Snowflake

by Louise Nealon

  There’s one four-word question you must absolutely NEVER ask a man if you want him to be your boyfriend or husband or anything beyond just a “hookup” who you never hear from again.

  Xanthe goes to skip it.

  “Leave it,” I say.

  “Seriously?”

  “Don’t you want to know what this sociopath thinks is the question women should never ask men?”

  She sits back.

  “This gobshite has over 60 million views,” I say.

  “I bet my left eyebrow we have to subscribe to something to reveal what the secret question is.”

  The question is “______you______me?”

  “Well, that’s more than I thought we’d get.”

  I’ve asked a LOT of women if they know what this question is

  and only one out of every hundred get it RIGHT.

  That’s only one percent.

  SO

  Do you know what the QUESTION is?

  A photo comes up on screen of a guy with his arms folded and one eyebrow raised. His list of credentials includes bestselling author, relationship expert, and television personality. The website is called Technical Love. It advertises courses on how to tap into the male psyche and make them want to adore you.

  “People actually subscribe,” Xanthe says.

  “I think I know the question.”

  “What is it again?”

  “Blank you blank me?”

  “And what do you think it is?”

  “Will you fuck me?”

  “Jesus, Debbie.”

  “What?”

  “Wow.”

  * * *

  I wonder if Xanthe ever talks like that with him. Does she buy nice underwear for him or tease him? Is sex a kind of confidence game? Does she perform for him? Or is it more real than that? Is it vulnerable? Has he told her he loves her yet? I shove the thoughts back down my throat. I feel sick. Maybe I can go to the bathroom and vomit out the jealousy.

  * * *

  “Do you like me?” Xanthe asks.

  “Of course I like you,” I say too quickly.

  “No, I’m trying to fill in the blanks.” She laughs.

  I look at her.

  “The blanks in the sentence?”

  “Oh.”

  “Thanks for the reassurance though.” She narrows her eyes. “Sometimes, I think you don’t like me.”

  “What? Of course I like you!”

  “Hmmm . . .”

  “I’m just jealous of you,” I admit.

  “Well, I’m jealous of you too.”

  “What? Why?”

  She shrugs. “You seem more real than other people. It’s the farm, I think. You’re not stuck in the college bubble. I’m envious of you living at home and being close to your family. I couldn’t stand to live with my parents. Not anymore.”

  “I want to get away from home,” I say.

  “Are you OK?”

  She noticed the crack in my voice and she’s going for the jugular. It feels like she’s won. She has achieved her goal for the day. She gets to be there for me.

  Fuck it, I think. “My mam’s not well,” I tell her.

  “Of course she’s not, after all she’s been through.”

  “No, like, really not well. She’s in the hospital.”

  “Oh God. What’s wrong?”

  “She’s in St. Pats,” I say, and let out a nervous laugh. “Just across the road like. She’s not well in the head. She’s never been well. In the head, like. But I’ve never seen her this bad.”

  “It’s been so hard on all of you,” Xanthe says, rubbing my shoulder.

  “I killed James,” I whisper.

  “Oh Debs, that’s not true. It was an accident.”

  “It’s my fault that he’s dead.”

  “It’s normal for people to blame themselves after a traumatic event.”

  “No,” I insist, trying to break out of the cliché. “I saw it happening. I dreamed it while it was happening. I was there, in my sleep. I know I sound mental. I know it doesn’t make any sense but I was there when it happened and I could have stopped it.”

  “You just had a bad dream, Debs.”

  “The bad dream was real. It happened in real time. I was there as it was happening. I was James in the dream. I felt him dying.”

  “That sounds really horrible. Really, really horrible.”

  “I sound like my mother,” I mumble into her duvet.

  “It’s OK, Debs,” she says, stroking my back. “It’s all going to be OK. I promise.”

  * * *

  Xanthe is still rubbing my back. I’ve cried so much I feel hungover.

  “I’m really sorry,” I say.

  “Don’t apologize. You needed that.”

  “I’m embarrassed now.”

  “Why would you be embarrassed?”

  “Because you think I’m mental.”

  “No I don’t.”

  I look at her.

  “Seriously, I don’t,” she says. “You’re my best friend, you know that?”

  “I haven’t had a best friend since primary school.”

  “Well, you’ve no choice. You’ve a best friend again. Can’t get rid of me.”

  “OK,” I tell her, sniffling.

  “Now, will we watch Gilmore Girls? The early Jess and Dean years?”

  “Team Jess,” I say.

  “Jess is a dick.”

  “But he reads!”

  “And he’s a dick!”

  “They’re all dicks. Self-absorbed dicks the lot of them. Apart from Kirk . . . and Lane.” She opens her laptop. The Technical Love ad is still on the screen.

  “Blank you blank me,” she says. “How about ‘Do you love me?’ That would definitely send them packing early doors.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Definitely.”

  She presses play and we bop along to the familiarity of the Gilmore Girls theme song.

  Drinking Lessons

  The morning after a night out, Billy finds me passed out in the calf shed in my trusted bandage dress and heels. He carries me into the house and puts me to bed, placing a pint of water on my bedside locker and a bucket on the floor. Later, after I drink the water and puke into the bucket, he knocks on my bedroom door.

  “Debs?”

  “Yeah?”

  He pokes his head around the door and grins at me. “The dead arose and appeared to many.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “I thought you were staying in Santy’s?” he asks.

  “I was,” I croak.

  “How did you make it home from Dublin?”

  “I can’t remember,” I say.

  “How’d you get that bruise on your leg?”

  I lift the duvet up and see an impressive purple bruise flowering on my thigh.

  “No idea,” I say.

  “What was your poison of choice?” Billy asks.

  “Blue WKD.”

  “Oh, the Lord Lantern. We need to get you some drinking lessons.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I’m serious. No relation of mine is to be seen getting pissed off alco-pops—they’re only sugary shite. How many did you have?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Was there vodka involved?”

  “Maybe.”

  “There’s only one thing for it.” He sits down on the edge of the bed and takes my pulse. “I’m putting you on a prescription of pints.”

  “I don’t like pints, they taste like piss.”

  “You’ll have to get used to them. They’re the only way to go.”

  “Go away, Billy.”

  “This Sunday. Eight o’clock. I’m bringing you down the pub and teaching you how to drink properly.”

  * * *

  We milk the cows together on Sunday.

  “What are you wearing down the pub?” Billy shouts over the milking machine.

  “Are you afraid our outfits will clash?” I shout back.

  “You’re not planning on wearing those stilt
s you had on the other night?”

  “Hardly.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “I’d look well now, wouldn’t I? Tottering into Shirley’s in stilettos on a Sunday evening.”

  “I was just asking.”

  “You think I’ve no cop on at all.”

  * * *

  I steal a blue jumper from Mam’s wardrobe. I have been wearing a lot of Mam’s clothes lately. I wear the jumper with black jeans. I consider wearing knee-high hooker boots to piss Billy off but settle for Docs. He’s waiting for me at the gate.

  “Well, do I pass the test?”

  “Those seem fine. They look like you should be able to walk in them.”

  “What do you have against heels?”

  “I have nothing against heels themselves. It’s only when they’re on the feet of young ones that they seem to transform ye all into newborn calves taking your first steps.”

  I can’t think of anything smart to say so I let him think he’s won.

  “The lads are probably there already,” Billy says.

  “What lads?”

  “The lads. You didn’t think we’d be drinking on our own?”

  “Ah Billy, who do I’ve to talk to?”

  “You don’t have to talk to anyone you don’t want to. All you have to do is cough up when it’s your round.”

  “Sure I’ll just get my own.”

  Billy stops in the middle of the road. “You will not. You’ll be civilized. There is a right way of doing things and a wrong way. Vodka, I can assure you, is the wrong way. You’d know that if you ever witnessed your grandmother on the tear.”

  * * *

  The old man’s bar is a tiny section through the door to the right at the entrance to Cassidy’s. It’s a pokey spot reserved for regulars on wooden stools. On a busy night, anyone sitting there has a view of the whole pub except for the pool tables around the back of the fish tank. It’s a VIP area, like having a box at the theater—the ideal vantage point for nosy old fuckers.

  “Debbie is here for her first legal pint,” Billy announces. “Shirley. What do you recommend?”

  Shirley comes out from behind the bar and gives me a hug, squashing her boobs into my face. “Come here to me, chick. Billy, what do you reckon?”

  They both look at me like proud parents. Billy points down at a beer mat and spins it over to me to inspect. There’s a smiling red-headed girl holding a pint of piss. “Want to try that?”

  I shrug.

  “Two Heinekens please, Shirl.”

  “How’s Jacob holding up?” Shirley asks as she pours the pints.

  “Ah, the poor craythur doesn’t know which way is up,” Billy says.

  “Like the rest of us,” Shirley says.

  Shirley wanted to keep Jacob as a house dog after James died but Jacob was having none of it. When he went missing on her, she called Billy to keep an eye out for him. Billy found him in his old spot in the tractor with his head slumped against the window, waiting for James to come. He whimpered when Billy tried to move him, so he left him there, thinking he’d eventually move. He hasn’t left the tractor since, not even for food. We still have to feed him in there. A weird feeling comes over me when I climb the steps of the tractor to shovel a tin of dog food into Jacob’s bowl on the tractor seat. I feel James there. It’s like I’m visiting his grave.

  * * *

  There’s a snug in the corner of the old man’s bar where Billy is known to hold court. Two men are sitting there, nursing the dregs of their pints.

  “Men, Debbie, Debbie, men,” Billy introduces us. I know better than to expect Billy to name them. I’m supposed to know who they are.

  There’s Dooley, who divides his time between eating breakfast rolls, looking after his elderly mother, and supping pints with Billy. The other man is younger, in his thirties. He’s a Mooney. I recognize him from being Minister of the Eucharist at mass.

  Billy ushers me into a seat and lays out the game plan for me. “So the lads here are finished theirs, which means they will probably be in rounds together. We don’t have to worry about them—they’ll look after each other. The only person you have to worry about is me. I bought this round so I expect you to get the next ones.”

  Mooney smiles. “What’s this, Billy giving a lecture on drinking?”

  “To be fair, it is his area of expertise,” I say.

  The men laugh.

  “What’s your poison, Debbie?” Dooley asks.

  I’ve established that it’s frowned upon to say vodka so I say, “Wine.”

  “Oh Jesus,” Billy rubs his temple. “Right, OK. A glass of wine is the way to go with dinner or a good book for company, but you can’t be drinking wine all night. You’d be a basket case.”

  “Billy, do you ever take your own advice?” Dooley asks.

  “Shut up you,” Billy says. “What else? Listen, there’s one golden rule when it comes to drinking in a pub: If someone buys you a drink, by God you get them back.”

  “My glass has been empty this half hour waiting on this prick to get me another,” Mooney says.

  “Don’t listen to him, Debbie, he’s a liar,” Dooley says, but he stands up and takes his wallet out of his back pocket.

  Billy continues as though he hasn’t been interrupted. “If you’re going to go cheap and swig naggins, swap the vodka for whiskey and learn to drink it neat. If you feel like you’re losing it order a sparkling water with ice and lime and pretend it’s gin. Never actually buy gin though. It’s a rip-off and makes you cry. Pace yourself. You’re looking for the sweet spot where you can act the maggot, not lose control altogether. There’s no freedom in that. Do not expect anyone to look after you when you get so hammered you can’t stand and if someone does look after you, make sure to thank them the next time you see them sober, no matter how embarrassed you are.”

  He pauses, watching my face for a sign that I’m taking it in. “There are unspoken rules of social drinking. Just because someone offers you a drink doesn’t mean you should take it. The other night was not the last time you will end up bollocks drunk,” Billy says. “You’re entitled to one of those every now and again, as long as you don’t go making a habit out of it.”

  “Not end up like you, you mean?” I ask.

  Mooney has dimples when he laughs.

  “Less of that,” Billy says.

  Billy’s attention is snapped away by Shirley calling him over to the bar. “Back in a minute,” he says.

  * * *

  I manage the silence between me and Mooney by tearing up the beer mat into tiny bits and piecing them back together, staring at them intently and pretending not to notice him looking at me. “You know,” he pauses and I look up at him, “you’re the ringer of your mother.”

  “So I hear,” I say, looking back down at the jigsawed beer mat.

  “I was in her class at school. Maeve White. Smartest girl I’ve ever known.”

  I nod awkwardly. He’s talking about her like she’s dead.

  “How is she?” he asks.

  “Not great,” I say.

  “Tell her Murt Mooney was asking for her next time you see her.”

  “I will.”

  * * *

  I’m relieved when I see Billy and Dooley coming back over with Shirley.

  “Myself and Billy were just talking, hun,” Shirley puts her hand on my shoulder. “About what to do with James’s car. We thought you might like it, for traveling back and forth to college.”

  “But I can’t drive,” I point out.

  “You’re not the first who can’t drive to take to the roads around here,” Billy says. “I’ll teach you.”

  “I don’t have my theory though.”

  “Well you better get it.” Shirley seems annoyed.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to . . . Are you sure?”

  “Of course, hun,” she says.

  “Thanks, Shirley.”

  “You’re welcome,” she says, clearing the empty glasses off the table.
She seems to have forgotten that Violet originally belonged to Billy in the first place.

  “Billy,” I say, once Shirley is out of earshot, “Violet hasn’t seen a motorway in ten years.”

  “You don’t have to drive all the way into the city. You can start by driving to the train station.”

  “But it doesn’t even have seat belts.”

  “We’ll sort that.” Billy downs his pint and turns to me. “It’s your round.”

  I stand up, relieved that the conversation is over. I can feel Mooney’s eyes following me up to the bar.

  * * *

  By my sixth pint, me and Murt Mooney are the best of friends. Dooley and Billy have gone over to the other side of the bar to play pool. I decide to tell him, “I like your dimples.”

  “You’ve got some too,” he says, poking his finger in my cheek.

  “Dimple comes from tümpel, which means pond. I like that, like you’ve a pond in your cheek.” I poke him back.

  “You’re smart, like your mammy,” he says.

  “Or a pothole. A pothole in your face. A big crater of a yoke.” I poke his face more.

  He looks at me. “Come on,” he says, getting up from his seat. “Let’s get a bit of fresh air.”

  I get my coat, grab my pint, and follow him out the door onto the road. I already know where we are going.

  * * *

  The gate is open at Fourknocks. Murt is talking but I’m not listening. I’d be afraid of this place if we hadn’t been drinking. I run up the steps of the hill and judder back down again. I spin around in circles faster and faster until I know I’m going to fall.

  I let him catch me.

  Then I hear Billy’s voice coming from inside my head.

  “The fuck are you at?”

  Murt rolls away from me and stands up. Billy is looking down at us.

  “I swear, Billy, she came on to me,” Murt says. “I would never . . . I mean she’s a child, I was only . . .”

  “Yes, Murt, you’re correct. She is a child.”

  “Billy . . .” I try.

  “Don’t,” he says.

  * * *

  We walk in silence the whole way home. When we get to the gate Billy turns to me and says, “You know that phrase, it takes a village to raise a child. Well in your case, it took a village to conceive a child. Any man you meet around here could be your father. So be awful careful whose mouth you go sticking your tongue into—I mean, good God, Debs. Murt Mooney has no more interest in you than the man in the moon. He’s still mad for Maeve and you know that you have to be mad to be mad for her. You can’t go around throwing yourself at men—”