Housekeeping, a short story by Donal Moloney

‘What about London?” asked David.

“Let me see . . .” I said. “Stansted . . . four adults –”

“Four? Even Ben?”

“Yeah, full fare for kids over two . . . And through to the taxes . . . Four hundred and seventy-five.”

“Next day?”

“More expensive.”

“Previous day?”

“Even worse.”

“When did flying get so expensive again?”

“How would I know?” I snapped.

“Concentrate,” said David.

“Sorry,” I said.

As a way of heading off petty rows, David had come up with the idea of using the word “concentrate” as a joker. Whenever one of us plays the concentrate card, the other is forbidden to complain or swear or pursue a gripe. It’s a fine little expedient that has saved us many pointless arguments over the past few years. However, it also contains a deeper truth. We tend to use it when the feelings of one or both of us begin to surface, and personal feelings about things are something we really must do without.

“Gatwick?” asked David.

I entered the details and clicked through the screens.

“Worse,” I said.

“Luton?”

Type-type, click-click . . . “No better,” I said. “How much space do we have again on the credit card?”

“Three hundred and ten quid.”

“Wasn’t it four hundred last week?”

“I had to transfer ninety to the joint account, remember?”

“No.”

“For the skip.”

“Oh yeah. So what do we do now?”

“I really don’t want to ask Aidan. The last time he paused for ages before he said yes. I think he’d say no if I asked him again. I don’t want to hear him say it.”

Aidan was David’s best friend and we already owed him two grand. Although Aidan and his wife were flush and could spare it, the loan was a running sore on David and Aidan’s friendship.

“If we could just leave the kids behind . . .” I said. “If it was two flights, we might have enough. I mean, for accommodation as well. I’ve about forty quid cash in my purse, which I could lodge tomorrow.”

David was looking at me in disbelief. “If there was anywhere we could leave them, do you think we’d be having this chat?”

The exasperation in his voice riled me, but I concentrated. Taking a deep breath, I rang my mother. After the briefest of pleasantries, I sprung it on her. “For how long?” she asked without missing a beat. Two days, I said. She said her back was playing up and that Dad had an awful cold. Two days was too long with boisterous kids. Why was I going to London midweek anyway? Go somewhere for a weekend instead. Then we could bring the kids with us. Had I checked out the Lidl breaks? She said she was sorry. One day would be fine: bring the kids for one day any time. Except Sundays.

“No dice,” I said to David when I had hung up. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I miss your mother,” I added spontaneously, at the risk of upsetting David. His mother had died of a stroke six months before. And despite all the tensions between us when she was alive, it was true – I missed her. She was a steady, big-hearted woman. David hadn’t grieved at all as far as I could see. This was a man who used to ring his mother every second evening for a chat. He said he would grieve when he had the time. I didn’t press him on it: I didn’t have the time for a grieving spouse either.

He looked me full in the eyes for a second before shifting his gaze to the computer screen behind me.

“I’ll look up the ferry,” I said.

The best connection to Holyhead was €250 return.

“OK, good, that’s doable. That’d leave sixty for the hotel.”

“With booking fees, closer to fifty,” said David. “It’s not enough. A room for the four of us for fortysomething sterling? It’d have to be a hostel.”

“We’re only a little short –”

“This is bullshit! We still need money for food until the end of the month. I’ll just sell the car now. It’s the only way.”

“But we won’t have it for the move then.”

“I’ll hire a van. We’ll manage. The heap of shit probably wouldn’t survive the move anyway.”

“You’d have to be quick.”

“I’ll flog it for eight hundred,” he said. “Cash only. It’s worth twice that, easy – someone will snap it up. It’ll leave us with extra. We could even pay off some of the credit card now. And we’ll get a hotel in . . .”

He leaned in over me and typed “map UK Holyhead” into the search engine. He opened a map, located Holyhead and traced his finger east across the screen. “Liverpool? Manchester?” he said.

“All the same to me,” I said. “But we could still wait until the end of the month . . .”

“It’s too long to wait – it’d be worse then. Let’s do this properly. Unless . . .”

You know when people who’ve had near-death experiences say they saw their lives flashing in front of their eyes? And you know the theory that it’s caused by the mind frantically trying to retrieve some saving information out of a life’s accumulated data? Well, I experienced something like that after the word “unless” as my thoughts scurried down a thousand pathways desperately looking for a concealed exit.

“You’re right,” I said in the end. “Let’s get it done now.”

“Okay, let’s sell the car, get the cash, book the ferry and the hotel, and done, finished. We’ll worry about everything else tomorrow.”

“And find a clinic in Liverpool or Manchester or wherever.”

“And that.” Seasickness teamed up with morning sickness and I spent the whole crossing hugging a toilet bowl. Eventually Jessica rushed into the ladies’ to tell me land was ahoy. “That means you can see it,” she clarified. As I rinsed out my mouth and washed my face, she asked me if my toothache was very bad.

“Wicked sore,” I said.

***

My stomach was better on the bus. Jessica and Ben slept after the excitement of the boat trip. As we passed through Bangor, I turned to David and told him I didn’t want to see our house again. He absorbed that one for a minute. “That’s fine,” he said then. “When we go back, we’ll go straight to the flat.”

“We’ll need bedclothes and stuff.”

“I’ll get the bus over to the house and bring a few things over for the night. Jessica can come with me for the adventure. Then I still have three days to finish the job before I’m back to work – get most of it done anyway.”

“I don’t want to say goodbye to anyone on the street,” I said. “Not even Anne and Diarmuid.”

David nodded and fell silent. A few minutes later, he said: “At least we won’t have to deal with the banks any more.”

I rested my hand on my belly.

***

The hotel room was clean and quiet – David had chosen well. After a quick shower, I walked to the clinic alone.

***

Hysterical laughter arrested me outside the hotel room door – the familiar sound of David clowning around with the kids. I’ve often told him there’s a career in children’s entertainment for him. “Yep, that’ll sort our finances out,” he would reply. When I entered the room, Jessica and Ben were huddled in a corner laughing wildly as David stumbled over the beds muttering “Where are my glasses gone? Where did I put them at all?” They stopped as soon as they saw me. “I’m sorry,” said David spontaneously. Without his glasses, he looked half-crazed.

“Give Mammy a hug,” he said. “Her gums must be very sore.” Jessica and Ben looked at me and didn’t move. “But glasses game,” said Ben. “Where’s glasses?”

“That’s finished now,” said David. “Hand them over.”

“No,” said Jessica, who was holding the glasses behind her back. “No, no, no,” she said and stamped her foot.

I lay down on the double bed and faced the wall. David put his hand on my shoulder and asked if I needed anything. “Quiet,” I said. Grabbing coats and shoes as he went, David bundled the kids out the door. The sound of his urgent pleading and cajoling came muffled into the room and lasted for many minutes.

***

Early the next morning I took a fistful of painkillers and off we trekked to the bus station. We couldn’t get seats together, so David sat beside Jessica and put Ben on his lap. A few rows back, I sat beside a young woman who cried all the way and kindly pretended not to notice when I retched into a plastic bag.

***

We made straight for the lounge once we boarded the ferry. David found us sofa seats and asked if I wanted a drink. I told him water would be fine. He said again that he was sorry, but he had nothing to apologise for, not to me. He’d made no mistakes that I hadn’t made with him.

“Your fix,” said David when he returned a few minutes later. He dropped a newspaper on to the table in front of me. “And there’s your water. I’ll play with Jessica and Ben over there.” He said “fix” because I’m a bit of a news junkie, always have been, but especially since so much of it began to affect me. Budgets, interest rates, property news, social policy; developments in Dublin, Brussels, Washington – they’ve all come to affect me terribly.

It was an optimistic gesture from David, buying the paper, and sure enough I couldn't read. I called Jessica over and gave her a Frozen-themed puzzle book I had picked up in a newsagent's opposite the clinic. She stood between my legs, and we began working our way through the puzzles.

Jessica was starting school in September. It was not an ideal time for her to move house. David and I have done our best to shield her from our stress, but it’s safe to say she hasn’t had the best start in life. Fuck, it hurts to say that. Now that we’ve abandoned the house to the bank, we have lost an investment in Jessica and Ben’s future. Our hope is that we will be able to offer them an emotionally stable childhood from now on.

David and Ben were sharing a pear. David was pointing through a porthole, and Ben’s face glowed in the rays of David’s undivided attention. It was strange to think that Ben might not even remember our house when he’s older. The new flat, which I’ve seen only once, may end up being his childhood home.

Ben squirmed out of David’s arms and toddled over to me shouting “Ireland! Ireland!” We started packing together our stuff. David said I shouldn’t go back to work on Monday if I wasn’t feeling up to it. “Concentrate!” I said.

***

In the port terminal, I saw the girl from the bus. As her eyes searched the building, her face sank into a deeper gloom. I told David about her and what I suspected her story was.

“We’ll offer her a lift,” he suggested.

“We don’t have a car,” I said.

“I mean in the taxi.”

“I thought we were getting a bus.”

“No,” said David firmly. “You’ve had an operation. That’s why I sold the car.”

“You sold the car so we wouldn’t have to get the bus?”

“Smartarse,” said David and pulled his face into a kind of smile.

“Okay, we’ll get a taxi,” I said. “But we’ll need a seven-seater if the girl comes. Have you enough cash to cover it?”

“I’ve got about eighteen – that should do it.”

“We don’t know where she lives! It could be the other end of town.”

“Go away!” said Jessica to Ben, who was hugging her leg for some reason.

“Let go, Ben,” I said.

“I’d like to do it,” insisted David. “I could go to a bank machine . . . although . . .”

“What?”

“Can you remember which account we left the rest of the car money in?”

I shook my head.

“Let go!” Jessica screamed at Ben.

“Let go now, damn it!” I shouted with a ferocity that surprised me. Ben cried and threw himself on the ground. People turned their heads. The girl walked out of the terminal. “Let’s just get through the day,” said David.

Donal Moloney grew up in Waterford. His stories have appeared in the Moth, Verge and the Galway Review. He lives in Cork