Asking for It (24 page)

I see the photos etched through the thin veil of my eyelids. (Bryan has seen those photos.) Pink flesh. Splayed legs. Slut, bitch, whore.

‘Or tonight?’ he continues. ‘I wouldn’t mind going to the cinema. Do you want to come?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

‘Well, what about heading to the arts centre?’ he says, even though he hates the theatre. ‘The Players are doing
Mole
. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ He pauses, checking his phone again. ‘Mole? Molly?’

‘It’s pronounced Moll.’

‘Will we go? You enjoyed that other play, didn’t you?’

We had gone to see the Toom Players’ production of
Juno and the Paycock
last year. We arrived at the arts centre ten minutes before the show was about to start, Bryan’s face turning pale when he realized the playwright’s name was Sean O’Casey, taking a sneaky look at me to see if I had noticed. I still thought then that it might all die down.

‘Shit,’ Bryan had said when his phone rang, a photo of Jen coming up on the screen. ‘I have to take this.’

He stepped away. A surge of people pushed from behind.

‘Sorry,’ I said to the person I bumped into, before realizing that it was Danny the Taxi, one arm wrapped proprietarily around a girl who had fake tan staining her elbows. He didn’t turn around, too busy arguing with the ticket seller, huffing in disgust when he was told that it was all sold out.

‘I have two spare tickets,’ I told them.

Mam and Dad were supposed to come too, but they had decided against it at the last minute. Bryan and I had left without them, neither of us mentioning Mam’s red-rimmed eyes and Dad’s stony face. Danny the Taxi turned, physically recoiling when he saw me.

He went back to the girl at the ticket office. ‘Are you sure there are none left? Any at all?’

She looked from him to me, and then back at him. ‘Did you not hear that girl behind you? She has two spare tickets.’

‘Yeah, well,’ he said. ‘I’m not that desperate.’

Bryan came back.

‘Bryan, my man,’ Danny punched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘What’s this about spare tickets?’

Bryan gave them to him, refusing to allow Danny to pay for them. ‘Nah, sure they’re paid for by the parents, don’t sweat it.’ Danny promised him a free spin home after his next night out. We went into the dark theatre, and no one turned to look at me, most of the audience were Mam and Dad’s age and probably hadn’t even seen the Easy Emma page. (They haven’t seen it, Emma. They haven’t seen it, that man isn’t looking at you, he isn’t, he isn’t, he isn’t. He hasn’t seen your tits and thought they were too small. Pink flesh and splayed legs. He didn’t comment that at least your ass was amazing. Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it.)

‘You all right, Emmie?’ Bryan had asked me as we took our seats. ‘I’m fine,’ I replied automatically. Danny and his date sat in the seats directly in front of us, where my parents should have been, and he leaned over to whisper something in her ear. She stiffened, slowly turning her head to look at me. (I had thought he was my friend.)
Slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore.
The lights went down and we stood for the national anthem.
Slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore.
The curtains drew back and the actors appeared on stage.
Slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore.
At the interval we had tea in the club bar, we bought tickets for the raffle. It was for a good cause, they said.
Slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore.
In the car on the way home, Bryan asked me what I thought of the play, had I enjoyed it, wasn’t I glad that I had come out after all? And I realized he hadn’t even noticed.

‘I’m not really in the form for the theatre tonight,’ I tell him now, still curled on my side facing the wall. He reaches out to touch my shoulder, and I can feel my breath clotting again, getting shorter and tighter. It’s only Bryan, I tell myself, but I can’t,
I can’t
, and I have to shrug him off me.

‘Everyone is always looking at me,’ I whisper, the words breaking from my throat.

‘People have always looked at you. Remember when we were kids? Mam couldn’t take us to the park to feed the ducks without twenty different people stopping her to tell her you should be a child model.’

I had liked it before. I had encouraged them.

(Maybe I had been asking for it.)

‘I’m not going, Bryan. Just leave it.’ I close my eyes again and start counting silently. I only reach five when I hear my bedroom door close quietly behind him.

*

‘Where’s Dad?’ Bryan asks my mother when we’re having dinner. ‘Shouldn’t he be home at this stage?’

‘He’s gone to the pub for a few drinks.’

With who? I want to ask her. Who does he have to drink with any more, since Ciarán O’Brien declared war against him? (My fault.)

‘Maybe you could go meet him for one,’ she says. ‘I’m sure he’d like that.’

‘No, I’m grand,’ Bryan says. He smiles at me. It’s a collection of teeth,
all the better to eat you with, my dear
, and I have to remember to breathe. Bryan is safe. Bryan is good. Bryan would never hurt me.

‘You sure?’ she asks, and Bryan nods. Does he want to go out for a drink?

I count the things he could do if it wasn’t for me.

1. Hang out with Jen.

2. Remember what a genuine smile feels like.

3. Have a good time.

4. Be normal.

He could be happy. They could all be happy.

‘OK, then. The two of you go on into the TV room, and I’ll just clear up here,’ my mother says, reaching for her glass. Bryan raises an eyebrow but I shake my head. It is funny how quickly we have become accustomed to this new life, and this new mother.

‘What do you want to watch?’ Bryan throws himself on the sofa, opening up the Doritos he took from the cupboard. He holds the bag out to me as I sit next to him, curling my feet underneath me. I shake my head.

He changes channel again and again. Mam and Dad finally gave in and got a satellite dish after years of saying it would only be
a distraction, and it’s unhealthy for growing teenagers. You should be outside with your friends, getting fresh air
.

‘What do you want to watch?’

I don’t reply, and the silence expands, yawning like a chasm between us.

‘Emma,’ he says again. ‘Emmie. I’m trying, OK? Can’t you just try too?’

But I don’t want him to try. I don’t want him to have to
try
all the time.

He reaches over to take my hand. The sound of our breathing filling the room. His breath, then mine, his breath, then mine, just a beat out of sync.

‘Emma?’ He needs me to say that I’m OK. He needs to know that I won’t do anything stupid.

‘I’m going to bed.’

‘But you slept for most of the day . . .’ he protests as I walk out of the room.

My mother closes the fridge as I come into the kitchen. ‘Oh, it’s only you.’ She puts her hand over her heart and reopens the fridge door, draining the last of the wine bottle into her glass.

‘I want to take my sleeping tablet.’

She nods at me. She doesn’t say,
But it’s so early
, or
Why do you want to go to sleep already?
or
Is there anything that you want to talk about, Emma?
She takes the small key off the necklace around her neck, standing on tippy toes to reach the cupboard that used to contain homeopathic remedies and plasters and vitamins and out-of-date cough syrup and now looks like a mini-chemist, countless clear bottles with ‘Hennessy’s Pharmacy’ emblazoned across them.

‘What the . . .?’ she says, when she finds the cupboard open. She gives me a sideways look to check if I’ve noticed and I pretend to be innocent. She takes down the small yellow bottle, and I can feel myself relax just at the sight of it. She counts them.

‘I thought there were twenty-six?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say as I grab the tablet off her.

‘Tongue?’

I show her my empty mouth gladly.

Sunday

‘Morning.’ Bryan takes an exaggerated look at his phone when I walk into the dining area. ‘Or should I say, good afternoon?’

I make myself smile at him. It seems to mean so much to him now, that he can make me smile.

I wonder if he knows I’m pretending. I wonder if he prefers it that way.

‘It’s a nice morning,’ he says. The rain has stopped and the entire room is bathed in sunshine, but it’s too bright. The sun shows up all of our messiness, the streaky smears on the window panes, the sprinkling of dust like ashes over the counter, the small piles of crumbs gathering in the grooves between the floor tiles. Precious is licking at the ground. When was the last time she was fed?

My brother is sitting at the dining table in the same outfit he was wearing yesterday, tracksuit pants and an old Ballinatoom jersey, flicking his unruly curls out of his face while he eats a breakfast roll, the Sunday papers spread across the table. He should shave.

‘Yuck.’ He fishes out a tiny piece of tinfoil that he accidentally chewed and removes the rest of the packaging from the roll before taking another bite. ‘I got you one too,’ he says after he swallows. ‘It’s on the counter. It’s vegetarian, just eggs and mushrooms in a wholegrain roll.’

I remember when I used to worry about being healthy.

‘I got them to put Ballymaloe Relish in it instead of ketchup. You like that, don’t you? It’s better for you than ketchup. Right, Emmie?’

Stop calling me Emmie, I want to say. I am the Ballinatoom Girl now. I am That Girl.

‘Thanks.’ I pick up the silver-wrapped roll and brandish it at him like a baton. He pushes his chair back and walks into the kitchen area, takes a key from his pocket and unlocks the medicine cupboard.

‘There you go.’ He gives me the tablets, picking up a glass from the draining board and filling it with water. He watches as I swallow.

‘Show me?’ His face relaxes when I stick my tongue out at him. He believes that each tablet I take will cut away at the fog that is obscuring me from him. He wants Emmie. He wants his real sister back, not this imposter.

‘Hey, did you see this?’ He picks up a magazine section of one of the papers. ‘Karen Hennessy is covering
Sunday Life
magazine.’

‘She always does this time of year,’ I say. Karen is wearing the bottom half of a gold lamé bikini, a waist-length wig covering her naked breasts as she sits on top of a huge horse. ‘The new Lady Godiva’, they’re calling her. Ali will be embarrassed. ‘Oh, thank God you’re here,’ Karen had said last year when she opened the door to see me, Jamie and Maggie on the front porch. ‘She’s in a terrible state. I don’t know what to do with her.’ Ali had texted that morning, begging us to come rescue her as quickly as possible when the photos of her mother styled as a topless Marie Antoinette started to flood her Instagram feed. The other two girls went ahead of me, but Karen put her hand on my shoulder, holding me back. ‘What did you think of the photos?’ she asked me. She pulled out her iPhone, scanning through the camera roll. Her body was perfect. I wouldn’t be so afraid of getting older if I thought I would look like that. ‘They’re unreal,’ I told her. We looked at one another. Did she feel the same way I did? Did she think that Ali was a changeling, that it was really
me
who should have been her daughter? It should have been me living here with her, sharing clothes and make-up, and never having to hear,
It’s too expensive
, and,
Do you know how much that costs?

That was the last weekend before everything changed.

I read a little of today’s interview. They asked her about the Ballinatoom Case.
It’s heartbreaking
, Karen said.
My daughter is very close to the girl involved so I can’t say too much. I’ve tried to give her and her poor family space. I don’t want to be in her face, you know?

I push the magazine away.

‘Do you not want your breakfast roll?’

‘I’m not hungry.’

He sits next to me. Clots of black pudding and tomato ketchup are oozing on to the plate, and something turns in my stomach, like a live thing. Before I would have wailed about the smell of pigs’ blood –
You’re, like, so disgusting, Bryan
– but I don’t have the energy.

‘Where are they?’

‘Mass.’ He takes a gulp of his milk, turning the page of the paper. ‘Should be home soon.’

They never ask me to go to Mass any more.

‘What time are you leaving for Limerick?’

Soon, I hope. At least my parents just leave me alone now, the silence pouring around us like water, covering our mouths and our ears, muffling the noise outside.

‘I think I might stay around for a bit.’

I want to tell him to go back to Limerick, to escape from here and never return. There is no need for him to drown in the silence too.

The front door is thrown open with a clatter, and I jump, my heart starting to race.

‘Jesus Christ, Nora,’ my father says once the door is slammed closed again. ‘Would you just calm down?’

‘Don’t you dare tell me to calm down, Denis. Don’t you
dare
.’

‘Well, what am I supposed to do about it? No, go right ahead and tell me exactly what you think I should do about this?’

‘She’s
your
daughter and I’d like you to be a fucking man and—’

‘Hey!’ Bryan calls out to them. ‘Emma and I are in here, you know.’

Your
daughter. No,
your
daughter.
Your daughter.
No one wants to claim me. I understand. I wouldn’t claim me either. I would give myself away to the first person who wanted me. (No one would want me now.)

There’s a sudden hush in the hall, as if they had forgotten that Bryan and I might be in the house.

‘We’ll be in in a minute, dear,’ my mother calls out. ‘We’re just chatting about something.’

They continue their argument in heated whispers. Then we hear the front door open, a hoarse, ‘No, Denis, come back, I didn’t mean it, I’m—’ and a loud slam. The rev of the car engine outside, tyres screeching as it backs down the drive. Something soft hitting the carpet in the hall, so quietly you could almost ignore it. (Easier to ignore it.) Moments pass. Then slow, soft footsteps on the stairs. Isn’t it funny how you can tell your family members apart just by the sound of their footsteps on the stairs? Bryan’s are usually sluggish in the morning, bounding later in the day, two steps at a time. My father’s are more deliberate, taking his time with each step. My mother’s always used to be quick and light. Cheerful, I guess. They used to sound cheerful.