All Our Hidden Gifts

by Caroline O’donoghue

  And let’s face it, at this point, if he asked me to spend the evening with him at a maggot lovers’ convention, I would say yes.

  I get home at half four, and make a plan to do my homework, walk the dog, eat dinner, and head out. None of that happens, though. Instead I spend the whole afternoon in my room, looking at my eyebrows with a pocket mirror, plucking two hairs, and then feeling guilty that I am taking any care with my appearance at all.

  This is not a date, Maeve.

  I put down the tweezers, my skin red and throbbing. How can things be going well and terribly at once? On the one hand, I have a new, incredibly fun friend who seems to really like me. A hot boy wants to spend time with me. On the other hand, my best friend is missing, my entire school thinks I’m a murderous witch, and I haven’t slept in days.

  It’s too cold to make any kind of effort with clothes. It is virtually impossible to look sexy and mature when you’re three jumpers deep. I feel like a toddler when I meet him, layered up in a blue duffel coat and wooly hat.

  “Hey,” he says. “Your nose is all red.”

  “Oh, what?” I start touching my nose, as if that’s going to do anything, and he smiles.

  “You look like Paddington Bear.”

  Ouch.

  “Thank … you?”

  “Have you got marmalade sandwiches packed?”

  This isn’t flirtatious banter. He’s scared out of his mind, filling the freezing evening with nervous Paddington references.

  There’s some indecision about whether we should get the bus in or not, but after three minutes waiting for it and hopping from leg to leg to keep warm, we give up. We trudge into town, the evening black, the grass frosting and crunchy underfoot. The closer we get, the quieter Roe becomes. The stupid jokes drain away. Eventually, he pipes up.

  “Maeve.”

  “Mmm?”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “About who?” I reply, playing dumb. He doesn’t even dignify it with a response.

  I sigh and kick the ground in front of me.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know. We saw so little of each other the past few years. Y’know, Mum and Dad were always so big on activities and schedules that even when we were small, it always felt like we were in different time zones. She was either at cello or in her room or off with you.”

  He sighs, and I almost feel like apologizing for Lily and me. For how insular we were. It had never even occurred to me that Roe would have wanted to hang out with us.

  “I’m not blaming her,” he continues. “I’ve been hiding in my room with my guitar for a good six years. I never showed an interest in her world, either. But … I regret it, Maeve. She’s my only sibling. We didn’t even fight. No one fights in our house, not even my parents. Everyone just … glides past one another.”

  That was always the pull of going to the O’Callaghans’. The fact that you could watch your cartoons in one room while the grown-ups watched the news in the other. The cool, clean, quiet rooms. The way Lily and Roe’s toys were never broken, or handed down. And when it all got too sedate, me and Lil could always go to my house. I’d never considered that Roe didn’t have that option. That Roe, now that I properly think about it, didn’t ever have any friends.

  None of this is actually my business to say, of course. So instead, I just talk about Lily.

  “Do you know how she was left-handed?”

  “Oh, come on, Chambers! I said we weren’t close. I didn’t say she was a stranger.”

  “No, I mean, obviously, she was left-handed, but did you know that she taught herself how to be right-handed?”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. When we were like, eleven?” I pause a moment, trying to remember. “She said she wanted to have a second form of handwriting that she could fall back on, if she ever needed it.”

  “What could she possibly need that for?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe … maybe she planned on a life of forgery. Maybe she always sort of knew she was going to end up on the run.”

  “You think she’s on the run?”

  “I know she left your house willingly. You know that. With that … woman.”

  With the Housekeeper. Say it. Witches know things by their true names.

  “Right. With that woman.”

  He slows down, takes his phone out of his pocket, then reorients himself based on the blue arrow on his screen.

  “Are we almost there?”

  “I think so. The invite says ‘Elysian Quarter’ but I don’t know where that is, and Google Maps doesn’t seem to have a clear idea either.”

  We’re standing on a narrow street at the edge of the city. Every building seems to be an anonymous-looking apartment block. There’s a pub winking yellow light in the distance, but nothing that looks remotely like a meet-up space.

  I shiver and stamp my feet. “I hope it’s warm inside.”

  “I know, right? They said it might snow later.”

  “It never snows properly here.”

  At that moment, two boys and a girl push past us, bullish and hurried. We shrug at each other and fall in casually behind them as they turn into a courtyard and hit a buzzer on one of the apartment buildings. The trio eye us critically, but don’t say anything.

  “Hi,” I say, unable to maintain the tension.

  “Hey,” one of the boys says evenly. He’s a couple of years older than me, but has the kind of red-rimmed watery eyes that you initially mistake for tears and then realize, no, that’s just his face.

  The buzzer sounds and the door to the apartment building pops open. We trail into an elegant lobby and look for the lift.

  Roe flashes his phone at me. Apartment 44, Floor 8, Elysian Quarter.

  We’re definitely in the right place. We get into the lift with the other three, hugging our elbows to our ribs in the cramped, mirrored box. Roe hits the “8” button. It’s only then do I feel comfortable getting a good look at our companions, peering into the mirror rather than directly into their eyes.

  The girl reminds me of Lily, although I can’t figure out why. She doesn’t look anything like her, but there’s some quality the two of them share that I can’t quite put my finger on. A squirming discomfort. A sense of being unable to relate to the physical world.

  “Are you guys here for the meeting?” I offer.

  They don’t say anything, but the girl unconsciously nods and Roe smiles at her.

  “I’m really excited for it to start,” he says, maintaining careful eye contact with her, and she smiles back.

  “Is it your first one?”

  “Yep. Just got the invite today,” Roe replies smoothly. “I’m so glad they let me join the Facebook group.”

  “How long did you have to wait to be accepted?” she responds, her eyes round and excitable.

  “Two days.”

  The two guys look at each other sharply and the girl makes an “oh” shape with her mouth.

  “Two days!” she gasps. “I had to wait two weeks.”

  The lift doors open and we trail up the halls. It smells like chlorine. The girl sees me sniffing and grins at me.

  “It’s because we’re near the roof,” she says, glee in her voice. “There’s a pool on the roof and in the summer, we’re going to be allowed to use it!”

  When we get to Apartment 44, the boys knock on the door, and I’m expecting some kind of secret password to be uttered. None comes. Instead, the door flings open, and a tall, blond man in his mid-twenties welcomes us in. He’s all smiles, and I immediately recognize him as one of the men from Basement.

  “Clara! Ian! Cormac!” he says, ushering them in.

  He takes an extra moment considering us. “Rory –” he smiles benevolently – “I’m so glad you were able to come. I’m Aaron, the chapter leader. Please, make yourself at home.”

  He shakes Roe’s hand rigorously, the whites of his knuckles glowing.

  “And you brought a guest,” he says, his eye
s scanning me. “You know, we have a very strict policy here around guests. Especially on your first meeting. We don’t allow it, Rory.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” Roe says, grappling for an excuse. “I didn’t realize, and, I just thought that Maeve might benefit from…”

  The man puts his hand up. “Don’t worry, Rory. We can make an exception this time.”

  He turns to me. “Hello, Maeve. I’m Aaron.” He takes one quick look at my blue duffel and smiles. “Can I take your coat?”

  I shrug it off and give it to him.

  “Wow,” he says, his voice mildly flirtatious. “And here was me, hoping you had a wedding dress on under there.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ONCE, YEARS AGO, ME AND LILY WATCHED A DOCUMENTARY about cults. It was on very late on the Bravo channel, and it was advertised for weeks as “a disturbing look at how one man could drive ordinary American girls … to murder.”

  The thought was electrifying. Someone could just make you commit murder? How?

  It was on at 1 a.m., so we had a sleepover at my house and watched it. I don’t remember much about it, but there was definitely an interview with a former cult leader who was known for recruiting teenage girls. The interviewer asked him how he recruited his followers. Simple, he said. He just approached groups of girls at shopping malls, singled one out and told her that she had beautiful eyes.

  “If she said ‘thank you’, or even just laughed, I would move on,” he said. “But if she tried to deflect the compliment or looked down at the ground, I would ask her for her number. Because that girl is the one with the hole inside of her.”

  That is what it is like inside the apartment at Elysian Quarter.

  I am standing in a room full of people with a hole inside of them.

  There’s about thirty of them all together, ranging from mid-teens to early twenties. Everyone is drinking orange juice out of wine glasses and they have that kind of nervy, tremulous energy that makes them cover their mouths when they laugh and bite their lips as they listen. There’s nothing individually wrong with anyone, just a collective sense of unease. They’re all standing in groups of threes and fours, their shoulders slightly hunched. Absolutely nothing in their body language suggests, “Hey, come talk to us.”

  The apartment is big, open and airy, like living rooms are on sitcoms. There’s a large window overlooking the city that we gravitate towards.

  “What did that guy say about wedding dresses to you?” Roe asks quietly.

  “Oh,” I say, my face turning red. “Fiona and I were in Basement trying on wedding dresses the day of the protest. We saw him there, trying to give out to the shop manager.”

  He looks at me in confusion.

  “As a joke, like,” I say hurriedly. “We weren’t trying on wedding dresses seriously. Fiona told them she didn’t believe in God.”

  “Wow.”

  A small, flutey voice suddenly pipes up from behind us. “I didn’t use to believe in God.”

  We turn around and a tiny girl with a long fringe is beaming at us. She’s about seventeen.

  “Hello,” I say uncertainly.

  “I used to think it was all crap. And when I learned about the Magdalene Laundries and the way they put girls in these horrible prisons just for getting pregnant, I thought, Wow, the Catholic Church has ruined Ireland.”

  “And then what … you changed your mind?” Roe asks.

  “I realized that it wasn’t the Church that ruined Ireland. Bad people ruined Ireland.”

  I want to ask her a little more about this, but at that moment the man who let us in stands in the centre of the room and taps his wine glass full of orange juice with a teaspoon.

  “Circles, everyone. Circles.”

  A hush falls over the room as everyone forms a circle by sitting cross-legged on the floor. Roe and I copy them. I’m desperate to blend in, to be inconspicuous. But I already feel as if there’s a big red dot on my head, singling me out as a non-believer. The girl next to me edges away slightly. She can tell I don’t really want to be here.

  “Hello, everyone!” Aaron says. He’s the only one standing. He’s not wearing the suit I saw him in on Friday, and, without it, he looks far younger. Twenty-five or -six. He’s dressed casually, in jeans and a navy Hollister hoodie, with red Converse on his feet. “How are y’all today?”

  A mumbling of “good” and “fine” fills the room.

  “Oh, come on. I know we’re all better than fine. How ARE y’all today?”

  A grateful laugh rises. “GREAT!” one guy shouts, and another, louder laugh shoots up like a flare.

  “Great! We’re great? C’mon, everyone. Are we great?”

  The room is feeling looser now, like stretched-out chewing gum.

  “YEAH!”

  “That’s more like it.” He smiles. “Now, I know we have a few new faces here today, so, as always, I thought we’d start with a game to warm up our circle time. That sound good to y’all?”

  “Yeah!”

  The ‘y’all’, full of Southern home-town charm, feels impossibly glamorous in this beautiful Irish apartment. But every instance feels rehearsed, dropped just at the right time to create a family barbecue atmosphere.

  “All right, all right, let me think.” Aaron places his thumbs and forefingers together to make a triangle in front of his face, like loose prayer hands. “All right. I’ve got it. Who knows Two Truths and a Lie?”

  A slightly, uncertain worried hum comes from the circle.

  “Relax, guys! It’s not as scary as it sounds. Basically, you say two true things about yourself, and one lie. We all have to guess which is the lie. They do this in drama school all the time and it’s a great way to get to know each other. Like, OK, I’ll go first.”

  He does the triangle in front of his face again and pads around the circle, smiling to himself.

  “OK, so… My name is Aaron. My parents are divorced. I really love Billy Joel.” He swings around and points at the very short girl. “Katie. Which one’s the lie?”

  “You … love Billy Joel?” Katie says hopefully.

  “Nope.” He smiles. “I really, really love Billy Joel. My parents are, however, still happily married. Twenty-two years.”

  Katie goes beetroot-red and everyone titters again in appreciation.

  “OK, now you guys go. Let’s start with a new face. Let’s start from … Rory.”

  “Er, OK,” Roe says. “Um … I play the guitar. My birthday is in June. And my sister is a fish.”

  Another laugh from the group. Aaron grants us a quick, dry smile.

  “Nice first try,” he says. “I can’t wait to meet your sister. Enid.”

  Enid is sitting to the right of Roe and Aaron is moving clockwise, so I won’t have to think of my two truths and a lie for absolutely ages. She is dark-haired and would be pretty if her forehead wasn’t in a perpetual furrow.

  “OK,” Enid says. “I’m twenty-one next week. I’m double-jointed.”

  Enid says this very quickly, as though she is psyching herself up for something major. You can feel the whole group leaning in, hungry to hear. Then, it all comes out, slick as an oil spill.

  “And I’ve had unprotected sex with a man twice my age.”

  Silence. I try to catch Roe’s eye, in a sort of “all that build-up, for that?” expression.

  Aaron crouches down on the floor in front of Enid. He looks at her very closely, making the kind of intense eye contact that feels like it’s between two people that know each other very well.

  He reaches out to her lap, where her hands lie dormant.

  “Enid,” he says softly. “May I?”

  She gives him her hand and he holds it, very tenderly, in front of everyone. I can feel the eyes of all the other girls goggling and realize that they have all wanted a moment like this. To hold Aaron’s hand. To feel the full wattage of his American attention on them. I am close enough to see that Enid’s hand is shaking, and her face has gone bright pink.

 
I turn away.

  After a moment of silence, Aaron speaks again, softly massaging Enid’s palm with his thumb.

  “Oh, Enid. You’re not double-jointed, are you?”

  “No,” she says, her voice soft. She sounds like she is about to cry.

  “That’s OK, sweetheart. That’s OK. It’s not what you wanted. It’s not your fault.”

  I start to wonder if I’m missing something. Enid is twenty. Sure, having sex with a man twice your age isn’t great, but surely it’s not that big a deal, is it?

  He puts an arm around her, cradling her, and she slowly begins to sob in his arms. Enid suddenly goes from being nervous and squirming to looking like a lamb suckling on a baby bottle. A golden calm settles over her. She is safe, cosy, warm, loved.

  We all watch, our breaths held. Roe and I look at each other, dumbfounded. I don’t know what we were expecting, but it wasn’t this.

  In a loud whisper, clearly intended for everyone to hear, Aaron tells Enid that he will check back in with her at the end of the meeting, and that they’ll talk about this properly. He disentangles himself and moves down to the next person in the circle.

  “Cormac,” he says. It’s one of the silent boys who came in the door with us. “Two truths and a lie.”

  “I … play GAA. My favourite superhero is Ant-Man. And … um…”

  “Go on, Cormac. It’s fine.”

  “Once, I, uh, I…”

  “Come on, now.”

  “I, uh, shaved my legs. Just to see what it would feel like.”

  Roe’s eyes are like saucers. If tensions were high when Enid spoke, they’re at the ceiling now.

  “Hey, man.” Aaron claps his hands together in delight. “Cormac! Is that all? Dude! What are you worried about? That’s nothing. That’s just curiosity. Look. You’re an athlete, right? Right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Swimmers shave their legs, did you know that? And, like, tons of other athletes. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean you’re gay. C’mon. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” says Cormac, his voice still uncertain.

  “Man, you know as well as I do that there’s no such thing as being naturally gay. I mean, nature would just break down completely, if that were the case, right?” He starts looking at the group, his palms up, giving a “these are just the facts” tone to everything he’s saying.