Somebody Loves Us All

by Damien Wilkins

  There was an exception they found.

  ‘Poor Linda Walker from Newcastle kept going for weeks,’ said Paddy. ‘What happened finally, we don’t know. There was no follow-up piece that we found. Did we look every-where?’

  Following a stroke, Linda Walker had developed an accent that was a mixture of Jamaican, Canadian and Slovak. She jumped around from day to day. ‘I’ve lost my identity, because I never talked like this before. I’m a very different person and it’s strange and I don’t like it. I didn’t realise what I sounded like, but then my speech therapist played a tape of me talking. I was just devastated.’

  Away from the Oxford team, there was another theory about FAS. If the brain was unaffected, there was the possibility it was a fine motor skills problem, an adjustment of troublesome phonemes. The speaker, unable to make the old distinctions, begins substituting sounds and ends by mimicking the whole accent. That was potentially the best news they’d heard all day. Phonemes were his kind of thing. Pad, pat, bad and bat.

  Helena placed her hand on the laptop, sealing it even more completely. ‘Your mother hasn’t had a stroke. On first look. That’s a huge plus.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘A huge plus, I’d say.’

  ‘On a first look, no stroke. I agree. And no evidence of a tumour, on a first look. CTs miss lots of tumours, we know that.’

  ‘But nothing yet.’

  ‘And there are no huge blood clots there, so that’s good.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘The brain is a strange beast.’

  ‘Sometimes there’s a knock to the system. Then things settle down.’

  ‘One scenario, there was a haematoma from her bathroom fall, it dissipated naturally, she’ll return to her old self.’

  ‘It’s a definite possibility.’

  They’d already been through all this. Yet it was good to hear it once more. Their terms of reference weren’t at all high-flown or particularly informed but it was Murray Blanchford himself who’d given them nearly all their statements. These were his words they traded and somehow even an adjective as weak as ‘strange’ took on an almost medical depth. Once he’d given up on humour, Blanchford had proved a straightforward and decent person.

  ‘We know that the brain,’ said Helena, quoting Paddy from several minutes earlier quoting Blanchford, ‘has extraordinary powers of recovery.’

  ‘Extraordinary powers full stop,’ he said.

  ‘Who knows what decisions are being made by it as we speak, as she sleeps, recovering. Who knows?’

  ‘We can only guess.’ Paddy took her wrist and held it. He felt the broad bones and against his thumb, the tendons. He felt the pulse. Perhaps it was his own pulse beating in the tips of his fingers as they touched each other in the circling grip. ‘Or, you know, it’s not brain-related at all.’

  ‘Motor skills,’ she said.

  ‘Exactly. Before all this, she probably knew what French bread was, a baguette. She’s been to England and Scotland and Ireland and to Canada but not to Quebec and she’s been to Australia. I think that’s it. The adventures of an Anglophone. Pourquoi Français? Because she listens to a thing on the news?’

  ‘It’s not really French though, is it. It’s just what it sounds like. Still, we have the trigger, possible trigger. We don’t know how that works but still. The radio. That’s good, I think. That’s a cause which is entirely harmless. It’s motor skills and the radio thing.’

  ‘I think we’ve solved it!’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Paddy.’

  He brought her wrist close to himself and placed it against his chest. This, he thought, was calming, one of those gestures that seemed about to unlock forever the mysteries of our individual selves, the way we’re trapped in private spheres and the way we long for some kind of curing connection. He saw again the young baby turning its head towards its mother as they stood on the hillside footpath watching the cretinous possessed man bike past in his stupid frenzy.

  ‘You know, Paddy,’ said Helena, ‘that she might need speech therapy.’

  ‘Crossed my mind,’ he said.

  ‘In some ways it’s like the orthodontist whose child needs braces.’

  The comparison made him think uselessly of Sam Covenay and his closed mouth. His own adolescence even. Orthodontists were psychic vandals, weren’t they. ‘You think a discount is in order?’

  They checked once more on Teresa and left her to it, her astonishing recuperation. Yet even this seemingly peaceful view had its own unsettling dimension of newness and strangeness. She looked pensive and poised somehow, as if ready to snap awake and say something of extreme intelligence. Was this her normal look? When had he last seen his mother asleep? Dozing in a chair perhaps, nodding off in the back seat of a car, but lying in the dark in a bed, watched as a child is watched—never, he thought. He didn’t like it. She seemed aware of them.

  In the morning he told Helena about Iyob. She listened without saying much, asking for clarification on a couple of points, and then she thanked him. At the mention of the language school she’d switched into a different mode. Paddy felt briefly as though he were someone who’d come to her with a set of problems that she would need to rank in order of importance. As he spoke he felt she was already making calculations, sifting, preparing to gamble. Her eyes flickered with some private boss-like thoughts. She withheld judgement, on either Iyob or Dora. That Iyob had come to the apartment drew no comment, likewise that Dora had presumably lied to her. Would she have admitted filming her mother’s staff?

  Helena was surrounded by situations of this nature on a daily basis, this was the impression she wanted to give. Her task as leader was to drain emotion from such events and recast them as a set of soluble facts. She and Paddy both knew this was an act. And perhaps she was right to attempt it. She was just trying to make it past the Ministry review. Behind the calm managerial front he saw dead tiredness crossing into resentment. You bring me this now?

  ‘What’ll you do?’ he said.

  She stared at him—you’re asking me?—and then she told him with a controlled sigh that it was very difficult. He’d delivered a message—fine—but he had no rights to know the message’s implications. This was when she said thank you. When they stood up to go next door to check on his mother, he half expected them to shake hands. Instead she said, ‘You don’t need this right now.’ And again she kissed him drily on the forehead. Dismissed.

  Teresa didn’t look wholly revived though she told them she’d had a wonderful sleep. She was dressed and had eaten breakfast. She said she didn’t remember certain parts of the day before and hoped she hadn’t disgraced herself. Her speech was shy and vaguely singsong. She was attempting to disguise the Frenchness. Each give-away noise was an ill-concealed humiliation for her. She attempted to ask about Helena’s day, to commiserate with her on the wretched review process, but this was all done through such contorted and fragmentary phrasing that progress could be made mainly through guesses on their part. Paddy was reminded of Caleb, his most recent graduate, with his ploys at getting his message across. Jimmy Gorzo too, waiting for others to fill in his gaps. Paddy’s mother wasn’t nearly as practised. She didn’t yet know which words were trouble for a French speaker of English. Her sentences were a series of self-ambushes. He had the terrible impression she was trying to listen to herself say each word before it came out, testing it with her brain, burying it back in her larynx, waiting for it to form correctly. Her mouth was terribly tight.

  ‘What are you going to do today?’ he said.

  The question was awkward. What could she do? What was expected of her now? What was the future for her? He’d meant little more than to make a casual inquiry. ‘Nothing special,’ she said, horrified, smiling. Nuteen. Stephanie was coming over later.

  He told her that Murray Blanchford from the hospital was likely to call. He had her number but he also had Paddy’s, he said. If he called her, she should ask him to wait and then Paddy could come and be there as wel
l when he talked to her. There was a possibility that she’d have to go back to the hospital for further tests but that probably wouldn’t happen today. Did she understand all that?

  She nodded carefully and put the back of her hand against her nose.

  Helena stepped closer to her and said, ‘We’ll be here for you, Teresa. Whatever you need, whatever happens.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she said quietly from behind her hand. ‘I feel so silly.’

  After Helena had gone to work, his mother rang him and said, ‘I need some milk.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And bread. I tried Steph but she’s out already.’

  ‘I can get them for you.’

  ‘Maybe some biscuits for the kids when they come.’

  ‘Sure. Anything else?’

  ‘A little block of Edam cheese.’

  He didn’t understand her. ‘What sort?’

  She repeated the word, finding the English pronunciation. Was he going to the supermarket?

  ‘I could go to the supermarket, no trouble.’

  ‘Potatoes. Fruit, I have no fruit. Where did all my food go? I have a list, Paddy.’ Leest.

  ‘Look in the freezer though. Medbh came and cooked for you. Do you remember that?’

  ‘Of course I remember that.’

  The last thing Murray Blanchford told them was that it might be best to carry on as normal, do the same things. Be positive. Maybe all that had happened was Teresa’s system had taken a knock, he said, and until they found out otherwise, life should be life.

  ‘You think that will help?’ said Stephanie.

  Blanchford had shrugged. ‘It can’t hurt.’

  ‘Be normal, yes,’ she said. ‘Like nothing’s happened.’

  Teresa had already stepped into the corridor.

  ‘But keep an eye on her.’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘I don’t know, try not to think of her as sick.’

  Stephanie was smiling through tears. ‘I don’t think of her as sick. She’s always been incredibly healthy. Right, Paddy?’

  ‘She vomits once and gets on with things. She cleans up the blood.’

  ‘That’s so true! That’s her.’ And she leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Good old Paddy.’

  With this ‘return to normal’ in mind, on the phone Paddy reminded his mother about the school barbecue. He could still take her if she wanted to go, if she was up to it. They could sit quietly in the corner and watch things for a while. They wouldn’t stay long and she’d get to see the girls. The school was very close to the apartment.

  ‘But I couldn’t go to that,’ she said.

  ‘Okay. Probably you want to rest. I’m not sure if I’ll go.’

  She was silent on the other end of the phone. ‘Don’t change your plans because of me, Paddy.’

  Then at the point of saying goodbye she said, ‘I’m not a prisoner, am I? Then why don’t I get the things, why don’t I go to the supermarket?’

  He thought again of Blanchford’s advice about a normal routine. This was too fast. Physically Paddy didn’t trust her yet. ‘Because I’ll go. Because you need to take it easy.’

  ‘What’s easy?’ she said.

  He didn’t know whether she meant this philosophically or that simply she’d forgotten what the word ‘easy’ meant. There was a third and somehow even more distressing possibility, that she’d had trouble understanding him, picking his accent. Was this the future? No, the future was phonemes, fine motor skills.

  ‘Can you do one thing for me, Ma?’ he said. ‘Can you say the word b-a-t?’

  ‘What do you mean can I say it?’

  ‘Can you pronounce it for me?’

  ‘Another test?’

  ‘Okay, you don’t have to.’

  ‘Bad,’ she said and hung up.

  When Margaret heard about their mother, she said, ‘Don’t be stupid, Steph. Let me talk to Paddy.’ And then as Stephanie outlined the events, the trip to the hospital, her older sister said, ‘Thank God Dad’s gone and we’re not children. It would have destroyed us all.’

  Stephanie phoned Paddy the moment she finished talking to her sister. The call had upset Stephanie, which wasn’t unusual with Margie. But this time Paddy figured Margie would have been especially tough. Wrong-footed, she came out fighting. She’d be annoyed Stephanie had known before she had, and then angry that he’d got Stephanie to make the call. Steph, she’d once told him, was lightweight. The only thing holding her up in life was Teresa. Her younger sister’s achievements as a mother meant nothing to Margie since she was convinced they relied almost entirely on Teresa’s contribution. This was wrong. She also thought, and had said this to Paddy, that the only reason Steph had had a third child was to move one ahead of her in the family stakes. He told her that was ridiculous. She said, ‘Sons don’t see these things, especially only sons. They don’t sense the mechanism at all. Why should they? They exist as little princes of their own kingdoms. But first I had to fight you, and then I had to fight her.’

  ‘All that aggression, Margie!’ he said, laughing.

  ‘It gets channelled. Oldest girls are high achievers usually. But all I managed to do was to appeal to a Canadian.’

  ‘A very picky Canadian though.’ She’d met her husband when she was working in the kitchen of a resort in Banff. He was a guest: Brian.

  ‘Oh, he had choices in front of him, I guess. Options.’

  ‘The pancakes or the eggs.’

  ‘I don’t know which I am in that line-up.’

  ‘You’re the maple syrup surely.’

  ‘The fat?’

  ‘The sweet.’

  ‘Oh, good try, little brother.’

  On the phone, Margie had said to Stephanie, ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. And I can’t really understand what you say if you keep crying.’ They’d already booked their Christmas holidays but if she had to, she could come over for a week or ten days. She’d have to move things around. She’d email their mother anyway. ‘She can operate a computer right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Stephanie.

  ‘Oh well, so that would be the end of the world if she couldn’t do that.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so horrible about it. She’s really in a bad way.’

  ‘Okay. In the meantime, I don’t know, give me updates.’

  Stephanie told Paddy that he should call Margie at once. ‘She doesn’t really believe anything I say. She wanted to know if Mummy was having us on.’

  ‘It’s what we wanted to know too.’

  ‘“What a weird stunt,” she said.’

  There was always a touch of conspiracy for his big sister in even the plainest arrangement and everyone believed that it was for exactly this reason that Margie had chosen to live overseas, away from the family, that eternal nest of arrangements. ‘Better this way, Old Paddy,’ she told him once at the airport when he was asking again whether her sons wouldn’t enjoy life Down Under. Brian was an optician, relocatable and totally pleasant, but it would never happen. Margie was their blot, Steph had once said. Not in the way of a blot on the landscape that needed to be removed, she added quickly. But the little darkness always in view. A shadow, and one cast by us all, she said. ‘I think about her almost every day. Do you think she knows that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Paddy.

  The subject of Margie bothered them all. Which was also the intentional effect of her absence. She was no longer the girl in the boat stamping her foot up and down, wearing out her petulance in mysterious little acts of mayhem. That aspect of fieriness had dwindled with their father’s death. Instead there was the peculiarly barren space between her and Teresa. Negotiations there took the form not of tantrums but a kind of carefulness, an excruciating politeness, which was often even harder to take for everyone. It was bleaker that was for sure. And it had zero entertainment value.

  It wasn’t dawn in Vancouver but Margie sounded lively. ‘You know when I got off the phone from Steph,’ she
said to him, ‘I just laughed and laughed.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said.

  ‘Come on! It’s hilarious.’

  ‘It’s got that aspect to it.’

  ‘Over here, we put people like that on TV. We give them their own shows, Paddy!’

  ‘I don’t think she’s quite there yet. Presumably that would take more than looking scared and whispering things.’

  There was a silence on the phone, and then she said, ‘Anyway, I’m sitting here with my cup of coffee and everyone else is in bed. Sitting in the dark more or less. Strange. It’s usually Brian who’s up first, puts the coffee on, empties the dishwasher. It’s still incredible to me that I’m with this mild and nice person. My boys are the same, so far. A house of good men and they’re all mine.’

  ‘How is Brian?’

  ‘You know, he’s great. Kids are great.’

  He heard some sounds. Was she moving her cup, drinking? ‘Pleased to hear.’

  There was another silence. She said, ‘But they didn’t find anything with the tests, right?’

  He explained what Blanchford had done and what he’d said. She listened without interrupting. And then he told her about FAS, the two theories. He heard a sudden noise at her end, her raised voice. ‘What happened?’

  ‘One of the damn cats just jumped on my lap. Gave me the fright of my life. Out of the dark, Jesus.’

  Immediately he felt weary, irritated. ‘Listen, Margie, I’ve got to go. Get my day started. You know as much as we do now. I’ll call.’

  ‘Steph falling apart?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s happening, no.’