Ruby's Tuesday

by Gillian Binchy

  I knew that both our families whispered, in hushed tones, that I ought to feel lucky to be pregnant at my age. “Imagine not being grateful to be expecting in her early forties,” they muttered. That was the problem with women these days, those people thought, too much focus on their career and other interests like travelling and seeing the world and before they know it is too late, too late for the eggs. The eggs they muttered about sounded as if my organs were on sale in a supermarket. The manner in which they mumbled made it sound like my eggs might just go off like those in the shop. I knew well that was exactly what Luke’s mother thought and I found it mildly entertaining that my mother-in-law was so ridiculously blatantly obvious about it all.

  So I patiently waited for those torturous three months to pass. I ticked off each one of those endless ninety-one days meticulously. Each night before I fell into bed, sick, exhausted and demented, I would draw a large black X on the calendar. This exercise illuminated the long and dark tunnel that had become my daily existence. The twenty-ninth of March was technically the last day of the first trimester; I had marked it in red, with a happy smiley face beside. I only had to make it to that date – from that date on the calendar miraculously it was all going to get better, to change. I was going to be transformed into some type of a rounded motherly earth figure with fattened hips and bloated boobs, or so everyone told me. I looked forward to this total transformation with great anticipation.

  Those early days of pregnancy had been filled with sharp words, the outbursts quickly followed by lengthy silences between Luke and me. Then the guilt would set in and he would apologise for upsetting me. I would blame myself, and then we would argue as to whose fault it was. It had become a vicious circle.

  Before the pregnancy we had always held each other in the highest respect but now that all-important reverence seemed to be dwindling. I felt like everything was under threat: our high opinions of each other, our marriage, both our sanities, and my pregnancy. I knew that there was something not quite right, but I could not quite describe it.

  I didn’t know myself any more; I didn’t recognise myself or my own actions. My own being, my own body and mind, were completely alien to me. I no longer believed my own feelings. How could it be that my own basic instinct no longer existed? It had abandoned me, leaving me lost and helpless. I was truly scared of myself, unsure how I might react. I no longer trusted myself. I never knew how I might respond to situations. I had become erratic and emotional. I even found myself a nightmare to be around. I disliked my own company; I wished for days when I could escape from myself. I was not at all happy with this person I had become. I felt possessed and trapped within my own flesh and blood.

  During the last six weeks of those torturous three months, Luke travelled even more than usual. Though I never said anything, or accused him of doing so, I guessed it was to be away from the hell that was our relationship. He had tried to be loving and caring, to go that extra step for me, but he was consistently greeted with abrupt and curt replies. Soon, he stopped bothering to try. He obviously concluded that the easiest way to not bother his wife was by not bothering to be home. Time differences between China and Dublin helped to avoid those screaming matches down the phone. No doubt he thought that after the first trimester he would travel less – we would work it out – after all, it was only the bloody hormones – it would pass, or so they told him.

  The blues never did lift, I never did blossom, and I kept my pregnancy a secret up until the twenty-second week. My work colleagues could not understand why I didn’t announce my due date five minutes after discovering I was pregnant. Instead I concentrated on concealing the truth. I managed to successfully continue the denial by dressing appropriately. I was proud of myself to have got to twenty-two weeks without telling a sinner other than Luke. He did think that this was a bit strange, but as he had learnt over the past twenty-two weeks, better to say nothing, so he remained silent.

  I was right. There was something wrong. Something fatally wrong. I was carrying a baby that was irreconcilable with life. These genetic abnormalities were lethal mistakes in development. Now I know it was my instinct protecting me, shielding myself from my own being. I now wonder was my extreme despair nature’s way of preventing a bond forming between a mother and her terminally sick baby. My baby had been alive but not really present. Was my misery in some way going to become part of my ability to accept that I was never going to have a healthy happy child? In retrospect, maybe it all formed part of the acknowledgement and acceptance process.

  The phone chimed and vibrated on the dashboard, startling me out of my acknowledgement of these home truths. I glanced to the left of the steering wheel. The phone’s scratched screen read: Sue calling. I reached to the dash and picked up the phone. Overstretching, I pulled the steering wheel to the right and swerved into the middle of the road. A black Toyota Corolla coming against me hooted at me – he delivered a filthy look as he whizzed past. I moved back onto my side of the road.

  “Sue, Sue, are you there? Just give me one second – the hands-free is not working and I nearly killed someone – hold on there for a second – I am just going to pull into Seapoint Beach.”

  “Afric?” Sue didn’t seem to register my earlier comment. “What the hell is going on? Are you okay? I just had Luke on the phone – he is trying to contact you – he’s demented trying to contact you – he’s so bloody worried, he was in tears on the phone. Is everything okay? Are you okay – are you and the baby all right?”

  “I know, I know, I’m going to ring him now – I had a few missed calls from him – I’m driving and couldn’t call him. I will just now.” But why was he so frantic? Just because I didn’t answer a few calls?

  “He asked me about Liverpool – he asked if I knew anything about what happened at the hospital in Liverpool,” Sue said then.

  I was struck dumb. How could Luke know anything about what had happened in Liverpool?

  There were no words to explain my lies, well, no words now for Sue. I would need to save the explanation for Luke – he was the one that deserved the first one of these. I suspected there might be many more rounds.

  I looked out onto Seapoint Beach. Early-evening bathers splashed around, a pudgy-looking dad held his little boy by the left hand as they jumped over the low waves. I could see Howth Head in the background, the yellow furze cheering up the green headland.

  “Is there something wrong, Afric? Is everything okay with you and with the baby? Has something happened, hun?” The tone of Sue’s voice was urgent but caring. “Luke said he had no phone – he lost the charger and has been using his iPad since Wednesday – but he plugged in the phone just now and one of the text messages was . . . Afric, what happened in Liverpool?”

  “What was the text message, Sue, what did it say?” I said, surprising myself with my almost detached question.

  “He said one of texts was from NHS Royal Merseyside Women’s Hospital – he read it out to me, Afric – he’s distraught, he’s pacing the floor, he’s sick with worry, he wants you to call him, to talk to him, to tell him what is going on.”

  “But what did the text say?” I repeated my question to Sue.

  My phone bleeped, announcing the arrival of another text message. Maybe Michael was back in Coliemore Road with my daughter, I thought. I would need to go now and ring him.

  “Afric, I can’t remember the exact wording but something about a transaction of NHS Royal Merseyside Women’s Hospital . . . nearly two thousand pounds on your joint credit card . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  I froze. I glared at the sea as if waiting for an answer. I looked at the clock at the bottom left-hand side of the sat nav: 17.01.

  “Afric, please go home to Luke, won’t you? He’s really frantic.”

  “Home? Oh God – oh no – fuck, are you serious – no, please no – no, he can’t be home.”

  “He is, Afric. He phoned me from there.”

  “Oh, God. Okay, Sue, yes, I’m heading home just no
w. Tell him . . . tell him . . . I will be with him in a few minutes. Sue, will you call later? Please? In a few hours? After I have seen him.”

  “Afric, tell me you’re okay?” Sue pleaded.

  “Yes, yes, I’m okay, I’m fine. But the baby, our little girl Ruby, she was sick, too sick and she did not make it – she was not meant for this world.” My voice began to tremble as I struggled to stop the tears.

  “Oh God, Afric . . . Go home, Afric, go home to Luke. I am going to call him now and tell him you’ll be home in a few minutes – you will, won’t you, Afric?” Sue voice was softer now, a few tones lower.

  “Of course, of course I will,” I replied and she hung up.

  I opened the car door and allowed the warm summer air to fill the car. There was a faint whiff of the sea. I longed to be in the water, there doing the lap of Seapoint Beach. I wanted the cool Irish Sea to take all this pain away, to sweep it all out to sea, to bring back those happy carefree days of sea swimming, of being in love. It was the carelessness of it that I craved. The tide was coming in and the yellow buoys were drunk again, with Dun Laoghaire pier in the distance.

  l looked back at the screen: 1 new message and one missed call.

  I pressed 171. A male voice told me that I had one new voicemail, left on Friday at 16.42. I held the phone to my ear and listened intently. I expected it must be Michael.

  The pudgy middle-aged man and little boy jumped over the waves. The boy was a miniature version of the man. They both tilted their heads slightly to the left as they guessed where the next new wave would break. A brown-and-white Jack Russell had joined in the action. It was not clear if the dog was theirs.

  There were a few pink, yellow and white-coloured heads cruising in different directions – they were further out to sea. In the background, the DART whizzed past, packed with early Friday-evening commuters. The sunshine twinkled on the windows of the dirty train, greatly cheering up its drab appearance.

  “Afric, Luke here, just got home on an earlier flight – sorry, my phone has been dead since I left China. I am here in the apartment and no sign of you. Give me a shout when it suits. I have great news, the promotion came through. No more trips to China. Happy days! Oh, someone at the door, must go, maybe it’s you without your keys. Hope it’s you!” He hung up.

  I turned on the ignition, indicated and pulled out on to the sea road, in shock. I was acting like a zombie. What was Luke doing home, how did he get home so early? How was that possible? His flight wasn’t due to land until after six o’clock. I had to get home, now, right now before Michael arrived, with the consignment, with the package that was our dead daughter, with Luke’s little dead girl called Ruby that he knew nothing about.

  I put my foot to the accelerator and whizzed in the direction of Dun Laoghaire. I had dressed up for Luke’s return, made a bit of an effort. I wore a long floaty black cotton dress. My silver sandals were wrapped around my ankles and snaked up between my large toe and second toe – they had a bit of a Greek look and feel to them. My reddish-brown hair was neatly tied back, tucked in at the bottom of my neck. I wore my pink sunglasses on my head – they acted like a hair-band, keeping the shorter wisps out of my eyes.

  The sat nav read: Thirteen minutes to destination.

  The phone read: 1 new message.

  I opened it.

  Luke Lynch has signed for consignment AER33456/9.

  I felt sick to my empty stomach. I swerved towards the right-hand lane. I opened the message again so I could reread it.

  It still read: Luke Lynch has signed for consignment AER33456/9.

  “Oh fuck, what now, what am I going to say to him, what if he opens the package, what if he discovers the truth that way?”

  I gripped the steering wheel so tightly that the white of all ten of my knuckles were on show to me. My heart was racing, my head was dizzy and my legs felt lifeless. I was afraid I might just pass out there and then in Dun Laoghaire, right next to the East Pier.

  What if he opened the parcel there in the middle of our cherry-coloured living room with the sun flooding in and discovered that all his dreams of the future were now nothing more than a pile of ashes in a box? I knew him – he definitely would never recover from that – I was sure that we would never ever come back from that. Luke would feel betrayed by me, my betrayal would then start the blame game, and I knew how that would end.

  What was I to do? Should I ring him and tell him not to open the parcel until I got home? That I would explain everything when I got home, just not to open it for the moment, until we were together? That I knew that he had the parcel, my parcel, well, addressed to me but the contents were soon to be ours? What should I do?

  Or should I ring and tell him what really happened now, before I got home, tell him the whole story so that he would not be quite so shocked and upset when I arrived?

  I was afraid to see the sadness creep into those Dairy Milk Chocolate eyes. Would that dreaded mist creep in and steal him from me? Would sadness engulf him once again?

  Panic started to set in, my mouth was parched, I could not think clearly. My heart started to thump inside my skin, and I thought I might vomit onto the steering wheel. My hands could barely grip the wheel, they were so damp. Would this be the final straw in our marriage? Would he blame me?

  And I’d have to tell him right at the start when I saw him. Explain to him, like the doctor had to me, how we had created an imperfect person. Our chromosomes together had got it wrong; our own bodies had got it wrong, so wrong that it was fatal. Our own flesh and blood together had created that fatal mistake. Our own beings had inflicted this pain on us three. Would I tell him how I saw our fatal mistake dead before my own eyes? Would I say that I was very sorry that we had created something that was incompatible with life?

  Would he want endless rounds of tests to pinpoint exactly where the problem lay – or would the results of the amniocentesis be sufficient? I would hand it to him to read – there it was in black and white – the result – Patau Syndrome.

  Would he surprise me and accept it – accept the findings, resigned to the fact that we were that unlucky statistic, that one in ten thousand, which you never think you might be? Maybe he would understand.

  The reality was that I didn’t know how he would react, because I was not sure I knew Luke any longer. We were out of touch with each other’s minds, just like we had both tuned out of the life we had once enjoyed together.

  I began to take long deep breaths; I concentrated on the road and on my breathing. I inhaled deeply through my nose, held my breath for three seconds and slowly expelled the air through my mouth. Slowly and methodically, I repeated the exercise.

  The lady with the slight twang spoke out loud at me: ‘In current traffic you are five minutes from your destination,’ she announced.

  This time I took a longer, deeper breath, and my shoulders almost rose up to meet my head, I inhaled so furiously.

  I pressed the centre button of the phone. The screen read: new message. I selected his name – Luke. The fingers of my left hand tightly gripped the back of the phone, and with my thumb free I typed: Please don’t open the package. Home in a few minutes. I added two Xs and then quickly deleted them. I replaced them with ‘Afric’. It felt more apt.

  If he threw me out, I would go to my mother’s place. My mother had been very supportive during all this and would completely understand and accept the situation. Lizzy got it, she would understand without judging, she would also see his side of story.

  I calmed myself again. Why would he react irrationally? He was not an unreasonable person. The person I had married just two years ago was a level-headed, calm and logical person; I must remember that. The baby was not my fault. It was a combined botched effort. Together, Luke and I had got it wrong. If he did attack me, I would tell him that it was a joint effort, that he was as much to blame as I was. I would then explain that really there was no one to blame. I would tell him that and he would be okay with that. In this instance, n
o one was right, instead we were both wrong.

  I expelled what felt like the remaining air from my lungs. I loosened my grip on the steering wheel and colour returned to my knuckles.

  I indicated and turned down towards the Forty Foot. I pulled in just before the steps that led down to the water’s edge. I needed to gather my thoughts, to get myself together. I needed to talk to Michael to find out what had happened, what he had said to Luke and how Luke had reacted about the package.

  I could wait; I could wait another five minutes before I opened the package, before I got home to find our box of grief, the remains of our charred dreams. This box of grief would be with us forever, for a lifetime. What was five minutes in a lifetime?

  Luke would understand the problem that I faced – of course he would understand the syndrome that Ruby had after I explained it to him. Patau Syndrome to me by now had become a household name like Fairy Liquid Original, but to Luke it would not have the same familiarity, just yet. The baby had some physical features that resembled a child’s and a few organs that had kept it alive, like a powerful heart. But Ruby, our little Ruby, was incompatible with life. I would explain to him that she would never have survived outside the womb, that there was no hope to be had. That was simple to explain, to anyone. And that was the reality, whether he liked it or not. Now, our reality was our imperfection, an imperfection that we together had created.

  I searched through received numbers and redialled the number beside 16.22.

  He answered immediately. “Swift Delivery, Michael Thompson speaking.”

  “Michael, I was speaking to you earlier this afternoon – you have a package for me.”

  “Yes, Áine – Áine, isn’t it?” he replied, proud to recognise the caller.

  “No, Afric, Afric Lynch,” I replied, a little irate. “Michael, do you know what happened to my package, the delivery for Dalkey? I thought you were going to take it to Bray and then deliver it on the way back – isn’t that what you said?”

  From the wall of the Forty Foot, I could see a bunch of scrawny youths in oversized shorts. They hugged their knees against their underdeveloped chests, and threw themselves carelessly into the calm blue sea. As they plunged into the water they howled, then frantically they splashed their way back to the steps, emerging from the water a shade whiter than before. They repeated the exercise over and over again.