Not My Problem

Of course Meabh hadn’t been allowed out. I don’t know how I forgot about her bananas schedule, but it definitely didn’t include midnight gallivanting and parties. On Sunday morning I texted her.

AIDEEN

How mch trble u in?

MEABH

He said he was really disappointed in me and he didn’t think that I would lie to him. He said he thought that I was above silly behavior like going to parties and sneaking out.

AIDEEN

Above bein norml . . . Cud b worse?

MEABH

It’s the way he looks at me when he says it.

I didn’t know what to say about that.

In the evening I told Mam I was going to go for a walk and get some fresh air and she gave me a funny look because that’s not something I would ever do or say, but she let it go. I met Angela in town to give her her car back. She had somehow survived the party and looked fresh as a daisy in spite of everything.

“Thanks,” I said, handing over the key and getting out of the car.

She got into the driver’s seat and was about to close the door when she looked at me and frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “Tired.”

She put her key in the ignition, her hand on the door handle, about to shut it.

“Oh, come on. Get in, I’ll drop you home.”

“That’s all right. I don’t mind walking back.”

I wanted to keep my life. I had a feeling Angela’s bad driving wasn’t solely down to the dark night and lashing rain.

“That wind would slice ye. Get in the car.”

I got in. At least if she dropped me home it’d be quicker. Mam wouldn’t be alone for so long then.

“How’s your dad?” I asked, once we were on a clear stretch of road.

“He’s not good,” she said bluntly.

I wondered if I could ask the question I was thinking.

“He’ll be okay, though,” she added without me having to ask. It sounded like a warning. Like if he wasn’t okay then God was going to have to answer to Angela. “But I hate talking about my crappy problems. Tell me about your crappy problems instead.”

“Who said I have any?”

“Everyone has crappy problems,” she said.

“Ah, you don’t want to hear about them. They’re stupid compared to what you’ve got going on.” My mam might break my heart sometimes but she wasn’t dying. Not yet anyway.

“Nah,” she said, “I love hearing other people’s problems. Makes me feel better about my own life. Like mine isn’t the only one going to shit.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“Are you going to tell me or not? Come on. My dad’s practically dying. It’s the least you could do.”

I laughed in spite of myself. How could I talk about Mam without being obvious? Should I? It wasn’t like me, but all of a sudden all I wanted to do was talk about it. Like I’d been keeping so much shoved down and I couldn’t hold it in, didn’t want to hold it all in.

“I have a . . . friend—”

“Just the one? Loser,” Angela said, but there was no bite in her voice.

“Yeah. Well. Kinda,” I said, thinking of Holly, even though I wasn’t talking about her. God help me, which was worse, Holly being my only friend or my mam? “Anyway, she’s done something really crappy and it hurt me and I don’t know how to tell her that because she doesn’t take criticism well.”

“You write them a letter,” Angela said seriously.

“A letter?” I said, skepticism leaking out of me.

“Yeah. Dearest Friend, Stop being a pure gobshite, you’re making my life miserable. Kind regards, Aideen Cleary.”

I laughed, but even the idea of saying something like that out loud to Mam made me feel sick. I could imagine the crushed look on her face if I told her truthfully how much she’d hurt me. I didn’t want to be the one to make her feel bad.

“She wouldn’t like that.”

“She’s not meant to like it? People don’t have to like everything you do or say. You know, I didn’t take you for being spineless. You have a whole social enterprise doing mad stuff just to help people. That’s pretty impressive.”

I smiled but it made me sad. “It’s complicated. She doesn’t mean to hurt me,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. People kept telling me I needed to stick up for myself and all I could hear was that I was a doormat. Was I supposed to choose hurting other people just so I could get my feelings heard?

“Doesn’t matter what she means.” Angela rolled her eyes. “It matters how she makes you feel. Why should she get to make you feel like shit and not hear about it?”

“I guess I’m just used to protecting her.”

If I told Mam she was hurting me, she’d feel bad. If she felt bad, she might drink, and I’d feel bad. If I didn’t tell her, then it would just be me who felt bad.

“Well, who the hell are you? Wonder Woman? Jeez. Stop being such a martyr and tell your friend she’s an arsehole.”

“You have a way of cutting through the crap, Angela.”

“I know. I think I should be a therapist or something.”

I wouldn’t go that far.

Angela pulled up to my building and I wondered what she thought of it. If she’d think bad things about me because I lived here. I decided she didn’t look like she was thinking anything bad.

“You got this,” she said.

I got out of the car. “That wasn’t so bad. You only clipped one wing mirror and it’s still on.” I pushed it back into place.

She pulled away from the curb, her gears grinding noisily, and she stuck her hand out the window to give me the finger.

HOLLY

Hey! Do you want to hang out this evening?

I thought about ignoring it, but the idea of not replying again felt like I’d be screaming in her face: I’M MAD AT YOU. I couldn’t do that.

AIDEEN

Sorry. So many favors today. Can’t hang out this evening.

It might have been manipulative. To tell her that I was doing favors and bring up the part of my life I’d shut her out of. It didn’t feel good. It felt like I was picking at her the way she’d picked at me. Was I as bad as she was?

When I got in the door, all the lights were on again.

“Mam?”

“I didn’t think you’d be home so soon,” Mam said. The phrase instantly made me queasy. Why did it matter that I was home earlier than she thought?

She was sitting curled up in front of the TV with a blanket around her legs. She had a mug in her hands and she was watching Fair City on catch-up. I did a quick scan of the room but couldn’t see anything to indicate she’d been drinking. No bottles or cans, but that’s too obvious. Other things like cigarettes that she smoked upstairs instead of using her vape because who cares about tobacco smell in the flat when you’re hammered. Or a ring on the arm of a sofa from sloshing bottles. But there wasn’t any of that. Still, I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling. Instead of going up to my room and tackling at least one piece of the mountain of homework that was due for tomorrow, I plopped down on the sofa and pasted a smile on my face.

“Got a lift home. What have you been up to?”

She shrugged and pointed at the TV.

Are you avoiding speaking because you’re tired, or because you don’t want me to hear you slur? Or am I being paranoid?

“Would you make me a coffee?”

Coffee? Are you trying to sober up? Did you ask me to make it because you don’t want to get up and stumble?

“Sure.”

I stood at the kettle and watched the back of Mam’s head as though she’d slip and give me a clue. Nothing.

“Here.” I set the coffee down on the arm of the sofa. Mam smiled at me and I tried to see if her eyes were unfocused without staring. “I’ll take that one,” I said, pointing to the mug she already had in her hands. It was empty.

“Sit down and relax. I’ll get it later.”

She didn’t put the old mug down until I’d taken a seat. Then she picked up the new one from the arm of the sofa. She sipped her coffee and watched the end of Fair City. She washed both mugs before she went to bed. When she kissed me on the head, all I could smell was coffee. I turned the TV off and stared at the black screen for a while. I wanted to trust her. Or maybe it wasn’t so much that I wanted to trust her as I didn’t want to deal with what came next if she was drinking. Quietly, I checked around the kitchen, in the cupboards, under the sink, in the bin. Obviously she could have hidden any cans or bottles in her room. Maybe that was why she’d gone to bed. Or maybe I was paranoid because it was so hard to believe that a slip could just be a slip.

I was about to give up and go to bed when I had another thought. I crept out of the flat and down the hall. The exit sign on the far end of the corridor was the only light. The bulbs in the light fixtures had blown ages ago and no one had replaced them. The back stairwell smelled terrible, as usual, and I cursed myself for not putting on shoes when I opened the bin room and the ground was sticky and covered in stray rubbish. The bag on the very top of the pile of rubbish in the skip was a Tesco carrier bag tied by the handles. Feeling like some kind of gross bin pervert, I took it and untied the handles. Inside were six empty cans of lager and a receipt. The receipt was from the Tesco in the shopping center where Mam worked.

I couldn’t be certain it was hers. It wouldn’t hold up in a court of law. But I knew it was. The sinking feeling in my gut knew it. I could practically hear the click of the pieces falling into place. I just knew. Like I always knew. I wasn’t paranoid; I’d developed a gut instinct. So it wasn’t just a slip. She was drinking again.

What the hell was I supposed to do about it?

The next morning Mam dragged herself out of bed before I even got up. Once upon a time that might have made me think she hadn’t been drinking after all.

This was not my first rodeo.

She had obviously stashed a can somewhere and wanted to drink it before I got up. She was sipping on coffee again when I came into the kitchen.

“Good thing I’m off today. Didn’t sleep a wink last night,” she said, blowing on her drink. “Must have been the coffee last thing.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be drinking it now, then,” I said, wanting my voice to come out cold and stern so she’d know I was annoyed, but instead it came out like I was making a casual suggestion. Why did that always happen? I didn’t like the idea of Mam being off all day in the house on her own. Doing God knows what. Well, I knew exactly what.

“Oh, I wouldn’t get through the day without it,” she said. The toast popped then and she turned to take it out of the toaster, preventing me from making a very cutting comment about how it wasn’t coffee that she couldn’t live without. Damn it. Obviously I wouldn’t say something like that to her.

“Are you all right, love? You look funny.” Mam buttered a slice and handed it to me.

I held the toast in my hand and looked at it.

“Love?”

“I feel really sick,” I said suddenly. “I can’t go to school today.”

A small part of me thought of Meabh and our almost kiss. I wanted to see her. Feel out her reaction. But that could wait.

“Don’t give me that,” Mam said. “You’re fine, you’re grand.”

“No, really. I feel terrible. I can’t go,” I said, and I applied a very convincing I’m-going-to-throw-up-or-maybe-faint tone to my voice.

Mam pursed her lips. We both knew she couldn’t make me go. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. I wondered if she knew why I was doing this. Was she panicking and trying to decide if I was onto her, or was she simply annoyed that I was in her way?

“All right,” she said, as though she was giving in, as though I needed her permission. “Get back to bed, then.”

I whined. “I don’t want to go to bed. I want to watch the morning shows. Can you make me a cup of tea?” I made a pouting face, like I knew I was being a pain in the arse but I expected her to indulge me because I was sick.

“If you’re really sick, you should go to bed,” Mam said.

I ignored her and curled up on the sofa, looking as helpless as possible. I pulled a blanket around my shoulders, rested my head on the arm of the sofa, and made puppy-dog eyes.

“So thirsty . . . ,” I said weakly, and gave a pathetic cough.

If she hadn’t planned on using her alone time to knock back a few cans, Mam would have found my annoying child act irritating and amusing in equal measure. She would have made a joke and felt my forehead and made me cups of tea. As it was, she rolled her eyes impatiently, but put the kettle on anyway. Even though I knew what I was doing, it still somehow hurt, knowing I was a nuisance.

I zipped that hurt away into a tight secret space and reminded myself that I was doing this on purpose. I was being annoying on purpose. Mam might not realize that I was doing her a favor by sticking around all day, but I was. Maybe if she went the rest of the day without drinking she’d get it out of her system and she’d know she didn’t need it. I could be her annoying detox fairy. She’d thank me later.

All day I followed her around, pretending to be needy and sick. I made her lie with me on the couch. Whenever she’d get up to do something I’d find a reason to follow her. If she was getting up to make tea, I’d give her a couple of seconds and then get up and wander into the kitchen.

“Are there any biscuits?” I asked mournfully.

“No,” she snapped, clearly sick of having a shadow. “Go sit down, if you’re so unwell.”

I started to cry. It came surprisingly easily.

“What are you crying for?” she said, throwing her hands up in exasperation. I could tell she was getting more irritated as the day went on.

“Don’t shout at me,” I said, sniffing pathetically. “I’m sick.”

I did my best impression of being a big baby who couldn’t handle having a stomach bug. I’d committed, too; whenever I went to the bathroom I stuck my finger in my throat until I retched loudly. I didn’t throw up but I made a good impression of it. Meabh and Kavi had texted me to find out why I hadn’t been in school. I didn’t answer. I don’t know why. I didn’t want to tell them the truth. But weirdly I didn’t want to lie either.

“Oh, come here, you pain in the arse,” Mam said wearily, and pulled me in for a hug. “What if I go to the shop and get you some biscuits? What kind do you want?”

Shit. Backfired.

“Oh, no. Don’t. I couldn’t eat them anyway. It’d make me worse.”

“Well, what would you like?” She held me at arm’s length and put on her best attentive-mother act. “I’ll get you anything you want.”

I bet you would. And what would you get yourself in the process?

“No. Really. Can we just watch a movie or something? I don’t want to be on my own.” I was laying it on a bit thick, but Mam just rubbed her eyes.

“Yeah,” she sighed, “whatever you want.”

By bedtime I could tell that she wanted to claw her own skin off. I don’t know if it was because of me being a pain in the hole or because I hadn’t given her a chance to down a drink. She was shaking her foot restlessly and picking at her nails all evening, but when I told her I wanted to sleep in her room, she didn’t seem surprised. She tossed and turned all night. I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid the moment I drifted off she’d get up. I wasn’t even certain there was any drink left in the house, but I wouldn’t put it past her. Whenever she rolled over, I’d roll over. All night I sighed or coughed or got up to use the bathroom so she knew I was awake.

The next morning we were mirrors. Grumpy and bleary eyed and greasy from no sleep.

“You still sick?” Mam said, though words seemed like a lot of effort.

I inspected her. I’d only made her want a drink that much more. One day of sobriety wasn’t enough. She had probably been drinking fairly steadily since her bender and I hadn’t noticed because I’d been caught up in all my favors and problems with Holly and Meabh.

I nodded and rubbed my stomach for good measure.

“Well, I have to go to work,” she said, with very little sympathy. I’d drained every last drop.

I sprang up. “I’ll walk in with you. I need to get some medicine.”

“I’ll bring you stuff home,” she said. “What do you want?”

“No, I can’t wait till you get home. I think I’m getting a head cold and I need Lemsip or something.”

“Let me see if we have any in the drawer.”

I wasn’t worried about that. We never had anything like that just lying around the house. It involved a level of organization neither of us was up to. I bet that Meabh had a whole drawer of emergency things. Maybe she had one of those first aid suitcases. She almost certainly never got cramps in the middle of the night and realized she’d forgotten to buy ibuprofen or tampons.

I was right. We didn’t have any Lemsip. I walked Mam to her work and then took her purse, saying I needed money for the chemist and that I’d bring it back. I walked home with her purse in my pocket instead. She texted me twenty minutes later asking where I was and I pretended I’d been delirious with my new cold. I picked her up from work, claiming that I really wanted some chicken soup and she couldn’t get some for me because she had no purse so I thought I’d walk in and meet her. When she pointed out that there was a Spar near our flat I pretended I didn’t hear her.

We did this for four more days.

I made up excuses to escort her to and from work. She didn’t ask me what the hell I was playing at because some part of her must have suspected and she was afraid that if she asked, I might tell her. I let my phone die and didn’t charge it. I couldn’t face Meabh and Kavi asking me why I still wasn’t at school. They’d be mad, but my sober companion act with Mam was working, and that made it worth it. As far as I could tell she hadn’t had a drink since Sunday evening, or maybe Monday morning.

The problem was, the week had felt like forever. It was exhausting, staying on her all the time, and by Sunday I was getting a knot in my stomach, wondering how long this could go on for. It may have felt like forever, but it had only been a week. Was a week enough for her to start keeping it up by herself? For her to want to keep it up?

The decision was taken out of my hands. We were watching Fair City when someone rapped on the door. Mam and I looked at each other, confused. We didn’t know people who dropped by. Mam shrugged and was about to get up and answer it when a thought occurred to me. Had Meabh or Kavi found out where I lived and come round to check on me? Or Holly.

“No,” I said suddenly, “you sit. I’ll get it.”

It wasn’t Holly. It wasn’t Meabh or Kavi either.

It was weird to see Ms. Devlin outside school. Obviously I knew she didn’t sleep in the gym cupboards and probably had some kind of real life with a partner and children and that sort of thing. But as much as you can know these things, it is never not weird to see your teacher outside of school. It is doubly weird when it’s not a supermarket or McDonald’s but your actual doorstep. Even weirder, she wasn’t wearing gym gear. She had on jeans and a stripy top and she was wearing glasses. I’d never seen her glasses before and yet now that I had it was very clear that she was meant to wear them. They fit her face.

“Uh, miss . . . ,” I said, gathering myself. “I know I’m your favorite student and all, but it’s a Sunday. The Lord’s day and all that.”

“Can I come in?” she asked, ignoring that she was interrupting my good praying time.

In response, I slid through the smallest gap I could manage and closed the door behind me.

“May I come in,” I corrected her, flashing her a beaming smile. “Sorry. It’s not really a good time, miss. My mam . . .” I sort of trailed off, not sure what would be a good enough excuse.

“I’d really like to speak with your mother, Aideen. I’ve been calling her mobile but it’s off.”

I was confused for a second; then I remembered it was my mobile she’d been ringing.

“She’s really sick, miss. She’s in bed now actually.” I dropped my voice to a stage whisper as though I was trying not to disturb her.

Ms. Devlin raised her eyebrows. “Lurgy, is it? Gangrene? Quinsy?”

I made a mental note to google quinsy.

Forcing a laugh, I shook my head. “No, miss, regular old flu.”

“Have you been off caring for her?”

That was a trick question. The social would have something to say about me missing school to care for my mother.

“No, not at all. She’s come down with it today, just as I was feeling better.”

“So you’re feeling better,” she said. It wasn’t a question. It was another trap. Although I’d kind of walked into that one myself.

“Well. I mean. I feel a bit better but I’m still not feeling great. Probably contagious. You’re probably getting all my germs right now. Good thing you didn’t come in the house or you’d be caught in a swamp of germs. It’s so thick with the bastards in there that the air is legit green. I swear.”

Ms. Devlin sighed. She pushed her glasses up her nose and peered at me pointedly.

“You don’t look like someone who has had flu, Aideen.”

“Miss, unless those glasses have some kind of James Bond body-scanning powers, I’m not sure how you can prove that.”

Ms. Devlin looked at me evenly, waiting. Then I realized what I’d said.

“I mean tell that. I don’t mean. I mean you can’t tell by—”

“Save it,” she said in her PE teacher voice. “I’m not here to prove anything. I’m here because you didn’t come to school all week and no one could get through to your mother.”

“I’m fine, miss. It was just the flu.”

“So I’ll see you in registration tomorrow?”

I hesitated.

“Aideen,” she said, and her voice became quiet and more serious than usual. “This is a matter that I should only be discussing with your mother for the moment, because you are a minor. But your attendance since September has been dreadful, and with this week’s absences you are dangerously close to the limit. The school has some discretion but I know that they are this close to contacting the education welfare board and that means there will be an investigation. There could be a fine, which I know you don’t need.”

I couldn’t help but flush at the implication. I thought about what Ms. Devlin must have seen coming here. Things that I forget to see. Rubbish strewn all over the streets and burned-out bins, cars blaring dance music that paused to let one of the boys out and then squealed off, broken beer bottles in the building’s entrance and the smell of the bin room seeping through the walls. Maybe I should have let her in the flat. It was nothing special but it was clean and tidy. I didn’t want her to think that it was like the outside. But really the thing she said about education welfare was a bigger problem. That’s just a fancy term for the social worker who gives you hassle about going to school. I couldn’t have them coming to the flat. I was barely keeping it together for me and Mam. I couldn’t put on a show for the social too. I had a terrible feeling that I would burst. Or that it would burst out of me. The worries. That I might break down and actually tell them that I couldn’t sleep at night because I was afraid that Mam would get up and leave and that she would come back drunk hours later. Or that she wouldn’t come back. I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t betray her like that. I wouldn’t give myself the chance to either.

“I’ll be in tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll be there early! I promise. Let me walk you out.”

Ms. Devlin was not stupid. She knew I was getting rid of her, but I wasn’t stupid either (at least not about this), so there wasn’t much she could do about it right now. There was the worry that she’d pull a Goody Two-shoes busybody move and call the social about her concerns, but maybe if I acted really good for a few weeks she’d forget about it. She could move on to the next charity case she wanted to rescue.

When I closed the front door, my first thought was that I’d left enough time for Mam to find the drink I was convinced was still hidden in the flat, and then I wondered what I was going to do tomorrow when I couldn’t mind her all day. Monday. The salon was closed on Mondays. She’d have the whole day to fuck it up. But when I entered the living room it didn’t look like she’d budged an inch. She was curled up with a cup of tea and beginning to doze off. I crossed my fingers—you know, like, my metaphorical fingers—that this week had been enough to give her a head start. Mam wanted to stay sober, I reminded myself. She needed me to help her this week because the first week was the worst. Probably.

“Who was that, love?”

“Bloody number eight saying we had his Amazon package. I told him we didn’t and sure I went downstairs and there it was sitting in the window beside the postboxes.”

“Next time he comes round, you tell me,” she said sternly. “I don’t want you talking to the likes of him.”

She cared about me. I knew Mam knew why I’d been following her around all week. Hopefully she’d feel too guilty to start drinking the second my back was turned. All the same . . .

“Maybe you should go to one of your groups after work tomorrow?” I tried to sound casual as I flopped back in the seat beside her. “You’ve not been because you were taking care of me all week but you said you were going to, and I’m all right enough to go back to school now.”

“Sure thing, love,” she said, and she took my socked feet in her hands and rubbed the toes. “I’m glad you’re going back. Wee Holly must be lost without you.”

Yeah right.