can’t help but feel a zing of pleasure and determination course through me.
Ashton Richards is doing cartwheels in the rain, yelling, “We’re all going to die one day, and we are so self-observed and obsessed with shit that don’t matter.”
We don’t pay attention to him.
“What are you waiting for, God?” he screams to the sky, opening his arms.
Rory and I exchange looks.
“I’m telling Ryner to throw him into rehab as soon as this is done,” she says.
“Good idea.”
A NOTE FROM DEAD KATHLEEN
Look, I’m going to admit it right off the bat. I am the villain in this story.
I lied.
I deceived.
I manipulated the situation to my own advantage.
That’s what you want to hear, and that’s what I’m telling you, but I am not one-dimensional, and I’m definitely not as bad as Glen.
I loved Mal from the get-go. I’m talking since age two, not since age fourteen, when all the other girls in Tolka finally noticed that the weird Doherty kid was not so weird anymore, and also happened to be exciting and cool and knew how to ride dirt bikes and pierce his own nose and ears.
I’ve loved him since he let me play the doctor and dutifully played the patient, asking me humorously to touch him places I had no business even knowing about at that age.
Since he snuck snacks into Sunday Mass because we were perpetually bored and shared them with me.
I loved him when he practiced the guitar and I practiced sewing in my room, and we were both terrible.
I don’t regret anything that happened. I did all of it because I thought I could make him happy.
Just remember that as you read on, okay?
Remember that Rory is here for a reason now.
And that before I hate my half-sister, I love my still-on-Earth husband.
So, so much.
In fact, love him to death.
A NOTE FROM THE COW
For the record, the farmers who work the shed I live in turn on the soft rock radio station all the time, which is something I am trying really hard not to hold against them. At any rate, that means I’m familiar with Ashton Richards’ work, and although I do not consider myself an expert of any sort, I can tell he is no bloody good.
Not good as an artist, not good as a singer, and probably not as a human, judging by the first and last hour we spent together on Earth.
Ashton Richards contributes less than I do to the human effort. At least I produce milk, which gives you calcium, which promotes bone strength. It is depressingly evident that some humans, such as him, clearly decline to use the superior intelligence they were blessed with.
He can walk on two feet. Learn a foreign language. Play Sudoku.
Yet he barely knows his animals.
So, no, I wouldn’t let him ride me.
As a horse, a car, a woman, or a spaceship.
Definitely not as a cow.
Just, no.
Present
Mal
Back inside my house, Richards is still higher than the Empire State Building and seems to be in good spirits. He is in a touchy mood, though, putting his hands on everything inside my house. It feels a lot like he’s touching me when he touches what’s mine, and I don’t particularly like to be touched these days—unless it’s by Rory.
“Mate, stay still, like, won’t you?” I sigh.
He turns on the radio and starts dancing in the living room, even though there’s nothing cheerful about George Michael singing that his heart was broken last Christmas. Why they’re playing Christmas songs after Christmas is a mystery I reckon everyone is too post-holidays bloated to solve.
Rory is in the bathroom, brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed.
When I look back at Richards, he’s fixing himself a martini on the breakfast nook, improvising with a pickled egg instead of an olive. I’m about to head into the shower to clean up and go through the script in my head of what I plan on saying to Rory. I laugh a little to myself, because I brought her here looking for one thing, and now it’s like scrambling to welcome a new baby hours before its arrival. Everything is different and exciting and new.
The song ends and another one begins.
“Belle’s Belle,” written and performed by Glen O’Connell.
No. No. No. She can’t hear this.
“Turn it off,” I snap, grabbing the rugby ball Richards brought in earlier today (“Dude, this football is hella weird. I had to buy it.”) and squeezing it hard to get rid of the tension.