But then Catherine sighed, and Ellen could read Catherine’s sighs, Catherine’s every sound and gesture, as though they were her own. She leaned forward on the bed, suspicion alight in her eyes.
“What?”
“What?” Catherine said, shaking her head. “No, nothing.”
“Did something happen? Something happened.”
“Nothing happened.”
“You’re blushing. You’re puce. What happened?”
“James,” Catherine blurted, and then panicked. No, no, she could not tell this; she would have to take a different tack. “James shifted a guy.”
“Cool,” Ellen said, sitting up. “Who? Was it Robert Emmet?”
“No,” Catherine said scornfully. “This American fella. And I’m not sure if it’s actually cool.”
“Why? It was his first shift with a fella, wasn’t it? That’s good.”
“He’s older.”
“Well, you can’t talk. Yer man Aidan was ancient.”
“Yeah, well,” Catherine shrugged. “He’s just not really suitable, or whatever.”
Ellen pulled a face of disbelief. “You’re not James’s mother.”
“I know I’m not his mother,” Catherine shot back. “Believe me, his mother wouldn’t be talking about this.”
“Yeah, but you don’t get to rule his life.”
“How am I ruining his life?”
“Rule! Jesus! Get over it! It’s fucking well for you, going to posh parties and watching fellas shift other fellas. What do you have to be moaning about?”
“It’s just more complicated.” Catherine shook her head.
“Why?” Ellen said, her suspicion sparked again. “Did something else happen?” She looked at Catherine more closely. “Did you shift someone?”
Catherine was silent.
“You did,” Ellen said, not with surprise but as though this was a fact which had merely been overlooked thus far in their conversation. “You shifted someone. You’re puce again.”
“I’m not fucking puce. Will you quit saying that?”
“Your face looks like you’re after running up the lane from the bog. Who did you shift?”
“Nobody.”
“You shifted someone. I know by looking at you. What the hell is the big deal? Was he married or something?” Then something else occurred to her; her eyebrows shot up. “Was it a girl?”
“No! Don’t be fucking ridiculous.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“It was the artist,” Catherine, her heart racing now, heard herself saying. “The guy whose exhibition it was.”
“Wow,” Ellen said. “Seriously?”
“He’s Irish, but he lives in New York.”
“Cool. Maybe he’ll take you to New York with him. How old is he?”
“Thirty, probably,” Catherine said, plucking the number out of the air.
“Thirty? Do you ever shift anyone your own age?”
“I was drunk. It was just a drunk thing. He pushed me up against the wall. I didn’t even know—”
“Wait,” said Ellen. Her expression had changed. “You mean, he made you?”
“No, no,” Catherine said impatiently. “Look, these parties. You don’t know. They’re just sort of mad. Everyone’s plastered, and everyone’s sleeping with everyone. You’ll see.”
Ellen stared. “You slept with him?!”
“No, I didn’t fucking sleep with him!” Catherine snapped, and at that exact moment, the door handle turned, and both sisters screamed at one another with their eyes, and switched instantly into the mode that this situation required.
“Yeah, she’s so mean to Peter,” Ellen said, leaning back against the wall. “But I actually didn’t see that episode. I can’t believe she said that to him.”
“Yeah, I know,” Catherine said, shaking her head, and then they both looked, with perfect, calm-eyed innocence, to the door, where their father stood.
“You’re home,” he said, with a nod.
“I’m home.”
“What do you think of your new room?”
“Oh,” Catherine said, looking around; Ellen had been so eager to get all of her news that there had barely been a chance to examine the new space that the extension had made of their bedroom, or to remark on it. It was much bigger than their old room had been, and painted in more sophisticated, adult-looking colors, and the bunk beds had been split apart, and were single beds now, covered in quilts of a diaphanous fabric, and Ellen’s desk, neat and ordered and piled with notebooks and folders, stood in one corner. “It’s lovely,” she said, and their father nodded again.
“Very good. Well, I think your dinner’s ready up here,” he said, and he stepped back out of the room and closed the door again; they heard his tread on the corridor.
“I hear you’re havin’ sex with old fellas now, Catherine,” Ellen said, in an imitation of their father’s low, careful tone. “Very good.”
“Oh, God, shut up,” said Catherine, laughing, her head in her hands.
* * *
The following night, in the kitchen of Murphy’s, her grandfather’s local, Catherine and her mother and her aunts made hundreds of sandwiches, and from her seat in front of the television, old Mary Murphy kept one eye on Kenny Live and the other on the women who were slicing tomatoes and going through packets of ham. Like everyone who Catherine met with down home now, she commented on how much Catherine had changed, on how she had grown, as though this was an achievement in itself, and she asked the same questions that people down home always asked.
“You’ll marry in it, so,” she said, nodding to the television, after Catherine had confirmed that, yes, she did like living in Dublin. Catherine coughed out a laugh, and looked to her mother for a mirroring of her own amusement, but her mother was not looking at her; her mother’s hands had, for a moment, gone still, and she was staring at the bread piled in front of her on the chopping board.
“You’ll marry in Dublin,” Mrs. Murphy said again, but this time it was not Catherine’s mother who reacted, but her aunt Fidelma.
“Oh, do not, Catherine,” she said, wrinkling her face into a grimace. “If you know what’s good for you.”
“Sure you don’t know Dublin,” her other aunt, Monica, said.
“I’m not talking about Dublin,” Fidelma said, working a bread knife through a tower of salad sandwiches. “I’m talking about riding.”
“Fidelma!” Monica and Catherine’s mother spluttered in unison.
“Ride all around you, Catherine,” Fidelma said emphatically, “and don’t bother your arse marrying any one of them. That’s my advice to you.”