‘Chocolate? Strawberry? Or…’ Dad paused, before triumphantly delivering his pièce de résistance. ‘ Or M&M? They’re new!’
There is always a wonderful selection of confectionery available at my parents’ house. Unlike most houses, though, this isn’t in addition to the usual foodstuffs, it’s instead of. It wasn’t so much that my mother didn’t enjoy cooking meals, it was more that we didn’t enjoy eating them. Some time in the early eighties she stopped preparing meals altogether. ‘What’s the point if you ungrateful brats never eat them?’
‘I eat them,’ Dad bleated, a voice in the wilderness.
But it made no difference. Convenience foods were ushered in and it made me sad. I’d always yearned for an Italian-style family who gathered for their evening meal, passing platters and bowls of steaming homemade food along the scrubbed pine table while the roundy mama beamed from the stove.
All the same, unlimited ice-cream was not to be sniffed at. Graciously, I accepted a Cornetto (an M&M one, of course) and watched the end of the programme. I might as well, there was no way I’d get their attention until it was over. Besides, it suited me to defer the moment when I had to spill the words Garv and I have split up. I was afraid that saying it out loud would mean that it had actually happened.
And then it was time.
I sighed, swallowed away the nausea and began. Tve something to tell you all.’
‘Lovely!’ Mum rearranged her features into her I’m-going-to-be-a-granny-again expression.
‘Garv and I have split up.’
Ah, here!’ With a sharp rustle my father promptly disappeared behind his paper. Anna flung herself upon me, even Helen looked startled, but my poor mother… She looked as though she’d been hit on the head by a flying brick. Stunned and stricken and shocked beyond belief.
‘In a minute you’ll tell me you’re joking,’ she gasped.
‘In a minute I won’t,’ I said stoutly. I hated doing this to her, especially because I was the second of her daughters to have a failed marriage, but it was important not to mislead her. False hope was worse than no hope.
‘But,’ she struggled for breath, ‘but you’ve always been the good one. Say something,’ she angrily urged my father.
He appeared reluctantly from behind the newspaper shield. ‘Seven-year itch,’ he offered tentatively.
‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,’ Helen countered, then elbowed Anna, who thought for a moment, then said, ‘The Misfits’
‘You’re describing yourself,’ Helen replied scathingly, then curled her lip at the wall of newspaper. ‘See, Dad? We can all name Marilyn Monroe films, but how does it help?’
‘It’s actually nine years I’ve been married,’ I quietly told Dad’s newspaper. He meant well.
‘This has come as an awful shock to me,’ Mum reiterated.
‘I thought you’d be glad, seeing as you all hate Garv.’
‘I know, but–’ Abruptly Mum collected herself. ‘Stop that nonsense, we don’t all hate him.’
But they did – all apart from Claire, who’d got to know him when she had a teenage fling with his big brother (also confusingly known as Garv). She’d always thought my Garv was sweet, especially since he’d fixed her tapedeck for her. (You wouldn’t want to get her on the subject of the elder Garv, mind.) But despite Claire’s stamp of approval, my Garv had somehow – through no fault of his own – acquired a reputation for tight-fistedness and old-before-his-time fustiness with the rest of the family.
The stinginess allegation had raised its ugly head the first night I’d ever officially brought him out with my family. He’d been knocking around on the fringes for a good while before that, but I’d realized I was serious about him and that it was time he met my family properly. With a sense of occasion we repaired to Phelan’s, the local pub, and the salient fact is that Garv didn’t stand his round.
Not Standing Your Round is a mortal sin in my family, and there’s always great competition to out-give and out-convivialize all the others. Hand-to-hand combat almost breaks out as people try to be the first to get to the bar.
On the night in question, Garv was more than willing to buy drinks for my family, but he was nervous and way too mild-mannered to stand up to them. As soon as anyone’s drink had passed the halfway mark, he’d leap to his feet, fumbling for his money, asking, ‘Same again?’ But each time he did so the table erupted like a dealing-room floor, with everyone yelling at him to sit down and put his money away, that he was insulting us. Even I joined in, getting carried away in the heat of the moment. Beaten back by a hail of words, Garv reluctantly lowered himself back on to his bar stool.
The net result of the evening was that Dad bought a round, Rachel bought a round, I bought a round, Anna bought a round, then Dad bought another round. And Garv gained a reputation as a tight-arse.
Hot on the heels of that miscarriage of justice came the polo-shirt incident. A story that begins happily and ends tragically. One Saturday afternoon, Garv and I were traipsing around town, half-heartedly going in and out of clothes shops. Because Garv was still only a trainee and he’d just bought a car, money was tight, so we were on the lookout for bargains. Free things, preferably. When by pure chance we found a polo shirt in the bottom of a clearance bin. To our great surprise, it had none of the characteristics you normally associate with things found in clearance bins, like three sleeves, no neck-hole or indelible, bile-coloured stains. In fact, it was perfect – the right size, the right price and a pale, icy colour that made his eyes look blue when normally they look grey.
It was only when we got it home that we realized there was a small logo above the breast pocket. A tiny outline of a man swinging a golfclub which, somehow in the euphoria of discovering the garment only had two sleeves, we’d missed. Naturally enough, we were both dismayed, but concluded that it was so small it was barely visible. Besides, we were too skint for him not to wear it. So he wore it. And the next thing I hear is that Garv wears the same kind of jumpers as Dad. Then a rumour started up that he played golf, which was not only untrue but very, very unfair.
Garv is no fool and he was aware of my family’s antipathy. Well, it was hard to be unaware, when every time he appeared at the house, Helen would bellow, ‘For God’s sake, don’t let him in!’
While he never responded to their discourtesy with rudeness of his own, nor did he launch a charm offensive to try and win them over either. And he could have – he had a nice, easy manner most of the time. Instead, he became very protective of me around them, which they interpreted variously as stand-offishness or downright hostility. And responded with stand-offishness or downright hostility. All in all, it hasn’t been that easy, especially at Christmas times…
‘You’re just going through a bad patch,’ Mum tried valiantly.
Wretchedly, I shook my head. Did she think I hadn’t thought of that? Did she think that I hadn’t clung on to that, hoping with gritted teeth that that was all that was wrong?
‘Was he, ah…?’ My father was clearly trying to frame a delicate question. ‘Was he dipping his wick where he shouldn’t have been?’
‘No.’ Perhaps he had been, but that wasn’t the cause. It was a symptom of what was wrong.
‘Things haven’t been easy for you, for either of you.’ Mum was off again. ‘You’ve had a couple of–’
‘– setbacks,’ I said quickly, before she used another word.
‘Setbacks. Would you not have a holiday?’
‘We’ve had a holiday, remember? It was a disaster, it did more harm than good.’
‘What about going for counselling?’
‘Counselling? Garv?’ If I’d been capable of laughter, this would have been a good opportunity. ‘If he won’t talk to me, he’s hardly likely to talk to a total stranger.’
‘But you love each other,’ she said, with desperation.
‘But we’re making each other miserable.’
‘Love conquers all,’ Mum coaxed, like I was five.
??
?No. It. Doesn’t,’ I spelt out, an edge of hysteria to my voice. ‘Do you think I’d do something as awful as leave him if it was that easy?’
That plunged her into sulky, that’s-no-way-to-talk-to-your-mother silence.
‘So you’re not going to tell us what’s going on?’ Helen concluded.
‘But you know everything that’s happened.’ OK, not quite everything, but Truffle Woman was not the cause, she was simply the final nail.
Scornfully, Helen flicked her eyes upwards. ‘This is like your driving test all over again.’
I might have known someone would bring that up. The bitterness still ran deep.
When I was twenty-one, I did a course of driving lessons, then sat my test and passed it. Only then did I tell any of my family, but instead of being delighted for me, they were hurt and confused. They felt left out, short-changed, deprived of a drama, and they couldn’t understand why I hadn’t involved them.
‘I could have given you a St Christopher’s medal for your test,’ Mum had protested.
‘But I didn’t need it, I passed anyway.’
‘I could have taken you out to practise in my car,’ Dad had said wistfully. ‘I see Maurice Kilfeather takes Angela out.’
‘We could have waved you off from the test centre,’ Claire had pointed out.
Which was precisely the kind of thing I’d wanted to avoid. Doing my driving test was just something I’d wanted to do on my own. I didn’t think it was anyone else’s business. And if I was being brutally honest, I’d have to acknowledge the issue of failure – if I’d failed my test I’d never have been let forget about it.
Finally Dad spoke. ‘How’s work?’
4
I was dreading the first night away from Garv (and all the subsequent nights, but first things first). I was sure I wouldn’t sleep, because wasn’t that what happened to people in distress? But I needn’t have worried: I slept like I was dead and woke up in a bed and a room that I didn’t recognize. Where’s this? For a moment my curiosity was almost pleasant, then reality tumbled down on to me.
That day was one of the most dislocated of my life. With no job to show up at, my time was spent mostly in my bedroom, keeping out of Mum’s way. Even though she was very vocal about how this was just a phase I was going through and that I’d be back with Garv in no time, my popularity with her was enjoying an all-time low.
Helen, on the other hand, was treating me like a visiting freak show and dropped by to torment me before she went to work. Anna came too, in an attempt to protect me.
‘God, you’re still here,’ Helen marvelled, marching into the room. ‘So you’ve really left him? But this is all wrong, Maggie, you don’t do this sort of thing.’
I was reminded of a conversation I’d had with my sisters the previous Christmas – we were trapped in the house without even a Harrison Ford film to take our minds off things and were driven to wondering what each of us would be if we were food instead of people. It was decided that Claire would be a green curry because they were both fiery, then Helen decreed that Rachel would be a jelly baby, which pleased Rachel no end.
‘Because I’m sweet?’
‘Because I like to bite your head off.’
Anna – ‘this is nearly too easy,’ Helen had said – was a Flake. And I was ‘plain yoghurt at room temperature’.
OK, so I knew I’d never been in with a shout of being, say, an After Eight (‘thin and sophisticated’), or a Ginger Nut biscuit (‘hard and interesting’). But I saw nothing wrong with me being a trifle (‘has hidden depths’). Instead, I was the dullest thing, the most flavourless thing anyone could think of – plain yoghurt at room temperature. It cut me deep, and even when Claire said that Helen was a human durian fruit because she was offensive and banned in several countries, it wasn’t enough to lift my spirits.
Back in the present, Helen continued jibing me. ‘You’re just not the type to leave her husband.’
‘No, having a broken marriage isn’t the sort of thing that plain yoghurt at room temperature does, does it?’
‘What?’ Helen sounded confused.
‘I said, having a broken marriage isn’t the sort of thing that plain yoghurt at room temperature does, does it?’
She gave me a funny look, muttered something about bridesmaids who looked like the elephant man and what was she supposed to do about it, then finally left.
Anna got into bed beside me and linked her arm through mine. ‘Plain yoghurt can be delicious,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s perfect with curry. And…’ After a long, searching pause, she added, ‘And they say it’s very good for thrush.’
*
I languished in the house, with no real idea of what I was doing there. I let telly programmes wash over me: ‘Smokin’ crack ain’t so all that’; ‘Girlfrien’, your butt is bigger than my car’. Whenever they finished, I’d find myself looking around, confused to find myself no longer in the Chicago projects, but in a flowery-curtained, befigurine’d, suburban Dublin house. And not just any flowery-curtained, befigurine’d, suburban Dublin house. How have I ended up back here? What happened?
I felt like such a failure that I was afraid to leave the house. And I thought about Garv and the girl – a lot. So much that I had to go back to using my much-hated steroid cream on my unbearably itchy arm. I was tormented by her identity. Who was she, anyway? How long had it been going on? And – God forbid – was it serious? The questions scurried incessantly; even as I watched two obese girls punching each other and Jerry Springer pretending to be appalled, another part of my brain was panning over the past few months with a magnifying glass, searching for clues and discovering nothing.
But I felt I’d no right to mind about the girl and that it didn’t make any difference anyway. With or without her, the game was up.
I’d been back at my parents’ about twenty-four hours when the reaction set in. As I listlessly watched telly, my temperature abruptly plummeted. Though the room was warm (far too warm), the skin on my arms had contracted like cling-wrap before heat, and the hairs were standing to attention from goosepimpled follicles. I blinked, only to discover that my eyes hurt. Then I noticed that my head was packed tight with cotton wool and my bones ached, and I was unable to find enough energy even to pick up the remote control. Muzzy and spaced, I watched Animal Hospital, wishing I could do something to make it stop. What was wrong with me?
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Mum had come into the room. ‘Lord above! What are they doing to that poor Alsatian?’
‘He’s got piles.’ My tongue belonged to someone else, someone with a much bigger mouth. ‘And I think I’ve got the flu.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m cold and everything hurts.’ Me, hardy Maggie, who never got sick.
‘I didn’t know dogs could even get piles.’ She was still glued to the screen.
‘Maybe he sat on a cold step. I think I’ve got the flu,’ I repeated, slightly louder this time.
Finally I had her attention. ‘You don’t look the best,’ she agreed. She looked concerned. Almost as concerned as she had been about the aller. She placed her hand on my forehead. ‘I wonder if you’ve a temperature.’
‘Course I have,’ I croaked. ‘I’ve the flu.’
She located a thermometer and gave it several of those violent flicks that people always do before they take someone’s temperature. An energetic throw, as if they’re about to fling the glass stick across the room, but change their mind at the last minute. But despite her adherence to protocol, my temperature was normal.
‘Though it’s hard to be sure,’ she added, casting a jaundiced eye at the thermometer. ‘Thirty years we’ve had it and that yoke has never worked.’
I went to bed at nine-thirty and didn’t come round until two the following afternoon. I was lying in exactly the same position I’d been in before I went to sleep, as though I hadn’t moved once in any of that time. Instead of feeling better I actually felt worse: lethargic and hopeless. And I conti
nued to feel wretched.
I’d never believed it was possible to become sick from sadness. I’d thought that was a nonsense concept confined to melodramatic Victorian novels. But sometime over the course of the following week I understood that there was nothing wrong with me – nothing physical, in any case. My temperature was normal, and how come no one else had caught my flu? Whatever was wrong with me, it was emotional. Mourning sickness. My body was fighting my separation from Garv as though it was a hostile organism.
I couldn’t stop sleeping. Deep, druggy sleeps from which I never fully woke up. Once conscious, I could barely manage the smallest things. I knew I was supposed to be getting on with stuff. Getting another job. Tidying up the loose ends of my old life. Sorting out my new one. But I felt as though I was walking underwater. Moving too slowly through an unwieldy world.
When I got beneath the shower, the water felt like a hail of sharp gravel being hurled at my tender skin. The house was too noisy – every time a door slammed my heart pumped too hard. When Dad dropped a saucepan with a clatter on the floor, I got such a fright my eyes filled with tears. I carried a permanent oppression, as though a dirty grey sky had been nailed in place two inches above my head.
I continued to perform poorly in the opinion polls. Mum was still vacillating between sharper-than-a-serpent’s-tooth-it-is-to-have-a-thankless-child chilliness and would-you-not-cop-on-and-go-home-to-your-husband cajolery. I wasn’t getting the same degree of grief from Dad, but then again I’ve always been his pet. What with once having played in team sports and going to the snooker championship with him, he’s nearly managed to convince himself that I’m his son.
Outside of my immediate family, I spoke to no one. People were keen to speak to me, however. Nothing like a disaster to get those phone lines a-hopping. Close friends like Donna and Sinead rang, but I mumbled, ‘Tell her I’ll call her back,’ and never managed it. Coffin-chasers like Elaine also called. (Mum thought she sounded like ‘a lovely girl’.) Claire rang from London and begged me to go and stay with her. Rachel rang from New York and we had much the same conversation. But there wasn’t a hope of me visiting either of them – walking from the telly to the kettle was about the only journey I could manage.