All That I Leave Behind

by Alison Walsh

  I don’t want to lose you, Rosie, not when I’ve only just found you again, but I also know that it’s up to you. If you want me, you know where I am, or you will do, because my e-mail address is at the bottom. I hope you’ll give me another chance. You only have to say the word, and I’ll be back in a heartbeat.

  I love you – even though we both know it’s not enough, I thought I’d say it anyway. Because that is one truth worth saying out loud, many times.

  Mark

  I love you too, she’d thought, reading the few lines again and then again, you know I do. And I remember the competition – you took two breaths before you dipped your head into the water and then you grabbed my ankle, so I had to lift my head out of the water to scream. You cheated too, don’t you remember? But maybe you were right when you said that loving each other just isn’t enough. Maybe I can’t love you the way you want me to because I’m not happy. Or maybe it’s you – maybe you just don’t love me enough to stay, no matter what. Maybe you just wanted one night with me for old times’ sake. But what the hell did it matter anyway, she told herself, folding the letter up and pressing it tightly into her hand. It was too late now in any case.

  The only way she could think to manage all of this was to write a list. On it were just three things: See GP. Get job. Talk to Daddy. Three things. She could manage that. She knew that she should have added a fourth, but she just wasn’t ready for that yet. One thing at a time, as Mary-Pat used to say to her.

  She’d tackled the doctor’s appointment first, a nice clinic in Portlaoise where, if they’d wondered why she’d wandered twenty miles out of her way to see a doctor, they were good enough not to say it. She’d opted to go to Dublin for her antenatal appointments because she was less likely to meet someone she knew than if she went to Portlaoise. Pius had gone with her that first time. He’d insisted on it, driving her there and waiting outside while she saw the doctor and then taking her to the chemist afterwards, the big Boots on the roundabout. He had a list in his hand and she followed him around the aisles as he picked things out and put them in the basket.

  ‘Pi?’ she said, as he scanned the rows of maternity pads.

  ‘Yeah?’ he replied, picking out a large pack with a smiling lady on the front and putting it in the basket, then ticking the item off on his list. When he saw her looking at the pads he cleared his throat and said, ‘I did some research on the Internet. They said you’d need them.’

  At the birth, she thought, trying hard not to smile at the idea of her brother boning up on the essentials of pregnancy and childbirth. He’d taken to the subject with enthusiasm, ordering books from the Internet via Nancy Brady at the library and giving Rosie instructions about the best ways of avoiding heartburn. He was her rock, Pi.

  Next, she went up to see Breda O’Hare. She hardly knew Breda but remembered a sunny girl with bright red cheeks and straw-coloured hair who’d sat beside her in junior infants, who was now deputy head of St Conleth’s secondary school. Rosie couldn’t think why the notion of teaching had occurred to her, but it seemed plausible enough and one thing she had learned from being the worst social worker in the world in that other life of hers was that she liked kids, teenagers in particular. She liked the way they thought they knew everything and the way they gave backchat all the time.

  Breda had greeted her like an old friend and had led her into her office, a tiny room filled with the detritus of school life – lost gym kits, a handful of trophies and a large year planner filled with little red dots. ‘I just need to do something useful,’ she said. Not to mention the fact that I need the money, as my savings have almost run out and I have no idea how I’m going to support my baby. ‘I’m pregnant, you see, so I won’t be looking for much before the baby arrives. But I thought you might have some advice for me. She’d bitten her lip. ‘Sorry, it’s been a while.’

  ‘That’s no problem, but I’m afraid you couldn’t teach without a HDip. You see, you’re not qualified and even if you were, then you’d have to be put on a roll of sub teachers. It’s difficult because of the cutbacks and all,’ she explained.

  ‘You must think I’m a complete eejit,’ Rosie had said, feeling like one of the school kids who’d been hauled into the office for detention.

  ‘Not at all,’ Breda had said diplomatically. ‘Sure the system here isn’t like the States at all. But my sister works in a private language college in Mullingar and they’re always looking for teachers.’

  ‘And they’ll take anyone?’ Rosie half-smiled.

  ‘No, you’ll have to do a TEFL course, and they’re very particular about vetting, but you won’t need a HDip.’

  Oh, I’ve offended her, Rosie thought. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I know what you meant. And you know, I think you’ll make a good teacher, Rosie. You have a great way with you. A lovely energy that people would enjoy. Good luck with it.’

  In the event, Breda’s sister did have a slot, providing she was prepared to spend a month, and another chunk of her savings, on a TEFL course, and to wade through the finer points of past participles and countable and uncountable nouns, before being unleashed on a class of students. The teaching gave her a boost of energy that carried her through the next three months of her pregnancy, when she began to flourish, her hair silky, her face beginning to fill out. She lost her sharp, bony edges and began to resemble a freckled marshmallow. She liked that, she thought, looking at herself in the mirror, wondering what Mark would think of her new figure.

  Pius found her a little second-hand car for the drive to Mullingar, refusing to take any money for it – ‘I called in a favour or two’ was all he would say about it. A vision of that weed he grew out the back flickered into her mind, but she let it drop, faced with the prospect of a comfortable drive. Anything was better than the Beetle, which was killing her. She thought the baby would be rattled out of her if she went on any longer. And as she stood up in front of a class of mystified newcomers to Ireland and pretended she was au fait with the present perfect tense, she felt as if she were learning with them. Except while they were learning how to communicate in this new country of theirs, she was learning to take responsibility for herself, to find her own path. It felt good.

  She knew that teaching English wasn’t going to be her life’s work, and so, as she drove back and forth every morning and evening, she began to ask herself what might be. And then one evening, she took out her old biology textbooks and she pored over them, remembering the hours she and Pi had spent together, examining his stag beetle collection, or trawling the canal bank for evidence of otters. After so many years of sociological waffle when she was in the States, the careful facts of sixth-year biology soothed her. She felt entirely at home with genetic mutations and the chambers of the heart. There was nothing that didn’t fit a pattern in biology, nothing that wasn’t expected, and if it was, it was called a ‘mutation’. Something that departed from the norm. Rosie wondered where this put her and if studying the subject was an antidote to her own life, where mutations were the order of the day.

  Finally, she plucked up the courage to enrol in a university conversion course. The nice lady in the admissions office told her that as she was a mature student, she wouldn’t need ‘the requisite number of honours’, which was fortunate, as she didn’t have them. The course wouldn’t begin for another nine months. Oh, she’d thought. I’ll be a mother then.

  She’d forgotten how much she liked study; how totally it could absorb her. She’d open a book to take a quick look at a diagram for an essay and, the next thing, she’d look up and see that three hours had passed. She could just dive into it and forget about everything else, balancing her bump on the huge claw-foot chair that Pius brought down from the attic, because it would ‘accommodate her’, as he said politely. Pius might have been her rock, but he was a faintly embarrassed one in the way that only a brother could be.

  Daphne, on the other hand, continued to be typically blunt about the whole thing, d
iscussing flatulence and other symptoms with glee. ‘I could have farted for Ireland and, Jesus, my sex drive went through the roof,’ she said one day over coffee. ‘Kevin was exhausted by the end of it. I was forever ringing him up in Dublin to come down and service me at all hours of the day and night – what?’ she said, as Pius cleared his throat. She glared at him. ‘I’m only telling her the truth. That’s what pregnancy is like. Your whole body is just consumed by it. You’re not a woman at all, you’re just a … vessel.’

  ‘Aha,’ he said, getting up and twiddling the knobs on the coffee machine, his face tomato red, while she and Daphne snorted with laughter behind his back. Rosie wasn’t quite sure what was going on between the two of them, but she knew it was something. They bickered constantly and yet there was a light in Pius’s eyes when he spoke her name, and he made Daphne relax and laugh a bit. They’d be good for each other, she knew they would.

  Pius had only asked her about telling the others once. ‘Have you spoken to your sisters?’

  Rosie had shaken her head. ‘Nope. And don’t ask me to.’

  ‘Don’t you think we have enough secrets in this family?’ he’d tried.

  ‘I can’t, Pi,’ she’d said. ‘I just can’t.’

  He hadn’t persisted, just nodded and squeezed her gently on the shoulder.

  She left item number three on her list until last, until late spring, when she was beginning to show, needing to push the driver’s seat a bit further back, pulling the seatbelt across her bump as she drove out the Dublin Road to the home. The girl at reception didn’t recognise her, a frown knitting her brows as Rosie explained who she was. ‘I don’t think you’ve visited before,’ she said grimly, a disapproving look on her narrow features.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ Rosie lied.

  ‘Right, well, he’s in the day room now,’ the girl said, looking at her watch. ‘The horse racing’s on,’ she added by way of explanation.

  ‘Thanks.’ Rosie half-smiled.

  ‘I’ll get someone to show you,’ the girl said, pressing a buzzer on the desk. After a few moments, a plump, pretty nurse appeared through a set of double doors. The badge on her immaculate scrubs told Rosie that she was Imelda.

  ‘So when’s the big day?’ she asked, eyeing Rosie’s bump.

  ‘Oh, in four months or so.’ Rosie was distracted, hesitating as Imelda opened the double doors of the day room, a bright smile on her face, and urged her in. ‘Summertime is just the best time to have a baby,’ she said cheerfully, scanning the room for Daddy.

  He was sitting in a large green vinyl armchair, arms folded across his chest, staring into space. He was wearing a knitted cardigan and a pair of brown trousers that looked three sizes too big for him.

  ‘Now, John-Joe, you have a visitor,’ the nurse said gently.

  Rosie had been half-hiding behind the woman, afraid, but when he looked up at her and beamed, she thought she’d faint with relief. He doesn’t recognise me. Thank God, he doesn’t know who I am.

  ‘You must be the new girl!’ He reached out a hand and shook hers, his hand warm and smooth, his grip firm. He’d been a great believer in firm handshakes, Daddy.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ she agreed, taking a seat in the chair Imelda had gently pushed across towards her.

  ‘I’ll leave ye to it,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said gaily, waving at Imelda. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘It’s Imelda, John-Joe,’ she said, as if it was the first time he’d asked her and not the hundredth or more.

  ‘Imelda,’ he repeated. ‘And what about you, love?’ He turned his bright gaze to Rosie. ‘How are you settling in here? You know, my mammy and daddy are from Donegal,’ he continued. ‘They’ve been roaming the roads for as long as I can remember.’ And then his face creased in a frown. ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘Oh, just up the road,’ Rosie said vaguely. ‘Have you been watching the horseracing?’ She nodded at the television.

  He looked at her blankly. ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Gambling’s the work of the devil, that’s what Mammy says.’ At this, he seemed to grow agitated, pulling at the hair behind his left ear and shifting in the chair. ‘The work of the devil.’ It seemed so unfair that he couldn’t remember, she thought, one of the things that had given him such pleasure, and her too, sitting up beside him, licking the pencil and marking the pink slip with the each-way bet. ‘Will we be lucky today, Rosie?’ he’d say. ‘What do you think?’

  He paused now and looked upset. ‘They’re all dead now. All of them.’

  ‘All of whom?’

  He looked irritated, swatting her away with his hand. ‘Oh, the whole lot of them. Everyone always leaves in the end, but then you know that.’

  Yes, I do know that, Rosie thought. Even you, Daddy. And all the questions I have to ask you will go unanswered. I can see that now. She reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘How about a little song?’

  He sat up straighter in his seat and looked pleased with himself. ‘Sure why not?’

  ‘Imelda tells me you’re a great singer.’

  He nodded enthusiastically. ‘I like a tune.’ But then he’d looked anxious. ‘The thing is, sometimes, I can’t remember …’

  ‘I know. I’ll help you. Do you know “The Rose of Tralee”?’

  He sat up straight then and looked thoughtful before launching into it, his fine tenor voice floating over her out into the room. He could remember every word, and as he sang, Rosie thought that it was beautiful and she wondered how such beauty could come from someone so … ‘bad’ wasn’t the right word. He wasn’t evil, just foolish and selfish and deluded, a man who had let his impulses dictate his life. She stroked the baby in her belly and wondered why it was that the people you loved most in the world could turn out to be for ever a disappointment, no matter how much she’d wish it otherwise or how long she waited for things to be different. And she could let it crush her or learn from it, to try not to make their mistakes, to try to do a little bit better for the baby inside her.

  When he finished, there was a scattering of applause from the few elderly people sitting around in the bright room. ‘Good man, John-Joe,’ a tall, upright man with snowy hair said. ‘Good man.’

  At the praise, Daddy beamed, delighted with himself, and as she looked at him, for a second, the old Daddy was there, face alive with pleasure, a twinkle in those dark eyes.

  ‘Is it time for lunch?’ He looked hopefully at the hatch from the dayroom into the kitchen, from where clattering and banging could be heard, the over-stewed smell of boiled cabbage wafting in. Rosie felt her stomach turn. ‘Yes, time for lunch,’ and then she squeezed his hand again. ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the song.’

  ‘See you, love,’ he said, continuing to look in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Come back soon.’

  I’ve completed my list now, Rosie thought the following week as she lay on the examining table, Margaret’s broad hands feeling her bump, shaping it like a baker shapes a loaf, identifying first the head, digging around in Rosie’s pelvis with surprising force.

  ‘Your blood pressure’s very low,’ Margaret said. ‘Been feeling dizzy?’

  ‘I have actually,’ Rosie admitted.

  ‘Hmm. Any idea whether Mum had low blood pressure during her pregnancy?’ Margaret was looking away from her, making a series of cryptic scribbles on the file and, when Rosie didn’t answer, looking up. ‘Oh dear,’ she said when she saw the tears. ‘Oh dear. Tea and sympathy.’ And then she got up and left the office, leaving Rosie sniffling, looking around for a tissue. I thought I could do this, she thought to herself. I thought I was strong, that I could manage by myself, but look at me. She was distracted by a rustling behind the door, after which it swung slowly open and a large foot appeared, followed by Margaret clutching two mugs, which she placed gently on the table, before handing one to Rosie. ‘Here.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Rosie said. The tea was hot and too sweet and tasted like nectar. And it
wasn’t that dreadful wee-like green stuff either, the stuff Pi kept making her drink because it was good for her.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Margaret leaned back in her seat and eyed Rosie narrowly. ‘Rosie, do you want me to contact social services? They can help, you know.’

  ‘No, God, no!’ Rosie half-yelled, pulling herself into a standing position, then sitting back in the chair. ‘Sorry, I mean, no. It’s fine, really. I have my brother and his … friend, they’re helping.’

  ‘What about Dad?’

  Rosie thought she meant Daddy for a second, but then she understood. ‘Oh. He’s abroad. And before you ask, no, I don’t think he has the right to know. It’s complicated,’ she managed. She knew that she sounded defensive, and her face reddened with shame, because he did have a right to know, of course he did. And she had no real right to keep it from him, except that she felt somehow that she had to – she told herself that it was because she was angry with him, that he hadn’t told her he was going until it was too late. That he’d let her fall in love with him all over again and then he’d just left her, but really it was because she just couldn’t make him come back, not after all the years he’d spent waiting for her here. His life had only begun and she wasn’t going to take that away from him. Not yet.

  Margaret put her hands up then in surrender. ‘That’s fine. I’m not pushing you – I just want to help, that’s all.’ She looked a bit miffed.

  ‘I know, and thanks.’ Rosie cleared her throat. ‘I’ll ask … my mother about the blood pressure.’

  ‘Good,’ Margaret said, making a note on the file, a cross look on her face. Then, ‘And take care of yourself, will you?’ Her expression softened, and Rosie thought again of Mary-Pat, longed to have her beside her, giving Margaret a piece of her mind.