Snowflake

by Louise Nealon

  The week after we went to the beach, Mam was called into the school to talk about a story I wrote entitled “My Summer Holidays.” In my heartwarming adventure, I spent my days at the beach collecting and identifying shells until my mother called me to say we were going home. Every time my mother called me by a different name, like Fiona or Louise, I was split in two and my misnamed counterpart would walk into the sea. By the end of the story, the body count was considerable. The teacher had pointed to a word on the page and asked me to pronounce it. “Suicide,” I said, proud of myself for knowing a big word.

  Mam came home from the meeting with my teacher with a smile on her face. She made us both a cup of tea and talked to me about the story as if I was an adult.

  “The girls—they should walk into the ocean,” she said. “Not the sea.”

  I nodded.

  “The ocean,” she repeated. “Don’t call it the sea—that’s vulgar. Give it its proper name. Call it the ocean.”

  “Ocean,” I tried.

  “See how much better that is? You can taste the sound of it in your mouth.”

  * * *

  That night, she left a letter under my pillow. She had written it in an excited scrawl. I read it so often that I know the words off by heart, though I’m not entirely sure what they mean:

  Ocean. Say it out loud. You can taste the sound of it in your mouth. The word ocean comes from the name of the Greek Titan Oceanus, a great body of water that wraps himself around the earth. No matter where in the world water is, it eventually finds its way back home to its own body where it can be rocked to sleep in the steady breath of its waves. The ocean is where water dreams.

  When we fall asleep, we go to a place where words dissolve and become meaningless, like rain dropping into the ocean. As soon as rain hits the ocean it is no longer called rain. As soon as a dreamer enters a dream there is no longer the dreamer. There is only the dream.

  Blessings

  When we arrive home from the beach, James goes out to milk and we spend an hour and a half getting ready for Cemetery Sunday. Everyone descends on the graveyard for the annual evening outdoor mass. It’s an event that is both a novelty and an effort—a cross between a silent pilgrimage and the world’s most boring outdoor concert. We stand over our dead relatives for an hour and have a nosey at how well or poorly the other graves are kept.

  The headstones are staggered in neat rows. At the top of the hill, there’s a large wooden cross—four meters by two—apparently, the precise size of the one lugged up Calvary. It used to be a crucifix with a life-size Christ on it but some shitheads robbed him, leaving behind a lone left hand nailed to the cross.

  It’s the priest’s first Cemetery Sunday and it shows. His feet are wobbling on the makeshift altar that has been set up on a trailer attached to the back of a Ford Transit van. He’s being a good sport though. Father John is a slight Filipino priest. The community took an instant liking to him because he is affable and able to hide his intelligence, sort of like a holy Louis Theroux. The football team managed to get him down to training. He turned out to be a nippy corner-forward. He seems happy out drinking with the lads on Saturday nights and playing along with the running joke that he’ll see them at mass in the morning.

  The Blessings of the Graves is always a shit show, but this year’s is especially bad. The choir are trying to pass off Leonard Cohen songs as hymns. “Hallelujah” is blaring out through dodgy speakers. They’re on the verse about your one tying him to a kitchen chair. James nudges Mam and whispers something and they both laugh quietly, their shoulders shaking.

  Of course, people have clocked that James is standing at our family’s grave and not his own. He finished up milking late and our grave is closer to the gate so he just slipped in beside Mam. His mother, Shirley, has a face on her like a slapped arse, but she’d never say anything to him.

  I’m jealous of Mam standing beside James. He seems like gravity itself standing all tall and broad-shouldered with his big, strong hands. Hands like shovels our Jim-bob, Billy says. Billy is the only one who shortens James’s name. Jim, Jimmy, Jim-bob. If he calls him James it’s sarcasm, usually to get at Mam. It’s a power thing, I think. Listening to them talk, anyone would think that James was the one who owned the farm. He’s the one who gives the orders and calls the shots. Men who call to the back door are never looking for Billy. Always James. Before James, they looked for my grandfather. Billy prefers it that way. When anything goes wrong in the yard, it’s not his fault.

  We’re standing at my grandparents’ grave. I’m named after my grandmother, Deborah. It’s weird seeing your name written on a headstone. I was told that my grandmother died in her sleep. I learned of the overdose later. It was never said outright, but it was implied by things Billy said when he got drunk and sentimental.

  Then I heard the story about what the church sacristan, Betty, said to Billy one night in the pub around closing time. Betty is a nervous, small woman who isn’t able to hold her drink. Billy was trying to knock a bit of craic out of her, but then, out of nowhere, she shouted that Debbie White was the devil’s whore and should not have been buried anywhere near consecrated ground. Billy squared up to her and said that if she breathed another syllable about his mother, she would have to pick a window for him to throw her through. They still call him Pick-a-Window down the pub.

  Father John is going on tour now, descending from the steps of the trailer to sprinkle the graves with holy water. Ninety-year-old Mrs. Coughlan has been carted up graveside in her wheelchair with a full duvet snuggled up to her chin. She looks as though she’s ready to be tipped in beside her husband.

  Billy isn’t religious. This is the only mass of the year he attends in order to pay his respect to his parents’ grave. He makes sure that the grave is kept clean and the flowers watered. He gets them a poinsettia for Christmas. For now, a pot of yellow primroses graces the gravestones. Primroses were my grandma’s favorite flower.

  * * *

  I’m not here for my grandparents. I’m here to catch a glimpse of the boy who stands at the back of mass. I saw him walking in with his family. He’s wearing a Waterford jersey and jeans. His skin is too tan for an Irish summer. He must have been away. I look in the direction of his grandfather’s grave. He’s hidden behind a gravestone, but I can just about make out his elbow. A holy elbow, if ever I saw one.

  It’s like he senses that I’m looking at him because he shuffles into view and I look away. I end up catching the eye of my old piano teacher instead. She smiles and looks back down at her feet. I feel bad for not smiling back. Audrey Keane has the nicest bathroom I have ever seen. I used to spend half of my piano class going to the toilet. She must have thought I had severe bladder issues. I remember digging my index finger into the wax of the scented candles on top of the toilet cistern and putting my waxy finger under the tap, marveling at the way I couldn’t feel the water through the wax.

  Billy stopped taking me to piano lessons after someone told him that Audrey Keane had gone to rehab. It is socially acceptable to be an alcoholic in our parish as long as you don’t get treatment for it. Being fond of the drink is a form of survival around here. If Audrey had kept quiet and continued to drink at home, people would have still sent their kids to piano lessons. Audrey’s problem was admitting that she had a problem, and the problem was with alcohol, the one thing everyone loved.

  I couldn’t imagine my piano teacher drunk, no matter how hard I tried. I’d lie awake in bed at night trying to reconcile the image of the soft-spoken, elegant-fingered, immaculately dressed lady patiently showing me how to play the scale of C major with the bleary-eyed, potbellied men I knew from the pub. After rehab, she put less effort into her appearance. She let her hair go gray. I think it suits her. I wonder how long she’s off the drink, or if she’s off it at all.

  The moon is out early. The crescent has slipped into the sky like a coin rolling out of its slot. I feel a drop of rain on my cheek and I curse the weather for breaking before m
ass is over. I wait for more but it doesn’t come. It feels significant—a tiny piece of cloud falling from the sky, like a blessing.

  Damsel in Distressed

  I lose my student card, my wallet, or my phone at least once a day. It’s always the same. I tap my pockets. Then I check my coat. I empty out my bag. My thoughts race, my brain goes into overload, and I can’t breathe properly. I feel my face grow hot. I get a lump in my throat, my hands shake, and I tune out of everything. I run, or walk quickly, toward I-don’t-know-where. I’ve missed lectures because I was looking for my student card. I didn’t eat for an entire day until I found my phone in the lost property department of Connolly station. I hugged the barista who found my wallet in the bathroom of a Starbucks. The reunions are emotional, especially after a long separation. I look at them and promise that this time will be different. I will cherish them. Like an unreliable father, I swear that I will never, ever leave them again.

  * * *

  The guy at the security desk should know me by now, but I still have to point to myself in the lineup of missing student cards displayed on the inside of the window.

  “I’m that one,” I say. I look like a child in my photo.

  He slides it under the window into the tray.

  “Thank you so much,” I say. “I won’t let it happen again.”

  He takes a sip of his coffee and turns to chat to the guy beside him.

  As soon as I feel the plastic card in my hand, I am able to breathe again.

  I start to walk over to the balcony by the sliding door, but a lecture has just finished and I have to stop to let a stream of people pass. They’re laughing—all of them—having the best time, while I bumble about on my own, panicking and losing shit.

  I don’t even know why I panic. There’s nothing to panic about. I spend all of my time losing things and finding them again. I’m starting to think there’s some part of me that is doing it on purpose. I’m caught in a vicious cycle. It’s the most mundane form of self-sabotage.

  I go to the bathroom for a break. I join the queue and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. There are blue shadows under my eyes. I’m exhausted from constantly giving out to myself. I’ve been sleeping a lot more since I started college, but it’s the kind of sleep that makes me more tired. I’m beginning to rival Mam in the sleep department. I got fourteen hours last night and I still want to go to bed as soon as I get home.

  I put my hands to my face to cool down my cheeks. A woman comes out of a cubicle. I barrel my way toward the free space and blot out the rest of the world. I sit down on the toilet seat and wait to feel OK again.

  * * *

  The benches outside the arts block are reserved for cliques, smokers, and precocious pigeons looking for food. Even the pigeons intimidate me.

  “Debbie!”

  It has to be Xanthe. My only friend. Friend? Acquaintance? Person who knows my name? I turn around but can’t see her.

  “Debbie!”

  “Oh, hi!”

  She’s sitting on one of the benches with a guy. His arm is around her.

  “Debbie, this is Griffin.”

  “Nice to meet you, Debbie.” Griffin offers his hand and I shake it. I stand there awkwardly until he gestures to the other side of the bench. “Have a seat.”

  I slide into the bench. It feels like an interview.

  “First year?” he asks, pointing to my Norton Anthology of American Literature.

  “Yeah.”

  He nods. “You know you can get that in a secondhand shop for like, a tenner?”

  “Seriously? I’m just after paying an arm and a leg for it in Hoggis Fidges!”

  They laugh.

  “Or whatever the fuck you call it.” I blush, knowing I got the name wrong.

  “You could always return it.”

  “The effort of that. In fairness, they were really nice in there. And I got a few stamps on my loyalty card.”

  “Very true. Every time I go in there I want to buy the whole shop. There’s nothing like the smell of a new book,” Xanthe says.

  Griffin sniffs my bag. “Smells expensive,” he says, tapping the ash off his cigarette.

  “Are you doing English too?” I ask.

  “Oh God no, I plan to get a job after college. No offense. Final year Physics for me.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “It is.”

  “Griff is a genius,” Xanthe says. “He got Schols.”

  “What’s Schols?”

  “They are scholarship exams I sat in my second year. Anyone can do them. If you do well, you get your fees paid for, free accommodation, and meals. A bit of money too. It’s pretty sweet.”

  “Oh.” I make a mental note to apply for Schols and get it at all costs.

  Griffin looks like the teenage son of one of the Beatles. He has a generous mop of curls. A coin necklace dangles in his chest hair.

  “Where are you from, Griffin?”

  “Ardee, County Louth.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re from Ardee.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “We’ve a hoof-parer from Ardee.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A hoof-parer. Don’t know his name. His accent is hilarious though.”

  “You don’t introduce yourself a lot to people, do you? You skip over the whole farming background thing, go straight for the hoof-parer.” He seems like he’s trying his best to embarrass me.

  “So you have a plan then, after graduating?” I ask.

  “I eventually want to specialize in oceanography.”

  “Wow, so like, climate change?”

  “My PhD will examine the Ice Ages—how ice sheets formed and why they eventually began to retreat.”

  “Fancy.”

  “He’s a tutor as well,” says Xanthe, his official spokesperson.

  “Sometimes. It doesn’t pay well, but it keeps me fed and watered.”

  “We should go drinking,” Xanthe says. “Debbie, come drinking with us.”

  “I can’t. I’ve to go home. It’s James’s birthday.”

  “Oh, lovely! No worries, next time.” She turns to Griffin. “Come drinking with me.”

  “I need to go home and change,” Griffin says.

  “Nonsense, you look great.”

  “I like your jeans,” I say.

  “Thank you.” He strokes the exposed knees of his ripped black denims. “These are new actually. Tommy Hilfiger. The label said they are distressed.”

  “How very existential of them.”

  “You’re my damsel in distressed,” Xanthe says, ruffling his hair. “How much were they?”

  “Can’t remember. Two hundred quid?”

  “You know you can get a pair of them in a secondhand shop for like, a tenner?” I say.

  “Ohhh!” Xanthe pokes him in the stomach.

  He smiles, but can’t think of a comeback.

  I say goodbye and walk away, feeling like I’ve won something.

  Twenty-Five

  My head is heavy from drink so I let it fall. I collapse onto the toilet seat until my belly touches the inside of my thighs. I have an upside-down view of the part of me that I shaved for the first time a few hours ago. I’d only trimmed it before—fingered the bristles and smoothed them out the way a mother cuts the curls of her baby’s hair. I wonder if everyone’s looks like a plucked chicken afterward—pink with red spots after the deforestation. The lips still have hairs from the bits I couldn’t get at with the razor like the end of an elephant’s trunk. A sideways tongue sticks out. I’ve never really noticed it before. It’s hard to believe it was always there, poking out of the beard.

  I wish there were other girls in the toilet with me, like when everyone piles into the same cubicle to down the naggins in our handbags and take it in turns to pee. It seems like a waste of a shave for nobody—not even drunk girls—to take a sneaky look to see how presentable I have made myself. I usually whip my knickers down at the last second and close my legs to
hide the nest, or avoid the situation altogether by waiting outside and forging a fake friendship with the toilet attendant sitting on her stool who hands out squares of toilet roll and guards her collection of deodorants and mints.

  I don’t really have girlfriends anyway. Some of the girls in school would tolerate me the way you would a stray cat. I just about managed to make it into the group that sat around the back of the prefabs, but there were boys there too. That only lasted a few months. I only started going there because I was shifting a lad in that group and when he got a girlfriend we stayed friends in the way that you can be friends with lads. He still tried to throw Skittles into my mouth until the girlfriend told him to stop. Then they started going to the shop for lunch and I was too scared to follow them so I used to go around the prefabs on my own and read.

  I inspect what I just squirted out of myself before I flush it away. Foam fizzes on top of the watery gold like froth on a pint. I wriggle about on the toilet seat and start flipping my hair, first to get volume into it and then a few more times for the thrill of it until I crack my head against the cubicle wall.

  The bathroom in Cassidy’s has all the charm of a cowshed in winter. A bird has installed a nest in the corner of the ceiling and splatted its shit down the tiles of the wall. Still, I see that Shirley has splashed out on a new bar of soap for James’s birthday. The top has come off the tap in the sink so you have to twist a rusty nail to turn the cold water on. There’s a knack to it, so everyone tends to scald themselves with hot water. A full-length mirror has been put beside the sink. I’m surprised by how pregnant I look when I stand in front of it. I keep forgetting to suck my stomach in. I’m wearing a black strapless bandage dress and heels that are already giving me blisters.

  The bathroom light is unforgiving. My hair is flat and greasy. My eyes are black, my face is white, and I’m orange with streaky fake tan from the neck down. There’s a spot on my knee. I try to pop it and that’s when I notice the hairs on my legs that I missed while shaving. The most upsetting thing is that I really tried to look well for tonight. I actually made an effort. It took up so much space in my brain to decide what to wear. I’ve been mentally and physically preparing myself for days—even weeks.