Watermelon

  Almost as though I could hear them all calling, “Hey, Claire, over here!

  Pick me, pick me! Can we come home with you?” I instinctively turned my trolley in that direction.

  And then turned it away again.

  “Remember Auntie Julia,” I told myself sternly.

  A little bit shaken, I cruised the frozen desserts aisle. When I was pregnant I’d eaten frozen chocolate mousse by the truckload. In fact, it used to really annoy James.

  So I thought I’d get myself one for old time’s sake.

  And as a mark of defiance.

  I held Kate up to show her the rows and rows of boxes of chocolate mousse.

  “Meet the family,” I said.

  I took out a box and held it for her to see.

  “You see that?” I told her. “Without that you probably wouldn’t be here.” She looked at it with her round blue eyes and reached out her fat little arm to touch the condensation on the box. Obviously something in her blood was calling out to the chocolate mousse, something as old as mankind, recognizing something that had befriended her mother through rough times.

  I went and paid, gaining a lot of pleasure from the astronomical amount that James would be charged on the credit card.

  And home we went.

  On the way we stopped at the bank. As soon as Anna got home I was going to give her back every penny that I owed her. At least now she could pay her dealer. And thereby continue to have an intact pair of kneecaps.

  nine

  I had to ring the doorbell when we arrived back home as I had left without a key. Mum answered.

  “I’m home,” I said to her. “We had a great time, didn’t we, Katie?” Mum watched me as I carried plastic bag after plastic bag into the kitchen, circling me suspiciously while I unpacked the groceries onto the kitchen table.

  “Did you get everything you needed?” she asked tremulously.

  “Everything!” I confirmed enthusiastically.

  “So you’re still going ahead with this idea of making them their dinner?”

  she said, sounding on the verge of tears.

  “Yes, Mum,” I told her. “Why are you upset about it?”

  “I really wish you wouldn’t do this,” she said anxiously. “You’ll give them notions, you know. They’ll expect cooked dinners all the time after this. And who’ll be expected to do it? Not you, that’s for sure. Because by then, you’ll have gone off back to London.”

  Poor Mum, I thought. Maybe I was being insensitive, showing off my fancy cooking in her kitchen.

  She paused while I cheerfully put some fresh pasta on a shelf in the fridge. “Are you listening to me?” She raised her voice, as her view of me was blocked by the fridge door.

  “They’re perfectly happy with the microwave stuff,” she continued. “Did you ever hear the expression ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?’ And what’s that?” she demanded, pouncing on a cellophane bag of fresh basil leaves and poking them suspiciously.

  “That’s basil, Mum,” I said, swishing past her to pack some pine nuts away in the cupboard.

  “And what does that do?” she asked, staring at it as if it were radioactive.

  “It’s an herb,” I replied patiently. Poor Mum, I understood how insecure and threatened she was feeling.

  “Well, it can’t be much of an herb if they couldn’t even put it in a jar,”

  she declared triumphantly.

  She might be feeling insecure and threatened, but she had still better watch her step, I thought grimly.

  And immediately I regretted it. I was feeling, hell, almost happy. No need to be mean to anyone. No need to get cross with anyone.

  “Don’t worry, Mum,” I told her apologetically. “I’m not making anything special. They probably won’t even notice the difference between this and the frozen stuff.”

  “Maybe today you won’t make it as nice as you usually do,” she said hopefully.

  “Maybe I won’t,” I agreed kindly.

  I started opening and shutting cupboards, searching for utensils for making the pesto sauce. It soon became apparent that despite our refrigerator-freezer and our microwave, in all other respects our kitchen was the Kitchen That Time Forgot. In one of the cupboards there was an enormous heavy beige ceramic mixing bowl with about an inch of dust on it. It was probably a wedding present when Mum got married nearly thirty years ago. And it looked as if it had yet to be used. There was a charming artifact of a hand whisk that could have been from the Bronze Age or could be even older. It was in marvelous condition, considering its great age.

  There was even a cookbook that was printed in 1952 with recipes that included powdered egg in the list of ingredients and faded sepia-tinted pictures of heavily decorated Victorian sandwiches.

  Positively prehistoric.

  It wouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest if a couple of dinosaurs lumbered through the kitchen door, had a slice of bread and butter and a glass of milk while standing at the counter, put their plates and glasses in the dishwasher, nodded civilly to me and lumbered out again.

  I thought with a pang of loss of my well-stocked kitchen in London. My blender, my food processor that could do everything except tell funny stories, my juice extractor—not just a citrus fruit one, mind, but a proper juicer. I could certainly have done with them now.

  “Haven’t you got anything at all that I could use for chopping?” I asked Mum in exasperation.

  “Well,” she aid doubtfully, “how about this? Would this be any good?”

  she said anxiously, offering me an egg mandolin, still in its box.

  “Thanks, Mum, but no.” I sighed. “What am I going to use to chop the basil?”

  “In the past I’ve usually found that one of these works quite well,” she said, now in a slightly sarcastic tone, obviously a little bit fed up with my pretentious antics. “It’s called a knife. I’m sure that if we ring around we could find a shop in Dublin that stocks them.”

  Suitably humbled, I accepted the knife and started to chop the basil.

  “And what exactly are you making?” asked Mum, who sat watching me looking half resentful, half fascinated, as if she couldn’t believe something as outlandish as cooking was going on in her kitchen.

  “A sauce to go with the pasta,” I told her as I stood chopping. “It’s called pesto.”

  She sat there silently, just looking at me as I worked.

  “And what’s in that?” she asked after a while, obviously hating herself for asking.

  “Basil, olive oil, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese and garlic,” I told her calmly and matter-of-factly.

  I didn’t want to panic her.

  “Oh yes,” she murmured, nodding sagely, knowingly, as if she encountered such ingredients every day of her life.

  “First of all I chop the basil very finely,” I told her, in the same manner that a surgeon uses to explain to his prospective patient how he will perform the triple bypass.

  Gently, thoroughly, dispelling any mystique.

  (“First of all, I break your sternum.”) “Then I add the olive oil,” I continued.

  (“Then I open up your rib cage.”)

  “Then I crush the pine nuts, from the bag here,” I told her, rustling the bag.

  (“Then I borrow some veins from your leg—have a look on the chart here.”)

  “Finally I add the crushed garlic and the Parmesan cheese,” I finished.

  “Simple!”

  (“Then we sew you back up and in a month’s time you’ll be walking two miles a day!”)

  Mum seemed to take all this information calmly in her stride. I must say, I was proud of her.

  “Well, go easy on the garlic,” she told me. “It’s hard enough to get Anna to come home as it is. We don’t want the poor little vampire to think we’re picking on her.”

  “Anna’s not a vampire.” I laughed.

  “How do you know?” asked Mum. “She certainly
looks like one a lot of the time, all that hair and those awful long purple dresses and that desperate makeup. Would you not have a word with her and try to get her to smarten herself up a bit?”

  “But the way she looks is the way she is,” I told Mum as I put the chopped basil into a saucepan. “It’s Anna. She wouldn’t be Anna if she looked different.”

  “I know,” sighed Mum. “But I’m sure the neighbors think we don’t clothe the child at all. And those boots! I’ve a good mind to just throw them out on her.”

  “Oh no, Mum, please don’t do that,” I said anxiously, thinking that Anna would break her heart without the Doc Martens she had so lovingly painted with sunrises and flowers.

  I must admit that I was also slightly concerned about whose shoes Anna would wear if hers were thrown out. I feared for mine.

  “I’ll have to see,” threatened Mum darkly. “And now what are you doing?”

  “I’m adding the olive oil,” I told her.

  “What did you buy oil for?” she demanded, obviously thinking that she had a bunch of idiots for daughters. “There’s a bottle of oil that I use to fry french fries. You could have used that and saved yourself the money.” “Er…thanks. I’ll know the next time,” I told her.

  There was really no point in trying to explain to her the difference between, on the one hand, extra extra virgin Tuscan cold-pressed prime olive oil and, on the other hand, vegetable oil that had been recycled about ten times and had little bits of blackened, charred french fries floating in it.

  I might be unnecessarily pretentious when it comes to food, but goddammit, you can go too far in the other direction too.

  “Right!” I said. “For my next trick, I will, without the aid of a safety net, grate the Parmesan cheese.”

  I took the hunk of cheese out of the fridge, where it was obviously terrorizing everything else in it. The packets of sliced plastic cheese were shrinking against the back wall of the fridge, frightened out of their wits by this exotic newcomer.

  But grating the cheese was easier said than done.

  I searched high and low but there wasn’t a grater to be found.

  Eventually I located a grater of sorts, though it barely belonged to the genus “grater.” It wasn’t even one of the round ones that at least stand by themselves, never mind an electric one. It was just a little piece of metal with ridges on it. And you would have to be a more dexterous person than I am to be able to maneuver the lump of cheese and grate it successfully on this contraption. My hands kept slipping and I would grate a goodly portion of my knuckles along with the cheese.

  Mum tut-tutted as I blasphemed and then she started sniffing in alarm as the characteristic aroma of the Parmesan cheese filled the kitchen.

  A commotion broke out in the hall. The sounds of voices and laughter.

  Mum glanced at the clock hanging on the kitchen wall.

  She did this although the clock hands had stood at ten to four since the Christmas before last.

  “They’re home,” she said.

  Dad brought Helen home from college most evenings, so they arrived together. He did this in spite of the fact that he had to drive about ten miles out of his way to get her.

  Helen burst through the door, looking absolutely beautiful. In fact, even more beautiful than usual, if that could be possible. There was a kind of radiance around her. Even though she was just wearing jeans and a top she looked exquisite. Her hair long and silky, her skin translucent, her eyes glowing, her perfect little mouth in a charming smile.

  “Hi everyone, We’re home,” she announced. “Hey, what’s that awful smell? Phew! Did someone get sick?”

  We could hear the sounds of people talking in the hall. Dad was talking to someone with a male voice.

  We obviously had company.

  My heart did an involuntary little somersault. I still hadn’t stopped hoping for James to arrive unexpectedly on the door-step. However, the male voice was more likely to belong to one of Helen’s friends.

  Although it would be more accurate to call them Helen’s slaves.

  Even though I knew I was being silly to think that James might just appear out of the blue I still felt a pang of disappointment pierce me when Helen said, “Oh, I brought a friend home with me. Dad’s showing him where to hang his coat up.”

  Then she looked at me. “Hey!” she shouted. “What are you doing wearing my clothes? Get them off this minute.”

  “Sorry, Helen,” I stammered. “But I had nothing else. I’ll buy new ones and you can borrow them all.”

  “You can be bloody sure of it,” she said darkly.

  And she left it at that.

  Thank God! She must be in a good mood.

  “Who’s this lad that you’ve brought?” asked Mum.

  “His name is Adam,” said Helen. “And you have to be nice to him because he’s going to write my essay.”

  Mum and I started to assemble our facial features into expressions that were both welcoming and compassionate. Another poor boy had fallen for Helen. Like a lamb to the slaughter, we were both thinking.

  I went back to grating the cheese and my knuckles.

  “That’s Mum,” said Helen’s voice, obviously introducing the doomed Adam to Mum.

  “And that’s Claire over there,” continued Helen. “You know, the one I told you about. The one with the baby.”

  Thank you, Helen, you little cow, I thought, for making my life sound like some kind of dreary inner-city kitchen sink drama. I turned around, ready to smile kindly at Adam, and extended my hand, reeking of Parmesan and with its pulped knuckles.

  And got a bit of a shock.

  This wasn’t one of Helen’s usual callow youths.

  This one really was a man.

  A young one, I grant you.

  But undeniably a man.

  Over six feet tall and very sexy.

  Long legs. Muscley arms. Blue eyes. Square jaw. Big smile.

  If we had a testosteroneometer hanging on the kitchen wall the mercury level would have gone through the ceiling. And I was just in time to see him giving Mum the firmest hand-shake of her life.

  He then turned his attention to me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mum shaking her crushed hand and surreptitiously inspecting her wedding ring to see if it had been bent out of shape.

  “Er, hello,” I said, feeling flustered and confused. It was a long time since I had encountered such a strong concentration of manliness.

  “Nice to meet you.” He smiled at me, holding my mutilated hand gently in his huge one.

  My God, I thought, feeling a bit overwhelmed, you know you’re getting old when you start noticing how young-looking all the gorgeous men are.

  I could hear Helen’s voice, but it seemed to be coming from a long way away. It was drowned out by the roaring sound of all the blood in my body rushing to my face to make me blush in a way that I haven’t done since I was fifteen.

  “Seriously,” she was saying. “There’s an awful smell of puke.”

  “That’s not puke,” Mum was saying knowledgeably. “That’s the smell of the Palmerstown cheese. You know, for the presto sauce.”

  ten

  Dinner was a bit of an odd affair because we were all slightly taken aback by Adam.

  Helen has always had hordes of men (although it’s more accurate to call them boys) in love with her. A day didn’t pass that the phone didn’t ring with some stammering youth on the other end of the line.

  And the house had a steady stream of male visitors. Their invitation to tea usually coinciding with the breakdown of Helen’s stereo, or Helen’s desire to have her room painted, or, as in this case, Helen’s needing to have an essay written and Helen’s having no intention of doing it herself.

  And the promised tea rarely materialized on completion of the task.

  But none of them had been like Adam.

  They were usually a bit more like Jim, one of Helen’s earliest conques
ts.

  Poor Jim, to give him his full title.

  He was lanky and skinny and went around wearing black all the time and all year round. Even at the height of summer, he wore a long black overcoat that was miles too big for him and big black boots. He dyed his plentiful hair black and never looked me in the eye. He didn’t talk much, and when he did it was usually to discuss suicide methods. Or to talk about singers from obscure bands who had killed themselves. He once said

  “Hello” to me and gave me a kind of sweet little smile, and I thought that I had misjudged him but I later discovered that he was blind drunk.

  He always carried a decrepit copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or American Psycho in the torn lining of his black overcoat. He wanted to be in a band and kill himself when he was eighteen.

  Helen absolutely hated him.

  He was always calling her, and whenever he did, Mum would speak to him on the phone and lie through her teeth as to Helen’s whereabouts. She would say something like “No, Helen’s missing, presumed drunk” while Helen stood in the hall looking at Mum, waving her arms frantically and mouthing “Tell him I’m dead.”

  After Mum had hung up the phone she would shout at Helen.

  “I’m not doing any more lying for you. I’m putting my immortal soul in peril. And why won’t you talk to him? He’s a nice lad.”

  “He’s an asshole,” Helen would reply.

  “He’s just shy,” Mum would say in his defense.

  “He’s an asshole,” Helen would maintain, louder this time.

  On occasions like Valentine’s Day or Helen’s birthday, at least one bunch of black roses would be delivered from him. Handmade cards would come in the post with very graphic pictures of shattered hearts and blood, or a single red teardrop. Terribly symbolic.

  There was a time when you couldn’t go into our kitchen without finding Jim in there, still wearing the long black coat and talking to Mum. Mum had become his best friend. His only ally in his quest to win Helen’s heart.

  Most of Helen’s would-be boyfriends spent far more time with Mum than they ever did with Helen.

  Dad hated him. Possibly even more than Helen did.

  I think he felt disappointed by Jim.