Good Eggs

by Rebecca Hardiman

  “Mum and Dad had a huge row, like. Huge.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’m not sure. It was really late. I was asleep, but the shouting woke me up.”

  “When was this?”

  “Their anniversary, was it Tuesday? Both of them were yelling—like, top of their lungs. Louder than you’ve ever heard. And then Daddy—” Aideen hates that Nemesis still sometimes calls them Mummy and Daddy. It’s a deliberately infantile ploy for their attention, a direct roadmap to yet more coddling and nice little preening poodle pats. Good puppy Nuala, go fetch. In fact, Aideen’s been toying with the idea of transitioning from “Mum” and “Dad” to “Grace” and “Kevin.”

  “Don’t cry. Fuck’s sake.”

  Nuala jams together her lips, but they tremble nonetheless. Aideen sees something like bravery in this minute battle. She is moved enough to do the unspeakable: she places a hand on her sister’s back—precedent-setting—which immediately results in Nuala’s total capitulation. In this state, Nuala’s suddenly not so gorgeous. Her nostrils flare; copious tears leak from red eyes, leaving a trail of fresh pale tracks down those sculpted cheeks. But instead of bringing her hands to cover her face, as Aideen would surely do, loath to exhibit anything like real emotion, Nuala turns with a helpless shrug to her sister and collapses into her. Aideen momentarily freezes and then gathers Nuala up in her arms, as she so often used to without awkwardness or hesitation. She feels for her twin.

  “It’s alright,” says Aideen. “It’s going to be alright.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “Everybody fights. Especially married people.”

  “Not like this. I think they’re getting a divorce.”

  “That’s ridiculous! Nobody gets a divorce. Why are you saying that? Did they say that? Did that word come up at all?”

  “No but, I mean, they’re barely speaking. And he’s been sleeping in the basement ever since.”

  “Would you ever fuck off!”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “You don’t know what’s been going on around here. I’m telling you. He waits till we’re all in bed and then he goes down. I found the sheets in a big ball in the cupboard. If you don’t believe me, go see for yourself.” They sit in silence until Nuala says, “I wish you lived here all the time.”

  31

  Half of Rossdale doesn’t make it to The Hall for tea. A tray is brought directly to their rooms or they’re force-fed through their nose or belly button or big toenail for all Millie Gogarty knows, poor sods. Of the patients—“clients,” if you please—who do roll or shuffle or otherwise make their way in, most head afterward to the TV lounge, though there’s constant moaning that they can’t hear the thing (the truth: it would deafen a veteran trombonist). Millie typically spends her evenings babbling at Mrs. Jameson. She’s grown quite fond of her roommate despite the lack of reciprocity the relationship poses. But some nights, like this one, the thought of sitting in that quiet already leaves her with a sense of hollowed out despair.

  She eyeballs the lingerers, decrepit but conscious, hoping to silently invite one or two to join her, but no one appears to notice. Right then, Millie goes it alone somewhat shyly, a recently acquired paperback, Mentor of Desire, tucked beneath her uninjured arm. The other one, wrapped daily in layers of sterile gauze and cradled in its navy canvas hammock, is part of a growing collection of useless limbs and sore body parts: frozen shoulder, gammy knee, a duo of unsightly corns.

  After settling herself into one of the less comfortable armchairs—the price of her dithering—Millie delves back into the unlikely romance between a sensual Chicago professor of puppetry and a smoldering South Dakota farmhand when she feels eyes upon her. It’s Anna, a timid, arthritic spinster with whom previous attempts at conversation have failed. Anna stands now in a puddle of golden lamplight openly studying Millie’s book jacket, which depicts a lusty, shirtless boy in razored jeans towering behind a buxom woman in square specs, the two of them locked forever in a hysterical portrayal of eroticism.

  Millie practically snorts. The young ones carry on as if they’d invented sex. No one could accuse her of being a prude. She and Peter once did the deed at lunchtime on a tartan in a wood. Lunchtime! In a wood! Still it’s troubling that, try as she might, she struggles to recall with any real specificity most of her life’s sexual episodes—all in wedlock and so long ago.

  “Would you mind reading aloud a bit, Millie?” Anna says. “I’m only desperate for a story.”

  Mind? Why, Millie is flattered the woman even knows her name! She invites Anna to sit beside her, mock-dusts the adjacent seat as if she’s hosting a supper party, and dives into a scene when things between the unlikely couple at Bucolic Acres have just begun heating up.

  After a few paragraphs, Millie’s acquired a small but intent audience: one passably lucid-looking fellow with white tufts of nasal hair launching in half moons from his nostrils, and two harmless biddies collectively known as the Mary Ss (Mary Sullivan and Mary Smith), who are rarely seen one without the other.

  “Roberta knew she wanted Hank,” Millie reads. “Hers was a type of desire she’d never experienced so acutely before. Her body thrilled and her heart leapt when she saw him wiping his glistening six-pack with a rag while taking a break from the hay-gathering, or tinkering with the chisel plow engine or patting down Rusty, his giant gelding.”

  “Ah, so it’s his giant gelding she’s after, is it?” says Anna.

  Millie and the little crew share a good laugh at this unlikely heckle, a rare infusion of mischief in these rooms, and all seem to settle into their seats with further ease, smiles fading comfortably, more committed to the promise of the evening’s entertainment. They are listening to her.

  “Could you quiet down over there?” A woman, obscure in the gloom, calls out. “I’m trying to watch TV.”

  It’s Elizabeth Colding, seated about as far from the television as the room will allow, her ragged face riddled with rosacea—an alky for sure—glowering in their direction. Colding is an unpopular former policewoman with a face like a raw, veined steak who always trails a curious stench of fish sauce.

  Millie raises a single, shit-stirring eyebrow at Anna; given that she has an audience, she can’t help but feel a touch revolutionary. She carries on reading with no discernible change in volume.

  “Roberta stretched her hand toward Hank’s chiseled six-pack. He flashed her a deep look of surprise. Roberta felt the thick, manly hair there. She moved her well-manicured nails to his big shiny belt buckle—”

  “Oh shut it, will ya? I can’t hear the news.”

  “Have you considered,” replies Millie with a regal, affected frostiness, “moving closer to the television?”

  “This is the television room, not the library, ya numpty!”

  “She’s the numpty,” says the old man, to Millie’s great satisfaction.

  “—to rake her fingers gently through the auburn thatches of—”

  “Rude!” says Colding. “Stop that!”

  Somewhere across the room a knee cracks once, twice. It’s probably Colding’s, since she’s beginning to unseat her lanky, skeletal frame from the dark depths of a sofa. Elsewhere a patient surrenders to a loud yawn. Millie imagines this as a film scene, only in this tragi-comedy, the players are gnarled, absentminded, shrunken, stubborn amnesiacs with swollen feet, bad tickers, faulty hearing, brittle bones, aching muscles, foggy vision.

  For an oldie, Colding, who’s now approaching the group in a menacing fashion, is surprisingly nimble.

  “The cheek,” Anna whispers.

  “Selfish ol’ wagon,” cries Colding, a finger wagging. “I’ll shut you up meself.”

  Millie’s next act feels more within the context of a garden-variety sibling squabble than an egregious or violent episode (which is how the staff will go on to characterize it). She raises Mentor of Des
ire and hurls it with her good arm in Colding’s direction. Years on the bottle must have dulled Colding’s senses because she doesn’t even duck, and Roberta and Hank bounce near her feet and land, soft-porn-side-up, on the floor tiles.

  An elderly gent whom Millie has dubbed Conall the Clueless wanders in during the taut, silent moment that follows and says, “Would anyone have a nail clippers?”

  Colding begins yelling all sorts of rubbish—“I want to file a patient 12A form”—and then she stops. Furious patches of color bloom on her face. She points to the book splayed on the floor. “Where are you after getting that?”

  “My granddaughter.”

  “You’re lying! That went missing from my room yesterday. Nurse!”

  In dash the Rossdale busybodies who commence their scowling and interrogating. Millie is led from the room with soothing murmurs, as if she’s unhinged, as if she needs mollifying, and made to wait in Mrs. Slattery’s office where, in time, she’s subjected to a tedious lecture about appropriate behavior and a boning-up of the Rossdale rules. Mrs. Slattery informs Millie that the option to spend evenings with other Rossdale residents in the lounge—distracting enough, certainly helpful in tackling the darkest portion of her days—are off the table for the time being. It’s a mean punishment, simultaneously overkill and petty, and Millie gets up to her feet upon hearing it.

  “That’s outrageous!”

  “Mrs. Gogarty, please. Sit down. You’re fine there. Come, please, sit down. Let’s discuss this calmly.”

  “How long am I to be stuck alone in my room?”

  “You’re not stuck alone. There’s Emma Jameson with you—”

  “Are you having me on?”

  “This is only a temporary restriction, just for a few evenings.”

  “A few evenings might be all I have left.”

  “You nearly hit a resident with a book,” says Mrs. Slattery.

  “A paperback.”

  “It’s getting late. Let’s regroup tomorrow, shall we? Things will look better by then, with a good night’s sleep, don’t you think?” Mrs. Slattery claps her hands together. “Was there anything else now before we get you settled?”

  “Yes,” says Millie. “When am I going home?”

  Mrs. Slattery, white of hair, sound of mind, clever, but with trembling fingers that suggest early-onset Parkinson’s, a woman who looks not far off full-time occupancy here herself, sighs and seems to size up Millie.

  “I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. I admire your energy. Your spirit. I do. I think you’re wonderful. You remind me of my auntie Margaret, who was—she was a tough bird. You’re right to keep a fighting spirit. But at the same time, you have to face some realities. You can’t bury your head in the sand, Mrs. Gogarty. It won’t serve you. The truth is… as we age, we’re inclined toward some… physical challenges, injuries, sickness, you know, and that’s the reality. That’s why you’re here, so we can help you get back on your feet.”

  32

  While his fellow countrymen are headed to mass or sleeping it off, Kevin stands on a Sunday morning before a front door whose lace curtains prohibit any peek within. His own home, ten minutes up the road, is presumably filled with his slumbering children, though who’s to know since he’s been booted from it—without ceremony, mercy, or tears. Grace essentially told him to fuck off. She hadn’t wanted to be rash, she said; she’d thought about it for days, hoped she could come to terms with his betrayal. But there was a moment during The Wizard of Oz when she’d looked past their children down the row of seats and realized she wanted to punch him in the face. And that impulse hadn’t lessened. Her tone? Steady, even, neutral, the tone one might adopt to notify the cashier that you’d like to make a small withdrawal. He, on the other hand, was all heart. Instant panic. He tried to explain, to reassure, to beg forgiveness.

  “Nothing really happened! I promise you,” he’d sputtered. “One or two kisses but we never—it was never consummated. I love you. Don’t do this.”

  This exchange—eerily calm on her side, hot on his—had taken place, at Grace’s insistence, in the back of the garden so the kids wouldn’t hear. Grace had finally betrayed emotion when he’d said “consummated.” She had glared then, the word seeming to strike her as particularly egregious—she’d never had much patience for his use of obnoxious vocabulary in weighted moments, his flair for the showy when the plain would do just fine. Grace wouldn’t let him speak after that—went so far as putting her hands on her ears, eyes shut, saying, “No, no, no.” She listed a number of stipulations and practicalities for the present, something about the little car and the bank card, but the only one he heard was that he was not to contact the children until she’d had some time to think.

  “You’re not serious? Who’s going to take care of them?”

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  “You’re going to hire someone to bring them to school and cook their—that’s ridiculous. I can keep sleeping downstairs until things—we figure it out. They need—”

  “Just go,” she says. “I can’t bear to look at you.”

  He found that he was not far off crying, something he hadn’t done since his wedding day. And those were tears of joy. After they’d come down the aisle as husband and wife and their guests were still inside the church, his new bride had turned to him and said, “We did it.”

  “We did it.”

  “So, too late to back out?”

  There was no other woman for him.

  But that night in the garden, Grace, shivering in a thin cardigan, turned her back to him and trekked toward the house.

  “But Grace, you’re punishing them for—”

  “No.” She stopped and turned. “I’m punishing you.”

  * * *

  The kids were asleep when he later crunched onto the drive with his hastily packed bag. But as he turned to look up at his house a final time, he noticed, at the upper bedroom window, his little love, Ciaran. He froze. Could his son intuit somehow that his father was en route to exile? But Ciaran had just waved merrily down at him, oblivious to the momentous conflict. Which had gutted him. Kevin forced a smile and returned the wave and moved on, thinking if he just kept moving maybe he could outrun his life.

  Without any real thought, he found himself driving to his childhood home; it was empty, after all, and he sought solitude. It had been tricky getting his mother into Rossdale, but definitely the right call. She was safe, she was cared for. As he pulled into Margate, all depressing gray wet stone, he saw that the nearby neighbors’ renovations were in full swing—two workers’ vans and a digger lorry were parked beside a massive hole, not a thing here remotely conducive to peace. Mum had nearly managed to blow up the kitchen, so in reality how habitable could the place be? He wouldn’t be able to make a cuppa or nuke a frozen pizza and the wine stash was likely low to nil. There would be little serenity here. Before he even got his key in the front door, Kevin returned to his car.

  Mick, ever supportive, had the audacity to laugh when Kevin rang looking for a place to crash. He explained that he’d been kicked out, yet hadn’t actually done the dirt (the whole dirt, as it were).

  “I cheated emotionally,” Kevin said, mortified as the emasculating words left his lips. Yet he knew his wife was not wrong.

  “Jaysus.” Mick’s voice was all disgust—for Kevin or Grace, it was impossible to say. “Of course you can stay with me. It’s grand, but I don’t have the flat in town anymore.”

  “No?”

  “Long story.”

  “Well where are you then?”

  A pause. “I’m actually back at Mum’s place.”

  Now it was Kevin’s turn to erupt in raucous laughter. He was breaking his shite laughing, he was hysterical.

  “And you’re giving me shit?”

  “Fuck off,” said Mick. “See you in a few?”

  33

  Standing just outside Room 302, Aideen watches as her grandmother squats next to Mrs. Jameson’s open cupboard a
nd stuffs two apples and a bottle of water into a pillowcase stamped “Rossdale.”

  “What are you doing?” says Aideen.

  “Aideen! Come in but, quick, shut the door.”

  Gran appears to be hiding the bag beneath a pile of her roommate’s cardigans.

  “Is that a knife?” says Aideen.

  Gran looks down to see a tip of cutlery protruding from her sling.

  “Well done. I’ve been looking for that.” She sticks the knife into the pillowcase. “Would you care for some fruit?”

  Gran gestures at an uneaten bowl of stewed prunes, like a petri dish of soggy minibrains. Aideen scoffs.

  “Listen, I’m only thrilled you’re here,” says Gran. “I need to ask you a favor.”

  “Gran, remember Friday night in the car when you were talking about Sylvia? After Nuala’s play? You said Sean was sick and Sylvia had taken him to America. Where did they go in America?”

  “New York. A specialty hospital there.”

  “But like, where? Like, which hospital? What did Sylvia say exactly? When she phoned?”

  “She was checking up on me. I think she misses me. We became very close, you see.”

  “But what did she say about Sean?”

  “Did you know Sean?”

  “Of course I know him!” Aideen huffs in exasperation. “I met him at your house, do you not remember?”

  When Gran says, “I didn’t realize you’d become friendly with him,” Aideen drops her head and gives her the broad strokes about their budding romance and its abrupt, aborted ending.

  “Don’t tell anyone, promise? I don’t think Mum and Dad would like it.”

  Gran murmurs knowingly.

  “But he’s OK now, right? You said the hospital thing was, like, successful?”

  “Oh yes,” says Gran. “They’ll be back in no time.”