UPFRONT:I'VE JUST FOUND OUT that over the past five years my mother has been writing a "little story" about me and my boyfriend and his little brother. This fascinating fact comes to light as I give orders and the boys ferry boxes from our house to her apartment, which is to be our home until February.
She drops it in, casual, like, as my boyfriend and I get into one of our many heated discussions about whether we should bring the boxes up to his granny in Keady, Co Armagh, or deliver various bits of furniture to Dublin-based siblings first. As usual, his sensible little brother comes up with a solution that calms us both down. "It's just like in my story," says my mother enigmatically.
I say nothing, thinking I must have heard wrong, but later, after she serves Sunday dinner - mother's chicken, roast potatoes, home-made gravy and string beans, followed by expertly sliced Viennetta; ah, it's good to be home - she brings up the subject again. "I can't believe you haven't asked about my story," she says, sounding put out. I tell her I thought she was joking, but she goes off and returns with two pages of neat print. (Two pages. In five years. My mother appears to be channelling John Banville.)
She begins to read. It's the story of "Sinéad" and "Brian" and "Brian"'s little brother "Robbie". It soon becomes clear that it's not so much a story as a blow-by-blow account of our interminable quest to transform the house into a home. Listening to her was kind of like a car crash. I want it to stop but at the same time I want to stand by the side of the road and watch the nightmare of seeing myself and my relationship unfold through my mother's all-seeing eyes. It begins as "Sinéad" and "Brian" move out of their "rented modern apartment" to the house they have bought. "Now they would have to begin the enormous task of making the old house they had just bought habitable. They needed help," our intrepid narrator says, setting the scene.
"Our wee Robbie would come from Portadown for a few days and give us a hand if I asked him," Brian said. "Och, to be sure, he spends most of the day in bed anyway just now, so he does."
"They were an unlikely trio for this mammoth task. Sinéad was a successful journalist, outgoing and full of life - provided it was the kind of life that involved lots of parties, openings of art exhibitions and alcohol. Brian was an administrative officer, really more like a secretary to a set of very demanding businessmen. He was not as outgoing as Sinéad but liked her gregariousness, for now anyway. Robbie spent a lot of time in bed and was refusing to do his A levels.
"The North-South divide did not figure greatly in the relationship between Sinéad and Brian, at least not in the political sense. It did, however, become more apparent when work began. Brian was hard-working but sometimes lacked logic. Sinéad was lazy but better at organising big events, although she lost her purse, mobile phone and credit card on a regular basis. Robbie was an easy- going young boy, but it soon became apparent that he had more sense than both of them."
It went on (and on), but in case you're hooked I'll provide another highlight: "One of Brian's main preoccupations was cleaning. He came from a household where order was maintained and the smell of bleach hung permanently in the air." See? Not so much a work of creative fiction, I suggest to my mother, as an exploitation of the minutiae of our domestic lives for her gratification. "Isn't that a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?" asks my mother. I can't think what she means.
Anyway, she reckons she is going to continue the story while we are living with her, but, at the rate of a paragraph every three months, I am not too worried. It turns out moving in with my mother is the best idea I've had in years. With my carousing days behind me, having just about grown out of my extended, petulant adolescence, I now seem to be in tune with her. We sit and listen to Terry Wogan and Jonathan Ross on BBC Radio 2 and The Archerson Radio 4. We read our book-club books in companionable silence. She whips up perfect meals out of seemingly nothing. We watch Little Dorrit on the BBC, escaping into the Dickensian slums and splendour. At times it feels as though we are in a nursing home. In a good way.
I'm going to leave my mother with the last word. I'm not being funny, but it might just be the only way she'll ever get this story published.
"So the work was to proceed, and Sinéad checked with her mother that it would be all right for her and Brian to move in with her mother while the builders did the job. 'Just from November to February, Mum,' said Sinéad. Everything had to be removed from their house and taken up to Brian's granny's house in Keady, and Robbie was roped in again for the stressful move. Sinéad, however, was unable to assist. She wasn't being lazy this time. She had just found out that she was expecting a baby." roisin@irish-times.ie