Chapter Eleven
Marty
“Ma! I'm back,” I call out. I want to get this over and done with.
“Aiden!” Mum walks through the double doors from our pool and terrace.
She’s wearing a floaty sort of dress over her swimwear and a wide-brimmed hat that all but drowns her small features.
While quite a bit shorter than Maeve, Mum has the same slim figure and long hair, although it's the dark shade of brown mine is. “How was the gym? Did you stretch?”
“Fine, and yes,” I say, walking to the fridge to get another bottle of water.
“Breakfast is out on the terrace. I managed to save three rashers of bacon from your father’s greedy fingers.”
“Where is Da?” I turn my back on her, busying myself making a coffee.
“Just finishing up after a shower.” She reaches for a mug. “Shall I make you that?”
“No, Ma, it’s fine. I can do it,” I say.
“Your father said you had a great ride. I’m so glad you’re here and able to do that with him,” she says, but I don’t reply.
As I push a button and listen to the coffee machine whir into life, I wonder, not for the first time, why her smile, her questions, her heartfelt concern for me aggravates me so much.
“I’m not sure why you had to go to the gym as well,” she continues. I close my eyes. “Your father said you covered a lot of ground, and you need your rest, and I’d ordered breakfast specially, and... ”
“I wanted to go,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I know but it would have been nice if we’d all eaten together,” she says, unperturbed.
“We had dinner together last night.”
“The prodigal son returns,” Dad says, walking into the room wearing swim shorts and a T-shirt.
He has a newspaper under his arm and his hair is still damp from the shower.
Giving me a quick wink, he reaches for an apple from the fruit bowl.
It is funny how he can say whatever he wants to me – often much worse things than my mother says - and it doesn’t come close to irritating me in the same visceral way.
“Want a coffee, Da?” I ask, hoping his arrival will end my mother’s line of questioning.
“No, thanks,” he says, walking to the fridge and grabbing a beer.
“But before dinner, Aiden,” Mum says, edging closer to me. “You still didn’t really explain where you were all yesterday afternoon.”
I pull the cup out from the coffee machine and walk away, heading towards Dad now that I see him sitting at the table on the terrace.
I hear my mother’s footsteps behind me as I finally respond.
“Ma, I need to be able to do things by myself sometimes. You can’t expect us to spend all day every day together this week. ”
“I don't mind you doing your own thing while we're here. I just worry...”
“That I'll drink,” I finish for her, sitting next to my father as if he’ll provide protection.
“No,” she says after a beat.
“And by no, you mean yes?” I uncover the plate she’s made for me and fuck, it looks good. Bacon, two fried eggs, toast, roasted tomatoes and some fun-looking potato and feta dish that has spinach, oregano and rosemary in it. Yum.
“Okay, yes, a bit. And what about other things...”
I grab some cutlery while rolling my eyes. “It’s a five-star resort for honeymooners and rich retirees, I doubt it's a hotbed for hallucinogenics and poppers.”
“You’d be surprised,” my Dad says from behind his newspaper.
“James, you're not helping,” my mother says pointedly. “It would be useful if you could tear yourself away from the sports pages to support me a bit here.”
My father's sigh is so dramatic in its force and volume that it gets a smile out of me.
“How do you need my help, my darling?” he says, folding up the newspaper.
“Can you talk to Aiden about what this week is all about? About our wishes?”
“Jesus, Mary, and the twelve disciples.” My father's head droops like it’s suddenly a lot heavier.
“Or explain how we're not keeping an eye on him, rather just wanting to spend some time together,” my mother adds. Her hand reaches for mine across the table. Her touch isn’t exactly unwelcome, but my skin still bristles.
“I know, Mum, but I also think you need to trust me. With the drinking thing, especially.”
She sighs. “Honestly, you're right. I know it's more my problem than yours. I think I feel guilty for bringing you somewhere where alcohol is well, everywhere...”
“Mum, I work in a bar, six nights a week.”
“I know, but your uncle is there, and everyone at work knows... about... about...”
“About me spending the final six months of last year absolutely wasted, shagging my way around the Balearics until I drunk-drove a scooter into a wall and ended up in hospital with a punctured lung?” I finish, and silence falls.
“Yes, that,” Mum says eventually, her lips pursed.
“It was a bit irresponsible of you, son,” my dad speaks up and I look at him.
His eyes are straining to read the crossword clues on the paper now folded up some distance in front of him.
I’m not sure if it’s my exhaustion, grief, or the reminder of what a royal fuck up I’ve been, but his light-heartedness and defiantly upbeat sarcasm quickly morphs into something that infuriates me almost as much as my mother’s interrogations.
“Well, it's not every day your boyfriend and best mate dies of a rare blood cancer,” I say, and I’d almost be proud of getting the words out if I didn’t sound so viciously bitter.
Dad doesn’t say anything, but he does hold my gaze and give me a quick half-nod.
“We know why it happened.” Mum ends the short silence. “Well, some of it. Can't say I would have done it, all the same.”
“Mum, your version of rebelling is skipping a book club meeting.”
She leans forward. “I only did that once and it was because I read the wrong book! You'd be amazed how many books were written about women on trains that year.”
I groan as I swallow a mouthful of egg. “The point is, I know I fucked up in Ibiza and I think I also know why you invited me on this holiday, or rather, why you insisted I came,” I say.
“Because we want you to have a holiday. We see how hard you're working. And it's your birthday in a few days,” she adds, like it's an afterthought, which I suspect it is.
“And you think if I was at home, alone, I'd do something stupid like go and get drunk or high.”
“No, darling, we...”
“Yes, that's exactly what we thought,” Dad cuts in, his hands inching closer to the newspaper.
“James!”
“You always say we have to be honest with each other. So, let’s be honest.” He turns from Mum to me. “We do still worry you’ll go off the rails again. And yes, we thought this week would be a trigger.” Dad looks back at Mum. “Is that the right word? Trigger?”
“Yes, well done, darling.” My mum drops my hand to pat his arm, but with her other hand she whisks the newspaper further away from him.
“Then I'll be honest with you,” I say with a sigh. “I nearly had a drink last night, but I didn’t. I didn’t. And honestly, in general, I don’t miss drinking. Really, I don’t.”
“Personally, I've never thought you had a drinking problem, son,” my dad says.
“Says the man drinking a beer at nine o'clock in the morning.” My mother points at the bottle in his hand.
“What? I'm on holiday and we rode nearly seventy kilometres earlier.” He toasts me with the bottle and I jovially return it with my coffee cup.
“I get why you don't want me to drink,” I turn to Mum, “and frankly, I don't want to drink for the same reasons. I know I have to feel all the shitty things that I was trying to run away from when I went AWOL. And I am. Sort of. I’m working on it. I may not always show it to you guys, but I am.”
Mum takes a moment before she speaks again which should have been my first clue. “So last night, before dinner, where were you?”
“I was here in the resort,” I say sounding like the smartass I’m trying to be.
“Well, that was assumed but you were gone all afternoon and no one can stay in the gym that long, and why didn’t you come home with Maeve after she found you?”
I swallow before speaking. Do I tell her the truth? That I met this really interesting woman and she made me laugh, a lot, and I’m not sure I'll ever forget the way her skin glowed in the last licks of the daylight as the sun went down...
No, best not tell her that. Best tell a whopping great lie instead.
“I ended up meeting the hotel manager in the bar. Got talking to him. Had a few drinks - mocktails before your blood pressure peaks - I watched the sun go down, and then I came to dinner.”
“The hotel manager? What's he like?” My mother's interest is piqued now, and I internally applaud my own brilliance.
“Nice. Gay. Arse looks great in linen shorts.”
“Oh, okay,” my mother stutters.
“I'm teasing. I don't fancy him.”
“He must be too old for you too, surely,” Dad adds, and I choke on my mouthful of coffee.
“You can't say anything about that,” my mother says tilting her head back so her hat lifts as she looks at Dad. It's almost impossible to notice the ten years between them now, but I do remember some kids having questions when my dad’s hair went grey a lot quicker than their parents’ did.
I never saw it as a big deal. They loved each other and they’ve always been good parents. In some ways too good.
“Fair enough.” Dad gives her a wink that she blushes at, which I try to ignore.
“Anyway,” Mum refocuses on me, “I wanted to also ask you about your meds.”
My skin is suddenly a lot tighter all over my body.
“You said yesterday that you’ve stopped taking them,” she continues.
“Yeah, I did,” I say, recalling how I blurted that out in one of the few stressful conversations we shared on the journey to Crete.
“Why?”
“Because... because I hate taking them. They make me feel broken,” I say, and I know I am, but I don’t want the reminder every morning and every night.