The Importance of Being Me Read online

  Tom never called to see us. If Alice was sad about this, I honestly don’t know. She never mentioned him. How we loved to dance to her old-time favourites, Bing Crosby and Doris Day. The good sideboard would be pushed down so we had more room to twirl. It was innocent and wonderful.

  Her old rolling pin was so heavy only she could roll out the dough. I looked over her shoulder and saw how Granny would dance the pasta from one hand to the other and I always marvelled at how it never split. Using her sharp knife she speedily cut it all into strips and then sent me off to wash up for dinner. I always remember being starving for the feast that would await me. As a chef, she was way ahead of her time.

  Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Mar-nee and Susan. Well yeah, they get on like a house on fire. Mar-nee and Susan Snapchat each other all day every day. It’s mind-blowing. You will have guessed by now that I hate Snapchat. Granted, I don’t really know what it is, but I hate it all the more for that. I hate the whole iPad, iPhone, Internet-reliant world Susan now inhabits. I detest how it’s stolen my daughter from me. Yes, I could probably confiscate the devices, use the not-under-my-roof line, but that’s just not me. Susan isn’t a silly girl; in fact, she is very clever. This is what surprises me most! The last thing I want to do is to treat her like she is stupid. It’s what they all do now, I get that, but all I’m trying to do is make her see for herself what an absolute waste it is to spend so much time on it. I’m no dictator, but I am a parent and I worry. Now that I’m mainly a single parent in the actual “parenting” department, my life is harder.

  I pull into the driveway just as David texts to say he has just dropped her back. I see him and Mar-nee in their little yellow sports Mazda parked across the road, waiting for me to pull in, to make sure she isn’t in the house alone. My mouth involuntarily lifts in a wry smile as I see David’s ridiculous hairstyle. I raise my hand. Mar-nee drives off, overly revving the engine. However, I’m relieved to see David isn’t attempting to drive with that limited vision. Claire is quite right: there is no way David can possibly see properly.

  Getting out of the car still chucking to myself, I’m relieved the dreaded weekly shopping is done. Tonight I’m going to make us a vegetarian tagliatelle carbonara with chanterelle mushrooms, red onions and my home-made creamy sauce, and I have a date with the lover of all lovers. He who never disappoints me. He who fills me full of confidence. He who can do no wrong. He who goes by the name of Senor Pinot Grigio. Bliss. I pop the boot and start to unpack the bags.

  Tonight I really need to sit Susan down and talk about the big decision we need to make. Another conversation that is not going to go my way. She wants nothing to do with my new offer. Slowly, slowly catchy monkey.

  Susan opens the red front door, phone in front of her face, telling all her followers that she is opening the door for me. Snap. Chat. No hello for Mummy. Her Timberland boots with the open yellow laces crunch down our short gravel driveway.

  “Hi love! Can I get some help here please if you have a minute?” I ask with a big smile, a runaway cucumber balanced under my chin.

  “Mom is on my back again. Later, guys!” She pouts her overly glossed lips and raises two fingers to her iPhone. Her long nails are painted a luminous green.

  “I’m not on the warpath, love, I’m just looking for some help.” I take a deep breath and keep the huge smile plastered across my face. Her face is so heavily made up I have to bite my tongue. Right now she’d pass for eighteen.

  “Okay, well for starters I didn’t say you were on the warpath, I said you were on my back,” she replies, giving me what I call her If-I-Have-To half hug.

  “How were Daddy and Mar-nee?” I ask, ignoring her defensiveness and holding her close. Beaming. Beaming. Beaming. I’m a modern woman. I live my life my way. Ha! I want to be better at getting her. “Did you do much over the weekend? You never called me last night.”

  “Both full of awesomeness, as always. Nah, we just chilled, did some face packs and watched YouTube videos . . . Sorry, I forgot.” She grunts, pulling away from my embrace and twisting her dark hair around and around her baby finger. We both watch the curl spring up.

  “Wonderful. I hope you gave them both my love. Grab a bag, will you? And, love, I need to talk to you seriously this evening about Mr Kilroy’s summer job offer. I think it will be so exciting for the both of us.” I throw that little chestnut in at the end. Her face does something I’m a little unfamiliar with for an instant: it lights up. Could it be an actual smile? My heart skips a beat. Has she changed her mind? Oh glory be.

  “So Mom . . . Mar-nee is getting me these amazeballs henna tattoo transfers for my birthday that last, like, a year!” She releases the hair on the other side and it springs up too. My last comment clearly went completely unheard.

  Oh Mar-nee. Why are you so stupid? I bite my tongue. It hurts. Not as much as Mar-nee trying to win over my child with ridiculous gifts. Semi-permanent tattoos on a fifteen-year-old?

  What Susan doesn’t know is that I’m planning her sixteenth birthday. I’m throwing her a surprise party in our local GAA club next Saturday night. I’ve had it booked it for months and I’ve managed to invite most of her pals on the quiet. A surprise party. Martin has been brilliant helping me at the school. He went to her classroom and took her out for a turn working in the mobile library while her teacher Ms Butler gave out the surprise invites to the selected few. I’ve booked a local band that I think she loves, we are having mini vegetarian burgers and sweet potato fries, and Claire is making a huge iPad-shaped chocolate-biscuit cake. I’ve bought her vouchers for all her favourite shops: Superdry, Claire’s, H&M. I haven’t invited David and Mar-nee. Yet. I just don’t trust either of them not to let it slip. Of course I will invite them, but not until closer to the event. They are due to have Susan on the Sunday anyway for a birthday lunch, so I know they will be here. A small but intimate party, I hope.

  Susan grabs a plastic shopping bag and I follow her into the house. Our small hallway leads down to the kitchen. Opening the fridge, I start to put away the weekly shopping. Susan is a vegetarian now. That’s fine with me. She was a great meat eater until she found out Mar-nee was a vegetarian. We used to make the most amazing home-made beef burgers, stuffed with spring onions and coriander, and cook them on our gas barbeque all year round. We would pan fry Angus steaks for minutes and eat them juicy and rare on our laps with granary bread and glasses of freezing-cold milk while we watched The X Factor. I watch now as she puts the unopened bag in-between her feet on the blue tiled kitchen floor and starts taking pictures of it.

  “Come on, Susan, the frozen yogurt is in there.” I make room in the freezer.

  “One sec!” She snaps again and again, then speedily scrolls through the pictures and snaps again. What could possibly be so beguiling about a seventy-five-cent plastic bag holding frozen yogurt and frozen peas?

  “Instagram.” She answers my unspoken question.

  She is incredibly pretty. Tall, like David, and of slim build, with jet-black shoulder-length hair and a blunt fringe. She calls them bangs. Her ice-blue eyes, identical to mine, compliment her rosebud lips and she now has perfectly straight teeth after five years of braces. But this evening it’s hard to see her beautiful skin under the heavy foundation. I won’t mention that, though. She is growing up, and I do get that; it’s just she’s also changing completely from the little girl I knew, and it’s hard. I have to adjust. I miss the old Susan so badly.

  “Just come on,” I say, nodding to the bag. “Please, love.” Smiling.

  In the fridge, an old red chilli pepper is curled up, staring at me, begging to be put to rest. Removing it, I close the fridge and move to the wall, stepping on the silver pedal of the bin and dumping it in.

  My phone beeps and I rummage in my leather jacket pocket for it. It’s a text from the nursing home telling me Granny is still refusing to eat any dinner. Her sunken eyes and mouth this morning told me that life is ebbing away from her. “Fight it,” I want to shout at her. Bu
t she is ninety-one years old. She has done all her fighting. I will drop by and try to feed her some porridge before I go into the office in the morning, like I do every morning. Her son, my uncle Tom, is there with her most evenings, so I try not to bump into him. He is her next of kin. He never took to me. Nor I to him. In fact, we never saw him all the time I was growing up. He never came by. He never called her. Her never took her for a lunch, or a drink, or to his house on the Northside. Christmases came and went without so much as a card. Funny how he’s stuck to her side now, in her last days, isn’t it? My thoughts are interrupted.

  “So, Mar-nee has got this, like, amazing cerise-pink glow-in-the-dark nail polish and she said she’ll do mine, plus my toe-toes, obvs . . . It will look so cool tomorrow cos we have yoga for gym cos we all need to chillax and stuff . . . So can I stay over there tonight, Mom, please?” She still hasn’t unpacked the bag.

  I shake my head and she drops her jaw and sighs heavily at me. I ignore her and she sighs again, louder this time.

  “Sorry, Susan, but no. Absolutely not. It’s a school night,” I say calmly. Not this argument again. Surely Mar-nee mustn’t be encouraging her to ask me this.

  “So? She can drop me to school on her new moped on her way to the salon. Please, Mom, please?” She stands on her Timberland-clad tippy-toes, her hands clenched together.

  “No. And I told your dad, Susan, you are not allowed on the back of Mar-nee’s moped.” I clench my teeth.

  “Okay, I will walk then, get some of that fresh air and outdoor exercise you are so, like, totally obsessed with.” She is hopping from foot to foot now. A Mar-nee type rain dance, it seems.

  “Look, love . . . I got us all the ingredients for your favourite carbonara. I thought we could cook together, eat dinner, have that chat about our summer and watch old episodes of Dance Moms? Snuggle up on the couch like we used to do?” I narrow my eyes at her before I take the bag up myself and take out the now dripping frozen items.

  “I’m so over Dance Moms, Mom. I’ll be so bored tonight!” She spits the words at me, the whites of her eyeballs rolling like a mad woman. And here it comes. My rebuttal. The words escape my mouth before I can swallow them back down and think of something better to say. Something less confrontational.

  “Okay then, you can clean that bombsite of a room of yours. I can’t even open your drawers to put fresh clothes into them and all our cups seem to have moved in permanently under your bed!” I know my voice is raised slightly now and I curl my toes up tight in my Adidas to stop myself and gather control.

  “It’s my room! You shouldn’t even be going in there! Respect my privacy!” she stabs back, leaning against the kitchen table.

  “Really? So how do all your clean clothes and uniform get in there then?” I try to lower my voice.

  “I’d prefer to wash my own clothes. You never wash them properly anyway.” She rubs her Timberland boot along the blue kitchen tiles.

  “And just what is that supposed to mean, Susan?” I ask impatiently.

  “Like, you are supposed to use fabric softener too. It’s as important how the clothes smell as it is how clean they are! This is two zero one seven, Mom!” She stares up at me. Is she wearing false eyelashes?

  “Is that so?” I look closer at her eyes. If I hear that it is 2017 in that way once more this year, I will scream.

  “It is.” She steps away from the table.

  “Well okay, I will buy fabric softener and you can start washing and ironing your own clothes. You are nearly sixteen.” I turn back to the fridge.

  “Thank you! I’d love that, I’ve, like, only been asking you for months if I can do all my own washing and ironing and cooking, but you still seem to think I’m a baby.”

  I push the old half-full milk to the side, add my new litre beside it and shut the fridge. Crumpling the plastic bag up in my hand, I say, “I love cooking for you, Susan.” I am aware how weak I sound.

  “I know you do, Mom, but I like different food to you now,” she answers in a clipped tone.

  “I make all vegetarian stuff!” I’m incredulous.

  “Right, I know, but I’m leaning more towards veganism now—”

  “Oh please don’t be so absolutely ridiculous!” I slap my hand off the worktop. It’s a much more aggressive action than I’d anticipated and I curse myself inwardly.

  “See, here you go again. It’s your way or the highway . . .”

  “Susan, you are too thin already. Why on earth do you want to limit what foods you can eat?” I extend both my hands out wide, palms bouncing up towards the ceiling.

  “Because I love animals, Mom!” Her eyes blaze at me.

  “I love them too, Susan, but I think by not eating meat you are honouring that. I just don’t see—”

  “Mar-nee saw a PETA video and she told me about it. If you saw it, Mom, you would never eat any animal products again.” Her eyes well up.

  “Mar-nee shouldn’t be telling you the things she sees, pet, it’s too upsetting for a girl of your age. Mar-nee is an adult. You are growing; you need to be careful what you cut out of your diet,” I tell her, trying to sound in control.

  “You can’t shelter me from the cruelty that is forced upon animals. You can’t make me want to eat something that causes defenceless animals pain!” she shouts.

  “Does it hurt a chicken to lay an egg? I don’t think so!” I shout back. I’ve lost it. I’ve lost the argument at the mere mention that Mar-nee is, again, behind all this. I have failed at mothering my teenager once more.

  “Why are you always so mean to me?”

  “How am I always mean to you?” I’m kind of incredulous, but I hold it together. “I’m not mean, love, I just want you to be healthy and I want you here with me, that’s all. This is your home. Here with me. You are my baby and I love you,” I tell her in a soft voice as I step closer to her, my arms outstretched.

  “Don’t crowd me, Mom!” she screams, and turns on her boots and leaves the kitchen. I stand still, my mouth open. The kitchen clock ticks on. Time waits for no man. Or woman. I take a deep breath in through my nose. Hold it. Her bedroom door slams shut. I exhale slowly, but a lone tear trickles down my face. Moving to the kitchen table, I pull out a chair and sit down. How did we go from zero to a hundred in ten minutes? I drop my face into my hands. I’m weary of these arguments now, the frequency of them. Softly, I cry, feeling dreadfully sorry for myself. When I dry my face, I realise I now carry tissues in my back pocket because one of us cries so often.

  “Hormones! I bet your periods are synchronised!” Claire keeps saying. But I know it isn’t that.

  Pulling myself up, I unpack the rest of the shopping and put my wine glass in the freezer to chill. The lump in my throat remains. I’m incredibly hurt. This probably sounds all “poor me, poor me”, I realise, but I’ve dedicated my life to Susan and when we aren’t getting on I can’t really function properly. I can’t understand why she doesn’t want to be with me. It’s baffling to me. Claire also tells me it’s a phase and it will pass, but it’s getting tougher and tougher. What is the point in shouting up after her to come back down? What is the point in telling her I love her so, so very much and that is why I want her with me? What is the point in telling her I’m so deeply wounded she doesn’t want to be with me? You see, I’ve said it all before. A thousand times this past year. She doesn’t care. I hear “Hey guys!” from upstairs and I know she’s lost to the world of her Internet friends.

  With a heavy heart, I decide to begin prepping my sauce. After removing all the items I need to cook from the fridge, I switch the radio on. Talk radio fills the empty air. A discussion about something in American politics I can’t really concentrate on. I click on the gas and the blue flames flicker to life. Dragging a bobble from my wrist, I tie my blonde hair up in a loose bun on top of my head, and wash my hands. Drizzling some olive oil in the pan, I leave it to heat while I crack the eggs a bit too firmly and beat them a bit too vigorously. Washing and dicing the mushrooms,
I feel my heartbeat slowing down as I slide them into the bubbling oil. Speedily, I grate the Parmesan, add it to the whisked eggs and pour in the full-fat cream, beating it all with a fork. Cooking helps me as I try to block out the reality. It remains unspoken, but for how much longer? I know, in my heart, soon-to-be sixteen Susan wants to go and live with David and Mar-nee.

  3

  “Does it feel like a good decision-making day?” Lar Kilroy slides his black horn-rimmed glasses back up his nose with his baby finger and holds open the glass door of our office block for me. I balance our two coffees, my laptop bag slung over my left shoulder. He licks his index finger now and holds it up in the air as though detecting the direction of the wind.

  “I have until Monday the thirty-first, stop crowding me, man,” I tell him with a wink.

  Lar grins at me as he takes his coffee. We stroll side by side to the lift and he jabs at the silver button. Lar is married, with a grown-up daughter in Dubai, and has just turned fifty-five years old. He is slightly overweight and he is the sweetest man in the world. I say “slightly” overweight now, as he has recently copped on and stopped eating sweets all day at his desk, swapping the giant Malteasers bags for Brazil nuts and chopped carrots and hummus. I may have had something to do with that. Mrs Kilroy is constantly sending me text messages to thank me. She is also hilarious and they have a very special marriage.

  “Yvonne is all packed, all ready to go!”

  He knows how to push my buttons. I don’t rise to his bait.

  “Meeting at eleven in regards to the latest Nerja swap and their subsequent relocation there,” he says, grinning and giving me the thumbs-up. “Debbie and Harry Desmond and their two adorable school-going girls, eleven and fifteen, can’t remember their names now, they’ve escaped me . . .”