Good Eggs

by Rebecca Hardiman

  At the same time, Millie is experiencing a surge of gratitude. The woman had clearly spent hours on this project for the sole purpose of pleasing Millie, even if she hasn’t fully succeeded. Sylvia means well. And it’s undeniable that her presses and all of her drawers—for the drawers, too, have been revamped—are far more functional and, yes, even superior.

  “When did you do this?” she finally says.

  “Oh no! You don’t like it?”

  “It’s not that…”

  “I’ve been doing it little by little. I finished this morning while you were resting.”

  Millie steps toward the first cupboard and stares in astonishment at a set of cups and saucers hand-painted with delicate pale roses climbing sage vines.

  “Where did you ever unearth these?”

  “Oh those,” Sylvia smiles. “Those were in one of the upstairs bedrooms, stuffed under the bed. I thought it was garbage at first because they were in a plastic, like, shopping bag.”

  “I haven’t lain eyes on that set for years.”

  “It’s so pretty! Let’s use them for our tea.”

  “I couldn’t use those for every day.”

  “Why not? Why not have your tea in the nicest cups you own? You deserve it.”

  “Do I?”

  “No one deserves it more.” Sylvia studies Millie, looks befuddled or cross, and fires off, as she tends to do, a sort of confrontational truth. “You shortchange yourself too much. You know that?”

  These words move Millie, stirring in her an eagerness to undo her initial, ungracious reaction.

  “This must have taken you ages. It really does look smashing.” In fact, it does. She just might even thank Kevin for bringing this absolute dote into her home.

  “Do you really like it?” says Sylvia. “I love doing stuff like this. I was gonna do some of your other rooms too, if you don’t mind?”

  “I don’t know why on earth I’d put those under a bed. What am I at?”

  Sylvia picks up one of the delicate teacups and puts it on the tray. “They look antique.”

  “Like me.”

  “Stop!” Sylvia chuckles. “Really, though, you have so many nice pieces.” She flips on the kettle and points toward the French mantel clock on Millie’s windowsill. “Like this. My mom had a clock just like this. I bet it’s worth something.”

  “That? A thief wouldn’t take it. It’s always at least ten minutes behind.”

  “But you could get it fixed. I could bring it in for you next time I’m going to town? You never know what kind of fortune you might be sitting on. You know that show, Antiques Roadshow? I’m not sure if it’s on over here? But, like, every week, people bring in stuff from their house, just like this clock or whatever, or a lamp or a vase they find in their basement and they have, like, experts who tell you how much it’s worth. Sometimes someone will have a painting they think is incredibly valuable from the 1800s or whatever, and it turns out to be a fake and worth nothing.”

  “Ha!” says Millie. “That would be me.”

  Sylvia natters away as she brings the tea things over to the table and the two of them take their seats.

  “But then someone else will bring in a chandelier they always thought was total junk,” she’s saying, “or, one time, this woman found earrings in her mom’s jewelry box and they turned out to be worth, like, fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Well, now that I have. My engagement ring. It’s a family heirloom. I never wear it, mind you. I lost it the first day I ever had it, did you know that?”

  Millie launches into a highly detailed, if inaccurate, saga. Peter and herself were picnicking outside a pub in Ballsbridge or maybe a field in Killester or another part of the city perhaps, and she’d dropped the emerald ring in the grass and the two lovers combed the banks of the river until they gave up. But wouldn’t you know, a cleaning lady named Mrs. Olive Keogh found it in a bin or maybe on the pavement outside a shop or on a café table beneath the sugar bowl. She’d posted a sign that read LOST RING and Peter, returning one last time to look the next day, spotted the poster and reclaimed the ring. And then Millie had invited Mrs. Keogh to afternoon tea—scones, salmon sandwiches, the works—at the Shelbourne.

  “Wow,” Sylvia says, “thank God he found it. But I don’t get it—like, why don’t you ever wear the ring?”

  “My fingers swell up, you see.”

  “Oh yeah. Well, I hope you keep it in a safety deposit box or something.”

  “Is that what they do in Florida?”

  “Well, yeah, if it’s worth a lot. You said it was valuable?”

  “Very, but no, I wouldn’t trust bankers. Too cute. I’ve got it here in Margate,” says Millie.

  “But what if someone were to rob your house?”

  “Don’t worry: it’s locked away, snug as a bug in a rug.” When there’d been a string of burglaries on the road years back, Peter had brought home a safe for their valuables. Her ring, tucked safely into one of Jolly Jessica’s velvety monogrammed pouches, was one of the only possessions she’d ever bothered securing. “And the key is hidden as well.”

  “Oh, that’s good, that’s smart,” Sylvia says, adding a teaspoon of sugar into Millie’s cup and stirring, without her even having to ask.

  14

  The tray on which Kevin has placed a pot of tea with a sugar bowl and milk jug and a poached egg and buttered toast and two paracetamol jitters with each footstep up the staircase of this beloved house, which they’d wisely purchased long ago, before the market lost its mind. He nudges the door open with the toe of his runner, still damp from his soggy jog earlier this morning, and approaches the mess of the bed where lies, somewhere, his wife.

  “I’ve got the cure to what ails you,” he says, setting the tray beside her.

  “Nothing will cure this,” she says and then a swatch of her dark hair peeks up from the depths and she reveals herself: eyes gunked with slept-in mascara or kohl eyeliner, shadowed pools beneath them the color of a cadaver pulled from the sea. Still hot, though.

  “Good God, woman, what did you get up to last night?”

  Kevin means this to sound jaunty, but a hint of resentment or jealousy or something dark has perhaps leeched in.

  “You’re too good,” Grace says. She sits up against the headboard, the faint stain of egg yolk still evident, inducing in Kevin a mini-rage still. They’d fought over how best to handle Aideen’s extreme act of vandalism, waffling between trying to understand her pain and wishing to punish her harshly. The matter was left unresolved, where it may likely stay, for the moment anyway.

  “Never let me out again,” she says, dragging the duvet up to her neck and rubbing her temples in quick, tight circles. Kevin mock-fusses over her, punching up pillows, and then pretends to get into an actual fight with a pillow. He jams all the cushions behind her and then takes her head into his hands and massages it, like he used to. She moans in gratitude.

  “Oh… that’s brilliant. No, please! More! I’m dying.”

  “What time did you get in?” he asks, though he knows full well that she had stumbled through the front door well after two and had gorged on some sort of drunken snack—a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich, by the looks of it—before falling onto their bed, fully clothed, and immediately and violently snoring.

  “No clue. One?” She brings a trembling cup and saucer to her lips. “Oh, shit.” She jerks up, sloshing tea. “Shit. I forgot. Someone from Millburn phoned the office late yesterday but I never got the chance to ring back.”

  “What with a drinks party and all…” He smiles to show he’s joking and then he winces. Wasn’t there a time—oh, yes, nearly two decades ago, that ridiculously carefree period before they started breeding—when he’d never had to signify a wisecrack? He would just crack wise. Nowadays, he feels the need to raise an eyebrow, shrug a shoulder, anything to explain, or offset, or soften the blow of edge lest his words be misconstrued by those he loves.

  “I’m on it,” he says. “H
er Majesty is requesting all sorts of toiletries. Hair gel or lubricant.”

  “Don’t even,” Grace says. She gulps down the tablets with the dregs of her tea and then chops her egg up with the side of a fork. “This is lovely.”

  He can hardly believe that this lie flew. Aideen, aggressively unprissy, has not requested toiletries, would never do such a thing. The truth is that in short order, his daughter has managed to get into trouble, though Bleekland, being the sort of sadistic schoolmarm who gleefully relishes witnessing the parental reception of bad news firsthand, had refused to reveal any information over the phone despite his pressing. She had just asked him, firmly, to meet with her first thing. Kevin has a strong notion to douse this little ember himself, without his wife’s knowledge. A fresh installation of mayhem so quickly following the wreckage of their painting will inevitably lead to further stress. At least, this is how he inwardly justifies his lack of forthrightness; of course, other motives are at play.

  “Whatever it is can it wait until Friday?” says Grace. “Are you alright? You look knackered.”

  “Fine. Actually I’m heading over there today. I’ve got to go into town anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mick has a line on a job,” he says. “It’s a long shot. Some digital nonsense I’m not qualified for.”

  “Would you not take a course?”

  Kevin resists snapping at this, since this is not the first time she’s proffered such simplistic advice.

  “Nice to have a prospect, anyway,” she says, “but, you know, it could take a bit.”

  “It’s already been a bit.”

  “Not to worry. Listen,” Grace says. “Don’t count me in for dinner. I’m going to be late tonight.”

  “Again?” He can’t help it.

  “No choice,” she says, frowning. “Believe me, I’d much rather be here.”

  “Would you?”

  “You’re not serious?” She half smiles, curious or befuddled, and heads off to the shower.

  * * *

  After pressing his best trousers, Kevin spends a good ten minutes trying to locate his sole belt, a sad worn and woven thing he eventually finds dangling from Ciaran’s bed railings decapitating a teddy bear. Christ, is nothing of his his? In the loo, he rejects a splash of Hollister Jake, given him by his kids for some birthday, sealed still, as being too obvious. Oh, he really is the village idiot. He is a man in his middling years—a married man, a relatively contented married man, yes?—foolishly sprucing up for a woman at least a quarter century his junior who may also be married and who probably has not registered his existence. To say nothing of the odds that he will even come across Rose Byrd today. His appointment with Bleekland is in Fair House, and Ms. Byrd’s office is in the school building. Not that this proximity has stopped his brain all morning from attempting to concoct some plausible excuse to stop by the main office and drink her in: the speck of dark mole in the northeast corner of her upper lip, the generous curve of hips beneath her pencil skirt, the wet eyes with a hint of naughty.

  As luck would have it—or the sheer force of subliminal will—Kevin spies Rose Byrd while sitting outside Bleekland’s office contemplating the trio of telephones attached to the wall in front of him. The object of his lust strides unwittingly toward him, her eyes scanning a substantial pile of file folders she’s clutching, cheeks flushed rouge from her brief steps out of doors between campus buildings. She’s sporting a pair of sexy black cat-shaped eyeglasses he’s not seen before and a blue wrap dress that covers and yet reveals her, and which he immediately imagines unfurling from her in slo-mo. She is clad, like every woman in Dublin, in dark leather boots to the knee, hers adorned with thick silver grommets and zippers that run from ankle to mid-calf. He would like to unzip them. He would like to peel them from her legs and work on whatever’s beneath. Tights? Suspenders? Bare skin?

  “Mr. Gogarty,” she says, skidding to a halt.

  When she smiles at him with those lips, the color races to his cheeks and the blood to his groin. He is fourteen years of age. Though he longs to transmit a suave sense of detachment, Kevin, instead, gawks dumbly at Rose Byrd. It’s like he’s ingested a pill or a tab of E; there’s something about her that hits his bloodstream: he feels good.

  “Ms. Byrd, how are you keeping?” He’s unsure as to etiquette—a nod feels too cold. A kiss? Good God, no, not a kiss. A small wave? Too awkward, for she’s upon him now. He opts for a handshake.

  “Oh,” she says. “You’re frigid!” and tosses off a husky laugh.

  She, however, is not: her hand is warm, it’s hot, and this, his first skin-to-skin contact with Rose Byrd, Millburn School Office Administrator, is pure sex voltage, or potentially mind-blowing sex voltage, and it surges through him in a dizzying flash.

  “How is Aideen getting along?” she asks.

  Behind Rose, Kevin suddenly spots that old battle-ax Bleekland limping her way through her absurdly large, self-important lair toward them. In seconds, he will have missed his chance.

  “Grand,” he says, ushering Rose Byrd forward as if to speak in confidence. “Listen, I’m wondering whether it might be possible to have a word with you after I’m through here?” He widens his eyes comically, as if the thought of his meeting with Bleekland is all terror. “Just an administrative thing…”

  “Oh?” Her lovely head tilts, flummoxed, toward his. A musky, expensive whiff engulfs Kevin, puts him in mind of Brown Thomas and the sales staff there who spend their days spritzing women as they breeze through on their lunch hour in search of seductive props. Ms. Byrd says nothing more, continues to hold her face at an angle, earnest and curious, forcing him to forge ahead with his nonsense cover story.

  “I wanted to see about setting up pocket money, some account for Aideen for after school. She says the girls go up to the Spar and buy sweets.” Then, because her gaze unnerves Kevin and her presence obliterates the filter he might otherwise pass his words through, he adds recklessly, “Though I suspect that’s not all they buy.”

  Whatever the shite does he mean? And more to the point, what must the lovely Ms. B imagine he means? What strange or illicit thing can one even purchase at Spar after all?

  “Oh, you mean cigarettes?” She nods knowingly—she is cool, he sees, on top of all the rest, she is smooth—and he’s afloat once again. Did her cells, he wonders, surge from that handshake too? “But actually that would be Miss Bleekland’s turf,” she says. “She takes care of all Fair House matters. And here she is now.”

  “Right,” he stammers and his mind feels like a mess of scrambled eggs as he tries, the old bag’s hand now poised on the door handle with a face flat and unreadable as a piece of particle board, to come up with some other legitimate reason to cast eyes on Rose Byrd again, and soon. It must be soon.

  “Actually, I meant to ask,” she says, righting an earring back that has presumably loosened, and turning to him a final time, “did you receive the orientation packet? I thought I’d posted it, but then I noticed this morning there was one lying on my desk, and since Aideen is our only new student this term I thought maybe I’d forgotten?”

  “I’ll come by and nab it on my way out,” he says, suppressing the urge to pump his fist in victory.

  “Oh, no need. I’ll send one of the girls over with it, no worries.”

  “Mr. Gogarty,” says Bleekland, no trace of humanity on her sour set of features. “Please come in.”

  “I’ll pop round after this,” says Kevin. “Want to say hello to Aideen anyway.”

  “The children are in class now, Mr. Gogarty,” Bleekland scolds. “They are not permitted to have visitors until school hours are over.”

  Kevin could brain the old witch. But then Rose Byrd, with a trace of mischief, shocks him into a state of bliss. “I’ll have the materials at the main office if you want to swing by when you’re through here?” She’s smiling and, when Bleekland turns, she sticks her tongue out and winks at him. Winks At him.

  Kevin Gogarty fairly
dances into Bleekland’s office.

  “Ready when you are,” he says.

  * * *

  Behind the closed door, Bleekland delivers, in bizarrely staccato blasts of information, the following narrative: His daughter purloined from his own home supply copious amounts of liquor, including a quite decent bottle of vodka, which he can’t believe he hadn’t noticed missing. Kevin’s first thought: this is the type of prank, frankly, that he himself had pulled in his own adolescence, though he’d usually had the good sense not to get caught. The astonishing part? The drink was discovered, Bleekland explains, because Aideen was trying to get rid of it. Another student witnessed her throwing it, undrunk, out! Aideen, thinks Kevin, is surely the most curious of all his brood.

  “We have a no-tolerance rule regarding alcohol in Fair House, as I’m sure you can appreciate. When this rule is broken, when a girl”—here Bleekland’s voice becomes agitated—“brings alcohol into the residential building, it is a very serious matter.”

  “Mrs. Bleekland—”

  “Miss.”

  “Beg your pardon. Miss Bleekland, the truth is, Aideen’s a good girl, she really is, she’s a very caring person, but she’s been having a hard time lately—she’s a twin and there’s been some… disagreeing, and her brother left home recently—he’s away at college and she misses him. And her best friend moved to Scotland last year. Look, I reckon this whole episode was just a sort of symbolic rebellion, you see. She didn’t want to come to boarding school. She has a hard time fitting in. She probably thought it would help her in that capacity, make her seem cool. Terrible judgment, yes.”