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The Crumble
Eva Garvey rarely acted on impulse. Well, far less often than you’d think anyway. With her life taken up with four sisters, their children and husbands, no event could be spontaneous. There was usually someone who counted heads or made the bookings and it usually ended up being Eva.
She woke up one soft grey morning and remembered their mother’s apple crumble. They’d had a couple of old apple trees outside as long as she could remember, and their mother picked apples off them every autumn. The best thing she made was the apple crumble, warm and sweet and perfect. It filled the house with its scent, golden and bright. Eva lay restless in bed, watched leaves drift from the trees, and made up her mind.
Outside, the air was chill and leaves fell to earth like lazy spring showers. They slid and dived under her boots on the slick grass. Eva, armed with a bag for life, shivered and pulled her coat closer. Soon she found what she was after: five nicely sized apples with taut skin and firm sour flesh. Perfect.
The recipe had been her mam’s. It wasn’t actually an old family recipe or anything, it was just something she’d got from the RTÉ Guide about forty years ago and was an easy crowd-pleaser. Simple, fragrant and sweet. Eva lost herself in the preparation, delighted in the sharp scent of freshly sliced apples merging with the distinct warm scent of cinnamon and sugar.
Once she’d done the prep work, she lined the glass baking tray and put on the radio as she put the pie together. By the time her oven beeped to let her know it was hot enough, she’d put together a very presentable crumble. As it went in the oven, she took a sip from her coffee. Cheers.
While she waited, she pulled out an old family album. It was inescapable, the association of this kitchen with her mam and the crumble too. Eva leafed through the slack cellophaned pages.
Here was Ursula with her hair in two fat plaits, laughing at Gracie making a face on the stairs. Here was baby Becka, face smeared all over in orangey baby food. Eva smiled and took a photo. She’d have to share some of these to the group chat later. Here was Bibi, about eight, with both eyes solemn in her tiny face at some school event. And here they all were, bundled up together for a photo, all laughing together as though it was forever. They'd been so young. How had they ever been that young?
Fuck. That was why she didn’t look at these too much. Eva closed the book slowly, and tried to ignore the ache in her chest and the sting in her eyes. She shook her head, as if trying to tamp down the surging feelings. Fortunately, the alarm she’d set on her phone went off, and she staggered to the kitchen feeling lightheaded but grateful to break away.
The oven door opened, and hot fragrant steam poured out. It was like another punch in the gut. The whole kitchen was scented with it. It wasn't nostalgia, it was something worse. Absence. Why had she thought she could do this?
Eva set the crumble on a cooling tray and then slowly slid down and sat on the floor and stared at nothing. The only sounds were her harsh breaths and the wind hollowing the air outside.
What am I going to do with this? she wondered. The whole thing seemed like a mistake. Sure, the girls were always over, but then she’d have to talk about why she was even making the thing, and she might feel like she did right now. It was too much. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Who got this upset over a pie? Fucking hell, she thought.
But she couldn’t just bin it either, she decided. She’d picked those apples and spent all that time on it. It was love in a dish and it would be useless just to throw it out because she couldn’t cope. Eva ran her hands through her hair. Who could she give this to? Who wouldn’t ask too many questions?
Grace, she decided, and hoisted herself off the floor in search of her car keys. She needed this gone.
By the time she’d packed the apple crumble up with care and was driving down the sea road towards Grace’s road with her windows open, Eva had calmed down enough to realise this might be a mistake.
What if the prick is there? she thought.
Well, so fucking what. He doesn’t own her.
Grace’s car was in the driveway. Thank God. Eva waited a minute in the car for her heart to stop pounding, smoothed back a strand of thick hair. Then she strode up the driveway like it was nothing.
She didn’t usually drop in without checking first – usually she’d text Grace and go when she knew the prick was away. But it seemed like a good choice today. She rang the bell and waited. A crow on the wall was being divebombed by some sparrows. The racket was immense. They must have a nest nearby. The crow flapped its dark wings and cawed.
“Eva. What an unpleasant surprise.”
“John Paul,” she replied, trying to keep her heart from dropping into her boots. He loomed over her, dark brows lowered, like he was looking at something he’d stepped in.
“Is Grace here?” Eva asked. She hated how small her voice sounded.
“She’s in the bath.”
“Oh. Well. I made this apple crumble, and I was going to give it to her.”
“How strange. Did she ask you to?”
“Sometimes people do things that are nice, John Paul.”
The birds were really going to war now. She vaguely registered a harsh cry from the crow, clustered flapping and cheeping from the attacking sparrows. It felt as remote as the clouds blanketing the grey sky over their heads.
He took the container from her, and considered it. “Full of butter and sugar, no doubt. In this home, we try to take care of the bodies God has given us. No poisoning them with too much sugar or,” he broke off and gave Eva a long, derisive look up and down until her skin begged to crawl off her body, “alcohol.” His Pioneer pin glinted in the light.
Eva snatched the crumble back. She’d stayed far, far too long already. All her instincts were begging her to leave already.
As she turned, she caught her heel on a flagstone and tripped. She fell on her hands, but the crumble fell out of its container and landed upside down, ruined.
She heard JP laugh behind her.
“You just can’t help everything turning to shit, can you, Eva?”
Eva felt his derisive gaze on her a while before the door closed. Without looking back, she hauled herself to her feet. She picked up the container with the ruined crumble inside, and fled to her car, not noticing that the tiny regiment of puffed up and preening sparrows that had successfully driven off the crow.
The Pink Dress
“Happy birthday!” Becka passed over the haphazardly wrapped package to Grace and watched her take it, brow creasing slightly at the softness. Out in the kitchen, she could hear JP moving around, straightening things in the already spotless kitchen. She was glad he wasn’t there right then. He had this way of draining the life out of a room. Was that a talent you were born with or one you'd to learn? Becka didn't know, and she didn't really care. The man was a prick.
Becka could tell what Grace was thinking. Grace was wondering if it was one of Becka’s silly jokes, like the time she’d seen an I’M WITH STUPID tshirt in a shop in Florida and begged an already stretched Eva to buy it for her.
“This is too big for you,” she remembered Eva saying, fingers already tight on her purse.
“It’s not for me. It’s for Grace!”
Becka had thought about this previously. She wondered if Eva would have handed over the $15 the tshirt cost if she hadn’t been imagining JP’s reaction. Grace and JP had only been married a year or so then, and they hadn’t known the full extent. Couldn’t have known. To them, he was just…uptight. Cross sometimes. These, Becka knew now, were all euphemisms.
This was nothing like that. This was nice.
Grace’s fingers tore through the paper, and then she stopped. She looked up, eyes wide.
“Oh, Becka!”
The dress was palest rose-pink, a modest midi length, and cut like a dream. It was more modest than Becka herself would have liked, but she wasn’t buying for her. She was buying for Grace. Grace, who still went to Mass, and who rarely wore anything much more revealing than a swimsuit. And even that didn’t count, she was in the water most of the time, and bundled up in a blanket with the rest of them when she wasn’t.
The material was a light knit, sheeny and soft. Becka had seen it a month ago, wandering around the shops in town, not really expecting to see anything. When she saw it, she knew. She’d scraped together the cash by letting other people buy her drinks, doing extra shifts, and even the odd bit of (local) delivery work. It was worth it to see the look on Grace’s face. On the sofa opposite, the rest of their sisters all surged forward, the stillness broken.
“That’s gorgeous,” Ursula said, smiling at Becka. She’d had the same look they all did when they went to Grace’s – guarded, tense – but now she was rubbing the dress’s knit between finger and thumb.
“This is really nice,” Bibi said. "Did you get someone else to pick it?"
Becka took this as the highest compliment apart from Grace’s herself – it wasn’t like Bibi to say something nice for the sake of saying it, as they all well knew. And the sting in the tail was so her.
“Good work,” Eva half-whispered, trying to see around Ursula. She handed the dress to Blanaid, who looked at her mother with delight.
“Oh mum, it’s so beautiful! Try it on now.”
The sisters backed her up noisily. Grace smiled, shy and lit up with happiness, and ran upstairs to put the dress on. Becka sat on the arm of the sofa and smiled.
When she came back, it was to a chorus of wows (Eva, Ursula, Blanaid) and whistles (Becka, Bibi). The dress fitted her perfectly. It skimmed over her slight figure and the pink lit her up. It was like it had been made for her.
“Give us a twirl,” Ursula urged, and they were all laughing and encouraging when JP returned. He was clutching a mug of tea like he thought it was going to run away on him. As usual, he hadn’t bothered to offer anyone else one. The sisters fell silent, glancing at each other. It was like he'd hit the off button on the room, as usual.
“What’s this?”
Grace looked up and her smile dropped right off her face. Her colour had faded slightly, and she seemed to shrink back into the arm of the sofa.
“It’s my present from Becka.” Her voice caught a little, and Becka hated him for that catch, hated him for making Grace feel she had to fade away to accommodate him. She looked over and saw Bibi’s knuckles white on her lap. Eva was looking away, with a protective arm slung around Blanaid. Ursula’s eyes were lowered.
“Isn’t it beautiful, JP?”
Becka couldn’t look at him directly, so she watched him move slowly over to Grace.
“Give me a look.”
Grace stood with her head lowered. Becka felt her fingers tighten on the arm of the sofa.
JP walked around Grace. He plucked at the soft weave of the dress like it was something caught in the wheels of his car.
“Isn’t it a bit young for you, Mammy?”
Becka bit her lip. She didn’t dare to look at her sisters. Grace looked up. She seemed to shrink even more.
“What? No, JP, it’s…”
“Mutton dressed as lamb, that’s what they’ll say,” he cut in. “Why is a respectable mother dressed like,” and here he paused, and Becka could feel his gaze sweeping over them all, like a cloud about to burst with rain over a summer’s day, “this?”
Becka couldn’t hold it in.
“It looks beautiful on her, and it’s got nothing to do with you!”
She heard Bibi exhale hard. Grace caught Becka’s eyes, and the look Becka saw there wounded her. Please. Don't.
“This was from you?” JP said. Becka broke eye contact with Grace, and looked at him for a minute. His eyes were cold and derisive.
“Yeah.”
“Well, I hope you kept the receipt.” He set down his mug and swept back to the kitchen. They could hear him opening various doors and rustling. Grace looked at them all. Her eyes pleaded with them one by one.
“It’s fine, I’ve got so many lovely presents.”
JP came back in. There was a definite spring in his step.
“Here we are, Mammy.”
It was an ancient carrier bag that looked as though he'd been using it to carry his communion money around in. At the very least, he must have had it since before the charges came in. Tight prick.
“Take that thing off and Becka can return it.”
Becka looked at Grace again, steadily. Then she flicked her eyes back to JP, daring him to say something, before she looked at Grace again. Grace looked away, and went upstairs to change.
“I’ll get her something else.”
JP actually put his hand on her shoulder then. Becka fought back the urge to tense up. She could feel the others’ eyes on her. Bibi looked as though she'd welcome a weapon, any weapon. But it was Grace’s birthday, and Grace didn’t want this.
“Haven’t you done enough?” JP said, and she actually saw him smile.
Grace came back in, in her old blue dress, and handed Becka the bag with her head down. Becka took it.
“Thanks,” she whispered, and that was the end of that.
The Gravestone
Bibi texted the group first. They all remembered the anniversary, of course, but it had become an unsaid ritual that she would bring it up. She wasn’t really sure why it had ended up being her, as the second youngest, but it was like many other facts of Garvey life; it just was. For Bibi, it was a long and agonising approach, and she dealt with it the way she did everything else in life: head on.
Becka looked at the group chat and sighed, but not too much. Bibi, Ursula and Eva took it in turns to clean their parents’ gravestones when they got time, but once a year all five sisters packed up their old toothbrushes and rags and this weird but incredibly effective cleaner Ursula saw in a euro store on the edge of town and set to work.
Ursula actually liked it. They’d divide into two groups, depending on how the stones had fared in the weather, and go two and two on them. Becka never did much, Bibi pointed out, so she didn’t count. It didn’t matter though. Becka handed them rags or tools as appropriate and kept up a stream of chat and questions. Ursula tied her long hair back and cleared the dirt and dust out of their parents’ names, feeling the cool breeze on the back of her neck and with her sisters’ voices in her ears, the wonder of being alive.
Bibi kept a basket under the sink of old tshirts that Reuben had grown out of and toothbrushes she diligently replaced after two months for exactly this purpose. She didn’t need to mark her calendar to remember this date.
I’ll collect you? she texted Grace the day before, and Grace replied, Perfect xx and Bibi hadn’t thought anything more of it. She was thinking about their parents, if any of this would have happened, and then she let the thought go, again. It wasn’t her style. She lived in the present.
She noticed a cloud had formed on the glass of the door, shaped by her breath and thoughts, and realised she’d been staring out at nothing. No good. Normally she'd run to shake off this darkening mood, but not today, she was needed elsewhere. Time to go to Grace’s.
On the way, Grace texted her. Sorry, love, can’t come. Blanaid’s sick.
Bibi waited until she was at a red light and got Grace on speaker.
“Sorry, what?”
Grace sighed. “She’ll be grand, but it’s this flu, I think, poor thing’s been vomiting all night. She’s only gone to sleep now.”
“I understand, but,” Bibi said slowly, as she watched her hands tighten on the wheel, “what about JP? Can he not mind her for a while?”
Grace was silent. Bibi watched the light flick to orange.
“He’s sick too.”
Bibi wanted to scream. JP was no more sick than he was pleasant company, she was sure about it, but Grace sounded so resigned. She was like a tyre with a slow puncture, running down quietly until you couldn’t not notice it anymore. How long until she crashed? Or worse, simply deflated until there was nothing left?
“All right,” Bibi said, with an evenness she didn’t feel. “I’m in the car, so I’ll text you later. Try to get some rest if you can, you sound wrecked.” She stared into the orange light.
“Thanks Bibi,” Grace said, sounding worn out. Bibi ended the call and put her foot down as the light eased to green.
***
“Are you fucking serious?” Eva said.
Bibi looked at her. “You know I am.”
Ursula set down the box of rags and brushes. Becka rolled her eyes.
“Wish it was true,” Bibi muttered. Eva frowned, then looked at Becka.
“If Grace isn’t coming, you need to help Ursula with Dad’s.”
“Sure,” Becka sighed. She shook out her dark hair and tied it back. Bibi was slightly impressed; she’d nearly expected Becka to get a bit bratty about it, but Grace’s absence had a way of forcing them all into serious mode.
Beneath the slate grey sky, the four sisters worked. Bibi watched Eva carefully scrubbing dirt out of the loops of Gs and slopes of Ys, and for a moment, felt like crying. They didn’t talk as they worked. The only sounds were passing cars in the distance, the rasp rasp rasp of toothbrushes on the weathered granite, and the occasional splash of a rag being dunked to rinse in their bucket. Bibi looked right. Ursula and Becka were concentrating on getting some birdshit off their mother’s date of birth, and they didn’t see her watching.
She returned to her own work, looking at the dates on the gravestone. Too young, she thought as she had a million times, far too young. But this time it was Eva she was thinking about. Bibi thought of Eva, achingly young, as she told them the news. Bibi had been at the dinner table with her homework. Ursula and Becka had been outside, and Bibi remembered the way their shrieks and laughs had stopped as Eva called them in.
She watched Eva’s hands hard at work alongside her own, bare fingers and skin rubbed raw from the cleaner. Eva had had a life of her own, then, and it ground to a halt along with everything that day. Only in the past ten years had she been able to let go of them, as Becka had started making her own way, and been able to breathe and focus on her own again.
“It’s not fair,” Bibi said.
Her sisters stopped brushing and scrubbing. She felt them all looking at her. Eva dashed her rag in the bucket with a splash. Her breath steamed out in the cold air.
“No,” Eva said, “it’s not.”
She looked right. Ursula and Becka gazed back. Eva sighed.
“But it’s what we have.”
She paused, and Bibi wondered what she would say. She watched Eva look at their mother’s gravestone again. They waited. The wind blew down the backs of their necks.
Suddenly, Eva broke out in a smile.
“That’s some work, Becka Garvey! I never want to see you dodging this again!”
Becka rolled her eyes, but she smiled.
“Listen,” Eva said, and she smiled even more, “let’s finish here and go back to the house, and we can talk more then. But can we do it before we freeze the arses off ourselves please?”
“Some chance of that,” Ursula said, slyly, and they all broke up then, huffing big gasps of laughter into the chill breezy air. Bibi looked at Eva. When Eva braced her hand against their father’s gravestone, cold and still, Bibi covered it with her own hand. Eva smiled, and gave her a little shove with her shoulder. Her eyes were bright around the rims with unshed tears.
“C’mon, ya sap,” she said, but the warmth in her voice was as good as a hug. Bibi smiled, and got back to work.
The Birthday
“Happy birthday!” Becka yells, as she and Matt walk in and embrace Grace.
“My ears,” Bibi complains, as she passes by and gives Becka a little shoulder squeeze. Becka flaps a lazy arm back at her. “Ah, you’re such an old woman sometimes.”
Ursula approaches Grace. “Are you really sure you just want a Chinese here? We could still go out.”
“Yeah, I told you,” Grace says, “and besides, Blanaid wants it. We never had it much before.”
Blanaid is the only child there, but then again, it is her home now. So everyone’s on their best behaviour.
“Or at least try,” Bibi had said in the group chat beforehand. She meant Becka, but it’s also not that serious really. Just try not to curse or make too many dirty jokes in front of her. It’s not like you’ll have The Prick popping up and saying you’re a Bad Influence on his daughter anymore. No comments about what they're ordering or eating or anything. Blissful nothing.
Bibi has a note already open on her phone for collecting orders. She asks Blanaid now, “What do you want?”
Blanaid, getting tall now, says with what is still a child’s delight “I can get anything?”
“Anything,” Bibi says, and across the room she sees Grace and Eva do a little dance. She’s not sure why. It doesn’t matter why they’re happy, it matters that they are. That’s where they’re all at these days.
While she waits for Blanaid, Bibi carefully jots down her own order: satay chicken and fried rice. About a billion calories. Incredible. Worth it.
“Can I have,” Blanaid is looking at the menu and Grace has joined them now, face still aglow, “hot and sour soup? Is that nice?”
“Yeah, course you can,” Bibi says, writing it down. “But you need a main as well. You can have some of my satay if you like.”
“What about…black pepper chicken?”
“Done. And rice?”
“Chips?”
"Chips."
Eva comes over with a couple of glasses of champagne. “Who’s collecting this?”
“I will,” Matt says, and Eva eyes him doubtfully. “You sure?”
“It’s only,” Matt breaks off to count, “seven people’s dinners. It’s grand.”
“Why do you think he’s here?” Becka says, giving him a little nudge. The sisters laugh.
“No accidents,” Eva says, handing Bibi and Becka a glass each. Becka smirks.
“Eva, the usual?”
“Yeah,” Eva says, and goes back to the kitchen to turn the oven off. Bibi dutifully taps in the usual, duck in plum sauce and steamed rice. There’s a delicious smell drifting over them from the kitchen, warm and sweet, and Bibi recognises it immediately. She also knows that Eva will have ice cream to go with it in the freezer, and that Eva has set the table already with candles and silverware, even though it’s just a Chinese. In the space between the kitchen and the main room, she can see Ursula walking back and forth, helping Eva with something.
“Urs!” she shouts, causing Ursula’s blonde head to whip in her direction, “What are you having?”
“Prawn chow mein!” Ursula shouts back.
“Right,” Bibi says, “who else. Matt? Birthday girl?”
“I want a 3 in 1,” Becka says, before anyone else can answer.
“That’s so like you,” Bibi says, “who orders a 3 in 1 for a nice family dinner?”
“I like what I like,” Becka says with a shrug. Bibi updates the list.
“Ginger scallion beef,” Grace says.
“Nice. Rice?”
“Why not,” Grace says, finishing her glass of champagne. Blanaid puts her arms around her mother.
“Right,” Bibi says, “Matt?”
Naturally he dithers even though he’s had more time than anyone else. Grace drifts back to the kitchen. Blanaid snuggles up to Becka.
“Sweet and sour and fried rice,” he says. “Boring!” Bibi and Becka say together, then laugh.
“Right,” Bibi says, “I’ll call them. You,” she gestures to Matt, “get ready, they’ll have it in about ten minutes.” She strides away, and Becka realises that Bibi has taken the opportunity to pay away from them too. She bites her lip, and smiles, and hugs Blanaid again.
In the kitchen, Eva’s set the apple crumble out to cool, and the whole place smells of home.
“I can’t believe you wanted this instead of a birthday cake,” Ursula says, refilling Grace’s glass.
“It’s more special to me than anything else,” Grace says, and the sisters all look at each other for a moment, before clinking glasses.
Bibi joins them. “Dinner’s ordered, I’ve sent Evel Knievel out to get it.”
“Thanks,” Eva says, and tries to slip Bibi a hundred euro with zero subtlety. “Would you fuck off,” Bibi says, laughing. She smacks Eva’s hand away.
"I'll get you back," Eva says, smiling. "You will, yeah," Bibi replies, smiling like it's her own birthday.
Becka and Blanaid come in to join them, Becka carrying a haphazardly wrapped parcel.
“Open this now, but don’t put it on til after dinner.”
The wrapping paper is diagonal rainbow stripes, wrapped with starry washi tape that’s got ragged edges. It looks like a child wrapped it. A drunk one. Grace sets her glass down and opens it with care despite the messy wrap job. When she breaks into the present, she gasps. It’s as pink and soft as a dream.
“You never returned it! Oh, Becka!”
“Like fuck I was going to!” Becka retorts, then looks at Blanaid, eyes wide with fake embarrassment. “Oops!” They laugh, and Grace hugs Becka, cheek traced with tears.
Ursula takes the dress away and goes off to set it down somewhere safe away from the crowded counters, glasses of champagne and happy, jostling sisters.
Eva refills everyone’s glasses and hands Blanaid a Coke. Ursula returns and sweeps her glass up in one motion.
“To Grace,” Eva says, and they all clink glasses and drink deep. Bibi notices that Grace seems lit from within, like she’s found what she’s been missing. She squeezes Grace’s hand with her free hand. They do not mention the person missing, or express their sorrow for his absence. He never liked coming here for Grace’s birthday anyway.
Instead there is warmth, and laughter, and love, and that’s more than enough for any of them.