“Sorry Mick. I’ve got to go.”
“Nothing serious?”
“Oh no, strictly your run-of-the-mill shite,” Kevin says bitterly. “My mother just got picked up for shoplifting. She’s in with the guards driving them all, no doubt, to the brink of mass suicide. Jim Jones, was it? He had nothing on Millie Gogarty.”
3
Three kilometers south of Dún Laoghaire, in the small, pretty seaside village of Dalkey, Aideen Gogarty sits at her father’s laptop tapping the word “pine” into the search box on thesaurus.com. She is penning a poem to Clean-Cut, the Irish pop singing sensation who croons mostly remixed mid-’70s and early ’80s soft-rock hits. Clean-Cut, who is, in fact, disheveled and bewhiskered, sports a wild, moppish bleached blond ’do and is as tall as an American basketballer, in stark and amusing contrast to his four tidy and diminutive backup singers. After considering each synonym on offer—ache, agonize, brood, carry a torch, covet, crave, desire, dream, fret, grieve, hanker, languish for, lust after, mope, mourn, sigh, spoil for, thirst for, want, wish, yearn, yen for—Aideen rejects the lot as embarrassing and a bit crap.
She scans the bookshelf and the piles of paper inundating Dad’s desk in search of his thesaurus from university, which was his father’s before him, preferential to Aideen on the grounds that it’s old-school and therefore authentic. Aideen yearns—hankers?—to be authentic.
As she spots the ragged Roget’s cover, she happens upon a photograph of a beaming, freckled schoolgirl in a brown uniform, a scarlet notebook clutched in her arms. It looks to be the cover of some sort of academic brochure. A cringe-worthy photo—what eejit would willingly pose for their school’s poxy PR?—but, curious, Aideen studies the other pictures splayed across the glossy foldout: there’s a gaggle of girls bearing cricket bats on a pristine pitch, arms thrust upward in victory; a “Residential Room” featuring fuchsia, try-hard cushions; and, the most commanding image of all, a wrought-iron sign on a grassy knoll that reads MILLBURN SCHOOL FOR GIRLS. The slogan beneath, HONOR, LEADERSHIP & ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE, is not the one Aideen’s heard regarding the place: “Noses up, knickers down.”
As she folds over the final page, Aideen is surprised to see, stapled in the top right-hand corner of an otherwise blank application form, a photograph of herself, one tiny yet hideous spot quite visible on the bridge of her nose.
Aideen tries to process what is so obvious and yet unbelievable. But all she comes up with is, Huh? She mentally combs through recent family aggro, trying to find a precedent for such a radical and covert move. Yes, she’s “acted out” lately—deliberately cracking her sister’s mirror (no regrets there), dipping into Mum’s handbag once too often, getting in a touch of trouble at school. And, then, her marks are a bit shit.
Still. Is the fact that the application form has not been filled out a good sign?
But the photo.
She hears a yell and through the window spies her younger brother, Ciaran, monkeying across the bars on his play set in the back garden. Behind him, dull clouds hover sharply against a dingy Dublin sky. Ugh, and there’s her twin sister, Nuala (codename Nemesis). Nemesis meanders toward the front of the house. She is scanning the horizon, no doubt, for boys, flipping her deep black, overgrown mermaid’s mane first left, then right, then left again, as if her hair is crossing the road, as if she’s a California chick from a Katy Perry video when she’s actually a vacuous phony from boring, provincial Dalkey.
Aideen checks the laptop’s internet history over the last week and, with sinking heart and a sudden desire to take to her bed, she sees quite plainly that Dad’s been visiting the Millburn website as often as three and four times a day.
Fuck.
She begins to hunt round his shelves and drawers, for what, she’s not exactly certain, confirmation, evidence, one way or the other—please, let it be the other—that she isn’t totally and irreversibly doomed. Millburn is a boarding school probably filled with haughty, confident girls who will hate her. She hears the back door slam. Quickly, Aideen slides the brochure beneath its original mess just as Nemesis and one of her newer, nicer tagalongs, Gavin Mooney, appear in the doorway.
Her sister’s beauty is a painful fact of Aideen’s life, or maybe the painful fact, especially poignant because of their twinhood. It feels to Aideen as if the girls are compared, directly or indirectly, nearly every day of their lives, and though no one has ever overtly stated it, Aideen knows she’s the brain, not the beauty. A modeling scout once stopped Nemesis in Stephen’s Green, forked over his business card, and winked at her and said she ought to get her headshots done up, that she was “a vision” (of utter bitchery) and he had a studio in town where they could shoot. Nemesis had Scotch-taped the card to her dressing mirror and gushed about it to the point of vomit-inducing boredom (hence, the mirror’s righteous destruction). Boys ring her every day. No male has ever phoned Aideen Gogarty, a fact about which she feels an undue degree of shame and sorrow. She is desperate that no one be privy to this, ever.
And then there’s Mum and Dad, nauseating on the topic of Nemesis: Our Nuala’s so sporty, she’s the top acrobat at school! Our Nuala’s so talented, she got the lead in the school play! Our Nuala’s so kind, she made this painting of our perfect family and it’s all so lovely!
There once was a girl who seemed sweet
An actor, gymnast, athlete
With dark stunning hair
That made all the boys stare
She’s fooled the world, thus I retreat.
“I need the computer,” Nuala announces in her entitled way, bouncing impatiently on tiptoes.
“Hiya,” Gavin mumbles. He wears a navy tracksuit and white-on-white Puma high-tops.
“You could say hello to Gavin.”
But Aideen is distracted by the gothic Millburn School lettering displayed blatantly on her father’s computer screen. Determined that her twin, of all people, not know about this—boarding school!—she ignores Nuala and steps backward to block the screen.
“Ooh, what’s the big secret?” Nemesis sniffs evilly.
“Hi Gavin.”
“Whatever,” says Nemesis. “I need the computer.”
“I’m using it,” says Aideen.
“I need it.”
“Fuck off.”
Nemesis slits her eyes at Aideen, but since a male is present, she merely huffs off, Gavin trotting after her, like all of them. Aideen decides to snoop further, later, when everyone’s asleep. This, in the wee hours, is when she gleans any real information about the goings-on in the Gogarty household. Mum and Dad talk a big game about openness and honesty and all that bollocks, but then they go and hide anything of interest or value. She once found a pregnancy test in her mother’s loo—negative, she eventually understood after studying the box and then the stick. Which probably explained why Mum had seemed so blue in the days that followed. Unbelievable to Aideen that her mum would want more kids when she’s always at work!
Then there was the letter addressed to Dad, which Aideen spied in ripped shards at the top of the bin: “We’re sorry to inform you that the position for which you applied…”
Aideen heads to the kitchen, warms up the lasagna per her father’s tiresome instructions—he’s an overexplainer and a worrier. She piles more logs onto the dwindling fire, pokes at it, still shell-shocked. It’s true that the Gogarty household has been strained, especially since her mother’s tourism consultancy firm landed some big new client and Dad lost his job in magazines. Nowadays he’s often to be found moping about with huge, needy eyes, inserting himself into every bloody moment. It’s equally true that, though her parents bang on about how clever and observant she is, that she has “emotional intelligence” (which means…?), Aideen knows she constantly disappoints them. She makes “bad choices,” which is parent-speak for not the choices they would make. Fine, okay, but to ship her off like an outcast to live with a bunch of strangers?
“Aideen! Is this the site you were looking for?” Nemesis cal
ls out from the study, singsong mockery in her voice, and, as Aideen enters, a sadistic, shitty little grin on her face. These are precisely the moments Aideen most misses Gerard, her older brother, who left in September to take up a psychology course at University College Cork, and who, unlike her parents, actually listens.
Gavin, head down, eyes averted, begins to retreat backward from the room. Aideen approaches the computer screen and sees that it’s filled with photos of magnified medical blobs. It’s a webpage of spots: crusty lesions, bulbous, bursting whiteheads. Nemesis throws her head back in a witch’s cackle and zooms in on a black-and-white retro advertisement of a distressed, spotty 1950s teen above a dialogue bubble that says, “Doctor, will these pimples scar my face?”
Nuala is right: Aideen is not attractive enough, she never will be, which is truly tragic because, above all else, she secretly covets being coveted. Clean-Cut is lovely to her at HMV record store signings and backstage VIP fan zones and even when he tweets her directly, which he’s done twice, but that’s more about her being a loyal fan, someone who’s worshipped the singer and his short crew since they were nobodies from Rathfarnham. What boy, what real boy, would ever choose Aideen Gogarty, especially in the shadow of her twin’s radiance? Even her horrible family doesn’t want her. Some ugly island of fury, or maybe injustice, or maybe just everyday sibling envy, loosens in Aideen, rekindling a dormant spark of self-loathing that’s been festering for months.
Which may or may not justify what happens next. She snatches the first weapon at hand, the fire poker she’d unintentionally left stuck between two now blazing logs in the hearth, as it happens. It is a glowing, sizzling neon hot rod; it is a tool to brand cattle with or some grotesque instrument of CIA torture.
It would do perfectly.
Aideen launches at her sister. Both scream. Nemesis gives chase and they race round the first floor, as they used to, happily, in earlier years. Though Nuala is six minutes older, Aideen was the unquestionable leader of their childhood larks. She made most executive decisions: Scrabble over Monopoly, bunk bed rotations (back when they shared a room), who would hide and who would seek. Nuala shadowed Aideen for years until, gradually, inexplicably, she didn’t. Now they slam with violence through the grand, high-ceilinged rooms, Aideen emitting bloodcurdling roars to petrify the horrible troll whose simultaneous yells are much girlier. At some point, Gavin pursues them and yells at them to stop and then gives up.
Of course, Aideen has no intention of actually burning flesh; she’s just trying to terrify the silly bitch. She’ll later try to explain this, though no one will listen. No one ever does. The sisters end up duking it out where it started, fireside, in a silence punctuated by the odd grunt. Hair is yanked, skin slapped, pinches exchanged. When Gavin finally reaches them and ends it, Aideen is straddling her sister, whose wispy, slender arms are pinned down by each of Aideen’s bony knees, the poker towering high, trembling and still trailing a thin whisper of smoke above them.
4
From her perch on a metal chair in a shoddy, windowless chamber that reeks of cigarettes—oh, for a smoke!—Millie spies her handsome son breezing into the Garda station. He doffs his overcoat, revealing a smart gray jumper and a pair of cuffless woolen trousers. Lean and trim still, Kevin is a man to notice, increasingly distinguished with age. The thick wedge of hair helps, only patchily gray and barely receding. His face, shadowed lightly in stubble, is kind and expressive, a face Millie would almost call bookish with its strong jaw and brow, and wiry, Yeatsian eyeglasses. Given his range of comedic tendencies—a single, arched eyebrow to self-efface, frequent squinting in faux skepticism, a throwing up of his massive hands to capitulate—he can easily enchant most rooms: a workingman’s pub down the country, a posh soirée, a recent party at the house where Millie was later told (she’d been mysteriously omitted from the guest list) he was carrying on like a celebrity DJ, pushing chairs and tables asunder to fashion an impromptu dance floor.
But will his charm do the trick at Dún Laoghaire Garda Station?
At the moment, he huddles, former footballer that he is, listening intently to Sergeant O’Connor, the man who’d brought her in. She’s often wondered whether Kevin’s athletic prowess—running, tennis, squash—isn’t a direct result of seeing Peter in recovery all those years, as if Kevin grew up bent on avoiding his father’s fate. Now he nods frequently and then seems to interrupt with a lengthy speech, and nods again, arms crossed. All her life, it occurs to Millie, men have convened with other men, making decisions on her behalf. What, she wonders, given this particular situation, might the Golden Girls do?
Finally they’re moving, a single menacing unit, a dark little cloud of doom, toward Millie Gogarty, who has the dizzying sensation that everything is topsy-turvy, that he’s the adult, and she the naughty child. Has he come to scold or threaten or yell? Or to take pity on his mother and her eccentric ways, to forgive and forget?
“Are you right there, Mrs. Gogarty?” says O’Connor, once he and a younger officer and her son have scraped their chairs toward her. It’s been ages since a group of men acknowledged, let alone flanked her, and a lifelong inclination toward the opposite sex nudges her spirits slightly upward. She smiles shyly at them, begins to see that she can rise to this occasion. After all, she conquered Peter’s strokes, three of them; she taught him how to speak again. She suffered through his death, and, long before that, the death of Baby Maureen. Surely this is but a blip.
Kevin’s sitting not a foot from her, aloof and stern, unwilling to meet her eyes.
“Can I get you anything?” says O’Connor. “Coffee, tea?”
Millie declines, nods her head to show she’s steadfast, prepared.
“The problem we have here is that this isn’t the first time you’ve taken a few bits from Mr. Donnelly’s shop, isn’t that right? You see, he was willing to let it go the once or twice, but now you’re laughing at him, you see my meaning?”
“Gentlemen,” says Millie bravely, though there is a detectable quiver in her voice. “I believe this is all a bit of a misunderstanding. You see, I was in the shop and my good friend Kara O’Shea, do you know her? She’s the mother of Henry and Dara O’Shea, wonderful sailors, the pair of them, crossed the Channel in a boat no bigger than a bathtub, now when was that? No I don’t suppose—”
“Sorry,” Kevin brays, suddenly on his feet. “May I have a word with my mother privately, please? Just briefly?”
The room is barely cleared before he whirls around, glaring, and quite definitively, she sees, prone to neither mercy nor amnesia.
“They want to charge you with shoplifting, Mum,” he hisses, “so the old lady ding-dong act is not going to fly here.” An explosive speck of spit soars toward Millie, who instinctively dodges it, watches as it lands on a metal stool that has probably hosted the rumps of hundreds of the town’s most hardened criminals.
Millie wonders if the coppers have gone off to one of those two-way mirror rooms she’s seen on Law & Order to watch the drama unfold. There is, she notes, a boxy window on the wall facing her. She assumes a calm manner, smiles up at her boy who, after all and despite everything, she loves mightily.
“I would give my eyeteeth,” says Kevin, “to understand exactly why you’re smiling right now.”
“This can all be sorted. I’ve been going to Donnelly’s for years. I’m a loyal customer.”
“Loyal customer!” Kevin’s jaw gapes, his eyes two fierce slits, like eyes a preschooler would gouge with a plastic knife into a play-dough face. “I’m seriously beginning to wonder if you are compos mentis.”
Millie’s skin prickles. This is just the sort of technical jargon that would be rattling around the brain of someone who’s researching how to make it look as if his mother hasn’t the full shilling and ought to be put into a home.
“Here, just take it all back! I don’t even eat Hula Hoops!” she cries, upending her bag onto the floor and setting free an astonishing shower of contents. Later, she marvels at h
er own stupidity since, if the men are indeed bearing witness, she’s just handed them a smoking gun. Out stream the stolen crisps and the birthday card and with a decided thunk, a single, browning banana. Millie snatches this up; in all the excitement of the day, she’s forgotten lunch.
“Tell me, please, that you’re not going to eat that.”
“I’m famished.”
“Look, do you have a notion of a bloody clue how much trouble you’re in? You do realize, don’t you, that if you’re charged, this could make the papers?”
“Ha!” she bellows. “For feckin’ a packet of Tayto!”
“For feckin’ every week in the same feckin’ shop! I warned you the last time.” He gets up, paces the room in tiny tight circles, panther-like. He is working himself up to, or down from, rage, she can’t tell. “They’ve got a list of every item you’ve ever pinched.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Donnelly had a CCTV installed a month ago,” Kevin says.
Millie scrambles to her feet.
“Please Kevin! Please! I can’t go to jail! Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” Dizzy, she buttresses her palms against the rickety table, which squeaks goofily with every application of pressure. She might indeed collapse, no put-on this time. As a girl she’d pocketed a peppermint or a pencil once and again, but stopped when her father, always solemn, had threatened to report her to the manager, who’d surely drag her off to Mountjoy Prison. But these days, she seems to have so little control over her slippery fingers, this terrific itch to take.
Now Millie hears footfalls—a cadre of them—and has a sudden hope that the officers behind the glass have been moved by her, this well-intentioned woman who’s quick with a smile, after all, leaning against a table in an interrogation room begging for mercy. But the steps pass and fade.
“Hang on now. Calm yourself.” Kevin steps back, guides her into her chair and sits himself down. “No one’s going to jail yet. Let’s not overdo it.” He begins to reach a hand out to her but stops midair. Kevin’s affection feels so often aborted. “Look, they want to make a point, they want to show you the seriousness of this. You’ll have to face the charges.”
Good Eggs Page 2