The Story of Our Life

by Shari Low

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, shoulders back, gasping for a breath of normal air. ‘Enough about the sadness. I need to go collect Beth soon, but first I want to know, when are you going to tell me about you?’ I asked, with mock reproach.

  ‘Tell you what?’ She actually looked worried.

  ‘What’s happening with Jack? Are you going to move in together?’

  She lowered her eyes as she shrugged. ‘Urgh, I don’t know. I really don’t. It just doesn’t feel… right. I think maybe I’m not the settling-down type.’

  If I wasn’t sitting in the middle of a bench, I may well have fallen off my seat.

  All Rosie had ever wanted was to meet the right guy, get married, raise a family in a white house with a picket fence and have adequate pension provisions. She’d craved that her whole life, but now she wasn’t ready? It didn’t make sense. This was like a mid-life crisis in reverse.

  I held my mug to my chest, warmed by the heat.

  ‘Right, what’s going on?’ I demanded, intrigued.

  ‘Nothing,’ she protested, laughing. ‘Can’t a girl be independent and reject a guy’s proposal?’

  ‘Of course! But it’s just that you’ve always wanted to do the whole marriage and babies thing.’

  ‘Maybe once…’ she said. I didn’t have time to probe deeper, as at that moment, Lulu and Colm arrived, bursting through the back door with a sledgehammer of energy and hilarity.

  For the millionth time, I thought how lucky Colm and I were to have Lulu. In truth, she may not be much of a wife, but she was a great friend and she was throwing herself into her new role as Colm’s chauffeur with real gusto. She was cheering him up, making him laugh, and was there every time he – or I – needed her.

  ‘Ta -da!’ Beth exclaimed, bursting out with jazz hands from behind Colm’s legs.

  ‘Baby!’ I greeted her, holding my arms wide open and bracing myself for the incoming charge as she rushed towards me. My favourite moment of every day, no question.

  ‘I was just coming to get you!’ I told her, puzzled. Had I arranged something else? God, I was so tired this was like being back in those days after she was born and I was so sleep-deprived I would find my hairbrush in the freezer.

  Colm tossed his jacket on a chair. ‘Yeah, we were literally passing the school, so we thought we’d pop in and collect her a little early. Teacher said it was fine. I told her we had an emergency situation.’

  ‘What emergency situation?’ He looked fine. They were laughing. Please don’t let that be an act. Please don’t let there be something else wrong. Come on, nothing else.

  Colm shrugged and scooped Beth off the floor. ‘I needed to see my girl! That was the emergency!’

  ‘It was only a white lie, mummy. Our secret. Just can’t tell Mrs Rodgers.’

  I decided these were exceptional times. Taking your child out of school early and lying to teachers? Not acceptable in normal circumstances. Colm, happy, upbeat, after his last day of radiotherapy, picking his daughter up early to celebrate? Go right ahead, savour every moment, because there was no knowing how many more days they’d have like this.

  Lulu flicked the kettle on, then slid into a chair next to Rosie. Meanwhile, Beth jumped on my knee and I hugged her tightly.

  ‘How was your day, honey?

  Fantaaaaaaaaastic!’ she raved. ‘The very best ever!’

  ‘Oooh and why’s that then?’ I asked her, tickling her stomach and making her squeal with delight.

  ‘Can’t tell you,’ she said, before creasing into an adorable fit of the giggles.

  ‘Pardon? Of course you can. You can tell your mamma anything.’

  ‘Can’t,’ she said.

  ‘Can.’

  ‘Cant.’

  ‘We could be here all night, baby.’

  That moved her off message, and she turned to Colm, eyes wild and pleading.

  ‘Can I tell her daddy? Can I?’ she begged. ‘Auntie Lu, let me tell her please!’

  ‘What are you all so buzzed up about? What’s going on?’

  ‘We’re going to Disney World! We’re going to see Mickey Mouse! And Minnie. And I’m going to be a Princess!’

  ‘We are?’ I kept the smile on my face, while raising a questioning eye to Colm.

  He said, ‘You know, I decided we needed a fantastic holiday. A holiday of a lifetime. Give us some great memories to look back on.’

  The smile stayed put while the shot of pain ransacked my guts. I got it. Oh God, I got it. Memories. For Beth. He wanted our daughter to have a lifetime of knowing her daddy took her to Disney.

  The pain in my guts reshaped into a ball of steel wool and lodged in my throat.

  ‘Thought we could book it online tonight,’ Colm was saying now.

  ‘Of course we can.’ I managed to force out, before reality dawned. In cartoons, some people had an angel on one should and a devil on the other. I had a small disapproving accountant sitting on both of mine, and right now they were just about having heart attacks.

  I silently argued with the accountants’ silent disapproval. Disney. Paris. A couple of days. I’d find the money. I’d cut back on costs, work a couple of extra shifts, maybe try to sell some of the stuff that was cluttering up the back shed. I’d find a way.

  ‘Good idea,’ I enthused, let’s do it! After Auntie Lulu and Auntie Rosie have had a cup of tea, I’ll get right on it.’

  ‘Yaaaayyyyy!’ Beth cheered.

  ‘I can’t wait to tell Marcy. She’s always wanted to go there.’

  ‘But, honey, Marcy went to Disney last summer.’

  Beth stuck out her bottom lip, suddenly serious, as if she had great knowledge to impart. ‘No, mummy. Marcy went to France. Daddy says we’re going to Florida. For two weeks!’

  Keep breathing. Keep smiling. Keep breathing. Keep smiling.

  My gaze went back to Colm. ‘Really?’ Still breathing. Still smiling. It was like every thought I was having was getting stuck on a repetitive loop, playing again and again until my brain managed to absorb it.

  ‘Yeah, well I thought we may as well do it properly. What do ya reckon?’

  I reckoned he’d already told Beth. I reckoned he needed this. I reckoned he hadn’t thought any of this through. I reckoned that even if it killed me, I’d find a way to make this happen because he wanted it and that was all that mattered.

  ‘Well…’ I could see he was bracing himself for objections, while Beth was watching my face expectantly. ‘I reckon it’s the best idea you’ve ever had.’

  26

  2009

  Broken Hearts and Promises

  There had been a time when he would shout my name when we made love, and then he would stay, his skin on mine, our limbs wrapped around each other. Our eyes would be locked, our lips inches apart.

  ‘You’re everything,’ he would tell me.

  ‘You’re more,’ I’d reply.

  We would talk, laugh, fight over who was going to go get drinks, or shower first, or make breakfast the next morning. Mostly we’d just talk. Just be.

  Tonight, as soon as it was over, he slid off me, gave me a brief, meaningless kiss, muttered something about it being great (it wasn’t) and then lifted the remote control for the TV from the bedside table. He flicked through the channels until he found something he wanted to watch and then slipped his arm around my head, nudging me into his chest.

  The message wouldn’t be any clearer if it flashed up on the television. Cuddle in, keep quiet, chill out, don’t bother me with waves that will disrupt my still pool of peace and harmony. Classic Colm. Sure, he’d make token enquiries, with the occasional, ‘Good day? or ‘How’s things?’ but I’d learned over the years that unless there was an impending apocalypse, an imminent death or the TV was broken, he really just wanted to hear ‘fine’. Every now and then, I’d test him by going off on a rant about something and he’d invariably zone out within a minute and a half. Colm wanted upbeat fun, an easy life, and a good laugh – and didn’t see why he couldn’t have
all of those things on an ongoing basis. It was a big part of the reason I’d fallen in love with him. And he was right. Except when he wasn’t.

  I pushed away from him and – keeping my knees tight together – spun around so that I could put my legs up the wall. I nudged a pillow under my buttocks to help tilt my pelvis in the right direction. The fertility guide recommended that this position was maintained for half an hour, but I usually stretched it and tried for at least an hour. I know it irritated him, and in turn, he irritated me because I didn’t understand why he was irritated! It wasn’t him who was filling himself full of fertility drugs and he wasn’t the one who was spending half their life checking ovulation charts and pregnancy tests. He hadn’t discovered that he had a condition called polycystic ovaries, which meant he rarely or never produced eggs. This didn’t make him feel like a total failure. And no, he didn’t have to lie with his legs up a bloody wall. Yet, he was irritated?

  ‘The treatment finishes this month,’ I mused aloud, hoping he’d be up for talking about it. It was all I’d been able to think about for days. The treatment plan had consisted of taking a fertility drug that was our big hope, but had so far only brought us huge disappointment.

  Now we’d hit the recommended limit of three courses, the doctor was reluctant to prescribe more due to the possibility that overuse of the drug could raise the chance of ovarian cancer later in life.

  If this didn’t work, it was back to the drawing board. More tests. Different drugs. Investigating other options. We’d discovered I wasn’t a candidate for IVF because I didn’t have any eggs to fertilize, but we could look at the possibility of using donor eggs or a surrogate, or perhaps even abandoning the pregnancy process altogether and considering adoption.

  So much to think and talk about, yet Colm was watching Match of the Day.

  ‘What, love?’ he replied, not taking his eyes off the screen.

  ‘The fertility treatment. This is the last month we can take it and then we have to look at other options.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Still hadn’t looked in my direction.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I could feel a wave of anger whipping up a storm in my stomach. I fought to stay calm.

  ‘So I take it from your reaction that you don’t want to talk about this then?’

  He sighed and finally turned to meet my gaze. ‘Now? You want to talk now?’

  ‘When else do we have, Colm? Between my job and yours, we’re lucky if we get to spend a waking hour together every second day.’

  I wasn’t exaggerating. Since he’d set up the business he was travelling a lot, pitching for clients, while I was working round the clock to keep us afloat. I wasn’t complaining – I knew it was part of the deal and I’d agreed to it. I wanted him to have his dream. I just didn’t expect it to come at the expense of mine.

  He pressed the off button on the remote control and threw it on the bed, clearly irritated.

  ‘Okay, shoot.’

  ‘What do you mean “shoot”?’

  The wave of frustration and anger at his attitude was rising and I wasn’t sure how I was going to stop it. It was in my throat now, ready to let loose. I could honestly say Colm and I had had maybe three or four major fights in the entire time we’d been together. Unless I could get this under control, we were on course for adding to that tally.

  He sighed. ‘Shauna, you’re the one who has all the opinions on this subject, so you tell me – what are we doing?’

  ‘You mean you can’t even be arsed having an opinion? Is that where we’re at now? I hear you talking about a bloody football game with Dan for hours upon endless bloody hours, and yet you can’t even be arsed talking about this for five minutes? This is not just me we’re talking about here, Colm. It’s us. Our family.’

  ‘We’ve already got a family,’ he shot back and something inside me snapped. Actually broke.

  ‘I don’t!’ I was definitely shouting now. ‘I don’t have a family. I know we have the boys, and I truly love them, but they’re not mine. My parents couldn’t give a fuck. And there was you… there was always you… but what’s happened, Colm? What’s happened to us? When did you become so detached that you couldn’t even be bothered talking to me about something that’s important?’

  ‘When it became all you talked about!’ he yelled back, making me flinch. Colm had never shouted at me. Not ever. It could have snapped me out of my fury, but it didn’t. It made it worse.

  ‘Because I’m trying to get you to care! You act like it doesn’t matter, but it does. It’s our future.’

  He twisted to face me now, eyes blazing, body language screaming conflict. ‘So why does it have to include more kids? Look, I’m not adverse to a baby. If it happens, fine. But I’m not going to lose sleep over it and I wish you’d just fecking drop it and let us get on with our lives. It’s become like a bloody obsession.’

  ‘Because I feel like I’m doing it on my own!’ I screamed. ‘Just me, Colm. On my fricking own. Trying to make something happen that’s important to me. And no matter how hard I try I can’t get you to share it.’

  ‘Why do I have to?’ His face was pure fury now, a look I didn’t recognize, had never seen before. Oh God, this was a fight on a whole different level from anything that had gone before.

  ‘Because… It matters. I want this. I’ve asked you for nothing since the day we met, and now I’m asking you to do this for me.’ I couldn’t make my mouth stop moving and I knew with absolute certainty that I was about to cross a line but I couldn’t pull back. ‘I take care of your boys every weekend, have done for all these years. I look after them, I love them, my money contributes to their maintenance and I never complain. I NEVER FUCKING COMPLAIN. I do that for you. And for them, but mostly for you. Yet you can’t do the same for me.’

  I paused, took a breath, then fired on.

  ‘You wanted to set up your own company and that means I have to double my income to pick up the slack, so I’m on fourteen-hour fucking days, not because I want to but because it’s important to you. It’s your dream, just like having children is mine. I’ll do anything to help you make it, Colm, anything at all, because that’s what you do for people you love. Their battles become yours. You fight for them. Do everything you can to make their lives as amazing as they can be.’ I took a gasp of breath, my chest hurting with the sheer exertion of trying to force all this out past a huge boulder that had lodged somewhere around my heart. ‘But you seem to think that doesn’t apply to you, that you get it all on your terms. Well you can fuck off. Seriously, Colm. Enough. I’ve spent my whole life with parents who couldn’t give a crap how I feel, who wouldn’t go out of their way to do something for me if their life depended on it and I’m not going to spend the rest of my life doing it with you. I’ve got to be worth something and if I’m not, then I don’t want to be here.’

  I jumped out of bed, needing oxygen that wasn’t available in a room that suddenly felt toxic. He said nothing, not a word, as I flew downstairs.

  In the kitchen, I poured a coffee from a pot that was off, but still warm, then opened the doors to the garden. It was almost a relief to feel the cold air, my vest and pyjama trousers no match for the night-time chill. I sat on the step, staring out at the hut Colm never painted, the greenhouse he never repaired and the empty space where he’d never build a swing set or a paddling pool. Empty. Void. An exact mirror of how I was feeling now that the anger had gone. No tears. No wails. No pacing up and down. Just cold empty stillness seeping into numb pores. I had a fleeting longing to call Annie, dismissed because a midnight call would startle her and I didn’t want to break her sleep.

  Maybe half an hour, perhaps an hour passed, time lost in the vacuum, before I heard him approach behind me.

  ‘You’d really leave?’ he asked, gently now, and as he sat down beside me everything about him suddenly felt familiar again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied honestly, still staring forward, unwillin
g and unwanting to see his face.

  ‘I could hide all your shoes so you couldn’t go.’ A tentative joke, his message hopeful, almost pleading. I could have ranted that this was no time for jokes, that he wasn’t listening, that I was buckling under the pain of this, but none of it would have meant a thing because this was the man I married, the one who made my heart melt on that first night, and who I’d loved because no matter what life threw at us he was that positive, funny guy. Even through the chaos of conflict, I knew that I couldn’t have it both ways. I couldn’t love that attitude, but hate it when it applied to me. It was who he was.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. No jokes. No witty banter. Just a serious man that I wasn’t sure I’d ever met before. ‘I know I’m crap at this and I know I haven’t been fair. You’re right to want me to support you but, Shauna, honestly, I don’t know how to change how I feel. It’s not that I don’t want to. If I could somehow switch on a desperate longing for another child then I would, but it’s just not in me.’

  I wanted to argue, but I also wanted to let him keep talking, fearing that if I cut him off during the first real conversation we’d had about this then he’d never start again, and the chance to resolve this would be gone. I just stared straight ahead, his silhouette mirroring mine, and listened as he carried on.

  ‘You know, I think in life that there are givers and takers, and you’re a giver. You can put other people before yourself, and you’re brilliant with the boys and you’re always the first person to pitch in when anyone needs help. You’re constantly wondering how other people are feeling and you genuinely care if there’s something wrong with them. I think you’re the best person I’ve ever known. And the kindest. But I can’t be like that. I just can’t.’

  ‘Not even for me?’ I asked, my voice struggling to raise above a whisper.

  ‘Shauna, I love you with all my heart,’ he said, deflecting the question. ‘But how I feel is how I feel. I can go along with what you want, but I won’t pretend I have a burning need for it to happen and I won’t be devastated if it doesn’t. The thing is, it seems that the more you want this, the more I lose my wife, and I know that’s made me avoid the situation and maybe even challenge it. I know I’ve been unsupportive and have been an arrogant prick.’ There was an embarrassed smile of honesty as he said that. ‘But I just want my wife back, the one that was happy with us, the one who woke up smiling and who lived for today, just happy because we were together. Shauna, I think that if we carry on this way it could cost us everything.’