“What about Millburn School?” says Millie.
“They’re sending me there!” Aideen cries. “They’re sending me away.”
“What?”
Aideen wipes her face. “Did you know about it?”
“Me?” Millie balks. “Sure, your father tells me nothing. When did this all happen?”
“I don’t know. I’m not even supposed to know about it. I just found the, like, papers.”
“But why?”
“Because they hate me.”
“Nonsense. Nobody hates you. It’s probably because of your Leaving Cert next year. They want you to buckle down.”
“Bollocks.”
“Let me ask you something, Aideen. Where did you find those papers?”
“Dad’s desk.”
“You didn’t see any for a nursing home there by any chance, did you?”
Aideen says nothing.
“No snaps of gaga pensioners in wheelchairs? A granny pushing a walker, something of that nature?”
“I like that word, gaga.”
Millie sighs. “I reckon he wants to ship me off as well. Maybe we’re in the same boat.”
“I don’t think so, Gran.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” Millie says darkly, and then: “I’ve got it. We’ll run off somewhere—the pair of us. We’ll stow away in one of those big ships in the harbor but we won’t know where we’re going. We’ll come out from some dark cupboard after two weeks’ time blinking into the sunlight, and we’ll be in Africa and we’ll go on safari.”
“Look who sounds gaga now,” Aideen says and, for the first time all evening, allows for the feeblest of smiles. Millie thinks, Pretty duck.
7
With care, Kevin chooses Dobbins as the most suitable venue for tonight’s tricky dinner, during which he and Grace (home at last, in the flesh!) hope to broach the specifics about Mum’s new companion, a topic that, since her arrest and true to form, she has steadfastly refused to engage. Whether she’s made mental preparations to welcome a companion into her home, he couldn’t say. In fact, other than an unhealthy consumption of back-to-back episodes of the liberated ladies of Miami (he’d replaced the remote batteries), Mum’s focus seems primarily bent on pestering the Fitzgeralds down the road to return a crate that she’d pressed upon them years ago.
Lit primarily by tiny white votives in glass jars, Dobbins is formal and hushed and discreet. The hope is that Mum, known for ditching her family at restaurants and sidling up, uninvited, to other parties at other tables for an evening she finds more interesting, will be intimidated enough to resist her urge to roam.
They settle, give their order. Kevin notices Mum, quickly tipsy, begin to eye-stalk potential ambush targets. Their waiter, middle-aged and haughty despite a goofily crooked, sparse moustache, delivers a margarita glass of prawn cocktail to the table just beside them, where a strikingly incongruent couple sits—the woman is stunning, olive-skinned with wild, kinky hair; her companion’s an overgrown, pleasant-faced ginger gorilla of a man.
“Oh that looks gorgeous,” Mum says, ostensibly to her own family, but Kevin knows better. “I must say I do like a good prawn cocktail, don’t I, Kev?” Mum raises her voice and glances over at the couple. “Of course, you really have to go to Ballybough for the prawns, that’s the first thing.”
Quietly Kevin says, “Let’s skip the second thing.”
“The second thing is the cocktail sauce of course. Needs a soupçon”—Mum smiles coyly as she does whenever employing her schoolgirl French—“of horseradish.” Then, directly to the woman, she says, “If you don’t mind my asking, are you Indian or Pakistani?”
“Mum, have you been tippling again?” Kevin says with a wink at the couple. “Let’s do leave them to it, shall we?”
“Not at’all,” says the man.
“I’m from Trinidad.”
The man smiles kindly at Mum. “Did you order the prawns as well?”
“Who, me?” says Mum. “I wouldn’t dream of it—too many prawns!” To Kevin, she says, “What did I order?”
This is part of the drill: his mother always pretends not to know what she ordered and then, when the dish arrives, she feigns great shock, as if she’s never set eyes upon a bowl of Dublin Bay mussels or a rocket salad, let alone ordered it.
“Smoked salmon, was it?” Mum says.
“I have no idea,” says Kevin.
“Or soup,” she says. “Whatever it is, I just hope it’s small. In America you should see—oh you wouldn’t believe the size of the plates you get there! That’s the problem with the States, the plates!” She laughs.
“Why don’t we let these—”
“But the people! The jolliest people you’ve ever laid eyes upon. Oh I do love Americans. Course they’re all fat as a house, but lovely and kindhearted. Have you been?”
Before the woman can respond, Mum knocks back the dregs of her wine and says, “Can I just say, if you don’t mind, but I’m very curious about mixed-race couples. Your skin is more mulatto, I suppose you’d call it? Actually.” She leans in conspiratorially. “If you want to know the truth, I prefer colored people to whites.” She beams. “Always have.”
Even Kevin, who can usually eke out a quip in the face of most embarrassing situations, who prides himself on his ability to smooth over the various mortifying social gaffes of his doddering mother, is struck dumb.
After a beat, the redhead says, “That makes two of us,” and begins to laugh, and then they all chuckle.
But that was never going to last.
As his mother tucks into her starter—soup, as she bloody well knew—Kevin, bracing himself, says, “We’ve found a companion for you, Mum. Or, rather, Mick’s sister has. A woman called Sylvia Phenning. I haven’t met her yet but apparently she’s very nice. Willing to tidy up and she does a bit of cooking as well. She’s American, actually.”
“An American?”
“Yes, from Florida somewhere.”
“Oh, I couldn’t have an American.”
“You just finished saying how much you love them.”
“Well, in America yes.”
“But here in Ireland you don’t?” Kevin can’t help smiling.
“In my own country?” She shakes her head as if the notion is plainly idiotic.
Kevin and Grace exchange the scantest of looks—no one besides his wife gets any of this. The rest of the world sees only quirky charm. Briefly fortified, he turns again to his mother. “The best part is she’s available to start right away—you know yourself, finding someone just before Christmas—we got very lucky.”
“Did we?”
“I think it’s a good plan,” Kevin says. Mum’s clearly lonely rattling around Margate on her own—a bit of company’s just the thing—and a second set of eyes keeping watch can only be beneficial. There are, after all, only so many times Kevin can gallop in when she burns her hand on the cooker and tells no one despite the risk of infection, or dismisses a bruising fall on the stairs, or accosts the gardener’s son in her nightie, inviting him in after dark to join her for a brandy and a biscuit.
Kevin says, “We may want to consider, further down the line I’m talking, other scenarios, given various health issues—”
“Health issues?” says Millie. “I’m in fine fettle.” She looks over at the couple for support, but, her audience lost, she turns back to her own family and taps her frozen shoulder. “This alone will not be my undoing.”
“Of course not,” Grace says. She looks particularly lovely tonight—soft gray cowl-neck dress, dark hair in a chic, layered bob. “How’s the shoulder, Millie? Are you still doing your stretches?”
Kevin marvels, always, at his wife’s ability to not react to the type of shit that would cause his own brain to rupture. She is a skilled disarmer. She’s able—with demanding clients and unreasonable children alike—to grasp volatile situations in hyperspeed and neutralize high emotion in a way that magically makes all feel heard, including him.
Then again, it’s not her mother; nuclear family can be uniquely nuclear.
Grace says, “I just worry that the house is a lot of work, even for someone with your energy. No one could be expected to keep it up.”
“I keep it up just fine,” Mum snaps.
Kevin exhales heavily. “We’re talking generally, just something to think about. Something could happen to you, say, when Sylvia isn’t there. Remember your fall last winter?”
“That was June!”
“It was not June. There was ice on the road.”
“I had on my sunhat.”
“That does not preclude ice.”
“Pass the butter, will you, love?” Mum says.
Grace reaches for Kevin’s arm and squeezes, but he can’t interpret whether the message is Cool it, you moron, or Steady on. “And then,” says Kevin, “there’s also the question of driving. There’ve been at least two accidents in the past year alone. That I know of.”
“You yourself were in a crash not so long ago, Kevin, amn’t I right?”
“We are not talking about me.”
“Well, why not? Why shouldn’t we talk about you?”
Except for the couple beside them, who now pointedly avoid eye contact, other diners begin to glance over, one or two openly rubbernecking, bloodhounds on the trail of some meaty family strife. Kevin rolls out an all-star grin and with a nod of his mug across the room manages to silently order another bottle.
The Gogartys work their way through their main course as a wary, uncharacteristic détente descends. Kevin chews but doesn’t taste his meal, and he’s soon itching to motion for the bill. But the waiter ignores him and wheels over a glass cart of dazzling desserts, meticulous in their tiny chocolate smears and pointillist drops of syrup. He indicates toward each dish, sharing its name and a fussy explanation: pineapple with ginger and crème fraîche, hazelnut soufflé, Mont Blanc Croquant.
“Sounds like a pen,” Mum interrupts. “Or a toasted cheese sandwich.” She giggles. “Or a toasted cheese pen.”
“And this,” he continues, frowning at her editorializing, “is a traditional plum pudding with—”
Mum’s hand darts out and she snatches the plate.
“This one, yes.”
“Oh, madam, these are for display only. Our pastry chef will be happy to prepare a fresh one for you.” He takes hold of the saucer but Mum won’t let go. For a suspended, punchy moment, the two tug-of-war over the pudding. Kevin, despite himself, feels hysterical laughter building in his gut.
“No, Millie,” says Grace gently. “That one’s lacquered—that one’s inedible.” She tries to pry her mother-in-law’s hands from the plate, but Mum refuses to release it.
“Oh just let her eat it,” says Kevin under his breath, with the realization that the evening’s been a perfect failure—she will never agree to even consider a nursing home; she will never give up her car keys; she will only drive him mad all his days. “With any luck, it’s poisonous.”
8
Dawn on Christmas morning finds Millie digging through her dining room drawers, cobbling together re-gifts to bring to Kevin’s. For himself and Grace, she finds a set of coasters each with sketches of Sydney tourist sites. Aideen might be tickled by a packet of seaweed (used for preparing sushi, or so she was told). For Ciaran, the little one, she has a cap with matching gloves—there’s a dribble of sauce on one thumb, but nothing a spot of soap wouldn’t remove. She’ll give Nuala nail varnish (her hairdresser’s always pressing bottles of them into her hands) and for Gerard, home for the break, a Chinese cookery book though, now that she thinks of it, is there a kitchen in his bedsit?
She spends the rest of the morning watching the road and the telly and the clock, and the road and the telly and the clock. She waits to ring JJ when she knows her friend will be at Mass and she can leave a “Happy Christmas!” on her answering machine. The day after her arrest, Millie had phoned JJ with her medical myth. Jessica had listened and then, with false cheer, said, “Sure, we’ll get there yet, Millie” before ringing off. Millie had then phoned the travel agency and postponed her journey, which had cost her vast quantities of pounds and pence, to be sure. Now that it’s out of her reach, the trip has taken on even weightier import: she fantasizes often of herself and Jessica descending a tour coach at Times Square and roaming the bustling streets. Maybe she would have found some flashy neon corner of Broadway and set out her hat and crooned Irish ballads—“Danny Boy” or “The Fields of Athenry”—the Yanks eat that sort of thing up. Maybe she would have enjoyed corndogs with ketchup for dinner, purchased a massive refrigerator and reinvented herself, never come home.
At half past one, when she can no longer stand the silence and chill of the house on what’s supposed to be a day of warmth, Millie drives the few minutes to her son’s home and knocks, a preemptive strike. In one of the many complicated struggles between herself and her son, she never fails to turn up a touch early and he never fails to invite her a good hour or so after he actually wants her.
“Happy Christmas,” he says and then he grins. “I thought we’d agreed on three o’clock?”
“Had we? Happy Christmas, love!” she sings.
“Come in, come in. You’ve brought gifts.” He takes some of the parcels, wrapped in the Indo sports section, and bends to kiss her cheek.
“Oh those are nothings.”
“Indeed.”
Kevin ushers Millie into the sitting room where she promptly gasps: the sheer abundance of ripped-open presents, paper everywhere, ribbons, bows, stuffed animals and new trainers and bottles of perfume and jumpers and small jewelry boxes and balled-up gift wrap, like the IRA’s been and gone.
“I know,” says Kevin. “I was just about to—”
“Holy Mary, Mother of God! So many presents! And kids in Africa with not even a bowl of rice.”
“Can we not, just this once?”
Millie, miffed at being censored, places the rest of her trifles beneath the massive evergreen. The room mysteriously empties and she finds herself alone, growing peckish and a touch resentful. She doesn’t care for the way her son has dismissively plonked her into one of two overstuffed, inexplicably white armchairs, as if she’s a dithering geriatric. She mulls the self-regard, the absurd decadence, of white upholstery in a family home.
“Happy Christmas, Millie!” Grace says, clad in a goofy Santa hat and heading toward her with a crystal flute of champagne, nearly friendlier, thinks Millie, than her own son. Kevin joins them and the three adults toast, but without the buzz of the children nearby, Millie has the sense of being on enemy territory.
Presently, she hears shouts and then the youthful thud of footsteps tramping downstairs. Bit of life. Gerard and Nuala and then little Ciaran appear beneath the dining room archway. They greet Millie with gorgeous hugs. Gerard is the image of her Peter—long-faced, soulful-eyed—and she adores him for it. All the Gogarty children are beautiful, in fact, kind and bright and confident. Well done, Millie wants to tell Kevin and Grace.
Nuala begins playing wobbly waitress on her new rollerblades, skating in jagged movements between kitchen and dining room, delivering an endless number of placemats, cutlery, dishes. At one point, she smacks into a doorway, upsets a glass of milk in her hand, and laughs. Millie, who always prefers mistakes to mastery, enjoys the sight of it.
She glances through the front window and studies young families and couples, old men in caps strolling along the road, the sky a smoked gray, but with a hint of sun. Everywhere her fellow Dubliners are calling in to each other’s homes—this is her favorite bit, like when she was a girl—to wish each other a Happy Christmas and share a drink and a bit of fun, bit of craic, and greet whoever’s come home from the States or London or Australia or wherever they emigrated to, so dire was—and is now once again—the Irish job market.
The eldest, Gerard, unbidden, situates his grandmother at the head of the table, serving her wine, pushing her chair in, chatting about his course
s and Cork, channeling the adult behavior modeled before him his whole life but which he seems to have only just awoken to today. Millie forgets herself and actually bats her eyelashes at him, so unprecedented is all this fuss. She takes a long look at her grandchildren—she is old, she can do as she pleases—and a powerful current seizes her, followed by a familiar jolt of panic: this moment, like them all, is already passing. And gone.
Where, she wonders, is Aideen?
Finally, when Millie is sure to pass out from hunger pangs, Grace calls up the stairs for the girl and Millie notes a vexed look, some message transmitted, between Kevin and his wife. They pull the Christmas crackers Grace’s mum sends every year from England and unfold their paper crowns and don them and take turns reading aloud the silly jokes within. Plates are passed and filled—ham, roasted potatoes, brussels sprouts, green beans, gravy—when Aideen finally slinks in like some scowling scullery maid, practically crawling in on all fours, so clearly does she not wish to be acknowledged. Indeed, her presence seems to unleash a palpable whiff of doom onto this otherwise festive table with its elegant tinsel icicles dangling from each corner, lit ivory tapers jammed into gleaming candlesticks.
“A happy, happy Christmas to you, Aideen!” Millie cries, standing to embrace her. She hasn’t seen the girl since their sleepover. Aideen tries to slip by, but an undeterred Millie clamps both hands on her granddaughter’s shoulders and lands a damp kiss on Aideen’s ear and whispers, “Any news?”
Aideen shakes her head and pats Millie awkwardly on the back as if consoling a stranger who’s just become unaccountably overwrought. She wiggles out of Millie’s embrace, but Millie’s not offended, familial affection being anathema at this age. No one speaks as Aideen, seated, spreads her napkin into her lap and studies with a blank, inscrutable, adolescent gaze the feast laid out before her.
“Well this looks only stunning,” says Millie, already losing track of how much booze she’s consumed.
The children’s well-groomed table manners quickly abandon them as they dig into their grub and compete to dominate the conversation. Kevin leans quietly toward his dour teenaged hatemonger and squeezes her arm, hunting for a smile. Aideen ignores him.
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