Page 17 of The Snag List
‘Well, Roe’s done a fantastic job on the restaurant since Covid. It’s no joke keeping a business steady in a global crisis,’ Philip cut in.
‘Hmmmm.’ Maura looked openly doubtful about this assessment. ‘I suppose you’ll hardly stay on there, Rose, now that ye’re all the way out here.’ Maura turned to Esther. ‘She was always a great one for starting things and never seeing them through. It’s amazing that this,’ she nodded at Eddie and Roe sitting side by side, ‘is still going on. Though still not married after all this time. Lib notions, I suppose.’
Esther looked stricken and, beside Roe, Eddie stiffened. Roe only sighed. ‘Never change, Mum.’
‘You’re sosensitive. I didn’t mean anything by that.’ She smoothed her napkin and clenched the cat’s arse even tighter, looking around the room. ‘It’s just a huge amount of space for two people.’
‘Well, we’re hoping it won’t just be the two of us for long, Maura!’ Eddie stood up in a move Roe recognised as his signature power assertion. ‘We wanted to show you the house and raise a glass to the future we hope to create here.’
‘Does that mean what I think it means?’ Esther raised her glass, looking giddy.
‘It means we’retrying.’ Eddie smiled broadly, crossing his fingers.
This statement had the effect of abruptly dividing the room. Philip and Esther leapt up and embraced their son, and Pat and Maura stayed frozen in their seats.
It was such a stark representation of the difference between the Kellehers and her parents, Roe thought sadly. Obviously noticing the subdued air emanating from Roe’s side of the family, Eddie brightly suggested showing his parents the rest of the house before they sat for the main course.Fuck’s sake, Roe thought.Just go right ahead, Eddie, detonate the bomb and stroll off there. This was Eddie all over – he had an ongoing obsession with seeing her stand up to her parents.
As Eddie and his parents filed out, she heard him say, ‘Youhaveto see the first-floor bedroom – we’re not actuallycallingit the baby’s room buuuuut—’ The door swung closed behind them and the mutedthunkof the door catch sliding home echoed in the silence of the room.
Finally Pat, who had barely spoken since their arrival, cleared his throat. ‘You didn’t go with blinds, Roe?’ Pat fitted blinds and was passionate about the ‘shading’ industry. He stood up and went to the window to examine the angle of the sun. ‘I would’ve sorted ye out, you know. As we get more into summer that sun will be blinding in here. I can still come and put something in?’
In a bland voice, she addressed him. ‘The blinds are on the snag list. Our contractor will be back to sort them. They’re included with the house.’
‘I see. Well, it’s a fine house at that. Very big.’
‘Hmmm.’ Maura was looking around the living room. ‘Strange to have a living room upstairs like this. I suppose that’s how it’s done these days.’
The silence stretched on with neither of them commenting on Eddie’s ‘trying’ announcement. Roe wondered if their problem was just that she and Eddie weren’t married? Pat and Maura were religious, but it was hardly unusual to stay together unmarried these days. Whenever Roe felt the morass of her mother’s judgement bearing down on her, it was impossible not to date it back to Roe’s teens when Maura had found out about Roe’s sexuality. They were on holidays in Portugal and Maura had walked in on Roe with a girl who was staying in the resort. Maura had freaked and seventeen-year-old Roe understood then and there what her parents believed was and wasn’t acceptable, and this,she, was not.
Roe avoided the girl, Emma, for the rest of the holiday. The night before Emma’s family was going back to England, she had handed Roe a letter.I’m not sorry it happened, the girl had written.I wish we could have had more time together.Roe was sorry it had happened. She couldn’t help but be. She’d seen the disgust on her mother’s face. They had never exchanged a single word about it since and she had kept her relationships completely hidden, until Eddie.
‘On a second-storey room like this, I’d suggest going with a very fine sheer curtain,’ Pat sat back down on the couch, ‘given that you’re not overlooked.’
‘Right, Dad.’
I should feel sorry for them, Roe mused, trying to be dispassionate.They don’t know their own kids. Her older brother, Connor’s approach was to emigrate and engineer an elaborate fake life of reporting on fictitious dates with women, and Jenny, the youngest, operated on a need-to-know basis with her parents, all too aware that many of the particulars of her life – an abortion at twenty-four, no plans for monogamy or children ever – would never chime with her parents’ goals for her. It was sad that Pat and Maura’s children had reached such a desperate impasse with their parents’ rigid views that they’d given up on having any kind of honest relationship with them.
And it was worse still that Maura and Pat themselves were largely unaware of it. As far as they knew, Roe was the outlier. The impossible one.The freak, the fuck-up, as Roe frequently thought of herself in her dark moments. That’s what Eddie and Danny could never understand about her relationship with her parents. As much as she raged against their narrow-mindedness, so often the voice in her head parroted their rhetoric.I am a freak, I am a fuck-up. I don’t deserve anything. They were the people who had raised her, and insidious remnants of their dogmatic opinions resided in her to this day.
Some years ago, Roe had realised that when you are emotionally estranged from your parents, it is near-daily work to go against them. Every day opposing them was a sustained effort, a fight. And it was a strange kind of battle, unseen, without bloodshed as such, but still a conflict that underpinned her life. Like subsidence in the foundations of a house, her well-being, her pursuit of simple things like love and security, all pushed constantly against her parents’ rejection and disgust with her.
‘What do you think of the baby plan?’ She couldn’t help it – a little part of her wanted some scrap of approval.
‘Why do you bother asking, Rose? You’ve never done anything the way I wanted you to.’ Maura’s scathing eyes roamed Roe’s body. ‘And look at you, Roe. How will you take care of a baby when you clearly can’t even take care of yourself.’
‘I take care of myself, Mum.’ Roe hated how weak her voice sounded. ‘Bodies just look different.’
‘Hah, that drivel again,’ Maura spat. ‘I know it’s not “popular” to talk about weight these days. But you’ll have a harder time conceiving. Though if you ask me, becoming parents without marrying is a recipe for disaster. And I’m sure you’ll say “my mother is so backwards, stuck in her ways” but the truth of the situation is this: if you won’t commit to a marriage then why do you think you’re capable of committing to a baby? You don’t have the slightest idea what it takes.’ Maura laughed sourly. ‘Can you even comprehend all the heartache you putmethrough? Going against me every way you possibly could since you were seventeen years old.’
Shame gushed through Roe, a silent plea in her heart.Please go. Please go. She always felt like a child when her mother unleashed like this. The punch of rejection landed fresh every time.
The living-room door burst open and Eddie, obviously having heard the tone if not the exact words, rushed to Roe’s side. ‘Maura, Roe does nothing but try to—’
‘We’re leaving, Eddie. I try and try to be accepting of this arrangement. But this baby thing. It’s too much.’ Maura held her hand up as if the very concept pained her. She pushed her way out of the room and clattered down to the ground floor. Pat followed meekly. Downstairs the front door opened emitting a cheery ‘Have a lovely day!’ and then they were gone.
Eddie tried to pull Roe close but she fought it. ‘I need a minute, Eddie.’ Her words came out sharper than she expected. She hurried out to the landing, ducking into the little guest bathroom to dodge Esther and Philip who were peering sympathetically up the stairs from the hall below.
Roe sat on the toilet lid and buried her face in the hand towel. The comedown from dealing with her parents always took as much of a physical toll as it did a mental one. She gripped the towel and pushed it hard into her face to muffle her ragged roar of frustration. The anger, when it was ignited, was like being taken by a wave in a dark sea. When she got like this she could become nihilistic and myopic in a matter of minutes, her entire life narrowed until all she could see was some bleak interior horizon upon which her failures marched, mocking her. Just as it was work to go against her parents every day, it was also work to be happy with herself every day. Or not even happy, just OK with herself. And one encounter with Maura and Pat could demolish that work in just a look and a few choice remarks. Roe doubled over, still chewing the towel, tasting soap on the crisp fibres. At these moments, she didn’t know what to do with the rage. She often wondered if any woman did. She wrenched the towel away, satisfied by the thud of pain as it yanked at her teeth.
