3.
Maggie
“Something smells good,” Siobhan commented as I walked up to the front door. She and our neighbour, Bob, were sitting outside sharing a cigarette and a cup of tea again, just as they did every day when the weather allowed. If it were raining or too cold, they’d retreat to Bob’s kitchen and have their tea inside instead.
I stopped by the Greek takeaway as planned on my way home to collect my food bag. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any baklava, but I did get some chicken gyros and a slice of syrupy custard pie I was looking forward to trying. My stomach rumbled thinking about the food. I was always starving right after I finished work, my stomach rumbling all through the bus journey home.
I was hungry a lot. If I wasn’t actively eating, then I was planning what I was going to eat later. It made sense it would preoccupy me so much. There was a time in my life when I didn’t know where the next meal was coming from.
“It does smell good, doesn’t it?” I replied cheekily as I slotted my key in the door and stepped inside, hearing Bob and Siobhan’s amused laughter in my wake. Smiling to myself, I turned on the television, then went into the kitchen to plate up my food. Thursday was my TV night. I recorded episodes of my favourite shows during the week, then binged them all as a treat on a Thursday.
I was sufficiently stuffed by the time I’d finished eating, but like last night, it was hard to get into the shows I was watching. I had difficulty focusing. My thoughts kept returning to him, how he’d ignored me when I spoke. But why? He could’ve at least acknowledged me with a nod or something.
I lost myself in wondering about him again. What was he doing right now? Was he spending the night with someone, or was he alone? Did he think about me as I thought of him?
Probably not, given the way he ignored me when I spoke to him.
There was a bit of a commotion outside, distracting me from my wandering thoughts, so I went to the window and peered through the curtains. A group of drunk people were making a nuisance of themselves. They looked like professional types, too, and from what I could hear, they’d been attending a retirement party for one of their colleagues. I decided they’d probably move on in a few minutes, but then five minutes turned to ten, ten to fifteen, and soon enough, they’d been out there making a racket for almost half an hour. I returned to my window, considering how I might gently encourage them to move along, when Siobhan’s window creaked open from above.
“Don’t you lot have homes to go to?!” my neighbour shouted down at them in annoyance.
“Sir, it’s only nine o’clock,” a man replied, and his friends snickered.
“There are elderly people living in this neighbourhood, I’ll have you know, and nine is too late to be making a racket.”
“Jaysus, relax ya old biddy,” the man responded, a cruel slant to his mouth, and I was instantly furious. Yes, he was drunk, but there was no need to be so rude, first calling Siobhan a “sir” and then referring to her as an “old biddy.” Something in his eyes told me he was a mean sort. He wore a suit, his tie loosened and his shirt unbuttoned at the top.
I could just imagine Siobhan blessing herself and praying to God for patience. The entire exchange was muted on my end because I hadn’t opened my window yet. I was considering coming to her defence when suddenly Bob’s front door flew open, our seventy-year-old neighbour wielding a walking stick as he marched towards the group. Most of them spotted him and quickly scarpered, but that one guy who’d been giving Siobhan cheek remained.
“Come on, then. Take your best shot, old man,” he taunted, and my blood began to boil. The guy thought it was okay to intimidate elderly people outside their homes? What a piece of work.
Bob swung at him, but the drunk guy easily dodged being hit. Without thinking, I was already slipping on my shoes, phone in hand as I automatically dialled 999. By the time I got out the front door, the drunk had somehow managed to take the walking stick from Bob and was making a joke out of swinging it at him.
“Drop the stick and get going,” I ordered, forcing authority into my voice I didn’t feel. “I’ve called the Gards, and they’ll be here any minute.”
The man had the audacity to scoff as he looked me up and down. “Sure, they will, love. You’ll be waiting ‘til Christmas for those lazy bastards to show their faces.”
Oh, he had the gall to call me “love.” Now, I really was fuming. “What the hell is wrong with you? Does it make you feel good to terrorize people outside their homes?”
He grinned. “Yeah, it kind of does.”
“You’re a scumbag.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. I had a lot of experience dealing with people who were drunk or high off their faces, mainly my mother and her boyfriends. With people like that, there was often a level of self-hatred going on, which might be the case with this guy. Did he just not care? Well, it appeared he cared a little because a siren sounded in the distance, and he suddenly dropped Bob’s walking stick and hurried away. I picked it up and returned it to my neighbour.
“Are you okay?” I asked, checking him over. He looked a little pale.
“I’m fine, Maggie. I’ve lived on this street for forty years. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”
The sound of clapping came from above. “That was marvellous!” Siobhan bellowed. “You really stuck it to him.”
I chuckled. “I’m not so sure about that. He heard the sirens and ran.”
At that, a Garda car sped by, still blaring its sirens. It hadn’t been coming to our rescue at all but headed to another incident. I quickly called back to inform them the disturbance was over, and their assistance was no longer needed.
“You were brave coming out to face him,” I told Bob as I walked him to his house. “But next time, promise me you’ll stay inside and call for help instead. It’s not safe to confront unpredictable drunks. He could’ve attacked you.”
“If he did, I would’ve gone down fighting,” Bob declared, and I shot him a fond smile before heading back to my place. Siobhan had closed her window, and the lights were off in her flat, so I assumed she’d gone to bed.
After all the drama, I was ready for an early night, too. I cleaned up the few dishes I’d left in the kitchen, locked up, then hit the hay. The incident with the drunk man stuck in my head, the look of emptiness in his eyes. Grabbing my headphones, I put on my sleep meditation and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to reach a place where my mind was completely empty, and I wasn’t thinking about anything at all.
***
On Fridays, I cleaned for the Connollys, a large family with four children, two dogs, a cat and a menagerie of exotic birds. Thankfully, I wasn’t required to clean up after the animals.
The family lived in a large period house, but no matter how large it was, it never seemed big enough to contain the raucous Connolly clan.
Mr and Mrs Connolly worked demanding jobs, and they were rarely home, which was why they had a full-time nanny, a cook, plus me, the cleaner. Both the nanny and the cook did little bits of cleaning here and there, while I came once a week to take care of the bigger jobs.
Personally, I felt like they could do with me coming more than once a week because three out of four of their kids, though lovely, were incredibly messy. The eldest teenaged girl, Imogen, was the only tidy one. The other three lived like tornadoes. I swear I had dreams about taking all the clutter in their rooms and simply dumping it into a giant bonfire.
The bus to work that morning was packed. I made brief eye contact with him before taking my seat, awareness prickling at the back of my neck. There were few constants in my life, and him being on the bus each day was one of them. I sometimes had a fear about arriving one morning to find him gone. He’d moved away or gotten a different job that required him to take another bus route.
I didn’t even know him. It shouldn’t be such a big fear of mine, and yet pathetically, it was. If he randomly disappeared, I would be unnecessarily heartbroken.
What was I saying? I was already unnecessarily heartbroken over the fact he’d ignored the one and only time I’d found the courage to broach a conversation. Clearly, whatever was between us, if there was anything at all, he wasn’t interested in talking to me. I should be glad for this. It meant I didn’t need to open myself up to possible pain. Even so, I couldn’t stop the disappointment from creating an aching hole in my gut.
I needed to get a hold over this silly obsession because it wasn’t healthy. I kept latching onto to random hopeful thoughts, like maybe he was just incredibly shy, or perhaps he was recovering from a throat infection, and it was painful to speak.
I was also still irritated over what happened with that drunk arsehole last night. Incidents like that tended to stay with me for a while, mainly because they reminded me of my childhood when I’d had to deal with my mother and whoever she was spending time around.
I wondered how he might’ve dealt with the drunk guy. A large man like him only had to look at someone a certain way, and they got the message to back off. He seemed like the kind of person even idiotic, self-hating drunks wouldn’t dare try to mess with, and they certainly wouldn’t be so blasé about making a racket outside his flat at night.
When I arrived at the Connolly house, I said a quick hello to the nanny, Helena, a reserved woman of few words. She was enjoying the quiet hours while the kids were at school. I then said hello to Marco, the chef, who I was friendly with. He always left a sandwich in the fridge for my lunch. Marco knew there was very little I wouldn’t eat, and I always looked forward to seeing what delicious sandwich he left for me each week.
I started cleaning out the kids’ rooms, putting in a load of laundry before laying clean sheets on their beds. As always, Imogen’s room was spotless. All I needed to do was vacuum and replace her bedding.
While changing her sheets, my eyes were drawn to the collage of photos on the wall by her bed. They showed Imogen and her friends on trips and days out. Imogen was seventeen, and evidently her friends were the most important thing in her life. She was a good student, too; her mother often spoke about how she was working hard and wanted to study psychology in college.
It felt pathetic, but a part of me was jealous of this seventeen-year-old girl. She had the life I wished I could’ve had at her age. Doting parents, good grades, a close-knit friend group.
I didn’t have many friends when I was growing up, not because I was mean or unkind, but because I was unkempt and dirty. I was the child other children avoided because they didn’t want to be associated with the girl who smelled. I quickly taught myself how to use the washing machine and how to run myself a bath, but by that time, it was too late. I’d already gotten a name for myself as the stinky girl, and no matter how hard I scrubbed, the reputation stuck.
A chill swept over me as I shook myself from the recollection. That wasn’t me anymore. My life was better now. Still lonely, but better.
I finished cleaning the upstairs of the house by lunch time. The kitchen was quiet when I came downstairs. Something bubbled on a low heat over on the stove. I checked the fridge and found a wrap with cheese, steak and fried onions covered in cling film. There was a sticky note on top that said, Microwave for two minutes, but I was too hungry for that. I tore off the cling film and took a big bite. Even cold, it was still delicious.
The back door was open, and I spotted Marco sitting on the bench at the end of the garden smoking his vape. I grabbed a glass of water and headed out to join him.
“Did you even bother to heat that up?” he asked, gesturing to the wrap. I’d already scarfed down half of it. As I said, I was hungry a lot.
“It still tastes great,” I said, waving off his comment.
“Philistine,” he grumped and took a drag from the vape. It smelled overwhelmingly of cloves, and I could never understand how someone who was so obsessed with taste buds and aromas tolerated such a strong and overpowering scent.
“What’s cooking in there? It smells amazing.”
“Beef stew. Mr Connolly’s favourite,” Marco replied and nudged me with his elbow. “It’s where the steak came from for your wrap.”
Helena appeared at the sliding glass door. She cast us an irritated glance, then slid the door over. “What’s wrong with her?” Marco wondered aloud.
“It’s probably your vape,” I said, gesturing to the slim contraption. “She doesn’t like the smell.”
“She’s always so cranky. I don’t get it.”
“Maybe because her job involves raising other people’s crazy children,” I supplied, and he chuckled.
“They can be a handful, all right,” Marco agreed. “But they’re good people.”
“Yeah, they are,” I noted. “Helena’s nice, though. She’s just a little bit uptight.” I fell quiet for a moment before casting Marco a glance. “I think she might have a bit of a thing for you, but you never talk to her.”
Bringing his vape to his mouth, he arched a sceptical eyebrow. “A thing for me? Are you high?”
I chuckled. “Not high. I’ve never done drugs in my life.”
He sucked in an inhale. “Okay, we’re definitely gonna circle back to that. But first, what makes you think she likes me?”
“What’s not to like? You’re handsome, an excellent chef and a very nice man who makes lunches for the lowly cleaner, even though he doesn’t have to.”
“You forgot twenty-five pounds overweight. Addicted to video games. Too many ill-conceived tattoos, including one on my neck.”
“Don’t be so self-deprecating. Your tattoos make you look hip and cool, especially the one on the neck, and I’d describe you as more husky than overweight. Contrary to popular belief, lots of women are into husky men. Plus, we all have our vices.”
He seemed curious. “Oh yeah, what’s yours, then?”
I furrowed my brow, taking a moment to think about it. “Solitude.”
“You’re addicted to solitude?”
“A little bit, yes. Solitude is predictable and safe. I’m addicted to a boring life.”
“Is that a bad thing, though?”
“A part of me feels like it’s selfish. I deny people the chance to know me, so I can live a frictionless existence.”
“I don’t know about that. I feel like I know you pretty well.”
No, you really don’t.“You know me a little. We talk to each other for ten minutes once a week. That’s not enough time to know someone.”
“You’re right. You should come for a drink with me tonight to remedy that.”
I smiled. “I don’t drink.”
His eyebrows rose. “You don’t?”
I shook my head. “Never have.”
“So, you don’t drink, and you’ve never taken drugs. Woman, you need to start living.”
“I like the way I’m living just fine,” I replied before continuing. “You should ask Helena out for a drink. I bet she’d say yes.”
He gave a laugh. “No, she wouldn’t. She’d scrunch her face up in that way she does and tell me she’d rather consume a bowl of sick.”
“What a lovely thing to say to someone when they’re trying to eat their lunch,” I joked, and he grinned.
“Okay. I apologise. But seriously, what makes you think she likes me?”
“Have I not already paid you enough compliments?” He shrugged, and I exhaled a sigh. “Okay, it’s mainly one thing. I’ve caught her smiling at you when you interact and joke around with the kids. She looks at you with this expression on her face like she’s thinking about what a great father you’ll make one day.”
Marco’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets. “That’s … okay, that’s interesting.”
“Some food for thought,” I replied before eating the final bite of my wrap. “Speaking of food, this was delicious. Thanks again for cooking for me.”
“I’m a feeder. Can’t help it.”
“You picked the perfect career, then,” I said and rose, dusting off my glass of water before heading back inside the house. Helena was in the kitchen studying the colour-coded timetable that displayed each of the kid’s daily routines. She didn’t acknowledge me, so I left her to it and got back to cleaning.