Made With Love

Chapter 9

I go to bed praying for rain, a big black squall of it, to blot out the morning sun and let me sleep. My prayers are answered. Sort of. I wake to a filmy drizzle, but it isn’t dark, not even close. Six in the morning, and the sky is shot through with that obnoxious gray light that’s just bright enough to keep you awake and just dull enough to keep you drowsy.

Damnit.

I toss and turn, head squirreled under the sheets, in a last ditch effort for a snooze, but give up when one of the donkeys plants himself beneath my window and goes to hawing like a mad Romeo.

Okay, Okay, I’m UP!

I pull Clare’s sweater over my head, slip into a pair of Mum’s old slippers, and shuffle down the hall to the kitchen.

I pry open the fridge, a squat tub of a thing like the one Kate and I shared in college, and poke around. Eggs smeared with chicken shit (that fresh!), a sheaf of carrots, some cheese, all manner of pork. There’s a pitcher handy, so I pull it free of the door and give it a whiff. Is it milk? I hate milk, and this stuff is clotted over with a hump of yellowing skin. Is that cream? Cream I can do. I tip the pitcher to my lips and gulp. My mouth is overwhelmed by a tinny, animal taste that seems like it should be familiar, but also triggers my gag reflex. I shoot to the sink and hang my head over the side, sputtering.

It’s only then that I see Clare. She’s standing in the doorway, arms crossed in the same attitude as last night and the night before, except now she’s smiling, like she might fall down laughing smiling.

‘You don’t like it?’ she asks. ‘That’s straight out of the cow!’ She has to turn away and pretend to fiddle with the kettle to keep from laughing outright. ‘Is it not like that in New York?’

‘No. No it is not,’ I say and wipe at my mouth with my sleeve. Her eyes bulge a half a degree. Ah hell. She’s noticed the sweater.

She coughs and then erupts into a fit of laughter. ‘That looks,’ Clare sniggers, ‘very well on you!’

Just then, Cormac breezes into the room with Dermot two steps behind. Clare bites at her lip and becomes suddenly very interested in yesterday’s paper.

‘You’re up early today, Mum,’ Cormac says.

‘It’s a market day. Same as every Friday,’ she says matter-of-factly.

‘I’m only messin’,’ he says and knuckles her in the shoulder. ‘What up, Jules?’ He sticks a fist in my face, and I bump it.

‘What up.’

‘They’re dropping like it’s hot out there,’ he says.

‘Three last night, another one this morning,’ Dermot adds. The two of them heap butter, cheese, and tinned sardines onto thick slices of brown bread.

‘Wash your hands, will you!’ Clare clucks at them. They go on eating, and Clare goes back to the tea. I catch the boys passing a sneaky smile back and forth.

‘Sorry, what’s dropping?’ I ask them.

‘The calves.’ Cormac says it like I’m a complete moron.

‘Oh, right.’

‘Come on! I’ll show ya!’

I open my mouth to protest, but Clare does it for me.

‘Julie doesn’t want to see a shed full of heifers. She’s from New York.’

‘I’ll go,’ I say defiantly. It’s little cows, right. How bad could it be?