Friday reading

Another instalment of Family Lines, a new letter from Lucy to her missing sister, Deb.

FAMILY LINES - LUCY

25 May 1980

At night now I run your last day here through my head in slow motion. The camera pans the early morning street for signs of an idling car, a shadowy man at the wheel, or a youth at the bus stop, anxiously checking his watch, scanning the horizon.

Meanwhile, back in the Kane kitchen:

  Ma hovering, face as yet unmade, soft, a double chin appearing, framed by greyish roots of hair, the old red receding. Already she looks sad as she lights her second fag off the first, pours a second cup of tea and stares at you.

  You shouldn’t be going out on an empty stomach, missy.

  You shrug, sip your coffee.

  I empty cornflakes into my bowl, add milk while swatting up on the pencil industry in the Black Forest until the flakes overtop the bowl and spill out.

  I thought I told you not to read at the table.

  It’s my homework, Ma.

  I don’t care. And you’ll clean that mess before you go.

  Yeah, yeah. I lash into another bowl of flakes while you rinse your mug.

The tap makes the usual crashing noise when you turn it on and you rear back as if you’ve been smacked but you get wet anyway.

  Then the door shuts behind you.

  I bolt the last of my flakes, slather a slice of bread with jam, stick another on top of it and run down the street. I catch up with you in front of Early’s shop where you’re staring at the magazines in the window.

  Later I got to know those covers by heart because I returned so often, looking for a clue or a coded message in the headlines about losing weight, saving money and achieving multiple orgasm.

  What’re you looking at? I ask.

  Nothing. You turn to me and say, You’ve got a jam moustache.

  Ssssssshhhhhh. I put my finger to my lips. It’s my disguise. I’m being watched. I rub the mark with my sleeve.

  Now it’s on your jacket.

  Hides the snot.

  Grow up Lucy.

I know it’s one of life’s greater mysteries, how beauty can have such a plain sister. You were so embarrassed you ignored me in school. But like the ugly duckling I’ll come into my own someday. And will you be there to see me?

Suddenly your expression changes. You fling your satchel at me. Hold this, you say. I’ve forgotten my history book. You run off around the corner. No goodbye.

  I hang on for a while. I look in the bag to see if there’s any money there or chocolate or fags. None of the above. Just Ireland Since the Famine and a packet of crisps. I eat the crisps, stick your bag on the wall beside the shop and pelt down the road to school. Mr. Daly reads the riot act over me being quarter of an hour late. He should be glad I showed up at all. He’s no star attraction.

And if I’d waited longer would I have seen you return? Ma says you never came home. You ran around that corner and vanished. Off the map. The money in your PO book is gone. There’s nothing else missing. Not even a sock.

I try to follow you around that corner. Maybe you were snatched into the idling car and forced to the floor as it merged with citybound traffic. Maybe you ran laughingly to embrace the lad at the bus-stop. Maybe you were assumed into the sky by a UFO. Seriously all these theories have been suggested. Not the one I like to imagine, you sauntering down the road singing, tasting freedom. Between fits of anger and sadness I envy you. Unless the baby theory proves true. There’s a lot of money riding on that one. Not mine.

Ma has turned me upside down and shaken me to get me to say you’re pregnant. That way she figures that you’ll repent and turn for home.

  I’m her mother after all, she says. She doesn’t have a script for this drama. None of us do. I don’t care what kind of bitching the neighbours do behind my back. Why didn’t she tell me? She should have known I’d help her. Her face crumples and tears slide between its creases. I try hugging her sobbing shoulders but she doesn’t soften to me. She’s so lost in her grief and guilt, beating herself up for not noticing, she hardly sees me or Da.   

  In her upbeat moments she pictures your return with a babe in arms – I even found her last week sorting through our old baby clothes – and reaches out to take it from you. I wouldn’t mind having another baby now, she laughs.

  That would be fun, I say.

  She gives me a withering look.

  Occasionally she grits her teeth and hints at abortion. If she’s done that she’ll need our sympathy.

  Da doesn’t believe you’d do that.

  When the phone rings we jump to answer it. When the doorbell chimes one of us runs to the hall while the other two peer through the window to see who’s there. For all the talk about babies, from each moment to the next we expect the worst.

  That’s the one picture I don’t want to see: your body on a slab, identification disc dangling from your toe, like a price tag. But it keeps surfacing. I see it in mirror when I brush my teeth, on the blackboard at school, on the TV screen.

  It’s so unlike her, Ma and Da say when the neighbours come around with cakes and curiosity.

Remember how distracted Ma gets in the run up to opening nights, rehearsing songs while she makes the dinner, so that she puts sugar on the potatoes and salt in the custard? That’s the way she is now, without the songs. I bet you’re not missing the home cooking anyway, wherever you are. Da has shrunk since you left. Partly malnutrition, partly worry. I see his hair going grey by the day. He’s only gone fishing once, when his mates came and dragged him out. He didn’t even catch a minnow. His heart wasn’t in it.

  You’re doing our heads in.

That evening, when you hadn’t come home and while we still thought you would, I went back for your satchel but it was gone. I rummaged in the litter bin, leaned over garden walls up and down the street, poked in the bushes. No sign of it. I knocked on the shop door, loudly. Mrs. Early called out that the shop was shut. I told her it was urgent that I needed to talk to her. Eventually she hauled herself out, a paper napkin tucked under her chin, a fork in her hand.

  You’re a terrible girl, she said shaking her head at me. Disturbing me from my tea. What’s the matter with you?

  I told her the story and in the middle of it broke down in tears.

  There, there, she said in a kinder tone. Take it easy. Deep breaths.

  I asked her had she seen you or your satchel.

  She shook her head sympathetically, the action dislodging the napkin which fluttered to the ground between us. I bent to pick it up, and pressed it, lipstick stain and all, to my streaming eyes.

  Go home, she said, taking the dirty napkin from me. There’s a good girl. There’s nothing you can do now but wait. The gardaí will find her. Young ones do this all the time. Many’s the day I thought of doing it myself. She gave me a grim little smile. Go on back to your Ma or she’ll be worrying about you.

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