Moira ran into the living room to whip up the imaginary meal. Elm lay back on the bed, crooking her elbow over her eyes. She needed to get up and start reheating dinner and play with her daughter and figure out how to get her sales figures up and how not to be demoted to some honorary position in her family’s firm, and how to get over the paralysis that threatened to overtake her at every moment.
But for now it felt so good to close her eyes and let herself be empty. She wasn’t anything, not mom, not boss, not wife, not friend. She was driftwood, a cloud, and she gave herself three minutes of unconsciousness that wasn’t sleep but rather absence until the cordon bleu and cherry soda were ready and Elm flooded back into herself.
“Where’s Wania?” was the first thing Colin said when he walked through the door. Elm fought a frisson of jealousy.
“Sent her home,” she said, watching his face, suspicious.
“Oh,” he said. The little hair he had left, white blond, clung to his head like seaweed. His face was inscrutable. Elm realized he was just commenting on the scene, performing a “find the differences in the two pictures” exercise.
He popped a carrot stick in his mouth, and then tried to kiss Elm on the cheek clumsily. “Where’s Shrimp Salad?” he called.
Moira ran out of her room. “Daddy, I asked you not to be so silly,” she chided.
“Ya did, did ye? Be not remembering that, I wasn’t,” he said, putting on his Irish hillbilly accent. Moira loved it, copied it like a mynah bird. It was almost their secret language. Elm understood it, but was unable to reproduce the sounds or words. She knew she should find it sweet, but she felt left out.
He picked Moira up. “I’m silly? You’re a silly silleen gob, y’are so.” Colin let her slide down his body to the floor. He asked Elm in his “reg-lar” voice (as opposed to “Daddy” voice) when supper would be ready.
“Whenever,” she said. “I’m just chopping carrots for salad. I can warm the chicken up anytime.”
“I’m hungry now,” he said.
“Then we’ll eat. Moira, set the table, please.”
A silence set in while they ate. Dinners were always like this. Elm didn’t understand why the family was reminded particularly of Ronan during dinner. They had rarely eaten together before; this was a new phenomenon. But his absence was acutely felt, his memory respected by a silence they had all tacitly agreed on.
Moira took one bite from each end of the three chicken fingers on her plate. She liked the ends, with the extra breading. She would have to be coaxed to eat the middle. Elm didn’t have the energy to fight this battle again. She was so tired that even her toes felt fatigued, as heavy as doorknobs.
As if she knew what Elm was thinking, Moira said, “Mom, do I have to eat the middle part?”
“What do you think I’m going to say?” Elm asked.
Moira didn’t answer. She took a large bite and chewed it with snarled lips.
Colin shook his head, snapping out of a daydream. “Guess what,” he said to Elm.
“What?” Moira answered automatically, looking at the three chicken fingers intently, willing them inside her stomach.
“It looks like Moore is buying Omnard’s prescription brands.”
“It’s going through, then?” Elm decided there was too much salt in the ricotta stuffing of the chicken breast. She began the delicate process of unstuffing it.
“Inked today. As of tomorrow Maxisom, Norafran, and Extardol are all ours.”
“What’s that, Daddy?” Moira had gotten down to two chicken finger middles, the point at which her mother usually gave up trying to make her eat them.
“Medicine to make people feel better.”
“And what happens to their PR departments?” Elm asked.
“They get folded into ours, I suppose. We’ll have to see how it’ll shake down.”
“Shake out.”
“Excuse me?” Colin poured them each another glass of wine.
“Shake down is extortion. Shake out is seeing how something will turn out.”
“Right,” Colin said. “Are you going to eat those, Ballyreal?”