I drove home in my Rover doing it not a doormat.
I had a firefighter boyfriend and I could cope with the danger of his job (outwardly, inwardly was my business). I had a position as a volunteer in a nursing home where part of the role was losing people I’d come to care about, this being regularly and without warning. And I had two kids that I’d forced to become estranged who were back with me, one bragging about how we were happy after all that had happened.
I was not a doormat.
I was not an heiress.
I was not a doctor’s wife.
I was me.
Amy.
And the best part about that?
I was pretty awesome.
*
“Erm…what?” I asked Mickey.
We were in his bedroom the evening of the Boston Stone incident. It was Thursday. He had his kids back.
And he’d just told me that Aisling had told him that she wanted me to go shopping to decorate her room.
The twist was that she wanted me to do this with her and Rhiannon.
And the twist to that was, Rhiannon had agreed.
So far, it had been a good week in a variety of ways. One of which was the discovery that Aisling was now showering regularly.
This was positive but not exactly surprising. Rhiannon had phoned Mickey and told him they’d had not one but three chats. The first one was reportedly dramatic, much like experienced by Mickey. The second one was surly.
Rhiannon didn’t give up and the third one was beneficial.
Apparently, Aisling wasn’t adjusting to high school very well. There were some girls she didn’t like, who she never really liked, but it was difficult to avoid them like she used to do as unfortunately they shared a number of classes. Classes that, also unfortunately, Aisling’s friends didn’t share so she had no one “at her back.”
According to Ash, “it wasn’t that big of a deal” and that “they just don’t get me, I’m not into the same crap as they are.”
Rhiannon then cottoned on to the fact that they were possibly picking on her and pointed out that she should give them less to pick on, in other words, having a shower and taking care of herself better.
She also asked if she and Mickey needed to contact the school.
Aisling had flatly refused this and before any headway that was gained could be lost, Rhiannon backed down. However, she asked for Mickey to keep an eye out when he got the kids back just to make sure that Aisling was still improving.
It seemed she was. She not only showered, she also helped me with dinner. She wasn’t back to her quiet but present self, but it was something.
Mickey was relieved. Mickey also communicated this to her, taking every opportunity to do that he could, without making it obvious or overbearing.
He’d also started calling her his “pretty girl” or his “gorgeous girl,” things he used to say but he said them now still infrequently but with greater regularity.
These were from her dad, not some cute boy, but it was plain to see she was responding. When he said them, her face would change in a way that was good, not bad. Or she’d hunch her shoulders like she was trying to hold the subtle compliments to her.
It didn’t hurt that Cillian, as if he sensed all this was happening (when, at his age, I was sure it was flying right over his head), got in on the act. He praised her cooking. And the first time she said she was going to watch TV with us instead of slinking to her room, he’d cried, “All right! What should we make Dad and Amy watch, Ash? I’m totally thinking Arrow.”
“Someone kill me,” Mickey had murmured, and both his kids had laughed (both of them!).
We’d watched Arrow. I’d never even heard of it but it was pretty good, even if I wasn’t into superhero kinds of things.
What was great about it was that Cillian and Aisling kept up a running commentary, catching us up on back stories we could have no idea about.
And Aisling was almost as into this as Cillian.
So the efforts of the three adults in Ash’s life were obviously working. It wasn’t a miraculous change but the silence, isolation and gloom seemed to be lifting.
And now she wanted me to go shopping with her and her mother.
“She’s not drinking,” Mickey announced rather than repeating the insanity of me shopping with his daughter and ex-wife.
“I’m sorry?” I whispered.
“She isn’t drinking.”
I stared.
“Ash told me. Not the whole week she had them. Not a drop. And when Rhiannon wasn’t around, Ash looked and there’s no liquor in her house. Not wine, which is what she drinks, but not anything and she keeps other shit there for when she has company.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
This was incredible.
“I don’t know,” Mickey stated. “Don’t got my hopes up, don’t want my kids’ up. But she’s spoken to me on the phone and I can tell, in the evenings, when she’s slidin’ toward gone, slurrin’ her words, losing track of the conversation. She’s all there. She hasn’t been all there in ten years. Now, she’s all there.”