So What If I'm Broken - Softcover

Anna McPartlin, who was shortlisted for Newcomer of the Year in the 2007 Irish Book Awards, was formerly a stand-up comedian and a cabaret performer. She lives in Dublin with her husband, Donal.

“Universe”

Oh nothing lasts forever,

you can cry a million rivers,

you can rage it ain’t no sin

but it won’t change a thing,

’cos nothing lasts forever.

Jack L, Universe

Alexandra

June 21, 2007

Tom,

When you are shopping can you pick up the following:

Bread

Milk x 2

Water x 4

Spaghetti

Mince (Lean! Make sure it’s lean and not the stuff they call lean and charge half price, because it’s not lean. I want lean cut right in front of you and I don’t care how much it costs.)

Tin of tomatoes

Basil

Garlic

Wine, if you don’t still have a case or two in the office, and make sure it’s not Shiraz. I’m really sick of Shiraz.

If you want dessert pick something up.

I’m meeting Sherri in Dalkey for a quick drink at 5. She has the Jack Lukeman tickets so I took money from the kitty to pay for them. I’m taking a ticket for you so if you don’t want to go, text me. I’ll be home around 7:30. Your aunt called. She’s thinking about coming to Dublin next weekend. Try and talk her out of it. I’m exhausted and can’t handle running around after her for 48 hours straight. Your aunt is on cocaine. I’m not messing. An intervention is needed.

Oh, and dishwashing liquid. And will you please call someone to get the dishwasher fixed?

OK see you later.

Love you,

Alexandra

P.S. When somebody close to you dies, move seats.

God, I love Jimmy Carr.

Alexandra laughed and put her note up on the fridge and held it in position with her favorite magnet, a fat, grinning pig rubbing his tummy. She was damp and sweaty, having run five miles, which was a record, and she was extremely pleased. She unclipped her iPod from her tracksuit, placed it on the counter, and headed upstairs to the shower. There she sang Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and did a little dance move before rinsing shampoo out of her hair. Forty-five minutes later she walked down the stairs with her shoulder-length glossy chestnut hair perfectly coiffed. She was wearing her favorite black trousers and a black fitted blouse complete with a large bow. She stopped at the hall mirror and applied lipstick and then rooted some lip gloss out of her handbag and applied that too. She stared at herself in the mirror for a moment or two, sighed, and mumbled something about Angelina Jolie crapping her pants. She smiled at her own joke while putting on her jacket. She picked up her handbag and walked out the door.

Alexandra walked along her own street and waved at Mrs. Murphy from No. 14. Mrs. Murphy was busy sweeping her step, but she waved and called out that it was a lovely day. Alexandra smiled and told her it was perfect. She waited for the DART and listened to a man talk about cruelty to animals to Joe Duffy on Joe’s radio show Liveline. It was too sad, so she switched from her radio to her music collection and stopped humming along to James Morrison’s “Last Goodbye” only when she realized that three pimpled teenagers were laughing and pointing at her. She stuck out her tongue and grinned at them, and they laughed again. She sat on the train next to a man in his fifties. He asked her to wake him at Tara Street Station if he fell asleep, explaining that there was something about moving trains that always made him sleep. She assured him she would wake him, and true to his word he was snoring less than five minutes later. Coming up to Tara Street, she tapped his arm gently; nevertheless, he woke with a start. He thanked her once he regained his senses and made his way off the train. He forgot his bag and so she ran after him and handed it to him, and he was grateful, but she was in a hurry to get back on the train, so she just waved and ran.

The woman sitting opposite her grinned and nodded. “My own dad would forget his head,” she said.

Alexandra smiled at her. “He was sweet.”

The woman nodded again. Alexandra got off the train in Dalkey. The woman got off at the same station, but neither made eye contact.

Alexandra made her way through the station and out into the sunshine. She continued straight onto the main street and took the left at the end of the street, after that she took a right and then another left, and after that Alexandra was gone.

Elle

Sunday, December 31, 1989

Dear Universe,

Please don’t send a fiery ball of hellfire comet thing to kill us all. I’m only eight so if I die now I won’t get to do anything that I really want to. Miss Sullivan thinks that I could be an artist. If I’m dead I can’t paint and I love painting and living. Margaret Nolan says that everyone thinks that we’re going to be nuked in 1999 but the real truth is that a flaming ball of death is going to crash into earth at the stroke of midnight tonight. She sits next to me in class and sometimes smells like a hospital. Her dad’s a scientist and he told her so she has a good chance of being right. She’s already given her pocket money to the poor and says I should do the same so that when our time comes God will think we’re decent enough sorts and let us into heaven. I forgot to go to the church to put money in the poor box because I got carried away working on a painting of my family dying in dancing fire. Jane says I’m a depressing little cow. She’s always in a bad mood lately. Mum says it’s because she’s a teenager, she’s fighting with her boyfriend, and she’s got fat. She thinks being eight is the same as being slow but I know Jane is pregnant because they shout about it all the time. I’m not slow and I’m not deaf either. I feel sorry for the baby because if we all die tonight it will never have known life but then again maybe that’s for the best.

OK, here are my promises to you if we make it past midnight.

1. 
   I’ll be good.
   
2. 
   I’ll do what my mum tells me to.
   
3. 
   I won’t swear.
   
4. 
   I won’t tell any lies unless my mum asks me to (see promise 2).
   
5. 
   I’ll be nicer to Jane.
   
6. 
   I’ll paint every day.
   
7. 
   I’ll help Jane take care of Mum a bit more. (I can’t help all the time—see promise 6.)
   
8. 
   I’ll give my pocket money to the poor tomorrow morning.
   
9. 
   I’ll be nice to Jane’s baby because I’ve a feeling I might be the only one.
   
10. 
    I won’t listen to anything Margaret Nolan has to say again.
    

And, Universe, if we do all die in fire tonight, thanks for nothing.

Yours,

Elle Moore
XXX

That was the first letter Elle Moore wrote to the Universe, and once it was written she folded it and put it into an old shortbread tin. After her supper, she tied her long brown hair in a knot and dressed in her brand-new Christmas coat, hat, and gloves, and her sister Jane’s favorite tie-dye fringed scarf. She made her way down toward the right-hand side of the long garden, where she dug a hole between her mother’s roses and the graves of four dead gerbils—Jimmy, Jessica, Judy, and Jeffrey. Once the tin was placed in the hole and its earth returned, she made a promise to herself that if she did live past midnight on that thirty-first of December in 1989, the following year she’d retrieve her letter and replace it with another. Little did she know back then that Elle Moore would continue to write letters to the Universe every New Year’s Eve for the next eighteen years.

Jane

May 5, 1990

“Dear Mrs. Moore,

“I am writing to you today about my concerns regarding your daughter Jane. I have attempted to reach out to Jane on a number of occasions in recent times but to no avail. As you are well aware, I have also attempted to communicate with your good self, but that too has proved difficult/nigh on impossible. Therefore, I am now left with no choice but to write this letter.

“It is clear to the teaching staff and to the student body that Jane is in the latter stages of pregnancy and so it is now urgent that we speak. Jane’s schoolwork and attendance suffered immeasurably last term, and as a Leaving Cert student she now faces her mock examinations unprepared and with motherhood imminent. Jane seems to be incapable of coming to terms with her condition, as it would appear are you, but we in St. Peter’s cannot simply stand by and act like nothing is happening to this seventeen-year-old girl.

“I urge you, Mrs. Moore, to phone me or to come in to the school and meet with me at any time convenient for you. I cannot allow this silence to continue any longer, and so if we do not hear from you within the next week we will be forced to ask your daughter not to return to school until such time as communication has been reestablished.

“Over the years, Jane and I have had our disagreements. Her flagrant disregard for our rules regarding smoking on school premises and the Irish stew incident that led to a fire in the home economics room are only two of the episodes I could mention. As you are aware, we’ve butted heads on many more occasions, especially when she came to school with purple hair or indeed during her thankfully short-lived Cure-inspired Gothic phase. This school has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to the presentation of its students, but I must admit, though exasperated by her opposition and having to endure debate on many occasions, she conveyed her points ably and with admirable passion. The reason I mention this is that although our relationship as principal and student is checkered, I feel it necessary to make it clear tha...