Chapter Thirty-One
Marty
We have our afternoon on the beach. It starts with Maeve, Dad and me riding in doughnut-shaped inflatable rings behind a speed boat, bouncing over the wake, while Mum stands on the beach taking photos on her phone that are terrible, but we all laugh at them.
After, we get a round of drinks - cocktails for them, a mocktail for me - and we toast each other before all lying back on our sunbeds.
Maeve whines at me long enough for me to relent and hand her phone over to her, and it's only minutes after that that I hear snoring and look over at my father asleep, his head pointed up and his mouth open. I shake my head and smile. Despite how the morning started and regardless of how the day will possibly end, I am glad we’ve had this time together and I know my parents are too.
“It would do you good to sleep too,” Mum says to me from her lounger next to Dad’s.
“I’ll sleep when I'm dead, Ma!” I say with emphasis.
“Just make sure that's long after I'm gone.”
“You'll outlive us all.” Maeve snorts while staring at her phone, hands busy. “Look at Nanna, for Christ's sake.”
“She's not that old.”
“How old is she?” I ask.
“Ninety-one,” Mum replies.
“So she was like forty when she had you. That's old for her generation,” I say, looking at Mum who is staring out at the sea.
“Yeah, I asked her about that once,” she says. “She said she was never much fussed by men growing up, but then she met Pops and they fell madly in love and I was a very happy honeymoon surprise. Or not. I possibly could have been a pre-honeymoon surprise.”
I pause, thinking, calculating. “Wait, so,” I begin. “Pops was sixty-odd when he died, wasn’t he?”
“Fifty-nine, actually,” Mum says with a quick glance at my dad’s snoring body. “Much too young. But that's what smoking all day, every day will do to you.”
“And he died twenty years ago?” I check.
“Yes, in September,” Mum says thoughtfully.
“So he would be seventy-nine now, if he was still alive?”
“Yes, Aiden. Why are you so... oh,” she says as the penny drops.
“Pops was Nan's toy-boy!” Maeve chimes in.
“It wasn't really like that, you know. I mean, I was never really aware of the age difference...”
“You weren't aware?” I say, audacity seeping into my tone. “That's interesting.”
“Aiden,” my mother cautions.
“It's just good to know it didn’t bother you. That it wasn't a problem for you.”
“I bet you wish he was still totally banjaxed most days now,” Maeve says, thumbs still moving in a manic fashion. “He's almost clever now he's sober.”
I don't say anything but close my eyes and tilt my head to the sun, something like triumph also warming me. I'm surprised my mother has stayed quiet but then I feel my lounger dip beside my legs. I open my eyes and see her sitting there.
“Aiden, I appreciate what you're trying to do,” she says looking at me over her sunglasses. “But I'm not sure why you're trying to do it. Surely this thing is just a harmless holiday fling? I can't say I'm completely comfortable with it, but I can at least understand if that's what it is.”
“Ma,” I say, both in warning and with exasperation.
“I've already told you I'm okay with her coming to dinner,” she adds.
“And...” I prompt.
“And I will apologise for... accosting her in the gym,” she adds. “But can we just keep an open mind about how unrealistic this is. It’s not like you have a future together.”
I still stiffen at her condescending tone, but am too busy thinking about the point she raises to respond. I’m stuck on those two words. The future. It's the one thing Jenna and I haven't talked about.
“Sure look, there's nothing wrong with having a ‘holiday fling’ Aiden.” She uses air quotes.
“You don't have to invest yourself in a future with Jenna.
You don't have to go all in so soon.” Ma moves her hand as if to touch me but then thinks twice, probably because she can see the thunderous look on my face.
“You thought Arnie was just a fling at first. What was it you called it, an exploration? Me being curious?”
“And I'm not ashamed to say I was wrong. That was a steep learning curve for me.”
“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 singing The Hills Are Alive from The Sound of Music and 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.
“What do you mean?” She slows and turns to look at me closer.
“Well, Jenna. You don't approve of her,” I say coming to a stop.
Ma points her cone at me. “You said we weren't allowed to talk about her!”