All Our Hidden Gifts

by Caroline O’donoghue

  “Right,” Roe says, his brow furrowed. “OK.”

  “Please don’t ask me any more, Roe. I don’t want to…”

  “No,” he says putting his hand up. “I know.”

  “We’d better go,” I say. “My mum wants me home for dinner tonight, too.”

  Sylvia smiles at me, the grateful small smile of someone who has been let out of a corner.

  “Thank you for telling us about the White Lady, Sylvia. It was really interesting.”

  And it was. It’s almost too big a thought to keep in my head.

  We say goodbye to Fiona and make our way through the kitchen, where Jos is hovering around Marie. He turns to look at us.

  “Sausages,” he says, sternly.

  “OK.”

  I awkwardly go to pat his head and miss it entirely. I smile at Fiona’s mother. “Thanks for letting us come over, Marie.”

  “Any time, Maeve! You too, Roe.”

  Roe nods. We go through the narrow hallway and I have one hand on the front door when we hear it. Marie’s singing voice. Completely different from the high, flutey sound of Fiona’s Disney Princess voice. This one is low, gravelly but completely controlled. A voice that could easily pass for Amy Winehouse, travelling aimlessly out of Fiona’s kitchen.

  We cock our ears.

  “Ladies, meet the Housekeeper card.”

  Roe looks at me sharply, his eyes like saucers. He puts his finger to his lips: that ciúnas signal again.

  “Now, she can be your downfall,

  or she can be your start…”

  Marie is singing about the Housekeeper. Singing.

  “And she only wants the best for you,

  like she never got for herself.

  She sees you at the bottom,

  and she’s coming down …”

  We burst back through the door, Roe and I practically falling over each other to get to Marie.

  “… to help.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “IT’S A SONG,” MARIE SAYS, PUZZLED BY OUR ASTONISHED expressions. “It’s a country song.”

  “Did you hear us talking about that, Mum? The Housekeeper card?”

  “I don’t know. I was only half paying attention, Fifi. I must have.”

  “Where did you learn it?”

  “America. We learned all kind of songs when we were over there. This is why I keep saying that music is better than plays, Ni. There’s an exchange. You learn more about the world.”

  “Could you write down the lyrics, Marie?” I ask, trying to stop the conversation developing into a debate about the performing arts.

  She furrows her brow. “I don’t know, pet. It’s been so long. I think I just remember the chorus. Anyway, Fiona, your daddy will be home in a minute. Set the table.”

  “What about after dinner, Mum? Do you think you could sit down with a pen and paper and try to remember the rest?”

  Marie looks at her daughter slyly. “If I didn’t have to clean up, maybe.”

  “I’ll clean. But you’ll sit down? You’ll write it up?”

  “I’ll try, Fifi, but later. Now stop crowding me.”

  Roe and I leave, our minds boggling.

  “I can’t believe it,” he says. “We thought this was some mystical magical thing, but it’s a song? A friggin’ song?”

  “I mean, it could be both.”

  “What were the lyrics again?”

  “She can be your downfall,

  or she can be your start.”

  “Where does that leave Lily?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, is this her downfall? Or is this her start?”

  The idea lightens us for a moment. The notion that Lily could be not just surviving, but thriving. Starting again somewhere. Better, just without us.

  “Do you really have to go home for dinner?”

  “What? Oh no, I was just saying that. My mum has late tutorials on Mondays, so it’s very much a grab-and-go situation.”

  “Do you want to head back to the river?”

  He says it nervously, as though asking if I wanted to have a sneaky cigarette by some bike sheds.

  “If you want to. But do you think we should – I don’t know – talk about what I saw? In your bedroom?”

  “Oh. That.” Roe tugs at his hair again, twisting the dark curls into his fist. He doesn’t say anything for a while.

  “We don’t have to,” I say, my palms up. “I’m not trying to out you or anything, but if you want to…”

  He hides his chin in the zipped-up collar of his jacket for a moment, and I assume the subject is closed. Suddenly, he speaks. “When my parents found out that I was…”

  “Bisexual?”

  “I don’t know. Sure. Bisexual is fine, I suppose. It makes me feel a bit like a specimen, but whatever.”

  I briefly imagine this beautiful boy in nail varnish, hidden jewellery and Chanel No. 5 pinned to a frame like a dead butterfly.

  “But that day was something I had agonized about for months. Before Lily went missing, that was like … the worst day of my life. And afterwards, after you made me relive it … I don’t know … it didn’t feel like this big burden any more. I had this weird feeling of clarity. Like I finally got how dumb my parents were being with me that day.”

  “A problem shared is a problem halved? That kind of thing?”

  “I guess,” he says, sounding unconvinced. He kicks at a stone.

  “What happened that day?” I ask. “The day your parents found stuff on your computer.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  I open my mouth, ready with the answer “Gay porn?” but am completely unable to say it.

  He looks at my face and bursts out laughing. “You look like a fish,” he says. “Relax.”

  “My dad was using my laptop and my texts were synched to the laptop. And there were some messages coming through from a friend.”

  “A friend?”

  “Yeah. Someone in the band. They were talking about coming out to their parents, asking me if I had any plans to do the same. Which, ironically, became coming out to my parents.”

  “Oh, shit. I bet your friend was kicking himself.”

  “Themself.”

  “What?”

  “They. Miel is non-binary.”

  “Ah. OK.”

  Miel. Miel.

  “Is … is Miel their name like Roe is your name?”

  “Do you mean, did Miel name themself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  We walk along in silence as I try to puzzle this out, turning out of Fiona’s road and down the street towards the river. A bunch of kids are hanging around Deasy’s takeaway, eating chips with gloves on. It’s a strange sight.

  Miel. Who is Miel? Are they in a relationship? Or is it just a band thing? Are they both in some kind of genderqueer club that I will never be a part of?

  Roe stops and turns to look at me. “I know what you want to ask me,” he says. “And the answer is, I don’t know.”

  “OK,” I reply. “I just … I don’t really know how it works.”

  “Non-binary people?”

  “Yeah,” I say, nervous. “So is it like being trans? You were born in the wrong body?”

  “It’s not about being born in the wrong body. I think that’s just like, an easy thing to say for people who don’t really get it.”

  I feel a moment of shame at being someone who, apparently, doesn’t really get it.

  “Can you explain it to me?”

  “I’m not sure. I feel like…” He stands still and closes his eyes. “A pinball machine.”

  “Right.”

  We turn onto the riverbank. It’s quiet, the sky turning purple. I miss the sun. I look at the snow under my feet. It’s not the pure white mound of sugar crystals it was this morning. Hundreds of schoolkids and commuters have turned it to grey sludge.

  He’s so much more Irish-looking than me. The curly hair. The thick shoulders. The
wire frame. The ruddiness in his skin, high in his cheekbones, scarlet to his ears. He’s like an old drawing of some Celtic warrior.

  “Like I’m this tiny metal ball that is just racing around this giant thing, colliding with all these levers and bumpers and bits of machinery. Except the bumpers are all labelled things like ‘dresses’ and ‘naked women’ and ‘Keanu Reeves’. And each time I hit something, it’s proof of either one thing or another.”

  He smiles then, clearly amusing himself with the metaphor.

  “Like, on the days I hit the things a guy is supposed to like, it’s like, Oh wow, the guy side has won. But some days the girl side wins, and it feels weird, but I like it, too. Am I making any sense?”

  “No,” I say, dumbfounded that anyone could have thoughts this detailed about their gender. “I mean, sorry, yes, of course you are. I’m just so impressed that you have this … this thesis on all this stuff that I just…”

  “Take for granted?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess it all feels natural to you. I’m jealous,” he replies. Then he pauses. Thinks about it. “Except, actually, no. I don’t think I am. I used to be. But the more I let myself just exist, the more fun it gets. So I try not to question it or label it. I’m trying to just see everything as … negotiable.”

  “Negotiable.”

  “Yeah. Negotiable.”

  We laugh nervously, turning over the weirdness of the word. Our laughter tapers off, and all I can hear is the lapping of the water where the river meets the low stone wall.

  I stare at him, in awe that he could know so much about himself, and at the same time, be so comfortable in not knowing.

  He stares back.

  For once, I am determined not to break eye contact. Not to change the subject. To prove to him that I’m capable of understanding him, or at least looking like I do. I hold his gaze in my own.

  “And … when you imagine the pinball machine,” I say, my words slow and deliberate. “Where am I, Roe?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What side am I on? Am I a bumper? A lever?” I tear my eyes away as he looks at me, confused.

  “Never mind,” I say, certain I got the metaphor wrong.

  “Maeve, you’re not on the machine,” he says, taking a step closer. “Lately…”

  He bows his head slightly, and I can see the space between the back of his neck and his school shirt, the leather string holding my rose quartz just barely visible.

  “Lately, you’re due north.”

  And he kisses me. Softly. His lips are cold and full, like fresh blackberries in a white enamel cup.

  I don’t move. Part of me is convinced that this is yet another one of his jokes. That, until his lips are firmly on mine, he is still likely to walk away and leave me gaping after him.

  He pulls back, checking my expression for … for what? Disgust? Discomfort? Rejection? Worry flickers across his face.

  I move closer to him and trace my finger gently up his school jumper, to his collar, to the soft warm skin of his pale neck. And with one finger, I loop the string of rose quartz and pull it out, the stone warm like a heart.

  “I just remembered,” I murmur. “I just remembered what this one is supposed to mean.”

  I pull the string. I pull the string and Roe follows. His mouth is on mine, his hands cupped around my face. I keep the stone tight in my palm.

  And I’m satisfied, despite all the many thousands of things I have yet to understand about Roe O’Callaghan, that I know exactly what he means by the pinball machine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  LIKE ALL PERFECT MOMENTS, THIS ONE IS RUINED BY OTHER people.

  The kids who were eating chips outside Deasy’s start wolf-whistling at us. Roe wraps his arms around me and turns his face to them. I bury my face in his neck, planting kisses on the warm skin there, thrilled that I finally have the permission to do so.

  “Piss off!” he shouts.

  “C’mon,” I say. “They’re going to start throwing chips at us.”

  The shouts get closer.

  “Thought you were a bender, Rory!”

  He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

  All roads, inevitably, lead to the underpass. Roe holds my hand, periodically bringing the back of my hand to his lips.

  “We have a gig on Saturday at the Cypress. You should come.”

  “Will I need an ID?”

  I once used Niamh’s older sister’s student ID to go to the gig of a boy Niamh liked. He played Ed Sheeran and George Ezra covers in a pub almost entirely frequented by accountants on their Christmas party, and it was the most boring night of my life. I bite my lip. The door to Niamh’s sister’s ID is definitely closed now, and there’s no chance of me getting away with Joanne’s.

  “No, it’s an all-ages thing. It’s like a cabaret night. They’re using it to fundraise for an LGBTQ homelessness charity.”

  “That’s so cool.”

  “Yeah, it was booked in months ago but with Lily and everything I completely forgot. Miel messaged me yesterday asking if I still wanted to do it.”

  “And do you?”

  “Honestly, I would give my right leg to do it under normal circumstances. But with all this drama at home I would give two legs. I just need something to take my mind off it.”

  I nod and he smiles at me. “Although I have someone right here who’s pretty good at that.”

  “Oh, do you?”

  I kiss him and kiss him, feeling ridiculously brazen about my new access to him. I press his back against the wall outside the underpass, curling my fingers around his hair. We stay like that for minutes, feeling the evening temperature drop to freezing, the cold bracing against our hands and faces but warm where our bodies are fixed, glued together.

  “I’ll walk you back,” I say.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “No, I want to. You’re always walking me back.”

  “It’s fine,” he says, kissing me on the forehead again. I look at him squarely, and there’s a flicker of anxiety in his smile. “You should get home.”

  “You don’t want your parents to see me, do you?”

  “What? No, it’s not that.”

  I look at him sceptically, my eyebrows raised.

  “OK, it kind of is that.”

  “Do they … do they blame me?”

  “Of course they don’t blame you, Maeve. But they’re not … not exactly fans of yours.”

  “Right. Why should they be? I’m the cow that ruined their daughter’s life.”

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “Roe. It’s true.”

  I untangle myself from him, feeling sick. I am sick: gross or perverted, a parasite who latches on to others, then abandons them once I’m full. I took everything I could from Lily, and now I’m taking it from Roe. I turn away from him and stare at the river, the water silent and black in the darkness.

  We leave each other awkwardly. He tries to kiss me again, but I can’t get lost in the moment. All I can imagine is how we look from the outside. How slutty and stupid, how uncaring and thoughtless. It’s been weeks, and Lily is still missing. What have I done about it? What am I doing about it?

  He gathers me into a hug, sweeping my long woolly hair into his hands.

  “Maeve,” he says. “Life is so shite lately. Can’t we just enjoy the good things while we can? Making yourself miserable isn’t going to bring her back.”

  I smile weakly. “I know. I just… The more we find out about this Housekeeper thing, the more convinced I am that if it weren’t for me, she’d still be here.”

  “And if I were a better brother, maybe she wouldn’t have felt so alone. We can ‘maybe’ things until the cows come home.”

  I shrug. He sweeps his thumb across my cheek. “Go home and get some dinner in you. And stop torturing yourself.”

  I take the long way, missing the split in the path where I usually turn right to go home. I keep left, taking a
detour along the riverbank. It’s strange how important this place has become to me in the last few weeks. This place that was once just a walk home, and before that, just a school project. I skim stones and throw branches to watch them sink. Green scum swirls. Coke cans float. Cigarette butts gather in an abandoned coot’s nest. I wrap my arms around myself and I think of my kiss, my first important kiss, my first kiss with anyone who matters, who makes my heart race and my blood warm. The first person to make me understand that attraction isn’t a puzzle or an equation, of working out who the best-looking people are and working backwards from there. It’s not maths. It’s magic.

  And I want to tell her. I want to tell her that her brother has become the most incredible person I have ever met. That I am falling, so badly, so terribly in love with him, and the only person I want to tell is the person I may never see again.

  What would I even say to her? Would she be the kind of friend who would stick her fingers in her eyes, and do the whole “Ew, gross, my brother!” thing?

  No. Not Lily. Lily is a lot of things, but she’s not predictable. She’s not boring. She wouldn’t act like a person off an American sitcom. I close my eyes, and remember her. I imagine she’s still here, and that we’re still friends, and that the last year didn’t happen.

  And just like that, I see her. Her long hanks of dirty-blonde hair, her eyes that are too wide, almost alien-ish. I imagine telling her while she’s drawing: the quintessential Lily pose. You would talk and talk to her, and she would draw and draw, and you would almost think she wasn’t listening. But then she would look up, ask one question and you’d realize she was paying perfect attention the entire time.

  “The thing is, Lil, I can’t even tell whether we’re both just older now, and more mature, or if I’ve become different and he was brilliant the whole time. But the thing is, I strongly suspect he was brilliant the whole time and I was too up my own hole to even realize.”

  “Mmmh,” she says, scribbling with a graphite pencil.

  “And I know it’s weird for you! I know you don’t want to hear this about your brother!” I rail, spinning around her room. “But if you had a crush on one of my siblings, I would be cool about it. You don’t, do you?”