Good Eggs

by Rebecca Hardiman

  “Hi,” she says. “Oh yes, I know this place. But from what I hear they’ve no money to renew their lease. Closes end of the month.”

  This information makes Kevin feel a village fool. He hasn’t chosen the in place after all. He breathes and can only hope she won’t judge him. The truth of this scene occurs in a single clear flash that he soon disregards: he is a married man desperate to prove to a much younger woman who is also his daughter’s school secretary how cool or interesting he once was.

  Kevin flags down a waiter and Rose suggests champagne. Despite his vow of sobriety, he orders a bottle, which costs roughly one-eighteenth of his former monthly paypack.

  “So…” he says, settling onto a transparent chair that immediately wedges his shorts straight up his arse. Kevin wants to hear her opinions on every single thing, from her political views to how she takes her tea. He is ravenous to learn her.

  The waiter retreats after doling out their bubbly and Kevin says, “To you,” and they clink glasses and he drains his in one greedy gulp. Once they place their order, Rose leans forward, her delicate chin perched on two delicate fists, elbows spread on the table, and says, “I’m assuming you wanted to discuss Aideen’s progress? At school?”

  She looks so earnest that Kevin stops breathing, overcome by mortification. He has misread her words somehow, wrongly translating friendliness as flirtation. Rose Byrd poker-faces him for a painful second longer, then throws her head back in demonic laughter, a great roaring chortle that he did not envision her capable of. This goes on for some time until she wipes her eyes with her napkin, recovering, and then pats his forearm reassuringly.

  “Your face!” she finally says. “Priceless!”

  Kevin, having been stripped of all pretense and feeling barer and more afraid and excited than he has in some time, can wait no longer. What he wants is so transparent, and her joke, though a touch mean, has boosted his confidence, banished his fear of rejection. He reaches toward Rose and takes her chin in his hands. She is no longer laughing, though there is some sort of smile, almost daring, in its place. She tilts her head slightly leftward and he greets her as he wanted to in the first place. Their kiss—in the daytime, in a proper restaurant where no other diners are eating the face off each other—lasts several long, lusty seconds until they naturally break away, pause to look with disbelief at each other.

  “That was a mistake,” he finds himself saying. “I’m married.”

  “Ssssshhh,” she says. “I know.”

  20

  The cheese soufflés are golden and rising, and Millie’s put a bottle of Chablis to cool in the freezer. Sylvia, who’s spent the day organizing the second floor—it’s gas how determined she is—has accepted a second invite for dinner chez Gogarty.

  Prior to Sylvia’s arrival, Millie seldom consumed what would properly be considered a meal. She might peel a banana and hover beside the space heater, which, on the coldest mornings, she drags laboriously from room to room by its cord like a stubborn dog on a lead. Or she’ll lean against the kitchen counter to save dirtying a dish and wolf down buttered toast, assuming there’s butter, or fix a bowl of Corn Flakes, assuming there’s milk. This is dinner. Despite years of Peter’s high praise for her Sunday roasts and shepherd’s pies and pork chops, Millie abandoned the kitchen after his death, having developed a sharp disdain for cooking, especially for one. At eighty-three, she is aware of some masochistic tendencies, but draws the line at self-imposed reminders of her already conspicuous solitude.

  But with Sylvia on the scene, Millie feels the call of cookery once more. She’s growing fonder of the woman by the day—nay, the hour—charmed, even, by some of her companion’s odder quirks: Sylvia’s incessant application of Vaseline to her lips, forever warding off some imaginary onslaught of chap; the yellow Splenda packets she powders into her tea and coffee like arsenic; her undiminishing sense of marvel that the Irish keep their butter on a dish in the press; her bottomless curiosity, those overt questions about everything from nose hair clippers to locksmiths to Irish law; her inability to pour milk without first sniffing at it with deep suspicion; her amusement at any advert featuring a Dublin accent; and, above all, her naïve, matter-of-fact, entitled, refreshing and decidedly un-Irish way of making everything under the sun seem within reach and perfectly possible, as if goals and dreams are legitimate and attainable, and problems exist not to complain about or sweep under the carpet, but to solve with directness and efficiency and good, practical common sense.

  Right now, for instance, Sylvia is whisking a concoction of sugar, bleach, and tepid water in a basin to reinvigorate a jarful of listing peonies she’d gifted Millie days before.

  A tea towel in each hand, Millie carries the piping hot ramekins to the kitchen table.

  “Come sit and eat before these bloody things collapse.”

  “This is my first soufflé ever,” says Sylvia, guiding Millie into her chair before settling into her own.

  They’re dipping spoons into their dishes when Sylvia picks up her ringing phone.

  “Oh, excuse me. I have to take this.” She steps into the hall. “Yes, this is her.”

  Rare is the moment Millie feels irritated with her companion, but this interruption does put her nose slightly out of joint; soufflés are infamously persnickety after all. She’s considering whether to make a fuss or not (probably not, Sylvia being generally too kind to give out to) when she hears her aide’s voice from the next room exclaim, “Oh my God!”

  Whether in shock or excitement, it’s impossible to say, but Millie is certain big news has been relayed. She gets up, winces at the scraping sound her chair emits, and inches toward the door, snatching the salt and pepper for cover.

  “Are you sure?” Sylvia’s saying. “Oh my God. OK, hang on, can you hold one sec and I’ll get a pen.”

  Millie dives back to her place just as Sylvia returns, miming frantic need of a writing instrument. Her face reads… what? High emotion? Joy? Fear? She grabs the pencil Millie hands her, mouths “thank you,” and hustles back into the hallway, half closing the door, whereupon Millie takes up her stance once again.

  “When would that be?” Though Sylvia’s dropped her voice, Millie can just make out the words. “What are we talking about, like, in terms of cost?… Oh, God, really? I don’t know what to say… OK yes. So I’ll call you as soon as… Thank you so much.”

  When Sylvia returns, Millie is seated once more, casually blowing on her piping dinner.

  “Everything OK?”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

  “That sounded important?”

  Sylvia opens her mouth, poised to speak. Though Millie feels certain she will explain or emote in some way, Sylvia seems to think better of it. Instead, she shakes her head.

  “Yes, fine, fine,” she says but Millie knows she’s lying. “I’m sorry about that. Let’s dig in.”

  21

  At breakfast, the eggs, undercooked and yet crunchy, are revolting enough that Brigid, quitting the queue in disgust, announces she’s officially on a hunger strike (which will quietly terminate when the kitchen ladies roll out the custard at lunch). Aideen sits before a bowl of sogging cereal carefully crafting a morning text message to Sean when Elena Antonia, a brilliant, thick-lashed Barcelona beauty, dashes into the dining hall late, as always. Elena’s a character—she’s always cursing and singing Neil Diamond songs in a remarkable alto and poking fun at her “frigid” Irish roommates.

  “What shit are they serving up today?” she says.

  “The usual,” Aideen says. “Brigid’s going on strike.”

  “You are good friends with her?”

  Aideen nods. “Why?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know if you know but Brigid was friends with a girl last year here, a really nice girl, and she left school. And it was Brigid’s fault.”

  Aideen scans the room, sees Brigid striding toward them. She plops next to Aideen as Elena drifts
away. “You text message him?”

  Aideen has been the recipient of quite a few messages from Sean Gilmore, most of which are brief and straightforward, but Aideen’s decided that not every crush has to be pure poetry. Not every boy tosses off lyrics like Clean-Cut who, currently on an Eastern Asia tour, seems to have forgotten his diehard Dublin fans, with zero tweets to or about them since leaving Ireland. Which is rubbish.

  Sean’s first message—“Did u listen? What u think?”—might appear fairly forthright, but to Aideen and Brigid, who discussed it at length, the fact that it was sent in the morning (9:18) had sparked a fascinating debate over the course of two smoke breaks (for Brigid, Aideen prudely waves away Brigid’s repeated offers). Does the time of day imply urgency? Is she his first thought upon waking, as he is hers?

  In any case, none heretofore could have prepared Aideen for today’s message:

  R you ever allowed to have visitors or do they shoot all males on sight?

  Aideen and Brigid look at each other and squeal, a noise Aideen has never before emitted. Gobsmacked, one of her favorite words—she is gobsmacked. She stares at her phone in a giddy daze and envisions Sean roaring up the winding drive to the school on a motorbike (does he even drive?), tossing a lit butt across the car park (does he even smoke?), and now he’s holding her round the waist (she doesn’t know what she’s wearing in this fantasy; she only knows it’s decidedly not her school jumper). He swoops her away from all of this because he cannot bear another moment without her.

  As the final bell screeches, the Millburn girls, wet-haired and puffy-faced, shuffle through the atrium, folders and textbooks and pencils in hand, a long and dull and endless school day ahead. Miss Bleekland, clutching her mints and a notebook, ready to record any perceived violation of the school rules, no doubt, drags herself into the dining hall to eyeball the slowpokes.

  Quickly Aideen types:

  No males allowed unless related. Long-lost cousin?

  “Perfect,” says Brigid.

  “Aideen Gogarty,” says Bleekland, a harsh tremor rising in her voice. “The third bell has rung.”

  Brigid shoos Aideen’s hands from the phone. Even with her friend’s goofy, gammy glasses and blobs of white greasy Sudocrem that dot her face, Brigid still looks somehow diabolical.

  I could sign out today with my friend at 4 and then meet u at the river across from the school where we always go

  She raises a questioning eyebrow at Aideen, who hesitates and then nods her assent. Brigid taps “send.”

  “Aideen Gogarty! Brigid Crowe! I would not want to revoke your sign-out privileges this afternoon.”

  “No, Miss Bleekland,” says Aideen. A ding sounds almost immediately.

  “Coming now,” says Brigid and then adds, in a whisper, “you stupid fucking cunt.” Aideen sees that another message has arrived and it requires no parsing:

  OK then see you at 4.

  * * *

  From half past three until teatime, fifth- and sixth-year Fair girls who wish to leave campus are required to sign their names in a great leather tome. This ledger, splayed like Dad’s Oxford English Dictionary on a pair of wooden wings, sits outside of Miss Bleekland’s power base, that glass-walled watchtower of an office where she’s always on the lookout for opportunities to apply her well-honed lack of humanity to some unwitting victim. Aideen despises Miss Bleekland’s ferocity: she’s as hawk-eyed with monitoring the book as she is with each charge and each tiny shift in Fair House, from an open window to a perpetually flushing toilet, keeping abreast of who’s in and who’s out, who’s going where with whom, who’s homesick, who’s retching in the toilets.

  Today, as the two friends sign out, Brigid flips off Bleekland behind her back and, pooling their money—€10.54—the girls leave through the gate and down the path to the Spar. Freedom! For an hour and a half anyway. In the shop, Brigid winks at the old fella manning the till and purchases ten Silk Cut Purples, considered, she often remarks, the most upmarket brand of smokes in the country. The girls cross the road and head to the strictly forbidden area near the river. “River” is a misnomer in this particular part of the city—it’s more of a trickle—but the girls had accidentally discovered a forgotten, largely torn up pathway above the water hidden by thick, unwieldy foliage beneath a graffiti-laden bridge under which they can sit in privacy and gab.

  Once they’re settled, Brigid says, “Did I tell you I’m supposed to meet Connor at The Peak Saturday night? Did I not show you a pic of him?” She scrolls through her phone. “He’s a total ride.”

  Ugly boys are just boys, according to Brigid, but cute ones are a “ride,” a “bang,” or, the ultimate, a “screw,” and every screw under the age of twenty in Dublin, apparently, is vying to get into Brigid Crowe’s knickers. To hear her friend tell it, boys up and down the Southside are forever hitting on Brigid, snatching at her bum on buses or bumping up against her tits on a packed Dart train in a way Aideen can tell she loves. And then there are Brigid’s drinking boasts, a veritable shopping list of alcoholic consumption: in under three hours last Friday night, she claims to have consumed four Southern Comfort and Reds, three pints of Carlsberg, and one shot of something, and she was “absolutely gee-eyed by then.”

  “Aideen?”

  It’s Sean. How he found them so easily, and so quickly, Aideen can’t figure, but here he is. He wears a buttery beige suede-like jacket and a blue shirt with a stiff collar over a white ribbed undershirt. He dresses so unlike Irish boys. Aideen spies dark, wiry sprigs of hair flattened at his collarbone. He bullseyes a killer grin directly at her. He’s a ride, a bang, and a screw.

  “Hi—oh shit.” He laughs. “Cover your eyes a sec.”

  But Aideen doesn’t. She continues gazing at Sean, who cups his hands together and shouts at a figure, a dark-haired man, middle-aged, on the opposite side of the river.

  “Hey!” Across the water, they see the man open a long dark coat to reveal a remarkably unattractive, doughy, pale, pasty torso. He is naked. The flasher’s too far away to pinpoint any specifics, which of course is what he would like them to do, but Aideen does take in a dark squab of pubic hair.

  “Oh my God!” she says, in a shocked, babyish way that she’s mortified by.

  Brigid screams out, “Copper bush!” and Sean and Brigid break their shite laughing.

  The man quickly belts his coat closed and hikes up the rocky riverbank, scrambling and stumbling through weeds and mounds of dirt, darting between the trees.

  “And don’t come back until you grow a bigger willy!” yells Brigid, which causes Sean to practically piss himself. Why had she brought Brigid? Brigid is witty and wild and worldly. Aideen is a dull doll, practically inanimate.

  “Now I see why you guys hang out down here,” says Sean.

  Brigid laughs and introduces herself and says, “It’s too cold to be a perv today.”

  Sean has another chuckle at that. If Aideen were to leap from the bank into the river and float down it calling “Help!” they probably wouldn’t notice.

  “I love your jacket,” says Brigid.

  Aideen studies her friend’s dimples, deep and suddenly ugly, like two baby belly buttons, two innies, squashed on her impish face.

  “Do you go into Bruxelles ever?” Brigid asks. “I feel like I’ve seen you there.”

  “No,” he says, “I don’t have a fake ID.”

  “Oh I can get you in there. I know the bartender, Jonathan. He’s always giving me free drinks. The last time I was in there he gave me two pints of Guinness.”

  “Cool,” says Sean.

  “I’ll be in there this weekend. I could get you in?”

  Aideen has been so stupid. Of course he prefers Brigid. Brigid is cool. She gets fake IDs. She drinks in pubs. She gives blow jobs.

  Sean looks steadily at Aideen. “Will you be there?”

  She could write a sonnet on the color of his eyes alone, which are green and sorrowful. “I don’t really go to pubs,” says Aideen.
/>   “Where do you go?” He’s smiling. “Other than Clean-Cut shows?”

  “Should we sit down?” says Brigid.

  Sean positions himself beside Aideen so that their knees graze. She wants him never to move.

  “So,” he says, “what did ya think of the music? Too loud?” He looks crestfallen. “Too fast? Too noisy?”

  “Maybe a bit much.”

  “A bit much is OK. That’s not the worst thing. Did you like any of it? Come on!”

  “I liked some of the lyrics, like that song ‘Pepper,’ ” says Aideen. “Kind of poetic.”

  “I don’t think anyone has ever said that about the Butthole Surfers ever.” He’s watching her with a curious expression. “What about the Ramones? Did you like them?”

  “Oh, they’re brilliant, I love the Ramones,” says Brigid, exhaling a jet of smoke expertly from the right side of her annoying mouth. “So how is it you don’t have to go to school?” She’s tossing her butt and already lighting another. Showing off.

  “We’ve been moving around a little,” he says. “I’m working on, like, credits toward a diploma.”

  “Lucky bastard. Your mum’s your teacher?”

  “Nah. My aunt. She kind of oversees it.”

  “Where’s your mum then?” says Brigid.

  “She died,” Sean says.

  “Oh, sorry, that’s awful,” says Brigid. “Was she sick?”

  “Brigid!” says Aideen.

  “Just asking.” Brigid shrugs. “Jesus.”

  “No, that’s OK,” Sean says. He shifts slightly, his knees abandoning hers. “No, she actually OD’d.”

  “Oh fuck,” says Brigid.

  “You don’t have to, like, say anything about it,” Aideen says.