‘But surely she should be going to school?’ Bryan persists. ‘It’s her Leaving Cert in a month. Is she sitting her exams? Or is she going to take a year out and sit them next year?’
‘Bryan, we talked about this last weekend.’
‘Yeah, Dad, we did, and we talked about it the weekend before that, and the weekend before that too, and I still haven’t heard a proper answer.’
‘Well, she couldn’t go to school today; she had to go visit the solicitor,’ my mother pipes up. ‘Much good that it did us, when he can’t tell us anything anyway.’
‘I still can’t believe she’s not allowed her own solicitor.’ My father shakes his head.
Not unless they make an application to bring up my sexual history, I think, and they will. Of course they will.
How many people have you had sex with?
What counts as sex? Full penetration? Oral?
(Remember you’re under oath.)
Mam’s face, Dad’s face, Bryan.
(Remember you’re under oath.)
‘Did he say anything about their performance in the District Court?’ Bryan asks. ‘I can’t believe those fuckers are saying they’re not guilty.’
‘Language, please.’
‘Sorry, Mam, but as if anyone is going to look at those photos and not convict them.’
‘Hmmm,’ my mother says. ‘Well, Aidan Heffernan isn’t sure if the photos will be admitted as evidence.’
‘
What?
’
‘Please don’t shout at me, Bryan. I’m only repeating what the man said.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’ She looks at me for support. ‘They might be allowed, he’s just not sure. They probably will be. I’m sure they will be.’
Bryan’s teeth are gritted. ‘After all that . . .’
Hassle
, he wants to say.
Trouble. Effort.
He has seen all the photos. He has seen my legs splayed, pink flesh. (I bet it smells fishy.) He has seen me as a
slut, whore, bitch.
‘I’ve started seeing a therapist too, this woman at UL,’ Bryan told us last month over dinner. My father pushed his chair back from the table and left the room without saying a word. I am infecting them all with my sadness. I am ruining their lives too.
‘I’ll phone Aidan tomorrow,’ my father says. ‘He’ll tell me.’
‘He can’t.’
‘Nora, I’ve been friends with Aidan Heffernan since national school.’ My father’s chest is puffed out. ‘He’ll tell me.’
‘He can’t, Denis. He doesn’t get to see this Book of Evidence thing either. It’s only the other side will get to see that.’
‘The other side? You mean Paul O’Brien and those scumbags will get to see this before Emma?’ Bryan asks, and my mother nods. He looks sick. ‘We’ve got to do
something
; we can’t just sit around and watch Emma fall apart while—’
‘She’s not falling apart,’ my mother says sharply.
I am not falling apart. I am being ripped at the seams, my insides torn out until I am hollow.
‘That’s none of your concern, Bryan,’ my father says.
‘Well, Dad, since I’m the only one who is prepared to face up to the reality around here, then I think it is my concern. It’s my
sister
we’re talking about.’
I wish Bryan would leave it alone. It’s because of him all of this is happening anyway. He was the one who persuaded me that I needed to press charges, that I needed to change my statement to say that I couldn’t remember what had happened that night. And if I couldn’t remember, how could I have given consent? And I did what he said. I thought it would be better for him to think of me as the victim (helpless, blameless, stupid) rather than a dirty slut (
slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore
) like everyone else.
And it spiralled out of control.
‘Hi, I’m a producer from
The Ned O’Dwyer Show
– we’d love to have you on with us?’
‘I’m with xoJane – we want you to write a piece for us. It will give you a chance to share your side of the story. I’ve attached some articles that we’ve run previously, girls with similar stories to yours.’
(I read the articles. I want to find stories that are worse. I need to know that there are girls who have been through worse. Did they survive?)
‘I work for Jezebel. We want to support you. You are not alone in this, Emma.’
I feel as if I am alone.
‘And I just think it would be nice to know that there’s some sort of plan for her future,’ Bryan says, ‘and not just everyone sticking their head in the sand and pretending like—’
‘Bryan –’ my father’s voice is firm – ‘just quit while you’re ahead. Your mother and I will deal with this. And that’s that. Now, are we going to go watch the match?’ He stops in the hall doorway, looking back over his shoulder at me. ‘Sure, Emma doesn’t want to watch soccer, do you, love?’ he asks me out of the side of his mouth, his gaze hovering at a point an inch above my head. ‘It’s not really her thing.’
My mother waits until they’ve left before rescuing her glass of wine. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs?’ she says. ‘No point in you waiting here. Go on now, out of my sight.’
*
I’m lying on my bed looking at Facebook when I hear my mother call us for dinner. Sean has commented on Ali’s wall about the poetry question for English Paper Two, Ali replying that she’s betting on Heaney to come up. Jamie commented underneath that she’s prepared an answer on John Donne too, just in case. Sean liked Jamie’s comment.
‘Should you have your laptop in your room?’ It’s Bryan, standing in the open doorway. I shut the computer.
‘You again?’ I joke weakly.
He has come into my room every fifteen minutes for the last hour, asking if I had seen his old Ballinatoom jersey, or if he could borrow my phone charger, or wondering if I had heard about this new comedian and wanting to show me a clip on YouTube. ‘Aren’t you missing the match?’ I asked him, and he shrugged it off. He’s always like this when he comes home, following me around, keeping an eye on me. He is the only one who looks at me any more and he looks too closely. I am afraid of what he must see.
‘Just wanted to check that you heard Mam calling us for dinner,’ he replies, walking before me down the stairs.
I don’t want to be caught, I want to tell him. Let me fall.
My parents have already started eating when Bryan and I sit at the table, the sounds of biting and chewing and slurping unbearably loud. I cut the tofu-burger up into little pieces, placing each one in my mouth gingerly and making myself chew it and swallow, washing it down with the rest of my juice.
‘No good?’ Bryan asks.
‘Food tastes a bit grey these days.’
My parents stiffen.
Medication = depression = things we do not talk about in this family.
That’s why I go to the therapist.
‘Well, it’s tofu, what can you expect?’ Bryan says, and my father guffaws, as if it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. I go to the fridge to refill my juice. There is a different bottle of wine in the fridge door now. I check the label. It’s a white wine from Chile, a quarter of it gone already. I sit back at the table and I say nothing.
‘Now tell me this, and tell me no more,’ my mother says to Bryan, ‘have you been on any dates recently?’
‘No one goes on dates, Mam.’
‘Well, any romance? A gorgeous-looking boy like you – they must be queuing up.’ She sucks her lower lip. ‘Unless you’re not ready. Are you still upset about Jennifer?’
‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘You poor thing, it’s only natural—’
‘The boy said he didn’t want to talk about it, Nora.’ My father drops his cutlery on his plate with a clatter.
Bryan looks sad. That’s my fault too.
‘Oh, don’t worry. You’re my beautiful boy. You’ll find someone yet.’ She reaches across the table to take hold of his hand, knocking over my juice as she does so. I try and catch the glass, scrambling to my feet to grab a dishcloth.
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘I had one glass, Denis. Surely I’m allowed to have
one
glass of wine?’
I wrap my legs around the feet of the chair to stop myself from running out to the utility room and getting rid of the recycling bin, all the empty bottles,
clink clink clink
, before my father can see it. What if he decides that my mother has a drinking problem and that she needs to be sent to a clinic somewhere to get sober? Will she have to go up to St John of God’s like Jamie’s uncle Billy had to do a few years ago, everyone in town joking that the publicans would be put out of business if he went on the dry. I could already hear them gossiping, saying
like mother, like daughter, sure everyone knows that girl was demented with the drink when this ‘attack’ happened, and I mean, who poured the drink down her throat? No one forced her to drink that much.
I imagine my mother at an AA meeting, sitting around in a circle talking about her feelings, and maybe she would want to start talking to me too, talking about things I don’t want to remember. (I can’t remember, I told you.) The therapist tells me that I need to
stop engaging in Catastrophe Thinking
, that I should
visualize a large Stop sign whenever your thoughts start to spin in this way
, but I can’t, no one will tell me anything, no one will tell me what’s
really
going on, so of course I have to imagine it for myself. What if my father doesn’t want to have a lush, a
stupid, ugly, fucking lush
, as a wife any more? (Why can’t she be strong? Why can’t she pretend like the rest of us?) What if he decides that he wants someone who has her make-up on in the mornings, and who cooks dinners from scratch for her family, not just for show at the farmer’s market? (
We can’t let them think they’ve got the better of us, Emma.
) What if he meets someone else, and doesn’t want to have anything more to do with this family, with his stupid, drunken wife and his stupid, damaged daughter? And my mother would blame me. She would wish that I had never been born. She would hate me for breaking up her perfect family. After all those years of wishing my mother was different, that she would just leave me alone, it’s strange how panicked I feel at the thought of her giving up on me.
And it would be all my fault.
‘So, Em, are you heading out this weekend?’ Bryan changes the subject.
I pretend to give this some consideration. ‘No, I don’t think so. Not this weekend.’
‘I met Maggie at Centra earlier, and she said she and Jamie are going to hang out at Ali’s later, watch a movie. Nothing too hectic, she said, because of –’ he hesitates – ‘the, eh, Leaving being so close now, you know. Anyway, she said that she’d tried to text you to ask if you wanted to come, and she phoned too but she couldn’t get on to you.’
‘Oh, wait.’ My mother slams her hand down on the table. The knife jumps off her plate and hits the floor with a clatter. I jerk back in fright. ‘She rang the house phone earlier looking for you.’
‘And why didn’t you tell Emma?’ my father asks. ‘Why didn’t you pass on the message?’
‘I forgot. I’m sorry.’
‘You’re forgetting a lot of things these days,’ my father mutters.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘I’ll ring her later,’ I say. The girls had come to visit at the beginning, filing into my room like mourners at a wake. I could tell a small part of them loved this, the drama of it all. ‘Yes, she’s my best friend,’ they could say. ‘Yes, I was there that night.’ ‘Yes, I know what’s happened. Emma talks to me. She trusts me.’
Maggie had been distraught, her eyes welling up, constantly reaching out to hug me. (I didn’t want to be touched.) I was stiff, my arms stuck to my sides. She broke away, embarrassed, apologizing over and over again for leaving the party without me, for not insisting that I go home with them, for being mean to me in school.
‘But I didn’t know, Em,’ she had said. ‘I didn’t know about all of this. I thought you had fucked Ali over, and with the whole Eli thing . . .’ I stared at her and she flushed. ‘Well, you
did
kiss him, Emma. Not that it matters now, obviously, but can you understand why I was cross with you? Even a little bit?’
I turned to watch Ali tracing her fingers over the Polaroids I had glued to my vanity mirror, and I knew she was counting to see how many she was in.
‘Ali,’ Maggie had hissed at her. She joined us on the bed, sitting with her legs curled up underneath her, telling me she forgave me for sleeping with Sean. She was restless, uncomfortable. She wanted things to go back to normal.
So did I.
‘Wait, are those my sunglasses?’ she said, picking up the Warby Parkers. I remember taking those. I remember thinking she could afford a new pair, I remember feeling it wasn’t fair, why weren’t my parents rich too? I remember caring about stuff like that.
‘Yes,’ I said. I didn’t even feel embarrassed.
‘Ali, for fuck’s sake.’ Maggie’s face was turning red. ‘Will you just cop on?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. And it didn’t. None of it mattered.
We were silent for a few moments. Silence follows me everywhere these days.
‘But are you sure, Em?’ Ali blurted out. ‘You were pretty wasted.’
‘Ali.’
‘What? Mags, I have to ask. Sean is a good guy, I just want Emma to be, like, totally sure.’ She wrapped her arm around my shoulder. (I didn’t want to be touched.) ‘You know I’m on your side, right? I was just asking if it was, like,
rape
rape.’ (I don’t want to hear
that word
.)
‘Do you want to go out?’ I said. ‘I heard Dylan’s throwing a party in his place.’
‘What? Why would you want to go—’
‘Or we can just go out,’ I said. ‘Do you want to go out for a few drinks?’
‘Eh, sure,’ Maggie said, looking at Ali in confusion. ‘If that’s what you want.’
I wanted things to go back to normal.
Ringing the doorbell of Dylan’s house. Walking into the kitchen to put our beer in the fridge. Silence. We go into the living room. One person leaves. Another. And another. It is only Maggie, Ali and me left. Sarah Swallows saying, ‘I think you had better leave. Dylan doesn’t want
her
here.’ We go to Reilly’s. I drink and I drink and I drink. I try to forget my shame. (I can’t remember.)