by Ciara Smyth
26.
The next morning, bleary-eyed and groggy, I made Ruby and myself a cup of tea. The kettle, a box of tea bags, and a few mugs were the only things in the kitchen not wrapped in newspaper and stuffed into a box. We had a few large items Dad had decided to replace rather than move that were being picked up by a disposal service tomorrow for recycling—the worn-out sofa, the oven with the wobbly door, our old mattresses—but the rest was up to us.
“You don’t have to help today, you know.” I kissed Ruby’s cheek and tried to sound like I only wanted to spare her the hassle. “It’s really not your job.”
Truthfully, I was struggling with the guilt of skipping out on Mum. I couldn’t exactly disappear for an hour this morning without Ruby noticing. If she left now, I could still go.
“I want to. I get to be with you.” She smiled and flipped her hair from one side to the other and I felt an ache. She really was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen in real life. Over the last few weeks I’d grown used to her in a way and she just looked like Ruby, but sometimes, like in that moment, I saw her as if she was a stranger again. I noticed her blue freckle and the way her hair always looked like she was after running her fingers through it; I saw her hazel eyes, wide and wondering; I saw the curve where her waist met her hips in a way that made me want to grab her close, and I could barely believe that she let me kiss her and touch her and do all the things we did that made the air between us sticky and hot.
I supposed I could skip seeing Mum this one time. My two lives were getting uncomfortably close in a way that was giving me palpitations and anxiety sweat on the back of my neck. I reminded myself that Ruby would be gone in four weeks and everything would be back to normal. Somehow that didn’t comfort me the way it should have.
Even though it felt like I’d been packing for approximately six months, there was still stuff all over the house. Things had to be cleaned and fixed before we left for good, like scrubbing the insides of the kitchen cupboards and tightening the loose hinge on the bathroom door.
Beth had already moved into the flat three days ago, so she was helping too. She was giddy all day and a little part of me begrudgingly thought it was kind of sweet. She was obviously really excited about the move. She was also intent on making sure that my desire never to see her and Dad snogging again remained unfulfilled. I caught them in the bathroom, leaning against the shower, Beth with an arm wrapped around my dad’s neck and a bag in her hand that she’d thrown toothbrushes and shampoos into.
“I need to change my tampon,” I said loudly and grumpily. It wasn’t true, but I liked to embarrass Dad. They broke apart. Surprised but utterly unembarrassed. By the kissing anyway. Dad scarpered, muttering about feminism ruining his life. I wondered if he ever thought about how lucky he was that Mum had had the talks with me before she got really bad.
“Oh, here, I packed the toilet roll,” Beth said, rummaging in the bag and producing a loo roll like she was presenting me with a great gift.
“You know, I think it’s OK if we actually leave one of these behind us. We can get more toilet roll for the new flat.”
“Thanks for the advice, smart-arse,” Beth replied.
“You know, if you two can’t keep it in your pants, maybe we should do this zone by zone. You and Ruby take apart the bed frames upstairs and Dad and I will take downstairs.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Beth saluted and playfully shoved me on the shoulder before she skipped out of the bathroom.
Weird. She was usually so thirsty for my approval and mortally wounded by the slightest sarcastic remark from me. If she was getting used to me I was really going to miss that sad frowny face she did when I was being a total wagon.
“Wi ooh dismahah e dsk,” Dad said to me as he lumbered past the kitchen, stooped under the weight of a crate of books, a screwdriver between his teeth. I was making another cup of tea. I needed a caffeine top-up to get me through the rest of the afternoon.
“Want to try that again?” I said, taking the screwdriver and wiping the saliva on his shirt. “Gross.”
“Will you dismantle the desk? The one in my office?”
“Seriously, I told you to do that yesterday.” I groaned.
“I needed it,” he said.
“So you do it now.” I pouted.
“I’m busy.” He shifted his weight, readjusting the crate of books to make his point. “And you’re out here slacking and making tea. Again.”
He was such a child. If he could get out of doing something he would, and we’d both had enough of deconstructing flat-pack furniture over the last few days. I’d already dismantled a bathroom cabinet, a rusted kitchen trolley, and a chest of drawers I’d ruined about ten years ago by gluing stickers of the Irish Olympic women’s swimming team all over the doors during a swimming phase I had. Come to think of it, that might have been the first clue I was a lesbian.
The desk was in Dad’s office, which used to be Mum’s office, and it used to be her desk. It was lopsided, the drawers stuck all the time, and there simply wasn’t space for a home office in the new flat, so we’d agreed to get rid of it. I started by pulling the drawers out of their sockets and unscrewing the handles. This required a lot of elbow grease and one screw in particular was so tight it took a bottle of WD-40 to get it unstuck. I wiped a sheen of sweat on my forehead and pulled out the last drawer. It jammed on the metal track and I sighed. If in that moment, the world saw fit to drop a giant comedy anvil on my dad’s head as karma, I would have been OK with it.
I reached, shoulder deep, into the drawer space and felt around for anything that was preventing the drawer from coming out. I couldn’t see anything, but I poked the screwdriver into the space behind the drawer a couple of times and felt something release. It came out easily then, and onto the floor fell a blue card file. I recognized it immediately. Those were the files Mum kept her client notes in.
Whenever she stopped working, out of necessity and less than willing, we’d forgotten about the files. After she moved into the home, we realized we couldn’t really hold on to them. Most of the clients she’d been seeing up until she finished working requested to have their notes sent to new therapists, but there were a lot from former clients who were off on their merry way and had no idea what was going on with Mum. We asked one of Mum’s old colleagues what we should do and she thought for confidentiality we should destroy them. This one had evidently escaped the cull.
A few months ago when Dad shredded those files I hadn’t really thought about what was in them. They didn’t interest me. It was a bunch of moldy old work papers. But sitting on the floor of my dad’s office, I was suddenly mad with curiosity about what was inside.
The angel on my shoulder told me that this was private and I shouldn’t look. Mum would kill me if she knew I read a client’s file. It wasn’t like she never talked about them. She sometimes told me a joke she’d heard from one or I’d hear her talking to Dad about people she was particularly worried about, but she never mentioned their names and there was a separate entrance to her office, so the closest I ever got to identifying someone was when they walked around the house to the side door. A blur through the blinds that revealed a blonde or brunette, maybe the color of top they had on, that was it.
A name was written in Sharpie in the corner. Dominik Mazur. Heart beating slightly faster, as though she might walk in and catch me, I flipped open the file. The first pages looked like standardized forms so I skipped forward a bit.
Dominik began session saying his week was good. Talked about his mother’s new job. She is enjoying it. Dominik is relieved his younger brother is happy at school. When prompted to talk about his own week he was initially reserved. Later he admitted he was locked in bathroom by peers and got in trouble for missing class. Did not tell mother about incident as he did not want to worry her. We role-played conversation with Mum. It’s clear D does not want to discuss his difficulties out of fear of upsetting her. I asked what would be so wrong with her being upset.
&nbs
p; I flipped back to the beginning of the file to see what age Dominik was. Fifteen. It said he came to her after an overdose. But that was ten years ago. He’d be in his twenties now. I skipped ahead to the middle of the file.
Dominik expressed anxiety about sitting Junior Cert in second language. He said he was afraid to make mistakes in grammar and punctuation. Then discussed anxiety about forgetting Polish. Woke up in the middle of the night unable to remember obscure vocabulary. He laughed but appeared distressed by this. Said he talked to his mother about speaking Polish more at home and she agreed. Previously she insisted on English to encourage learning second language but feels they are sufficiently fluent now. I expressed how incredible it was for D to be fluent in English when it is his second language. He appeared embarrassed. Discussed his inclination toward perfection and whether other students were also likely to make mistakes in punctuation and grammar.
For half an hour I sat with Dominik’s file and tracked a year in his life through my mother’s notes. He was bullied and anxious and felt alone. I thought about him coming to my house every week and talking to my mum. I wondered if it helped.
Discharge session. D brought Junior Cert results. Appeared proud and pleased. Spoke animatedly about transition year. Decided to move school for a fresh start. Visited St C’s last week and discussed his past experience with principal and parents. Expressed some concern that bullying would reoccur in new school but said that if it did he would be more comfortable raising it with new principal who he likes. Sad to end sessions (both of us!) but D happy to move on and demonstrates increased confidence and greater openness in discussing his difficulties with family.
I searched for Dominik online. Many came up but only one in the same county as me. I clicked into his social media profile. His wall was private, but some personal information was open. Dominik Mazur. Twenty-four. Works at TEFL Singapore International School. In a relationship with Chloe Durand. His photo was him, tan and handsome, with his arm around a short girl with curly hair. They looked like they were in a pub.
I’m not stupid. I know that social media doesn’t tell the full story about anyone’s life. He was hardly going to post a picture of himself looking depressed. But he was alive. He was teaching English in Singapore and he had a girlfriend. So at least some things were good and maybe part of that was down to Mum. I blinked back a few tears rudely trying to escape.
“How is this not done yet—Saoirse, is that one of your mum’s files?” Dad’s tone shifted from exasperated to sharp in the same sentence. He marched toward me with stern knitted brows. He’d left a mirror propped up against the wall in the hallway.
“Uh . . .”
“Saoirse! Those are private.” He took the file out of my lap. “Your mum would go ballistic.”
I hung my head. I knew it was technically wrong, but I didn’t feel like I was spying on this stranger, this fifteen-year-old boy, so much as I was spying on a version of my mum that I sometimes forgot existed. I didn’t really regret it and judging by Dad’s skeptical expression, my acting was over the top.
“Wise up and get back to work, it’s getting late,” he said gruffly. But he didn’t really seem mad. Before I could stop myself I blurted out a question.
“Do you think she really helped people?”
Dad stopped in the doorway. His expression softened.
“Of course she did. Not everyone. Liz would be the first to say she wasn’t the right therapist for everyone. But she was the perfect therapist for some people.”
“That’s nice, I suppose.”
“Why do you ask?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it’s nice to know that there are people out there who remember her. Who are living better lives because they knew her.”
Dad crossed the room in a beat and put his arm around my neck, pulling me in. He kissed the top of my head. When he pulled away I thought his eyes were watery, but he blinked and it was gone.
He stepped back into the hall and jumped.
“Sorry, Ruby. I didn’t see you there.”
I heard Ruby tell him it was OK and did he know where she could find a dustpan. Something about the high pitch of her voice made me wonder what she’d overheard. My heart started that uncomfortable palpitating. It was like I was in a room that kept getting smaller and smaller. That nightmare from childhood that you’re going to be crushed by the walls.
For the rest of the day I tried to tell if she knew something from the way she looked at me or the things she said, but she acted normal, kissing me on the cheek as she walked past with a box of mugs, interrupting me sweeping the almost empty kitchen to show me a picture of Noah and her parents eating cheeseburgers the size of your face. The room eased up. A little more oxygen circulated around me. She must not have heard anything.
By the time Dad and Beth got into the van to take the last trip over to the flat, it was around nine p.m. and it was starting to get dark. My muscles already ached in anticipation of tomorrow and the thought of unpacking everything again made me want to cry.
Dad called me over to the van and rolled down the window. He dangled a set of keys at me.
“Can you lock up and follow us over?”
I looked at the keys and looked at Ruby. The last time we’d taken the car we had nearly driven into someone and then stranded ourselves. Although the bit in between had been good.
We watched Dad and Beth drive off and Ruby put her arm around my waist and leaned her head on my shoulder.
“Let’s not go straight over.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Let’s not go anywhere just yet,” she said, and she pulled me back into the house, her hand in mine as she led me to the couch.
27.
An intense longing coursed through my body, my breath tightened, and all the things I wanted rushed into my head like a wave. I lay on top of Ruby, propped up on my elbows, and looked into her eyes for a moment. I saw that look. The one where something passed between us without words. Then I leaned in and kissed her, soft at first, but it was like tiny fires were catching all over my body and she was the cool, dark water that would save me. Her mouth found my neck and shivers rippled through me. My hands found the hem of her shirt and I peeled it off, tossing my own on the floor. She reached around and unclipped my bra and took her own off too. Somehow I felt almost embarrassed to look, like she’d see how much I wanted her and she’d laugh. She touched me first and the sensation rippled all through my body. We melted into each other, her body pressed against me, her skin sticking to mine in the humid summer.
Twenty minutes later we surfaced. Disheveled, out of breath, and unable to keep the smiles from our faces.
“I don’t want to do it for the first time on a manky, old sofa,” Ruby said, clambering back to sitting, out of breath and rumpled in a way that made my stomach flutter. “I’d still rather something more traditional.”
“Like after prom?” I suggested, thinking of the montage.
“Like in a bedroom,” she said.
“Right.”
My mattress was still upstairs to be picked up by the recycling people tomorrow, but the bed frame had been moved and the sheets and pillows were packed. I didn’t think Ruby was going to be any more enamored of a bare mattress in an empty room somehow and I wasn’t either. I pictured soft bedding, soft lighting, and soft music.
But don’t tell anyone I said that. It’s embarrassing.
We caught our breath in silence for a second, holding hands even though our palms were sweaty.
“So,” I said very casually and not at all in a higher pitch than normal. “When you say first time, do you mean first-first or like our first together?”
Ruby flipped her hair from one side to another, a few slick strands stuck to her forehead.
“First-first.”
“First with a girl first or . . .”
“First ever. I’ve had a few girlfriends but nothing serious. I’ve never even kissed a boy.”
�
�Oh my God, maybe you’re secretly straight, but the lesbian agenda got to you before you had time to figure it out,” I joked. Mostly I was trying not to think about those other girls. We all know being jealous of someone in the past is stupid, but it doesn’t mean you don’t still feel it.
“I’m not,” she said, her voice hoarse, and she kissed me again so I could feel the heat coming from her mouth, her skin. “Or they’ve done an excellent job of implanting some really super gay thoughts into my head right now.”
It seemed redundant to blush after everything, but my cheeks didn’t get the message.
“What about you?”
“Well, you already know I kissed Oliver once. I mean, it’s something I’d dearly like to erase from my memory, but sadly the technology does not yet exist.”
Instantly I flinched, realizing what I’d said. Ruby didn’t seem to notice.
“I forgot you told me that before. So weird.”
“We were about eleven. It was not one of the erotic highlights of my adolescence.”
“Did you and Hannah . . . ?”
“No.” I felt myself turn colder at her name and tried to remind myself that it wasn’t Ruby’s fault. She didn’t know what talking about Hannah did to me.
“I haven’t had sex with anyone.”
I hadn’t had sex with Hannah and I’d obviously never had sex with any of the straight girls I’d kissed between Hannah and Ruby. Would having sex with Ruby be a step too far? Would having sex with Ruby break the rules? It wasn’t one of the harbingers of doom specifically, but it was pretty serious, wasn’t it? Would it mean something because it was the first time? If literally everything I’d ever heard was right, the first was one you remembered forever. It was important. Whether it was good or bad or weird, you wouldn’t forget it. Then again, I knew it was perfectly possible to forget extremely important things. Husbands, children, thirty years of your life.