Page 4 of A Very Irish Christmas
She comes bearing gifts – wine and a big bag of Thai food. She dumps it on the kitchen table, and gives me a hug.
June is tiny, barely scraping five foot, with crazy blonde curls. She dresses like she’s at a music festival, all flowing skirts and battered Converse, and looks like the kind of woman who works in a crystal store. She actually runs her own successful accountancy firm.
She wipes away my tears, and says: ‘You’ve got to stop, Cassie. This isn’t good for you. I don’t want to be one of those insensitive assholes who says you’ve got to move on – but, well, you’ve got to move on. You’ve got to stop torturing yourself like this. I’m almost tempted to sneak in here and erase that damn video.’
‘I know, you’re right,’ I reply, as we decant our food and settle on the couch. ‘I know how insane it is, poking and picking at everything, but I just don’t seem able to stop. It’s like tugging at a broken nail, or biting your lip when it’s already bleeding… it’s bad for me, but something makes me do it! Especially this year…’
This, frankly, has been the year from hell. My hours at work were cut due to the ‘challenging economic environment’, and that stings. I used to be ambitious and driven, essential to the company. Now I am competent but easily sidelined – more likely to want to hide in a closet than pitch my vision to a client.
I have less money coming in, and too much time on my hands. I’m thirty-seven, and most of my peers are married, have kids, high-flying careers and vacations to the Bahamas. I just seem to be in freefall, stuck in reverse. If I keep on like this I’ll be back to eating illicit candy and wearing a padded bra in my childhood bedroom.
Even worse, my beloved Nanna Nora died six months ago, just before her 100thbirthday. We’d planned a big party, complete with an Irish band and male strippers (she was thatkind of girl), but she slipped away in her sleep a few nights before. It was a good way to go – peacefully, after a long, full life – but it’s left a Nanna-shaped hole in my life that will never be filled. I miss her every single day.
The third highlight of the year from hell was Ted finally getting married. It was a September wedding in the Hamptons, because that’s how he rolls these days. His wife works at his bank, and is the very picture of refined old money. They have an adorable Labrador called Humphrey, enjoy biking and skiing, and wear matching outfits on their vacations. Best not to ask how I know all that. It’s definitelynotbecause I’ve stalked them on social media with fake accounts or anything.
Even though I knew the wedding was coming, it still hurt. He wore a white suit to match her dress, and the stormy weather that had been sweeping down the Eastern Seaboard cleared up as if by magic, just for that weekend. Most importantly, he actually went through with it.
‘I saw him the other day,’ June mutters between spoonfuls of tom yum soup. There is no need to explain who ‘he’ is. ‘I was on my way from a client meeting in Midtown, and he was coming out of a bar.’
‘How did he look?’
‘Fat, really fat. Bright red zit on the end of his nose. Losing his hair. Revolting. I almost threw up in my purse.’
I have to laugh at this, because Ted has great hair and is the kind of guy who can eat pizza every day and not gain a pound. I can hold out hope for the zit though.
‘He looked like a proper eejit, so he did,’ she adds, doing a good impression of the Irish twang that Nanna Nora never lost despite all her decades in the States. ‘Eejit’ was one of her favourite words, and it slipped into our vocabulary over the years, along with its stronger sibling ‘fecking eejit’, ‘what’s the craic?’ and calling handsome men ‘a ride’.
June used to agree that Ted was a ride, but now she rates him somewhere below plankton on the food chain – she’s never forgiven him for what he did. If he ever plummets off a balcony or accidentally falls in front of a subway train, she’s my prime suspect.
I’d been more forgiving – or, frankly, more desperate. I wanted to believe it was a blip –something we could overcome. I told myself he’d been overwhelmed by the pressure, the wedding, the planning.
I’d cried and pleaded and promised to do it however he wanted. We could elope, or go to Vegas, or not even get married at all – as long as we stayed together. If we stayed together, we could work it all out, I was sure.
I was still sure when he moved out the next day, leaving me in our luxury apartment with tear-swollen eyes and the rent paid up for a month. I was still sure when he changed his number, and told his PA to stop putting my calls through. I was still sure when he took a trip to Aspen with his new girlfriend, and when the girlfriend turned into a fiancée. Now, the fiancée is a wife – and there is no coming back from that.
‘I think,’ I say to June, feeling a fresh round of crying sneak up on me, ‘that I’ve finally accepted it’s over.’
‘Well, that’s positive,’ she replies, patting my knee in reassurance. ‘And it’s only taken you three years.’
She’s right, and I am a ridiculous woman. How could I have been holding on to this for so long? How could I have let myself sink so low? It’s as though when Ted rejected me, I started rejecting myself, and I’ve never figured out how to stop. In fact, I’ve been getting better and better at it. Ted might have broken my heart, but I’m the one who has stopped it healing.
‘This sucks,’ I say, placing the soup down. I have no appetite anyway. ‘I miss Nanna Nora, and Ted is married to Wall StreetBarbie, and work is awful. They’ve put me back on children’s parties, June!’
I started at my company straight out of college, and my first job there was organising events for rich kids. After a year of explaining to parents that it wasn’t good for ponies to be dyed pink and have plastic unicorn horns glued onto them, I progressed.
I worked hard, was passionate about what I did, and made my way up the ladder to the really big events. Corporate gatherings, product launches, flashy charity fundraisers – the kind with celebs and lobster bars. Now, after the decline of both the economy and my self-belief, I’m at the bottom again. My whole life is a game of Chutes and Ladders.
‘Babe,’ June replies, squeezing my hand, ‘I know – and it does suck. It’s been a bad year, and it’s going to be Christmas soon and that always makes you feel worse. Let’s look ahead. What are your plans?’
I bury my face in my palms, anxiety settling in my stomach.
‘Suzie’s invited us all for Christmas this year,’ I say. I sound about as happy as if the creepy clown fromIthad asked me round to his underground sewer for a body-part buffet.
‘And how do you feel about that?’
‘Like I’d rather put my head in a blender.’
‘Nice image. So – crazy idea – why don’t you just… not go? She always makes you feel crappy about yourself. I say screw Suzie. Give yourself the Christmas gift of not seeing her.’
