‘EILEEN IS FULL OF light,’ that’s what people could say of her, ‘Eileen is full of wisdom and love and light, coming back to take care of her elderly mother…’ At the funeral – well, she’s getting ahead of herself, but it’s something she just knows now – at the funeral people will nod their heads, and whisper to each other as she stands at the altar. She will wear an elegant black veil, and when she lifts it, people will see how big her eyes are, and how the tears are running steadily down her smooth cheeks. She was her Daddy’s favourite, no one can deny that. And even if Mammy misunderstood her sometimes, Eileen’s the one who is here now, when it most counts.
Sometimes Eileen explains her story to herself this way. It helps her to get a bit of a handle on things. Her life is such a scattering of experiences, such a mixture of blessings and horrors, that she needs to put it into words for herself sometimes, just so that she can look in the mirror and know who she is and what to wear and how to speak.
She picks the rubber stopper from the base of the salt cellar and shakes the salt into the bin, spilling some over the floor. The minder can clean it up, that’s what she’s paid for.
From her chair in the TV room, her mother makes an ugly lowing sound, trying to heave herself up.
‘Mammy, stay where you are, give me a minute.’
But her mother strains her head back towards the kitchen, her features warped with pain. ‘Oh Lily, what are you doing now?’
‘It’s for your own good, Mammy. Salt is one of the greatest toxins you can ingest. After wheat and sugar, it has a huge part to play in depression, cancer, heart disease…’
‘Everybody has to die some way, darling.’
Eileen takes a slow breath in through her nose, pushing her rib cage wide, visualising the light filling her lungs and pushing the darkness out. She will not give in to anger. ‘I’m making you some millet, Mammy.’
‘Oh Lily, not your birdseed again, darling…’
‘It’s very good for you.’
‘Freya says we are killing the Bolivians… they need all that birdseed over in Bolivia. They’re starving for it…’
Nothing is ever good enough for her mother, but Eileen feels no resentment now; only forgiveness. Things are coming right at last, and just in time.
Her mother can’t walk now without her frame. It’s a pity, but in a way perhaps it’s for the best, for now her mother can’t bustle about, averting her eyes, avoiding the question, shutting her out. Now there are long afternoons where she sits by her mother’s side, talking and talking, and she knows her mother has come to appreciate her at last.
‘Where’s Polina?’
‘She’s gone off for her lunch, Mammy. Don’t worry, Lily is here. I’m making lunch for us.’
Eileen looks down at her blue gingham dress. It was Anton, the facilitator of the ‘Awakening Your Truth’ workshop, who told her she needed to get in touch with her feminine energy. He was right. She feels good in the gingham dress, the way it springs out at the waist, the way it swishes when she moves. It makes her feel like little Lily again. Daddy’s little Lily. Pretty, cheeky, spunky little Lily.
Eileen used to sit by her Daddy’s feet and lift them one by one out of the warm, soapy water, and clip his toenails and scrape the dirt out from under them.
‘Ow.’ Her mother is trying to raise herself out of her chair again. Eileen kneels by her, the big skirt lifting and settling in a lovely dome. She needs long hair to go with this new look. Her hair is still toffee-coloured, hardly a grey in sight – it’s a sort of miracle, and she should appreciate it. Her sister Aoife went grey at thirty. If Eileen had long hair, she could plait it, or put it in bunches, but her hair is taking so long to grow past her ears…
‘Are you hungry, Mammy?’
‘Yes, darling – there wasn’t a biscuit left in the house for elevenses; of course I am hungry.’
‘They weren’t good for you, Mammy. Processed wheat… You know I really think that, after sugar, wheat is the most toxic of carbohydrates. Anton says there’d be no war or rape if it wasn’t for wheat.’
‘Is that right, darling? Well I miss my elevenses…’
‘Well, we’ll sort a few things out now and then we can eat.’
‘Yes, okay…’ Her mother winces dramatically, her whole body suddenly tense and her hand lightly touching her knee and flinching away again, as though it burns. ‘Fetch me some Paracetamol, darling, will you, it’s very sore.’
‘In a minute, Mammy; we need to sort this out now, Mammy, and no more evasion, okay?’
‘What is it?’
‘I found him. I told you this yesterday, Mammy.’
‘Found who, darling?’
‘Oh Mammy, no! I refuse to play this game with you. You know who! My brother. I found my brother and I want to bring him back here and have him buried beside Daddy and you.’
‘Leave things alone, will you darling? Leave things alone.’
‘He’s my brother, Mammy.’
‘Let him rest. Ow. My pill, Eileen.’
This is not the first time Mammy has taken extreme measures to avoid what Eileen needs to say. After she reached her dead brother that time – the medium’s voice going high and sweet, her palms spreading and her eyes rolling back – Eileen had come straight to Mammy to tell her the message. He wanted to be buried beside Daddy. At first her mother didn’t want to hear it – she wept and trembled and all that, but Eileen knew she’d thank her in the end. She was just beginning to get through to her, when in came Aoife, throwing a real spanner in the works. It was Aoife’s fault, leaving that big Brown Thomas bag there for Mammy to trip on, but Eileen is certain Mammy did it on purpose – she didn’t like it that Eileen was the one he came to.
‘It’s what he wants, Mammy.’
‘No, darling.’
‘No? NO?’
‘No darling, leave him be, please.’
‘Well I’ve gone to a lot of trouble Mammy, for you to just turn around and say no – you may be happy to leave my brother in a pauper’s grave, but I’m not.’
‘Please Lily, quieten down darling. Rest easy darling, please.’
‘Do you want me to leave, Mammy, is that it? Do you want me to leave you here in your chair? You want me to leave so you can piss yourself again right here in your chair?’
‘Don’t Lily, don’t go. What do you want, darling?’
‘It costs me a lot you know, driving back and forth, getting your shopping – the price of petrol, for one thing.’
‘Well take it from my purse then, darling, whatever you need.’
Her mother’s handbag lies all day by her feet like a faithful dog. Eileen lifts it into her lap and feels around for the purse. It’s not easy for family carers like herself – she heard a woman on Joe Duffy yesterday saying it. It’s not easy because the state support for carers is minimal, and it is a full-time job. Perhaps she should call up Joe, and tell him about her brother. But people can be very close-minded about these things; very quick to dismiss anything they don’t understand. Perhaps she should get long hair extensions while she’s waiting for her hair to grow.
The notes are filed neatly – fifties at the back, then twenties, then tens, and one crumpled fiver at the front. She slips two fifties from the back row of notes, folds them and tucks them into the white, lace-edged socks she is wearing. Then she looks at Mammy sitting there mightily, like Mother Courage with her mouth drawn open, both hands on her knee. A sudden indignation flashes through Eileen – she will not give way to rage, but she will take what’s due to her. ‘And the milk, Mammy, and the millet… how do you think I buy those?’ Ridiculous that she, the daughter of Dennis Kearney, that she should be there worrying about the cost of hair extensions, living off her tenants like some kind of a nobody.
‘Take what you need, darling. Disgusting amounts of money I have now, you wouldn’t believe the bank statements. And isn’t it well for me.’
Eileen takes another two fifties before buttoning up her mother’s purse. That will do.
‘What do you want, darling?’
‘I won’t be treated like this, Mammy! I won’t hang around here, waiting on you hand and foot to be treated like this! Who cleaned up your shit when the Solpadine made you shit everywhere? Who wiped the shit off your legs, Mammy? Who scrubbed your shit out of your skirt? That skirt you’re wearing right now? Me! Me, that’s who!’
Her mother needed to hear that – the sobering truth of it. Eileen has to be firm, as well as kind. After all she’s been through in life, she has at last learned not to let herself be taken advantage of. Eileen was once an innocent, but she has learned to be tough. It took some trials and tribulations though; the married man who duped her, and the dark gremlin of a child she bore him. How she loved that child – for the first six weeks she even fed her from her own breasts. She should have known immediately, of course she should have. She was expecting a boy to carry on Liam’s gifts – and then out came a girl who looked nothing like him, but Eileen persisted. She gave that child every opportunity but she was a bad one; dark-haired and dark-hearted and wrong. Some wrongness you can see straight off – by the shape of the skull or the width of the eyes or whatever – but there are other kinds of wrong that take some time to show. She thought the second one was the right one – white-blonde hair and great green eyes – but she was a useless idiot without a note in her head and so fat, my God, so fat. Never mind – the truth is that all Eileen ever really needed was the courage to access her own specialness, her own gifts.
She knows she’s got through to her mother by the sudden gulp, the bright trail of red spreading like ivy up her neck to her cheeks. Her mother’s mouth, once so sensual and womanly, has grown lean and masculine, little puckers of loose skin hanging down either side of it with a gravity that says she understands how much she owes Eileen. She’s clutching her knee now, her eyes squeezed shut. ‘Get me a painkiller, darling, will you?’
‘Let’s get this sorted first, Mammy. I have the form here, and the cheque book. I’ve done all the legwork that you couldn’t be bothered doing – I have his birth cert, his death cert, your passport, all I need is your signature for the exhumation, and a cheque. When we’ve got you better, I’ll bring you to see the new plot…’
‘Darling. Get me my pill, will you please?’
‘Let’s just get this sorted now, Mammy, and then we’ll do all that. And we might even change you into your nice blouse then after lunch, what do you think? Aoife is coming later to see you, Mammy. She’s bringing Valerie. Won’t that be nice?’