Authors: Kate Eberlen
Charlotte had spent her father’s gift on booking us into business class so there was plenty of space for me to stretch my legs. I’d already had a lot more to drink
than she had because of the baby, and now there was a constant supply of champagne.
‘I could get used to this,’ I said drowsily, as the cabin lights were dimmed and the stewardess handed us pillows with clean cotton cases.
‘Just as well,’ Charlotte replied. In the darkness, I was aware of her hand seeking mine.
I’d been talking about the luxury; she was talking about us.
The simple act of holding hands felt like the most intimate thing we’d ever done.
‘Come on,’ she whispered against my neck.
I followed her to the toilet cubicle and we consummated our marriage at thirty thousand feet, with grains of rice skittering from our clothes.
I think it’s called the mile-high club. That’s definitely what was going on, but I don’t suppose it was much fun with Hope banging on the door. I’d
thought the business-class toilet would have more room – I couldn’t risk letting Hope go in on her own and locking herself in – but we couldn’t wait, so we ended up walking
all the way back through the dimmed economy section, where people were trying to sleep, with Hope loudly declaring, ‘My knickers are wet!’
‘Why didn’t you go at the airport when I told you?’
‘I didn’t need to.’
It was so long since Hope had had ‘an accident’, I hadn’t packed a change of clothes in my hand luggage and I was dreading asking the stewardess for a towel for the seat, but
it got worse in the cubicle when Hope pulled down her knickers and saw the blood.
None of the books gives any advice about how to tell a mildly autistic child in an aeroplane loo that they’re having their first period. Hope was only just eleven, so I hadn’t
expected it to happen yet, even though I knew that plumper girls sometimes got theirs before they went to big school. It’s a difficult enough process to explain at the best of times,
especially to someone as literal as Hope. The only upside was that by the time I got her out of there, with a wad of tissues stuffed into her knickers, Hope was so exhausted from screaming she
slept the rest of the flight.
Kevin and Shaun were waiting for us in the arrivals hall with a sign saying:
Céad míle fáilte Teresa and Hope Costello
.
Which shows it’s true what they say about Irish people becoming even more Irish when they’re living abroad.
It’s funny when you haven’t seen someone for several years, because there’s always a bit of awkwardness at first, when you’re looking at each other wondering if
they’re thinking how much older you look too.
I’ve never quite understood why men with a fear of going bald elect to go completely bald at the first sign of losing their hair, but it can’t be nice seeing a shiny dome
relentlessly stretching back from your brow, even worse if it’s a bit patchy. I suppose the thinking is that shaven is cooler than comb-over, and I’d have to agree with that. Did Kev
have to wear a wig when he was performing, I wondered? I’d never seen a bald ballet dancer, not that I’d seen a lot of ballet dancers apart from on BBC2 on Boxing Day and the all-male
swans at the end of
Billy Elliot
, and you couldn’t see their heads for feathers.
I’ve no idea what Kevin was thinking about me. Or perhaps I have, because he and Shaun discussed the idea of getting me a ‘makeover’ long before Shaun suggested it later on in
the holiday.
‘Good flight?’ Kev asked.
‘Blood is coming out of my room because I’m not going to have a baby,’ Hope announced.
I think even Kev had to admit at that point that Hope wasn’t like most girls her age.
‘She got her first period . . . Yes, on the plane . . . No, not expected, obviously . . . Apart from that? Oh, fine, perfect flight, thanks.’
‘Welcome to the Big Apple,’ said Shaun.
He seemed like a decent, sensitive man. Although we’d only just met, I found him easier to be with in some ways than Kevin, who I’d known all my life. With Kev, there was always the
defensiveness. It wasn’t that I was going to make a big deal about him leaving me to do everything, but he still had to keep listing all the reasons why it had been impossible for him to come
home even for the occasional visit.
We took a yellow cab into Manhattan. I was disappointed at first. New York was just like any other city on the outskirts, with scrubby nondescript buildings, dusty parking lots and advertising
hoardings, although, if I’d thought about it, I should have known from
The Great Gatsby
. As soon as we caught our first glimpse of Manhattan, all lit up like the beginning of
Friends
, that changed of course. Driving over the Brooklyn Bridge and seeing the view, so familiar from television and movies, really brought it home to me that the Twin Towers were no
longer there, and how the empty bit of sky must remind New Yorkers every day how the whole world would never be the same.
Kev and Shaun had a duplex loft apartment in the downtown area known as Tribeca. Shaun explained the name was short for the Triangle Below Canal Street, although it sounds more exotic than that,
doesn’t it, like some old Russian quarter or something. Kev told us that Robert de Niro – he called him Bob, as if he knew him – lived just round the corner. The apartment seemed
quite dark when Shaun opened the door and showed us the bedrooms on the fifth floor. Hope and I had a room of our own with a view towards the Wall Street area, a big double bed and a futon unrolled
on the parquet floor.
Kev and Shaun shared an enormous double bed in the other bedroom. I didn’t know what Hope was going to make of that. She wasn’t keen on what she called ‘kissy stuff’
between a man and a woman and I had no idea how she’d respond to the idea of two men doing it. I kind of felt I should have prepared her, but I didn’t know where to start, so I spent
quite a lot of the holiday dreading the moment she would ask an embarrassing question, and it would somehow be my fault.
You entered the living room on the fifth-floor level, but the ceiling above had been knocked out and a staircase went up to an open-plan kitchen which had doors onto a roof terrace. All the
glass gave it a massive, airy feeling.
‘Why is the kitchen upstairs?’ Hope wanted to know.
‘Why not?’ said Kev. Like I said, defensive.
‘Tree! Why is the kitchen upstairs?’
‘It’s just the way Kevin and Shaun like it. It means you can eat your meals and look at the view, see?’
I could tell she was thinking,
Why would you want to do that? We
didn’t look at a view at home, or in school, or any other place where we ate our meals.
‘Is your house upside down?’ Hope asked Shaun.
‘I suppose you could say that,’ he chuckled. ‘But please make it your home!’
Hope wasn’t good with idioms.
‘Our home is the right way up.’
We wandered around the neighbourhood before eating an early supper, because it was already after midnight for us. It was the kind of area where the clothes shops look like art installations with
a neon tube in the window and maybe just one pair of shoes, or a dress on a hanger, and no price tags. Shaun had booked us into a lovely restaurant, but it was wasted on people who had no idea of
the difference between a flounder and a snapper (or even that they were fish) and knew pasta only as ‘cheesy’, ‘meaty’ or ‘tinned’. The staff were so helpful and
friendly, I think they’d have gone out and bought us a can of Heinz spaghetti if we’d demanded it, but I assured Shaun that Hope would be fine with
farfalle
– although
better to call them bows than butterflies – with cherry tomatoes and goat’s cheese.
I couldn’t help noticing that the tip Shaun left was bigger than the entire cost of any meal I’d ever eaten out. I told him on the way back to the apartment, when Kevin fell in next
to Hope for the first time and Shaun and I hung back to give them some space to get to know each other, that we’d be just as happy with McDonald’s or KFC.
He smiled at me. ‘What would you like to do while you’re here?’
‘We have to see the Empire State Building. I mean go up to the top.’
You could see the actual building in the distance from their roof terrace.
‘Would Hope like to see a musical?’ Shaun asked. ‘Kevin says she enjoys singing.’
I hesitated, because of course that was the thing she’d like most of all.
I decided to be up front about it. ‘The problem is, if she knows the song, she’ll try to sing along. And she knows
all
the songs.’
‘Don’t worry, Tess,’ said Shaun. ‘I spend my life dealing with high-maintenance people.’
He was a director, so he probably meant all the dancers and actors, but he definitely nodded his head in Kevin’s direction, and we exchanged one of those sweet, private moments of
understanding.
The following evening, Shaun got us tickets for
The Lion King
. We had four seats right in the centre of the stalls, house seats, he called them, which people in the theatre know about
because they save them in case someone like George Clooney wants to come along at the last minute. Hope sat between Shaun and me, and when the lights went down and the music started, he said to
her, nicely, but very firmly, ‘Now, Hope, you’re in the audience, and the audience’s job is to sit still and stay quiet, otherwise we won’t be allowed watch the show any
more.’
Which was a risky strategy, but clever, because it didn’t give her any time to object. To my astonishment, she did exactly as she was told. It helped that Shaun was a man, I suppose,
because we were used to doing what Dad told us, and there was so much for her to look at. It’s amazing the way the cast move like African animals and the music makes you well up. Literally
breathtaking.
Afterwards, as soon as we were on the street, Hope said, ‘Can I sing now?’
And Shaun said, ‘OK, now you can.’
So it was ‘Hakuna Matata’ all the way home, much to Kev’s embarrassment, although the other passengers on the subway enjoyed it. If Kev had taken the cap off his head, I reckon
we could have filled it with change that evening.
After that, Shaun took Hope and me to Broadway shows matinee and evening.
Wicked
,
Hairspray
,
Les Misérables
, and her favourite,
Mamma Mia!
Kev had a
performance coming up and was rehearsing most days, so couldn’t join us, and I sensed he was a bit miffed. Kev liked to be the centre of attention, and maybe he was right to be jealous,
because, to be honest, I think I fell a little bit in love with Shaun. Not in a physical way, obviously – although he was a very good-looking man and wore beautiful clothes, like soft yellow
cashmere sweaters with perfectly clean jeans, and he always smelled lovely – but just because he was so considerate and good at bringing out the best in everyone. Not just Hope, but me
too.
Shaun was the first person I ever spoke to properly about Art. We went to MoMA together while Kev took Hope to the zoo. They have some lovely Matisses there, as well as all the Warhols, and it
was great to see them in the city where they’d actually been made (I’d never said ‘made’ about art before that, always ‘painted’, which wasn’t the right
word). He also introduced me to contemporary American literature, selecting shiny hardback novels from the shelf in their living room, which I read every night, and discussed with him the following
day. My mind was like an empty vessel, thirsting for knowledge. He didn’t even laugh when I said that, but instead told me I should go to school, which means university in America.
‘I had a place to read English,’ I told him proudly. ‘At University College London. But I couldn’t go because of Mum.’
‘Here we go!’ said Kevin, playing an imaginary violin.
We were all sitting in Central Park because it was one of those days when it’s so sunny you think it’s warm enough for a picnic (which we’d got in a paper carrier bag from a
deli called Zabar’s), although when he said that, the grassy lawn we were sitting on suddenly felt a bit too cold, the breeze a bit chilly, and we probably should have moved off.
It’s not that I wanted people to think I was a martyr, or thank me all the time, but I did feel I was coping with something pretty difficult, and making some sacrifices on the way. I
wasn’t looking for sympathy, but because of other people’s refusal to acknowledge that there was actually a problem (in case that meant they might be obliged to share the
responsibility), it didn’t seem fair somehow, that I wasn’t allowed to get any recognition either.
So I said something of the sort and Kevin took umbrage.
‘It’s not as if you were going to study anything useful,’ he said.
Which sounded just like Dad, when Kev’s meant to be the artistic, creative one of the family.
‘Like dancing’s useful, you mean!’ I retorted.
To which he replied, ‘Why has everyone in my family always been against me dancing?’
‘Why do you always twist things?
You
were the one saying what I wanted to do was nothing!’
How easily siblings revert to being children. You started it! No, you started it! Very soon you’re so cross you can’t actually remember who started it.
‘I just meant it didn’t stop you reading books,’ Kev said. I should have recognized that as his attempt to climb down. But I was on fire by then.
‘It stopped me getting a degree! I was top in our school, and now I’m not even qualified for anything!’
‘But you still can be, Tess,’ Shaun said. ‘And you should be, shouldn’t she, Kevin?’
‘She should be, shouldn’t she, Kevin?’ echoed Hope.
That afternoon we went on the Circle Line boat which takes you all the way around Manhattan Island.
Standing out on deck, Kevin pointed. ‘There’s the—’
‘Statue of Liberty,’ Hope told him.
‘How did you know that, Hope?’ He looked over the top of her head at me, surprised.
‘You sent us a postcard.’
I could see he was pleased as well as impressed.
He started pointing out the other sights as we chugged past: the Staten Island Ferry, South Street Seaport, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge . . .