Aileen couldn’t open Rosheen’s door, thwarted by a blockade of clothes on the other side. She’d put a moratorium on new purchases until she could at least hoover the rug. Not that Rosheen listened to anything she said. She’d tried threats; she’d tried humor. “You definitely have a disorder,” she said, half-joking, but Rosheen hadn’t laughed at the pun.

Aileen pushed again. There were so many obstacles these days when it came to dealing with Rosheen. Perhaps she should get a battering ram? She could give up, set the clothes outside the door, but then the mess would begin to take over the rest of the house, and she couldn’t allow that to happen; it must be contained. She glanced at her watch. It was nearly time for the lace society meeting that evening at Bernie’s house. She just needed to complete this last chore—and a chore it surely was.

One more shove, and the door finally yielded. Aileen stumbled into the room, hopping over a pile of jumpers and boots, laundry basket balanced precariously on her hip. The things she had to go through just to put away some clothing. She stared at the wreckage within and shook her head. It was worse than usual. She snatched a scrap of notebook paper and pen off Rosheen’s desk and scrawled a single word: “Clean!” so that Rosheen would know what was what. It was meant to be informational, that note, not a reproach, not entirely.

Now, where to put it? There weren’t many choices. The vanity was out, with its open pots of eye shadow, liner, and lip gloss, depressions where her daughter’s fingers had dipped into the war paint (she wore too much, in Aileen’s opinion). Ditto the desk, with its cairns of half-completed homework and seldom-opened books. Too late to earn high marks now.

She’d try the dresser. She set the pile there carefully, as if she were playing Rosheen’s favorite childhood game, Jenga, taking care not to upset the balance. Aileen thought she’d completed the maneuver successfully, but the moment she turned her back, the pile slid to the floor. She swore under her breath, thought of leaving it there, one mound among many, but to do so was to admit defeat. She was as inclined to neatness as Rosheen to disarray, yet another way in which they seemed the opposite of each other, no matter that people said Rosheen looked just like her when she was young. (Rosheen didn’t take it as a compliment. Aileen wasn’t sure she did, either.) The same high spirits too. Aileen wondered how they could see the resemblance, given her daughter’s make-up and tattoos and piercings.

She studied the lines of poetry (most of it illegible) Rosheen had written on the walls, along with pictures of rock bands and glittery stars, trying to gain insight into her daughter’s mind.

“It’s the history according to me,” Rosheen had said.

Aileen didn’t think Rosheen had lived long enough to have much of a history—the most recent entries to the volume of her life being one colossal muck-up after another.

There had been better times. Happy memories tucked in photo albums with scuffed edges and fading pictures in the bookshelf downstairs, where sometimes, late at night after the rest of the family was asleep, Aileen pored over the snapshots of those joyful moments—the day Rosheen first rode a bicycle, or celebrated her first birthday (she’d shampooed her hair with frosting), or modeled her costume for the feis, where she won first prize at the age of four.

Aileen sighed over the drifts of garments littering the bedroom. This is what her daughter wore now. Not the neat skirts and shirts of her St. Agnes uniform. Rosheen said she was finished with school. She was smart enough to continue. Or she would have been, if she’d bothered to apply herself. She’d gotten good marks until the year she turned fourteen. It went to hell after that. Aileen nagged and cajoled and threatened. Nothing did any good.

Rosheen had apparently acquired more thongs over the past week. “I love my cabana boy,” announced the crotch of one pair. Lovely. Aileen didn’t know how she could stand to wear them—they were uncomfortable, creeping up the bum, whatever Rosheen claimed about their eliminating knicker lines. A zebra-print bra hung from the doorknob. Her daughter had the lingerie of a stripper.

She refolded the jeans, shirts, and underwear, one by one, taking solace in the meditative process of smoothing and tucking, as if Rosheen were somewhere in each strap and sleeve. Aileen could care for her in this small way, though her daughter might see it differently, the precisely arranged garments standing out among the rest as an accusation. These are neat. You are not. Or maybe she wouldn’t notice, the laundered items swallowed by the nest of sheets (the girl never made her bed) and cast-off clothing. Aileen suspected she probably ended up doing twice as much laundry as necessary, because Rosheen couldn’t tell which were clean and dirty and chucked them all into the hamper.

A foil packet glinted on the floor. The cold medicine Aileen had gotten for her at the druggists in Kinnabegs, probably. She picked it up, intending to set it on the vanity where Rosheen might have half a chance of finding it.

Wait: It wasn’t cold medicine at all. It was a package of birth control pills. Aileen supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised, and yet she was. The pills were another indication of how far Rosheen had moved away from her. She couldn’t have gotten them in the village—or anywhere nearby for that matter. Where had she gotten them? Galway? Who was she having sex with? That lout Ronnie? She hoped not!

Just then Rosheen walked into the room, headphones clamped as usual over her ears. For a split second, her eyes widened with fear when she saw Aileen holding the pills, then she reverted to her habitually sullen expression. “Why are you in my things?” She snatched the packet away.

“I was trying to put your clothes away, and everything came tumbling down,” Aileen said. “Where did you get these?”

Rosheen didn’t reply.

“Answer me.” Aileen felt her irritation rising. “Unless you want to get grounded for a month of Sundays.”

“Does that mean I don’t have to go to mass?”

“Don’t be smart.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve wanted me to be?” Rosheen stared at her, defiant.

“You know what I mean. I could call Reena’s mother. Perhaps she’d have the answer for me.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, wouldn’t I?” Aileen moved toward the door, in the direction of the phone, downstairs in the hall. “Watch me.”

“Fine. A clinic. Satisfied?”

“No place around here.” Aileen wasn’t done yet.

“Yeah. We had to drive for them.”

“You didn’t have permission.”

“It’s not like you’d have granted it—or I have to ask. This is private. It doesn’t involve you.”

“I’m your mother.”

“Give the woman a prize,” Rosheen said, adding, “You might be my mother, but you’re not me.”

“Thank God for that. I do, however, have certain rights and responsibilities. You wouldn’t understand that. You’re too young.”

“I’m not a child anymore.”

“If your father, if Father Byrne—”

“What do they have to do with it? It’s my body. It’s not like they have to worry about getting pregnant. I’m not going to rely on the rhythm method or whatever it’s called, fat lot of good it’s done you.”

“That’s enough.”

“Well, it’s true. I’ve seen the look on your face. The fear. Don’t tell me you didn’t think about it yourself.”

“It’s against the Church. There are values, choices. You shouldn’t be doing these things. You shouldn’t—”

“I’m sixteen,” Rosheen said. “I can’t stay a virgin forever. Did you save yourself for one guy?”

Aileen didn’t answer.

“See. My point exactly.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Why don’t you tell me, then?”

“Some things are private.”

“Exactly. You should be glad I’m taking care of myself. You should too. Then you wouldn’t have a scare every month.”

“Yes, you’re sixteen. Sixteen, Rosheen—and while you’re under this roof—”

“Well, I might not be much longer,” she interrupted. “I might just fecking leave.”

“Watch your language.”

“Why don’t you watch what’s going on around you? You’re only forty-eight, and you’re already old.”

Aileen resisted the urge to slap her. “You’re yelling so much you’re drowning yourself out.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you can’t even hear yourself anymore. If you could, you wouldn’t say these things, you wouldn’t—”

Rosheen cut her off again. She was forever cutting her off, not allowing Aileen to finish a sentence. “No, you’re the one who can’t hear me. You don’t get it, do you?”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“All you do is sit there making lace every night, looking at me over the top of your glasses.”

“That’s such utter shite.”

“Now who needs to watch their language?”

“Don’t you take that tone with me. I’m a human being, damn it. Being your mother doesn’t make me less of one,” Aileen said. “Or have you somehow overlooked that fact?”

“Doesn’t it? You act like being my mother puts you in line for sainthood. A martyr to the cause.”

“That’s not true, and you know it.”

“All I know is that I have to get out of here.”

“Rosheen.”

“How many times do I have to tell you? My name is Jane.” She stomped out of the room, down the steps.

“No, it isn’t!” Aileen yelled after her. “It’s Rosheen. And if you were going to change your name, you could have at least picked something more interesting!”

The only response was the slam of the front door. Aileen wilted against the wall, beneath the crucifix of the long-suffering Jesus, nails in his hands and his feet, and closed her eyes, the fight gone out of her. Aileen hardly recognized this girl with her lips curled back, speaking with such vehemence that spit flew through the air between them. Her throat hurt from shouting, shouting so loud, she wondered if the whole neighborhood had heard them. Sound carried easily over the hills. It had been quite a row. One of their best. At least they could excel at something, she thought bitterly.

The silence settled around her, pressing in on all sides. She sobbed, crossing her arms over her chest. Loud, heaving sobs, part frustration, part sadness. The children could reduce her to tears more quickly than anyone except her husband.

This wasn’t the person she meant to be.

She’d told herself she was going to keep her temper, that she would say the right and wise thing, the phrase that would penetrate the churlish attitude Rosheen carried before her like a shield, a new coat of arms, that consisted, not like the family crest of a hawk on the wing, from the days the Flanagans had been warriors, full of power and promise, but of blades and beer bottles and pills. Tolerance and patience had been one of Aileen’s Lenten intentions, but she’d broken it more than once, and now Easter had passed without progress. Maybe that meant she was going to hell with the other mothers who’d failed their maternal duties.

The tears started again. She sounded like a child. She wanted her own mother, with whom she’d fought, yes, when she was a teenager, especially when she was sneaking out to see Rourke. (Oh, yes, her mother did watch, did come out of her room and try to offer guidance, sometimes. Though it was too late by then, and there was nothing she could do but hold her tongue over the worst things and not say I told you so.) Her mother was dead now. Heart disease. Five years ago.

Aileen wondered if she had it too. She felt pains sometimes, by her left breast, as if she were being stabbed by little knives. Rourke said it was heartburn. She wasn’t so sure. One of these days, she thought the frustration of being Rosheen’s mother might kill her—the blood pumping in her skull would trigger an aneurysm, and she’d fall down dead in her rose-patterned apron, there on the kitchen floor.

How to reach Rosheen? How to let her go? The question kept Aileen awake at night, her mind spinning like the toys the children used to love, purchased on a seaside holiday on the Dingle Peninsula. There had to be some separation, it was necessary, natural, and yet couldn’t it be more gentle than this brutal wrenching that felt as if her heart was being torn in two? Her family had no idea how Aileen felt or who she was. Did it even occur to them to wonder? Did they care? To them, she was the cook, the nagger, the worrier, the chauffeur, the nurse, the laundress, the accountant. They didn’t realize she’d been at the top of her class, a champion camogie player. That she lived and breathed and felt just like them. That they were a part of her and she of them. Always. Always.

She took a ragged breath, quieter now. She was grateful that no one else had been home to witness the screaming match. Rourke was off, making deliveries—there were benefits to him being on the road so much. And her youngest, twelve-year-old Sile—who didn’t mind the spelling of her name and would, if she’d been home, have given Aileen the hug she desperately needed—was staying the night at a friend’s house in the next village.

Aileen was alone in that house in which she’d raised five children. How would it feel when they were gone? What would she do? “You’re nearly free,” her friends said. Though at the rate things were going, she could be a grandmother soon, if one of the boys settled down, or if, heaven forbid, Rosheen continued in this reckless manner. (The pills weren’t 100 percent, were they? Nothing was.) No, Aileen wouldn’t think about it. She would pray. She supposed the saints rolled their eyes at her too, from their seats in heaven—not her again. She imagined their floor in God’s high-rise: the Department of Saints, a door just for her: Desperate Mothers & Whiners Division.

There was a part of her that wanted to strangle Rosheen—oh, that sneer, that eye roll, she had the gestures of disdain, of disregard for parental guidance, down cold—that could imagine, even anticipate, her departure. Without the rebellions and arguments, her leaving would have been too hard to contemplate. But there was another side that yearned to hold the girl in her arms and sing Irish lullabies and rock her to sleep. Oho oho oho mo leanbh / Oho mo leanbh is codail go foill / Oho, oho oho mo leanbh / Mo stoirin ina leaba ina chodladh gan bron. It didn’t seem that long ago that Rosheen was a baby, crying for hours, yes, raging against the world even then, but in the end consoled, face pressed into Aileen’s neck, surrendering at last to sleep.

The years had passed quickly: Rosheen sitting on her lap, reading The Tales of the Brothers Grimm; Rosheen singing carols in the school choir—her face, her voice, those of an angel—wings on her back, a glittered halo over her head; Rosheen shrieking with glee, riding her bike down the lane, finding her balance for the first time.

Rosheen hadn’t really left, not for good. She couldn’t have meant it. How could she live on her own?

Aileen pulled the bedroom door closed behind her, as if sealing off the scene of a crime. The walls of the house seemed at once flimsy, paper-thin—not strong enough to support the life she and Rourke had tried to build within—and confining. She put on a jumper, picked up her basket of lace, the tea cakes she’d made for the potluck in a tin, and went outside. She gazed up the road, in the direction she thought Rosheen might have gone. There was no sign of her. She must have run, hard and fast. She’d always been good at running, even now, a camogie champion like her mother, though she didn’t compete anymore. There was so much she’d given up on. The shadows gathered, evening coming on; her daughter was lost to them, blending into the landscape, into wherever it was she was going. Away from home. Away from her.