Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [156]
After three weeks of incarceration, Monica re-emerged devoid of any obvious improvement. The anti-depressants she’d been prescribed made her irritatingly dopey and slow, so she changed to another type, which didn’t agree with her either.
And despite her on-going interaction with pharmaceuticals and Ashling’s increasingly elaborate rituals, things never really got better. Monica’s grief could be triggered by anything, from a natural disaster to a small random act of cruelty. A schoolboy being bullied out of his pocket-money could unleash the same torrent of weeping as an earthquake in Iran which killed thousands. But the days of silent, mostly bed-bound weeping were punctuated by fits of screaming, violent rage, directed at her husband, her children, and most of all herself.
‘I don’t want to feel this way!’ she used to shriek. ‘Would anyone want to feel like this? You’re lucky, Ashling, you’ll never suffer like me because you’ve no imagination.’
Ashling held on to this fact as though it were a shield. Lack of imagination was a great thing, it stopped you from turning into a nutter.
So volatile was Monica that Ashling spent large parts of her teenage years practically living at Clodagh’s.
Occasionally, amid the torpor and hysteria, there were pockets of normality. Which weren’t really normal at all. With each shirt that Monica ironed perfectly, with every meal that she served up on the dot of six, Ashling’s nerves stretched that little bit more, waiting for the time when it would all slip again. And when it came it was nearly a relief.
At seventeen, Ashling left home and moved into a flat. Three years later, Mike got a job over a hundred miles away in Cork, and their subsequent move meant Ashling rarely saw her parents. During the last seven years Monica had stabilized: the depression and rage departed as unexpectedly and as unheralded as they had arrived. Her doctor said it was linked to the end of her menopause.
‘She’s not so bad now.’ Clodagh’s voice brought her back to the present.
‘I know.’ Ashling exhaled wearily. ‘But I still don’t really want to be near her. That’s an awful thing to say, I know. I love her, but I find it hard to see her.’
46
Ashling was due to arrive in Cork at lunch-time on Saturday, and she was getting the five o’clock train home on Sunday. So the ‘weekend’ was really only twenty-eight hours long. And she’d be asleep for eight of those hours. Which only left twenty hours to talk to her parents. No bother to her.
Twenty hours! Clutched by panic she wondered if she had enough cigarettes. And magazines? And her mobile? She must have been insane to say she’d come.
As she watched the countryside rickety-rack past, she prayed that the train would oblige and break down. But no. Of course not. That only happened if you were in a desperate hurry. Then the train would spend several unexplained half-hours loitering in sidings. Then you’d all have to change to a different train, then you’d all have to get off the new train and on to a waiting, freezing bus, and the original three-hour journey would end up taking eight hours.
Instead Ashling’s train arrived in Cork a galling ten minutes early. Naturally her parents were already there, waiting, looking determinedly normal. Her mother could have passed for any Irish mother of a certain age: the bad perm, the nervous, welcome-home smile, the acrylic cardigan draped about her shoulders.
‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’ Monica was about to burst into proud tears.
‘You too.’ Ashling couldn’t help feeling guilty.
Then came the hug – Monica’s uncertain cross between ladylike cheek-to-cheeking and full-on body-slamming ended up being more like a scuffle.
‘Hi, Dad.’
‘Er, welcome, welcome, welcome!’ Mike looked uncomfortable – would he too be required to indulge in affection? Luckily he was able to grab Ashling’s bag and busy all available arms with that.
The drive to her parents’ house, the discussion about what Ashling had eaten on the train, and the debate over whether she’d have a cup of tea and a sandwich or just a cup of tea, took