#5 Margarita

I walk through the park with S, her baby strapped to her chest. Her long hair blows in the wind and she is tired, grappling with the ways in which her world has turned. Birds gather on bare branches. I look at her baby’s soft scalp before she pulls on his woolen hat.

G buys his auntie a bouquet of tulips and daffodils, wrapped in brown paper. It is freezing and we go to a cafè. He is hungover and I order two perfectly square slices of bread with two ovals of poached eggs, a hot cup of coffee. He tells me that he has been having visions of the devil, at church and in his car. I nod slowly, ask questions, do not act surprised. I ask him what the devil looks like. A mask, he says. A terrible mask.

My mam and I walk through the Barbican estate after my graduation, trying to find our way out. Pale January sun grazes our skin. We are trying to repair something that happened here thirteen years ago, when I stretched out into the world and was clawed back. We go for lunch and when I ask her what she wants she says, anything, I’ll have anything. I’ll have the same as you.

I meet C at a bar near my house and we sit by the window, car headlights blurred in the rain. She says that she is starting to think she might not have time to have a baby, that she can feel possibility slipping away from her.

On New Year’s Eve we dance in an old car garage until past daylight. When the strobe flashes too brightly the dark corners of the room are illuminated, piles of coats and the corrugated iron, dirt trod into the floor. Keep the veil on, A and I say to each other. Mask on.

I chat with my colleague, J and an ex-student at D’s book launch. I tell the ex-student that my family are from Ireland, and she says, did you used to be a Protestant? And I say, quickly, Catholic, widening my eyes as if I am joking. J says, you can’t ask someone if they used to be a Catholic, can you? It’s in you for life.

We get a cat and he lies on the floor with his paws outstretched, asking us to rub his belly.

J and I go to the theatre. We sit at the edge of the circle, restricted view, elbows resting on red velvet. We watch the violinists in the orchestra pit raise their bows in unison and place them gently on the strings, poised and ready to play.

My brother comes to visit and we walk along the canal. We let his dog off the lead in the park and he jumps through the fence and heads towards the water. We run after him, shouting his name in the cold pink dusk, our voices like smoke in the air.

K and W come over for dinner. K calls the novel, the millennial swan song. W doesn’t have proper walking boots. K says, you should get some, you could wear them, we could go walking, it would be good.

We sit at a table outside of a bar in Dalston in the early hours of the morning, oozing red light. A waiter comes to take our order. I ask for a lemonade and she says, no, no soft drinks, not at this time. Everyone laughs and I order a margarita instead.

I go to see Lucien Freud’s drawings at the portrait gallery. The gallery text says that he used to buy birds from a market in East London. He is quoted saying, I was always excited by birds. If you touch wild birds, it’s a marvellous feeling.

When we leave the house our cat paws at the window, butting his head against the glass, not understanding why he can’t reach us, feel our touch.

I go to a literary reading and have the overwhelming sensation that I want to run out of the door and lie down in long grass, smoking a cigarette, bare-legged.

S’s long hair blows in the wind and she says, no one talks about the regret you feel in the beginning. Now, I love him, I love him so much. But there was a moment. Her husband says, he looks so sad when we walk away, as if we have put him down in the long grass and left him.

I stroke the baby’s fragile head. The first crocuses push through soil. A new heart flickers in his body, a wild bird. What if this is the long grass, and S is barefoot inside of it? The violinists raise their bows. What will I touch? The mask slips. The millennials beat their wings. What will I let touch me? I lace up my boots and order a margarita. I hear a voice in the air like smoke, calling my name in the dusk.