by Ciara Smyth
I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was Barb. She was wise and also psychic apparently.
“Oh, wisht. You think you can work in the business of love this long and not get some of that gaydar? I’ve known some brides in my day who shouldn’t have been marrying grooms, that’s for sure. You still get the odd one here and there who doesn’t know it yet, poor dears. I try and give them a hint, you know, subtle, Would you not like a nice pantsuit, dear. That sort of thing.”
“Truly you are doing God’s work, Barb.”
Barbara nodded sagely and tapped her nose.
“But I don’t think a wedding is for me anyway,” I went on. “The whole till death do us part? Bit ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Oh, death schmeath,” Barbara tutted. “How about life’s too short to be second-guessing yourself the whole way? You can only go with what you feel right now and if you feel like it might make you happy, even for a while, jump in with both feet, girl, and get wet.”
I eyed Barb curiously. Was she that good at reading people or did she spout off wisdom all the time and this just happened to be exceptionally relevant to my interests?
Just then Beth emerged from the changing booth and we stopped talking. The dress was pure white with a boat neck and lace that draped off her shoulders. It hugged her waist and hips and then flared out at the knee. When she turned around, there were tiny silk-covered buttons about three-quarters of the way up her back. It really was beautiful.
Beth looked in the mirror and caught my eye in the glass.
“This is it,” she said, “this is the one.”
Barbara nodded approvingly, “See, I told you I’d know exactly what you needed.”
We left the shop exclaiming about how weird and wonderful Barb was, so I didn’t notice her until it was too late. She didn’t notice me because she had stopped dead in the middle of the street to rummage in her bag. That’s how I literally walked into Izzy on the path outside a wedding dress shop.
“Oh, Saoirse,” she said, after we’d both rebounded and exchanged the “I didn’t see you there, stranger” sorrys and realized who we were saying sorry to.
I said hi because even I wasn’t cold enough to walk right into someone and then ignore them. If I had been paying attention and spotted her earlier, I would have been suddenly distracted by something and pretended not to see her, like a normal person.
Beth stood beside us, beaming, waiting for an introduction maybe. She’d be waiting a long time, let me tell you. When she realized she had stumbled upon something awkward, she mumbled something about forgetting to tell Barbara about buttons, then scooted back into the store. At least she wasn’t a complete balloon. If I’d been with Dad he probably would have started his own chat with Izzy and said something unforgivable like, Oh, Izzy, how come we never see you anymore, or I wish you two girls would make up, we miss you around the house, or God forbid, Saoirse is stuck in her room all the time, you should come by and take her off my hands.
Izzy looked past me into the window of Pronuptuous and I saw it dawn on her face.
“Is that her,” she whispered, even though Beth was nowhere near being in earshot.
I nodded.
“I never thought I’d see the day you two would be hanging out,” she said.
She didn’t sound appalled, she sounded like she might be impressed by my personal growth, but I had the sensation of being caught doing something shameful.
“It’s not a big deal.” I smiled tightly and I rubbed my thumb into my scar.
Izzy noticed and gave me a look like she was trying to tell me something. If we were friends, I’d probably know she was trying to tell me that I couldn’t fool her and I should stop pretending. But we weren’t friends, so I decided I was totally baffled by whatever mysterious thing she was attempting to communicate.
“We could talk about it,” she offered.
“I have to go,” I said, and I hurried off, leaving her on the street looking after me. I mean, I assume she was looking after me. I couldn’t see that part, but I’d been watching a lot of movies lately and it felt like the right thing, dramatically speaking.
A few seconds later Beth caught up with me.
“I got the impression I should give you two some space,” she said. “What was that about?”
I rounded on Beth, stopping us both on the footpath.
“We’re not friends, Beth, OK?”
“I know,” she said, and her face fell. “But I’d like to be. I don’t have a lot of friends here. It’s hard to get to know anyone when you move to a town where everyone’s been best friends since they were four. It’s kind of lonely.”
Her vulnerability was excruciating. I couldn’t bear someone being that needy. It made me want to claw my own skin off. Imagine admitting to anyone that you were lonely. Wouldn’t you just die?
“I really don’t have that problem,” I said.
“If you say so,” Beth replied, and I thought I saw a flash of something in her eye. I couldn’t tell if it was sadness for herself or pity for me. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
Given that a shriek of frustration would have been a regression too far, I satisfied myself with storming off in the opposite direction, grinding my teeth. Where did she get off being so fucking understanding all the time?
16.
When I was little, Mum would take me to the museum. I hated it. She’d stand staring at the paintings for ages and I’d get bored. I didn’t know why it took her so long to move on. So I’d tug on her hand and drag her along. The only bit I liked was the gift shop with the colorful toys and books.
Now I took her at least once a month and I stood there as long as she wanted. It was practically empty early in the morning so it was one of the few places we could go where I didn’t feel like everyone was looking, wondering what was wrong with her.
When I’d picked her up that morning, Mum’s key worker, Nora, mentioned she’d taken a shine to some young girl who worked there on the night shift and they had watched a video of a concert online. I gave her a stony glare and she scurried off. Some girl making my mum sit through a grainy phone video of whomever was currently top of the charts was not cute to me. Mum was a wonderful, glorious snob who may have smiled indulgently when Dad wanted to rhapsodize about an obscure band, but always found somewhere else to be when he played his music through the sound system.
He could never keep up with her either. She was too quick, too well-read; she had facts and figures at her fingertips, and their discussions over the dinner table would always end with him laughing and agreeing that she was definitely right and he didn’t know why he even argued. She would say she didn’t know why he argued either because she always kicked his ass. When I got older I would join in; it was the one time when Mum and I were a team instead of Dad and I. When she started to lose her thread and get confused, I stopped wanting to argue. Especially since she moved out. If he tries to goad me now with a stupid comment that he knows will rile me up, I do my best not to take the bait. It makes me sad. I don’t think he understands that.
The people in the home didn’t know these things about her. I thought about telling them. I crafted long speeches where I told them what she was really like and gave them a piece of my mind. But I never did. They were just doing their jobs. And there was a part of me that thought if I shared those things with other people they would become diluted. I’d lose the little part of Mum that I owned from knowing who she was before.
When Dad told me Mum had to go into the home, that it wasn’t safe, we couldn’t provide enough supervision, I couldn’t accept it. Sure, she was deteriorating, I could see that. We were in a state of constant alert. There was very little else going on in our lives. But I was OK with that. It was my mum. We could manage. We would try harder, I said.
I cried and yelled and told him it would happen over my dead body. Or his, preferably. But not long after he brought it up, things changed. I was at school, Dad was at work, and the care
workers who came in six times a day were between visits. Mum left the house and got lost. She was always trying to leave, and it was hard to manage because you couldn’t have an eye on her all the time and you couldn’t just lock her up in a room. That wasn’t fair or safe. But it wasn’t safe to let her roam around either. She was too confused.
That day, the care worker got to the house and found the front door open. She couldn’t find Mum anywhere. She rang my dad and couldn’t get through to him. She called the police. Then she called me at school. I phoned Dad over and over and tried his office, but they said he was in a client meeting and had left his phone on his desk.
Hannah was the one who got me home in the end. She called her dad to pick us up and they drove me around the town looking for Mum. Hannah held my hand as we traipsed up and down the promenade, along the beaches, through our entire neighborhood. We were still looking when Dad finally turned up. I wanted to shout at him and make him feel bad for not being there, but the stricken look on his face stopped me.
I always thought I lived in a small place until that day. A little seaside town. When I realized my mother could be anywhere, it felt infinite. I didn’t cry all day, though I probably bruised Hannah’s hand I was holding it so tight. Eventually, the police got a call. They picked her up at the side of a dual carriageway. Her face was scratched, a drop of blood trailed from her hairline, and her trousers were soaked with urine. We never found out what happened to her, how she got those scratches. Whether she’d fallen or if someone had hurt her. Part of me wanted to padlock her in a room in our house just so she would still be there, where I could see her every day.
I still resented the relief I saw on Dad’s face when I told him I wouldn’t fight him on the home anymore.
Most of all I tried to pretend I hadn’t felt it too.
“How are you?” Mum asked later, in the museum café. There was no sign of the meltdown she’d had yesterday. She was in good form and had enjoyed wandering around the exhibitions. It was nice to see her in her element. She put her hand on mine. I closed my eyes for a moment and relished the pressure. Mum would always hug me if I went to hug her, but she didn’t always initiate physical contact these days. The waitress put two scones down in front of us and gave Mum a big smile. She was here all the time and I was sure she recognized us by now.
I cut Mum’s scone in half and buttered it and slathered it in jam. She started telling me this story from when she was little, about her dad.
“So every time the season changed I wrote a letter to a new fairy. The spring fairy or the summer fairy. And in the morning I’d go out into the garden and I’d pick up the stone and the note I left would be gone and there was a new note written in fairy language. Dad would tell me what it said because he understood fairy language.” She looked as happy remembering as she probably did those mornings when she found her notes.
Mum talked about her dad a lot. Not her biological dad, but her ‘real’ dad as she called him. He died before I was born, but even when I was little she talked about him so much I felt like I knew him. He sounded like he made magic happen. I was so grateful that the memories she kept revisiting were ones that made her happy. It didn’t always work out that way. There was a woman in her home who relived her parents’ deaths as though they had just happened. All that grief and trauma over and over again.
I wondered if I got stuck in time, what I would say about my dad.
There’d be swearing, I imagine.
Mum stood up and looked around, biting her lip.
“Where’s the bathroom?” she asked.
I told her I’d bring her and I took my bag but left our half-drunk tea and Mum’s cardigan to show we were coming back so the waitress wouldn’t think we weren’t going to pay the bill. I ushered her past the till to the disabled bathroom and loitered outside. Mum didn’t usually need help with the toilet, but you still had to wait for her, especially in a place she could get lost or disoriented easily. I couldn’t help but think of the day when she would need help inside. It’s not that I’d mind, but I knew that she would.
Mum opened the door and looked out at me.
“I . . . the sink doesn’t work?” she said. I looked over at it and saw it was one of those fancy ones where you had to hover your hands under exactly the right spot to get soap and water, so I took her over and helped her wash her hands. At the same moment we were exiting the bathroom, a man scooted past me in the narrow hall to get to the men’s room. He stopped when he clocked us.
“You shouldn’t use the disabled toilet if you’re not disabled,” he said in the most teacher-y tone of voice.
I gave him the coldest look I could muster, hoping he would jog on and leave us be. Instead, he seemed to wait for a response. Mum’s face crumpled and she took a step behind me.
“Sorry. I’m sorry,” she said.
I don’t think she really understood why he was giving off, but she could sense the tone.
“Feck off,” I said, tempering my language because Mum hated swearing. “Mind your own bloody business.”
The man tutted angrily and when his back was turned I gave him the finger. On both hands. And there was a little dance too.
We went back to our table to drink our tea and finish the scones. A few minutes later I saw the man talking to the waitress and pointing in the direction of the toilets. He was really racking up the busybody points today. I turned away from him and silently prayed my mother would finish her tea soon so we could leave.
“Hi. I’m sorry I was rude to you there. I didn’t know.”
The man loomed over us, and though his words were technically remorseful, he seemed so unused to apologizing they came out like hard, constipated little words, straining out of the puckered arsehole he called a mouth.
“Didn’t know what?” I said in clipped, disdainful tones.
“The waitress said there’s something wrong with your mum. I didn’t realize. She doesn’t look . . .” He trailed off, but he wasn’t done yet. “Anyway, she said you care for her, and I think that’s really admirable.” He looked at me more with pity than with admiration, though, and he didn’t look at Mum at all, even though she was the one who deserved the apology.
I wanted to tell him off. Give a moving speech in defense of minding your own business and not judging people. Later in bed I’d think of the words, but I didn’t have them right then. The man didn’t wait for a response either; he sauntered off, smugly thinking he’d been so humble and nice today. I concentrated very hard on my scone.
“I have to go now,” Mum said suddenly, breaking my focus.
I recognized the hint of urgency in her tone. She was getting upset.
“Everything’s OK,” I said soothingly. I didn’t want that guy to ruin her day. “We’re having a nice time.”
Her forehead creased into a frown and she pulled the kind of face you make when you smell something unpleasant.
“I really do have to go now. I have work.” She looked around the café. “Can you take me home?”
“Mum, please.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “We’re having a nice time. Everything is OK. You don’t need to go yet.”
“I have to go.” She stomped her foot under the table. I hated myself for checking to see if the waitress was watching us now. For a second, I was so angry I wanted to stomp my foot too. Mostly I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell her, your dad is dead and you had to quit your job because you couldn’t remember your own last name. You have literally nowhere better to be. I pressed hard into the scar on my palm. I needed to breathe and calm down.
Mum looked so lost. The clouded expression on her face broke my heart. I stared up at the ceiling so I wouldn’t cry. It would only make it worse.
“I’ll take you home,” I said, and I gathered up our things. “Come on, give me your hand.”
Her expression cleared and she stood up, happy again, like nothing had happened. She took my hand and I squeezed it.
“I love you, Mum.”
“I love you too,” she said. And even though I knew she only said it because I had, I savored hearing those words in my mother’s voice.
17.
4. Frolicking (as seen in all of them, apparently).
8. Date on a rowboat (as seen in The Proposal, 10 Things I Hate About You).
SAOIRSE
Ruby meet me at beach at 1 a.m.
RUBY
Mysterious
SAOIRSE
It’s time for No. 8
RUBY
I thought that was Saturday?
SAOIRSE
At 1 a.m. it will be Saturday.
I spotted Ruby before she saw me. I couldn’t make out her face in the dark, but I could tell it was her by the way she moved. I liked these moments of observing her when she didn’t know. It was like seeing a secret. When she got close I could see she was wearing old trainers and a pair of shorts with a trim of multicolored pom-poms. Her legs were long, and her thighs were thick and muscular.
“It’s so quiet,” Ruby whispered, even though there was no one around to hear her. It was dark, but you could still see black clouds swirling around pinprick stars. “It’s eerie.”
“I like it.”
“Me too.” Ruby shivered.
I took her hand and led her down the strand.
“This is beautiful.” She sucked in the sea air and lifted her head to gaze at the stars. “I think I can see my star from here.” She pointed at the sky. “But how are we going to do number eight?”
“Four and eight, I’ll have you know.”
“Four was?”
“Frolicking,” I reminded her. “I wasn’t sure what the hell we were going to do for that, but I figured it out. Two birds, one stone.”
“How so?”
“Well, Ruby, we’re going to steal a boat.”
She stopped walking.
“What?”
“A little bit down the way there are pedalos. We’re going to steal one.”
“You’re not serious?”
“When we first met, we stole someone’s beloved pet, and now you’re balking at borrowing a plastic bird?”