Evenings and Weekends

by Oisín McKenna

she booked a singing lesson without telling anyone. She left the boys at the creche and walked up to the building where the lesson was due to take place. She slowed down her pace as she approached, and then she walked past. She thought: it’s not for me. She thought: they’ll think I’m a fool. Even then, she was nervous. Even then, she thought: what’ll the people on this street think of me, doddering around with nothing to do? In a panic, she walked into the nearest shop and bought the first item to hand: a cabbage, a loose and lonely cabbage, which she did not need, which did not fit with her dinner plans for that week, which she would then have to boil and salt and serve on a plate, and she’d have to wash those plates afterwards because this was in the days before they had a dishwasher, and her hands were raw-red and cracked with the washing-up.