The young teenager was sprawled out on his unmade bed, the one place in the world he could call his own and, even if it looked a sight being strewn with discarded clothing, coke cans and cheap magazines, it was his own clutter. On the walls were recent pictures of football stars, the ones he'd got to know about and discuss with his schoolfriends and learnt to hold his own in talking about them. In the corner, his school bag lay where he'd thrown it.
On this evening, he wasn't going out to see his friends as he might have expected so he felt down in the dumps. He slouched past the front door when he came in from sciool and hadn't felt like joining his mother and Cassie and his younger sister Niamh as he'd badmouthed them in the past and didn't feel comfortable with them. He said a few words and went straight to his bedroom and he could sense that, on the far side of his bedroom door, a happy atmosphere of domesticity prevailed which he tried his best to shut his ears to.
A long time ago, he was a happy and carefree boy, he'd inhabited that world without thinking. It was only at brief moments like these that he grudgingly admitted that he'd lost something along the way. He'd started to go through chages and couldn't understand what was happening to him. For a start, he'd started to gain height rapidly but had become lanky and ungainly and that bothered him. He'd let his hick black hair grow longish and untidy, always a bone of contention around the all linked to the way that questions had started ctreeping into his mind that he'd never thought to ask of himself before, who he thought he was, what others might think of him and above all, how normal he was. This last question was a real torment as it had only been a few months ago he had innocently blurted out that he and his sister lived with two mothers. He'd been questioned upon the matter and he had to admit that Cassie hadn't been around all his life but just acted like a parent. He'd been deeply embarrassed and resented his mother and Cassie for bringing all this trouble on him. It wasn't fair of them to wish all his troubles on him and, no he wasn't going to talk to them about it as he wasn't a little boy any longer. Niamh wasn't any use to talk to as she was on their side and she was just a kid so she didn't understand him.
All these swirling emotions was why he next turned to his music. He'd been given an expensive music centre for his last birthday. Throughout the runup to that day, he'd become temporarily nicer in his manner even though he'd pleaded and pleaded for such a present. He had detected waverings in the normally solid united front that his mother and Cassie normally exerted and his sharp ears had heard a snatch of conversation.
"If he likes music and if it's something he really wants. It'll give him an intetrest," he'd heard his mother say through a door left ajar to another room.
"Depends on the music. OK that makes me sound uncool, turn the music down and all that. At that age, you're not sure what you want. The only thing I knew I liked was girls. All right, I haven't any other idea," Cassie's slightly sharper voice was heard to reply. At that moment, he knew he'd won.
He remembered the monment of pleasure with which he let Cassie help set up the system and the first few Cds that he bought. he knew his friends liked them so therefore he liked them. It was what there was these days.
The thumping noise from his speakers did the trick in slightly raising his spirits as he mouthed along to the sounds. They sounded as angry as he felt and locked him into a world of sound and rhythm into which nothing interfered or bothered. It was only later that he suddenly realised he was hungry so he helped himself to some cold pizza on a plate in the fridge. It was then that he wearily contemplated doing the most pressing of his homework assignments to keep the teachers off his back.
As Roisin clicked off her computer at the end of the afternoon and slipped on her dark jacket, she looked nervously round the open plan office. She senses that work's certainties that kept her feeling competent and assured were starting to slip away. The uncertainties of home life started to creep colsdly into her veins. The worst of it was that Cassie, her partner and lover was perfect in her strength and loyalty and Niamh was a charming ten-year old. The elephant in their room was Michael, a surly fourteen year old who was feeling more and more of a stranger, a cuckoo in their nest whose adolescent turbulence resurrected her old feelings of guilt that she thought dead and buried and these battled with intense exasperation and in the middle of which was her enduring love which felt badly rewarded. The closer she drew nearer to home, the closer she was to his rejecting presence. It was so unfair, her more combative nature told her as she'd more than made up for the disruption in hers and Niamh's lives when she and Cassie wwere imprisoned and they were left in the horrible combination of her ex-husband and his mother.
She started working on the family meal straighaway for when Cassie and the children came home as she always had done and her nerves were already drum tight. Finally, the sound of the front door opening caused her eyes to swivel round. She took in a downcast Michael who informed him that he wanted last night's leftover cold pizza and was staying in. While he headed for his bedroom, a confused Roisin wasn't sure whether his move to isolate himself was better for the family than the peace and quiet of him going out except that she was always worrying what he might be getting up to in the hours or so that he wasn't in the house. She had an uneasy feeling about teenagers hanging around street corners and didn't know if that's what Michael was getting up to, something she didn't do when she was young in far off Ireland. He used to be so open and of sunny disposition contrasted with the close mouthed surly adolescent and this made Roisin especially insecure. The only problem was that Michael was excluding himself from the family, or so she felt and that made her feel guilty.
Niamh Conor had grown up to be a fairly placid child and had moved away from the nuisance baby sister role that she used to be. Her mother was in prison years ago and her father and grandmother were absolutely horrid to her and about her mother. That made her dreadfully insecure as she'd grown up in an atmosphere of family tensions that she could feel but nobody explained to her why things should be that way. Finally, her mother came back into her life and a woman called Cassie breezed into the family and waved away all this bad feeling, bringing in lightness and relaxation. Both of them explained that she and Michael now had two mummies and because everything felt right, she happily accepted this second change in her life. Mummy was so much more confident and happy so everything was right. She happily accepted their house move as she loved these new surroundings and got on like a house on fire with Nikki and Helen and their charming little daughter. Niamh could still remember how a fresh faced and boyish Michael happily played lego with Rose and that happy memory upset her. She senses that Michael had become ashamed of the family he grew up in and also of their neighbours as they were just like her own family.
With a resigned sigh, Niamh trudged up the front path to be affectionately greeted by mummy but she could sense the tension in the hugs. Cassie was due home soon and was guarenteed to brighten things up a bit but she also knew that Michael's moods were bound to take all that good feeling away from her.
"Is there anything wrong darling?" a slightly anxious Roisin asked of her little daughter who felt tense to her touch.
"Nothing's wrong, . I'm a bit tired, that's all," she answered with one of her rare smiles. Niamh couldn't help but realise that the brilliantly warm smile she received wasn't common these days and she felt a little guilty in trying to say the right thing, even if it wasn't strictly accurate. They chatted for a little while, each of them knowing that time was running out on them and they were both getting tense for the moment that normality would cease. At last, Niamh asked the question that had been on her mind all this while.
"I wondered if Alice and Emma could come round for tea this Saturday. we've been talking about it," she said in deliberate tones without thinking about it."I think Michael was talking of seeing his friends," she added, substituting the word talking for bragging.
At that moment, Cassie blew in with her customary cheerfulness which was seized upon like an oasis popping up in the middle of a desert. both Niamh and her partner Roisin knew that this quick-witted woman with sharp hearing was abreast of the situation and her presence temporarily dispelled the growing sense of negativity.
"What do you think Cassie?" she asked anxiously, conscious that Michael wasn't home yet.
"It's a no-brainer," Cassie pronounced in a determined fashion." You have equal rights to Michael and you asked first,"
"That's great. We'll be ever so good. I think you know Emma," Niamh said gratefully.
"The way I see it, there's been the four of us here at weekends for weeks so it'll be a treat for us."
"If you can call it four," Niamh said under her breath as the words shot out of her mouth. The huge feeling of relief had loosened her normally guarded tongue on matters like this. A long silence ensued as both Roisin and Cassie knew what their daughter was talking about but both of them had hesitated dragging this out into the open for fear of taking sides.
"Even if Michael's acting pretty badly at times, it would be wrong for him to be pushed further away from the family. It also means that your rights need standing up for as well," Roisin finally said with careful deliberation, feeling as if she were delicately balenced and any sharp move would tip her off the edge.
"I wasn't exactly the ideal teenager when I was growing up. The real problem is that I frankly haven't got a clue how this all started. We'd better leave it at this," Cassie chipped in, expelling a lot of pent up emotion
A sudden hush fell over the home. The matter was temporarily decided but, while normal family life was still continuing, a growing sense of imminent disruption was hanging in the air. It was the anticipated moment when Michael was due to come home. Would he be angry, would he be sullen or would he be depressed and uncommunicative? They'd seen all these variations in all these months. Finally, as the front door opened, Roisin couldn't help her teacup grating against her saucer as her nerves jumped up inside her.
"Have you had a nice day, Michael?" she asked with forced brightness, trying to catch his eye.
The monosyllabic answer from the youth as he slung down his school bag on the floor and his downcast eyes merely announced that he was staying in. His monosyllabic grunt to the other three was a generalised greeting before he shoved off in the direction of his bedroom. Anything could have happened to him that day.
The other three started chatting away about Niamh's day at school, including her brief glimpse of Rose Stewart-Wade. Niamh thought fondly of the lively little girl who raced around without a care in the world. She wished that she could be as bold as her. Nevertheless, she sat happily in her armchair and watched mum and Cassie potter about her, loving feelings flowing easily between the three of them. It made her feel looked after and secure and having two mums felt the most natural thing in the world.
Suddenly, a thumping rhythm shattered the domesticated peace and quiet. It put them on edge as it sounded like someone's ugly blind anger at work.
"Oh no, not that again," groaned Cassie in exasperation. What upset Niamh was that she had always looked up to Cassie as the blond-haired superwoman. Nothing had been beyond the cool, daring creature who had breathed life into their home and had got mum to relax and become strong as well as loving and motherly. Even Cassie hadn't dared challenge Michael heas on about the matter as she and Cassie knew that Michael would only turn round and go out with his friends. Cassie clicked on the TV while Roisin cooked dinner but it couldn't help but be drowned out and overpowered. So the evening progressed as something to be endured, leaving them feeling powerless and angry.
After all the hard slog of the day's work, Cassie and Roisin private moment came at last as they loved the intimacy of getting undressed in front of each other and coming together for the feel of each other's soft skin against each other as they lay in bed together curled up in each other's were physically and emotionally exhausted and faced a couple more days at both ends of the spectrum before the weekend. Nevertheless, they grabbed this segment of time for a heart to heart talk.
"This is getting impossible, Cassie. I don't know how to deal with Michael these days.I'm not imagining it that he wasn't always like this," confessed Roisin into her lover's ear.
Cassie knew her partner well enough to detect a defensive undertone in her voice but her guilt could be excused as she found the problem equally intractible.
"Going through teenage years don't help but not everybody's the same. I'm sure you were a good girl when you were his age," Cassie said tentatively as her fingers meditatively stroked her partner's back.
"And what of it?" Roisin asked anxiously pulling a little way back from her partner.
"There's nothing wrong with you babe," Cassie said softly and affectionately, gently kissing the other woman on her lips."It's just that you grew up in far off Connemara the way your parents wanted you to and i grew up as a smartass pretend rebel in croydon with an eye to my future. Things were fixed and certain and, in our case, opposites attract you know."
"That's more like it darling," Roisin said smiling as she ran the fingers of her right hand down through her lover's blond hair and going on to gently squeeze her lover affectionately."Let's run with this as I don't see where Michael fits in."
"That's where I get stuck. I've tried to meet Michael on his terms and it was easier when he was younger. The problem is that I really don't know how a boy becomes a man. All my experiences have been women or guys I've worked with...," confessed Cassie trailing off inconclusively.
"So why has he turned against us and blanked Niamh. They act as if they're on different planets," Roisin pursued, just ablt to see Cassie's blue eyes in the dim light as they lay on their sides, facing each other.
"All I can figure out and this is guesswork is that he's getting peer pressure we don't know about. Perhaps he once let slip something about us and he's been made to see us as an embarrassment," Cassie replied as the thoughts fell out of her head in sequence.
"My God," exclaimed Roisin in shock.
"You get ignorant people out there and they have ignorant kids. Besides, that's common for teenagers as they get self- conscious. I think back on the tantrums I kicked off with in my teens that I was trying to get away from being Mr and Mts tyler's daughter and being a dyke certainly helped. What complicates things for Michael is that he really loves us both and, because he feels guilty for badmouthing us, that only makes him worse," Cassie responded in slow even tones as she fiddled with a spare lock of Roisin's shoulder length brown hair as an aid to thinking.
A random memory came back into Roisin's mind after Cassie had finished talking. She was standing next to a pay as you go phone in Larkhall Prison and talking desperately to Michael via the delicate and easily breakable lifeline to her family. She remembered the drab, echoey alienated surrounding that was her life at the time.
"What's on your mind babes," Cassie asked gently. She could tell from her partner's stillness and slightly open mouth that she was thinking.
"I remember being on the phone to Michael when we were in Larkhall. I told him that I know how annoying sisters can be but he'd got to look after her especially as I wasn't around. He was such a good boy," Roisin said with a slight break in her voice and tears in her eyes. Cassie sensed this, softly kissed her eyes and squeezed her tight.
"Things have been better than that for years. I know that getting locked up and breaking from your ex didn't help our kids but we have to be strong for him and Niamh and somehow sort this out babes," Cassie said softly. Her patience and perseverence brought a different kind of tears to Roisin's eyes and she drew the blond-haired woman into a long soft kiss. It made them both feel better that, anyway, they weren't alone.
"We've been through such a lot siunce that do at the Dorchester to get to where we are now," Roisin said tenderly, touching the other woman's face wiuth both hands.
"Yeah, I remember it well. Just at the right moment, I said that you weren't just a brilliant PA but I really fancied the pants off of you," laughed Cassie as memories took her back in time to the lavish celebration by Roisin's ex to show off Mrs Aiden Connor to the glittering multitudes."You were wearing that long emerald coloured dress with your boobs on display and I had my favourite white suit."
"I was so shocked or so I told myself. I never thought a woman could be thought of that way. I was hideously embarrassed but I can't deny that it didn't start off a train of thought.," reminisced Roisin.
"If we dealt with all that, we'll sort out anything," Cassie said carelessly.
"Either that or something will happen so we get Michael back on the straight and narrow. We must have faith," Roisin said. These words brought a little smile on Cassie's lips and both of them finally snuggled down into the warmth and shelter of their bed. It was time to for them to sleep on things.