you sure you are okay? You don’t sound okay? I’ve been calling you all weekend, Maggie!’
And don’t I know it…! My mother’s voice is always high-pitched, but today it is more frantic than ever.
‘I’m fine, Mum. I’m driving,’ I tell her. I shouldn’t have answered. My head…
I’m not really driving but it’s the only thing that might get her off the line. My mother would talk the hind leg off a donkey but she sees right through the whole ‘I’m sorry, you’re breaking up’ or ‘I’m in a bad area’ or ‘I have an important call coming through’ excuses I usually make when I can’t be bothered with conversation.
‘You’re not fine. I know you’re not fine. Robert, she says she’s driving and she’s fine.’
‘Lies!’ my father shouts back. ‘She’s not fine. Maggie, you cannot do stress! You need to rest. No stress!’
‘You should have taken the day off and done something nice, Maggie. Even your father says so. You can’t afford this stress.’
‘Yes, she should have taken the day off and done something nice,’ I hear him echo in the background. I can just picture him, standing in his green wellies and baggy old-man trousers with his braces over his checked shirt, hovering by the ancient navy-blue landline phone that is attached to our kitchen wall back home in the big farmhouse I grew up in. He will be chewing on something, the end of his pipe, probably, and he will have a pen behind his ear (chewed also), just like I always do when I am doing something I enjoy and he will smell already of manure and sawdust.
‘I’m going out for dinner with Flo after work and she is meeting me outside the office at six, so it’s best I’m there,’ I lie. ‘I’m really looking forward to it.’
‘Oh, that’s nice. Where are you going for dinner? Robert, she is going for dinner. With Flo.’
‘We’re going to… um, we’re going to that new place,’ I waffle. ‘You know, my favourite. On George Street.’ More lies. ‘You see, I’m keeping busy, Mum. Busy, busy, busy.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s better than having too much time to think. Did you go to the church?’
‘Yes.’
‘Robert, she went to the church.’
Oh, Christ.
I hear a rustle as my dad takes the phone.
‘I hope you weren’t making an eejit out of yourself in front of those people,’ he says in a fluster.
By ‘those people’, he means ‘a man of the cloth’. By ‘eejit’ he means going to what Catholics call ‘Confession’. There is no one my dad hates more in this world than the Clergy.
‘I wasn’t.’
‘You could say your piece in your own apartment and it would do the same good than telling ‘them’ boyos your problems. None of their bloody business. Nosey –.’
‘I didn’t even see a priest, Dad. I just said what I wanted to say to Lucy, lit a few candles and left. I’m about to walk into the office now, so I’d better go.’
That bit wasn’t a lie. I was standing outside our office block and Davey, the porter, was winking at me as he did every morning and checking out my boobs, legs, bum and everything in between. Davey loved a good old perv.
‘You’re a good girl, Maggie O’Hara,’ says my dad and I can hear his voice shake. ‘A really good girl and you deserve the best and you deserve to be here. God bless wee Lucy Harte, but you deserve to have a life too and a great one at that. Now, push those guilty feelings to the side and have a good day, do you hear me? And look at Princess Diana. Charles didn’t want her but it didn’t stop her finding a man again, did it?’
‘No, it didn’t, but then she died,’ I remind him.
‘Well you’re not going to die, are you? You’re even nicer than Princess Diana. You’re even nicer than Princess Diana and Elizabeth Taylor. You’re nicer than the whole bloody lot of them rolled into one and don’t you ever forget it!’
I turn my back on Davey. I feel his eyes burning on my backside.
‘I hear you, Dad,’ I say and feel tears sting my eyes. ‘I am absolutely fine and as much as I wish I looked like Lady Di or Liz Taylor or the whole bloody lot of them, believe me when I say that finding a man is the least of my worries. Now, stop worrying! I am thirty-three years old. I can cope with being dumped and having my heart broken. I’ve coped with a lot worse…’
I know that he is pointing his finger through the air in front of him as he speaks. I can just see him.
‘Well, I’m just saying that when the time comes to find love again, you’ll have no bother,’ he tells me, ‘so don’t be worrying that you are going to be on your own because you won’t be on your own for long. You’ve been through enough in your life and if I was talking to the man upstairs if there even is such a thing as the man upstairs I would be telling him that enough is enough and it’s about time he left you alone! Enough is enough!’
And at that I burst out crying.
‘Yes and that is well enough, Robert!’ my mother shouts in the background. ‘Enjoy dinner with Flo and send our love to her, Maggie. Is she crying?’
‘I’m not crying,’ I say, wiping black blobs of mascara onto the back of my hand. ‘I love you both, okay? See you soon. I will come visit really soon.’
‘Do. Yes, see you soon, love,’ says my dad and I can tell that he is crying too.
This makes me feel even worse because every time my second-hand heart breaks, I think my parents feel my pain even more than I do.
‘Morning, Maggie,’ chirps Bridget, our long-serving receptionist who caters for the six businesses who share our building, diverting calls and taking appointments and basically minding other people’s business. ‘My God, what happened? You look a mess. And you’re very late!’
Bridget is salt of the earth, but she couldn’t tell a white lie to save her own life. I know I look like shit. I don’t need her to remind me. I also know I’m late too! I fucking hate this place right now.
I stop in my tracks. I am not just late for work. I am late for a really, really important meeting. Oh shit!
‘Can you tell the guys I will be up in two? And give my apologies, please, of course. I’ve had a rough morning.’
Bridget looks back at me somewhat reluctantly.
‘A speedy two-minute fix-up in the bathroom isn’t going to make much difference, is it?’ I say.
She shrugs and lifts her phone while I quickly nip into the bathroom and see her honesty staring right back at me. I have a face that would scare babies, all blurred mascara, and I am as white as a ghost. Ah well, nothing that a hairbrush and some good old war paint won’t fix. Thank heavens for make-up. I need to compose myself and then forget what day it is.
Lucy Harte, just
