If You Could See Me Now (5 page)

“Don’t, Elizabeth.” Colm’s voice was
firm.

She had to hold her hand across her mouth to stop herself. She took a deep breath and tried to regroup, tried to regain control. “She has to go to court?” Her voice was a whisper.

Colm looked down at the ground and moved a stone around with his foot. “Yes. It’s not just about her harming herself anymore. She’s a danger to others now.”

Elizabeth swallowed hard and nodded. “One more chance, Colm.” She gulped, feeling her pride disintegrating. “Just give her one more chance . . . please.” The last word pained her to have to say. Every bone in her body pleaded with him. Elizabeth never asked for help. “I’ll keep an eye on her, I promise she won’t be out of my sight for a minute. She’s going to get better, you know, she just needs time to work things out.” Elizabeth could feel her voice shaking. Her knees trembled as she begged on behalf of her sister.

There was a sad tone in Colm’s voice. “It’s already been done. We can’t change it now.”

“What will her punishment be?” She felt sick.

“It depends on the judge on the day. It’s her
first
offense, well her
first
known
offense. He may go lightly on her, then again he may not.” He shrugged, then looked at his hands. “And it also depends on what the Garda who arrested her says.”

“Why?”

“Because if she was cooperative and gave no trouble it could make a difference, then again...”

“It might not,” Elizabeth said worriedly. “Well? Did she cooperate?”

Colm laughed lightly. “Took two people to hold her down.”

“Damnit!” Elizabeth swore. “Who arrested her?” She nibbled on her nails.

There was a silence before Colm spoke. “I did.”

Her mouth dropped open. Colm had always had a soft spot for Saoirse, he was the one who was always on her side. She chewed nervously on the inside of her mouth and felt the taste of blood slide down her throat.

“I’ll do the best I can for her,” he said softly. “Just try and keep her out of trouble until the hearing in a few weeks.”

Elizabeth, who realized she hadn’t been breathing for the last few seconds of the conversation, suddenly let her breath out. “Thank you.” She couldn’t say any more. Although she felt huge relief, she knew it was no victory. No one could protect her sister this time, she would have to face the consequences of her actions. But how was she expected to keep her eye on Saoirse when she didn’t know where to begin looking for her? Saoirse couldn’t stay with her and Luke, she was far too out of control to be around him, and her father had long since told her to move out and stay out.

“I better leave you at it so,” Colm said gently,
fixed his cap back on his head, and made his way down the cobblestoned drive.

Elizabeth sat on the porch, trying to rest her knocking knees, and looked at her mud-stained car. Why did Saoirse have to taint everything? Why was everything ...every
one
Elizabeth loved chased away by her younger sister? She felt the clouds above push all that was between them and her onto her shoulders and she worried about what her father was going to do when they would undoubtedly bring Saoirse to his farm. She would give him
five
minutes before he rang Elizabeth, complaining.

Inside the house, the phone started ringing and Elizabeth’s heart sank even deeper. She rose from the porch where she had been trapped in a web of thought, turned slowly on her heel, and headed inside. When she got to the door the ringing had stopped and she spotted Luke sitting on the stairs with the phone pressed to his ear. She leaned against the wooden door frame, arms folded, and watched him. She felt a small smile creep onto her face. He was growing up so fast and she felt such a disconnection from the whole process, as though he was doing everything without her help. He was doing it without the nurturing she knew she should be providing but that she felt awkward summoning. She knew she lacked that emotion, sometimes lacked emotion full stop, and every day she wished the maternal instincts she lacked had come with the paperwork she signed. When Luke fell and cut his knee, her immediate response was to clean it and plaster his cut. To her that felt like enough, not dancing him around the room to stop his tears and slapping the ground like she’d watched Edith do.

“Hi, Granddad,” Luke was saying politely.

He paused to listen to his granddad on the other end.

“I’m just having lunch with Elizabeth and my new best friend, Ivan.”

Pause.

“A cheese and tomato pizza, but Ivan likes olives on his.”

Pause.

“Olives, Granddad.”

Pause.

“No, I don’t think you can grow them on the farm.”

Pause.

“O-L-I-V-E-S,” he spelled it out slowly.

Pause.

“Hold on, Granddad, my friend Ivan is telling me something.” Luke held the phone to his chest and looked into thin air, concentrating hard. Finally, he lifted the phone back to his ear. “Ivan said that the olive is a small, oily fruit that contains a pit. It’s grown for its fruit and oil in subtropical zones.” He looked away and appeared to be listening. “There are lots of types of olives.” He stopped talking, looked into the distance, and then back to the phone. “Underripe olives are always green but ripe olives are either green or black.” He looked away and listened to the silence again. “Most tree-ripened olives are used for oil, the rest are brine-or salt-cured and are packed in olive oil or a brine or vinegar solution.” He looked into the distance. “Ivan, what’s brine?” There was silence, then he nodded. “Oh.”

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and laughed nervously to herself. Since when had Luke become an expert on olives? He must have learned about them at school, he had a good memory for things like that. Luke paused and listened to the other end. “Well, Ivan can’t wait to meet you too.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and dashed toward Luke for the phone in case he said any more. Her father was confused enough as it was at times, without having to explain the existence, or lack thereof, of an invisible boy.

“Hello,” Elizabeth said, grabbing the phone.

“Elizabeth,” said the stern formal voice, thick with a Kerry lilt. Luke dragged his feet back to the kitchen. Irritation at the noise reared itself within Elizabeth again. “I just returned to
find your sister lying on my kitchen
floor. I gave her a boot, but I can’t
figure out whether she’s dead or not.”

Elizabeth sighed. “That’s not funny and my sister is
your
daughter, you know.” “Oh, don’t give me that,” he said dismissively. “I want to know what you’re going to do about it. She can’t stay here. The last time she did, she

released the chickens from the coop and I spent all day getting them back

in. And with my back and my hip, I can’t be doing that anymore.”

“I know, but she can’t stay here either. She upsets Luke.”

“That child doesn’t know enough about her to be upset. Half the time she forgets she’s given birth to him. You can’t have him all to yourself, you know.”

Elizabeth bit her tongue in rage. “She can’t come here,” she said more patiently than she felt. “She was around earlier and took the car again. Colm just brought it back a few minutes ago. It’s really serious this time.” She took a deep breath. “They arrested her.”

Her father was silent for a while and then he tutted. “And rightly so, the experience will do her the world of good.” He quickly changed the subject. “Why weren’t you at work today? Our lord only intended us to rest on a Sunday.”

“Well, that’s the whole point. Today was a really important day for me at wor—”

“Well, your sister’s come back to the land of the living and is outside trying to push the cows over. Tell young Luke to come around with this new friend on Monday. We’ll show him the farm.”

There was a click and the line went dead. Hello and good-bye were not her father’s speciality; he still thought that mobile phones were some sort of futuristic alien technology designed to confuse the human race.

She hung up the phone and made her way back to the kitchen. Luke sat alone at the table, holding his stomach and laughing hysterically. She took her seat and continued eating her salad. She wasn’t one of those people who was interested in eating food; she only did it because she had to. Evenings spent over long dinners bored her and she never had much of an appetite, she was always too busy worrying about something or too hyper to be able to sit still and eat. She glanced at the plate directly ahead of her and to her surprise saw that it was empty.

“Luke?”

Luke stopped talking to himself and faced her. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” she corrected him. “What happened to the other slice of pizza that was on that plate?”

Luke looked at the empty plate, looked back at Elizabeth like she was crazy, and took a bite of his own pizza. “Ivan ate it.”

“Don’t speak with your mouth full,” she admonished him.

He spat it out onto the plate. “Ivan ate it.” He began laughing hysterically again at the mush on his plate that was once in his mouth.

Elizabeth’s head began to ache. What had gotten into him? “What about the olives?”

Sensing her anger, he waited until he swallowed his food before speaking. “He ate them too. I told you olives were his favorite. Granddad wanted to know if he could grow olives on the farm.” Luke smiled and revealed his gums.

Elizabeth smiled back. Her father wouldn’t even know what an olive was if it walked up to him and introduced itself. He wasn’t into any of those “fancy” foods; rice was about as exotic as he would get and even then he complained that the pieces were too small and that he’d be better off eating “a crumblin’ spud.”

Elizabeth sighed as she scraped the remainder of her food from her plate into the bin, but not before checking through the rubbish to see if Luke had thrown the pizza and olives in. No sign. Luke usually had such a small appetite he would struggle to
finish a large slice of pizza, never mind two. She presumed she would
find it weeks later, moldy and hiding at the back of a cabinet somewhere. If he had eaten the entire thing, he would be sick all night and Elizabeth would have to clean up the mess. Again.

“Thank you, Elizabeth.”

“You’re very welcome, Luke.”

“Huh?” Luke said, poking his head around the corner of the kitchen.

“Luke, I told you before, it’s pardon, not huh.”

“Pardon?”

“I said you’re very welcome.”

“But I haven’t said thank you yet.”

Elizabeth slid the dishes into the dishwasher and stretched her back. She rubbed the base of her aching spine. “Yes you did, you said ‘Thank you, Elizabeth.’ ”

“No I didn’t.” Luke frowned.

Elizabeth made a face. “Luke, stop playing games now, OK, we’ve had our fun at lunchtime, now you can stop pretending. OK?”

“No. That was Ivan who said thank you,” he said angrily.

A shiver ran through her body. She didn’t think this was funny. She banged the dishwasher door shut, too fed up even to reply to her nephew. Why couldn’t he, just this once, not give her a hard time?

Elizabeth rushed by Ivan with a cup of espresso in her hand and the smell of perfume and coffee beans
filled his nostrils. She sat down at the kitchen table, her shoulders sagged, and she held her head in her hands.

“Ivan, come on!” Luke called impatiently from the playroom. “I’ll let you be The Rock this time!”

Elizabeth groaned quietly to herself.

But Ivan couldn’t move. His blue Converse runners were rooted to the marble kitchen
floor.

Elizabeth had heard him say thank you. He knew it.

He circled her slowly for a few minutes, studying her for signs of a reaction to his presence. He snapped his
fingers next to her eardrums, jumped back, and watched her. Nothing. He clapped his hands and stamped his feet. It echoed loudly around the large kitchen but Elizabeth remained at the table with her head in her hands. No reaction at all.

But she had said, “You’re very welcome.” After several efforts to make noise around her, he was confused to learn of his deep disappointment that she couldn’t sense him. After all, she was a parent, and who cared what parents thought? He stood behind her and stared down at the top of her head, wondering what noise he could make next. He sighed loudly, exhaling a deep breath.

Suddenly, Elizabeth sat up straight, shuddered, and pulled the zip on her tracksuit top higher.

And then he
knew
she had felt his breath.

Chapter Four