She should have gone to the gym. She was after missing her spin class two weeks in a row. But the instructor had changed and she wasn’t as happy with the new lad. He was very young-looking and his shout was a bit too screechy. And they’d upped the price to twelve euros for the hour from ten for those that hadn’t paid the lot up front. All the smart ones paid in the one go, or the ones with the biggest arses anyway. They thought that’d surely force them into going every week, the idea of not getting what they’d paid for. She resolved to walk the block before work, once she had the vegetables done and the meat left out for the dinner, and the note of instructions for her husband written out and left stuck to the fridge. She settled her debt and said a few prayers and sat for a while not thinking of anything, her eyes focused on Our Lord in his agony. She was roused from her gentle reverie by a movement from the front pew; an old one making shapes to leave. She left herself before she was sucked into anything, gossip or small-talk, or the feeling of being judged, somehow, or of being made to feel unentitled to the company of Christ.
She peeled potatoes and chopped carrots and parsnips and left them in saucepans of water on the hob, ready. She took a sirloin joint from the fridge and dressed it in a casserole dish with onions and apple slices and covered it and slid it back into the fridge. She wrote on the back of an ESB envelope:
1. Turn on oven to 180. 2. When red light goes off put in meat from fridge. It should take two hours. 3. Drain off juice and mix with OXO cube and water for gravy. 4. Turn spuds and vegetables on about 20 mins b4 meat cooked.
He knew what to do but still she always left the note, fastened to the fridge door with a magnet in the shape of the Eiffel Tower that the eldest boy had brought back from a school tour for her. She put on her tracksuit and walked the block fast, watching the hedgerows and gardens and greens for her lark, her little man. There was no sight of him, but she heard him again, thrilling, chirruping, pleading for love. She was flushed returning, her calves ached a little, but she felt good. Her morning had gone well and she had a bit of time left before her two to ten shift, so she could go easy with her shower, and she sang as she climbed the stairs, and thought of the weekend away she was going to surprise her husband with for his fiftieth, and the things she could do to take his mind off the march of his years.
The day room was empty when she arrived. The supervisor had them all in doing make-and-do in the arts and crafts room. The supervisor had a course done on that kind of thing, and she thought she was awfully swanky with the certificate they’d given her. It was framed on the wall of the arts and crafts room and it hung there like an accusation. Are you qualified to be in here, showing these people how to glue a button to a toilet roll? You are in your arse. You haven’t a certificate. Anyway, how’s ever. The supervisor was giving out yards about paint that was after being spilt on the floor and the spiller was standing bent-backed in contrition, one arm slung over his head, one still daubing at nothing with a dripping paintbrush. Sit down, sit down will you, the supervisor was saying, but the spiller wasn’t stirring, and the supervisor’s voice was getting louder, and her face redder, as she sopped at the bright blue puddle with a dirty-looking rag.
She was glad to be able to back out from there again, the mess of it; she was rostered onto the bungalow for the evening, where there were three profoundly handicapped patients, relatively elderly, mute, usually docile enough. There was a short walk from the main building’s back door to the low bungalow flanked by trellised gardens and copses of young fruit trees. She felt the rising wind as she walked along the narrow path; she looked at the darkening sky. She hoped it wasn’t going to turn stormy again. She’d forgotten to listen to the weather forecast. She’d Google it from the bungalow. She saw the new girl through the living-room window, standing with her hands at either side of her head. She was met at the bungalow door by screams. The new girl brushed past her, head down, almost charging. Thank God that day is over. The three of them are as quare all day. I don’t know. I’ve notes left on the table. Good luck.
Notes. Barry did pee at 12.10. No poo. He needs to go tho. Holding it. Mary L on console all day, gaga from it, wouldn’t eat lunch. Mary M like a bitch. Scratching. Nails too long. Have told Nurse about Barry’s no poo.
She breathed deeply, twice, three times, to steady herself. She clenched and unclenched her fists. She brought her hands together beneath her chin, tucking her elbows in tight to centre herself, like the yoga girl had said to do the time in the gym. She ignored Barry’s wails from the corner of the room where he was clutching his bum with one hand and describing wild arcs in the air with the other and walked to the giant bean-bag where Mary L sat, the flickering light of her child’s game console reflected in her wide brown eyes. Mary L. Mary L. Look at me. You have to put away that a minute and eat your food. Mary L. Mary L. And she reached down with her left hand and closed it around the top of the grey plastic console and as Mary L looked up she drew her right hand behind her and swung it back across Mary L’s cheek with just a shade short of all her strength. Mary L tumbled sideways from the bean-bag onto the floor, and lay there, long keening sobs escaping her. She took a handful of the hair at the back of Mary L’s head and entwined it in her fingers, and yanked upwards, so that Mary L screamed shrilly at the shocking pain, and rose to all fours, and she pulled on the hair so that Mary L began to crawl forward to lessen the pressure and relieve the pain, and in that way she was able to get Mary L across the living area and up onto a chair, and she took a segment of the sandwich that had been prepared earlier that day by the new girl and as a long wail exited Mary L’s mouth the sandwich entered it, and Mary L’s eyes bulged, and she bucked and coughed, and her hands went up towards her face but they were batted back down and the bread and ham and grated cheese fell in wet clumps from her mouth to the table and her lap.
Eat. The fucking. Sandwich. Mary L, eat it. Eat it. And she gathered the spit-covered clumps in a square of kitchen paper and smashed them back in past Mary L’s cracked lips and through the gaps in her teeth, and pushed upwards with one palm from beneath her chin and downwards with the other on the top of her head, so that Mary L could breathe only through her nose, and the air that was rushing in and out through her nostrils sent flailing lines of watery snot outwards and down, along her chin, and Mary L clawed at the arms and the hands that were holding her mouth closed, but it was no good, and all she could do was swallow, because she knew that’s what she was supposed to do, and then this would end.