Carmel took a deep breath and flapped a hand at her face, and the red started to subside. “God, look at the state of me, people’ll think I’m getting the hot flushes… It’s not that I was head over heels about Lenny; I’d probably have broken it off with him soon enough anyway, he was an awful bad kisser. It’s that I never felt the same, after. You wouldn’t remember, but I was a cheeky little wagon, before that-I used to give Ma and Da dreadful back talk, so I did. After that, though, I was afraid of my own shadow. Sure, me and Trevor were talking about getting engaged for a year before we did it; he’d the money saved up for the ring and all, but I wouldn’t do it, because I knew I’d have to have an engagement do. The two families in the one room. I was only petrified.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. For a second I wished I had been nicer to Trevor’s piggy little brother.
“And Shay’s the same. Not that he went frightened, like, and not that Da ever got in his way with the girls, but…” Her eyes went to Shay, leaning in the kitchen doorway with a can in his hand and his head bent close to Linda Dwyer’s. “Do you remember that time-you would’ve been about thirteen-he went unconscious?”
I said, “I try my very best not to.” That had been a fun one. Da had aimed a punch at Ma, for reasons that now escape me, and Shay had got hold of his wrist. Da didn’t take well to challenges to his authority; he communicated that concept by grabbing Shay round the throat and giving his head a good smack off the wall. Shay blacked out, for what was probably a minute but seemed like an hour, and spent the rest of the evening cross-eyed. Ma wouldn’t let us bring him to hospital-it wasn’t clear whether she was worried about the doctors, the neighbors or both, but the thought sent her into a full-on conniption. I spent that night watching Shay sleep, assuring Kevin that he wouldn’t die and wondering what the fuck I would do if he did.
Carmel said, “He wasn’t the same, after. He turned hard.”
“He wasn’t exactly a big fluffy marshmallow before.”
“I know yous never got on, but I swear to God, Shay was all right. Himself and myself used to have great chats sometimes, and he used to do grand in school… After that was when he started keeping to himself.”
Sallie hit her big finish-“In the meantime we’ll live with me ma!”-and there was a burst of cheers and applause. Carmel and I clapped automatically. Shay lifted his head and glanced around the room. For a second he looked like something out of a cancer ward: grayish and exhausted, with deep hollows under his eyes. Then he went back to smiling at whatever story Linda Dwyer was telling him.
I said, “What’s this got to do with Kevin?”
Carmel sighed deeply and took another dainty sip of fake peaches. The droop to her shoulders said she was heading for the melancholy stage. “Because,” she said, “that’s why I was jealous of him. Kevin and Jackie… they had a bad time, I know they did. But nothing like that ever happened to them; nothing where they weren’t the same after. Me and Shay made sure of that.”
“And me.”
She considered that. “Yeah,” she acknowledged. “And you. But we tried to look after you, as well-ah, we did, Francis. I always thought you were all right too. You’d the guts to leave, anyway. And then Jackie always told us you were in great form… I thought that meant you got out before your head was wrecked altogether.”
I said, “I got pretty close. No cigar, though.”
“I didn’t know that till the other night, in the pub, when you said. We did our best for you, Francis.”
I smiled down at her. Her forehead was a maze of little anxious grooves, from a lifetime of worrying about whether everyone within range was OK. “I know you did, sweetheart. No one could’ve done better.”
“And can you see why I was jealous of Kevin, can you? Him and Jackie, they’re still great at being happy. The way I was when I was a little young one. It wasn’t that I wished anything worse would happen to him-God forbid. I just looked at him and I wanted to be like that too.”
I said gently, “I don’t think that makes you a bad person, Melly. It’s not like you took it out on Kevin. You never in your life did anything to hurt him; you always did your best to make sure he was OK. You were a good sister to him.”
“It’s still a sin,” Carmel said. She was gazing mournfully out at the room and swaying, just a tiny bit, on her good heels. “Envy. You’ve only to think it for it to be a sin; sure, you know that. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do…’ How’ll I ever say it in confession, now that he’s dead? I’d be ashamed of my life.”
I put an arm around her and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. She felt squashy and comforting. “Listen here, babe. I absolutely guarantee you that you’re not going to hell for a bit of sibling jealousy. If anything, it’ll be the other way round: you’ll get extra God points for working so hard to get over it. Yeah?”
