Alexandra, Gone (18 page)

“What about you?” Adrian asked Leslie.

“She’s too embarrassed to talk,” Elle explained when Leslie left him hanging.

“Why?”

“She’s not used to exposing herself to strangers,” Elle said.

“And you are?” Keith asked, and Elle laughed but failed to respond to his question.

“Well, trust me, Leslie,” Adrian said, “you have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

Leslie drained her glass. “Thanks,” she said.

By the time the four of them were kicked out of the pub they were friends, laughing and joking and pushing one another down the street under a bright white moon. Adrian put his arm around Leslie’s shoulders and she examined it for a second before relaxing against him.

“Adrian?”

“Yes?” he said.

“Would you like to have sex with me?”

“Yes, yes, and yes again,” he said.

“Oh good,” she said, “that’s a big relief.”

They walked together to the boat, and Keith and Elle kept walking, leaving them to it.

“How do you feel about a bed in a castle?” Elle asked.

“Sounds like bliss,” he said.

“You haven’t seen the décor.”

They walked on, arm in arm.

“I’m not having sex with you,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

“I find you attractive and funny, and ordinarily I would but I’m very tired and today has been perfect and I’d like to sleep now,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, and they walked into her room together and she kissed him good night and they jumped into the single beds and were asleep within minutes.

Leslie was standing in the middle of a bobbing boat wondering what she was doing. She heard the toilet light go off. The door opened and Adrian appeared. He walked up to her and she waited for him to kiss her. He fixed her hair and touched her face with his hand; he cupped her chin and leaned in and his lips hovered close to hers, and she wished to Christ he’d get on with kissing her because her legs were going to go from under her if she wasn’t careful. And when he did kiss her, a deep, wet, soft kiss, she closed her eyes and thought,
This beats the shit out of batteries.

They made love once, then twice, and after that she told him about her surgery and he kissed her breasts and placed his hand on her stomach as she had done that morning and a lifetime ago, and he told her that she was beautiful and that she would always be beautiful, and she cried and he held her, and when she was done crying he kissed her and they made love again.

On the morning that Kurt and Irene’s Leaving Cert exams started, Jane was as nervous as if it were her own future on the line. Kurt found schoolwork easy—he was like his mother that way. Irene had to work a bit harder, but she was happy to do just enough to qualify for Nursing. He was determined to get Medicine. Jane laid out a huge breakfast to feed the pair of them, and when Irene was first into the kitchen Jane pulled out a chair for her.

“Sit,” she ordered.

“I’m not that hungry, Jane.”

“You need food,” Jane said, and she began piling pancakes onto a plate.

As Kurt was still in the shower and they had time alone together, Jane asked Irene why she wanted to be a nurse.

“Because Kurt wants Medicine,” she said. “And even if I studied day and night for forty years I wouldn’t get Medicine.”

“Kurt is your reason?”

“Kurt and I want to go to Trinity.”

“But what if you hate it?”

“As long as we’re together I’ll love it.”

“I hope you’re right. Otherwise you’re going to be cleaning vomit for the rest of your life because of a boy you knew when you were seventeen.”

Irene laughed. “You’re so funny, Jane!”

Kurt appeared, and they kissed, and Jane began to wonder where time was going.

Her son and his girlfriend enjoyed their hearty breakfast while Jane cleaned around them.

“Do you have enough pens?”

“Mum, you bought us about five thousand. Relax.”

“Okay, double-check your bags for calculators.”

“Have them,” Irene said.

Jane put down the tea towel, reached into her bag and took out a twenty-euro note and put it on the table between them.

“Buy some lunch—oh crap,” Jane said. “Batteries. I forgot batteries.”

“What do you need batteries for?” Kurt asked.

“The calculators.”

“They’re solar,” Irene said, and she giggled.

“Oh, right, of course they are.”

“Jane?” Irene said.

“What?”

“If you didn’t have Kurt, would you have gone to college?”

Kurt looked up from his food. It was a question he’d never thought to ask his mother.

“I was thinking about Medicine,” she said.

“You never said!” Kurt exclaimed.

“Well, it was just an idea. After all, I didn’t sit for the exams. I had you two weeks before them.”

“I think you would have been a cool doctor,” Irene said.

Jane smiled and blushed a little. “Thanks, Irene.”

“Yeah, Mum,” Kurt said, “you would have been cool.”

“Thanks, son.”

“It’s a pity you were such a big slut,” he said, and he winked at her the way his dad did when he said something outrageous and thought it was funny.

Irene and Kurt burst out laughing and high-fived, and Jane couldn’t help but laugh along with them.
Cheeky little bastard.

Midway through the exams, when Irene and Kurt had a day off, Martha invited her daughter and her boyfriend to lunch. Kurt regarded Irene’s mother with suspicion, but Irene begged him to join them, so he did, and he was really glad he had. Martha had reviewed the situation she found herself in with her daughter and decided the only way back into her daughter’s good graces would be to buy her way back in, and so at the end of an expensive lunch she handed her daughter an envelope.

It contained two InterRail tickets.

“What’s this?” Irene asked.

“It’s a month’s traveling through Europe,” Martha said.

“But we’re going to Greece,” Kurt said.

“For two weeks,” she said, “and then you’re going to Europe for a month.” She smiled her big porcelain-toothed smile.
Anything the Moores can do I can do better.

“No way!” Kurt said.

“Oh my God!” Irene shouted.

They hugged each other, and then Irene hugged her mother, and Kurt shook her hand awkwardly, but when he moved in for a hug, they bumped and Martha pushed him off. “You’re welcome,” Martha said.

Twenty minutes after that, Kurt witnessed his girlfriend’s mother manipulate her into coming back home on her return from Europe, and as much as he wanted to say something he kept quiet because Irene looked so happy.

At first Jane was unhappy with the notion of her child backpacking around Europe, so she called Dominic and they arranged to meet for lunch to discuss it. The rain had been coming down in buckets for three days straight. Jane battled her way into the restaurant and shook the rain off. Dominic was waiting. They kissed and it was slightly awkward, but both pretended not to notice. She got to business straightaway.

“That bitch thinks she’s so clever.”

“Or maybe she just wanted to do something nice for her daughter.”

“She’s getting back at me.”

“Really? Don’t you think you’re being a bit paranoid?”

“No, I don’t.” She sighed. “She’s saying in no uncertain terms that if she can’t have her daughter, I can’t have my son.”

“I think you’re being hysterical,” he said, and she made that twisted face that made her look like her mother, so he backed down. “Or not—you’re right and she’s a bitch from hell, but at least Kurt gets to do something great.”

“It’s too much,” she argued. “He’s never been away from home for longer than a week, and that was with supervision, and now nearly an entire summer!”

“He’s eighteen,” Dominic reminded her.

“I know, but—”

“But nothing. My brothers did it, I did it, Brick and Mint did it, and we all came home safe and sound.”

“Times have changed,” she argued.

“Times are always changing. He’s not going to war. All he’s doing is strapping a bag on his back and going out into the world to have a blast.”

“Did you have a blast?”

“Time of my life,” he said.

“Alexandra spent two weeks in the Canaries with Siobhan Wilson and Christina Benson. She came home burned alive and with beads in her hair. She said it was the best time of her life.”

“Who are they?”

“They were in our class.”

“I don’t remember them. What was she doing with them?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Dominic. Maybe it was because her best friend was sleep deprived, knee-deep in nappies, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, “sorry.”

“So you think I should just let him go?” she asked then.

“I think that if you are really honest with yourself, you have no choice.”

“God, I hate that woman!”

“I don’t know—maybe you should thank her.”

“For what?”

“Kurt’s seeing you in a different light. He appreciates you in a way he didn’t in the past.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s seeing you through his girlfriend’s eyes, and as a mother you beat that Martha bitch hands down.”

“Yes, I do,” she said, and she smiled. “I can live with that.”

It was true. Since his girlfriend had moved into his home, Kurt had come to appreciate his mother more.

“You’re lucky,” Irene told him one day in his room, “you just don’t know how lucky you are.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“No. Not easy. I live with a woman who doesn’t seem to notice if I’m there or not, and as for my dad, the last time I saw him was over three months ago. Your mum lives for you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s the problem.”

“That’s not the problem, Kurt. The problem is she gave up her future for you and now you’re scared she’ll want to keep you.”

“Bollocks,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

“You’re so full of shit, Irene,” he said, and she laughed.

“Fine,” she said. “Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s a thought.”

Irene was wrong, but it made Kurt think. A whole new world was opening up in front of him—opportunity, his first foray into adulthood, leaving home, university, making his own decisions, living his own life. He was so excited about his future and was counting down the days until he and Irene were on a flight and leaving their childhood behind for good. And eighteen years ago his mum had been standing in the same kitchen, but instead of holding a bag full of pens and a solar calculator she had been holding a baby, and instead of planning trips abroad, preparing for college and a life without Rose, she had been stuck in the rut she still found herself in eighteen years later.

Two days after their exams finished and with packs on their backs, Irene and Kurt made their way down the front steps and toward Jane, who was holding the car doors open. Elle sat on the wall, wearing sunglasses even though it was dull and raining. Rose emerged from her basement flat and stood by her door. Kurt put his bag in the trunk and went back to kiss his grandmother. She hugged him tight.

“Stay safe,” she said. “Life is hard enough without you disappearing on me.”

“It’s only six weeks, Gran,” he said.

“Six weeks is a lifetime, my darling. Live well.”

“I will.”

She let him go and watched him hug Elle, who took the opportunity to slip him an extra few euros.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I do,” she said.

Irene got into the car and waved at Rose and Elle, and Kurt joined her. Jane got into the driver’s seat and started the car, and Elle waved one final time, and they were gone. Rose went inside, and Elle sat on the wall smoking a cigarette and wearing her sunglasses despite the rain.

Jane had felt bad about the ways things had ended with Tom for a number of weeks, and when she eventually got the confidence to call him, she left a message apologizing for blowing up. She asked him to call her and told him once again she was sorry.

Tom had listened to the message, but he was too embarrassed, too ashamed, to call her back. In the few weeks that had passed he had found himself missing her. He missed her smile and the way she twisted her face when she wasn’t happy. He missed her laugh and her calm and caring nature. He missed the devil side of her because just when you thought she was a total pushover, she pushed back, and by God she pushed hard. He liked that. He liked that she was formidable, just like Alexandra, and it made sense that they had once been best friends because in a way they were similar.

Jane missed Tom so much it interrupted her thoughts. She’d be on the phone to a buyer and she’d think of him and lose her concentration. She’d be parking the car and she’d stop dead in the middle of the car park just to remember a moment they’d shared, and only when someone beeped would she resume normal operations. She’d find herself thinking about him and worrying about him, and at night she lay awake wondering what he was doing, where he had been, where he was going, and whether or not she’d ever see him again.

Jane woke up early on June 21 and was up and out before eight. She knocked on Tom’s door a little after eight forty-five, and when he didn’t answer she pressed the doorbell and held it down until she heard him stamp down the stairs.