Chapter 55
I picked Jennifer up from her auntie’s house.
She’d been staying there ever since her parents had decided to go on their weekend break to Prague without her the day after Ronan’s funeral.
Jennifer fumed at how blinkered to reality they were at such a time, how insensitive to make a holiday priority over everything, how could they not understand that she needed to be at home because her boyfriend was grieving and might need her support.
When Jennifer told them to go to Prague without her and said she’d stay at her Auntie Alice’s for the weekend she didn’t think they’d actually go but they did.
So Jennifer decided to stay on with her Auntie Alice even after her parents got back because she couldn’t face being in the same house with them all summer.
Alice was a bit of a rebel in the family apparently and had never seen eye to eye with Jennifer’s mum.
It was over halfway through August and Jennifer was showing no signs of changing her mind about going home and Alice, who had no family of her own, was more than happy to have her ‘spirited niece’ living with her for as long as she wanted.
Jennifer thought Alice secretly enjoyed having the one-upmanship on her high-achieving sister.
I parked my car at The Stable grounds, a local historic site in town with forested walks. Jennifer and me had been going there a lot after I’d managed to break my housebound isolation.
‘This isolation isn’t good for you, Brendan,’ Mum had said to me a few days after the bowling trip with the McCoys when I’d taken another slump and hadn’t left the house. ‘Take it from someone who has previous experience.’
But it wasn’t isolation I was experiencing, I didn’t feel isolated, I was actually beginning to enjoy company; the company of my mum and dad. I hadn’t felt that before. I think I yearned to feel it, maybe we all did.
‘Don’t worry, Mum, I’m working on it.’
‘That poor girl Jennifer has been calling every single day, she’s worried.’
‘I’m going to phone her tonight.’
‘Good. I know the effort to reach out can feel like the last thing you want to do but you’ll feel better for it.’
‘Bowling; case in point.’
‘Exactly,’ she said with pride.
Mum’s smile; there was a time I thought I’d never see that smile again.
‘Mum, I haven’t said this to you but … how far you’ve come, I just … yeah … it’s good.’
Mum pressed her lips tight together so that they disappeared inside her mouth and let them out again.
‘We struggle to say things in this family, don’t we?’ she said.
‘What things?’ I asked, as if I didn’t know.
‘Things that are OK to say,’ she said.
‘OK.’
‘It’s OK to say them.’
‘I know.’
Her hands came up and she glided towards me and held my face. Then she put her arms around me, and I put mine around her. It wasn’t a tight, confident hug. But it was a hug. We came out of it and smiled at each other.
‘Love you,’ we said at the same time.
Mum’s mouth went down at the corners and her eyebrows raised in an exaggerated expression. I don’t know if my face did the same thing or not but it might have. Surprised at saying out loud the thing I felt, at hearing out loud the thing I needed to hear.
‘That was new,’ Mum said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Who are we and what have we done with the other versions of ourselves?’
Mum, laughing gently, said, ‘We left them where they probably belong.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘I don’t know. Somewhere back there,’ she said with a gesture as if she was shooing something over her shoulder. ‘I don’t think we really need to know, do you?’
‘No, I don’t think we do. I think this here could be better.’
‘I think it could.’
‘You know,’ I said, ‘maybe I’ll give Jennifer a call now.’
‘Why wait?’ Mum said.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘why wait?’
Every day since then, Jennifer and me had connected in some form or another; sometimes just a phone call but going to The Stable grounds to walk around with an ice cream from the van had become a favourite on the days when the sun was out.
‘My parents could learn a thing or two from yours,’ Jennifer said after I’d mentioned a possible return to the bowling alley with the McCoys. Mum was ready to beat us all again, apparently. ‘I mean, could you picture my mum and dad in bowling shoes?’
‘I can’t, actually,’ I said, laughing.
‘I mean, it’s quite a change in your parents, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘Over the past year, definitely.’
‘And the fact that they’re trying.’
‘I’m guessing your parents wouldn’t … ?’
‘What? Try? To change?’ She laughed. ‘No.’
‘Do you plan on going back home at all?’
‘No,’ she said defiantly. ‘I don’t. I’m pretty content at Auntie Alice’s and I think they’re content with me being there too.
Plus, Auntie Alice is closer to town, I can walk to tech from her house come September, unless someone wants to pick me up in the morning in his new car so we can drive to tech together? ’ she said with a nudge and a wink.
‘So it’s definitely the tech you’re planning on going to?’ I asked
‘Yeah, same as you.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said and she slowed her pace. ‘Even if I get the grades, I don’t know.’
Jennifer stopped and stood in front of me.
‘Brendan, explain.’
Not that I had been dedicating time to planning my future but I just couldn’t picture myself in a matter of weeks at a new school, with new people, new everything. Something was telling me I needed more, I needed something different.
‘I just can’t see myself going there in September,’ I said.
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t have an answer. Maybe it’s one of those universe things.’
‘Don’t use the universe thing on me even though I use it on you all the time,’ she said. I laughed but she stopped me with her non-ice-cream-holding hand on my chest. ‘No, seriously, what will you do if you don’t go to tech? Where would you go instead?’
‘Jennifer,’ I said, looking at her as directly as I could, ‘I think the question is where will you go if I don’t go to tech?
’ She shook her head as if she didn’t know what I meant.
‘I’ll tell you where; you’ll go to the college you’re supposed to go to because of how hard you’ve worked and because it’s what you deserve.
Settling for tech, which is like the second, probably third, best option for you simply because your boyfriend is there just isn’t right. ’
‘That’s not why …’
‘It is, Jennifer. Look at me. I know that’s why you’re saying you’ll go there.’
She let out a huge sigh.
‘Tech is not third best,’ she said.
‘It is for you.’
She didn’t say anything because she knew it was true even if her modesty wouldn’t allow her to admit it out loud.
‘Jennifer, when you get your results next week and you see all those A stars …’
She took a breath to object.
‘Wait! Just stick with me one second, when you see how well you’ve done … tech isn’t good enough for you.’
‘I don’t think it matters anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s only killing time until I can audition for drama school.’
‘I know, but what happens if you change your mind in a couple of years?’
‘Brendan, I would say you’re beginning to sound like my parents if I didn’t think that that was the cruellest insult I could possibly throw at you.’
I laughed.
‘I know, but really, you’ll be happier somewhere else,’ I said.
‘Without you?’
‘It won’t be without me, I just won’t be breathing down your neck every day in a place neither of us belong in.’
‘I happen to like you breathing down my neck.’
I jumped forward and blubbered my lips on her neck and she dropped her ice cream but didn’t notice or didn’t care. She pushed me away playfully and then looked at me from under the curtain of her hair.
‘Where will you go, Brendan?’
‘Don’t know. I need to think about it.’
‘And what do your parents think about it?’
‘They’re worried, but so much has happened and … I guess they feel like they’ll go along with whatever I decide.’
‘I like the sound of your parents,’ she said. ‘I want to meet them properly.’
‘How’s your bowling arm?’ I asked.
‘Terrible,’ she said.
‘Great, come with us and you can be on Dad’s team, then.’
We laughed.
‘What about a bowling trip on results night?’ Jennifer said. ‘What time you going to pick your results up at?’
‘Don’t know. Want to go together?’
‘We could,’ she said, drawing out the word, ‘but I want to open my results alone, you know, nothing personal just …’
‘No, me, too,’ I said, ‘there’s no way I’m opening mine in front of … well … anyone.’
‘So,’ she said, ‘maybe we should … just go ourselves and then …’
‘… meet at the bowling alley later?’ I said.
We nodded in the same rhythm and then said:
‘Plan!’ at exactly the same time and laughed at ourselves.
‘We are such weirdos,’ Jennifer said.
‘Which I’m totally OK with,’ I replied.
‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Totally.’
We walked around the grounds together, hand in hand, sharing my ice cream, and agreed not to talk, or even think, anymore about things we didn’t have an answer for.
We didn’t actually say very much at all and I think we were totally OK with that too.