Not My Problem: Chapter 21

The flat did smell like dinner when I got home, but nothing I’d brought back from the food bank would smell that good, which made me suspicious about where it came from.

“Is that you, love?” Mam called out from the kitchen.

I didn’t answer. I went around the flat turning off the lights that she’d left on in her bedroom and the bathroom. They’d probably been on all day. I didn’t take my coat off, though, because it was bloody freezing, but at least that meant Mam had enough sense not to put the heating on; our gas bill last month was astronomical.

When I walked into the kitchen she was flipping two chicken breasts in the frying pan.

“Where’d you get those?” I asked.

“I went shopping. I am able to do that, you know. I’m the mother.” She said it in a joking tone and I didn’t say anything.

“Child support,” she said after a minute, cheeks reddening. “I know I fucked up the other night,” she added.

How had I not remembered it was child support day? She didn’t mention Dad by name, though. She wasn’t going to tell me about how he’d gone on holidays with his real wife or how he’d most likely not even told her that he was going. His name wouldn’t come up again until the next time. I hoped there would never be a next time again. I hoped that every time. When was I going to learn to stop hoping?

“Last night,” I said.

“It was a slip. You know they happen, Aideen, but I promise it doesn’t mean I’m off the wagon. I went to group this afternoon. I called the doctor and I’m going to get him to put me back on the Antabuse.”

Mam’s support group was run by the place she did her detox in last year, when I had to stay with my auntie Jacinta for four never-ending weeks. You could go to the group anytime. It wasn’t quite like AA. At least not the AA I’d seen on TV. There weren’t any doughnuts or sponsors at Mam’s group and there was no God bothering. People didn’t get up and tell stories and no one said, Hi, my name is Betty and I’m addicted to drinking Lambrini and scrolling Instagram or whatever. There was an actual therapist there and they chatted as a whole group. Antabuse was a pill that was supposed to stop you drinking because the side effects of drinking on it were awful. But it didn’t stop you wanting to drink.

She was looking at me like she was praying and I was God. I could wipe away her sins with the sign of the cross. Or I could smite her into damnation.

“What about your job?”

“I told Jacqui I had a bug but I was fine now and I’d be in, in the morning. And that I’d do extra shifts next week.”

“She bought that?”

Mam flinched and I felt bad. Was I being too hard on her? She had been sober for a long time. Maybe this was a slip like she said? Slips happened. I remembered that from one of the social workers. There was one who took me bowling and tried to be my friend. She said stopping drinking was not a straight line. It was a cycle. People sometimes had to go back to the start again but it didn’t mean that all the time they’d been sober was worthless.

“I’m normally a pretty good employee,” Mam said, and I got the feeling she was trying to impress upon me that she was normally a pretty good mam.

I didn’t say anything else and the tension grew thick.

“I paid the lecky bill,” she said after a bit.

“Aye, and left the lights all on to celebrate,” I grumbled.

“I got you a present,” she said.

I wanted to say it was a waste of money, but she was trying so hard. I didn’t smile, though.

She rolled her eyes and got up and went to the hall. She returned with a gift bag. She held it at arm’s length away from me.

“Now, you only get this if you promise to stop being mad at me,” she said. “I know I’m the worst mam in the world but I’m the only one you’ve got and I love the bones of you so you can’t stay mad. I can’t take it.”

“So needy,” I said, shaking my head.

She grinned and handed me the bag. Inside was an advent calendar. Not a chocolate one but one of the ones that had things like nail polish and lip balms in it. She started getting me one of these a couple of years ago. The first year it had taken me two days to crack, and one day when she was out I opened all the little doors in one go. Mam walked in on me surrounded by tiny samples of bath oil and night cream. Since then she’s kept the calendar on lockdown and presented me with it on a daily basis.

“I found it in the sale bin,” she said pointedly, “so it wasn’t even that dear. You can stop panicking. And you can open all the doors at once!”

I looked at her. She was so excited. She looked really proud of herself. Truthfully I still felt really hurt and angry. But I could see what kind of gesture she’d made and if I reacted in any way other than pure joy she’d feel rejected. Though I didn’t know how she could think that something like this would make me happy after everything she’d put me through. Still, I did my best smile and made excited noises as I opened all the doors. There were little face creams and lip glosses and nail polishes behind each door. Mam watched me closely, wanting to soak up my joy, so I did my best to give it to her.

When I’d opened them all I gave her a big hug and she squeezed me tight.

“That was brilliant,” I said, and, though I did my best to hide it, I didn’t know how she couldn’t hear the hollow note in my voice. “I’m going to put these in my room. And you can’t use any of them,” I warned playfully.

She crossed her heart.

With my bedroom door closed I let my smile drop. I arranged all the little bottles and jars in a row on my dresser where she would see them and think I was really pleased about it. I knew she’d done it to make me happy but all it felt like was that she’d taken something that made me happy in the past and tried to use it as a bandage for my pain now. Pain that she caused. It tainted the good thing. I knew instantly that next December when I got another advent calendar I’d only be able to think of this moment.

First thing Saturday morning my phone dinged. And I mean first thing. I hadn’t voluntarily got up this early on a non-school day in my whole life.

Almost like she could tell I was planning something stupid, Meabh’s name popped up on my screen.

I’d cracked and told Meabh about my plan for Daniel. I hadn’t mentioned any names but told her the gist.

Mam got up early and brought me tea and toast in bed.

“I won’t be here when you get back from work,” I said. “I’m going to hang out with Holly and then we’re going to a party.”

“You?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied, feeling a bit testy. “I go to parties. It’s a normal thing to do.”

I did not go to parties. And it wasn’t that normal. I mean, most of the people in my class lived in the country and their parents weren’t jetting out of town all the time. Half the time someone had a party it was the kind where the parents were putting a tray of sausage rolls out every twenty minutes. Unless there was an underground network of raging house parties that I didn’t know about. Which could be true, I realized.

“Whose party?”

“A girl in school.”

She looked even more surprised. I think she was expecting I meant someone from down the road, where a party meant clutching on to cans of cider at the end of the street. I mean, that’s all this party would be, but everyone there would feel superior because they were doing it in a garden instead.

“Will there be drinking and drugs and sex at this party?” Mam asked, sitting on the end of my bed.

“No.” Not for me anyway.

“Are you sure it’s not Mass you’re going to, then?” Mam cracked up.

“Have a good day at work, Mam.”

“Wait, wait. Hold on. How are you getting there? Where is this party?”

I gave her a look. The look said, Are you, the dirty stop-out of the century, really asking me these details?

She gave me a look back. The look said, I’m your mother, you insolent pup, answer my question.

“It’s out in Tydavnet. I’m getting a lift. I’ll be home tonight. Late.”

“But you’ll be home? You can’t stay out all night,” she said, sounding the most Mam-like she had ever sounded.

I nodded.

She knew I was lying about something, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was.

“Okay, if you’re going off to have sex, make sure you don’t catch chlamydia please. GP appointments are €55 before you even get a script, and I’m not made of money.”

“You really earn that World’s Best Mum mug, you know that?”

I shook my head at my mother’s version of the sex talk, but I felt a lot lighter than I had yesterday. How did she do that? How did she make it seem like her stumbling in, totally hammered, was years ago and everything was okay now? I knew I couldn’t trust her. I wondered if she would drink when I was out of the house. Maybe that was why she didn’t mind me going out. But I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe this was just her regular brand of lackadaisical parenting and that she wasn’t cracking open a hidden bottle of wine as I stomped downstairs. I had done a sweep of the house when she’d been in the shower and hadn’t found anything. But she had all day to buy drink.

If I stayed in I could stop her.

But I’d promised Daniel.

Mam popped her head back into my room just as she was about to leave. I don’t know if she saw through right into my brain or if she just took a good guess at what I was thinking.

“I’m going to be fine, you know,” she said. “I’m going to group after work. I want you to go and have a good time.”

I shrugged like I hadn’t been worried. “I will.”

This pleased her. She gave me a big smile and an exuberant wave.

“Off to glitz and glamour,” she said.

She did seem like she was in one of her good spells—the days following a bender where she tried so hard to be good and make things better. Maybe Dad hadn’t been around long enough to get to her this time. Like a disease she hadn’t had enough exposure to, to get really sick. It would be fine. Time to concentrate on the next problem. The one I could actually fix.