The Rachel Incident(69)

Then my mother called.

“We really think you should reconsider this graduation thing, Rachel,” she said sternly.

I felt like I was drowning and someone was asking about my tax return. “Oh?”

“It would mean a lot to your father,” she continued. “He’s very low. He needs a day out.”

“It’s too late anyway, Mum. All this stuff is arranged months in advance. Seating and gown rental or whatever.”

“Don’t mind all that,” she said. “If you can sort the gown, I can sort the rest.”

I didn’t see how. My graduation was Monday, on what had once been the planned date of my abortion. “What do you mean, ‘sort the gown,’ Mum?” I said. “How on earth am I meant to ‘sort the gown’? I don’t have any connections at Big Gown. I have no idea where you even get them. It’s all done through the college.”

“You’ve gone very ratty,” she said.

“I’m just trying to be realistic.”

“Listen, I’ll call the college. We’ll pick up the degree, take a few photos, go for a nice lunch. We’ll bring James. What’s wrong with that?”

I had already taken two days off, for my appointment and for my miscarriage, and knew I was on thin ice at the call centre. I phoned my manager and asked for the time off. She sighed.

“Rachel, I think it’s better if you don’t come back in. I’m not sure if this is the right fit for you.”

“Will I still get paid for my sick days?”

“What? No.”

I hung up the phone.

My mother got her way. Well, most of her way.

She pestered the administration office all day to let me go. She invented various problems as to why I hadn’t RSVP’d or booked my gown rental, hinting heavily at mental illness, financial ruin and general poor health. It was incredible how accurately she had nailed my situation while ostensibly lying about it. Eventually, she was allocated three guest passes to the ceremony, but was told that there was no scroll prepared for Rachel Murray, and that I would have to watch everyone else graduate. My mother thanked her, and then rang back an hour later. How could we get the scroll prepared? The woman said she had nothing to do with the scrolls. My mother asked for the phone number of the scroll people.

After a solid eight hours of pestering, bribery and exquisitely performed small talk, my mother called me to say that I would be collecting my scroll, after all. I had to sit in the guest section, and I would be permitted to collect it on stage after everyone else had picked up theirs. If I could not procure a gown, I had to wear “dark, loose-fitting formal wear.”

“I have a black dress,” Mum said triumphantly, and started talking about getting my hair blow-dried.

It seemed to me that this was the worst of all possible worlds. You could go to your graduation or you could not, but this in-between state was humiliating. It was too late to do anything about it. My mother had already worked too hard, and all I could do was wearily go along with it.

“How did you manage it?” I asked. “With the scroll people?”

“Oh, I promised everyone I spoke to a free teeth cleaning,” she said.

I was in no position to complain about my fake graduation. Even if half the people my mother spoke to didn’t accept the free teeth cleaning, it was still a huge expense that she couldn’t afford.

My parents called to Shandon Street at 11 a.m. the next morning, my mother with her lipstick on, my father in a grey suit. The graduation had been sold to me as something my father desperately wanted and needed. That morning, however, he would have obviously rather been at home. He was utterly sullen, a mood that was in keeping with the tone of me and James’s home at that time, and I began to wonder whether depression was coming out of the walls.

My dad sat down on the couch and seemed to sink right into it. “I’ll just wait here,” he said, “while you perform your ablutions.”

Ever since Chris had shown up months before, I had thought about my father’s depression as an errand that I must get around to. I didn’t think about it as a thing that was happening to him, pushing on his shoulders, pinning him to chairs.

“Do you want a tea, Dad?”

He looked at a months-old magazine with Leona Lewis on the cover.

“All right.”

I learned—later, of course—that my mother had insisted on celebrating my graduation day because the last of my father’s investments—a shopping complex in Killarney—had just gone bust. All of my parents’ money was in property and investments, and there were huge questions around what they were going to retire on.

I brought my father his tea and he spoke.

“You’ll be going abroad, I suppose.”

“Who told you that?”

“They all are,” he said. “The youngies always go.”

I thought about the three grand in our savings account and wondered if I should tell him about it. It might comfort him to know that someone had money.

“Just don’t get up the duff, or anything stupid.”

Despite everything, I laughed.

My mother and I went upstairs, and I put on the black wool dress she had brought from home, along with thick black tights and brogues. I looked like I was going to a funeral. She asked me how the job was going, and I told her that I had been fired again.