Chapter 12
TWELVE
“Savannah, is Camden in town and nobody told me?”
“Nah. He’s in Japan, I think. Mom mentioned something about someplace. This fucking thing! Agh!”
“Informative as ever.”
“It’s the journalist in me.”
“He’s still on tour?”
“Yup. Why?”
“I dunno. I thought I saw him last week, that’s all.”
“How was Lapland?”
“Fucking cold.”
It wasn’t altogether odd for Star and Savannah to be up here, griping at one another, but I still glanced into the TV room anyway.
When I saw the knitting circle, I literally had to take a step back and then regretted it as I tripped over Beavis and Butthead.
What the fuck?
I retreated to the hallway.
The Twilight Zone?
Shook my head.
Psychedelic drugs?
Then I peered through the door again.
“Oh, stop fussing, Conor,” Ma groused, proving where I’d gained my surveillance skills.
Totally inherited.
But, yeah. No tripping, no Rod Serling—just my woman, my mother, my sister-in-law, and my cousin.
Fucking knitting.
“I’m not fussing!” I shook my head again as I took in the scene. Somehow, the fact that Jennifer didn’t have a pair of knitting needles made the most sense to me. “I’ve seen Star making—”
“Conor! Shut your trap! It’s a secret,” she yelled at me, her eyes promising a not-so-fun time as she shot me ocular daggers.
I held up my hands and quickly pivoted from “homemade explosives” to, “Making her Secret Santa gift and now you’re all knitting?!”
“We’re crocheting, actually,” Savannah retorted, frowning at the very holey piece of fabric she discarded on her knee.
As for Star, the holes seemed uniform, but the way she held the hook in her hand reminded me of a goddamn weapon.
Jen leafed through one of Kat’s Teen Vogues and shot me a desultory wave when she realized she’d caught my eye.
“What’s happening here?” I asked her because she was the only one unarmed.
Star never willingly spent time with Ma, so this whole thing felt like I’d fallen down a black hole and had been spat out in Narnia after vacationing in Wonderland via a detour to Whoville.
“Lena is teaching them how to crochet, and I’m learning about the devolution of the Supreme Court.”
“See, that’s where my confusion stems from. You can already crochet, Star.”
“I can, but Savannah can’t, and I wasn’t frickin’ teaching her. She’s a whiner.”
“Hey!”
“Now, dear, it’s fine,” Ma chirped. “Everyone whines now and then. Aidan used to do it all the time when he and Brennan were small. My little whiner.”
Savannah smirked at her fond tone. “I think I’ll call him that later.”
“Now, Brennan was my stoic one. Always scowling. Conor was a bit of a crybaby—”
“Ma!”
“What? It’s true. He was on the breast for three years—”
“Ma, for fuck’s sake!”
Star halted the craft of ‘stabbing wool into knots.’ “So, that’s where the fascination started, huh?”
“Do not ruin breasts for me,” I protested.
“That’s where all men’s fascination with tits starts,” Jen derided, with a distinctive turn of the page in her magazine. “This isn’t new information.”
“It is for me!” Star jeered, but I saw the gleam in her eyes and knew I’d never hear the end of my ma’s loose goddamn lips.
My ship would not be the one sinking!
So what I’d made her an orgasm machine for the express purpose of fucking her tits? She had banging tits! It was only sensible to worship at their altar.
“What about Eoghan?” Savannah huffed when she stabbed herself and not the wool or whatever disaster she attempted to make for one of my poor sisters-in-law. “And Dec?”
“Eoghan was very quiet. That was probably for the best. Things were hectic with five boys in the house at that point—”
“No shit, Ma.”
“Aidan and Brennan helped a lot—”
“Hit a lot.”
“They didn’t!”
“They did. Knuckle sandwiches in exchange for peace and quiet.”
Ma scowled over the shawl she crocheted. “You never said.”
“I’m not a snitch! And when I cried—” My tone turned pointed. “—you called me a crybaby.”
Though her cheeks pinkened at my wry tone, she harrumphed. “Declan was forever in the coloring books—”
“Until Da said they were for girls and threw them out—”
“Conor, you’re aggravating me.”
I rolled my eyes. “The truth stings.”
“Conor!”
“Ma!”
It wasn’t often that I raised my voice, but I wasn’t about to let her paint a fairytale story about our upbringing in my own goddamn home. Some of it had been fun, some of it had fucking sucked, and some of it was downright brutal.
I wasn’t complaining about this fact of life. But letting her spin her BS wouldn’t serve anyone.
“It wasn’t so bad, was it?” She sounded wistful and I knew she was thinking about the old days. The old good days. At least, in her mind.
“Not all the time.”
She nibbled on her bottom lip and nodded, like she knew I conceded for her sake.
“Well, that conversation became gloomy hella fast,” Jen mocked with a crisp turn of a page in her magazine.
Instead of answering, I stepped into the room and plunked myself beside Ma. I hadn’t meant to give her a hard time, so the least I could do was sit next to her. Beavis did me a solid by snuggling up to her, and she cooed at him in delight.
Then, without looking at me, she passed me a skein of yarn, and my fingers did the talking as I began untangling it for her.
Man, it’d been years since I’d done this, but muscle memory pulled most of the slack.
“So, what are we making?”
“Can’t tell,” Savannah muttered, then stuck her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated.
“Something unrecognizable by the looks of it,” Jen taunted.
“Fuck off and fuck you,” Savannah countered, saccharin sweet.
“Crafting, ugh.” Jen pulled a face. “That’s for Easter—”
“How is Easter the time you give crafted gifts?”
Jen shrugged at Star’s question. “Because you don’t want to mess up the Christmas gifts. They’re sacred.”
“I wouldn’t hate adding another gift tier to the holiday options,” I agreed. “Birthday and Christmastime just aren’t enough.”
“Luciu tried to give out gifts at Thanksgiving. He doesn’t get it.”
“He’s Sicilian, dear. Why would he? It’s not a part of his culture. Do you know what?” Ma paused in her crocheting. “I hate corn.”
My eyes bugged. “How do you hate corn? And what does corn have to do with crafting?”
“I do. I just decided. Your father loved it, of course. Always had me making corn casseroles, creamed corn, corn pudding, and cornbread muffins—”
“No wonder you hate it.” Jen turned green. “That’s corn overkill.”
“Exactly. No more corn for me,” Ma declared. “There’ll be none of it tomorrow, that’s for certain.”
I gaped at her. “No corn pudding?!”
“No. But I’ll give Star the recipe.”
“Gee, thanks, Lena.”
“You’re welcome, dear.”
Either Ma didn’t hear the sarcasm, or just ignored it…
“Heard about the vacation over the holidays, Lena.” I could have kissed Jen in thanks for changing the subject. “Sounds neat. You’re really going with Paddy?”
Jen had started calling Uncle Paddy Dad. Unless he pissed her off.
As I pondered what he’d done, Ma hummed. “I told him he could come if he packed a suit.”
“Ah, so that’s why Luc had to take him shopping last week?”
“Probably. I told him he was too damn old for a woman to hold his hand in a clothing store.” Her scowl turned fierce.
“And I won’t be having him show me up. I also told him he’ll have to shave everyday and none of that low fade nonsense Shay talks about.
I asked Luciu to encourage Paddy into buying some hair gel. He’d better use it.”
“What’s the deal between you two anyway?” Savannah queried then, huffing, threw down her work. “I hate this so much. I’ll never get it and I’m running out of time. Can you buy this shit online?”
“It’s busy work, dear. Persevere. You’ll come to enjoy it.”
Savannah’s expression said she doubted that very much.
“You can, but I’ll tell the person you cheated,” Star chirruped, forcing a grin out of me.
Savannah narrowed her eyes. “Payback’s a bitch.”
“You’d know.”
“Girls!” Ma tutted. “No fighting. We talked about this earlier.”
I’d have paid for ringside seats to watch that.
“As for Paddy and me, well, he’s good for fixing things to walls—” Jen snickered at Ma’s statement. “—and he eats what I put in front of him without much fuss, so I can cook for two instead of one. We have a lot in common—”
“Are you together?” Star asked.
All three women leaned in like they wanted to know.
I, on the other hand, did not.
“A woman has needs,” Savannah concurred to my horror.
“She certainly does,” Jen agreed.
Star hummed. “And Paddy takes direction well.”
I stared at them, aghast, realizing they wanted my mother, my actual mother, to discuss her fucking sex life!
In front of me!
“He—”
When Kat yelled, “MOM! DAD!” relief hit me as Ma’s head whipped over to the door, and I knew the distraction would sustain this conversation until I left the goddamn room.
“I’ll deal with whatever’s happening,” I said quickly, jumping to my feet, dumping the ball of yarn on the floor in my haste to run into the hall as my dogs raced alongside me. “Where are you, Kat?”
“Kitchen!”
Of course, I soon found that was a lie.
“Kitchen? You meant war zone, right?” I gaped at the state of it. I didn’t know what was more heinous—the conversation going down in my living room or FlourNam. “Is that flour on the ceiling? When did you even do that? I didn’t know you were home!”
“We have to bring Christmas cookies into school tomorrow.”
When Ren and Stimpy hissed at my dogs, I picked them both up and plunked them in their bed with the order, “Stay.” Ignoring their whining, I wagged a finger and they settled down with a huff.
The cats curled into balls on the table.
With a battle momentarily appeased, I directed at Kat, “You do know we could have bought Christmas cookies from Aunt Aoife’s bakery? ”
“You’re right.” She whistled under her breath then flicked looks between the ceiling and the mess on the counter. “But that’d be lying, and Mrs. Bosko said we had to make them at home from scratch.”