEABH

  THAT’S NOT HOW CONTRACTIONS WORK AND YOU KNOW IT.

  AIDEEN

  Mea b it shud b. No point wsting lttrs.

  MEABH

  1. LETTERS AREN’T RUNNING OUT.

  2. IT’S ONE LESS CHARACTER.

  AIDEEN

  Stap shoutn babe. Can here u frm hear.

  MEABH

  It could technically be seen as kidnapping a minor.

  AIDEEN

  will u rite 2 me whn im in jail?

  MEABH

  Only if you promise not to write back. I won’t have time to decipher this code for an entire letter.

  AIDEEN

  Mam got up early and brought me tea and toast in bed.

  “I won’t be here when you get back from work,” I said. “I’m going to hang out with Holly and then we’re going to a party.”

  “You?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I replied, feeling a bit testy. “I go to parties. It’s a normal thing to do.”

  I did not go to parties. And it wasn’t that normal. I mean, most of the people in my class lived in the country and their parents weren’t jetting out of town all the time. Half the time someone had a party it was the kind where the parents were putting a tray of sausage rolls out every twenty minutes. Unless there was an underground network of raging house parties that I didn’t know about. Which could be true, I realized.

  “Whose party?”

  “A girl in school.”

  She looked even more surprised. I think she was expecting I meant someone from down the road, where a party meant clutching on to cans of cider at the end of the street. I mean, that’s all this party would be, but everyone there would feel superior because they were doing it in a garden instead.

  “Will there be drinking and drugs and sex at this party?” Mam asked, sitting on the end of my bed.

  “No.” Not for me anyway.

  “Are you sure it’s not Mass you’re going to, t
hen?” Mam cracked up.

  “Have a good day at work, Mam.”

  “Wait, wait. Hold on. How are you getting there? Where is this party?”

  I gave her a look. The look said, Are you, the dirty stop-out of the century, really asking me these details?

  She gave me a look back. The look said, I’m your mother, you insolent pup, answer my question.

  “It’s out in Tydavnet. I’m getting a lift. I’ll be home tonight. Late.”

  “But you’ll be home? You can’t stay out all night,” she said, sounding the most Mam-like she had ever sounded.

  I nodded.

  She knew I was lying about something, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was.

  “Okay, if you’re going off to have sex, make sure you don’t catch chlamydia please. GP appointments are €55 before you even get a script, and I’m not made of money.”

  “You really earn that World’s Best Mum mug, you know that?”

  I shook my head at my mother’s version of the sex talk, but I felt a lot lighter than I had yesterday. How did she do that? How did she make it seem like her stumbling in, totally hammered, was years ago and everything was okay now? I knew I couldn’t trust her. I wondered if she would drink when I was out of the house. Maybe that was why she didn’t mind me going out. But I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe this was just her regular brand of lackadaisical parenting and that she wasn’t cracking open a hidden bottle of wine as I stomped downstairs. I had done a sweep of the house when she’d been in the shower and hadn’t found anything. But she had all day to buy drink.

  If I stayed in I could stop her.

  But I’d promised Daniel.

  Mam popped her head back into my room just as she was about to leave. I don’t know if she saw through right into my brain or if she just took a good guess at what I was thinking.

  “I’m going to be fine, you know,” she said. “I’m going to group after work. I want you to go and have a good time.”

  I shrugged like I hadn’t been worried. “I will.”

  This pleased her. She gave me a big smile and an exuberant wave.

  “Off to glitz and glamour,” she said.

  She did seem like she was in one of her good spells—the days following a bender where she tried so hard to be good and make things better. Maybe Dad hadn’t been around long enough to get to her this time. Like a disease she hadn’t had enough exposure to, to get really sick. It would be fine. Time to concentrate on the next problem. The one I could actually fix.

  22.

  I met Angela in a car park in town. I told her it was more convenient for me instead of her picking me up at my house. It wasn’t, but we arrived at Daniel’s unscathed. Except for the new fear of dying in a fiery car crash I’d developed. Angela parked at the bottom of their drive. It was a large, detached house with a neat lawn, a flower bed, and a shed. It was a dream home.

  The plan was that Daniel was going to put in some face time with his grandparents and then pretend to feel sick and go to bed. Then he’d throw his pillows out the window and jump. The aim was, hopefully, to land on the pillows. We’d wait for him in the car and drive him over to the party. Seeing as I wasn’t even allowed to drive the car, it was the easiest favor I’d done yet. I was more of a facilitator for this one.

  Angela and I sat in the car with the radio on. After a minute of me trying to think of something to say, she began grilling me on the mechanics of the social enterprise. She asked me how many favors I’d done and whether I always used repayments to “fund” other favors. I explained as much as I could without giving too much away.

  “So you’ve never used one to, like, get someone to do your homework or something?”

  “That sounds like a great idea, but frankly if I start handing in good homework at this point of my education, I think it would only be a red flag.”

  “You know, you have a really good thing here. You could tweak it a bit. Formalize it. Have applications or something, but it’s a pretty solid model. But what would you do if you needed something from someone, but they didn’t owe you anything?”

  I had no idea.

  I was saved from answering by a text.

  DANIEL

  Change of plan. I just said I was going to bed and my mam has told me to go and stay in the attic room and granny and granda are staying in my room because they can’t climb all those stairs.

  AIDEEN

  so go out the attic window

  DANIEL

  I could. But you know, I’d die.

  I glanced up at the house. The front of the house only had a small round window where I guessed the attic would be, but it definitely was too high up to escape from.

  AIDEEN

  Well what do you want me to do about it?

  DANIEL

  There’s a ladder in the shed that Dad uses when he’s cleaning the gutters. I’ll use the window at the back.

  I sighed.

  AIDEEN

  Fine!

  DANIEL

  There’s a spare set of keys under the frog at the back door, the biggest one is the shed.

  “There’s been a hiccup,” I said to Angela. She raised an eyebrow.

  “I won’t be long,” I promised.

  “I’m missing my own party,” she grumbled, but she didn’t do anything except turn up the radio and lean back in her seat.

  The lights were on in the house but the curtains were drawn, so I wasn’t too worried jogging up the driveway, but I didn’t want to take all day about it either. At the back of the house there was a patio and a back door. On the step was a ceramic frog wearing a tutu. The keys were nestled underneath and I had to shake a wood louse off them. I shook my head at someone leaving their keys outside their house like that and imagined leaving mine underneath the perpetual beer can that sat on the front step of my building. Middle-class people are not wise.

  The shed was a bit trickier; when I opened it, it was full to the brim with junk. At least six bikes even though I knew there was just Daniel, his parents, and one brother. There was also a lawn mower, buckets of paint, an old bath, and right at the back . . . the ladder. I had to clamber into the old bath and wrestle with the ladder to get it off the hook. It was one of those extendable ones and it was surprisingly heavy, but I finally made it out of the shed with only a few bruises and one scrape down my leg that burned. Around to the side of the building I saw Daniel Something peering out of the window forlornly. His expression changed when he saw me and he grinned and gave me a thumbs-up. It was freezing outside but all the effort had me sweating at the back of my neck, and yeah, if I’m honest, the underboob. He opened his window and shout-whispered to me.

  “HI!”

  I rolled my eyes, feeling irritable from all the effort this “easy” favor had cost me so far. I tried to extend the ladder fully and nipped my finger in the process.

  I groaned and clenched my jaw so I didn’t shout the bad words I wanted to shout. Pissed off, sweaty, and hurt, I slammed the ladder against the wall with a louder bang than I meant. I froze for a second. Daniel froze. We both listened for any disturbance. A second passed and nothing happened.

  “All right, come on to fuck,” I shout-whispered.

  I held the ladder and Daniel shimmied out of his window. He was wearing a shiny green shirt and painted-on jeans. As a breeze wafted toward me, so too did the overwhelming scent of Brylcreem and Paco Rabanne. Daniel paused on the top rung of the ladder and took his phone out.

  “For God’s sake, what are you doing?” I hissed.

  “Photo op,” he whispered back. He angled himself in the frame and I watched in slow motion as he slipped. I watched him reach and grab the ladder with both hands, my heart in my throat. I watched his phone fall out of his hand as he did, and that’s when everything went black.

  When light returned, I had a throbbing pain between my eyes, and as my vision adjusted and I pushed myself up to sitting, I saw Daniel was clinging on to the windowsill, his tiptoes barely reaching
the lip of the gutter. The ladder had fallen to the ground beside me. I was lucky it hadn’t landed on top of me.

  “Are you okay?” He looked worried. I wondered how much time had passed. Not more than a few seconds, surely.

  Then there was a screech and my head turned toward the noise. I’d been out just long enough for Daniel’s mother to make it from her living room to the back of the house and find me lying on the ground with her ladder and her son scrambling back through the window, his tight jeans highlighting his butt as it toppled into the room.

  Daniel’s mam lifted me by the elbow and dragged me in through the back door and pointed at the kitchen table.

  “Sit,” she said through gritted teeth.

  A rumbling racket of feet on the stairs boomed overhead and in a few seconds Daniel had burst into the kitchen.

  “Mam, don’t be mad,” he said breathlessly.

  “Oh right, son, I won’t now that you’ve said so. Would you like a cup of tea and a biscuit,” she said with mock politeness. Then her tone shifted. “Get you upstairs before I lose the head. I’m not having you two sitting down here coming up with a story.”

  “Mam—”

  “Up,” she said. Her voice was quiet and authoritative. Daniel gave me a pained look before he turned around and slunk out of the room. I heard plodding on the stairs this time.

  His mam turned on me with her hands on her hips. She was a thin white woman with long hair pulled into a sleek updo and she was maybe only an inch taller than me. She wore a silk blouse and a fine gold chain. She looked like she might be a doctor or a receptionist or something.

  “Explain yourself,” she said sharply.

  “Uhhhhhhh . . .” I dragged out the noise, hoping something would come to me, a very good reason for trying to aid her son’s escape.

  “We’re in love?” I said, trying to take a leaf out of Kavi’s playbook. But I was unconvincing and she gave me a pursed-lip look that plainly said both that she did not believe it and that even if she did it wasn’t an excuse that would hold any water with her.

  “What’s your name?” she demanded.