I haven’t sat at this kitchen table in a long time, but now I’m here, there are questions that seem to slam against my skull.
Why was our house so awful to grow up in?
Why didn’t you ever save me from Dad?
Why did you let him do all the awfulness that he did?
Why did you always, always take his side?
What the hell was the whole Patrick thing about, anyway?
‘You know I won’t be going back to him,’ I tell her.
‘Well then, what?’
‘I don’t know yet. But, Mum, it wasn’t working. Not really.’
‘What do you mean, “not really”?’
‘We weren’t happy. We were just sort of stuck. Settling for what we had. We were just… sleepwalking.’
‘And what the hell is wrong with that?’ she explodes. ‘That’s the problem with your generation. You want rom-coms and feckin’ fireworks every day of the week. Marriage isn’t like that.’
‘I wasn’t looking for fireworks,’ I say softly. ‘Just… knowing you’re with the person you’re meant to be with.’
‘Esther,’ she says imploringly, taking my hand. ‘Why areyou determined to make the same mistakes I have? When it comes to men, just… choose kindness. I don’t know why you went to Canada or what you were doing with who, but… don’t choose what your father was. Johnny is a good man. He is decent. Considerate. I know that doesn’t feel like it’s important right now and that, I don’t know, excitement or chemistry or whatever is the thing, and being nice is boring, but I can assure you it’s not.’
‘We’ve left each other, Mum,’ I tell her slowly, allowing it to absorb once and for all. ‘It’s done. I’m sorry. And right now, all I need is a place to draw breath. Can you do that one thing for me? Can you just… do your job for one second and be the lighthouse until I figure out what to do, just this once?’
This has dislodged the cold hardness within her. We leave it unsaid. She’s never been able to be the lighthouse before. I’ve always had to be my own lighthouse. And I’ve gotten it wrong on the job many, many times.
With something approaching softness in the air between us, I feel brave enough to ask my mother something that has been on my mind for years.
‘Do you remember the way you used to say to me, “You’re so serious”?’ I ask her. ‘I’d never heard other mums talk to their kids like that. “You’re so anxious.” “You’re such a sober thinker.” “You’d do anyone’s head in.” You used to make me feel like I was such a huge amount of hard work to be around.’
She thinks for a minute. ‘I think half the time, I was just trying to figure you out for myself.’
It’s not going to make it right, but it’s an explanation and it’s made things a little bit more OK. It’ll have to, because only the good Lord himself knows how long I will be here.
She gets up to leave. ‘The greatest shame in this life is that we can never see contentment for what it is when we are in it, living in that moment. That’s what it is, a terrible shame.’
Something in what she says cuts through me. For a long time, what Johnny and I had was good enough, until it didn’t feel good enough. But what’s done is done, and that in itself is a strange comfort.
And then, Mum delivers a final verbal shiv to the side. I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not, if she still thinks we can move forward together as a couple, or if she has somehow forgotten all that we’ve just talked about.
‘Don’t worry, someday both you and Johnny will find out all about this for yourselves.’
Epilogue
Four Years Later
I hear the siren of the Garda car well before I see it. I push the bedroom curtain open a crack to see the car coming slowly down our street. ‘Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop,’ I tell it. Sure enough, it eventually slows outside the front door of Hiroshima. I’ll never not fret when I see those blue lights now. The muscle memory remembers.
There are two gardaí on the doorstep, their uniforms making my pulse quicken. ‘Are you a resident here?’
‘I am,’ I tell them.
‘Esther Loftus?’
