Good Eggs

by Rebecca Hardiman

  “I don’t know. Around the time Aideen started at Millburn.”

  Grace sets her utensils down, first the fork, then the knife, and puts her head in her hands.

  “Darling,” he says. “Please don’t be upset. She’s…”

  “She’s what?”

  “She’s very private and—”

  “She is not private,” says Grace. “I’m her mother. She’s not private with her mother.”

  “I don’t think you should take this personally.”

  “Of course I take it personally!”

  “She’ll tell you in her own time.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Kevin. And, anyway, why didn’t you mention it?”

  “It’s not a big thing. I don’t know. It really didn’t occur to me.”

  “Didn’t occur to you? A milestone—”

  “Don’t let’s get histrionic.”

  “Don’t tell me what to get.”

  “How is this my fault?”

  “I didn’t say it was your fault.”

  “It sure feels like my fault.”

  “Maybe our communication has broken down even worse than I thought.”

  “She’s got a boyfriend!” Kevin’s volume is higher than he’d intended. His wife shushes him with a fierce jab of finger to lips and a face that’s bloodthirsty. Well he won’t be quiet now: he feels a mighty truth surging to the fore—the gun’s been fired, the horses are stamping in their stalls—and he has the goods to hurt her. The impulse to unburden himself and fumble toward some direction of truth is too exhilarating to ignore.

  “There’s a lot that goes on you don’t know about,” he says. “You’ve barely been home.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is true.”

  “Well if it is true, it’s because I have a job.”

  “You also have a family.”

  “Oh please.” Grace is glaring daggers at him. He hears the soft chimes of a text message alert. Could it be from Rose?

  Grace takes up her wine and, squinting as if she doesn’t recognize him, says, “You can’t even see it.”

  Kevin knows she’s on the cusp of deploying something dangerous here and he ought to deny her this small satisfaction. But he can’t help himself: he’s always craved her insight—thoughtful and considered, wise, bent toward optimism—regarding just about every topic, especially himself. How many times have her coworkers, her underlings, even her bosses, come into her office over the years and shut the door to disclose some agony or problem or anxiety and left the better for it?

  “See what?”

  She looks coldly at him. “That you’ve been wallowing in a pool—no, not a pool, an ocean—of self-pity since the day you lost your job. That you’re filtering every single thing, everything, the kids, your mother, me, everything, through the most toxic lens. You’re not even yourself. You’re a misery guts.”

  He wants to cry foul, to argue the point, to reciprocate, to wound her back, to tell her she’s the miserable one. He’s just fine, he needs only understanding, support. He wants to scream. He wants to punch something. To hit the table. To drink a whiskey. To get away.

  Grace’s mouth is slightly open; her teeth have purpled from the wine.

  “Well, then, here’s to our marriage,” he says viciously, holding up his glass in a faux toast. The chimes on his mobile ring again.

  “Look, Kevin, I’m just trying—”

  “Excuse me.” He gets up, tosses his napkin onto the table, frantic to be gone.

  “We’re in the middle of a conversation.”

  “Oh, is that what this is? Feels more like an ambush.”

  “Will you sit down and let’s talk? Please.”

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “It’ll give you time to reload.”

  Kevin huffs off toward the men’s room, fucking furious that his wife can still, all these years later, deliver precise pinpoints of pain (and truth?) at high-voltage levels. He enters a gleaming white cave of a room where nothing is discernible: no fixture, no tap for the water, no proper sink, only a porcelain trough, no towels or hand dryer visible. He feels disoriented. Where stall doors might normally stand hangs, instead, a massive sheet of frosted glass the width of a kitchen counter but without knobs or pulls. He pushes with both hands into various spaces along it. As he turns away in disgust, his shoulder brushes up against the wall, and a sleek invisible door magically opens with a whoosh, revealing a toilet, which, Kevin is pleased to see, looks exactly as a toilet should.

  He plonks himself down on the commode and reaches for his phone just as he remembers that he’d removed it from his back pocket and placed it in his jacket. Which is hanging on the back of his chair and which could very well be bleating incessantly in this moment not thirty inches from his wife.

  Kevin bashes his way out of the absurd bathroom and quells a sickening sense of doom, a rising hysteria. His adrenaline is jacking so high he could probably reach the table, a room away, in one Herculean leap. He can’t see Grace. Has she left? That would be fine, that would be workable, he could figure it out, he could apologize for this absurd fight about his daughter’s first boyfriend. How was that so important only two minutes ago? But no: she’s bent over her phone, sitting exactly where he’d left her.

  “Houdini couldn’t find the jacks in here.”

  He eases back into his seat, hand immediately checking for the reassuring bulk in his jacket. But the mobile’s not there. He slips his fingers into each side pocket, empty, both, and then looks at Grace, bearing such sorrow it’s as if her face is a crumpled bit of linen, and he realizes she’s holding his phone.

  But there’s nothing to see on his phone, nothing incriminating. He’d wiped all of Rose’s text messages from it a while back. He’d wiped her contact information. Yet Grace won’t look at him. She swipes his screen, and there’s a photo of Gerard and Kevin hamming it up in the kitchen and she swipes again and there’s another photo of Gerard and Kevin in the kitchen, taken a second later. She’s not flicking through his text messages; she’s flicking through his camera roll.

  The screenshots.

  His wife is reading the early exchange—raunchy, incomplete, an insiders’ incomprehensible exchange—of this once-burgeoning thing, this nothing thing that’s already over.

  “Grace,” he says.

  For a time, she refuses to even look at him, but when she does, her eyes are murderous.

  “Grace.”

  Now she’s standing up, reaching for her metallic clutch.

  “Wait!” Kevin scrambles up out of his chair. “Wait. Hang on. Let me explain.”

  Now she’s taking up the shawl from her seat.

  Their marriage, like any, has had its share of conflict—money stresses, differences in child-rearing philosophies, a terrifying cancer scare (the lump was benign), arguments about the uneven distribution of labor, and hundreds of other mundane, irritating quotidian differences long since worked through and laughed at even. One late night in London in the early days, they’d had a big row and he’d stomped theatrically out of bed in his jocks, shoved on tracksuit bottoms, and slammed out of the flat. They’d howled around the place later, when he returned to discover he’d stormed out in her pants.

  But until this moment, celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary, none of their cross words have ever felt so perilous, or permanent.

  Now she’s walking out the door.

  30

  Even the wholesome square of gingham on Nuala’s Dorothy costume, one of fiction’s most notable goodie-goodies, manages to look sexy on her sister. An hour ago, there’d been a row over the ruby slippers Nuala attempted to get away with as part of her stage debut—two-inch platform stilettos that screamed “floozy” and that Dad unconditionally forbade.

  “I’m putting my foot down,” he’d said with a nerdy chuckle. All had stared at him with steely contempt.

  When the Gogartys arrive Friday evening at the school auditorium where The Wizard of Oz is set to beg
in, Mum sits at one end while Dad, at the other, positions Aideen beside Gran, who’s been signed out of Rossdale for the evening and, frankly, has been a bit of a glommy burden so far. In less public circumstances, Aideen would tolerate her grandmother’s blatant insecurity better. She gets being at sea, obviously. But A) she’s in turmoil, and B) she’s in the second row of her ex-school where a pack of mean girls barely acknowledge her—never really did—and though she wishes she doesn’t give a toss about what they think, the truth is it’s not the height of cool to be seen shackled to one’s octogenarian granny.

  Soon enough, Dorothy’s world collapses in a cheesy Kansas cyclone reenactment. Even the dimmest audience member could spot the set of large, bony hands from backstage that visibly reach out and shake Uncle Henry and Aunt Em’s shack. Which is funny. Aideen, laughing, points them out to Gran.

  Gran laughs and whispers, “I adore you.”

  Aideen puts an arm around her. How insubstantial Gran’s shoulders feel, just air and bone.

  As they were leaving the house earlier, amidst the usual whining and moaning of the siblings (none but Nuala was looking forward to the night’s slice of culture), Dad had hooked Aideen’s arm into his.

  “A quick word? Look, your Gran’s in a bad spot at the moment. She’s feeling alienated and abandoned and with the burn—it’s just not a good situation as I know you can appreciate.” As he delivered this pile of utter gobshite, Aideen had watched Gran through the window bent over the gravel drive, bashing something with the pointed tip of her golf umbrella. Satisfied, Gran moved on and stood beaming at a bush, or nothing. Or maybe everything? Maybe they’re just missing what Gran’s seeing.

  “I just want to be sure she’s looked after,” Dad said. “Let’s be extra kind.”

  “Is that a joke? I bloody well know that, Dad. I’m the one who is kind to her.”

  “Language.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  In public outings, the Gogartys tend to occupy an entire room or row or pew or lift. Mortifying. Like, who else’s parents so overprocreated? OK, quite a few in Dalkey—in fact, just down the road the Broughlins produced seven children, all twelve and under, including two sets of twins who are rarely spotted without soiled clothing and inappropriately light jackets in wintry weather. Still, the size of her family vexes Aideen; she knows Dad takes a huffy pride in his clan, like he has all these people he loves and who love him. Aideen wonders if this is why people have children: to guarantee a critical mass of love. She spots her mother, who seems quieter than usual, gazing openly at Nuala onstage, straining to absorb every note the girl trills, wet-eyed, tissue-clutching. By the time “Over the Rainbow” starts up, Mum’s practically keening.

  Her twin is admittedly better than Aideen had expected. In fact, she’s really good—easily the most natural actor onstage and hers is one of the only voices consistently on key. But the play itself is a yawn, and the America-ness of it reminds her of Sean and again and again what she did wrong that he would vanish without explanation.

  At first, Aideen had been confused. Had he misplaced his phone? Had he gotten lost? Was he sick? She had text messaged him repeatedly: Sean? U OK? Hello? But all for naught. She spent the weekend waiting, but nothing. An incomprehensible silence, like a death. A full week after their nonmeeting, she’s come to realize that Sean is done with her, that, contrary to his initial blindness, he now sees her as ugly, dumb, boring, undeserving, flat-chested, big-footed, scabby-kneed, uncool. (Ironically, the only source of comfort to her has been his music. Turns out heartbreak and Nirvana jive well.)

  Afterward, the lobby is a sea of munchkins, a study in blue ombre—tights, makeup, caps, trousers and pinafores, overalls. There’s a buzzy, post-show energy about the room that makes Aideen feel even more unmoored—too many people excited, or pretending to be. Every few minutes, the stage door opens and a student performer anxiously peers out, blinking, embarrassed, at the crowds and the mums who’ve come bearing cut flowers wrapped in paper and boxes of Cadbury Roses.

  Gran wanders off.

  When Nuala, the last actor, of fucking course, appears, raven-tressed and blushing, a mild, local applause sparks up and Dad calls out, “Hip, hip!” and Ciaran answers, “Hurrah!” Mum runs to Nuala, like a film’s ending when the lovers reunite after a touching and funny but still worrisome string of misunderstandings.

  “Fabulous, darling!”

  Aideen turns away, eyes sweeping the room slowly and, after some scanning, spies Gran a good distance off. She’s latched herself onto a pair of middle-aged parents, both plain, in eyeglasses and anoraks, looking vaguely alarmed as Gran points to her own bandaged arm. Then Gran’s other hand sneaks onto the arm of an unknown nearby munchkin where it remains firmly in place.

  The Gogartys are positioned in a receiving line so that Nuala is now bestowed with accolades from each family member individually, in full bridal party fashion. When she reaches Aideen, Nuala leans forward, cleavage practically leaking from her white top, and whispers, “I have to talk to you.”

  “You’re up the pole?”

  “What?”

  Aideen shrugs. “Nothing.”

  “But not here.” She leans in closer so that a cluster of silky locks lands between Aideen’s lips, emitting a foul, stiff blast of hair spray. “Come to my room tonight. Once everyone’s asleep.”

  “What?”

  “It’s important.”

  * * *

  Sometime after eleven that evening, the Gogarty minivan pulls up alongside Rossdale and Dad kills the motor. A single bulb burns above the front door, illuminating a brass knocker that gives the impression of this actually being a home. The road is stunningly quiet and dark, no streetlights, no cars, no noise. It occurs to Aideen that Gran must miss the sound of the sea.

  “Right,” says Dad. “Here we are.”

  “I need to stop by Margate and get some papers,” Gran announces, sniffing.

  Dad hops pointedly out of the van and heaves open the sliding backseat door.

  “Count of three,” he says.

  “I have to go over my will. Make some changes.” Is she winking at Aideen? It’s hard to tell in the dark, but Gran’s face does have that wild shit-stirring look.

  “I’ll ring you first thing in the morning,” Dad says now, reaching across Gran to unbuckle her seat belt.

  “Ring?” She blocks his hand from the buckle. “I haven’t gotten a single phone call since I arrived.”

  “That is patently untrue,” Dad says. He leans Gran’s umbrella against the van and offers both hands to her. Gran ignores him, sighs and sits back, as if fireside.

  “In actual fact, I did get a phone call. From Sylvia.”

  Aideen stirs.

  “Who?” Irritation creeps into Dad’s voice. “Oh, her.”

  “Sylvia rang?” says Aideen.

  “From America, no less.”

  “That’s splendid,” says Dad. “Can I assist you out of the van, Mum? Let’s—give me your good hand there.”

  Gran bristles. “I want to go home.”

  “And you will, just as soon as you’re fully recovered,” says Dad.

  “Sylvia’s in America?” This, from Aideen, is asked as casually as she can muster.

  “The surgery was a success.”

  Aideen says, “What surgery?”

  “Mum, it’s late and Ciaran needs to go to bed. Can we talk about this tomorrow? Please, just give me your good hand.”

  Gran’s face fogs. “Wait now… Did I not mention…? I suppose I didn’t.”

  “She needed surgery?” says Aideen.

  “Oh no, not Sylvia,” says Gran. “She’s right as rain. The most thorough American you can imagine.”

  Dad sighs. “I thought you just said she had surgery?”

  “No, it was the boy she looks after, her nephew. Did you never meet him? From Florida.”

  “What in the world are you talking about, Mum?”

  “Sean, Sylvia’s young charge,” Millie says, a
s if they are all brain-dead, “has a life-threatening illness.”

  “Who’s Sean?” says Nuala.

  Throughout these detonations, Aideen has barely dared breathe. She’s struggling to absorb this data dump, grateful that the darkness can hide her shock and also that Sean never laid eyes on her sister.

  “In actual fact,” Gran says, “he was on his deathbed, if you must know. He called at the house a few times with her. I will say, he helped me tremendously. Extremely helpful.” She looks directly at Dad. “Odd jobs I’ve been trying to get accomplished. He rewired the lamp in the kitchen.”

  “What do you mean Sean’s… sick?” says Aideen. “I don’t think so, Gran.”

  “Do you know him?” Mum asks.

  Aideen mumbles a sort of affirmative.

  “Oh I don’t remember what the disease was,” Gran says. She removes her hat, scratches with gusto the back of her scrubby head. “Some terrible life-threatening thingamajig. Not cancer but something… cancer’s cousin. Sounds like a play. Did you ever hear the like? Anyway, they flew to America. The two of them did. Did I not tell you?”

  * * *

  Afterward, in the safety of her room, Aideen pores over every bit of the minivan discussion. Sean is sick, and therefore, therefore, oh my God. If he’s sick, what disease has he? Will he die? Will he come back to Ireland? And why had he not said a word to her? It’s both the worst and best news: her boyfriend may be battling for his life in some U.S. hospital bed, but it also explains why he’d abandoned her so callously. He must have taken ill that day she’d waited outside Bewley’s or he was silently suffering, trying to be gallant, uncomplaining, heroic.

  Two soft knocks sound on the door and Aideen sees the bright, blemish-free face of her sister.

  “What?”

  “Sssh! You were supposed to come down.”

  Nemesis quietly clicks the door shut and, with perfectly dainty grace that makes Aideen want to hurl her clear across the room, she steps over piles of discarded knickers on the floorboards and sits with a sigh on the bed. She is so pretty: the clear, light eyes, the full, arched brows, the etched cheeks, all of it.