An Argument In The Kitchen
It started over a bill.
It was the sixth day and I had come into the kitchen to make the tea, and on the table was a pile of envelopes that Caitriona had brought up from the house in Oughterard, because my parents' post had been going there since before Christmas so my mother would not have to deal with it, and my mother had asked me to sort them out into what mattered and what did not. I had been doing it for an hour. The what-did-not pile was bigger than the what-did.
Sean came in the back way at six, the way he always came in, and he took his boots off and he came through to the kitchen and he saw the piles, and he said, "You don't need to do that."
"Mam asked me."
"You don't need to. I've a system."
"I'm nearly done."
"You don't have the context, Maeve. There's bills there that look like they want paying and they don't, and there's bills there that look like nothing and they're the ones that'll cut the power off if you ignore them. Leave it."
I put the envelope in my hand down on the table. I did it slowly, the way I had learned, years ago in a rehearsal room, to put a thing down when a row was coming, so that you did not throw it later.
"I can tell the difference between a red bill and a junk letter, Sean."
"You can. But I know which red bills have been in already and which have been settled."
"Then you could tell me and I'd finish the sort."
"Or you could leave