22
Joan was there the day I got my first period. I was late to the menstruation game. The week after Mum left, Aunt Flo arrived. Aunt Flo was not my choice of words. I never got why people felt the need to euphemise body parts and bodily processes. But Joan was of a generation of women shamed into concealing the earthier aspects of the female experience, and so persisted with references to my ‘little friend’ or asking me if ‘the painters were in’.
I came home from school, my underwear stuffed with scratchy industrial toilet paper, and told Joan what had happened. She put on her navy mac, marched straight to the chemist and came back with the biggest packet of sanitary towels I’d ever seen. Jesus, Joan, I’m not bleeding Niagara Falls, I said, as she busied herself with the dusting she had abandoned to help me in my hour of need. Your first cycles are unpredictable, she replied, the gold crucifix around her neck bouncing with the briskness of her movements. Just like your last ones. You don’t want to be caught off-guard in a cream shift dress at midday mass in St Brigid’s, let me tell you. She made me a hot water bottle and chicken soup, and we watched Glenroe before she went home.
Joan had been cleaning for us every Tuesday and Friday afternoon for four years. I looked forward to her visits. I’d sit on the stool at the breakfast bar when I got back from school and she’d ask me about my day and what I’d learnt and which teachers I’d terrorised. She was a petite woman in her late fifties with a bleached blonde perm and a freakish physical strength that belied her diminutive frame. I came home one day to find her clearing out the attic, at Mum’s request. She hauled skis and horse-riding gear and an easel and a stationary bike – Mum’s short-lived former interests – from the top of the house to the shed at the back of the garden without breaking a sweat.
She was picked up without fail by her husband Tommy, a big, smiling man who said the same thing every time I answered the door to him: ‘Lovely day for it.’ He said it even when it wasn’t a lovely day – meteorologically or figuratively speaking. Mum once said that Tommy had ‘a wee want in him’, Northern Irish speak for a person of dubious mental capacity.
After Mum left, Joan started coming every day. I don’t know whether Dad had asked her to take over the running of the house or maybe she intuited that I needed mothering. She did the groceries, cooked dinner, made sure I did my homework. On rainy afternoons, she’d meet me at the bus stop after school with an umbrella.
I asked Joan once if she’d ever wanted children. She said with all her heart, but that God hadn’t blessed them with a baby. It was okay. She felt lucky. She and Tommy had good friends and they had their faith. She played bridge with some women from their local GAA club on Mondays evenings. Tommy had his allotment and his call card collection to keep him occupied when he wasn’t working. He’d been a baggage handler at Dublin Airport for twenty years. On Saturday mornings, they swam fifteen lengths together at their local leisure centre, popping into Brenda’s café afterwards where they ordered the same thing every time: a baked potato with cheese and baked beans for Joan, a full Irish for Tommy. In the afternoon, they volunteered at their local hospice, Tommy driving patients to doctors’ visits, Joan helping them with their correspondence.
Mostly, they were happy. Tommy got ‘a bit lonesome in his head’ sometimes, had inherited a melancholia that ran in his father’s side of the family. Joan took him to their doctor shortly after they were married, the first time he said his legs had stopped working and he couldn’t get out of bed. The doctor told him he was fit and healthy, to get more sleep and go for long walks. The second time it happened, after he lost his job during the big recession in the eighties, he didn’t leave their bedroom for a week. When she finally convinced him to come downstairs, he’d sit in front of the TV all day. She’d come home from her job at the biscuit factory and he’d be swirling a fork absentmindedly around the barely touched plate of food she’d made him for lunch, his eyes glued to the screen. One day, she found him in the kitchen, holding the knife she used to carve their Sunday roast, his finger running along the blunt edge, a passive expression on his face. ‘I just want it to stop, Joanie,’ he said, as she gently took the knife out of his hand and laid it on the worktop. She pulled him close to her, stroking his head, and he let himself be comforted, allowing her to take the full weight of his big bones.
They went to the parish priest – who suggested seeking solace in Our Lord – and another doctor. He warned that if Tommy didn’t snap out of it, he’d end up in St Pat’s, and everyone knew that when you went into the funny farm, you never came back. Desperate for answers, Joan found a woman in the Golden Pages, who was something called a naturopath and ran a health shop in Dalkey. She took the Dart there one Saturday afternoon and walked in the rain along a row of fancy terraced houses facing the Irish Sea until she reached the village. The shop smelt of incense – something foreign, not the stuff the priest uses in mass – its shelves packed with exoticisms like oat bran and lentils. The woman behind the counter listened without interrupting, nodding sympathetically as Joan explained Tommy’s ‘forlorn spells’. She suggested a Mediterranean diet and advised Joan to ditch the deep-fat fryer and start using something called extra virgin olive oil. There was evidence to suggest ginseng was helpful and tablets made from fish. Joan must have spent a small fortune that day. It took weeks before they saw any improvement. But Tommy did improve. Gradually, he started to feel better. He still had his moments, mind, though for the most part they were ticking along. He no longer needed to take time off work, and when he retired in a couple of years, things would be better still, she was sure of it. They were going to move to a small cottage by the sea. They’d been careful with their money, had saved a decent amount.
It was Tommy I told before anyone else about the first boy I kissed. I went to a disco run by the parents’ committee at school. Yiv dragged me along. She said we should do at least one regular teenage activity before we graduated, even if we hated it. The boy I fancied was there. He was at the bus stop every day after school, his tie tucked into his pocket, his blazer slung over his shoulder. He asked me the time once and it felt like a real moment between us. I couldn’t believe it when he suggested we shift that night, and I thought maybe my classmates have it right. Maybe there’s merit in straightening your hair and rubbing glitter gel over your shoulders. Maybe good things come from conforming to the rules. He walked me outside to the back of the building, away from the watchful gaze of the chaperones, and kissed me hard on the mouth, grabbing my breast greedily. He slipped his hand roughly into my jeans. I batted it away and he told me to relax. I said no. He pulled back. Your loss, he shrugged, walking away. Afterwards, searching for Yiv, I bumped into a group of girls from our year. I hear you’re frigid, Murphy, said one of them. Revelation of the century. Everyone laughed.
Tommy was outside waiting for me. Dad was away on business and Joan had insisted he pick me up. Lovely day for it, he said as I got into the front seat. It’s the evening, Tommy, I snapped, my eyes welling up. Ah, there, there, he said, placing an awkward hand on my shoulder. I told him everything. Spared no detail. He sat there, saying nothing, his big, calloused hands resting on the steering wheel, taking it all in. Eventually, he said, ‘Look, I’m not good with this kind of thing, not like our Joanie. I’d like to say it gets easier as you get older, but I’m not sure that’s true. What I can tell you, love, is this – the way you’re feeling now, it won’t last. Nothing does. Not the good or the bad. Best thing you can do is to find the ones who’ll stick with you until the cloud passes, let them love you, don’t push them away. And when the storm does pass, which it will, give back that love tenfold. Do whatever you can to do some good in this world. It gets you out of yourself, you know?’
I reached across the seat and hugged him.
One day, Dad was home when Tommy came to pick up Joan. He’d just landed a big deal and was feeling celebratory. Come in, come in, Tommy lad, he said, answering the door. pumping Tommy’s hand, his gold chain bracelet clinking against his diamond cuff links. Dad offered him a beer. Tommy said no, thank you, he was driving. Dad laughed and told him he was stopped by the guards on the way back from a golfing weekend in Connemara the week before. He’d had a couple, as you do. The guard in charge gave him a wink and told him to mind his speeding, as he sent him on his way. Well, Tommy said, I’m okay, thanks. Dad asked him what his plans were for retirement. Me and Joanie are going to buy a place by the sea, Tommy replied. Ah, you don’t want to be doing that, said Dad. All those old houses, mould everywhere, energy inefficient. Money pits. This is what you need to be doing, he said, handing Tommy a prospectus for his latest development. Triple glazing and underfloor heating and everything. I could get you a deal if you’d be willing to put a deposit down ASAP. Tommy thanked Dad and said he’d think about it.
I left home for university a few months later. Even though I was staying in Dublin for college, I moved into the halls of residence. Dad was rarely home and Joan retired when her arthritis started playing up. I saw Dad every couple of months. We’d meet at high-end restaurants of his choosing, where he’d bump into business associates, leaving me to eat my fifteen-euro starter alone while he worked the room. It was around then I started going to Joan and Tommy’s for Sunday lunch. We had the same thing every week. Roast lamb with carrots and potatoes (no leeks as Joan said they gave Tommy mad wind), apple tart and custard for dessert. We’d sit in their good room, surrounded by photographs of Joan’s sisters’ children on their first holy communions and holding diplomas in their graduation gowns. The TV would be on quietly in the background, playing whatever Gaelic football or hurling match was on that day. Afterwards, we’d have tea and biscuits in the living room, and watch Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments or some other religious epic RTé had lined up for the afternoon. Tommy would fall asleep and wake up during the final credits.
These Sunday lunches were my anchor. I never missed a single one, not even when I decided to become vegetarian. Lamb was part of the routine and it was the unvarying nature of these afternoons that reassured me of my place in the world. I had roast lamb and apple tart and watched a religious epic with Joan and Tommy every Sunday for six years until 5 October 2008.
I became a real vegetarian after that.