Free Reluctantly Charmed by Ellie O'Neill

petty.
    “Right. Okay, look, if you change your mind, you know where I am.”
    And that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. Forty minutes later, Mam was hollering down the phone to me. She couldn’t believe I’d said no to Pauline, and her mother was sucha good friend to her, and this was no way to treat your friends. I furrowed my brow at that one—they were more rivals than friends. The conversation went downhill from there.
    I told Mam there was no way I’d hang myself out to dry on radio.
    “Well, that’s just fine,” she said. “Your father and I will. Pauline says they’d rather have you, but they’ll take us.”
    I tried to talk her out of it. I really did, but she was adamant. Mam was, if nothing else, a good friend.
    My parents’ media debut was on a gray shivery Irish spring Monday with winds howling and rains spitting. Maybe it was because it was cold and I needed to hibernate, but I slept in that morning. I leapt out of bed half an hour late, ran to the kitchen, and turned on the radio.
    Not only had I missed most of their interview, I was going to be late for work.
    “. . . so tell me, was there ever an inkling that she was different?” Tom’s familiar morning voice caused me to cock an ear in his direction, busying myself around the kitchen. Surely I had time for a quick coffee?
    And there it was, a quick breath—no sound, just a sharp intake of breath that I recognized immediately. Mam.
    “Ah, different isn’t the right word, Tom. She was always special. She’s a very special girl. They said I couldn’t have children, you know, so for us she was special, a miracle. And when she was born, didn’t the doctors say, ‘It’s a redhead’? Not a boy or a girl. A redhead!”
    I stopped. I felt my grip tighten around my coffee mug as I tried to breathe, my feet anchored to the kitchen floor. Stop talking about me , I thought. Stop it.
    “And of course, red hair has always been associated with mysticism in Ireland.”
    “Very interesting, Teresa.” Tom Byrne did sound interested.
    “Tell him about her imaginary friends.” It was Dad.
    “She did, Tom, she had imaginary friends as a girl. We thought it was just because she was an only child, Tom, but I suppose you never know.”
    “Do you think she could have been communing with the fairies, even then, as a young girl?”
    “You never know.”
    I dropped my coffee mug. It shattered into smithereens, and a dark pool that looked like blood slowly crept around the soles of my shoes. Edging in closer and closer to me. I turned and ran shoulder first into the bedroom and, falling on the bed, reached for my phone. I scrolled down until I found “M” for Mam. The call went straight to a chirpy voice-mail message. “D” for Dad was the same. They had their phones turned off.
    Stunned, I walked into the kitchen and wiped my sweaty damp hair off my forehead.
    Tom was still talking. “. . . I know my gran swore by it. She’d never have thirteen people at a table. Noel and Teresa McDaid, thank you for coming in. You’ve given us all food for thought. And please, visit us on rte.ie for a link to the Step, so you can see for yourselves what we’re talking about.”
    “Thanks, Tom.”
    That was me off-balance. My parents were on national radio talking to Tom Byrne about me and my imaginary friends who may or may not have been fairies. Nobody read a page-seven column in The Irish Times , but everybody listened to Tom Byrne.
    My heart flip-flopped the whole way to work. Once there, I fixed my stare on the floor, only looking at coworkers from the knees down. If I couldn’t see their faces then they couldn’t see mine and they couldn’t ask me about fairies. I almost slid under my desk and waited for someone to say something, to throw a pointy hat inmy direction or shuffle by on a broomstick. But nothing happened. Phones rang, keyboards clicked, and my coworkers moved around as usual, the scent of toner trailing behind them.