Sundae Girl

by Cathy Cassidy

  I ruffle his fur and lead him back inside.

  ‘All right, love?’ Mum asks, glancing up from the piano. The pub is quiet, tonight. It’s been practically empty all day, and even now there are only a few grim-faced men drinking Guinness, tucked away in the corner. Mum’s good mood has leaked away like last night’s party atmosphere.

  ‘Can we take Toto for a walk?’ I ask. ‘He needs a run. It’s not fair to keep him inside all day, in a strange place. He’s missing home.’

  Like me, I add, silently.

  ‘Home?’ Mum blinks. ‘We’ve only just got here! It’s going to be great – where’s your sense of adventure?’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ I say. ‘And I’m worried about Gran and Grandad.’

  Mum’s eyes flash with anger. ‘What about me, Jude?’ she argues. ‘Can’t I have some fun for a change? I mean, I’m still living at home, at my age, looking after elderly parents. How sad is that?’

  I was always under the impression that the elderly parents looked after us, but I don’t say anything. Mum turns back to the piano and starts to bang out ‘Over the Rainbow’. Almost at once, a bloke in the corner calls out.

  ‘Not again!’ he shouts, in between a whole bunch of words I can’t repeat. ‘Give it a rest, can’t you? Kids, dogs, and now The Wizard of Oz! I came in here for a bit of peace!’

  Gina pulls a face from behind the bar, but Mum’s fingers freeze over the piano keys. Her lower lip trembles, like a small child after a telling off. She looks at me, shaken.

  ‘I thought it would be different,’ she says. ‘I’ve messed up, big style. Maybe Glasgow isn’t the Emerald City, after all?’

  ‘Mum, there’s no such place.’ I squeeze in beside her on the piano stool, and Toto puts his head on her lap, brown eyes sorrowful. ‘You were doing fine until you started drinking again. You just need to dump the whisky.’

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ Mum says, staring into her glass.

  ‘So do it anyway!’ I say ‘Life isn’t easy, is it? I love you. So do Gran and Grandad, and Toto, but you don’t care about us! Do you have any idea what it’s like for me, watching my own mum drink her life away? It hurts! Why can’t you stop? Just because giving up isn’t easy?’

  Mum’s face is grey, her eyes wild. She makes a low, gasping sound, like someone trying to breathe underwater. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve let you down – all of you.’ She puts an arm around me, pulls me close. ‘Maybe I’ve used up all my fresh starts. My problems just follow, wherever I go.’

  ‘Am I one of the problems?’ I ask, in a small voice.

  Mum’s eyes open wide. ‘How could you even think that?’ she asks, genuinely astonished.

  ‘Because when I was born, you started drinking heavily?’ I say. ‘Because you’re so full of regrets for what might have been? And that’s just a polite way of saying that things might have been different if I’d never been born. Isn’t it?’

  Mum’s whisky glass slides through her fingers and drops to the floor, where the liquid spills out. The glass rolls into a corner, behind the piano.

  ‘No,’ she says, her face white. ‘No, no, no. If I’ve ever made you feel that way … oh, God, I’m sorry!’

  ‘I just thought …’

  Mum takes my hands, holds them tight. ‘No, Jude,’ she whispers. ‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to me – the only good thing, I sometimes think. I love you. I’ve been stupid, always looking for things that don’t exist. I don’t notice what I’ve got, right here under my own nose.’

  ‘You’re not drinking because of me?’ I ask, finally finding the courage to say it out loud. ‘It’s not my fault?’

  Mum folds me into a bony, whisky-scented hug. ‘Never, Jude,’ she says. ‘I drink because of me. Because I’m not good enough at anything I try to do – even the basic stuff, like being a mum, a daughter, a girlfriend. I want to be perfect, but I’m a mess. And sometimes, when I drink, I can kid myself that I’m not.’

  She pulls away, trying for a smile.

  ‘I don’t care about perfect,’ I tell her. ‘I just want you. Can we go home, Mum? Please?’

  ‘First thing in the morning,’ Mum promises. ‘If we had a real wizard handy, I’d wish us back right now, but like you said, that’s just a stupid film. There’s no such thing as magic.’

  ‘Maybe you’re just looking for it in the wrong places?’

  Like at the bottom of a whisky glass.

  ‘Maybe.’

  She takes a tissue out of her bag and dabs at her eyes. I wish I could make things better, turn the world from black and white to full-on Technicolor for her, because I honestly think that real life has got its own magic. You find it in little things, unexpected things, like a tube of Love Hearts sweets, a boy feeding birds from the breadcrumbs in his palm, a plump woman in a pink wig who says it doesn’t matter even when someone has just fried her bridal veil to a crisp.

  Magic. It’s what makes life bearable.

  Suddenly, far in the distance, I hear the sound of an ice-cream van jingle, getting closer. It sounds familiar – very familiar. Mum jumps up, her face shining with hope.

  ‘An ice-cream van, now, is it?’ the grumpy man in the corner huffs. ‘Can a man get no peace? Is it too much to ask?’

  ‘Strange,’ Gina says from the bar. ‘An ice-cream van, at this time of night!’

  Mum’s eyes are dancing, but I beat her to the door. We’re all on the pavement when Giovanni’s van pulls up outside The Wizard, and Toto’s tail is thrashing about with delight.

  ‘What were you saying about magic?’ I grin.

  ‘This old wreck?’ Mum scoffs, but she’s smiling, and when Giovanni slides the door across and jumps down on to the pavement, she flings her arms round him like she hasn’t seen him in a year. ‘I’m sorry, Giovanni,’ she’s gabbling. ‘So, so sorry.’

  ‘All right, Rosa,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘Is this The One With No Backbone?’ Gina wants to know, wiping her hands on her skirt. ‘Forget backbone. He’s cute!’

  But Giovanni isn’t smiling, and gently he unpeels Mum’s arms from round his neck, puts a finger to her lips.

  ‘Get your bags, Jude,’ he says to me.

  ‘OK.’ I grin. ‘They’re just upstairs. Giovanni, how did you know we were here? How did you find us?’

  His face is grim. ‘Please, get your bags now,’ he says. ‘We have to hurry.’

  ‘Ah, now, why don’t you just come in and relax and stay the night?’ Gina wants to know. ‘After that long drive. The motorway will still be there in the morning!’

  I cut across her babble, shivering suddenly.

  ‘Giovanni, what’s wrong?’

  He takes a breath in, pushes a hand through his blue-black hair.

  ‘It’s your gran,’ he says to me, softly. ‘It’s Molly. She’s in the hospital. She’s had a stroke.’

  Giovanni drives through the night. We sit huddled into the cab of the ice-cream van, following distant tail lights along an endless stretch of motorway.

  ‘What happened, Giovanni?’ Mum wants to know. ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘It’s bad,’ he tells her. ‘Patrick is at the hospital with her. He won’t leave her side.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ says Mum. ‘I’ve been such a useless daughter. Hopeless. Hopeless daughter, hopeless mum, hopeless girlfriend.’

  ‘No,’ I soothe her. ‘Not hopeless at all.’

  Well, maybe a little bit.

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ Mum tells Giovanni. ‘You’re my hero – the best, bravest man I ever knew. If it hadn’t been for you …’

  Giovanni shakes his head in the darkened cab. ‘It’s the kid with the skates you should really thank,’ he says.

  ‘What kid?’ Mum puzzles. ‘What skates?’

  It turns out that after my phone call this morning, Carter took off and bladed round to our house to find out why Gran and Grandad weren’t answering their phone. There was nobody in, so he fo
und a neighbour who told him about the stroke, about the ambulance with its wailing siren and flashing lights. It happened on Saturday night, as Mum and Toto and I sat on a train, hurtling towards Glasgow.

  ‘This kid, he skated right over to the hospital, found out which ward Molly was on,’ Giovanni says. ‘Patrick was there, of course. Your friend passed on the message, Jude, and Patrick sent him to the restaurant to find me. I was washing dishes, as usual, when this crazy kid flew into the kitchen, shouting about hospitals and phone calls and a pub in Glasgow called The Wizard …’

  ‘Bet your boss liked that,’ Mum says.

  ‘He’s not my boss any more.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  I think of a boy, a lanky, straw-haired boy in scruffy school uniform, blading about the streets of Coventry on a secret mission when he should have been at his Aunty Eileen’s. I think of him carrying his Rollerblades through the hushed hospital corridors in his stocking feet, bursting into the kitchen at Mario’s Italian restaurant, getting chucked out again with a torrent of Italian abuse ringing in his ears.

  ‘He’s a good kid, though,’ Giovanni tells me. ‘He came back to the hospital with me, waited while I spoke to Patrick. He wanted to come to Glasgow too, but of course I couldn’t take the time to track down his parents, clear it with them. I had to get going, find you, bring you back.’

  There’s a silence.

  ‘She will be all right, though?’ Mum asks. ‘Won’t she? People get better from strokes, don’t they?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, Rosa.’ Giovanni sighs. ‘We have to just hope and pray.’

  I lean my head against the ice-cream van’s rattly window, look out into the starless sky. I hope and I pray and, eventually, I sleep.

  The ice-cream van takes up two parking spaces in the hospital car park, but it’s barely four in the morning, so the place isn’t exactly packed. We get out, shiver in the cold morning air.

  ‘Stay, Toto,’ I tell him, winding the passenger window down a bit and slamming the door. ‘Sorry. Hospitals and dogs don’t mix.’

  He sticks his head out of the window, whining softly as we walk away, his crimped strawberry-blonde hair fluttering in the breeze.

  It’s way too early for visitors, of course, but Mum and Giovanni don’t care about rules. They haul me across the hospital reception area, call the lift. We get out on the second floor.

  A passing nurse frowns quizzically at us. OK, at me. I’m still in the pink minidress with the red winkle-picker boots. She probably thinks they’re taking me to the psychiatric wing.

  ‘Molly has a room of her own,’ Giovanni tells us. ‘This is the ward. She should be … just along here.’

  We creep along the carpeted corridor, pause in the doorway of Room Six. In the half-light, I see Gran, sleeping, in a high hospital bed with a white waffle coverlet. When I look closely, I see that the right-hand side of her face seems to have slipped, fallen, so that it no longer matches the left side. It’s scary, distorted, like a jigsaw someone has tried to force together even though the pieces are wrong.

  In a soft chair at the side of the bed, Grandad is sleeping. His clothes are crumpled, his shoes discarded and kicked to one side. His head lolls and his breathing is dry and raspy, as though he’s the one who’s ill.

  Mum sits down gently on the edge of the bed, takes Gran’s hand. ‘Mum, I’m sorry, so sorry,’ she whispers. ‘You have to get better, d’you hear? We can’t do without you. I can’t do without you.’

  Grandad stirs, rustling out of sleep. ‘You found them,’ he says. ‘Good boy, Giovanni.’

  I fling my arms round Grandad, hold on tight. He smells warm and safe, like home. His rough whiskers scratch my cheek and a damp patch appears in my hair. I pull away, puzzled. Grandad doesn’t cry.

  ‘They keep telling me to go home,’ Grandad says brokenly. ‘Do they really expect me to do that? Leave her here, in this place? We’ve never been apart in fifty years.’

  ‘I know, Patrick,’ Giovanni says. ‘I know.’

  Abruptly, a nurse comes in, hands on hips.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asks, sternly ‘You shouldn’t be here! Mr Reilly, we’re breaking the rules already by allowing you to stay! Your wife is very ill, she’s not up to so many visitors, and certainly not at this hour of the night. Patients are trying to sleep!’

  Grandad bows his head, defeated, but Giovanni speaks up. ‘We’ve come a long way,’ he tells the nurse. ‘All the way from Glasgow, driving through the night. This is Molly’s daughter and granddaughter. Please – can they stay, just for a little while? Please?’

  The nurse softens, smiles. ‘Well. Just five minutes then, no longer,’ she says. ‘And quietly, OK? If Sister catches you, I’ll be in big trouble!’

  ‘Five minutes,’ Giovanni promises, and the nurse turns away.

  At that moment Gran’s eyes flutter open. Her milky-blue eyes blink and focus, and a single tear wells and rolls down her left cheek.

  ‘Don’t, don’t, Molly, pet,’ Grandad says. ‘I’m here. Rose is here too, and Jude, and Giovanni. We’ll get you home soon, I promise you. They’re doing all they can.’

  Mum reaches forward to smooth Gran’s hair, which lies spread across the pillow, dull, frizzy, lifeless. ‘We’ll get you smartened up, Mum,’ she says softly. ‘Good as new.’

  She takes a brush from her shoulder bag and begins to brush, smoothing out the tangles so gently, so carefully, as if she’s brushing spun silver. She makes a braid, weaving the hair over and under into a thick, glossy plait that curves across the white waffle coverlet like a rope of silk.

  ‘There,’ she whispers. ‘All done.’

  ‘I really must ask you to go now,’ the little nurse says, reappearing in the doorway. ‘Mr Reilly, you can stay, but that’s all, I’m sorry. Come back later, at visiting time.’

  ‘Rosa?’ Giovanni prompts, and Mum dips down quickly, kissing Gran, backing away. I lean down next, my lips brushing the dry skin of her cheek.

  ‘Bye, Gran,’ I whisper. ‘I love you. We’ll be back later, promise.’

  We are. Later, at visiting time, we’re lined up outside the ward, rested, showered, changed, carrying flowers and chocolates and grapes and cards. We’re there, ready and waiting, but even as I see the little nurse from earlier walking towards us, face fixed into a mask of sympathy, regret, I know that we’re too late.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, spreading her arms out and herding us into a side room. ‘I tried to call you, but you must have left already. I’m very sorry to tell you that Mrs Reilly passed away, just after 12.30 p.m. It was another stroke, a massive one. It was very quick.’

  I sink down on to a soft chair. A stroke. It sounds so soft, so gentle. It doesn’t sound like a way to die.

  ‘No,’ Mum says. ‘No, no, no!’ She makes a strangled sound, slumps against Giovanni. His arm folds around her, and I see the glint of tears in his eyes.

  ‘Mr Reilly was with her at the end,’ the nurse is saying. ‘She wasn’t alone.’

  But we are, now, without her.

  I get to ride in the pink Cadillac one more time. I sit very still, my cheek against the cool, shiny glass, snuggled into the Barbie pink leather of the seats.

  Gran would have liked this car. ‘Ooh,’ she’d have said. ‘Pink to make the boys wink!’

  ‘OΚ, Jude?’ Dad asks.

  I just nod, because I can’t trust myself to speak, and Grandad, sitting beside me, covers my hand with his big rough one.

  Dad and Victoria called from Killiecrankie on Monday night – they’d been calling the whole time, apparently, to check that we got home safely. When they found out about Gran, they abandoned their honeymoon tour of the Highlands and drove straight home.

  ‘No, no, Bobby,’ Grandad had insisted. ‘There’s nothing you can do – nothing anyone can do.’

  ‘We can be there for you,’ Dad had replied.

  He was too, him and Victoria. They contacted the funeral home, organized the flowers, spoke to F
ather Lynch about the service. They organized all the awful, necessary jobs you have to do when somebody dies, and they did it quietly, gently, without any fuss.

  Where was Mum? Well, she cried and raged and drank whisky all Monday night, with Giovanni at her side, holding her hand. For the first time in her life, she said, the drink didn’t soften the edges, dull the pain.

  In the morning, she hugged me and she hugged Grandad, and Giovanni drove her to the hospital. She checked herself into the alcohol dependency unit, and she’s been there ever since. She’s been through the initial withdrawal, and she looks more determined than I’ve ever seen her. She says she can do it, really kick the drink, this time.

  Well, maybe.

  Dad parks the pink Cadillac neatly in the car park at the church of Our Lady of Sorrows. Giovanni’s ice-cream van is already parked in the corner, near the shrine. He’s been to fetch Mum from the hospital. He lifts her down from the passenger seat, slides a protective arm around her. She looks too thin, too frail, as if the life has drained out of her. In the cool spring sunshine, her skin is tinged with yellow.

  After the funeral service and the burial, she will have to go back to the hospital.

  ‘Oh, Mum!’ I fall into her arms.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ she whispers into my hair. ‘It’s OK, Jude. Seriously.’

  It feels like nothing is ever going to be OK again.

  ‘Hello, Bobby, Victoria,’ she says. ‘Jude’s told me everything you’ve been doing to help. Thank you – both of you.’

  ‘It was the least we could do,’ Dad says.

  ‘No,’ Mum corrects him. ‘It was much more than that.’

  We walk up the church steps, Mum and Giovanni, Dad and Victoria, me and Grandad and Toto.

  ‘Are you sure, Father Lynch?’ Grandad asks as the priest meets us at the door. ‘About Toto?’

  ‘Isn’t he one of the family?’ Father Lynch says, kindly. ‘Why wouldn’t he be welcome in the house of God?’

  So we go in, all of us. The organist is playing a slow, sad song that makes me want to slit my wrists, and the church is full of people – old friends, neighbours, distant relatives. They sit in rows, huddled in black coats, navy jackets, silent, respectful.