Always Denied
Irene was seven years old when she first realised there was something wrong with them. They'd been on gone out for the day to the beach. Mother and Father had rented deck chairs, neatly placed, side by side, with a shared umbrella. Father sat and examined a paper with a frown , the corners flapping in the wind. Mother had a book, but she wasn't reading it, just looking out at the water. They looked like any other family, a little quiet perhaps, but outwardly completely normal. Like any other girl on the beach Irene had been kitted out with a bucket and spade, jelly shoes with a broken clasp that flapped awkwardly at her ankle when she walked. But looking around the beach at the supine adults, the clusters of playing children, at the sea dragging itself in and out, Irene was suddenly hit with a realisation. She wasn't - they weren't – at all like what they looked like. Nothing at all like an ordinary family. That little girl paddling in the waves, squealing as the cold water ran up her ankles, she had no more in common with Irene than she did with the sea gull flying overhead, or the rocks on the beach beside her. The mother fussing over the sandwiches, the father shouting at his son that he was swimming too far out – they were nothing like her parents. Nothing at all.
Irene's parents had never shouted at her. They never fussed. If Irene refused to eat her vegetables they accepted her decision without a flicker of dismay. If Irene came in with messy clothes or wild hair, her mother would tidy her, holding her at arm's length as she removed her clothes and untangled her hair.
Irene rarely misbehaved . Her teachers at school often remarked what a quiet child, what a good girl Irene was.) It wasn't a mark of any innate virtue on her part – she had merely that she had learned at a young age that there was no point. Her parents would greet disobedience in the same way they met compliance. With resigned indifference. Don't do that, dear. Bringing up Irene was a task, a duty –like loading the dishwasher, or paying the gas bill. It wasn't pleasant, nor necessarily unpleasant. There were motions that had to be gone through, that was all.
Love was one of those words that Irene had always found meant everything and nothing – a helpful filler concept used to plumb gaps in our understanding, to cast a romantic gloss over the confusion– of lives, of relationships. When she looked back on her childhood, on what was missing – (and anyone who looked more than twice at the Adler family sitting in silence on that beach, at Irene in her neat pig tails with her unused bucket and spade, would know for a fact something is missing ) love wasn't the word she used. Perhaps her parents had loved her. Love for one's children was a sort of biological function, after all and as far as Irene could tell her parents weren't biologically abnormal.
Perhaps those long cold evenings spent within arm's reach of one another, but never looking at each other, those morning where Irene's breakfast was placed in front of her, her hair brushed and plaited without the smallest unnecessary touch – perhaps they were her parent's way of expressing whatever warmer emotions lurked in the depths of their hearts. Irene couldn't speculate on that – didn't really care to. It wasn't love that she had placed a premium on, that she had lain awake at night fantasizing about – it wasn't love that she'd sought desperately, recklessly in the ill judged teenage trysts which gave her such a reputation at school. It was something else she wanted from them– engagement. A response.
She wanted to make them laugh, sigh, stammer, wince, gasp. Throw back their heads and scream.
It must have been a shock to her parents, she supposed, when their quiet obedient little girl began wearing black leather and six inch heels, disappearing on the back of a motorbike with boys several years older than herself. Certainly it was a surprise when she informed them that she was dropping out of school, moving to London with an older woman.
We always thought you would go to University. You were such an intelligent child.
Irene remembered, with some satisfaction, the expression on her parent's faces as she'd struggled down stairs with her bags (difficult to manage three stuffed bin bags and a suitcase in stiletto heels and a miniskirt, but she'd been making a point). Their mouths hung slightly open, like twin goldfishes, eyes disbelieving, hurt. It was as though they'd seen her for the first time. Irene. Not a little girl shaped living room ornament but a horrifyingly complex human entity awash with needs, fears, resentments, dreams. If the paper had unpeeled itself from the wall and turned to address them they couldn't have looked more bewildered.
Once they'd had time to think about, Irene was sure, they'd realise what a lucky escape they'd had. They'd unwittingly been giving house space to a ticking bomb. Removing herself had been a kindness.
Her mother had followed her out to the car (eyes blankly taking in Irene's girlfriend in the front seat – tufted purple hair, piercings, tattered leather jacket).
"Will you –" Irene turned back to look at her. Her mother looked oddly small and frail, huddled against the cold (she'd come outside without her cardigan). Whatever question she'd been about to ask faded on her lips as her eyes searched Irene's face. "Will you send us a postcard, when you get there? Your father does like to get postcards."
Irene tossed her hair over her shoulder, rolled a wad of chewing gum to the corner of her mouth with her tongue. "I'll think about it."
"Good. That's – good. I hope," Irene's mother's eyes flicked to the car again, to the inauspicious looking woman in the front seat, "I hope you have a lovely trip."
Irene thought she felt something inside her collapse at those words, her beautiful hot and cold bravado melt away. Just for a moment she was a little girl again, neat plaits and empty words. "Thank you very much." She said politely. Blankly.
When she got inside the car her girlfriend leaned over to give her a kiss and Irene twisted the lip ring with her tongue, hard. Satisfied to hear the answering gasp, to feel a hand tighten on her knee. Pleasure and pain. The perfect reaction. She'd never need love. When they pulled away from the house, Irene didn't look back.
A/N: This is something I wrote to try and make sense of Irene's backstory to Dining with Frogs (although in that story Irene's real name is Iris Adams I kept Irene's canon name for simplicity's sake). Title comes from the Beatles song She's Leaving Home.