Lifesaving for Beginners (21 page)

On Sunday, I visit my parents’ house.
There is nothing unusual about that.
I often visit their house on Sunday.
I’ve been doing it for years.

It’s cold inside.
Dad doesn’t like it too warm because of the orchids, in various stages of development, that occupy most windowsills.
He’s supposed to grow them in the orchard but he brings some of them inside.
The ones that need special attention, he says.
I’ve come across him doing all sorts with them.
Talking to them, playing ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ by D:Ream to them, painting their pots (although he says this is a last resort, not being gifted with a brush and a palette).
I think it was their second date when Mum expressed a liking for the flower.
Dad never forgot it.

Ed says, ‘Where’s Thomas, Kat?’

Maybe this is the worst part about me and Thomas.
About Thomas and I.

Ed.

From the moment he met Thomas, Ed has declared himself to be Thomas’s best friend.
And who could blame him, the way Thomas carried on?
Bringing him everywhere.
Like to the film premiere of
Pirates of the Caribbean
,
a Skulduggery Pleasant book launch, a trip to the set of
Fair City
,
just because he knows that
Fair City
is Ed’s favourite soap.

‘Ed doesn’t need a chaperone, you know,’ I often said in the voice Thomas called my ‘testy’ voice.

‘Sure, don’t I want to go too?’
he’d say.
‘Isn’t yer woman, what’s her face, Penelope Crows in it?’

‘Cruz.’

‘Exactly.
And there’ll be a bit of a feed and maybe some goodie bags.
We’ll have a blast, won’t we, Ed?’

And they always did.
Have a blast.
They went to football matches at Croke Park, the opening night of
The Sound of Music
at the Grand Canal Theatre, a journalists-only trip to the zoo when the baby elephants were born.

‘There’s no need for you to take Ed on every jolly you go on,’ I told Thomas, more than once.

‘I know,’ Thomas said.
‘Do you want to come with us?’

‘To the smelly zoo to see some smelly elephants lifting their tails and excavating the contents of their bowels right in front of me?’

‘Yes,’ said Thomas.

‘OK,’ I said, enjoying his surprise.
And my own, if I’m honest.
And the elephants weren’t even that smelly.
In fact, what I remember is the heavy sweetness of jasmine in the air and the smell of summer when Thomas bent and kissed the corner of my mouth in public, before I could tell him not to.

No matter how many times I try to tell Ed about me and Thomas – Thomas and I – he still asks.
Especially on Sundays.
In the months before we broke up – before he left me – Thomas had infiltrated the tradition of our family Sunday lunches the same way he had infiltrated everything else: without my noticing until it was too late.
So there he was, squashing himself into my father’s chair at the head of the dining-room table.
BAM!

Today, I just don’t have the stomach for it.
I say, ‘He’s at work.’

This catches Mum’s attention and she looks up from her notebook.
She says, ‘I thought you two broke up?’

I look at Ed, but he’s gone back to reading
Soap Watch
and isn’t listening.

I say, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s not at work.’

She nods and returns to her notebook.
I don’t mind.
Not really.
She can be vague, is all.
It takes her longer than normal people to focus on the real world as opposed to the fictional one in her head.

Ed puts down his magazine.
He says, ‘Thomas can come next Sunday, if he doesn’t have to work on the farm, can’t he, Kat?’

I say, ‘Who’s for wine?
I got a lovely bottle of Côtes du Rhône in Fiztpatrick’s yesterday.’
I stick my head into the sideboard and rummage around for the biggest wine glasses I can find.

When I return to the table.
Ed is waiting for me.
‘Thomas can come next Sunday, if he doesn’t have to work on the farm, can’t he, Kat?’

I look at Mum, who is scribbling something in her notebook.
Then at Dad, who looks at the leg of lamb on the plate in front of him with distrust, as if it is about to jump up and reattach itself to its previous owner at any moment.

I look at Ed.
‘I don’t think so, Ed.
I’m sorry.’

‘Why not?’

‘Thomas and I broke up.
After the accident, remember?’

Ed nods and smiles.
‘Yeah, but you can get back together, Kat,’ he tells me.
‘That’s what me and Sophie do.
We get back together.
All the time.’

Mum says, ‘It’s Sophie and I.’

It’s like a reflex with Mum.
I don’t think she’s even aware of it.
Today, I can’t let it go.
‘Jesus, can you just stop correcting him?
For once?
What difference does it make?
Me and Sophie?
Sophie and I?
Who cares?
You get the picture.
You know what he means.
Don’t you?’

She doesn’t respond.

‘Is there anything else to eat?’
I say.
‘Apart from the lamb, I mean.’
It’s not that I’m hungry.
I just want to get the meal over and done with so I can get out of here.

Mum looks up from her notebook.
‘Of course there’re other things to eat,’ she says, looking around.
‘Aren’t there, Kenneth?’

My father’s name is not Kenneth.
It’s Leonard.
But when he first introduced himself to my mother, she thought he said Kenneth.
Of course, he was too polite to correct her.
And a little awestruck, to be honest.
He presumed that a woman like Mum would never be interested in a man like him, so the mistake was inconsequential.
When she decided that she wanted to see him again, he agreed.
She only found out, by accident, months later that his name was actually Leonard.
And by then it was too late.
She said it was too late.
It would feel odd, she said.
To call him anything other than Kenneth.
In fact, lots of people call him Kenneth now.
He says he doesn’t mind.

I get up from the table and walk into the kitchen.
In the oven there is a dish of roast vegetables and a bowl of mashed potatoes.
I get oven gloves, carry the dishes into the dining room, set them on the table.
In that time, Dad has managed to carve two slices of meat.
Mum is still scribbling in her notebook and Ed takes a sip of wine from a glass and tries not to wince.
He doesn’t really like wine.
He likes the idea of liking wine.

I keep up a kind of chatter that could best be described as idle.

‘You’ll have two scoops of spud, Ed.’

‘And there’s some roast pumpkin for you, Mum.
I know you’re partial to roast pumpkin.’

‘Don’t worry, Dad, none of your vegetables have been anywhere near the aubergine.
I made sure.’
Dad doesn’t like aubergine.
I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say he hates it but his displeasure at the leathery purple skin of the vegetable is fairly acute.
And because he so rarely voices an opinion, especially a negative one, everybody goes out of their way to ensure that aubergine never crosses his path, Monday to Saturday.
An exception is made on Sunday because of Ed and Mum, who love it.
As for me, I’m pretty non-committal.

I sit down.
Mum closes her notebook, pats the bun of hair at the back of her head, like she’s making sure it’s still there.
Ed pours milk into a wine glass.
Dad puts a slice of meat on everybody’s plate and tucks a napkin into the collar of his shirt.

We eat.

The silence isn’t strained but it’s there.
It’s always been there.
We are not a family who sit together for meals, Monday to Saturday.
But, for some reason, Mum insists on the Sunday dinner tradition.
As if perhaps she read somewhere that this was the kind of thing that families did.

We eat.

Mum cuts her vegetables and meat into tiny pieces, then spears one tiny morsel of everything – potato, pumpkin, a sliver of lamb and, of course, the controversial aubergine – with her fork and steers the food into her mouth, which opens only at the very last second, and even then it’s only a slit of an opening, barely wide enough to get the food through, but she manages, nonetheless.
Then the mouth closes and the chewing begins.
At least ten careful chews before she allows herself to swallow.
She is pedantic about chewing.
‘Eat slowly,’ she always told me and Ed.

‘Don’t speak with your mouth full.’

‘Chew carefully.’

Some people have a fear of flying.
Or spiders.
Or lollipop ladies.
Mum was afraid of choking.
Of me or Ed choking.
That’s how I knew she loved us.

I say, ‘So .
.
.
how’s the new book coming along?’
Mum waits until she has chewed her ten chews and taken a huge gulp of water – just to be sure – before she speaks.

She says, ‘Difficult.’
She shakes her head.
‘Difficult.’

I say, ‘Oh.’

She says, ‘As you know, the story is told through a series of letters from the Archbishop to the Diocesan manager and so the narrative tone must be quite constrained, which makes it .
.
.’
She stops.

I say, ‘Difficult?’

She says, ‘Yes.’

We eat.

Dessert is home-made.
Dad has several sweet teeth and Ed got him
Nigella Does Dessert
for his last birthday.
I don’t know why, as Dad has never expressed an interest in either baking or in Nigella Lawson, who is like the polar opposite of the women he usually favours: Mum; Judi Dench; Margaret Thatcher, circa 1980.
I think it’s because the book was fifty cents in the local charity shop.
The price is written in pencil inside the cover.
Ed loves charity shops.
His room is full of other people’s rubbish.

Since he got the book, Ed and Dad meet in the kitchen on Sunday mornings and bake something.
They do it chronologically.
Today, they’ve done page forty-three, which is a chocolate fudge cake.
They serve it warm with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side.
I usually have a coffee and a cigarette for dessert but not on Sundays.
Not since Nigella.
She has made them surpass themselves, Ed and Dad.
That’s what I tell them most Sundays.
That they’ve surpassed themselves.
Even Mum, who has the appetite of a tiny bird, concedes to a sliver of cake.
For a while, all you can hear is the scrape of forks against plates.
Forks aren’t great implements to eat ice cream with.
You really need a spoon.
At times like these, you can understand why children lick plates, you really can.

I make coffee.
A decaf espresso for Mum, a cappuccino for Dad and Ed – with cocoa powder sprinkled on the top – and a black coffee for me.
I grind the beans and I set up the machine and I sit on the worktop, as I always do, and wait.
I love the noise of the machine.
The gurgle and the splutter of it.
And the smell.
That strong, earthy smell.