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Fionn reached to touch a piece of her hair, twisting the curl ever-so-gently. “Sometimes when you talk like that, I get worried you might faint. I thought that in school sometimes too, which is funny—or well, probably not funny, but it was one of the first ways I realised I cared about you. I’d imagine you being so heaped with the passion of your point that you’d forget to breathe. And I’d have to scoop you off the floor and have reason to touch you, help you, worry about you without wondering what it meant because it was normal to worry about people who were physically unwell.”
Áine didn’t suspect Fionn was trying to offend, or even compliment for that matter. He just seemed to be talking. Getting things off his chest.
“Education felt so painfully important back then,” he said. “I don’t mind not getting to go to college now, honest to God.” His fingers drew from her hair to caress the scar across her chin. It was like he needed to touch all the parts of her that he purely fantasised before. His own version of her lover’s scratch map per se. But still, she dipped from the touch of this one.
“They either leave scars or defined memories, the things considered pivotal,” she told him, instantly wishing she hadn’t for how much her words sounded like an Instagram quote with an insufferable backdrop of a grayscale beach.
Then Fionn reminded her of something he needn’t have for how much the false stories didn’t solely apply to him: “You used to make up stories about it, do you remember? About the scar on your chin. Used to say it was from the carrot peeler, or a stone had bounced up at you when riding your bike. I think you even once said you fell on a tiny piece of seaglass at the beach. And I never quite believed you. That maybe you used to say those things to be . . . interesting. Looking back, it seems like a stupid thing to think when you didn’t need pretend stories. Because you were interesting anyway. Mentally deft, I think I called you once.” He grinned, but whether it was the absurdity or the truth of it that caused him to, she didn’t know and she wouldn’t ask.
Áine’s eyebrows arched, twitching against her best efforts to lasso them down. Even now a hint of frustration from the past echoed about how often he was wrong about her. “I’ll tell you how I actually got it—the scar . . . if you want. It’s not a great story by any means, but it’s one I’ve never told before. One I’m not sure the complete truth of when I’ve barely relayed it to myself.”
“I’d like that.” He gestured to her with his chin to settle back onto his chest.
Áine shook her head as she slivered away with the top sheet of the bed wrapped around her in imitation of a marble statue that miraculously made cloth look real. It caught dust from the floor on her journey over to the kitchenette where she dished for her stash of duty-free cigarettes. They were hidden in a lower cupboard behind the toaster, which was there because she didn’t have much worktop space, not because she was pivoting to Protestantism.
“I’m not oblivious to your suffering by the way,” she called over to him from her crouched down position. “The suffering from when you were younger was something I think you hid well, in fact. I only saw past it because you mirrored a pain I saw in myself way too fucking often. Maybe I did have it better than you, though. And I’m not saying that to brag, but because I know my issues in comparison do seem a bit trivial. I had parties and the occasional day out to the beach in Tramore and stuff. Even went to Dublin Zoo once.”
She stood then, unravelling the plastic film from the cigarette box on her way to the wooden cubby by the window she found herself most fond of sitting in.
Fionn watched her silently as she did all these things, both his head and eyes following her like an inquisitive bird she might feed if they visited regularly.
“And there was this one birthday,” she continued. “My eighth I think it was . . . around the time my big teeth had grown in and were too large for my mouth.” She pressed her thumb into her top teeth as she said it, leaving behind a temporary divot through her fingerprint. “Mam made the cake for it, all pink buttercream on a lopsided sponge. But I loved it, and sure didn’t I suppose my mother loved me for baking it the morning of, when she could have been doing other things.”
Áine lifted the horizontal handle to open the creaky window. “Want one?” she asked Fionn’s way with the box tilted to offer him the first cigarette.
His arms were folded making his biceps puff out more. He lifted a resting finger off one, slightly shaking his head. “All good.”
Taking it for herself, she lit it with the matches always left on the sill. She blew it out, discreetly shuddering as the whirl of sulphur drifted away. “Anyway. It was a big shindig, both the gesture of cake and the party. After the presents, which were quite remarkable that year and mostly in the shape of five-pound notes with the nun on them. Do you remember the nun, Fionn?”
He did.
“So, the lights flick off and my stomach begins to brew with the youthful excitement we’ll never find as adults.” She smiled to no one as she said it, her eyes drifting to the fluffy-coated girls gathering outside the Chinese takeaway across the street. “You know the feeling—the excitement that is.”
He did.
“Then of course the music starts, in Irish because Dad wouldn’t have it any other way, and rightly so! There they all are singingLá breithlá Shona dhuit,” she said to the tune ofHappy Birthday.“The aunts, the uncles, cousins, siblings, all of them in the darkness. Mam comes into the kitchen with the cake, more lopsided for the heat of the day and the eight candles sitting atop it, which judging by their height I’d say were reused at least twice before me. But I loved it, and like I said sure didn’t she love me for making it.”
Áine inhaled the cigarette over and over, finding herself grateful for the layer of smoky separation it gave between her and Fionn when looking at him during this story was the last thing she wanted.
“Mam put the cake on the table in front of me and my eyes lit up with wonder and tiny flames. But as I sucked in my breath that teased the candle’s heads closer, ready to exhale my wish that teased great things to come, her fingers curled around my neck through little curls, very slowly, so slow it looked loving.”
Áine curled her own fingers around her neck to comfort the restriction rising in it.
“But the pressure grew harder. Stronger. Sure I thought, you know, the emotions had gotten the better of her because her baby was another year older, but then she edged me into the candles before I had a chance to blow them out. Caught me by complete surprise. And everyone roared with delight as opposed to the disarray my hurt little heart expected of them.
“I burned.Sheburnt me. God, the pain was horrible, Fionn. And it was so short, but only stopped because my sister, Deirdre, in spite wanted to take the attention and blew them out before me. And then Mam hugged me and everyone cheered. No one noticed and what’s worse was, I didn’t fucking tell them, did I?”
Áine was unsure if her lack of crying was worrying now that she’d finally gotten this trauma off her chest. But maybe she didn’t need it when she was sure telling Fionn was enough. Fionn, whose inertness was apparent in even the window’s dark reflection. But now she’d started, she found herself incapable of holding it in anymore.
She flicked the cigarette out onto the quieting street below before managing to speak the next words to her hazy reflection she’d have rather gone without tonight:
“Mam did it on purpose. She didn’t want me at all, did she?” Saying it aloud, it was as if she were making what was only a thought something real now. “I only remembered it at all when I turned twenty. I had made up so many reasons I’d gotten the scar that it almost became the truth. Like you said, a quirk tojoke about it. Didn’t take me long to discover it’s a repressed memory. You’ve probably heard of it.”
He had.
“But how stupid is the inflictor to not realise every—well, most people when it comes to abuse, WE GROW UP AND BY GOD DO WE REMEMBER.” Áine snuffed out the rise in voice. Her mother didn’t deserve even that much energy from her. “We grow into adults who are almost forced to live theirshame.”
She paused before finally managing to look at him; the man who could take her dark secrets to the grave, or at the very least, to Australia. “She knows I know. I see it when I catch her staring at my chin instead of the TV or whatever. The unspoken burden she placed upon herself is enough comfort, in a way. My scar doesn’t hurt me anymore, but it sure as fuck hurts her. It hurts her to know she’s a bad mother. That she can’t escape the permanent proof on my face. That I do not love her. At least not in the way society would expect one to love their mother. And now, well, I don’t love anyone the normal way.”
