Anybody Out There - Marian Keyes (2 page)

they'd been done with a darning needle. Of all the marks on the face this was the only one which
wouldn't eventually disappear.
"But that's what plastic surgeons are for," I said, also parroting what the doctor had told us.
"That's right," Mum agreed. But her voice sounded faraway and strangled. Quickly I opened my
eyes. She was hunched in on herself and muttered something that might have been, "Your poor
little face."
"Mum, don't cry!"
"I'm not."
"Good."
"Anyway, I think I hear Margaret." Roughly, she rubbed her face with a tissue and went outside
to laugh at Maggie's new car.
M      aggie had arrived for our daily walk. Maggie, the second eldest of the five of us, was the
maverick of the Walsh family, our dirty secret, our white sheep. The others (even Mum, in
unguarded moments) called her a "lickarse," a word I wasn't comfortable with because it was so
mean, but admittedly did the job well. Maggie had "rebelled" by living a quiet, well-ordered life
with a quiet, well-ordered man called Garv, whom, for years, my family hated. They objected to
his reliability, his decency, and most of all his jumpers. (Too similar to Dad's, was the
consensus.) However, relations have softened in recent years, especially since the children came
along: JJ is now three and Holly is five months.
I will admit to having entertained some jumper-based prejudice myself, of which I'm now
ashamed, because about four years ago Garv helped me to change my life. I'd reached a nasty
little crossroads (more details later) and Garv had been endlessly, unfathomably kind. He'd even
got me a job in the actuarial firm where he worked--initially in the post room, then I got
promoted to the front desk. Then he encouraged me to get a qualification, so I got a diploma in
public relations. I know it's not as impressive as a master's degree in astrophysics and that it
sounds more like a diploma in Watching Telly or Eating Sweets, but if I hadn't got it, I would
never have ended up in my current job--the Most Fabulous Job in the WorldTM. And I would
never have met Aidan.

I   hobbled to the front door. Maggie was unloading children from her new car, a wide-bodied
people carrier that Mum was insisting looked like it had elephantiasis.
Dad was also out there, trying to provide a foil against Mum's contempt; he was demonstrating
what a fine car it was by walking around it and kicking all four tires.
"Look at the quality on it," he declared, and kicked a tire again to underscore his point.
"Look at the little piggy eyes on it!"
"They're not eyes, Mum, they're lights," Maggie said, unbuckling something and emerging with
baby Holly under her arm.
"Could you not have got a Porsche?" Mum asked.
"Too eighties."
"A Maserati?"
"Not fast enough."
Mum--I worried that she might have been suffering from boredom--had developed a sudden,
late-in-life longing for a fast, sexy car. She watched Top Gear and she knew (a little) about
Lamborghinis and Aston Martins.
Maggie's torso disappeared into the car again, and after more unbuckling, she emerged with
three-year-old JJ under her other arm.
Maggie, like Claire (the sister older than her) and Rachel (the sister younger than her) was tall
and strong. The three of them come from a gene pool identical to Mum's. Helen and I, a pair of
shortarses, look astonishingly different from them and I don't know where we get it from. Dad
isn't terribly small; it's just the meekness that makes him seem that way.
Maggie had embraced motherhood with a passion--not just the actual mothering, but the look.
One of the best things about having children, she said, was not having the time to worry about
what she looked like and she boasted that she had totally given up on shopping. The previous
week she'd told me that at the start of every spring and autumn she goes to Marks & Spencer and
buys six identical skirts, two pairs of shoes--one high, one flat--and a selection of tops. "In and
out in forty minutes," she said, gloating, totally missing the point. Other than her hair, which was
shoulder length and a lovely chestnut color (artificial--clearly she hadn't given up completely),
she looked more mumsy than Mum.
"Look at that hickey oul' skirt on her," Mum murmured. "People will think we're sisters."

"I heard that," Maggie called, "And I don't care."
"Your car looks like a rhino," was Mum's parting shot.
"A minute ago it was an elephant. Dad, can you open out the buggy, please."
Then JJ spotted me and became incoherent with delight. Maybe it was just the novelty value, but
I was currently his favorite auntie. He squirmed out of Maggie's grip and rushed up the drive,
like a cannonball. He was always flinging himself at me, and even though three days earlier he
had accidentally head-butted my dislocated knee, which was just out of plaster, and the pain had
made me vomit, I still forgave him.
I would have forgiven him anything: he was an absolute scream. Being around him definitely
lifted my mood, but I tried not to show it too much because the rest of them might have worried
about me getting too fond of him, and they had enough to worry about with me. They might even
have started with the well-meaning platitudes--that I was young, that I would eventually have a
child of my own, etc., etc., and I was pretty sure I wasn't ready to hear them.
I took JJ into the house to collect his "walk hat." When Mum had been searching out a wide-
brimmed, sun-deflecting hat for me, she'd come across an entire cache of dreadful hats she'd
worn to weddings over the years. It was almost as shocking as uncovering a mass grave. There
were loads, each one more overblown than the next, and for some reason JJ had fallen in love
with a flat, glazed straw hat with a cluster of cherries dangling from the brim. JJ insisted it was
"a cowboy hat" but really, nothing could have been further from the truth. Already, at the age of
three, he was displaying a pleasing strain of eccentricity--which must have been from some
recessive gene because he definitely didn't get it from either of his parents.
When we were all ready, the cavalcade moved forward: me, leaning on Dad with my unbroken
arm, Maggie pushing baby Holly in the buggy, and JJ, the marshal, leading the party.
Mum refused to join us on our daily constitutional, on the grounds that if she came there would
be so many of us that "People would be looking." And indeed we did create quite a stir: between
JJ and his hat and me and my injuries, the local youths felt like the circus had come to town.
As we neared the green--it wasn't far, it just felt that way because my knee was so sore that even
JJ, a child of three, could go faster than me--one of the lads spotted us and alerted his four or
five pals. An almost visible thrill passed through them and they abandoned whatever they'd been
doing with matches and newspaper and prepared to welcome us.
"Howya, Frankenstein," Alec called, when we were near enough to hear.
"Howya," I replied with dignity.
It had upset me the first time they'd said it. Especially when they'd offered me money to lift my
bandages and show them my cuts. It was like being asked to lift my T-shirt and show them my
knockers, only worse. At the time tears had flooded my eyes, and shocked at how cruel people

could be, I turned around to go straight back home. Then I'd heard Maggie ask, "How much?
How much to see the worst one?"
A brief consultation had ensued. "A euro."
"Give it to me," Maggie ordered. The eldest one--he said his name was Hedwig, but it couldn't
really be--handed it over, looking at her nervously.
Maggie checked the coin was real by biting it, then she'd said to me, "Ten percent for me, the
rest for you. Okay. Show them."
So I'd shown them--obviously not for the money but because I realized I had no reason to feel
ashamed, what had happened to me could have happened to anyone. After that they always
called me Frankenstein, but not--and I know this might sound strange--not in an unkind way.
Today they noticed that Mum had left off some of the bandages. "You're getting better." They
sounded disappointed. "All the ones on your forehead are nearly gone. The only good one left is
the one on your cheek. And you're walking faster than you used to, you're nearly as fast as JJ
now."
F   or half an hour or so we sat on the bench taking the air. In the few weeks we'd been doing
this daily walk, we'd been having un-Irishly dry weather, at least in the daytime. It was only in
the evenings when Helen was sitting in hedges with her long-range lens that it seemed to rain.
The reverie was broken when Holly started screeching; according to Maggie, her nappy needed
to be changed, so we all trooped back to the house, where Maggie tried, without success, to get
Mum, then Dad, to change Holly. She didn't ask me; sometimes it's great having a broken arm.
While she was off dealing with baby wipes and nappy bags, JJ got a rust-colored lip liner from
my (extremely large) makeup bag, held it to his face and, and said, "Like you."
"What's like me?"
"Like you," he repeated, touching some of my cuts, then pointing at his own face with the pencil.
Ah! He wanted me to draw scars on him.
"Only a few." I wasn't at all sure this was something that should be encouraged, so I colored in
some halfhearted cuts on his forehead. "Look." I held a hand mirror in front of him and he liked
the look of himself so much, he yelled, "More!"
"Just one more."

He kept checking himself in the mirror and demanding more and more injuries, then Maggie
came back, and when I saw the look on her face, I was filled with fear. "Oh God, Maggie, I'm
sorry. I got carried away."
But with a funny little jump, I realized she wasn't angry about JJ looking like a patchwork quilt
--it was because she'd seen my makeup bag and got The Look, the one they all get, but I'd
expected better from her.
It's been the oddest thing--despite all the horror and grief of the recent past, most days some
member of my family would come and sit on my bed and ask to see the contents of my makeup
bag. They were dazzled by my fantastic job and made no effort to hide their disbelief that I, of all
people, had landed it.
Maggie walked toward my makeup bag like a sleepwalker. Her hand was outstretched. "Can I
see?"
"Help yourself. And my wash bag is on the floor here. There's good stuff in there, too, if Mum
and Helen haven't cleaned me out. Take anything you want."
As if in a trance, Maggie was removing lipstick after lipstick from the bag. I had about sixteen of
them. Just because I can.
"Some of them haven't even been opened," she said. "How come Helen and Mum haven't stolen
them?"
"Because they already have them. Just before...you know...everything, I'd sent a consignment
of the new summer products. They already have most of these."
Two days after my arrival Helen and Mum had sat on my bed and systematically gone through
my cosmetics, discarding almost everything. "Porn Star? Have it. Multiple Orgasm? Have it.
Dirty Grrrl? Have it."
"They never told me about the new stuff," Maggie said sadly. "And I only live a mile away."
"Oh. Maybe it's because with your new practical look they think you wouldn't be interested in
makeup. I'm sorry. When I go back to New York, I'll make sure to send things directly to you."
"Will you? Thanks." Then, a sharp look. "You're going back? When? Get a grip. You can't go
anywhere. You need the security of your family--" But she was distracted by a lipstick. "Can I
try this one? It's exactly my color."
She put it on, rubbed her lips against each other, admired herself in the hand mirror, then was
cowed by sudden remorse. "I'm sorry, Anna. I've tried to avoid asking to see the lovely things, I
mean, under the circumstances...And I'm disgusted with the others, they're like scavengers. But
just look at me! I'm as bad as them."

"Don't be hard on yourself, Maggie. No one can help it. It's bigger than all of us."
"Is it? Okay. Thanks." She continued taking things out, opening them, trying them on the back of
her hand, then closing them neatly. When she'd examined everything she sighed heavily. "I
might as well see your wash bag now."
"Help yourself. There's a lovely vetivert shower gel." Then I thought for a second. "No, wait, I
think Dad took it."
She sifted through the shower gels and exfoliators and body lotions, uncapping and sniffing and
rubbing, and said, "You really do have the best job in the world."
My job
I   work in New York City as a beauty PR. I am Assistant Senior Press Officer for Candy Grrrl,
one of the hottest cosmetic brands on the planet. (You've probably heard of them; and if you
haven't, it means someone, somewhere, isn't doing their job properly. I hope to Christ it isn't
me.) I have access to a dizzying array of free products. I mean literally dizzying: shortly after I
got the job my sister Rachel, who had lived in New York for years, came to my office one
evening after everyone had gone home, to see if I'd been exaggerating. And when I unlocked the
closet and showed her the shelves and shelves of neatly stacked Candy Grrrl face creams and
pore minimizers and concealers and scented candles and shower gels and bases and highlighters
and...she stared for a long, long time, then said, "I've got black spots in front of my eyes. I'm
not joking, Anna, I think I might be about to faint." See--dizzying--and that was even before I
told her to pick out some stuff for herself.
What makes it all exponentially fabulous is that it's not just Candy Grrrl stuff I get. The agency I
work for, McArthur on the Park (founded and still owned by Ariella McArthur, she never sold
out) represents thirteen other beauty brands, each more delicious than the previous, and about
once a month we have a souk in the boardroom, where a full and frank exchange takes place.
(Mind you, this is not official policy and never happens when Ariella is around.)
Besides free products, there are other perks. Because McArthur on the Park has the Perry K
account, I get my hair cut and colored for free by Perry K. Obviously, not by Perry K himself,
but one of his loyal minions. Perry K, the man, is usually on a private plane, being flown by a
studio to North Korea or Vanuatu to cut some film star's hair on location.
(Free haircuts sound fabulous, but at the risk of seeming ungrateful, sometimes I can't help
feeling it's a bit like high-class prostitutes being given regular, up-the-frock health checks. It
seems caring, but it's only to ensure the girls do their job properly. Same with me, I've no choice
about the haircuts. I have to have them and I get no input: whatever is on the catwalks is what I
get given. Usually high-maintenance, feathery yokes which break my heart.