PACKING FOR A day trip to the Cliffs of Moher, I’ve decided to bring:
It all fits inside a sleek black backpack that I’ve kept rolled in my main carry-on suitcase the entire trip for this exact purpose. Callum and I have agreed to meet at the bus stop at eight A.M.—just enough time, he said, for us to grab coffee at the shop on the corner and make it back with plenty of time for the eight twenty-four bus to Galway. “I’d drive us there, but Dad can’t go all day without the truck,” he said. “Also, parking is a fucking nightmare.”
I go downstairs and find my mom cooking breakfast on the stove, with thick slices of Evelyn’s homemade bread already in the toaster. “Your backpack on already? We’re not leaving until this afternoon.”
“What do you mean? I’m spending the weekend with Callum. In Galway.”
My mom drops the spatula on the counter, and bits of scrambled egg fly into the air. “What? You didn’t tell me that.”
Oh shit. No, no, I definitely didn’t. I really, really should have. I could’ve sworn . . . Nope. No. I didn’t. “Oh god, I am so sorry. I’ve been so busy trying to finish this project for Declan and spending more time with Maeve and Tess . . . I totally forgot to mention it. But,” I say, “in my defense, we do have that ‘no more commentary on my life, more freedom because you’re staying’ thing?”
“Did you also forget,” she says, “that we were going to go to Belfast this weekend?”
Double shit. Triple shit.
Option A: Run. Run as fast as I can to the bus station, go to Galway, and live there forever. Change my name and begin a new life as Eimer the Shipbuilder.
Option B: Melt into liquid form and disappear in the floorboards.
Option C: Apologize profusely, and then apologize some more. Beg forgiveness, and then apologize again.
“I am so sorry,” I say. Option C it is. I contemplate getting on my knees, but I decide against it. “I totally forgot.”
“Well, that’s all right. Just make sure you message Callum before he makes too many plans.” She returns to her eggs.
“Wait. I mean”—I struggle with choosing the right words—“I’m still planning on going with Callum. I mean, I want to go to Galway and . . . and see the Cliffs.”
“So,” she says, “you are bailing on the plans that you and I made to go off with a boy you barely know.”
“Mom, I’m sorry. I’m not bailing. Yes, I want to go with Callum. I made a mistake, but this trip is still supposed to be about me gaining some freedom. Like you promised, remember?”
“I thought . . .” She pauses. “I thought that you would have wanted to spend some time with your mother. When you made plans with her. When she came halfway around the world to be with you. I mean, really, Nora, how selfish can you be?”
And that’s when I lose it. “I never asked you to come!” I shout so loud that I’m probably waking Evelyn and half the town, but I don’t care. I’ve kept what I’ve wanted to say inside for too long, and now that it’s found a tiny hole to release the pressure, everything is coming out in full force. “You were never supposed to be here in the first place. And you were never supposed to stay this long! I’m selfish? ME? What about you? Crashing my trip and manipulating me into staying even longer than I originally agreed to? Why are you still here?”
My mother sits down at the kitchen table. I have never seen her respond to confrontation this way. The flame is still on underneath the pan of eggs. They’re about to burn, but neither of us dares to move. “I lost my job, Nora.”
The toaster dings.
I try to wrap my head around what she just said. “Because . . . because of this trip? Because you’ve been gone for so long?”
“No, Nora.” I don’t like the way she keeps repeating my name. “Before we left. I . . .” Her voice cracks. “Going back to work has been hard. I’m not as quick as I once was, or as I thought I would be, and they’re bringing in younger partners, and with you, and things changing, I just . . . It was the Edwards case. I made a mistake. And with Walter—I mean, with your father gone . . . I thought taking some time to go on this trip would help me figure out what to do next.”
“No,” I say, synapses in my brain firing like an electrical storm. “Hold on. This happened before the trip? So this whole time—” My voice is sharper than it usually is, shriller. I don’t quite recognize myself, but at this moment, the most important thing is that my mom keeps talking, that I make sense of what she’s saying, because right now everything is just a blur.
She’s hysterical now, hands shaking, hair frizzing at the temples. I haven’t seen her like this since the day after Dad left, and I’m about to comfort her when a terrible thought creeps into my brain.
“At the airport, you told me—you said you wanted to come on this trip to ‘get to know me.’ I went along with it because I thought it was nice. I thought it was nice that my mother finally wanted to get to know me. But that’s not why you came. You . . . lied?”
“What do you mean, Nora?”
“I mean”—my voice is getting louder—“I mean all of that stuff you said, at the airport and here, about wanting to get to know me before I leave for college, it was all bullshit. You came here for you. To clear your head? You lied to me and guilt-tripped me and manipulated me so that you could control me. You couldn’t just let me have this one thing.”
“You don’t understand what you’re saying,” she says, standing up. She walks over and turns off the stove with a definitive click. “Do you think it was easy having a baby when I was twenty-two, relying on help from a father who wasn’t sure when or if his next painting would ever sell? How hard it was to go back to work after your father left? I’ve been fighting to take care of myself my entire life.
“When I tell you to come up with a plan B, it’s not because I don’t think art is a wonderful pastime. It’s because I want a daughter who’s able to take care of herself and will never need to rely on anybody else for anything. It’s because you’re being naive and unrealistic.”
Heart rate up, I shout back: “But I’m good enough! I got into the Deece!”
My mother laughs a bitter, terrible laugh. “You got into the Deece because your grandfather wrote you a letter of recommendation, Nora.”
“He didn’t even know I applied!” I spit back. “I sent an application with my portfolio, which you would know if you paid attention to anything that ever mattered to me. If you paid attention to anything other than your stupid job and stupid clothes and stupid exercise.”
My mother looks at me, her eyes aiming for sympathy but landing on condescension. “Of course he knew, Nora. Who do you think told him to write the letter of recommendation?”
We look each other in the eye for the first time all morning. We’re both breathing heavily, and my mom’s eyes are watering.
I turn around and storm up to my room, stomping so hard with each step it’s like I’m trying to transmit my rage and sadness into the floorboards. It doesn’t work.
There are three unread messages from Callum on my phone: “Hey, you on your way?” “Bus coming soon!!” “You still coming?” I throw my phone as hard as I can onto my bed, where it bounces innocently on a pillow and lands on the floor. If I don’t look at it, it doesn’t exist.
I hear my mom leave the cottage, and I’m left alone, lying on my bed, closing my eyes, and pressing my palm against my forehead, where a throbbing headache is blooming, hoping that in a few minutes my head will hurt less and everything will be less complicated. The day is going on without me, and I am here: stagnant, frozen, crying. I stay immobile on my bed as the buzzing message notifications from my phone become more and more infrequent until, finally, they cease altogether.