Family Plot

I lean my back against the hot closed car door and window as Drew walks the four corners of the field. She has already done this three times. I refuse to track her with my eyes, but I know exactly where she is in the way older sisters do. She walks parallel to the shiny road, skirts the heaving and knotty hedgerow. I stare straight ahead at the massive yellow scalped field behind this lulling green one. From my perch, bare legs warm and beginning to attract nipping insects, I watch a harvester at work through the big black sunglasses I bought at the airport, following an argument with a now ex-boyfriend. I am an early airport person. He was not. The glasses’ heavy acetate makes me feel like an Italian film star you see on black-and-white postcards. Sitting in a speedboat at the Venice Film Festival or something. They prop up the brave version of me.Today, the air in North Tipperary is hot dust with all the cutting. Tractors, driven all loose-limbed and careening by boys, nearly killed us a few times getting here. Childhood summers of near and distant engine noises pull at me like a menstrual ache. I remember a paddling pool and matching striped magenta and kelly-green togs. I remember Daddy chasing us with the hose, Mammy throwing ice cubes down our little backs. I stare straight ahead, through where the long pebble-dashed bungalow used stand. The harvester stops and a man jumps down to take a call. Drew makes another turn.She hasn't been in this field in a long, long time. A few years ago, when Travellers pulled up and parked, and the neighbours and a Garda rang me about it, she ignored my calls and didn't answer texts about coming down with me to sort it. She washed her hands of that one. I am the adult, I have to be the bitch. She is busy being the girl who gifts sage at housewarmings, boycotts Starbucks for various shifting reasons, sells old velvet and creased leather clothes at Saturday markets in pubs, drinks crème de menthe with her friends and posts about it on Instagram.A few days ago, I was treating her to a weekday lunch in a restaurant overlooking the canal when I told her about the above-market value offer. I begged her to relinquish our field. The restaurant was near her office. She was dressed uncharacteristically conservative, in wide-legged high-waisted navy trousers and a smart vintage silk blouse. Oyster, scalloped neck, tucked in. I watched her eat, terrified she'd drop or spill some red food down her immaculate front. I asked her how the new job was going and she said fine, but only because it was part-time. I didn't pry further. This was the first job of hers in a long time where tax was deducted at source. I felt that if I examined this new chapter of hers for too long, I'd make it a mirage. To her, my approval has always been vinegary. I'd say a boyfriend was nice and he'd be dumped. I'd compliment a coat and it'd be fed to moths.Drew was quiet as I outlined the expected takings for us after the government took their bit. She was looking at the small bowl of chips between us and I said she could finish them off, that I wasn't hungry anymore. As she took even the crispy oil-soaked shavings from me, I said, “Please, Drew. Say yes. I want to draw a line under this.”“Okay,” she said, looking out the window past a curtain of hanging greenery. “Sure.”Later that evening, she texted and said she needed to say goodbye properly. I knew the steps of this dance well. I offered to drive her down Saturday morning to the field in which our parents and belongings crumbled to ash all those years ago.I collected her outside an apartment building in Kilmainham, as instructed. Not the house she shared with crusty friends in Cabra. A man was waiting at the kerb with her. He was slightly older and wore nice sunglasses and a loose forest green short-sleeved shirt. He looked carefree. Like someone who had lovely weekends and knew France's full geography from attending rugby matches. He took an empty plastic cup of ice from my sister's hand and kissed her on the forehead, cheek, lips, and neck—quick pecks that had Drew preening, the blonde strands in her long brunette hair shimmering. Done, blessed, she crossed the street to me. This man waved at me and I waved back. My sister's smile as she buckled herself into the Clio was inappropriate considering our purpose. We drove past Palmerstown before I asked who he was.“I think he's my boyfriend,” she said, her tone uncorked and fizzing.His name is Mark. She spoke about him just up until Junction 14. She met him on an app, she knew his cousin Jess in one of his photos. She housesits for him and looks after his cat whenever he goes home to Galway to see his parents, he wants her to meet his parents, he works in design, he didn't get her her job but he did help her prepare for the interview.“I don't know, he's just so together, which terrifies me, but also I'm really into it,” she said. “I feel like if he knows I've not voted in ten years he'll stop talking to me.”“Are you serious about the not voting?”I risked a sideways glance and caught her glare. Mulish, that was Drew. But also, I always brought it out in her. I looked back at the road. Braced myself for the crosswinds. The drive home coming back to me.“Even in the abortion referendum?”I could hear the judgment in my voice. Drew made an annoyed noise, a huff native to younger sisters. After a few moments she spoke, quietly.“My vote was in Granny's and I never got around to registering it in Dublin.”Years ago. Nearly a young teenager ago. Granny passed away as Drew finished her third year of college and I my master's. Less than a month after we buried her, our uncle and father's brother Joe forced the sale on the terraced house she'd bought when widowed young. We had lived with her after the fire. Shared a bedroom with paisley wallpaper and stiff drawers full of dusty holy water from Lourdes. We never complained once. We moved through those final years of school in a trance. And during my degree, her home, cramped and covered in Catholic objects, had been my refuge during listless holidays spent working in the service station near the bypass roundabout.On the doorstep of her house, with the local estate agent beside him holding a digital camera, Joe said we'd be fine, sure we were barely here now that we were off in Dublin. Wasn't the point of our education to get good jobs? Become self-sufficient? I didn't dare say Drew's fashion design degree was just a creative way to spend money. That all the meandering internships in Italy and London were swallowing her savings account. A withdrawal from our shared account during a J1 to pay everyone's rent for a month in Brooklyn had led to me screaming at her and some of her useless friends in Terminal 2 Arrivals. Joe said that the farm money and the insurance were more than enough for us. We didn't need a holiday home in Tipperary. And he had already gotten our aunt in Australia to agree to his demands.His behaviour that day stunned Drew. It didn't surprise me in the least. I had never told Drew that Joe called me a cunt in a hotel car park outside another relative's funeral reception. From what I could tell, it was over us selling the land to Richard Burns a few years before. Burns had been a good tenant. Very delicate around us when we set the farm. Granny liked his manner the most out of all the interested parties. Said all she'd ever heard of the Burnses was that they're gentlemen and ladies. His wife still sends me a Christmas card. Joe meanwhile had been next to useless in the aftermath of our losses. And he hadn't the means to lease, never mind buy, the very small farm, even at a recession price.I remember our aunt-through-marriage, Maureen, did nothing to stop her husband that day. Didn't drag his swaying body to the car with an apologetic look. Didn't tell him to shut up when he went on to call me a useless whore and spat on the ground in my direction. I don't know why he thought I was off gallivanting. I'd only slept with my ex Declan at that stage. I dressed like a nun back then, conscious of my scars. I didn't feel like having fun was an option. I relished telling Maureen no when she rang me a few years ago, wondering if their daughter Trish could buy the field for a site.“It's a great location,” Maureen said.Your husband spat at me and called me a whore and I bet you that's a hobby of his, I didn't say. I just gave her a firm and cheerful no. I didn't wish Trish the best of luck. She'd mocked Drew during her goth stage.“There's a real simple website for registering to vote,” I said, carefully passing out a horsebox.Drew didn't speak again until I turned off the motorway for home. She needed to use the toilet in the busy filling station. I bought her some lentil chips and cashew nuts from the small gluten-free section as an apology. She didn't offer to pay for petrol, she never did.In the field, it suddenly becomes overcast. A bit cooler. I pull at the cuffs of my long-sleeved top from one of those hiking brands. Hook my thumbs through the purposefully there holes. The weather forecast had warned about showers. Those lukewarm, quick ones. This spell of July heat was on the way out.“Are you done?” I call over my shoulder.Drew comes back to stand in front of me. Holds out her hand for my water bottle. I give it to her, even though I know she'll drink it in a way that gives backwash. She gulps down more than I'd have done. Hands it back to me. The bottle's body is wet.“You got rid of the foundations,” she says.“Yes,” I say. “A few years ago.”“We should have planted this place with wildflowers,” she says, her hands on her hips as she turns around and looks again. She poses like a rancher. “Native ones. We'd have been a real biodiversity oasis out here.”Speckles of water come from the sky. Just a freckling.“Wouldn't be hard,” I say, pulling on the light work-branded windbreaker I've tied around my waist.“Yeah, I'd say the bees here are starved.”Drew looks at the space beside the car. I follow her gaze. I am pretty certain that that was where the oak tree had stood. I had the dead stump drawn out with the remaining cement. We used to hang a tire from the tree. We threw blue rope over the high-to-us thick branch like ninjas scaling a castle wall. We threaded it through an old thick tire and made a knot. Every summer, we'd need to retie the rope a bit higher up because we'd have stretched it down so much from use that the tire ended up scraping the ground.The oak tree burned that night. The smell of hot rubber, one of many I'll never forget. Smoke in my hair, the ends burned. The sound of branches cracking under flames, glass exploding, sirens, cattle wailing in distress.“Did you know that the Aboriginals burn underbrush and trees as land management, like it's good for the soil?”Drew can't see my eyes behind black plastic, so she takes my stillness as interest and continues speaking.“It helps control wildfires too. Native land management.”I remove my sunglasses to pinch my nose.“Please, stop. Just stop.”Drew shrugs.“I was reading a long read about wildfires. Thought it was interesting.”The strap of her cotton terracotta summer dress falls down. No bra strap. That is her usual MO.I open the car door, slam it shut, and start the engine. Drew gets in and sighs as she reaches into a dirty tote bag and takes flowers out of her pocket and puts them in an envelope.I drive us, wipers squeaking as they wipe away the soft rain, to the pub that fed people after granny's funeral. There hadn't been a meal after our parents. Back then, a second cousin of our Mam's drove us back to hospital as my arm was being monitored for infection and Drew was on some sort of oxygen treatment. She's since been in and out of a private hospital for years with it. For some of the lockdowns, I forced her to stay with me. All the talk of ICUs terrified me.After we order a steak sandwich and a chickpea curry, Drew asks what I am going to do with the money from the field.“I'm not going to touch it for a while,” I say. I've a two-up two-down in North Strand; my car passes the NCT every year. I've spent my small inheritance on plastic surgeries on my arms. Drew encouraged that. She knew my skin bothered me. She'd used the money to go to Bali for three months and do a yoga teaching course that wasn't recognised in Europe.“Sensible,” she says, reaching for a pint of cider. That word coming from her doesn't sound like an insult like it would have done years ago.“You should use it as a deposit,” I say. “Get a one-bed.”“That would be sensible,” she says, looking down at her hands. She picks her nails when she is nervous. “I think I might buy a car. Finally learn to drive. Mark said he'd teach me.”“Wow, it's proper serious so,” I say.She nods, looking down still. I can tell she is upset. Maybe at my words. I am about to say sorry, I know you like him, I'm just being a bitch, I hope you're happy, I'm so proud of you, I'm sorry for all the pressure and the judgment and the control, I'm sorry I had to be Mammy and Daddy and Granny, I love you, I love you, I don't mind paying your rent now and then, I don't blame you for thinking I'm boring, I am, everyone is in comparison to you, you're wonderful, I'd give you my rib, the last chip, rolo, my oxygen bag on a nose-diving plane, you're all I have, I know he's in love with you, I know he'll take care of you, how could he not, you're sunlight and water, you see existence as an invitation.I am about to show you the colour of my blood but you speak instead.“He offered to drive me down. But I needed to do this with you. He said I'm not thinking straight though. That I didn't. But I know I did.”I say nothing.“I think I did it.”I frown.“What are you talking about?”You are fascinated by your hands. You twist our mother's wedding ring around your index finger. It hadn't fit me when the authorities delivered it.“I know the coroner said it was the fuse box sparking, but I think it was me. No, I know it.”You look up at me, by millimetres.“My laptop charger was overheating. It burned my leg a few weeks before. Don't you remember that? I left it plugged in all the time. I knew it was dangerous. It sparked for fuck's sake. Anytime I plugged it in it sparked. I ignored it all the time. But I was bringing it to class the next day for that coding course. God, I used to be clever, didn't I?”You bite your lip. Your voice sounds like a suitcase that can't close it is so full.“I think the fire brigade lied about the fuse box so I would be able to doubt myself. A conspiracy of kindness, that's what it was. That's what I've been calling it all these years. I killed them. I left it plugged in and I killed them.”You meet my eyes for those final three words. Tears drip off your jawline like a gutter full of rain. You dare me to respond. Before I speak, I fight the urge to go up and ask the barman to pour me four glasses of his cheapest whiskey, neat. In another branch of this life, I down that lukewarm paint stripper like a cowboy and get behind the wheel of the car and kill us both.The night it happened, I restrained you from going inside as they screamed. You bit me, drew blood from already broken skin. We were outside, in singed nighties, you were coughing on the ground. Eventually, you gave up the fight. Or your body did. I made my way to the shed, the brigade and ambulances sounded far away, and I dragged the garden hose to the side of the house. I held my raw thumb over the opening. Tried to the of the all I had in my I hope my as as As as the wish you told me that I say. have been that. plugged your charger out you went to I remember because I on the three I was It wasn't your out who don't us stare for a few I for your hot I you. I your I the I should buy for a a hot you say, the all with and My can barely and a small from we buy another I say. being in get a in that can drop you to him when we get be are again. The thought of him should get you say. should meet sounds we drive out the road, past the on the and of a all the older at I remember we still one of the I say I back up home to Dublin.