your mother doesn’t make me less of one,” Aileen said. “Or have you somehow overlooked that fact?”
“Doesn’t it? You act like being my mother puts you in line for sainthood. A martyr to the cause.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.”
“All I know is that I have to get out of here.”
“Rosheen.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? My name is Jane.” She stomped out of the room, down the steps.
“No, it isn’t!” Aileen yelled after her. “It’s Rosheen. And if you were going to change your name, you could have at least picked something more interesting!”
The only response was the slam of the front door. Aileen wilted against the wall, beneath the crucifix of the long-suffering Jesus, nails in his hands and his feet, and closed her eyes, the fight gone out of her. Aileen hardly recognized this girl with her lips curled back, speaking with such vehemence that spit flew through the air between them. Her throat hurt from shouting, shouting so loud, she wondered if the whole neighborhood had heard them. Sound carried easily over the hills. It had been quite a row. One of their best. At least they could excel at something, she thought bitterly.
The silence settled around her, pressing in on all sides. She sobbed, crossing her arms over her chest. Loud, heaving sobs, part frustration, part sadness. The children could reduce her to tears more quickly than anyone except her husband.
This wasn’t the person she meant to be.
She’d told herself she was going to keep her temper, that she would say the right and wise thing, the phrase that would penetrate the churlish attitude Rosheen carried before her like a shield, a new coat of arms, that consisted, not like the family crest of a hawk on the wing, from the days the Flanagans had been warriors, full of power and promise, but of blades and beer bottles and pills. Tolerance and patience had been one of Aileen’s Lenten intentions, but she’d broken it more than once, and now Easter had passed without progress. Maybe that meant she was going to hell with the other mothers who’d failed their maternal duties.
The tears started again. She sounded like a child. She wanted her own mother, with whom she’d fought, yes, when she was a teenager, especially when she was sneaking out to see Rourke. (Oh, yes, her mother did watch, did come out of her room and try to offer guidance, sometimes. Though it was too late by then, and there was nothing she could do but hold her tongue over the worst things and not say I told you so.) Her mother was dead now. Heart disease. Five years ago.
Aileen wondered if she had it too. She felt pains sometimes, by her left breast, as if she were being stabbed by little knives. Rourke said it was heartburn. She wasn’t so sure. One of these days, she thought the frustration of being Rosheen’s mother might kill her—the blood pumping in her skull would trigger an aneurysm, and she’d fall down dead in her rose-patterned apron, there on the kitchen floor.
How to reach Rosheen? How to let her go? The question kept Aileen awake at night, her mind spinning like the toys the children used to love, purchased on a seaside holiday on the Dingle Peninsula. There had to be some separation, it was necessary, natural, and yet couldn’t it be more gentle than this brutal wrenching that felt as if her heart was being torn in two? Her family had no idea how Aileen felt or who she was. Did it even occur to them to wonder? Did they care? To them, she was the cook, the nagger, the worrier, the chauffeur, the nurse, the laundress, the accountant. They didn’t realize she’d been at the top of her class, a champion camogie player. That she lived and breathed and felt just like them. That they were a part of her and she of them. Always. Always.
She took a ragged breath, quieter now. She was grateful that no one else had been home to witness the screaming match. Rourke was off, making deliveries—there were benefits to him being on the road so much. And her youngest, twelve-year-old Sile—who didn’t mind the spelling of her name and would, if she’d been home, have given Aileen the hug she desperately needed—was staying the night at a friend’s house in the next village.
Aileen was alone in that house in which she’d raised five children. How