Sisters ... No Way!

by Siobhán Parkinson

  It’s all girls in the school she teaches in, and there are only two male teachers, both about twenty-two, which is not very promising for somebody like Mum, not like working in a glamorous job like television or publishing or something like that, where I am sure there are lots of interesting, kind, middle-aged men, just what Mum needs.

  Thursday 17th April

  Mum seemed more distracted than usual today. It was my turn to cook. During the week, we take it in turns to cook dinner, so everyone does it twice a week and the two who don’t cook do the washing up. We just have very quick, simple, cheap things like pasta or an omelet or a really thick vegetable soup or maybe sausages and mash. Then on Sundays we have a proper Sunday lunch and we all cook it together, a joint venture we call it. That’s a joke, because we usually have a joint of meat, our only real meat meal of the week, and we all do it together, jointly.

  Alva and I wash up on Sundays, to give Mum a day off from the sink. Alva moans about this, because she never gets Sundays off from the sink, but I am firm with her on this one. Mum needs the break more than we do. She has a tough time with school and everything. That argument doesn’t impress Alva, who thinks nobody could find life as tough as she does, and she has the nerve to argue that since Mum only does school part-time and we do it full-time, we are the ones who should get Sunday off from washing up. Sometimes I worry that Alva will grow up without any sense of empathy with other people. I will lay the blame at Dad’s door if she does.

  Anyway, I was talking about Mum. She came into the kitchen just as I was putting a quiche in the oven, and she slumped into one of the kitchen chairs. She didn’t say anything, which is a sure sign that she is preoccupied, because she usually sniffs the air and tries to guess what you’re cooking or she offers to help. A couple of times I have had to forcibly steer her away from the cooker on Alva’s days and frogmarch her to the kitchen table, insisting that Alva is big enough and competent enough to do it herself, but also lazy enough to let someone else take it on.

  I asked her what was bothering her, but she said it was just a girl she’d had that day at school, somebody she described as ‘very distressed’. Mum is always discreet about her clients, as she calls them, the girls she counsels. She confines herself to general remarks. I asked if the girl was being abused. Mum said no, nothing like that, she had been bereaved and was reacting badly, being smart with teachers at school, attention-seeking tactics, that sort of thing. Poor girl, whoever she is. Mum takes these things to heart. I’m sure she’s a really great counsellor, for the people she works with, but it wears her down sometimes. She’s too kind-hearted for her own good.

  Tuesday 22nd April

  Mum was on the phone for ages yesterday. I was getting a bit edgy, because I wanted to practise, and I can’t when someone’s on the phone. I play the double-bass, and when I’m practising, the whole house vibrates. We’ve had to apologise to the neighbours – we live in a semi and the walls are not the most sound-proof – and we’ve agreed that I will only practise between five and six in the evenings. Alva plays the flute. Nobody minds a flute, no matter when it’s played. That’s typical of Alva. Everything she does is fine with everyone. I’m the one that has to tiptoe around, trying not to offend people, smoothing things over all the time. Sometimes I wish I was the youngest for a change.

  Anyway, Mum made a phone call just as I was about to get out my bow, and she was on for ages. I waited and waited until at last she hung up. I only got about fifteen minutes of practice in before I heard the angelus bell on the kitchen radio and knew I had to stop. It’s not like Mum, so it must have been quite an important phone call. Probably something to do with school.

  Thursday 1st May

  Mum was out last night. She doesn’t usually go out mid-week, but she said it was a parent–teacher meeting. I didn’t think they had parent–teacher meetings in May, but she said this was a special one she had arranged with a particular parent. She’s far too dedicated to that job.

  Bob came over to celebrate Bealtaine. He is interested pagan festivals. I should explain that Bob is my boyfriend. His mother calls him Robert. I call him Bob. It started out sort of like a petname, but now Mum and Alva and all my friends call him that too. He’s in sixth year. I’ve been going out with him for a few months now. He’s very cute, and he’s fun to be with. He’s tall and his profile is rather chiselled. It’s his noble nose that does it, I think, and his smooth forehead. Mum thinks he’s a bit wild, because he drinks. I told her everyone in sixth year drinks, even the girls, which is an understatement, and anyway he only drinks beer, he doesn’t get drunk, much, and he doesn’t smoke. Smoke! screeched my mother when I mentioned this word. I meant tobacco, but she made it sound as if I was talking about heroin. As if I would have anything to do with anybody who did stuff like that! Honestly, when I think how hard I try to understand Mum, I think she might make an effort to understand me too. I said he doesn’t smoke, I repeated, but I think even mentioning the word smoke in connection with Bob was enough to make Mum suspicious. She’s a bit over-protective, but once she got to know Bob she settled down. He’s very good at handling parents. Talks about choosing the right subjects for the Leaving and how the points system works and stuff like that. (I take back the bit about Mum not making an effort to understand me. She’s a great mother really. I must try not to be Alva-ish.)

  Anyway, Bob and I made a sort of punch in the kitchen, consisting of heated up honey, diluted with some orange juice (out of a packet) and lemon juice (out of a lemon) and a shot of vodka. Neither of us drinks spirits normally, so we only used a tiny drop of vodka, just so it would be realistic, because we were pretending it was mead. We poured it into a sort of squat little vase thing we found under the sink, because it had handles, and we wanted something we could both hold. We called it a loving cup and we drank to each other’s health and fertility. I was a bit worried about the fertility part, tempting fate I thought, but Bob said that was the sort of thing the Celts drank to, so I did. There was hardly any alcohol in it, and it tasted pretty disgusting, which may have had something to do with the fact that we had to scrub out the loving cup with Jif, because it was caked with dust.

  Alva heard us laughing in the kitchen and came in and said she wanted some mead too. We had a job persuading her that that wouldn’t be a good idea. When we said she couldn’t have any because there was vodka in it, she said, Ooh, I’m telling! as if we were little kids. I’m sorry I told her about the vodka now, not because I think she’ll ‘tell’ – I don’t care if she does – but because I think it might have given her the wrong idea. She might think drinking vodka at sixteen is OK, which I don’t really think it is. It was only a tiny drop, and we only added it in for authenticity, but now I feel we shouldn’t have. It’s no joke being an older sister, especially if your younger sister is a bit on the impressionable side, like Alva. It’s a terrible responsibility. If you didn’t watch her, she’d be swigging neat vodka in no time at all and topping the bottle up with water. I’m not exaggering. They do that sort of thing, you know, in her class, and that’s the normal ones. The rest are anorexic and don’t eat, not to mind drink. It’s an awful age. But they can’t help it. It’s their hormones.

  I managed to get her to bed before half-past ten, which was something, I suppose. Bob left soon after that, and I went to bed myself. I didn’t hear Mum come in. It must have been late.

  Sunday 4th May

  Mum was on the phone again this morning, another long session. I was just basting the chicken when she came back into the kitchen and it was sizzling noisily, so I had to wait until I’d got it back in the oven. Then I straightened up and said, Well, whoever it is, it must be somebody interesting.

  Whoever who is? she asked.

  Whoever all these mysterious phone calls are to, I said, smiling encouragement.

  She went bright red and started to flap her hands in front of her face to cool herself down. It’s hot in here, she said.

  Oven, I replied. But I wasn’t goi
ng to let her get off that easily. Well? I said.

  It’s none of your business, she replied.

  I shrugged nonchalantly. I didn’t push it, partly because I respect her privacy, but partly because I thought there was a better chance of her telling me eventually if I didn’t try to worm it out of her. I hope that isn’t very devious of me. I have her best interests at heart. I hope it’s a man. I know that’s very conventional of me, but there you go. I can’t help it.

  Thursday 8th May

  Mum was out again last night. Another mid-week appointment. Hm! Bob thinks I should ask her straight out if I am so concerned. I’m not concerned, I told him, just interested. But I am concerned really, and curious.

  Sunday 11th May

  Alva announced yesterday that she was going to a rave. We were just home from the supermarket, and we were unpacking the bags. At least, Mum and I were unpacking them and Alva was opening the chocolate biscuits, which was her idea of contributing to the domestic chores. A rave? said Mum. Sounds fun! Really, sometimes Mum is so vague it would drive you up the wall. She knows perfectly well what goes on at raves, but she has these little plastic containers she keeps in the fridge, labelled Sausages, Rashers, Cheese, and I could see she was wondering which one to put the salami she had bought ‘for a change’ into. I know she would happily have run out and bought another little plastic box and labelled it Salami, if I hadn’t been there to prevent her, just to solve the problem, rather than put salami in a box labelled Rashers.

  You’re not going to a rave, Alva, I said. That was a bit bossy of me, I know, but it was clear that Mum wasn’t going to say it. Did I say she can be a bit vague sometimes?

  I am so, she said, biting savagely into a chocolate biscuit. Everyone’s going.

  The first biscuit out of a newly opened packet of chocolate digestives is always extremely fresh. There were biscuit crumbs everywhere.

  Who precisely is everyone? asked Mum, her parent-of-a-teenager skills suddenly kicking in.

  Raves are out anyway, I added. I know that because I read it somewhere, but I said it as if I knew it from personal experience.

  You just don’t understand! Alva shouted, and tore out of the room. We could hear the fast and furious pounding of her shoes on the stairs.

  Mum and I exchanged glances, meaning we do understand, all too well. I felt we were not a mother and daughter, just two women shaking our heads about a child.

  Put it just loose in the fridge, in its bag, I said, if you really can’t make up your mind.

  Good idea, Ashling, she said. You really are such a support to me, love.

  I felt quite overcome. A sort of a warm wave of love and gratitude washed over me. I knew she didn’t mean just about the salami.

  I’d better go and try to get some sense out of her, she went on.

  Sooner you than me, I said. I’ll make a pot of tea. It’ll be ready for you when you come down.

  She shot me one of her radiant smiles from the door. She is not a particularly beautiful woman, but her smile is like the sun coming out.

  Mum and Alva came down together. The tea was cold. I’ll make a fresh pot, I said. Alva’s face was mottled from crying. I was dying to ask what had been said. I can guess anyway. Mum probably asked her again just who was going to this rave and where it was being held and what time it was over at and whether she had a lift home, and Alva probably got so upset at the questions that she decided to drop the whole thing. That must be roughly what happened anyway, because the subject wasn’t raised again, and Alva didn’t go anywhere last night.

  Saturday 17th May

  I took Alva shopping today, to make up for being hard on her last week about the rave. It was her birthday on Wednesday, and she had some birthday money that Dad sent her, burning a hole in her pocket. So I took some money out of my post office account and we went off into town, to treat ourselves. We weren’t really planning to buy anything. Only if we saw something we really liked.

  There’s a bargain shop I know about, where they sell out-of-season clothes, so we went there just to have a look. Sometimes the things are nice, but most of the time the stuff is creased and weary looking, and in dreadful colours you wouldn’t be seen dead in. But today they had some irresistible knife-pleated skirts, very short. I tried one on, and it looked great. I have good legs, even if I say so myself, especially in black tights, and short skirts suit me. I usually buy my clothes in Penney’s or somewhere like that. I never had a really good wool skirt before, but this was only fifteen pounds. It’s a green tartan. Alva thought it was lovely, and even though she never wears skirts except at school, she decided she’d get one too, so she tried a navy tartan, and it looked great on her.

  We look just like sisters, I said, joking.

  We are sisters, she said, puzzled.

  She doesn’t really have a great sense of humour. Anyway, the skirts were great value, and with Irish summers what they are we’ll probably get to wear them most of the year around. Alva wanted to wear hers straight away, but I said it would get ruined on the bus, and anyway she didn’t have any tights, and it would look a bit silly with bare legs and an old pair of black socks with bobbles on them from washing, so I got her to agree to have it folded up in tissue paper and put in a paper carrier bag. They have anonymous brown paper bags in this shop, with paper handles, which I think are quite smart.

  Then we went to a coffee shop, one of those trendy new places in Temple Bar, with our mysterious brown bags and made two cappuccinos last for half-an-hour. It was a nice day, the sort of thing sisters in books do. It was expensive, though. Not the sort of thing you can do every Saturday. Still, I have to learn to be a bit less anxious about money.

  After that we went and looked at an exhibition in an art gallery. Neither of us knows anything about art, but we’re willing to learn, and anyway the exhibition was free. We didn’t understand it. We didn’t like it either. It was all half-finished looking pieces of sculpture, as if the sculptor had died in the middle of making a statue, and there were strange-looking things made out of chicken wire and dead light bulbs and what looked like lumps of plaster of paris. There was a television in a corner that kept playing the same thirty-second video of somebody running screaming through a tunnel, ending with their face looming right up at the camera and sort of exploding at you. Then they’d be running screaming through the tunnel again. The whole thing was green, like a black-and-white picture, only green, if you see what I mean. The last exhibition we saw there was patchwork quilts, all in lovely colours with feathery bits and sequins. It was much nicer.

  The reason I mention this is that as we were leaving I caught sight of Mum. She was coming in the entrance door, as we were going out the exit. We were in a group of about six people all leaving together, so we would have been partially hidden by the bodies around us, and she was pushing the glass door with her right hand and looking back over her left shoulder to talk to somebody who was half beside her, half behind her, so that her raised arm shielded her face. I put my hand on Alva’s arm to attract her attention and was about to say, There’s Mum, look, what’s she doing here, let’s tell her it’s terrible, not to waste her time, when I saw who it was Mum was talking to so animatedly. It was the proverbial tall dark stranger, though he wasn’t especially handsome, and too thin for his height. I noticed as he leaned across Mum to lend his weight also to the door that his hands were long and thin and rather white. I just stood for a moment and watched them, and then I half-turned and heaved against the heavy door and joined Alva, who by now was out on the footpath, putting up the hood of her anorak, as it was starting to drizzle.

  I said: Let’s run to the bus shelter, otherwise these paper bags will start to disintegrate. Biodegradable is all very well, but I don’t want them biodegrading all over our lovely new skirts.

  I never mentioned Mum, or the tall dark stranger.

  Tuesday 20th May

  Alva had extra hockey today. She’s good, if only she would train a bit harder. Anyway, she’s
been picked for a team that has a match on Saturday, so she had no choice but to go to extra practice, and she wasn’t able to come home with me, so we arranged that she’d go home with her friend Sarah afterwards, and Mum would pick her up from there later. That’s how come Mum and I ended up doing the shopping together, without Alva, this evening. It was nice. I didn’t have Alva nagging at me to buy chocolate biscuits, so I was able to concentrate on what I was doing much better. We went around together, pushing our trolley, and we discussed all our purchases rationally, tranquilly, in a grown-up way. It sounds a small thing, but those are the sort of situations that intimacy is built on, I feel.

  They had boyscouts on the checkouts, doing the packing. They don’t know much about packing shopping. They don’t put the frozen things separately, so you can unload them quickly into the freezer, and they put mushrooms at the bottom of a bag, under big heavy things like tins of tomatoes and bunches of bananas, so you end up with mushroom paté by the time you get home. I was just thinking that if I had a little brother, I’d make sure he knew about putting the fragile things at the top. Then I remembered. It hadn’t really struck me before that Gavin is our little brother. We always just think of him as belonging to Dad and Naomi. It’s not the same as a real little brother, of course. We can’t teach him things like putting the frozen foods together, but still, he is a little brother, it is a blood relationship.

  I was thinking all this as I rescued a bag of hot-cross buns from under the toilet-duck, and I must have stopped in the middle of it, because I suddenly realised I was standing at the checkout with a bag of buns in one hand and a toilet-duck in the other, with a puzzled-looking little boyscout staring at me curiously. I met his eyes, like two little buttons in his freckly face, and I gave him a quick smile and said: Just rescuing the buns. We don’t want them forest pine flavoured, do we?