Primperfect (14 page)

I'm not very pro-God at the moment. Seeing as how he saw fit to have Fintan knock me up. We'll get married in a church, though. Because that's what's done. Whoops a mother of pearling daisy.

Quote from Prim's mum's diary

obb with two bees wants to go to the cinema with me. I think this might mean that kissing will happen. Cinemas are great places to do first kisses because it's dark and if the kissing doesn't work out no-one will see you and there will be a movie to watch and talk about afterwards, while you wait for your lift home. I have never kissed a boy with two bees before. Kevin didn't even have one bee. Also Robb is objectively pretty hot. He has a mean face, but in a handsome way. His bottom lip is really full, so it looks like he has a permanent case of the sulks. His bottom lip is a big pillowy part of the reason that I want to kiss him even though I don't fancy him. I don't think I do want to kiss him, but if he kissed me I would probably do some kissing back. I wonder what that would be like. I've only ever kissed Kevin and this random guy called Barry at a party Syzmon had.

Kevin was a better kisser than Barry. Oh, wait! There's Joel as well, who was probably my worst kiss because it wasn't expected or consensual. I don't really count it as my actual first kiss. He was only doing it to prove to this guy Liam that he wasn't gay or something. It was more of a lip-mash than a kiss. And afterwards, we had this massive bust-up and he told me I kissed ‘like a bullfrog' and, sometimes, when I kiss a boy I wonder if I am doing anything bullfroggy. I do have quite a wide mouth, like a frog. But I'm not, like, catching flies with my tongue or anything like that. And what did Joel even mean? I mean it's not like he has any vast experience with frenching bullfrogs.

Isn't ‘frenching' a weird term? It comes up in books about old-timey high-school and I'm kind of wondering if I should bring it back, because shifting isn't the nicest term there is. It kind of sounds like something you'd do to a reluctant cow. I normally say ‘making out', which is another Americanism, but it covers a multitude and sometimes you do want to make it clear that only kissing was involved in a given situation. Same goes for ‘hooking up'. Because sometimes that means sex, and you could really hurt someone's feelings by going around the place implying that you had had sex with them when you really hadn't. Frenching is peculiar said out loud but I think I could get Ciara on board with it. She's very into old-lady-isms because of Grandma Lily.

I have asked Joel about the bullfrog thing a few times, and he said he was only saying it to hurt me, but the things that are the best at hurting people are the things that are kind of sort of true as well as mean and I worry that it was one of those ones. I don't want to kiss like a bullfrog. I want to kiss like someone who is good at kissing. And I definitely want to be better at kissing than stupid Karen, who has shifted about fifty boys and that's before she turned into a lesbian. Maybe she is only a lesbian because she shifted all the boys in Ireland and now there are no boys left and it was either switch to women or emigrate. That was a pretty homophobic comment. I'd never make a comment like that about Joel or even about Duncan, the adult lover of young boys. I'm only a bigot when it comes to Karen and that is because she deserves it. I can't imagine wanting to kiss her on her stupid evil face and am very nonplussed as to why she gets more action than me when my face is clever and not evil. She is prettier than I am, though. And Good at Make-Up. I would like to be Good at Make-Up. I'd blame it on my mum not being around any more, but she wasn't too gone on make-up and I doubt she would have schooled me in the womanly art of it to any great degree. I wonder if there are exercises you can do to make yourself a better kisser? If there are, I bet they are pretty embarrassing.

Being pregnant is weird. At what point do you stop being one person and start being two?

Quote from Prim's mum's diary

t's weird, reading my origin story from the source documents. On blue-lined pages. How I came to be, laid out in ballpoint pen and smudges. Some of them were tears. We learned about all the different types of evidence that you need to do historical research in first year and I had to revise it for the exams this summer. It didn't actually come up or anything, so I suppose I didn't
ACTUALLY
have to revise it at all, but I did anyway. I think Mum's diary is a primary source, because she was there at the time, in the throes of it. But if you were going to write an essay or something about Mum (and why wouldn't you? – she was amazing) then my diary, if you could get your hands on it, would be a secondary source. Because I only really started keeping it regularly after she died. If you were writing an essay about me, my diary
AND
Mum's diary would both be primary sources. But I'm a bit crap, so I think that maybe your essay would have a limited audience.

Dad tried it on with other girls, probably even when he was engaged to her. He wasn't exactly smitten. Even she knew that and she was smitten with him. A suspicious kind of smitten, where she kind of knew it wouldn't work out well but hoped it would. I wish it had, while reading it. I wish that she had fallen for a less crap person than my stupid, gormless dad. He basically had no gorm at all when it came to her. He's not very good at romantic relationships. Maybe I get that from him. Although I could have tons of gorm. Never having had a proper boyfriend, it is hard to gauge how much gorm I do or do not have from a relationshippy point of view.

It must have been hard for Dad to read back over Mum's diaries. To see it all laid bare in blue and white what a horrid disappointment he had been. If he had given the diaries to me the year that Mum was killed I really think it would have broken me. Because I hated him for ages out of loyalty to Mum and also out of contempt for his parenting ineptitude. And I could muster up some hatred for him even now, only I'd still be stuck with him. My dad is all I have that will not leave me. Unless he dies or something, which could happen because he is an old dude. Fintan is fifty-three years old. Which isn't, like, super-old. But it is old enough that he has to take those tablets for his cholesterol and things.

The biggest thing my mum's death taught me is that parents aren't for ever. Their impact is, but that is not the same. Anyway, it wasn't fair the way he treated Mum, but how he's treated me since she died has been kind of nice with intermittent screw-ups. Or not so intermittent. Maybe it is because he has lived on his own for so long with no kids or womenfolk to guide him, but Dad is basically a teenager himself in a lot of ways. Only with wrinkles instead of acne and without even a modicum of cool. I'd like to see him meet somebody nice. Because when I go to college he'll probably regress to his before-I-lived-with-him levels of crapness. Only problem is, who'd have him? He's not the nicest boyfriend and is not getting any younger.

He does have
LOADS
of money, but the kind of lady who would be attracted by that wouldn't exactly be good to Dad, I reckon. He'd go back to buying ties that cost €250 and denying his farming origins. He never used to see his brother Patsy before I came to live there. Now we see them about twice a year. Which isn't loads, but it's definitely better than nothing. I'm always nice to them, because Mum's family are all dead and I have it at the back of my mind that if anything happened to Dad they'd be stepping up to mind me. I wouldn't like to have to move to Mayo. Two more years and then I can stop worrying about that, because if Dad died then, I'd be all by myself and have no-one minding me. I don't feel like I'll stop needing minding in two years' time. Maybe I will always need some level of minding.

OK, so there is this thing where the baby lives and it is called the amniotic sac. Which you think is revolting, until you hear tell of the mucous plug that stops the waters breaking and is basically a plug. Made of mucous. The human body is a mysterious and disgusting thing. Sorrel and me had to put the baby book under the sofa because we were both so creeped out. I don't know what I'll be like when I actually have a baby. But on the plus side, when the baby comes I will no longer be filled with amniotic sac and mucous plug. And placenta. Oh God, placenta! A placenta is basically an extra liver you grow around your womb to nourish the baby. Well, not exactly a liver, because then it would be called an extra liver. But big and meaty and able to break down things like a liver. Sorrel says she read about people in America who eat it once it comes out because it is filled with nutrients. We can't decide if this is more or less gross than the plug made of mucous. Probably more, but there's something about the word ‘mucous' that makes it worse. I think when the baby comes, I will probably love it right away because I will no longer be pregnant and full of disgusting miracles. People look at me in the supermarket. At my big fat pregnant belly. I'm really glad of my engagement ring, which I wear whenever I leave the house to stave off eyebrows and moues of disapproval. I have an essay due on different translations of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. I do not have time for this.

Quote from Prim's mum's diary

o, loads has happened.

I met Duncan for one thing. And the cinema visit with Robb was interesting. The kind of interesting that warrants three little dots in front of it. An ellipsis-y kind of interesting. But I'm going to start, not at the beginning because that would be predictable, but with what is, arguably, the biggest piece of gossip.

Ciara and Syzmon are no more.
SHE BROKE UP WITH HIM
. My hand actually had trouble writing that down because it feels so much like a lie. But it is the truth. She rang me, crying. I had never really thought of the dumper being sad when they dumped someone. I wonder if Dad was sad when he dumped Mum. I bet he was, a little. A sadness spiced with selfish. Like: ‘I regret having to do this, but it was the right decision for the both of us,' or ‘I could have handled that better.'

Ciara is of the ‘I regret having to do this, but it was the right decision for the both of us' school of dumping. Her mum dropped her over to my house pretty much right away after the phone call. Ciara is a surprisingly loud sobber, and her mum was having her fibromyalgia support group over for coffee. Ciara's mum has fibromyalgia. It is a thing where you sometimes get really bad muscle pain and have to take to the bed. Ciara does the hoovering and toilet-scrubbing for her whole house because her mum doesn't want her fibromyalgia exacerbated and Ciara's dad is the kind of man who wouldn't say ‘That's women's work' but would definitely think it.

was my main question for Ciara.

Because she properly loves Syzmon and he properly loves her. And fulfils at least 180 of her 234 requirements for a boyfriend.

‘It wasn't because of 194, was it?' (Syzmon has recently begun growing a sort of beardlet. He calls it a goatee, but ‘beardlet' is a far more accurate term.)

‘No. I would never dump someone because of
194.
Beards are so easily shave-able. It was because of loads of things. I mean, I still think that we'll end up together eventually.' She was trying to sound positive but her eyes were sad. I held her hand and squeezed it.

‘Yeah?'

‘Yeah. But I didn't want him to be my only boyfriend. And I kept on wanting to sleep with him, but I don't want to lose my virginity yet, because Mum goes through my drawers, like, all the time, and she'd go ape if she knew that I was even considering sharing my body with him.'

‘But you've already shared loads of your body with him.' I refrained from putting air quotes around the body-sharing. She had enough going on without me criticising her word choices.

Ciara smiled a bit. Her lips curved anyway. There was some latent positivity bubbling under all the sad. I hoped it would come out soon. I didn't like her little crying face. It made me want to hug and I'm not huggy.

‘I know, but I don't, like, give Mum a blow by blow account of it. I think she thinks we spend most of our time holding hands and talking about TV programmes we like.'

‘So you broke up with him because you fancied him too much?'

This kind of blew my mind, but I held back from saying
‘BUT WHHHYYYY?'
because I'm tactful like that. She got it, though. Ciara understands the importance of having a boy to fancy. It is high on her list of priorities. Or was, at least, before she had this break-up.

She snuggled into the sofa and held her cup of tea in both her hands, like she was an old lady in the winter. ‘Kind of. Any time I thought about losing it with him, I'd kind of also think about when I moved to London and he stayed behind and I'd get all sad and kind of wanting to stay in Dublin or follow him to Bratislava if he decides to go to college there and, I mean, if you're scared of the future all the time, that's no way to live, and I kept turning it all over and over in my brain until I decided the best thing to do would be to pull off the bandage.'

‘Syzmon being the bandage.'

I looked at her.
Syzmon is not a bandage, he's a person
, said my look.
A person that you loved and stuff. You know?

She wiped at her eyes and spread the make-up round them so her sockets looked like whirlpools with eyes inside the middle. ‘I think I broke his heart, Prim. He properly cried and everything. I had to go downstairs and get him a glass of water.'

‘Where did you break up with him?' I don't know why this seemed important. But it did.

‘In my bedroom. I was going to do it in a public place, but then I wanted us to be able to have a proper chat about it without anyone looking or anything.'

‘That was nice of you.'

‘Syzmon didn't think so.' She started to cry again, big Hollywood tears bouncing down her cheeks one after the other. Ciara is ridiculously pretty, even when she's in bits. I think I would hate her if she weren't my second bestie. ‘He said … oh God, Prim, he said, he said …'

‘What did he say?'

‘
If that's the way you feel.
'

‘Wow.'

‘I know. I never. I never thought he'd be so upset. I mean, I'm not that great.' She put her heavy head inside her hands.

‘Yes you are, you're lovely. Of
COURSE
he'd be upset.'

‘What if he gets another girlfriend? Oh my God, Prim.'

I curled my legs up underneath me. ‘He won't for a while. He'll need time to heal.'

‘I need time to heal.'

‘I know you do. I know you do. Would you like a sausage sandwich and some Joy Division?'

‘I'm not Fintan. I would like a cheese pizza and some
High School Musical
, please.'

‘That sounds doable. I'll text Dad and ask if you can stay over. He'll totally let you.'

‘I'll text Mum and see …'

Dad said it was OK, but Ciara's mum needed her to do some house things, so she stayed till eleven and then Dad dropped her home. We had fun, interspersed with weeping. It takes a lot for Ciara to cry. I don't think I had seen her do it since Grandma Lily died the year before last. Maybe she cries when she is by herself, though. I mean, if I weren't me, I'd think that I didn't cry a lot. But I actually do. At least once a week. Usually when thinking about Mum, sometimes when thinking about Joel not being friends with me or Kevin not wanting me to be his proper girlfriend or the amount of time I will spend getting rid of unwanted body hair over the course of my lifetime. Time that could be better spent on snacking or reading books.

I hate using that stupid hair-removal cream on my legs and pits. It smells
SO WEIRD
. Shaving was much simpler, but Dad won't let me do it any more because he sucks. When I go to college, I'll totally shave again. And, I mean, it is nice that Fintan is trying to do some parenting. Laying down rules. Having concern for my well-being. All that nonsense. Look how far we've come since he was secretly going to propose to Hedda without telling me.

I wonder how Hedda is doing with her new, presumably childless husband and her new life? Probably fine. She struck me as the kind of woman who would always do pretty well for herself, no matter what. No crying into ham and pickle sandwiches while pregnant with the child of a much older man who is inevitably going to dump you for Hedda. No shifting forbidden Kevins and then fighting with your best friend and then not being fancied enough to warrant anything beyond house party hookups and the odd text.

Kevin is not a very nice boy. I probably dodged a bullet. I wonder when a bullet will actually hit me? I quite want to get my heart broken nice and early to get it out of the way.

Although, looking at Ciara, maybe I could cope without any heartbreak for a while yet. She also timed the break-up perfectly. She didn't want to break up with Syzmon, or have just broken up with him, in Leaving Cert year. Because it would impact on their exam results and she wants him to be all he can be. Ciara over thinks things. But then again, you can't just go through life being surprised by the consequences of your actions, like they were something you had no control over. Something you couldn't help.