Not My Problem

By the time I left school that afternoon, Holly seemed grand with me.

I walked her over to the office so she could oversee the paper printing. Orla was behind the desk with earphones on and she was clearly running through the steps of her dance. I tried to guess which Britney song it was.

She looked up and saw me. I waved and she took her earbuds out and grinned.

“‘Toxic’?” I guessed.

“How did you know?!” she laughed.

Holly glanced between us, confused. A crease formed between her eyebrows.

“Do you wanna stay? Hang out?” Holly asked me.

Just then Jill arrived, literally rolling up her sleeves, and said hi to everyone.

Part of me wanted to stay. I wanted to make sure things were okay with us, and also watching Holly in her element was kind of nice. The paper came out every other Thursday, and Holly always spent most of the evening before in the school office, tweaking the final layout and making last-minute edits. I’d gone with her before and watched her work. Which I know sounds boring, but it wasn’t. She got this super intense look on her face and she’d roll up her sleeves and put her hair in a ponytail. She’d take it out an hour later when she was yelling that there were six typos that the copy editor hadn’t noticed in one article and did she have to go through the whole thing herself?! She’d tie it back up when she realized there was a blank space where a photo should be and she had to call up the photographer and give out. It was cute, though.

By the end of the night her hair would be greasy and she’d be five minutes from a coronary, but as much as she complained, I knew that she loved it. Becoming editor in chief this year had been her crowning achievement. I knew it meant much more to her than captain of the camogie team, which I suspected she only wanted because Meabh had it all three junior years. This was the thing she actually loved.

But I didn’t like being stuck with Holly’s newspaper friends. I could never relax around them. I was always thinking of whether I was acting right or if the thing I was going to say was stupid. So I told Holly I didn’t want to get in the way at the office and hugged her goodbye. I waved goodbye to Orla too and she waved back, mid-spin.

On my way out I finally spotted Kavi sitting on a couch in the atrium. I instantly felt horrible for forgetting about him all afternoon. I sidled up, worried he was going to be really annoyed, but when he saw it was me, he grinned, so I sat beside him.

“Well, what do I owe you?” I said, trying to make a joke out of it. When Kavi looked confused, I continued, “That was not a plan. That was a full-on martyr mission. Did you get in much trouble?”

Kavi waved me off. “Not as much trouble as the time I swung a golf club into my little brother’s face—even though that was an accident, my parents were still really, really mad at me. Maybe they are just as mad this time. I’m not sure. They took my phone away for a week and I have in-school suspension.”

“In-school suspension?” I asked dubiously.

“For the rest of the week. I sit in a classroom by myself. Just me and Mr. Kowalski. He said he didn’t want me missing class and that I was normally a really good student and that he didn’t think that I ‘fully understood the gravity of my misdemeanor’ at the time. He is letting me off easy because he doesn’t want me to have a criminal record over a mistake. It was kind of tricky when he asked how I got in.”

I hadn’t thought of that, and I winced, but Kavi had thought of everything.

“But I just played stupid. Said the gate was unlocked—I figured there was no way you guys could have relocked it—and I climbed through an open window and accidentally set off the alarm. He seemed a bit suspicious so I need to be extra good I think. And of course now he thinks I’m in love with his daughter so that was a bit awkward. He had a long talk with me today about the difference between love and infatuation and about consent.”

I grimaced.

“It was nice!”

How was Mr. Kowalski such a hippie at school and yet such a demon parent with Meabh?

“Well, that’s amazing,” I said. I felt horribly guilty. It should have been me. It felt wrong to have someone protect me like that. Selfish. “But you took a massive risk.”

He smiled like it was no big deal, which made me feel worse.

“Thank you,” I said, though it didn’t really feel like enough. I couldn’t work out what he was getting from all this. Just another story he couldn’t tell anyone?

At that moment Mr. Kowalski stepped out of his office. Immediately Kavi flopped onto my shoulder and began wailing at the top of his lungs.

“SHE’S THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WHOLE WORLD BUT SHE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW I EXIST.” He flailed backward and collapsed on the sofa with a hand over his forehead like an old movie star dying of consumption.

I waved at Mr. Kowalski with one hand and patted Kavi’s knee with the other.

Mam was already home when I got there. I tensed, on the lookout for signs of Dad. Nothing. My shoulders dropped. I should have realized he wasn’t there when I didn’t see the mark of Satan hovering over the building. Mam was hanging laundry in the windows. There wasn’t anywhere to dry clothes in our flat so I’d stuck a nail in either side of the wall beside the window and hung my own makeshift washing line. It was very effective but Mam always complained that you could see our laundry from the ground outside since the blind broke and the landlord wouldn’t replace it. Apparently, the fact that the cord on a twenty-year-old blind snapped was due to misuse and not normal wear and tear and so it wasn’t his responsibility.

“You’re back early,” I said, a tight squeeze in my throat as I tried to sound casual. It’s not even humanly possible to sound casual if you’re not. It’s like licking your elbow: it seems like it should be possible but it isn’t.

I squeezed up beside her and began helping to put the laundry out. She smelled like strawberry mist.

“Oh, crashed around lunchtime. I was wrecked. Nadine let me go home.”

Great. It wasn’t like we needed the money. And obviously she was irreplaceable at work. Mam unballed a pair of socks and hung them across the radiator.

“We stayed up all night chatting.”

“You and Bernie?” I asked.

“Yeah, obviously, love. How did you get on?”

“Nothing exciting.” I wondered how she’d react if I said I’d enlisted a ragtag bunch of misfits to break into school in the middle of the night and got a boy suspended.

She stood absently with a pair of pants in her hand that had nowhere to go. There was no room on my makeshift washing line and no more room on the radiator. She hung them off the door handle and threw her arms round me.

“I’m sorry I left you alone, love. I’ll make it up to you. Do you want to watch a movie and have a crisp bowl tonight?”

I breathed her in, relaxing. She seemed fine. Maybe everything was okay. Maybe I was only imagining the worst, thinking Dad was around.

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Good. Because I already bought these.” She broke away from me and went to the cupboard, pulling out three sharing bags of different pickled-onion-flavored crisps. The greatest and most underrated crisp flavor.

We put on our favorite film, Dating Amber, and put all the crisps in a mixing bowl. We pulled throws around us for the cozy factor. Mine was the red one, worn but so soft. Hers was the green-and-blue one, bobbly but toasty.

However, even before Amber and Eddie started fake dating Mam was back texting. I tried giving her a few pointed looks and loud sighs. It’s no fun watching a film when the person you’re with is on their phone. You might as well be watching it on your own. Holly did it all the time and I hated it.

“I’m going to the loo. You don’t have to pause it though,” I said about half an hour in.

“All right, love.”

Mam’s room was dark and I knew she’d see the light if I turned it on, so I used the flashlight on my phone. Her red sports bag was on her bed, along with three folded tops that she must not have worn when she was away. I shone the light into the bag. It was empty except for half a pack of gum and a crumpled-up receipt. I flattened it out and sighed when I saw she’d spent €5.10 on a garage coffee and the pack of gum. What a waste of money. I looked around, wanting some other clue to jump out at me. I had my suspicions, but I needed confirmation.

I’d just given up on finding anything incriminating when I spotted it. In a ceramic dish I’d made her in primary school. It was painted red and said Best Mam EVER in clumsy handwriting. You couldn’t see the words now, though; they were obscured by the pile of tangled-up necklaces and silver rings from eBay that turned your finger green.

But on top of it all, glinting in the flashlight, a gold ring. My heart sank. I knew that ring and I knew it lived in the back of my mam’s sock drawer in a little gauzy pouch most of the time. I picked it up and inspected it, somehow hoping it was an identical but different ring. One that didn’t have the engraving I saw when I picked it up and held it to the light.

LISA & AIDAN ♥

I spent the next two days on high alert. After school I’d walk the whole length of the street, past our flat, and double back again before I went upstairs. I didn’t know what I’d do if I saw his car. I had imaginary conversations with him in my head, where I’d take him aside and tell him clearly and firmly that his presence was unwanted and that he should go back to his real wife or I’d tell her that he was coming around here again. In reality, if I did see his car I probably wouldn’t go home. I’d turn right around, turn off my phone, and find a cave to live in instead.

Mam always worked late on Thursday, but then she said she was also going to stay late on Friday because the other girl who normally did Friday night was sick. A fine story. Friday evening, I pulled a pile of cushions over to the windowsill, draped myself in my red blanket, and watched for her to come home. If she was really working she’d leave around eight. I only relaxed when I saw her walking up the street around eight forty.

Unless she knew I’d be watching and she got him to drop her one street over.

Well, as long as he wasn’t coming up here, that was something for now. Still, I wondered how I could get Mam to see that he wasn’t worth having around. If she dumped him for a change then surely she wouldn’t be so badly affected. On TV the characters are always having deep realizations about their own lives when they perform in the school play. I couldn’t sign Mam up for a local drama group, but maybe a different kind of narrative kick up the butt?

Saturday night I could feel some kind of calm. Mam stayed in with me and Holly came round and I made us all watch a really awful film called The Other Woman about three women who team up to get revenge on the same cheating man. I kept giving Mam side glances through the first ten minutes, but then Holly and Mam began talking about hairstyles for curly hair, and halfway through Mam started giving Holly a bloody updo and going on about how Holly could probably go blonde if she wanted to but why would you ruin your gorgeous red hair for that. I huffed and stuffed Oreos into my mouth and made very relevant remarks about the film. Like, “People who cheat are just really selfish. They only want to have their cake and eat it too.” Both of them ignored me and I realized I should have told Holly what was going on so she could have been in on it. I didn’t know why I hadn’t told her yet. I felt embarrassed.

Sunday morning I made Mam breakfast in bed. I bet Dad never did that. He never could because he would never live with us. Because he would never leave his wife.

I climbed into Mam’s bed with her and sipped on a cup of tea.

“This is nice, isn’t it? The two of us on a Sunday morning,” I said cheerfully. “How’s your eggs?”

“Perfect, love. What’s brought this on?” she asked, with a mouthful of toast.

“Just wanted to spend some time with my favorite . . . mother.” I almost said parent, but I thought that would be a bit too pointed. “Remember the time we went on holidays to Galway?”

If anyone ever asked me a time in my life when I was really happy, that’s what I’d pick. It was hazy, but I remember me and Mam washing sand from between our toes and skin that smelled like coconut sunscreen. I remember feeling peaceful. There was no drinking that week, she didn’t need it. And I wasn’t worried; it was back when I believed her when she said there’d be no drinking ever again.

“I don’t know if staying in your auntie Jacinta’s house while she was in Spain really counts as a holiday.” She gave me an apologetic smile. “I promise I’ll take you on a proper holiday someday.”

“It was proper,” I protested. “We went to the beach. We got ice cream. We had barbecues. Just the two of us. It was brilliant.”

“I remember getting you ice cream from the corner shop because the ice-cream van on the beach was twice the price. And you cried because you really wanted to get one from the van.”

This was not going the way I’d envisioned. I tried not to show my hurt that she kept batting away my good memories like they were nothing. I needed to keep things upbeat. Mam was always so blue whenever Dad was gone and she didn’t appreciate that we could be happy, just the two of us. If she’d only see how much we already had.

“We don’t need money to be happy, Mam. I cried because I saw a dead crab, too. Like let’s not put too much emphasis on what an eight-year-old cries about.”

“You’re right, love, money doesn’t buy happiness.” She pulled my head toward her and kissed my temple and I could smell a faint whiff of her perfume. Her Mam smell. “Family is what’s important.”

“And we’re a perfect family,” I said. “Just the way we are.”

There. I’d said it. I’d let her know I knew, without saying the words. Maybe we could at least talk about it. It was up to her now. If she said anything, even if she just asked me why I was being weird, I’d take it as a sign to tell her how I felt.

She didn’t meet my eyes. Instead she took a long sip of her tea. Then she frowned and opened her mouth. I held my breath.

“Did you forget my sweetener?”