Good Eggs

by Rebecca Hardiman

  Where other guests might have found their fifty-three-dollar “garden view” room to be wanting—a wheezing air conditioner, chipped tile underfoot, shiny curtains—Gran had beamed and said, “This will do nicely.” Within a half hour, poor Gran was snoring away on the king-sized bed, which Aideen is displeased to have to share. Gran’s so lively, Aideen forgets how many decades she’s been knocking about.

  Aideen had used the rare moment of quiet to count their diminishing funds, $200, give or take. Studying Gran, she tried to imagine the beauty she once purportedly was—long lashes, high cheekbones, gorgeous hair straight down to her arse. But Aideen can’t get past the withered terrain of Gran’s face and the chopped hair long drained of color.

  Getting old is fucked.

  Aideen had pulled the slimy blanket up around her granny’s shoulders, tucked her up like a child, and let her be. She hadn’t packed a swimsuit—most of her items are useless here—but still she prowls the desolate pool area and, finding no swimmers or bathers anywhere, pulls up a white plastic chaise lounge and takes her phone from her pocket just in case Sean Gilmore has changed his mind about her (Yes, OK, she’s obsessed, she is aware). But no, of course he hasn’t. Still the fact that she may be geographically close to him, within a mere few kilometers, has a physical effect on her. She feels restless and buzzed, as if she’s downed multiple Red Bulls and is on the verge of doing something bold and public and terrifying.

  In the taxi on the way from the bus depot, Gran and Aideen had whisper-bickered over the appropriate tip. Gran had presented a single euro coin (“No way,” Aideen had hissed, forking over two dollar bills). Aideen had confronted Gran, for the second time, about contacting Mum and Dad now that they’d landed, but Gran had waved her off, stalling again.

  Easy for Gran. She’s not the one watching her parents’ names—and Gerard’s now too—blast onto her screen incessantly, though they’ve given up leaving voice mails. Aideen can’t listen to the earlier ones; nor can she delete them. She’s a documenter by nature. It’s not in her to destroy evidence.

  The pool is encaged within a metal, chain-link fence through which would-be sunbathers can view a largely empty car park flooded in garish high-wattage streetlights, which showcase an industrial-sized bin and a turquoise computer from another decade that looks as if someone might have pummeled it to death in a fit of antitech rage. To Aideen, the whole scene feels cool, right out of a hundred films she’s watched, poems she’s read, or written, or thought about writing. She half expects a hot, misunderstood twentysomething in frayed jeans to jump out of a pickup truck with a smoke in his mouth and knock on one of the motel doors and be let casually in by a girl who looks indifferent but isn’t, by a girl like her.

  There once was a parking lot town,

  Where broken chairs and dreams did abound

  In a roadside motel

  Can’t afford a hotel

  Sean Gilmore, will you ever be found?

  It’s so alien—no, surreal—to think that her family’s across an entire ocean and she’s sitting by a kidney-shaped pool in the beautifully warm Florida evening. That’s what her next limerick ought to be about: independence, snacks in a vending machine, adventure. Her phone starts blitzing again. Dad. Dad. Dad. With every ring, she sees him walking back and forth in the kitchen, agitated, hands raking through his hair. He deserves to know they’re alive, doesn’t he? And what harm could it do? She taps “Accept.”

  “Aideen!”

  He sounds so pitiful she nearly speaks. But she holds her tongue—Dad can be as persuasive as Gran had been adamant. Aideen can only hope that her breathing will be reassurance enough. So she breathes. He repeats her name over and over, a blend of terror and sweet relief that, quite frankly, infects her.

  “Is that you? Aideen? Where are you? Aideen?”

  It’s agony to say nothing, but she says nothing.

  “Just tell me you’re okay.”

  When his voice cracks, she can no longer bear it.

  “I’m OK.”

  “Oh, thank God! Thank God! Where are you?”

  She manages to suppress an imminent breakdown mostly by swallowing the thick bullet in her throat and steeling herself against the great feeling she can hear in his every word. Has he ever been so kind, so concerned, so thrilled and emotive just from hearing her voice?

  She should run away more often.

  “Darling? It’s OK. We’re not angry with you. We’re just very worried. We can sort everything out, but you need to come home.”

  Of its own accord, her mouth lets loose a minute but unmistakable sob.

  “Is she alive?” Aideen cries.

  “Who?”

  She wipes her face.

  “Gran?” says Kevin.

  “Miss Bleekland.”

  “Oh! She’s fine, she’s fine, she’s out of hospital. She’s back at Millburn. Is that—where are you? I’ll come collect you.”

  Aideen absorbs this news. She hasn’t killed Bleekland. Bleekland is out of hospital. Bleekland is so alive, she’s already back at work!

  “I’ll come collect you,” he repeats.

  She summons the strength—which is not easy, it’s very difficult—to hang up, but not before adding, “I’m grand, I’m grand, Dad. I’m just sleeping at a friend’s tonight.”

  “Which friend?”

  “From school. One of the day students. I’ll be home soon, I promise.”

  She disconnects the call and, for good measure, turns off her phone. Out of nowhere, a bird—pelican? crane?—swoops through the sky and as her eyes follow the graceful dip of its swift progression she spots a turd, or maybe a bit of palm frond, floating on the surface of the pool. Something about it and Bleekland’s recovery and the astonishing moment in her life that she finds herself in makes her laugh. At some point this morphs into a cry—therapeutic, she’s sure, but also mortifying, if anyone were to witness her sitting here weeping like a total eejit.

  Ah well, as Gran would say.

  52

  It’s been eight days since Kevin started shacking up with Mick and Maeve, and so eight days since he’s laid eyes on his wife. When Grace enters the Gogarty home and dumps her bag on the carpet, a thing that would normally annoy the living shite out of him, signifying as it does her unwillingness to heed his mild rules, he sees it now for what it is. She’s worked hard, she’s tired; ergo, she dumps her bag on the carpet. How narrow Kevin’s lens has become since he lost his job, filtered primarily to benefit himself, to beef up his own case, one he alone is laying out, and to whom by the way, and to what end? Why this perverse need to keep score?

  “I just spoke with Aideen,” he blurts. “She’s OK.”

  “Oh thank God. Thank God. Where is she?”

  “Sleeping over at a friend’s—one of the day students, she said… from school.”

  “You think she was lying?”

  “No, and she sounded—I don’t know how to describe it. Ashamed, worried, contrite.”

  “Are the others in bed?” Grace says.

  Kevin nods.

  “What did the police say?”

  “Not much. They asked a lot of questions about Aideen running off in the past and how long had she been gone. They said to ring up her friends.”

  “But can they not do anything?”

  Kevin gets up and cautiously approaches her. “Remember the last time? Hiding in the confessional with a bag of sweets? She needs to cool off. I just spoke with her and, really, she’s fine, she’s safe. She sounded OK.”

  Grace contemplates this.

  “As frustrating as it is,” he says, “she’ll be back tomorrow. I’m sure of it.”

  Grace, the most resilient person he knows, begins to cry, and watching her succumb to her distress when she’s usually so stalwart is difficult to bear. He badly wants to comfort her, but he knows he’s lost the right.

  She really is beautiful. Though her pallor is paler than it ought to be and in disturbing contrast to the delicate skin bene
ath her eyes, which is all dark shadows, there is no denying her beauty. It is a fact that does not require fact-checking. He goes over to her and boldly puts his arms around her. He doesn’t give a shite. He pulls his wife closer toward him fearing she won’t allow this meager consolation, but she does. Kevin feels a powerful peace descend, a righting of the world. After a long moment, during which she stands slack, like a peaceful protester neutrally submitting to police arrest, she begins to reciprocate. She presses back into him with growing force until their hold on each other is mutual. Her nose is a pinprick of ice against his neck, but under her coat where his arms encircle her, Grace feels warm, divine. His mind empties. For a neurotic, unemployed, recently turfed-out father of four prone to stress, this is calm and bliss, however fleeting.

  “I fucked up,” Kevin says, her hair pressed into his neck. “I really fucked up.”

  Grace’s body tightens. “You did.”

  “Was I out of my mind?”

  She snorts bitterly. “You tell me.”

  “I was. I was out of my mind. I’m sorry,” he says. “Forgive me.” He tells her he’s been missing her, which is true, even before all of this started, though they live in the same house.

  She lets go of him. “I know work has been—”

  “No,” he says. “No, that’s not what I mean.”

  He puts his lips to each side of her face and finds, to his great fortune, that she is receptive, or at least not giving him a clap across the mug. Could it be that he hasn’t totally lost her? They kiss. He feels her body loosen slightly. He lands small kisses across her face and then works his way down her neck. This is their tried-and-true road map, hackneyed perhaps and with frequent shortcuts taken, but reliable, familiar. Only not now. This particular drive feels spectacularly, mightily new. It’s a powerful reboot of chemistry, as if twenty-odd years of touch never occurred between them. Kevin wants to lose himself right here on the family settee, but he stops. He must tell her about the other thing. He nearly laughs: here is a gift, an ember of dormant passion, and the kids, his mother—family—even when the bloody house is empty, still manage to douse it.

  “We’ve got another problem.”

  She stiffens, releasing him. “Oh God. Do I need to sit down?”

  “Yes. And a drink might help.”

  Grace heads directly to the side table where stands a bottle of red, half emptied, and pours two glasses.

  “OK, so what am I bracing myself for?”

  He exhales loudly. “Mum’s gone missing.”

  “Oh Jesus.” Grace shakes her head and takes a deep swallow. “What do you mean? She left the home?”

  “In a certain manner, yes.”

  “In what manner?”

  Kevin plonks onto the very sofa that was the backdrop to his erotic domestic reconciliation of a moment ago. Beckett is purring languorously, his long ginger strands having pompously shedded across all three cushions.

  “I’m not really sure where to begin. Maybe with the bit about how she escaped Rossdale in the middle of the night.”

  “Last night?”

  He nods. “And may or may not have hitchhiked.”

  “What?”

  “Or would you prefer the part about her slipping a mickey into the night guard’s café au lait?”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m embellishing. It was coffee.”

  “What in God’s name…”

  “Apparently she’s been working on an elaborate plan that involved pilfering linens from the laundry—a number of towels were found to be missing—oh, and robbing her roommate of forty-five euros.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “Her dead roommate.”

  Grace screams in laughter. “Stop! That’s awful. Stop!”

  “They think—”

  “You talked to the—”

  “Sheila Slattery, you remember, the head of Rossdale? She and her sidekick Quasimodo popped by.”

  She hoots again. “Don’t!”

  Kevin’s beaming, laughing.

  “Mrs. Slattery and that knuckle-dragger were on our very doorstep quietly freaking out, though trying desperately to appear otherwise. Probably worried about a lawsuit. Turns out Mum’s been going around visiting with half the residents, bidding all a dramatic farewell and furtively showing them random items pulled from her rucksack. Which were to be used while she was, and I quote, ‘on the lam.’ ”

  Grace is hysterical. “Like what?” She has trouble getting her words out. “What was in the rucksack?”

  “Let’s see.” He’s enjoying this, is Kevin. This is what it used to be like. Kevin ventured into the world, a little lab mouse, to extract crumbs of stories and pithy observations about the people and places he visited, and returned to their little nest to entertain Grace with them. “A can of lager, some toilet roll.” He is breaking his shite laughing now. “Oh, and a bottle of Imodium… because you never know when a fugitive might suffer a nasty bout of the shits.”

  Grace is howling.

  Kevin finally recovers. “But, sure, no one paid her any notice. They assumed she was talking rubbish.”

  “I honestly—I don’t even…”

  “I know.”

  “Go on.”

  “Sometime in the wee hours—I’m not even sure of the order—she sweet-talked the guard at the front desk, laced his coffee with sleeping tablets. Like a film. And she hid out in a room, terrorizing some old-age pensioner. It seems they’d had some history, the two of them, some row. Which I never knew. Mum had been banned at some point from the common rooms.”

  “I can’t—”

  “That’s on me though.” He looks away. “Because Rossdale has been ringing and I never bothered—”

  “It’s not on you.”

  But it is.

  “Anyway.” He waves off her show of kindness though it does go a small way toward alleviating his nagging sense of having failed. “Oh, and did I mention, the pièce de résistance? Don’t ask, but she was hiding behind some sort of tree or plant when your man found her, and she started going on and on about her daddy’s horse farm.”

  “What horse farm?”

  “Precisely.”

  She is still wiping her eyes. “Oh my God. I need more wine.” Grace tops off both their glasses.

  “And after all these theatrics,” Kevin says, “she somehow slipped out through the back door.”

  Grace scoffs. “There’s no security?”

  “There’s some kind of coded door thing but it sounds shoddy. They’re investigating.”

  “Unbelievable. Where is she now? Is she home? You checked Margate?”

  “Of course. No sign of her. Her car’s gone, though, so she must be about somewhere.”

  Kevin regards Grace, who suddenly goes quiet, head in her hands.

  Eventually, she says, “But how is it possible? How can two of them be missing at the same time? It’s too absurd.”

  The room grows terribly still. Beckett awakes to stretch, lick, and reposition himself. Kevin becomes aware of the second hand on the wall clock, sweeping past three, six, nine.

  “Kevin?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “You don’t think they’re…”

  He’s had no such thought, not one second’s fleeting whim, not a glimmer that his mother and Aideen are together, that the stories are in any way connected. It’s too outlandish, too premeditated. Mum wouldn’t dare abscond with his daughter when she knows Kevin and Grace would be utterly beside themselves. It’s beyond the pale, even for her.

  And yet the moment the suggestion is loosed from his wife’s lips, Kevin knows like he knows primal truths—we are born, we age, we die—that Aideen was lying to him and that she and Millie are indeed in cahoots. Of course they are. He stares at Grace as this churns its way through his addled mind and changes every one of his hypotheses of this cursed day.

  Then he has three thoughts. First: He will bloody well brain Millie Gogarty once and for all. He will lock her up in her attic cupboard and bri
ng her crusts of stale bread and water and weak tea without sugar. The irresponsibility! The deceit! The selfishness! Second: At least Aideen’s not alone, she’s with her granny. Third: She’s with her granny.

  53

  It must be said—and so she’s mentioned it three times in the space of forty minutes—that Millie suffered a fitful night’s rest, due in part to the punishing motel mattress, ancient coils knifing her each time she shifted. To say nothing of her sleepmate, who battled her for the single blanket from dusk till dawn, the pair of them tugging and thieving it to and fro like a comedy act. But it’s morning now—it’s half past nine—and the Gogartys are walking in the surreal, blazing sunshine en route to Sylvia Phenning’s apartment. Millie feels gay, optimistic, the kind of cheer she supposes Floridians statewide must experience every morning by the mere act of stepping out of doors. Could she ever live in such a place, she wonders, without the damp and gray and rain?

  Things hadn’t looked quite so sunny yesterday. They’d hit a major roadblock at the Clearwater Police Department. Millie had relayed, in extraordinary detail, a breakdown of all of Sylvia’s wicked deeds to an unlikely policewoman—shapely and glam with excessively plucked eyebrows and a lush set of false lashes. Millie was just getting to the bit about her safe with the emerald ring in the diamond setting stowed in one of Jolly Jessica’s homemade sacs when the policewoman interrupted.

  “Hang on. This all went down in Ireland?”

  Not five minutes later, the pair found themselves on the pavement, in some despair. The Clearwater PD, they were told, don’t investigate crimes that occur outside their jurisdiction, or, for that matter, outside the country, except in the very rare case of extradition. Millie, feeling the doors of justice swiftly closing, had brandished the luggage tag in a sort of “ta-da” moment. Here’s her contact information! Couldn’t they just do a check on Sylvia Phenning? Drive to her house, say? Surely she’s been up to all sorts of dodginess in this jurisdiction. But the officer was already turning away.