Alexandra, Gone - Softcover

Anna McPartlin, who was shortlisted for Newcomer of the Year in the 2007 Irish Book Awards, was formerly a stand-up comedian and a cabaret performer. She lives in Dublin with her husband, Donal.

“Universe”

Oh nothing lasts forever,

you can cry a million rivers,

you can rage it ain’t no sin

but it won’t change a thing,

’cos nothing lasts forever.

Jack L, Universe

Alexandra

June 21, 2007

Tom,

When you are shopping can you pick up the following:

Bread

Milk x 2

Water x 4

Spaghetti

Mince (Lean! Make sure it’s lean and not the stuff they call lean and charge half price, because it’s not lean. I want lean cut right in front of you and I don’t care how much it costs.)

Tin of tomatoes

Basil

Garlic

Wine, if you don’t still have a case or two in the office, and make sure it’s not Shiraz. I’m really sick of Shiraz.

If you want dessert pick something up.

I’m meeting Sherri in Dalkey for a quick drink at 5. She has the Jack Lukeman tickets so I took money from the kitty to pay for them. I’m taking a ticket for you so if you don’t want to go, text me. I’ll be home around 7:30. Your aunt called. She’s thinking about coming to Dublin next weekend. Try and talk her out of it. I’m exhausted and can’t handle running around after her for 48 hours straight. Your aunt is on cocaine. I’m not messing. An intervention is needed.

Oh, and dishwashing liquid. And will you please call someone to get the dishwasher fixed?

OK see you later.

Love you,

Alexandra

P.S. When somebody close to you dies, move seats.

God, I love Jimmy Carr.

Alexandra laughed and put her note up on the fridge and held it in position with her favorite magnet, a fat, grinning pig rubbing his tummy. She was damp and sweaty, having run five miles, which was a record, and she was extremely pleased. She unclipped her iPod from her tracksuit, placed it on the counter, and headed upstairs to the shower. There she sang Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and did a little dance move before rinsing shampoo out of her hair. Forty-five minutes later she walked down the stairs with her shoulder-length glossy chestnut hair perfectly coiffed. She was wearing her favorite black trousers and a black fitted blouse complete with a large bow. She stopped at the hall mirror and applied lipstick and then rooted some lip gloss out of her handbag and applied that too. She stared at herself in the mirror for a moment or two, sighed, and mumbled something about Angelina Jolie crapping her pants. She smiled at her own joke while putting on her jacket. She picked up her handbag and walked out the door.

Alexandra walked along her own street and waved at Mrs. Murphy from No. 14. Mrs. Murphy was busy sweeping her step, but she waved and called out that it was a lovely day. Alexandra smiled and told her it was perfect. She waited for the DART and listened to a man talk about cruelty to animals to Joe Duffy on Joe’s radio show Liveline. It was too sad, so she switched from her radio to her music collection and stopped humming along to James Morrison’s “Last Goodbye” only when she realized that three pimpled teenagers were laughing and pointing at her. She stuck out her tongue and grinned at them, and they laughed again. She sat on the train next to a man in his fifties. He asked her to wake him at Tara Street Station if he fell asleep, explaining that there was something about moving trains that always made him sleep. She assured him she would wake him, and true to his word he was snoring less than five minutes later. Coming up to Tara Street, she tapped his arm gently; nevertheless, he woke with a start. He thanked her once he regained his senses and made his way off the train. He forgot his bag and so she ran after him and handed it to him, and he was grateful, but she was in a hurry to get back on the train, so she just waved and ran.

The woman sitting opposite her grinned and nodded. “My own dad would forget his head,” she said.

Alexandra smiled at her. “He was sweet.”

The woman nodded again. Alexandra got off the train in Dalkey. The woman got off at the same station, but neither made eye contact.

Alexandra made her way through the station and out into the sunshine. She continued straight onto the main street and took the left at the end of the street, after that she took a right and then another left, and after that Alexandra was gone.

Elle

Sunday, December 31, 1989

Dear Universe,

Please don’t send a fiery ball of hellfire comet thing to kill us all. I’m only eight so if I die now I won’t get to do anything that I really want to. Miss Sullivan thinks that I could be an artist. If I’m dead I can’t paint and I love painting and living. Margaret Nolan says that everyone thinks that we’re going to be nuked in 1999 but the real truth is that a flaming ball of death is going to crash into earth at the stroke of midnight tonight. She sits next to me in class and sometimes smells like a hospital. Her dad’s a scientist and he told her so she has a good chance of being right. She’s already given her pocket money to the poor and says I should do the same so that when our time comes God will think we’re decent enough sorts and let us into heaven. I forgot to go to the church to put money in the poor box because I got carried away working on a painting of my family dying in dancing fire. Jane says I’m a depressing little cow. She’s always in a bad mood lately. Mum says it’s because she’s a teenager, she’s fighting with her boyfriend, and she’s got fat. She thinks being eight is the same as being slow but I know Jane is pregnant because they shout about it all the time. I’m not slow and I’m not deaf either. I feel sorry for the baby because if we all die tonight it will never have known life but then again maybe that’s for the best.

OK, here are my promises to you if we make it past midnight.

1. 
   I’ll be good.
   
2. 
   I’ll do what my mum tells me to.
   
3. 
   I won’t swear.
   
4. 
   I won’t tell any lies unless my mum asks me to (see promise 2).
   
5. 
   I’ll be nicer to Jane.
   
6. 
   I’ll paint every day.
   
7. 
   I’ll help Jane take care of Mum a bit more. (I can’t help all the time—see promise 6.)
   
8. 
   I’ll give my pocket money to the poor tomorrow morning.
   
9. 
   I’ll be nice to Jane’s baby because I’ve a feeling I might be the only one.
   
10. 
    I won’t listen to anything Margaret Nolan has to say again.
    

And, Universe, if we do all die in fire tonight, thanks for nothing.

Yours,

Elle Moore
XXX

That was the first letter Elle Moore wrote to the Universe, and once it was written she folded it and put it into an old shortbread tin. After her supper, she tied her long brown hair in a knot and dressed in her brand-new Christmas coat, hat, and gloves, and her sister Jane’s favorite tie-dye fringed scarf. She made her way down toward the right-hand side of the long garden, where she dug a hole between her mother’s roses and the graves of four dead gerbils—Jimmy, Jessica, Judy, and Jeffrey. Once the tin was placed in the hole and its earth returned, she made a promise to herself that if she did live past midnight on that thirty-first of December in 1989, the following year she’d retrieve her letter and replace it with another. Little did she know back then that Elle Moore would continue to write letters to the Universe every New Year’s Eve for the next eighteen years.

Jane

May 5, 1990

“Dear Mrs. Moore,

“I am writing to you today about my concerns regarding your daughter Jane. I have attempted to reach out to Jane on a number of occasions in recent times but to no avail. As you are well aware, I have also attempted to communicate with your good self, but that too has proved difficult/nigh on impossible. Therefore, I am now left with no choice but to write this letter.

“It is clear to the teaching staff and to the student body that Jane is in the latter stages of pregnancy and so it is now urgent that we speak. Jane’s schoolwork and attendance suffered immeasurably last term, and as a Leaving Cert student she now faces her mock examinations unprepared and with motherhood imminent. Jane seems to be incapable of coming to terms with her condition, as it would appear are you, but we in St. Peter’s cannot simply stand by and act like nothing is happening to this seventeen-year-old girl.

“I urge you, Mrs. Moore, to phone me or to come in to the school and meet with me at any time convenient for you. I cannot allow this silence to continue any longer, and so if we do not hear from you within the next week we will be forced to ask your daughter not to return to school until such time as communication has been reestablished.

“Over the years, Jane and I have had our disagreements. Her flagrant disregard for our rules regarding smoking on school premises and the Irish stew incident that led to a fire in the home economics room are only two of the episodes I could mention. As you are aware, we’ve butted heads on many more occasions, especially when she came to school with purple hair or indeed during her thankfully short-lived Cure-inspired Gothic phase. This school has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to the presentation of its students, but I must admit, though exasperated by her opposition and having to endure debate on many occasions, she conveyed her points ably and with admirable passion. The reason I mention this is that although our relationship as principal and student is checkered, I feel it necessary to make it clear that Jane is a very clever girl, bright and articulate, and I have often thought that this girl could do anything she set her mind to, and in twenty years I have thought that only a handful of times. I am worried for her, Mrs. Moore. She has lost her sparkle and her fight. The girl I knew and, despite our differences, have a great fondness for has all but disappeared.

“Teenage pregnancy is terrible and absolutely not to be encouraged, but support is not the same as encouragement, and with support Jane could continue her studies and fulfill her ambitions. Surely it is not the end for a girl such as Jane?

“Please come and speak to me for Jane’s sake. Don’t leave me with no option but to expel such a talented young girl from our school.

“Kindest regards,
“Amanda Reynolds
“Principal Amanda Reynolds”

Jane finished reading the letter aloud and blew her blond fringe out of her eyes while waiting for her best friend’s response. Alexandra twirled her chestnut hair around her finger and stared at it in silence.

After a few seconds she shrugged. “Jesus, who knew Reynolds had a heart?”

Jane felt like crying because her principal had responded to her crisis pregnancy with far more kindness and understanding than her own mother, who had one tantrum after another since Jane’s condition was revealed months previously. During her latest tantrum she took the time to mention how much money she had pissed into the wind by sending Jane to private school and told Jane in no uncertain terms that her education was over because only a bloody childless spinster like Amanda Reynolds could possibly think that having a baby at seventeen didn’t mean an end to an academic career. She slammed the door on exiting the room, not once but twice for effect.

On that afternoon and for the first time Jane truly acknowledged the predicament she was in and how badly wrong her life had gone. She realized that she would miss her principal and she would miss school and the opportunity to go to college. She’d miss her friends, who except for Alexandra had drifted away during her pregnancy, and she’d miss Dominic even though he was avoiding her and was completely ignoring the fact that she was carrying his child. She could see through his schoolyard bravado and recognized his pained expression and haunted look, and she loved him.

Following an argument with Dominic’s parents, who had dared to imply that Jane was a little whore, her mother had made it clear that if she saw him anywhere near their property she’d attack him with a shovel, and Jane’s mother did not make threats of violence lightly. Once when Jane was seven a man had come to their door. He was buying and selling antiques. Her mother said she wasn’t interested but he spied an antique table in the hall. He put his foot in the door and attempted to change her mind about doing business. She reiterated that she had no interest and told him if he didn’t remove his foot from her door she would hurt him. He laughed at her. “No can do,” he said, and his foot remained in the door. She counted down aloud from five to zero. He continued to push his foot farther into her hallway, all the while grinning stupidly at her. It was clear to Jane’s mother that this man believed her to be a stupid, incapable woman and that she would not or could not keep her promise. When she got to zero, she calmly reached for an umbrella that she kept by the door and, releasing the door, shoved the umbrella with full force into his stomach. Startled, he bent forward, clutching his midriff. She then bopped him on the head, not once or twice but three times. He fell backward; she smiled politely, said good day to him, and left him winded and slightly dazed on her doorstep. Jane remembered the incident well because she had stood at the window watching the man sit on the step for what seemed like a long time before he was capable of getting up. Her mother had joined her just as he was leaving. “Good riddance,” she’d said with a genuine smile. “You know, Janey, there is nothing quite like giving a smug arrogant cock like him a good dig to cheer up an otherwise gray day.” Jane knew that if her mother had enjoyed giving that cock a dig because he put his foot in her doorway, she would definitely enjoy slapping Dominic in the face with a shovel for putting his cock in her daughter.

After Alexandra had read the letter a few more times and lamented with Jane over her mother being a bigger bitch than Alexis on Dynasty, she opened the first of six cans of Ritz. Later, when Jane was drunk on one can and Alexandra was on her third, Jane compared her and Dominic’s plight to that of Romeo and Juliet. Alexandra expunged Jane’s fanciful theory in an instant.

“It’s like this, Janey,” she said. “Romeo didn’t get Juliet up the pole and then dump her at a disco.”

“I know, but his parents made him give me up and—”

“And anyway,” Alexandra said with drunken authority, “as bad as your situation is with Dominic, you don’t want to be anything like Romeo and Juliet because Romeo and Juliet is a shit love story. Romeo was a shallow slut, Juliet was pathetic and needy, their families were killing each other, and they were in love one stupid day before they were married and then dead. Romeo and Juliet weren’t star-crossed lovers, they were white trash.”

“When you put it that way,” Jane said sadly.

“Can you believe Miss Hobbs only gave me a C in English? I may not be able to spell ‘apothecary,’ but I have insight. That woman doesn’t know her ass from her elbow.”

Then Alexandra threw up in Jane’s wastebasket.

After that they talked about how Jane could win Dominic back, but neither came up with a workable solution, and so they agreed that Jane should just wait it out.

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