A Greyhound of a Girl (3 page)

There was no smell of French toast when her mother opened the door, but that was okay, because Mary was the one who was going to make it. She'd decided to become a chef.

“Great idea!” said her mother.

“Stop talking like that,” said Mary.

“Like what?!”

“Like !!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Oh, no!” said her mother, whose name was Scarlett. “I don't talk like that! Do I?!”

“Yes, you do.”

“What?! Always?!”

“Yes!”

“I'm sorry!” Scarlett whispered.

“Even your whispers end in !!!s,” Mary whispered back.

“You said you wanted to be a chef.”

“That's right.”

“A world-famous chef, I think you said.”

“Right again.”

“So, what do you concentrate on first?! ‘World' or ‘famous' or ‘chef'?!”

This was the kind of question Mary loved, so she gave it some thought.

“Chef,” she said, after about ten seconds.

“I think you're right!” said Scarlett.

“I know I am,” said Mary. “You have to be a chef before you can be a famous one.”

“Yes!”

“The same way, like, I'd have to murder someone if I wanted to become a world-famous murderer,” said Mary. “Not that I'm looking at anyone in particular.”

Cheekiness was often a sign of intelligence. So Scarlett usually liked it when Mary was being cheeky.
My brainy daughter has insulted me yet again!
Sometimes, though, it was just tiring, and even Mary's snores sounded cheeky.

“Oh, shut up, Mary!” said Scarlett.

And Mary did. Because if cheekiness was often a sign of intelligence, so was keeping your mouth shut.

The plan was, Mary would cook something different every day, and what she cooked would gradually become more complicated. They'd made a list, ten days' worth of cooking. Scarlett loved lists—but Mary kept her mouth shut.

Now, today, just after she'd met the woman outside, Mary walked down the hall to the kitchen.

“You seem a bit more cheerful!” said Scarlett.

Normally, that comment would have really annoyed Mary, her mother trying to force her to be happy. But just as she got ready to tell her mother that no, she wasn't more cheerful, she realized something: she actually was more cheerful.

So she closed her mouth, and started again.

“I suppose I am,” she said.

“Great!” said Scarlett. “So school was okay!”

“No,” said Mary.

“Oh!” said Scarlett. “But you had fun on the bus home!”

“No.”

“Well, I bet you're hungry.”

“No,” said Mary. “I mean, yeah. I'm starving, like. But
that's not why I feel better. Starving people don't feel better.”

“Why, then?!” said Scarlett.

Mary was already cracking the eggs, on the side of a glass bowl.

“I met our new neighbor,” she said. “She's nice.”

“What new neighbor?!” Scarlett asked. “Have they moved into Ava's house already?”

She got out of the way while Mary whisked the eggs. Mary's hand was a blur, and specks of egg yolk were hitting the wall, like yellow flies committing suicide.

“No,” said Mary. “Ava's house looks empty. She's in a different one, I think. She's old.”

“Old?”

“I mean, she isn't old,” said Mary.

She'd finished whisking, and most of the egg was still in the bowl.

“She talked old, like,” she said. “But, actually, I'd say she was as young as you. Maybe younger.”

“She talked old?!”

“Yeah,” said Mary. “Old-fashioned, like. Like Granny. And she dressed old too. In a dress and stuff.”

“I don't think I've seen her,” said Scarlett.

Mary had added milk and salt to the egg. She lowered the first slice of bread into the mixture.

“What's her name?” said Scarlett.

“Don't know,” said Mary.

She put the frying pan on top of the cooker and turned on the gas. She loved the whoosh the gas made when it sparked, and she loved the blue color of the flame. It was much more interesting than red. She dropped the butter into the pan and watched it melt and start to fizzle. Then she lowered the first slice of egg-and-milk-soaked bread.

“I'll ask her the next time,” she said. “She's nice. And so is this French toast.”

The first slice was for Scarlett.

“Thank you!” she said. “It's lovely!”

“Eat it first,” said Mary. “Then tell me.”

“I am! It's even lovelier!”

They ate three slices each.

“Ready?!” Scarlett asked, as she dropped the plates and cutlery into the sink. She tried to sound even more enthusiastic than usual. But Mary's mother hated this part of the day—this journey that had shoved itself into their routine every day for the past five weeks—just as much as Mary hated it.

“Okay,” said Mary.

ary didn't like the hospital. She hated the smell of the place, and the noise, and the people in the corridors crying and holding each other, and the sick people in their dressing gowns at the front door, smoking and coughing. The place frightened her. Even the name, Sacred Heart Hospital, scared her a bit. The Sacred Heart, people called it.
She's in the Sacred Heart
. Mary imagined a huge bloody heart with a squelchy door that you had to squeeze through, and blood dripping from the ceiling. She knew it was silly. The hospital was actually a gray building that didn't drip blood at all, although water leaked in one of the corridors. But there were all sorts of warnings about swine flu, or H1N1, and winter vomiting and coughing and sanitizers and washing your hands and paying your bills, all over the walls and doors. She hated it, not because she was afraid she'd catch the swine flu or
that she'd start vomiting on the first day of winter. It was the atmosphere of the place—all the sickness and warnings. Mary loved her granny, but she didn't like having to go to see her—and that made her feel bad too.

Her granny was very sick, but also very cheerful. Her smile got bigger and wider when she saw Mary.

“Get up here beside me,” she said.

“Okay,” said Mary.

She took off her boots and climbed up on the bed and lay down beside her granny.

“Oh, my, Granny,” said Mary. “What big teeth you have.”

It was a Mary-Granny joke that went back to the time when Granny had first read her
Little Red Riding Hood
, when Mary was only five. (Although Mary's granny's teeth actually were quite big.)

Her granny smiled again.

“All the better to eat you with, my dear,” she said.

“Start at my feet,” said Mary.

“They're too far away,” said her granny. “You're growing too fast.”

“I know,” said Mary. “I'm really good at growing.”

“She'll be as tall as you, Mum!” said Scarlett.

“Like all of us,” said Mary's granny—Scarlett's mother. “We're all tall girls.”

“How are you feeling today?” Mary asked.

“Ah, sure,” said her granny. “I've felt better. My own growing days are over. But, sure, the bed is grand and comfy. What did you do in school today?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” said her granny. “That was my favorite subject. I was always good at doing nothing. Top of the class, every blessed time.”

Then she fell asleep. And that was frightening too, how quickly, how easily her granny fell—
dropped
—into sleep. It was always so sudden, as if she'd been unplugged. No yawn or smile, just the sudden drop.

Mary kissed her granny's forehead. Then she climbed back down off the bed. Scarlett kissed the forehead too. And Granny's eyes opened.

“I'm frightened, Scarlett,” she said, very quietly.

“It's fine,” said Scarlett.

“I'm afraid I'll never open my eyes again.”

“I know,” said Scarlett. “But you opened them this time.”

“That's true,” said her mother. “I'm not dead yet.”

“No,” said Scarlett, and she smiled. “You're not.”

“Here goes,” said Granny.

And she shut her eyes.

She opened them.

“Just checking.”

She closed them.

“Go on,” she said. “I'm fine. I'm too lively to die today.”

Her eyes stayed closed. They watched her breathing, a little smile on her old face. She was asleep.

They left.

“What's actually wrong with Granny?” Mary asked, on the way home in the car.

“Nothing really,” said her mother. “She's very old, you know. No one lives forever.”

“Why not?”

Her mother looked at Mary.

“We just don't,” she said. “We're mortal. You know what that means.”

“Yeah,” said Mary. “But it just seems mean.”

“You're right,” said her mother. “It does seem mean. Especially when it's someone you love.”

They cried. And they laughed a bit too, because they were crying.

“Oh, dear,” said her mother. “I can hardly see the road ahead of me.”

“What happened to the !!!s?” said Mary.

“What?”

“The !!!s,” said Mary.

“Oh,” said her mother. “They seem to fall out of me whenever I go into that hospital.”

When they got back to the house, Mary's brothers had come home from their school.

“Hi, boys!”

“They're back,” said Mary.

“The boys?!”

“No, the !!!s.”

“Oh, good!”

The boys were back, but Mary didn't care. Her brothers were older than her. At fourteen and sixteen, they were boring and weird. They used to be Dominic and Kevin but these days they preferred to be called Dommo and Killer. They had deep voices that made all the cups in the kitchen shake, and their bedroom and most of the house smelled of a deodorant called Lynx that made Mary's eyes water whenever she strolled through a cloud of it. They laughed a lot and never explained why.

It was an hour later, and Mary was having her dinner with Dommo and Killer, and her mother and father, whose name was Paddy.

The boys were laughing, and nudging each other.

“What's so funny?” asked Paddy.

“Nothing,” said Dommo.

“Is there any ice cream?” asked Killer.

“It's a weekday!” said Scarlett. “What's so funny?!”

“Nothing.”

“Laughing at nothing,” said Paddy. “I'd love to see the state of yis when you're laughing at something.”

This time they didn't laugh.

“I give up,” said Paddy.

They laughed.

“How was your mother?” Paddy asked Scarlett.

“Fine,” she said. “Not fine. The usual. God, it feels cruel just talking about it.”

The boys weren't laughing. They loved their grandmother. She'd always called them her mad fellas, for as long as they could remember. She'd listened to everything they'd ever said, every whinge and complaint, and always answered the same way: “You're dead right.” And she'd always greeted them the same way, from the time Dommo
was three and Killer was five: “Any girlfriends yet, lads?” They'd only been to the hospital once and they'd spent all the time there showing their granny how to use their iPods. They had to show her how to put in the earphones. She tried to sit up straight. She held an iPod in both her hands.

“Give me a listen to these lads here,” she shouted—she read the name. “Kings of Leon.”

She'd listened to about thirty seconds of one song.

“Not too bad,” she shouted. “But they're not a patch on Elvis.”

“D'you like Elvis, Granny?” said Dommo.

“What?!”

“D'you like Elvis?”

“Love him!” she shouted.

“Did you ever see him?” Killer asked.

“No, I did not,” she shouted. “He never came to our parish. But, sure, boys, I'll be meeting him soon enough.”

They'd laughed, because she'd wanted them to, even though she'd been talking about her own death. But it was nothing new, really. She'd always made them laugh. Just like Mary, they hated the hospital, and they hated the fact that they almost never went. They refused to go, because they
hated it so much. They felt like cowards, although they'd never spoken about it. They missed their granny; they felt sorry for their mother, and for themselves. But they didn't know what to say, and they were too old for hugging. They were too old for everything.