The husband's sister and brother and their respective broods are visiting. The mother-in-law had been grumpy in the preceding days, dog poo this and dog poo that. It's as if the driveway was littered with dog poo, when it is really one little poo that isn't picked up for half an hour until I walk the dog.

Last night we went for a meal: the children sat at one end of the table staring into devices while the adults chatted about property, taxes, and recent deaths. At one point the brother-in-law complained about his au pair, who was trying to save, via a labyrinthine itinerary, three euros on a trip to the airport. She gets room and board, but is paid two hundred euros a week, which, to the husband and I, seems hardly enough to save on in pricey Dublin. When I was her age, I was terrified of the possibility of an emergency, a catastrophe, for which I was woefully unprepared. Three euros would have seemed a fortune in those days.

Throughout dinner I felt like a bad daughter/sister-in-law, unable to be captivated by their concerns. Sometimes I think I'm like those fairy wives of humans, who cry at weddings and laugh at funerals, unable to assimilate into human culture. There's a plushy dark pelt hidden somewhere in this house, which if I ever found, I could don again and slink back into whatever sea or forest I came from.

<<