After my banoffee-and-bitching session with Claire, and with my well-worked-out-to-the-rounded-cent, budgeted weekly shopping crammed into the boot of my tiny white Peugeot, I take a leisurely drive home. These days I have to go compare. I buy milk and bread in one supermarket, my meat and chicken in another, and my cleaning products in yet another. It will be five o’clock before David drops Susan home. David’s timekeeping now that he’s with Mar-nee is perfection. She has made several positive David improvements, I have to give her that much.
David was actually late for his own wedding. I’d had to circle the church five times waiting for him to turn up. Granny Alice had grunted and gritted her teeth beside me in the bridal car, holding my clammy hand tightly in hers. Uncle Tom had cruelly laughed in the front, saying, “Knew that fella was a complete knob. Looks like yer still on the shelf, Courtney.” Eventually David turned up, oblivious to the small panic he had created. He’d been watching the Masters by all accounts and lost track of time. Go figure.
Claire and Martin’s house overlooks the sea on Sandymount Strand so I take the coastal route home to my house in Dun Laoghaire. As I drive I allow my mind to drift slightly. I try to organise my weekly schedule in my head, but as always my mind floats straight to my pubescent daughter, Susan. The reason Claire did not want to discuss Susan today is that mother and daughter are going through a real rough patch. Dangerous ground is being trod upon. Susan is no longer overly fond of me, her mammy, or, as she calls me in her American accent, her mom. These days I am sworn enemy number one and I do not like this phase in our relationship. I do not like it one bit. Obviously all I want is for her to be happy, but I honestly don’t know if she is or not. There is so little connection and communication between us right now. We used to have a brilliant relationship before the spilt. But now I’m constantly on her back, according to her, and it’s true. I am. If you see her Snapchats, you will see me literally behind her back, sneaking up on her, despairing of her every move being Snapchatted to God knows who. Nothing in my house is private. Every inch of it has been Snapchatted to the world, from my toilet to my messy wardrobe. It’s almost like Susan can’t live without telling people she is living.
Walking into the kitchen. “I’m walking into the kitchen.”
Opening the fridge door. “No nice food in the fridge again.”
Standing in the middle of the kitchen. “Kitchen floor needs mopping.”
In the back garden. “Mom’s empty wine bottles need the bottle bank.”
Opening the press. “Down to the last teabag.”
Dull. Dull. Dull. I cannot see the point in it. Susan lives in a world of social media. It consumes her life. Her every waking moment. The world’s top surgeons couldn’t remove that iPhone from her hand if they tried. It is now an extension of her arm. Honestly, it riles me every time I try to talk to her and it keeps beeping and beeping and beeping and beeping and beeping some more and I don’t know why I get so utterly mad. Yes, it is 2017, it’s what they all do. I know that.
“It’s two zero one seven, Courtney, it’s what they all do,” David tells me all the time when I call him to complain and ask him to talk to her. I ask him whether we’re monitoring it closely enough. Just because it’s what they all do, does that make it right? How safe is it all really?
“Chillax. It’s just a bit of harmless fun,” is his repetitive answer. I don’t think David had ever heard the word “chillax” until he met Mar-nee Maguire. Now he uses it in almost every sentence to me, and we have to talk a lot. You see, we never went to court, David and me. I know. I might live to regret that decision. We just decided it was best for Susan if we could manage our affairs in private and slip easily into our new lives with as little upheaval as possible, so we agreed to co-parent. Thankfully the break-up was all very quiet and low-key, as we had Susan’s best interests at heart the whole way through. The night we told her was horrendous, though.
As the traffic lights turn amber, I brake slowly, press the clutch, wiggle the gear stick to be sure I’m in neutral, and pull up the handbrake. An older couple pushing a double buggy wisely make sure I’ve fully stopped before they trust the green man. They both look exhausted. I think back.
We were sitting down to dinner in our kitchen and every bite stuck in my throat. I’d made our family Friday-night favourite on a Monday. My much-loved grilled chicken breast, sweet garden pea, red onion and wild mushroom risotto with Avoca’s pink lemonade. “Second-helpings Friday” as David used to call it. Susan’s suspicions were immediately aroused as she stood by me, my eyes watering, chopping spring onions. Susan was fourteen but very clued in. She knew we were fighting about stuff and heard all the badly hushed conversations, but I was so careful to shield her as best I could. Occasionally she would say, “I know you and Dad hate each other, Mom.” I would tell her not to be so silly, that I certainly did not hate Dad at all. Eventually it was me who broke my little girl’s heart.
“Susan, Daddy and I have decided we cannot be married to each other any more. Daddy is going to move out.” Harsh words, no sugar coating for her: just the truth. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t just blurt this out; I had been on every break-up advice website from Dublin to Toronto. Truth was the only way. Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
“I fell in love with someone else, sweetheart, it’s not all Mammy’s fault,” David had stupidly spat out after we had absolutely decided not to tell her that bit. I’d gripped my glass so tight I’m amazed it didn’t shatter into a metaphor for our broken family life. Susan had just looked at us both. Her bright eyes were glazed, but she was composed. Her risotto was largely untouched.
“Who did you fall in love with, Daddy?” she’d asked carefully. My heart had lurched into my throat.
“A lovely lady called Mar-nee, beautiful, sweet, sweet Mar-nee Maguire, and I know you will really like her, sweetheart. I’m going to be staying with her, but she’s so lovely and she’d love to have you come stay too – she has a spare box room that just has salon supplies in it right now and says you can do it up as you wish. I thought the three of us could go to IKEA and—”
I’d slammed my hands down on the table and immediately regretted it. The upside-down glass ketchup bottle had toppled over. I had been trying to get the sauce at the end of the bottle out. Susan had yelped.
“Sorry . . . sorry. Please, David, now isn’t the right time to discuss Mar-nee. We need to talk about Susan and her feelings,” I’d implored.
“Calm down, Courtney, eh? Chillax.” David had folded his arms defensively. The first “chillax” had been thrown my way. I had tried to compose myself beside this bloody idiot.
“I am really calm, David, I just want us to focus on Susan and how she is feeling right now.” I’d grabbed a bobble on my wrist and tied my long hair up in a topknot for something to do with my hands. The kitchen clock had ticked so loudly all three of us looked up at it. The small hand counted down our last meal as a family. No one had eaten. No one had spoken until at last Susan pushed back her chair, scraping it off the tiled floor (normally a no-no), coughed and then said quietly, “It’s grand, whatevs . . . I knew anyway.” She had slid the screen of her iPhone across, illuminating her drawn face, then held the phone out at arm’s length and made a sad face into the screen.
“So . . . Mom and Dad hate each other, Dad taking off.” She actually Snapchatted our breakup. They were our daughter’s final public words on the matter of her parents’ marital break-up and her father moving in with his new, younger girlfriend.
Now, I push my foot down hard on the clutch and move into first, pressing the accelerator softly. When David had finally moved out, Susan had stood by his plumbing van sobbing and sobbing. The neighbours, taking for ever to put out their brown bins, watched it all. No doubt David had told them all our private business already. When he drove away I’d cuddled my shaking little girl, but something had changed in her. I’d felt it instantly. She seemed stiff, aloof, far away. I’d held her as tightly as I could and made soothing sounds and told her how much I loved her and said over and over again, “Everything is going to be all right, love.”
“I’m going on the iPad in my room,” was all she had said back to me as she’d ducked out of my embrace, and she pretty much stayed in her room on that iPad for the next year and a half. For some bizarre reason, I felt that she blamed me.
Our routine is that Susan stays with me during the week and David and Mar-nee at weekends. Holidays are shared out equally. The first Christmas was the hardest. Our first one as a broken unit. What we’d agreed was that David has her for Christmas Eve each year and Christmas Day Susan spends with me. But the problem is Susan wants to spend more time with her dad and Mar-nee. I’m not stupid – I know why. They are very lenient on her and the time she spends on the phone and iPad. David thinks social media is all fine and just a part of growing up nowadays. A bit of fun. Chillax, Courtney. But I don’t find it fun. Not one single bit. I don’t get a single laugh out of it. We used to laugh all the time, me and Susan, before the split. God knows who she’s laughing with now in her Snapchat world. We laughed so hard I have the lines to prove it. I’d slap my knee, throw my head back and freely guffaw with her.
I relax my feet, look up and risk a wry smile in the rear-view mirror. Avert my eyes quickly. Crow’s Feet Winslet. Listen, I can be against Botox but I can still have a moan about ageing.
Susan and I were so close. Like, ridiculously close. Cooking was something we did together every evening: she’d be my helper. When she was much smaller we would play cookery school. Susan would be the head chef and I played her commis chef. I was teaching her to cook and she was having so much fun, covered in flour and other messy ingredients. At weekends we went horse riding to a local school and we’d take the hacks around the area together. David worked Saturdays and Sundays on call-outs most of the time so I would drive her to parties or we’d go to Dundrum and browse the shops, sipping smoothies and enjoying one another’s company.
When she hit thirteen, the change occurred. Perhaps a coincidence, I will never know, but it was just after David insisted we get her an iPhone for Christmas. Now we rarely do anything together, never mind laugh. Well, Mar-nee makes her laugh all the time, she tells me.
I stare up into the mirror again, lick my index finger to wipe some running liquid eyeliner from under my ice-blue eyes. I used to be the person who Susan said saw the good in everything and was so lovely. Courtney Downey, her mum, her glass was always half full. Courtney Downey, her mum, she’s great craic. Courtney Downey, her mum, always up for a laugh. “Mum, I love the way we are best friends!” She’d hug me closely.
“Mothers aren’t supposed to be best friends with their daughters,” Claire used to say, and I used to disagree with her.
“Why not?”
“Well, because you need to point out all the shit they are doing wrong . . . No one wants a BFF like that,” she’d answered truthfully.
“I do that too!” I’d argued.
“You don’t, Courtney . . . You never tell Susan anything negative.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I had got stroppy and defensive.
“I’m not meaning anything . . . I’m just saying if you treat her as a best friend, she has no boundaries, right?”
I ponder this old conversation now as I turn to look at the calm summer evening tide. Holding the button down on my electric window, I inhale the seaweed and salted air. I’m sure Claire was right, of course. What I hate most of all now is I’m so regularly angry with Susan. It’s just not me. That’s not the type of person I am. Sometimes when I am deep in an argument with her I don’t understand who I have become. I’m not someone I like. I forget to be grateful for all the blessings I have. Her. Our health. My job. Having my only other blood relative, my maternal grandmother, Alice, still with me on this big green earth.
Slipping the car into fourth gear, I drive on up the free open road. The truth hurts me deeper than I let myself feel. That truth is that for the last year Susan has preferred Mar-nee to me. Pathetic to think, pathetic to admit, but it cuts like a knife.
“She just gets me, Mom, she’s just more on my wavelength,” Susan had almost shouted at me only last night when I asked her to put down the phone and stop FaceTiming Mar-nee and get into bed. She’d corrected me and told me they were Snapchatting before she threw the phone onto her cluttered dressing table and then asked again to spend one night mid-week in Mar-nee’s luxury apartment. Purposely I’d ignored the request and asked her, “Where are Sophie and Emily? Why are you always talking to Mar-nee on that thing?” I was referring to the two girls on our road who still call for Susan though she seemed to have completely dropped them. I realised I sounded like a dinosaur when I referred to Snapchat as “that thing”.
“They are so immature, Mom. Like, I never hang out with them any more. Plus Sophie doesn’t even have a Snapchat and Em’s mother is always watching every move she makes.” Susan shuddered.
“Immature as they might be, they have been your friends since you were six years old!”
“People move on, Mom.” Susan had dragged her dark ponytail from her bobble and run the pink Tangle Teezer through it.
“People, not fifteen-year-old girls.” I had picked up five dirty glasses from her dressing table and stood at her door.
“Sophie still goes horse riding with her mom and Emily just wants to walk around the estate all day looking for John Murphy from number six. John looks like such a loser on his skateboard, I can’t cope . . . literally!” She facepalmed herself.
“I don’t think you are being very kind, Susan.” I’d clinked the dirty glasses off one another.
“Maybe you just don’t get me, Mom.” She’d picked up a tub of some kind of expensive salon moisturiser and twisted the lid off.
“Aren’t you a bit young to be using so many products on your skin?” I’d exclaimed.
“It’s never too early to start looking after your skin, Mom! I mean, you really don’t take proper care of your skin. Like, Mar-nee can’t understand how you never tone?” She hadn’t meant to be hurtful, I know that. She must have seen the look on my face. “I-I-I-I-I mean you are super pretty, Mom. You have good skin . . . for your age . . . You know you could get rid of the bags under your eyes with Bag ’N’ Vanish – it’s the latest top-of-the-range eye-care machine Mar-nee has – and a little dab of Botox at the sides of your eyes. There’s a lot we could do with you!” She’d jumped off the bed and approached me. With her index fingers raised, she’d brought them up to the sides of my eyes and pulled back my skin. Looking really pleased with herself, she’d said, “There! See! Come look in the mirror, Mom.” She was delighted with herself. I, however, was offended and I simply couldn’t play along. I’d removed her hands slowly.
“Thanks, Susan, but I’m happy to grow old gracefully,” I’d said, trying to keep the hurt out of my voice. I know she hadn’t meant to upset me.
“Just so you know, no one else is!” She’d padded away in her bare feet.
“I hope you aren’t ever considering messing with your beautiful face when you’re older?” My voice had gone an octave too high.
“I’d do it now if I could. Kylie Jenner had her lips done at sixteen; Kris, that’s her mom, is so cool and she’s, like, absolutely ancient but looks shamazing,” Susan had informed me.
“Kylie Jenner looks ridiculous,” I’d said, and meant it. The poor child. What will she look like in twenty years’ time?
“Oh please!” She’d pulled back the yellow and white daisy-print duvet cover.
“You really think she looks pretty?” I’d asked, bemused.
“I think Kylie Jenner is the most beautiful girl in the world, Mom. Everyone does.” She’d slid under the covers, pulling the duvet up over her chin, and I wanted to cry.
“Good night, Susan.” I’d flicked off the light, completely disheartened. All this image obsessiveness really worries me. Susan. Susan. Susan. My heart’s desire. The one true love of my life. My nine-pound, eight-ounce bundle of absolute joy. My swinging-pig-tailed, soother-sucking two-year-old. My clingy junior infant. My delightful Communion girl. My ten-year-old cooking buddy. My only child. Now, my moody soon-to-be sixteen-year-old. College not too far away. I can’t get her to go anywhere with me any more without a bribe, but Susan and Mar-nee go shopping together. I don’t know what age Mar-nee actually is, it’s hard to tell through the stretched skin and chemical desperation, but she actually dresses like Susan: green bomber jackets, denim shirts, dark leggings and Timberland boots.
“Please, Mom . . . Before you go downstairs, please . . . You didn’t answer my question. Please let me crash at Mar-nee and Dad’s one night during the week?” she’d begged.
“No. No way. It’s not on, Susan, you already spend every weekend there. That’s the deal. You live with me during the week. I’m not having this argument again, love.” I’d shut the door quietly behind me. I had tried to be understanding. Had tried to hide my hurt. Again.
Turning the corner, I head towards our suburban house: 16 Clover Green Hill. It was actually left to David when his mother passed, so he already lived there mortgage-free when I met him. To be honest with you, it’s never really felt like my home. David very kindly lets Susan and I remain there: less disruption for her. I pay him some rent – a very small amount, it has to be said. He has to pay half of Mar-nee’s colossal luxury-apartment-complex mortgage since her tenant moved out to make way for him, so he gives us very little. He pays for Susan’s phone bill and the medical insurance and that’s about it. I can manage. I have a really good job. I don’t want anything from David other than for him to be a great dad to Susan. And he is, I have to give him that. No, he’s not a great disciplinarian, but he loves the very bones of that girl. Our agreement, the verbal one, is that Susan and I can stay there until Susan is eighteen and then we re-discuss the living arrangements. Claire is beyond maddened by this. She is always pointing out that I have no legal leg to stand on. Claire doesn’t trust David one iota any more.
“So what if he and Mar-nee decide to have a baby and they want to move into Dun Laoghaire? For all we know, under all that botulinum toxin she could be twenty-five! Use your brain, Courtney!”
But what can I do? Other affordable property options aren’t really waving me down in the street. I can’t afford to buy a house now, or ever, and it is Susan’s home. Granny Alice’s house in Inchicore is rented out by my uncle Tom to students to pay for her nursing home. Anyway, David would never kick us out. Planning has never been one of my greatest gifts, or saving for that matter.
I don’t really remember my own family home. My parents both died within ten months of each other when I was six years old, and I only have one or two very vague memories. Playing on a makeshift tyre swing with a thick blue rope attached to the tree in the back garden, which my dad made for me, and my mam spooning chocolate sauce over my square-shaped ice cream. I remember how I had to wait for seconds before it hardened, then I’d crack it with my spoon.
My dad was killed in a motorbike accident on his way to work in the local garage and my mother, who had been ill for many years with MS, passed ten months later. My beloved maternal granny, Alice Bedford, took me in and gave me the most beguiling life. Alice’s only son, Tom, was a lot older and had married and moved out before I ever moved in. Alice and I lived very happily in her two-up two-down in Inchicore. She worked as a cook (no women were called chefs in those days) in Dublin in a small local café, Rosie’s. They did wholesome, old-fashioned foods for the building-site workers and the bus drivers around. Corned beef and cabbage. Ham and boiled potatoes and thick gravy. Hot meat sandwiches on thick cuts of white bread, saturated in real butter. Warm food. Filling food. But at home in our little haven in Inchicore, she made fabulous modern Italian cuisine, inspired by her mother’s heritage. Her secret recipe for seafood linguine was simply out of this world! Alice’s Seafood Surprise, she called it. Never would she let me peek at how it was made; instead, she’d make me taste and guess. It was a game I loved. I never got it exactly right, and to this day I still make that Seafood Surprise dish, but it never tastes as good as Alice’s. I’m still missing something, and now I’ll never know what that special ingredient was.
She managed to make these dishes somehow. Woodcock’s, the local fishmonger, would sell her scraps at the end of the day as they were cleaning down, the ends of what fish hadn’t sold, and still she could make that masterpiece. Expensive cuts of meat were also hard to afford, but Granny could make the most mouth-watering pasta carbonara with the original recipe, which uses guanciale, or pig’s cheek. I would help her make home-made pasta. She would let me whisk together the flour and eggs as she stood over me, adding a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of olive oil. Her mauve padded housecoat, as she called it, protected her good clothes. Then I would cling-film our dough and while it sat for thirty minutes we’d put on old records and have a little dance. Although we had a television, we rarely put it on.
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. But 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.