Good Eggs

by Rebecca Hardiman

Aideen hasn’t a clue whether this is a code-red hospital-level crisis or just a cold or what. She picks up her phone to ring Dad because what if Gran is dying? She’s old, she’s sick. Old, sick people die. What if Gran keels over right here in this room? Who would she call to report a dead body? How could she ring Dad and say, “I’m in Florida with Gran but she’s died.” Aideen could have done something but instead she sat, a clueless child in a motel, and did nothing.

  “Gran?”

  “Um hmm.”

  Not dead. She puts the phone back down. Maybe she’s overreacting. Maybe this is not an ambulance situation. If she rings home, their trip would have all been for naught and Gran would be gutted. She types the symptoms—sneezing, coughing, fever—into her phone and, after some poking around, feels fairly confident that she’s dealing with something nonlethal, that she needs to cop on. Besides, Gran herself, who is an adult (however unconventional), is downplaying all of it, murmuring that she’ll be grand and could Aideen just find two paracetamol from the bottom of her toilet article bag?

  Mum and Dad would act; they’d go out and buy, like, fluids of some sort, medicine. They would take care. Um, hello, but she does not recall signing up to deal with a sick/dying grandmother. Yet here she is, sliding two twenty-dollar bills into her sock, pulling on her runners and, loath to roam the streets of a city so alien to her, Aideen nevertheless heads to the chemist.

  Her solo trek takes her along a choked motorway, no pavement in sight, wading cautiously through scrubby, straw-like grass grown wildly and too high, no other pedestrian (do people walk here?) save the occasional drifter, a plaid shirt tied round his waist or no shirt on at all, chest baked an impossible brown. One is currently headed in her path—soiled Marlins cap, leathered face, blue wasted eyes (at ten in the morning!). He carries a carton of beer on his right shoulder like a boom box from some old film. Bollocked? Homeless? Psycho? Aideen, unnerved, takes pains to give the derelict wide berth, though not so wide that he senses her anxiety. As they pass each other, he looks directly at her and nods. She nods curtly back and, having survived, carries on.

  There is a constant and loud stream of cars on this massive roadway, many driven glacially, a comical slow-motion stop-and-go, traffic signals on every block, so different from her fellow Dubliners back home bombing round the bendy roads, whisking through mini-roundabouts and crossroads, barely breaking at the odd YIELD sign. She walks past a tan-hued warehouse called Shoot Straight Gun Range; a “motor court,” whatever that is; a clapboard Pentecostal church; Best Buy; and three personal injury billboards, one advertising a Harvard-trained attorney. “Injury is personal,” it reads. “Justice pays.”

  Walgreens, though a pharmacy, is as large and gleaming as the supermarket back home. Aideen wanders its many aisles, disoriented beneath a vast fluorescent glare of bulbs. She discovers an entire section devoted to sex: condoms and lubricants, yes, but also vibrating bullets and vibrating eggs, something called a pleasure ring, male enhancement capsules, feminine cleansing cloths. So fascinated is she that an officious male employee approaches her without her noticing and asks does she need help. Aideen blushes wildly even though he is not remotely good-looking. He stares blankly at her when she stammers a request for Lucozade.

  “Is that a medication?”

  “Sorry, no, a drink, it sort of has a gross taste. Like when you’re sick you drink it.”

  “Sick like a stomach bug? Or like a cold?”

  Aideen lists off the symptoms and he guides her to Vicks and Theraflu.

  She pops into Dollar General and then makes her way back to the Castaways without passing a single dodgy person, though she feels slightly more prepared. Aideen administers the medicine to Gran, who turns out to be a surprisingly compliant patient. The tablets Gran took earlier seem to have helped; her flesh is no longer scorching. Aideen slumps with relief onto the bed. Maybe she can handle this. She starts to tell Gran about the pharmacy, how it was filled with products and empty of shoppers, but Gran falls asleep as she says, “I’m going to fall asleep…”

  People don’t always get how funny Gran can be.

  With a new hint of swagger in her gait, Aideen decides to leave again, this time in the other direction, to the Sunshine Diner. Here she lingers over a stack of pancakes served with an unseemly smear of butter and a supersized jug of sticky syrup. She accepts countless free coffee refills (adding this to her growing tally of brilliant quirky Americanisms) and records in her journal as many details of her adventure as she can recall, including the vibrating eggs. Gus Sparks (and his obvious crush on Gran) takes up half a page. Never has she considered that people their age would be, like, into each other. Gran with a chance! Naturally, she pictures Sean and pens a fictional passage about a boy and a girl who get locked into a storage closet all night at a boarding school. She tries to nudge away thoughts of what will happen when, or if, she returns to Millburn.

  There once was a dumb girl at school

  Who thought it would make her quite cool

  To fuck with some mints

  She’s regretted it since

  Will the world only know her as cruel?

  By lunchtime, Aideen’s body is flooded with coffee and her hand tired from writing and her brain drained from thinking. She beckons shyly to the waitress to place a takeaway order of chicken soup. Willow is a single mother from Fort Lauderdale (everyone here is the opposite of private) with black roots that contrast sharply with her choppy, platinum pixie cut. Aideen covets this sort of style—different without screaming different. Willow’s been traversing the worn walkway between booths all morning, a glass pot of decaf in one hand, regular in the other, familiar with every customer, usually by name or even nickname. She brings the bill over along with the soup and smiles and says, “Have a nice day.” Aideen has always loathed this expression so prevalent in Hollywood pop culture, dismissing it as the ultimate in yank phony. But being on the receiving end when it’s delivered in earnest is another thing. She surprises herself when she says, “You too.”

  * * *

  Gus Sparks—same sandals, fresh, collared shirt—is seated in the motel room’s only chair, lending the room an unprecedented dignity when Aideen turns the key in the door. She greets him and nods to Gran, upright in bed. Aideen raises a single, cheeky eyebrow, as if to say, Hmmm, what’s this now?

  “There you are,” says Gran, blowing her nose loudly. Aideen makes a mental note to advise Gran against future aggressive honking in Gus’s presence. “I thought you got lost.”

  “Not at all,” says Aideen and goes about setting up the little meal at the bedside table: paper serviette, plastic spoon, steaming broth.

  “You’re taking good care of your grandmother,” says Gus.

  “She’s a good egg.”

  Aideen, pleased though not letting on, says, “Are you feeling any better?”

  “Not one hundred percent yet Duckie, but I’ll survive. Sure amn’t I eighty-nine?”

  “No. You’re eighty-three.”

  Gran pats the bed. “Come here to me. Gus has an update for us, but I wouldn’t let him utter a single word until you came back, sure I wouldn’t, Gus?” She puffs up the two deflated pillows behind her back, resettles into them against the headboard, and gingerly takes up a spoonful of broth.

  “Well, I’m not sure yet,” says Gus, “but we may have something.”

  “You’re our hero,” says Gran.

  “Oh no, I can’t take any of the credit. It’s Bob.”

  “Bob’s just a cog. We’d be back to square one if we hadn’t met you.”

  Gus hands Millie a file, a tremor in his fingers that Aideen hadn’t noticed the day they met him. She studies both hands and realizes that, in fact, both are shaking. Has he got some horrible old person’s disease like epilepsy or diabetes? Or could this be Gran’s effect on him?

  “We started by reviewing the lease agreements of every female renter in the past two years. Then Bob took the license plate numbers of each and looked those up
on the computer. He whittled that group down to women between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five.” Gus waits, smiling at Gran. “You want the good news?”

  Gran puts the soup down. “Is there bad news as well?”

  “There isn’t. I’m not really sure why I said it that way.”

  “Maybe you’re as excited as we are?” says Gran.

  “This sure beats plunging a toilet for ornery tenants.” He grins. “Well, the good news is there are only three women who fit that description.” Gus stands up. “Would you like to see if any of these is the person you’re looking for?”

  Aideen holds her breath. Gran reaches for the folder and two balled-up tissues flutter loose from her sleeve.

  “I need my specs.”

  “Can I have a look?” says Aideen.

  “Lovely to be so young!” Gran says.

  Aideen snatches the file from her grandmother’s hands and freezes at the first photograph of a cross, scowling woman in her midthirties. The few times Aideen met Sylvia, she was amiable, vivacious, pretty. And yet this is, without a doubt, Sylvia Phenning.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Is that her?” says Gus. “According to this, her name—her married name—is Sylvia West,” says Gus. “Phenning is her maiden name.”

  “Aha,” says Gran. “Aideen, would you ever find those glasses? I need to see.”

  “Maybe mine would work?” says Gus, stepping forward. “Try these.”

  Gran looks cerebral and somber in his tiny wire frames and she pulls an exaggerated straight face, hamming it up before turning to squint at Sylvia Phenning. She stares for a long time at the picture.

  “Wow,” she says, her nose leaking.

  “It’s her,” says Aideen.

  “Definitely her,” says Gran.

  “The cow,” says Aideen.

  “If you’re sure,” says Gus, “Bob can look her up, find out if she’s paid taxes or run a credit check or gotten a parking ticket. With any luck, we can locate her current address.”

  “Funny,” says Gran. “Those glasses did the trick. We have the same vision, haven’t we, Gus?”

  56

  Kevin paces his kitchen, squinting as he mentally calculates a complicated bramble of arrival times and cities and prices. The first flight to Florida with an empty seat, the ticketing agent explains, is the day after tomorrow, lunchtime. It won’t be a doddle, but his family, he’s deeply pleased to note, has rallied. Grace goes off to the local cash point to collect euros, dollars being only available in certain banks in the city center, and they haven’t got time for that. He will just have to submit to extortion via the bureau du change. Gerard had offered, of his own accord, to come home for a brief stint and help out with the younger ones. That was magic. Nuala’s back any moment from debate practice and Ciaran’s on passport detail. Lovely Ciaran, still young enough to get a kick out of being charged with a task.

  Then a wrinkle. The flight in question lands in Miami, hours from Clearwater. This option would require a long nighttime trek on the intimidating highways and byways of southern America. Under other circumstances, he would love a family jaunt to Miami. Bit of Latin música, bit of buzz, poolside mojitos while the children splashed in the sun, a group tennis lesson with the pro, breakfast buffets and pontoon rentals. But this, of course, isn’t that. The agent explains that if Kevin were able to wait yet an additional day—two days in total—he could fly to Atlanta and then board a second flight to Tampa, which is close to Clearwater. Googling it while on hold, he discovers that Clearwater is universally known as ground zero for Scientology, its opulent, block-long Scientology “super-building” headquarters located splat in the middle of town. Maybe Mum’s been lured by the promise of personality tests and spiritual awakening. The idea of it—Scientology taking on Millie Gogarty. Good luck!

  No matter how he tries, Kevin cannot fathom why his mother and daughter would go to Florida of all places. Mum despises nothing more than extreme heat and old people. Nevertheless, she’s there, she must be, and so, despite the frustrating wait he must now endure, he tallies up the exorbitant costs of this last-minute booking and gives over his credit card number, thereby planting yet another seed of financial worry in his already overtaxed mind. He has tried to phone Aideen many times since discovering their whereabouts, but each time he is maddeningly greeted with the long American trill of an unanswered call. Never mind. He’s through with powerlessness. He’s coming for them.

  Amidst all this tumult, Nuala arrives home in a dark mood. The debate teacher, it seems, has given her unflattering notes—she’s overly emoting to the point of inauthenticity. When she learns from Ciaran that her father is going to America, she stamps one slender foot on the floorboards and hunts him down.

  “But you’ll miss my debate!” Nuala is livid—indeed, overemoting. “ ‘Adversity introduces a man to himself.’ You have to be there!”

  Kevin shushes her and jabs a finger at the phone on his ear.

  She ignores this and deploys, from her arsenal of weaponry, a distinct, high-pitched whine designed to do his bloody head in. “This is so unfair!”

  “Quiet!” Kevin hisses.

  She stands glaring at him until he is thanking the agent and hanging up with some sense of relief: the plan is crystallizing.

  “Dad!” Nuala demands. “Can’t you go next week?”

  “I’m not having this discussion.”

  “Aideen ruins everything!”

  “Listen to me.” He gets right up in her face, close enough to glean a whiff of salt and vinegar off her breath, then tells himself to calm down. This isn’t Nuala’s fault; this is collateral damage. He lowers his voice. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry to miss it, but Mum’ll be there. Aideen’s your sister and she’s in trouble. It’s not about you. It’s not about you today. Understand?”

  Nuala, flushed and defiant, refuses to acknowledge his warning. They stand glaring and panting, like a pair of pugilists after a particularly dirty round late in the fight. They might do so for longer but Ciaran interrupts the moment with a breathy announcement from the doorway.

  “I can’t find your passport. I’ve looked everywhere.”

  Crikey. The next twenty minutes are spent futilely ransacking the study. Every Gogarty passport is in a file marked “Passports” except for Aideen’s and his own. Intellectually, he knows this, he sees this and yet how many times does he open the file and look through the little pile of booklets? Five? Ten? Gerard checks the other rooms halfheartedly; really, they all know the passports are kept in the desk and that Aideen has struck again.

  If he were not an evolving man, he might throw a mickey right about now, if for no other reason than to experience the potent release of his profound frustration and anxiety, to momentarily purge the feeling that he is constantly thwarted, whatever his objective. It seems to Kevin that, at the age of fifty-three, not only does he often not know what he wants, but in the rare moments, such as this, when he does, when his goal is perfectly lucid and ought to be within reach, he can’t seem to fucking attain it anyway. He has no control.

  But he refuses to capitulate to such bollocks today. Today, he must stick with evolution. He will channel his anxieties, his inclination toward doomsday thinking, into the practical art of problem-solving. Kevin sits in the living room, closes his eyes and carefully considers his options. He could systematically dismantle the house. He could apply for an emergency passport replacement, which would take at least two, three days. There’s some courier service he’s heard of, some astounding rush fee. He pictures a helmet-clad messenger on a bike tearing out of the embassy doors, a package tucked up in his armpit. But this plan wouldn’t get him to America until next week. He could keep phoning Aideen until she weakens and convince her to put her grandmother on the line and then demand, under threat of death, that they get their arses on the next plane home to Ireland.

  “Kevin?” Grace is beside him, placing a cautious hand on his shoulder, as if a bomb is strapped to his tors
o and he needs to be dissuaded from detonating it. “I’ll go.”

  He hadn’t even considered this option, and what does that mean? It means he’s been in the weeds. Or, more to the point, he needs to cop on because his coparent, his wife, his bride, still loyal, still his somehow, is here offering to shoulder his burden. But even as he turns to Grace with relief, Kevin knows it’s all moot. She has a big work do in the North in two days’ time, a conference that’s been in the pipeline for months, one that she’s helming.

  “What about Belfast?”

  “I’ll have to miss it.”

  “They could sack you.”

  “They won’t,” she says. “And you’ll get something. Any day now.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “I know you are.”

  “Will I?”

  “Will you what?”

  “Get hired.”

  “Don’t be daft.”

  “Grace…”

  “Yes?”

  Kevin knows he must look cringe-y since what he’s about to reveal slightly terrifies him, but he is reassured by his wife’s frown of concern.

  “I think I might make a go at writing again. Like real writing.”

  He can see he has surprised her. “Really?”

  “Well, as Maeve might say, it’s high time I pulled the finger out.”

  Grace mulls this. “Your wife tells you this for twenty years but one week with Maeve Rooney and you’re sold?”

  Kevin laughs. “What can I say? She’s a font of wisdom.”

  “I think it’s a brilliant idea.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. In fact, hurry up and get on it already!” She motions vaguely to the house, the children. “And in the meantime, we keep doing this?”

  “I’m shite at this.”

  “You’re not actually. You just think you are.”

  “But I should be the one to go to the States,” Kevin says. That Grace is willing is enough.

  “But you can’t and that’s that.”

  “It’s my mother.”