Tender (29 page)

H
er mother, smiling from the car. It was almost dark, but it was possible to make that much out: her mother’s smile. Her mother leaning over the wheel a little, as though she needed to come closer to the windscreen to get a proper look at Catherine. And, Catherine could see now, in the space between the front seats, Anna, the blond mop, the happy wave, and now she was scrambling, as she always did when they met Catherine at the train station, to get out of the car. She tumbled through the door, and she was out, and she was coming, running, and—
oooof
—Catherine picked her up and told her how heavy she was.

“I have six Easter eggs,” Anna said solemnly, and Catherine said that this could not possibly be true.

“Eight, because I’m sharing two.”

“
Eight.
That’s unbelievable.”

“And you have two for you just on your own.”

“Hello, pet,” their mother said, coming around from her door to open the boot of the car; she leaned in to give Catherine a kiss.

It could not be shown. Under no circumstances could it, or anything close to it, anything that was even a shadow of it, be shown. So the thing to do was to talk yourself, to ask questions, rather than to be asked them.

“All set for Granddad’s party?”

“He doesn’t want a bloody bit of it,” said Anna from the backseat, and both women erupted into laughter at the child’s pitch-perfect imitation of what she had so clearly been hearing all week at home.

“Stop that, you,” their mother said, as firmly as she could, and Anna gave a self-satisfied snort.

“So is there much left to do?” Catherine said, as Anna sank back in her seat, singing to herself.

“Oh, you’ll be kept busy, don’t you worry,” her mother said drily. “Monica and Fidelma are up to high-doh with the preparations.”

“You’d think it was a wedding,” came another echo of her mother from the back.

“Anna!” their mother warned, before turning to Catherine. “So what is it you’ve been so busy with?”

She slowed the car, now, for Mulligans’ cattle; the large herd was walked to the farmyard twice daily for milking from a field further on down the hill, sixty or seventy Friesians filling the road to the verges, weaving lazily through the stalled cars, nosing windscreens, swatting tails against wing mirrors.

“They’re late out this evening,” Catherine said.

“Good Friday,” her mother said. “They were probably at late Mass.”

“The cows?” Anna said, delighted with herself.

“You settle down, now,” Catherine said over her shoulder. She wanted to get off the subject of Good Friday as smoothly as possible; she was cursing herself, now, for having walked right into it. “Just this essay for English,” she said, seeing from her mother’s slow blink that she had clean forgotten her question of a few moments earlier. “It’s a big one, so I want to do a good job.”

Her mother nodded. “Where did you go to Mass today, in case you’re asked?”

“At Mass?”

“If you’re asked. I presume you didn’t go.”

“I didn’t get…” Catherine said, trailing off.

“Well. Pick a church,” her mother said briskly, and eased the car back onto the open road.

The yellow square of light on the hill as they drove towards the house. Inside, a figure moved past the window: Ellen. Catherine would have recognized the shape of her, the movement of her, even if she had been looking at a stranger’s house from a stranger’s car in a country she did not know. She was heading for their bedroom, where they would meet to talk, as they always did the moment Catherine arrived home; they would confer on the events of the weeks since last they had seen one another.

“Ellen’s very worried about this bloody Leaving Cert,” their mother said now, clearly seeing the same thing. “Give her some reassurance, would you?”

“But it’s ages away yet.”

“That’s what I keep saying to her. She can’t go on like this for the next two months.”

“She’s got exam stress,” Anna clarified. “She needs to take a break and do an activity.”

“Where did you hear that?” Catherine said, laughing; it did not sound like their mother.

“The radio,” Anna shrugged, clicking herself free of her seatbelt.

“So who was at the party?” Ellen said, sprawled across her bed. “Was Robert Emmet there?”

She had heard, on a previous visit of Catherine’s, of James’s nickname for Emmet, and had approved of it.

“No,” Catherine said. “Nobody from college was there.”

“What were you doing there, then?”

“James.”

“Oh,” Ellen nodded. “Cool.”

Ellen was the only one in Catherine’s family who knew that James had returned to Ireland; Catherine had told her in a phone call that first Sunday, warning her to check, first, that there was no way their mother, much less their father, might be within earshot. James was still an unmentionable subject with her parents; James would always be that way, Catherine suspected. He had gone to Germany, far away and unable to influence their daughter, and that was all that mattered to them. That weekend the previous summer, when Catherine had stepped over the line so astonishingly, simply, now, had not happened; the shouting had not happened, and the arguing had not happened, and the aftermath, the weeks of creeping around under a cloud of anger and trouble, simply had not happened. With Ellen it was different, obviously; Ellen liked the sound of James, laughing at the things Catherine told her about him, at the lines of his that Catherine quoted to her, as though they were lines from films. But none of what had been happening over the last couple of weeks could be told to Ellen; she and Ellen had always told each other about the boys they liked, and the boys they had been with, but this was different. This was, Catherine felt, somehow shameful; that was what this was. This was not something that Catherine could stand for her sister to know. Which made it a first, yes—but some things needed, surely, to be that way. They were getting older. They were moving on, on their separate streams.

But then Catherine sighed, and Ellen could read Catherine’s sighs, Catherine’s every sound and gesture, as though they were her own. She leaned forward on the bed, suspicion alight in her eyes.

“What?”

“What?” Catherine said, shaking her head. “No, nothing.”

“Did something happen? Something happened.”

“Nothing happened.”

“You’re blushing. You’re
puce
. What happened?”

“James,” Catherine blurted, and then panicked. No, no, she could not tell this; she would have to take a different tack. “James shifted a guy.”

“Cool,”
Ellen said, sitting up. “Who? Was it Robert Emmet?”

“No,” Catherine said scornfully. “This American fella. And I’m not sure if it’s actually cool.”

“Why? It was his first shift with a fella, wasn’t it? That’s good.”

“He’s older.”

“Well, you can’t talk. Yer man Aidan was ancient.”

“Yeah, well,” Catherine shrugged. “He’s just not really suitable, or whatever.”

Ellen pulled a face of disbelief. “You’re not James’s
mother
.”

“I know I’m not his mother,” Catherine shot back. “Believe me, his mother wouldn’t be talking about this.”

“Yeah, but you don’t get to rule his life.”

“How am I ruining his life?”

“Rule! Jesus! Get over it! It’s fucking well for you, going to posh parties and watching fellas shift other fellas. What do you have to be moaning about?”

“It’s just more complicated.” Catherine shook her head.

“Why?” Ellen said, her suspicion sparked again. “Did something else happen?” She looked at Catherine more closely. “Did
you
shift someone?”

Catherine was silent.

“You did,” Ellen said, not with surprise but as though this was a fact which had merely been overlooked thus far in their conversation. “You shifted someone. You’re puce again.”

“I’m not fucking puce. Will you quit saying that?”

“Your face looks like you’re after running up the lane from the bog. Who did you shift?”

“Nobody.”

“You shifted someone. I know by looking at you. What the hell is the big deal? Was he married or something?” Then something else occurred to her; her eyebrows shot up. “Was it a girl?”

“No! Don’t be fucking ridiculous.”

“
You’re
being ridiculous.”

“It was the artist,” Catherine, her heart racing now, heard herself saying. “The guy whose exhibition it was.”

“Wow,” Ellen said. “Seriously?”

“He’s Irish, but he lives in New York.”

“Cool. Maybe he’ll take you to New York with him. How old is he?”

“Thirty, probably,” Catherine said, plucking the number out of the air.

“Thirty? Do you ever shift anyone your own age?”

“I was drunk. It was just a drunk thing. He pushed me up against the wall. I didn’t even know—”

“Wait,” said Ellen. Her expression had changed. “You mean, he made you?”

“No, no,” Catherine said impatiently. “Look, these parties. You don’t know. They’re just sort of mad. Everyone’s plastered, and everyone’s sleeping with everyone. You’ll see.”

Ellen stared. “You slept with him?!”

“No, I didn’t fucking sleep with him!” Catherine snapped, and at that exact moment, the door handle turned, and both sisters screamed at one another with their eyes, and switched instantly into the mode that this situation required.

“Yeah, she’s so mean to Peter,” Ellen said, leaning back against the wall. “But I actually didn’t see that episode. I can’t believe she said that to him.”

“Yeah, I know,” Catherine said, shaking her head, and then they both looked, with perfect, calm-eyed innocence, to the door, where their father stood.

“You’re home,” he said, with a nod.

“I’m home.”

“What do you think of your new room?”

“Oh,” Catherine said, looking around; Ellen had been so eager to get all of her news that there had barely been a chance to examine the new space that the extension had made of their bedroom, or to remark on it. It was much bigger than their old room had been, and painted in more sophisticated, adult-looking colors, and the bunk beds had been split apart, and were single beds now, covered in quilts of a diaphanous fabric, and Ellen’s desk, neat and ordered and piled with notebooks and folders, stood in one corner. “It’s lovely,” she said, and their father nodded again.

“Very good. Well, I think your dinner’s ready up here,” he said, and he stepped back out of the room and closed the door again; they heard his tread on the corridor.

“I hear you’re havin’ sex with old fellas now, Catherine,” Ellen said, in an imitation of their father’s low, careful tone. “Very good.”

“Oh, God, shut up,” said Catherine, laughing, her head in her hands.

The following night, in the kitchen of Murphy’s, her grandfather’s local, Catherine and her mother and her aunts made hundreds of sandwiches, and from her seat in front of the television, old Mary Murphy kept one eye on
Kenny Live
and the other on the women who were slicing tomatoes and going through packets of ham. Like everyone who Catherine met with down home now, she commented on how much Catherine had changed, on how she had grown, as though this was an achievement in itself, and she asked the same questions that people down home always asked.

“You’ll marry in it, so,” she said, nodding to the television, after Catherine had confirmed that, yes, she did like living in Dublin. Catherine coughed out a laugh, and looked to her mother for a mirroring of her own amusement, but her mother was not looking at her; her mother’s hands had, for a moment, gone still, and she was staring at the bread piled in front of her on the chopping board.

“You’ll marry in Dublin,” Mrs. Murphy said again, but this time it was not Catherine’s mother who reacted, but her aunt Fidelma.

“Oh, do
not,
Catherine,” she said, wrinkling her face into a grimace. “If you know what’s good for you.”

“Sure you don’t know Dublin,” her other aunt, Monica, said.

“I’m not talking about Dublin,” Fidelma said, working a bread knife through a tower of salad sandwiches. “I’m talking about riding.”

“Fidelma!” Monica and Catherine’s mother spluttered in unison.

“Ride all around you, Catherine,” Fidelma said emphatically, “and don’t bother your arse marrying any one of them. That’s my advice to you.”

“Jesus tonight!” Catherine’s mother said, but along with Monica and Mrs. Murphy, she was creased up now with laughter.

Fidelma pointed her knife straight at Catherine. “Don’t mind these ones, Catherine,” she said. “I’m not joking you. When you’re my age you’ll know that I wasn’t joking you. I mean it. Ride. All. Around You.”

Catherine tried for laughter herself, to match the gasps and shudders of the other women, but she was too mortified, felt too paralyzed in the spotlight; all she managed was a wheezing noise and a jerking of her shoulders. “It’s not really an option,” she said.

“Make it an option,” Fidelma pointed again.

“Jesus, Fidelma,” Catherine’s mother said. “Will you concentrate on the bloody sandwiches.”

“This is what you’ll find yourself doing, Catherine, I’m warning you,” Fidelma said. “Concentrating on the sandwiches.”

“Young people have great options these days,” Mrs. Murphy said almost dreamily from her armchair. “Great opportunities above in Dublin, I’d say, Catherine.”

Which started them all off again, really roaring laughing this time, bent low over the table, and Catherine standing in the middle of them, staring at a bowl of hard-boiled eggs. “Well,” she said, to Mrs. Murphy, “I suppose, there’s always something going on.”

“Ride them backwards,” Fidelma interjected.

Dancing. They all knew how to dance. Waltzes. Fox-trots. Jives. There was a confidence to them as they spun each other, moved with each other. But they never, Catherine noticed, looked into one another’s eyes. They did not seem awkward in this; they seemed, on the contrary, quite happy. They talked to each other without looking one another in the eye, and they laughed together, and they met the eyes of other dancers, other couples, but never one another. Catherine remembered her mother coming home, once, from a dinner dance, giving out yards about the parents of a boy Catherine had gone to school with—they were rich, they lived in an enormous house on the outskirts of the town, they always sat, after Mass had finished, in their pew and talked to one another, the whole family, gossiping and chattering like people who were very glad of the chance to catch up with each other. When this couple had danced, apparently, they had looked at one another, smiling, as they did so, and Catherine’s mother had considered this a deeply ridiculous, almost tacky, display; in the kitchen the following morning she had made Catherine and Ellen laugh by mocking them, grabbing Ellen and dancing her around the kitchen, pretending to be Jarlaith Byrne staring deep into his wife’s eyes. Here, on Murphy’s dance floor, the couples all observed the unspoken rule—her father with her mother now, to “The Gambler,” her grandfather with a neighbor woman, Uncle Matt with Fidelma, who was looking content and serene now, not at all like a woman who harbored a longing to go back to her unmarried years and fuck every man she saw. They moved quickly, with great skill, and they kept their eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance, which could not have been easy, since the pub was so small and so cramped; how, then, did they all find a point in the middle distance? And moving as fast as they were?