Chapter 3
Chapter 3
As I finish applying my mascara the following morning, there’s a knock on my bedroom door. “You decent?” Jason calls out.
I screw the lid onto my mascara and pick up my lipstick. “My lips aren’t dressed yet, but other than that, absolutely.”
He pushes the door open and leans up against the door jamb. “I can handle naked lips. Even though it sounds weird to call them ‘naked.’ That means my lips are naked, like, all the time, right?”
I apply my lipstick and then look at his reflection in the mirror. “Lipstick would look totally weird on you, Jas.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. So, what time are we due at lunch?”
I turn to look at him with raised eyebrows. “ We’re not due anywhere. I’m going to my family lunch just as soon as I put on my jacket.”
“Well, I’ve got a text from Mammy McCarthy here that tells me otherwise.” He waves his phone in the air. “ We’d love to see you, Jason ,” he begins in a terrible rendition of my mum’s Irish lilt as he reads his screen. “ You know how much we adore you .” He looks up at me with a grin on his face. “See? Your mum adores me. Mammy McCarthy clearly has great taste and clearly wants me to come to the Mandatory McCarthy Meal.”
I shake my head and smile. “Only because you flirt your butt off with her every time you see her.” I slip my jean jacket on and sling my purse over my shoulder.
“Can I help it if the older ladies have a thing for me? No, Sophie, I cannot. And anyway, I haven’t had a Sunday off in over a month. Some of your mum’s cooking would suit me just nicely.”
“Well,” I say with a chuckle, “I guess you’re coming with me, then.”
A short drive later, we pull up outside my old family home in a suburb not far from our downtown apartment. As we get out of my beat-up old car, I glance at the expensive Europeans parked against the curb. “My brother and sisters are here already.”
He whistles. “Is that Sean’s new car?”
“You mean the shiny one that looks all dark and threatening? Yup, that’s totally my brother’s style.”
“Maybe your car will grow up to be like his one day?”
“I can only hope.” My voice positively oozes sarcasm. Being like my brother, Sean, is not exactly on my list of to-dos.
“Since you’re the youngest, aren’t you given more leeway? Daddy’s little girl and all that?”
I push open the fence and walk up the path to my parents’ front door. “I’m not a daddy’s girl.”
“Oh, you so are. And I don’t blame you. I’d be a daddy’s girl if I had Pappy McCarthy as my dad.”
Jason has always referred to my parents as “Mammy” and “Pappy” McCarthy. I think he got it from some Netflix show he watched about an Irish crime gang or something. More than once I’ve had to explain to him that we McCarthys are just a regular family with absolutely no links to the Irish mafia underworld—no matter how much he wants us to be.
As I push my way through the yellow front door, I’m hit by the chatter of voices emanating from down the hall, the aroma of my mum’s famous bacon and cabbage with the best roast potatoes you’ll ever eat filling my nostrils. I know bacon and cabbage sounds truly, truly horrible, but cooked right, the Irish way that Mum does it, it’s delicious. Although you may have to simply trust me on that.
I stand in the doorway and take in the scene before me. As always, Mum is stirring something on the stove, giving her firm opinion on something to my sister Abigail. Dad is leaning back in his chair at the kitchen table, one of the last people on the planet to read an actual newspaper, his reading glasses balanced on the end of his nose. He’s flanked by Sean, my one and only brother, who has his back to me as he talks on his phone and stares out the glass door onto the back yard.
My other siblings are two sisters, Caitlin and Fiona, and they’re nowhere to be seen, but I can hear them in the living room with Caitlin’s baby daughter, Lola, and Sean’s son, Simon.
And then there are the partners: two husbands, a long-term boyfriend, and a wife for Sean. My family. A whole cartload of ’em.
“Hey, everyone,” I say.
Mum looks up from her cooking. “ Mo stoirín ,” she says, using one of her favorite Irish terms of endearment as her eyes crinkle with her warm smile.
“That always sounds to me like she’s saying, ‘must Doreen,’ and I wonder who the heck Doreen is,” Jason says quietly into my ear.
I give him a quick eye roll before greeting my family, one by one, each and every last one of them. It takes some time, I can tell you, because there’s a lot of us.
“Jason, how wonderful to see you, love,” Mum coos and blushes as Jason gives her a kiss on the cheek.
“The pleasure is all mine, Siobhan, I promise you. You look extra gorgeous today. Is that a new blouse?” he asks.
“Oh, Jason,” Mum replies as her face flushes.
I shake my head at his blatant flirtation. Jason could charm the pants off a roomful of committed, elderly nuns.
“When you two have finished your mutual admiration session, will you bring that wooden board with the soda bread out to the table,” Dad says to Jason.
“Of course,” Jason replies smoothly. “You’re looking very dapper today, Pappy McCarthy. Have you lost weight?”
And so Jason continues, charming my entire family—the youngest members included with tickles and funny faces, much to their delight—until Mum mercifully announces that lunch is ready. We take our seats at the dining room table on a mish-mash of chairs. The table my parents bought way back in the Dark Ages—okay, the eighties—was never designed to accommodate all of us McCarthys and hangers-on at once. Today, I get the creaky swivel chair from Dad’s office down the hall, and I’ve got to pump it up so I’m not the size of a ten-year-old child next to my siblings and their partners.
As we sit together at the table, we serve ourselves up cabbage with chunky bacon and enough roast potatoes and gravy to feed the entire New Zealand-Irish population. There’s general chit-chat about babies and house renovations and what’s growing well in the veggie patch right now. Apparently, the snails are on attack and the spinach has been ruined, much to everyone’s dismay.
Talk turns to Sean and Fiona’s legal practice, McCarthy to Abigail’s latest success as marketing manager at the tech company she works for; and finally, how amazingly well Caitlin’s new online baby store, Baby-ness, is doing in the breast pump sector. These successes are all well and good, but I ask you, is breast pumping an appropriate conversation while consuming food?
With all my siblings’ recent achievements fogging up the room, inevitably, the conversation turns to me and the state of my life.
Which is just awesome.
“What’s happening with you, Sophie?” Mum says from the other end of the table, and all eyes in the room turn to me. Even the babies swivel their heads to stare at me. No word of a lie.
“Well, I’m enjoying work.” My mind turns to the Cozy Cottage Café. I love it there. It’s got such a great feel to the place, so relaxed and welcoming. It’s like being at home, snuggled up in your favorite armchair but with the yummiest food and an endless supply of coffee. Sure, it’s where I work, but seriously, there’s something about the café that makes your worries melt away when you walk through the door.
“Are you still at that café?” Sean can’t keep the judgment from his voice. “I thought you were going to work for some tech company or something?”
“No, it was a telco. I’m sure of it.” Abigail says.
“You’re both wrong. It was a power company. Nettco,” Caitlin says with authority. “I was the one who set it up.”
“Nettco? Aren’t they government-owned?” Sean asks.
“Whatever sort of business this company is in,” Dad interrupts in his authoritative way, “it clearly wasn’t the right place for our Sophie.” He winks at me. “Was it, love?” Dad is the sweet Kiwi-Irish guy who fell in love and married the Irish cailín while on a jaunt to Dublin way back when.
Jason nudges me with his elbow. “How are you not a daddy’s girl?” he whispers and receives a glare from me.
“No.” I let out a puff of air and force a smile. I’d gone to an interview at Nettco last week, more to please my “all up in my business” siblings than any real desire to start a career in the electricity industry. They didn’t offer me the job, and I didn’t lose a whole lot of sleep over it.
“What went wrong?” Fiona asks.
I open my mouth to respond but am interrupted by Abigail. “Do you need some interview skills training? I could put you through your paces, teach you a thing or two.”
“Abigail’s right, Sophie. It’s very important to know how to interview,” Fiona says with a sage nod. “Do you know how to interview well?”
I open my mouth to speak when Sean waves my sister’s idea away. “Oh, she doesn’t need that. She needs experience. Actual working experience. If she can’t get a paid job, she needs to become an intern somewhere. Methink’st working as a barista doesn’t exactly teach you how to think, does it, Sophie?”
“Methink’st” is one of Sean’s favorite words, and he totally overuses it. But then let’s face it, using the word “methink’st” even just once is overusing it, really.
Taken from old Willie Shakespeare himself, I’ve often thought Sean only uses such words and expressions because he thinks they make him sound all learned and clever. I wonder whether people even understand him. I mean, what exactly are “froward and unable worms,” anyway? Worms that lie around in the garden on little deckchairs, watching Netflix all day?
Jason, who up until this point has been a silent observer in the conversation, pipes up with, “Sophie happens to make the best latte this side of the Bombay Hills, you know. That is a real skill.”
I shoot him a small smile of gratitude, and he flashes me his dazzling Jason version back.
Sean scoffs. “We’re talking careers here, Jason. Making a good coffee is all well and good, but where will Sophie be in five years? Ten? Behind the counter, serving up cappuccinos?”
“That’s a good point, you know, Sean,” Fiona says. “I’ve got an idea: Sophie, you could move back home and take a job as an intern at McCarthy & McCarthy. Couldn’t she, Sean? We need help right now with all these new clients, and Sophie has a finance degree, so we all know she can pick things up quickly.”
“What an excellent notion,” Sean says.
I blink at them in disbelief. Move back home? Work with my brother and sister at their stuffy old legal practice? Are they freaking kidding me with this?
It becomes the straw that broke the camel’s back, and as the camel in this equation, I’ve had enough of this conversation.
“Thanks, everyone, for your ideas,” I say in what I hope is a sweet but firm “don’t mess with me” tone. Really this whole “fix Sophie” thing is getting out of control. They bring it up every Mandatory McCarthy Meal, and I’m officially over it. “I want you all to know I’m very happy where I am right now. I love the work I do at the Cozy Cottage, my bosses are awesome, and I’ve got no plans to work as an intern or move home.”
“That’s good to hear. I don’t want to have to find a new roommate,” Jason says with a wink.
I roll my eyes at him as Dad echoes my words with his own. “Sophie’s right. She’s doing just fine, aren’t you, love?” He smiles at me, and I nod. “You’re all very sweet the way you want to look after your baby sister, but remember, some of you took a while to get your careers off the ground, too. You weren’t doing what you wanted when you just graduated in your early twenties. So, give her time. She’ll get there, won’t you, love?”
“Oh, you are so a daddy’s girl,” Jason whispers in my ear.
“Err, Dad? Sophie’s twenty-five,” Caitlin adds helpfully, which wins a swift kick under the table from me. “Ow! What was that for?” she complains.
Dad’s speech is so sweet and supportive, none of us should need to bother him with semantics like my age or the fact I graduated from college three years ago. Minor, irrelevant details.
His shaggy gray eyebrows shoot up. “You’re twenty-five?” he asks me, and I give a reluctant nod. He looks at Mum at the other end of the table. “Where does the time go, love?”
“I don’t know myself. What I do know is with all this talk about our Sophie, no one’s eating nearly enough of this meal I spent hours preparing for you all.”
“Sorry, Mum,” Sean, always the biggest suck-up with our mum, says, and obediently, we all set about devouring our meals.
Thankfully, the conversation moves onto other topics for the rest of lunch, and I’m let off the hook—at least for today.
You see, this is the problem with not only being the baby of the family—a “pleasant surprise” as my parents refer to me, otherwise known as a whoopsy in the contraception department five years after their last child was born—but I’m also the only one with no real direction in life. I know it, they know it, and I’d really rather prefer to bury my head in the sand about the whole thing.
Later, in the car on the way home, I know Jason’s going to bring the “let’s fix Sophie” conversation up again.
“Okay, Soph, tell me: when you move back home, how do you want your old bedroom decorated? Pastel pink with unicorns and rainbows? Oh, wait, that’s how it looks now .”
“No, it doesn’t!” I protest. “Well, there aren’t any unicorns, anyway.”
“Ha! You’re such a girl.”
“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not. It’s merely an observation, that’s all. Anyway, back to your family’s constant need to ‘fix’ you,” he leads. “What’s all that about?”
I grip onto the steering wheel as I pull up at a red light. “I don’t know. They’ve all got their lives sorted out, I guess. Sean and Fiona both knew they wanted to be lawyers, practically from when they were in diapers. Caitlin always wanted to run her own business, and now she’s like the Kim Kardashian of baby clothes.”
“Don’t forget the breast pumps.”
I giggle. “Yeah, and Queen of Breast Pump-onia.”
“You know, from a guy’s perspective the whole pumping milk out of your breasts thing is super weird. I mean, breasts are easily among my favorite things. I’m not sure I want to think about cows’ udders when I’m, you know, visiting a pair.”
“ Visiting a pair ?” I let out a laugh. “That’s quite a turn of phrase you got there, Christie.”
“What would you prefer I said?”
“Actually, I don’t want to think about you and breasts, be they cow’s udders or otherwise. Roommate, remember? But I promise, when you have that nurse from last night back, I’ll be sure not to make any mooing noises to put you off your game.”
“That would be much appreciated. And no cow bells, either,” he deadpans.
“Definitely no cow bells.”
We fall silent for a couple of blocks until Jason, dog with a bone that he is, returns to the lunchtime conversation once more. “The way I see it, it’s your life. If you want to be a barista, then go for it. You’re the one who needs to be happy.”
I indicate to turn and wait for an oncoming car to zip by. “Here’s the thing: I’m not sure it is what I want to do. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Cozy Cottage, I love the girls there, and I know I make a good coffee.”
“You make the best coffee, Soph. I only wish the hospital were closer. I’d be there all the time.”
“You’d get fat on Bailey’s amazing cakes.”
“Bring it.”
I let out a sigh. “I don’t know. I took the job after I graduated and I guess it was good enough that I just got stuck, you know?” I spy a parking spot near our apartment block and reverse into it.
“Well, three years on, maybe it’s time to get un stuck?”
The thought of leaving the safe, comfortable harbor of the Cozy Cottage sits uncomfortably inside. “And do what?”
Jason pushes the passenger door open with his foot. “Whatever you want.” He gets out of the car and closes the door.
I sit, lost in thought. As much as I’ve loved my time at the café, maybe Jason and my family are right? Maybe it’s time to “unstuck” myself? Maybe it’s time to brave something new?
The thought scares me half to death.