Mam dropped her head in her hands and sighed wearily. “Oh, Joey.”
“There’s a lot to be taken into account here, Joseph,” Miss Lane interjected in a haughty tone. “First and foremost, there’s the matter of whether or not the school’s insurance covers having a pregnant student on school grounds."
“What are you saying?” Aoife croaked out, paling. “Insurance not covering me?” She looked to her mother. “Am I being expelled?”
“You are not kicking her out of school,” I snarled, sitting straight up. “This isn’t the nineteen fucking fifties. There’s no goddamn way that I’m going to allow you to shun her like she’s some sort of scarlet woman. If anything, I’m the scarlet fucking man.”
“Joey.”
“Seriously. I’m as pregnant as she is.“
“Joseph, please.”
“What?” I demanded. “It’s true. I’m the father. I put that baby in her. If you want to lay blame, lay it at my door, not hers. She has just over two months of school left, and she’s finishing it out. Over my dead body are you taking that away from her.”
“Joey, calm down. Aoife, just breathe. Nobody is kicking anyone out,” Trish tried to soothe, eyes locked on Mr. Nyhan. “It’s discrimination, not to mention completely against the law, to exclude a student from attending school on the sole basis of her being pregnant. Isn’t that right, Eddie?”
“Well, yes, of course it is,” the prick tried to back pedal. “Nobody is suggesting that your daughter be removed from school.”
“Just like nobody suggested that Samantha McGuiness be removed from school, or Amy O Donovan, or Denise Scully. All girls from my terrace,” I sneered, giving him a look that said yeah, asshole, I know how it works. “If that’s the case, then explain to me what her angle is when she says the school’s insurance won’t cover Aoife being here?”
“I didn’t say it wouldn’t. I was just saying—”
“You were just trying to intimidate my girlfriend into going quietly, without making a splash for the school,” I corrected, cutting her off. “Yeah, I know your game. I didn’t come down in the last shower. I know how much easier it is for the school board when pregnant girls disappear from the roll book. Difference is, those girls had to do it alone,” I paused to point at Molloy before adding, “Aoife has me, and I have no intention of going quietly.”
If I could do nothing else for her, then I could stand in front of her and take the pressure, the disappointment, the pain. I could take the blows for her, and I would.
I sat there, back poker straight, muscles locked tight with tension, and took their disappointment on the chin, knowing that she was in no fit state to take another blow.
“Joey.” Mam placed a hand on my bopping knee and squeezed. “Please settle down, will you?”
“Yes,” Mr. Nyhan added, giving me a glaring look. “There’s no one fighting you on this.”
“Only because I made a preemptive strike,” I muttered under my breath. “What are we even doing here?” I looked around at their faces. “Aoife’s pregnant. I’m the father. She’s due after we finish school, so I really don’t understand the need for this bullshit meeting.”
GO TO WAR FOR YOU
AOIFE
If I had any doubts about Joey Lynch’s willingness to stand by me before this meeting, they were long gone now.
Because, as I sat in the office, listening to my boyfriend go to war for me against our year head and principal, all I could think was ‘thank god he’s mine’。
Having my name added to the dreaded list of girls-who-got-pregnant-in-secondary-school was, by far, one of my most shameful moments, but I could feel nothing but pride when it came to who I was having this baby with.
Haunted and beautiful, Joey sat across the table from me with his mother by his side, looking like he was seconds away from flipping the table.
Yes, he was brash, and yes, he was cursing like a sailor, but his words meant more to me than any well-rehearsed speech ever could.
Because he was speaking from the heart.
Every word he uttered, he meant, and that sentiment soothed something deep inside of me.
Maybe we were going to be okay.
Maybe I could actually do this.
With him.
The situation I found myself in was beyond terrifying, but unlike the other girls from school that had fallen victim to the same hormone-ridden, nine-month-long affliction, my partner is crime was standing by me.
In a weird way, I felt like Rose from Titanic, when all of the other girls were drowning, but Jack kept her afloat. While Joey was no angel, he was loyal and accountable, and a better man than anyone in this room came him credit for.
I felt better just being in his presence.
That’s the kind of person he was.
I listened to our mothers talk back and forth with Mr. Nyhan and Miss Lane for another few minutes, talking about restrictions around me taking part in P.E and so on, but to be honest, Joey had been dead on the money.
This meeting was pointless.
All I had taken away from it was high blood pressure and a dodgy stomach.
“Do you want to go for coffee?” I heard Mam ask Joey’s mother when we reached the school carpark afterwards. “There’s a lovely little café at the corner of main street. We could have a little sit-down together. Mother to mother.”
Both Joey and I, who were walking a few feet behind them, hand in hand, turned to gape at each other.
“Coffee?” he mouthed. “What the fuck?”
“No clue.” I rolled my eyes. “Maybe it’s an olive branch?”
“Or we could go back to my house? I’ve a lovely, fresh madeira cake in the bread bin,” Mam suggested, unlocking the driver’s door of Dad’s transit van. “What do you say, Marie? Coffee and cake, while we dissect the prospect of grand-motherhood?”
Joey’s mam looked like she had just been asked to explain Fermat’s Last Theorem. “Coffee?” Her mouth opened and closed several times before she whispered, “I, uh, I don’t know?”
“Did you drive here?”
“No.” With wide, uncertain blue eyes, she looked up at my mam and shook her head, and the move made her look a lot like her daughter. “I, uh, I walked over here from work.”
“Well, hop in,” Mam instructed, climbing into the driver’s seat of the van. “You can come over to mine for a cuppa and I’ll drive you home afterwards.”
She looked to Joey and shrugged helplessly, almost as if she was looking for permission.
“What do you want to do, Mam?”
“I, ah…” Voice trailing off, she glanced around nervously before taking a step towards the van. “I…” She straightened her frail shoulders then and reached for the passenger door. “Thank you.”
“You two,” Mam called out, as she rolled down the window. “Straight home after the hospital, ya hear? You’re not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination. I haven’t even started on the lectures.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” Joey noted, watching as our mothers drove off in my dad’s van. “That makes me feel really fucking uncomfortable, Molloy.”