Originally published in print September 2020.
This is the first entry in a new flash fiction series by TN2, which aims to give a platform to exciting new writers from Trinity. If you would like your fiction to be considered for publication, simply submit it to literature@tn2magazine.ie along with your name and a one-sentence bio.
Ger didn’t actually want to come with me to get stuff in IKEA. She cared more about being seen as helpful than actually helping, which I felt was petty. The plan was for me to go alone to buy things for our grandparents’s new house, but the day before I was supposed to go I got a message from Ger. She said Mam told her over the phone how good I was to be driving all the way from Sandyford to IKEA and then suggested she join me and we go in her car, so she could give me a hand. Ger saw Mam’s praising me as another example of me being her favourite child, a suggestion which fundamentally upset Ger. “It’s only because you’re the youngest,” she would say. I knew Ger took the time to come to IKEA as an oblique way to limit the positive side-effects I could earn from going, but she also wanted to use the car journey to complain to me about Mam.
Even though Ger was driving, it still felt like I was the one in charge, since again, she wasn’t interested in what we actually had to get. When we were approaching the top of the queue Ger said, “Right so, you know what we’re getting? I don’t want to be here long.”
Our grandparents were downsizing from their three-storey home in Wicklow to a two-bed bungalow in Malahide, down the road from Mam. The contents were being sold with the house so they needed things like bedding and rugs. Mam had ordered wardrobes and a suite of furniture for them somewhere online but she left the smaller things for me to get. While Nana often phoned me about the “stress of it all”, I found it hard to take her worry seriously. While Mam was definitely making a fuss over the move, I believed Nana secretly enjoyed the attention it gave her. The more people involved in the move, the more people to whom Nana could act overwhelmed by it, which meant the more we would assure her that they were only happy to do things for her. I was better at doing this than Ger was.
As much as Nana would have liked to pick new home decorations out herself, she would never leave the house without Grandad and he refused to go shopping because he hates wearing the mask. Mam said they would eventually buy things more to their taste when everything had calmed down again. This took a weight from my shoulders. Until then I arranged to take a few hours away from working at home to walk around IKEA.
“Do you think they sell double-adapters here for plugs?” said Ger as we moved through the showrooms. “I may pick things up for myself while we’re here.”
“I haven’t seen any yet. Maybe they’re further on.”
Before each room was a yellow sign asking customers to enter one party at a time. There were markings on the floor that had dulled and begun to peel at the edges. We walked into an interpretation of a child’s bedroom. There was a pink single bed with a large painted crown over the headboard. Ger dropped onto the duvet and turned to face the fake window glued to the wall. It showed the room’s view from the second storey onto a back garden with children playing on a swing set. The view was sweet, but I thought its sincerity was undermined by the photographs of different children framed on the wall.
“God, it’s so hot in here,” Ger said. She pinched the nose of her surgical mask, pulled it from her face and took in a big breath of air and slowly placed it back over her nose. She then blew against the mask, which made it look full and curved like a parachute until it deflated and wrinkled again. “Right, let’s keep moving so.”
We passed through the showrooms, pulling out display cabinet drawers and feeling the veneer of kitchen countertops. By the living room furniture, I pointed out a coffee table I liked and asked Ger if she thought it would suit my sitting room. I couldn’t figure out the full face that she made but her eyes squeezed together and she shook her head. “A rattan coffee table. You’re twenty-three,” she said, “not sixty. No, get something more timeless,” I agreed and we went on.
Eventually, we walked down the staircase from the showrooms to where we could collect the smaller things like lamps and artificial plants. The walkways were packed with clustered shelves and heavy, stacked pallets, most of them half-filled with products already opened. At the foot of the stairs was a bank of shopping trolleys, baskets of yellow tarpaulin bags and a sanitizing station. I placed my hand under the automated dispenser and clear, watery fluid dropped into my hand. It smelled repulsive and antiseptic like gin.
“We’d better get one of those,” I said.
I picked a waxy bag from the basket and pulled it over my shoulder. “How do they clean these?” I said to Ger, who stood with a shallow frying pan in her hands, not listening.
“These are actually good for three euro,” she said. “If we don’t tell Nana that they’re from IKEA she may keep them for longer. And we should get a few soap dispensers for the house too. Do they sell the actual soap?” She decided to ask someone. They didn’t, he said, “unfortunately”.
I told her to put the pans back. We continued along the stream of customers that moved in a procession. I stopped occasionally to pick out vacuum-sealed pillows and look at lampshades. About halfway through the markethall I dumped our full shopping bag into a trolley because I could only hold it for so long and Ger said that she wanted to get new towels and picture frames. I was so tired that I said nothing; I just rested on the handlebar of the cart and pushed it along lazily. Any illusion of control I had over the situation was ridiculed with every addition to the cart. We reached the checkouts with a trolley brimmed with mostly things nobody actually needed.
“We actually don’t need to get half of this,” Ger said, as we loaded the conveyor belt at the till. “Nana will bin most of it anyway, and I don’t even know if I have enough on me to get all of this.” Both Ger’s sudden awareness of what I had put into the trolley, and the assumption that I was interested in negotiating what Nana and Grandad needed right before we were about to pay for it all, annoyed me, and so I ignored her solicitation.
“Well, they’re only taking card now anyway,” I said. “And Mam gave me Nana’s to pay for this, so it is taken care of.”
“Thank god.”
The contents of the trolley amounted to over eighty euro. While Ger packed everything at the end of the till I plugged the card into the machine and input Nana’s pin. I took a copy of the receipt from the cashier. Ger drove the trolley out through the glass sliding doors and I doused my hands with sanitiser, rubbing it between my fingers until it completely soaked into my skin.
