Page 4 of An Angel's Share
Grasping a napkin now, she starts wafting it at her puceface. “Why couldn’t you be normal? Nooo, you had to be smarter than all the boys. Taller, more confident. Why couldn’t you have pretended like all of my friends' daughters. Made them think they were in charge. Bent over a bit so you never towered over them. No, you had to become a Dr. Dr Aoife O’Clery. Why couldn’t you have been stupid?” She’s screeching as she catalogues my crimes against her, and her outdated ideas and ideals.
That’s it. Game time over.
“Go tell them I’m pulling out of your stupid deal.”
She faints.
Again.
Maggie, my godmother and Mammy’s best friend, runs into the room. She’d obviously been listening at the door and heard the thud.
“Aoife, she only wants what’s best for you,” she chastises me gently whilst pulling my mother into a sitting position and tapping at her face.
Mammy starts to come around, reaching up to check her elaborate hairstyle has managed to stay in place. It has. Huh, I’m impressed.
They’re hugging each other as if the end of the world is upon them. What a disaster for them both—a woman who has her own thoughts. A woman who will not take orders from idiotic men, even to make them feel better for ten minutes. They’re discussing me as if I’m not in the room.
“I knew she’d be trouble when she was born with that red hair,” Maggie tells my mother softly, rubbing at her back. “It’s not your fault, Mae. It’s the red hair gene. Your Da was the same.” They both nod sagely and look at each other, tears in their eyes.
I snort out a laugh, reminding them that I am actually inthe room, and can hear them. Grinning like the devil has ridden into town and shouted my number, I shake my long red locks at them.
“Thank god for Paddy Healey. Granda Healey was a god in my eyes,” I state with my hands on my hips, legs splayed in a power pose. I probably look like an alien species to them. I’m supposed to cower and smile politely.
They both gulp at the similarities they clearly see. Everyone else on my Mammy’s side of the family is short with dark hair and blue eyes. Me? No chance, a total throwback. I take after Granda Healey, her father. I’m tall at five foot ten inches, well over six feet in heels, which I love to wear, expressly to tower over small men. It makes me laugh how they then try any means to make you feel smaller.
Flaming red hair with an amazing natural curl to it, brown eyes, and a fuck you attitude saw Paddy dead and gone in his early forties. But his legend lives on. He’s still talked about on a weekly basis, both at home and in the surrounding villages. And certainly any pubs in a fifty mile radius. I’ve been compared to him wherever I’ve gone—in looks and, certainly on occasion, due to my antics.
My love of breaking the mould, taking a risk, has landed me in my current predicament. My mammy is not impressed this time.
“You can’t pull out. It’ll kill your father.” I doubt that is true, but let her ramble on. “He needs to know you’re settled. Why you wouldn’t get married instead of just this engagement, I just don’t understand.” Maggie has revived her. Her mouth is moving yet again. Why does nothing nice come out of it?
“Being engaged is enough at this point,” I assert. “I wantto settle back into life here. Get this company back on the straight and narrow. I can’t do that if I’m being harassed over a bloody wedding.” I’m tugging at my very tight dress. It’s getting a bit hot in here. “It’s been bad enough for this event. I need time to sort things out as well as have this baby, and then I’ll think about getting married.”
That is actually a bald-faced lie, but I can’t hit her or Daddy with too much. He’s ill, she’s a pain. To be honest, I couldn’t stand the fall out at present.
“But at least Daddy knows my intentions. He’s fine. You, however…” I scowl at her and Maggie, who have moved onto the settees, Maggie picking up two flutes of champagne, one after the other, and downing them like it’s water.
A knock at the door and the smiling round face of Maggie’s daughter Christy comes into view. Married to my eldest cousin, Patrick, she was in my class at school. My yardstick, according to my mammy.
Where I went to Trinity then on to Harvard for business, slogging my guts out on my degrees and doctorate, Christy stayed home, working in the offices for my family business here in Killclery. I then had to commute backwards and forwards, up and down the east coast of America, when my idiotic cousin Patrick and his pals convinced my dad and his brothers to set up a New York office. Meanwhile, Christy was still at home in Ireland. All fine so far.
Then she made her fatal error, in my view anyway. A mistake so huge it cost her her freedom. She fell in love with Patrick, married him, left work, and popped out two beautiful kids. Perfect life.
Now you can see why I’m the biggest disappointment to my mother. I could have had it all. Her utopia. And I didn’t need to leave the family home to get it. I didn’t even need toleave Ireland. “Look at how happy Christy is,” was trotted out hourly. I just rolled my eyes.
And don’t get me wrong, I am not criticising Christy. I do want it all. I just did not want a man to get in my way. Hence, my sperm donor.
Christy is a lovely woman, one of the nicest people I have ever met. Always has been. Not a mean bone in her body. A great cousin-in-law, and an asset to the whole family. But she was always, in my view-of late anyway, playing second fiddle to Patrick.
I’ve seen the hurt look on her face when people dismiss her. They see her as a convenience, and they treat her as one. The wife of Patrick, the mother of Ryan and Lara. Not Christy, the vivacious girl I knew. The caring human who was so empathetic, she cried at other people’s stories of hurt and woe. She’s no longer a person in her own right.
Well that’s not going to happen to me. I want to be a person. I’m going to demand it. They’re not sidelining or dismissing me.
Oh, but they tried. I’ve only been back two months, but as soon as my mammy leaked my news, the looks started. The patronising stares. The whispered, “It’s her hormones, pregnancy brain, over emotional.”
No, you fools. It's the business that my family have been involved with for hundreds of years going under. Making a loss for the first time in over seventy years.
I have to do something. It’s made my dad ill, and he’s controlling shareholder of the family firm. He holds the reins. He’s the decision maker. But I feel he’s being worn down.
