“Well, maybe that's how you need to approach 'this thing' with Jenna.” I wave my own quotation marks in the space between us.
She opens her mouth, then closes it again and her chin pulls down, the air emptying out of her lungs.
I look over at Maeve who has stepped away from us and is on her phone, holding it up and talking into it, waving at it occasionally and doing far too many pouts and V-signs with her fingers. She must be recording or live-streaming or something. So much for her having a phone-free afternoon, I think grumpily. I spare a quick thought for why my parents don't question Maeve's behaviour as much as they do mine, but then I don't have the gumption to pursue it. Not when I have to do something to improve my mother's mood before dinner tonight.
I sigh before sitting up and leaning towards my mother whose face is still sullen as she picks at the hem of her kaftan or whatever the fuck it is she’s wearing over her swimsuit.
“Let's go for a walk,” I say. “Let's go get an ice cream. Just us.”
She lights up like pure sunshine. “Okay,” she says, trying to swallow her grin.
“On one condition,” I say. “We talk about anything but Jenna and my problems and the future and just well, anything that makes me want to run for the hills.”
“Okay,” she says. “I think I can do that.”
“You better, because I will run for those hills, Mother. I'm quite fit at the moment, no matter what Dad has been saying.” I swing my legs to the side and stand up. I reach out a hand for her and pull her up, noticing how petite and slim she is. It’s strange seeing your mother’s physical fragility so clearly.
She brushes sand off her legs. “He's been saying you've been too shagged out to keep up, which I probably shouldn't repeat considering those conditions you just set.”
“Yeah, but that's nothing to do with my conditions. That's just not something a mother and son should talk about,” I say with a light laugh and a shake in my head as we start walking to the water's edge.
For the most part, it works. We talk about what we see – a banana boat throwing holiday-makers around in the sea, no fewer than five men around my father’s age also conked out asleep, a team of maintenance men near the beach toilets being bossed around by Jake although he doesn’t see us – and she asks me about my bike rides with Dad, questioning if he's pushing himself too hard. Ma then gives me another lecture about my physical health and doing too much exercise, about being careful of any possible lasting effects from the scooter accident, in response to which I start singingThe Hills Are AlivefromThe Sound of Musicand she promptly shuts up.
We find the ice cream stand and each get a cone with mango sorbet, and my following her choice of flavour makes her irrationally delighted which both irritates and pleases me, another reaction I can’t make sense of. We start our walk back in silence, licking our ice creams as they melt quickly in the heat that is soothed by a fresh ocean breeze. But it doesn't last.
“So, your degree,” she says. I admit, it's not a topic of conversation I specifically forbid, but her hesitant tone and my raised shoulders in response indicate we both know she's pushing her luck.
“What about it?”
“Are you looking forward to going back in September?”
I think about what Jenna and I discussed on the deserted beach yesterday. “I'm not one hundred percent certain I will go back,” I say.
“Why would you not go back? You should finish your degree. You don't want to throw it all away.”
“I only did a year and a half, Ma. And it served its purpose. I learnt a lot. I got to experience college life, and I got to live with Arnie and...”
“But you're so smart, Aiden.”
“So? I can be smart and working in a kitchen too.”
“You can't work for Dermot forever,” she says.
“You're right. And I don't plan on it. I've got more than enough experience to apply for a role elsewhere now.”
“With an unfinished degree?”
“A decent head chef isn’t going to give a flying fuck about that. All I've got to do is get in front of the right person, show them what I can do, get some sound references from Dermot and Craig,” I say referring to my uncle's head chef. “You know me, Ma. People can't resist me when they meet me.”
“Apparently not,” she says under her breath.
“Would you really be that disappointed if I didn't go back?” I ask. “I'll pay you back the college fees.”
She shakes her head. “You know we don't care about the money. Well, we care enough that we want you to understand the real value of it, but you don't need to pay us back your fees. The credit card debt we paid off, yes, you need to pay that back but there’s no rush. I just worry a lot about your whole life being a restaurant. It's a stressful environment. You said yourself so many times in the past that there's a lot of drinking, and sometimes drugs. Isn't that just too much temptation?”
I want to launch into the same speech I've given her many times before. About how the jury is still out if I’m actually addicted to alcohol and drugs, rather than they just became my crutch, my coping mechanism, my escape. But I know I’m walking on thin ice if I dare highlight this now. I also can’t deny how being sober has helped me, and over the last few days, since Jenna, it’s never felt easier or better.
“It seems whatever I do and wherever I go, I end up doing things you don't exactly approve of,” I say in a quiet voice.
