The Perfect Mother

by Margaret Leroy

  Afterwards, there was music through our window. I went to lean on the window sill, still drugged and high with sex. A man with hair down his back and a rucksack covered in badges was sitting by the canal and playing the flute, and a gondola drifted past, and the underside of the bridge was bright with the fluid dance of reflected light from the water. And I thought, How can these things coexist—the life I used to have: and here, all this silk and shimmer, everything silvered, luminous? How can these things come together in a single life, a single story? And I couldn’t reconcile them. It was as though to believe in one world, you had to disbelieve in the other as though those other things—my mother, The Poplars, the cruel room with the door panels covered with brown paper—as though all these things had simply ceased to exist.

  I still think back to those moments in our early life together, that moment with the sound of the flute by the Ponte della Libertà; and the first time we made love, when he put the pendant on me, his gaze so hot and complete, my thirst for his touch. Yet now, amid the dailiness of caring for the children—all the demands, the practical things, the routine pleasant love-making—those moments too have receded: as though they too belong to another life.

  CHAPTER 12

  We put on our best clothes for the hospital: Daisy has her new red denim jacket, I wear my long black coat. In my bag I have a piece of paper on which I’ve written a list of Daisy’s symptoms. I learnt to do this from a book Nicky once lent me, on how to be assertive with your doctor. It was called My Body! My Decision! and had lots of alarming gynaecological drawings. Afterwards Richard will go straight on to his office. He’s in his suit, he has his Financial Times, he looks substantial, purposeful.

  Sinead is getting ready for school as we leave.

  ‘Good luck, Daisy,’ she says cheerily. ‘And don’t forget—if they want to take your organs, you mustn’t let them.’

  ‘Sinead, what on earth are you on about?’ says Richard.

  ‘They do, though, Dad,’ says Daisy. ‘They take children’s livers and they keep them in jars in garages.’

  Both girls are thoroughly pleased with themselves.

  We drive there through the thick traffic and the grey day. Daisy is silent now. There’s a car park at the hospital, with borders full of those shrubs with dull green leaves that don’t respond to the seasons, and we manage to find a space. The receptionist in Outpatients directs us to the clinic. The serious sharp smell in the corridor makes my pulse quicken. Daisy looks unperturbed, but her fingers are wrapped round my hand.

  We go through swing doors into the waiting room for the paediatric clinic. There are battered Fisher-Price toys and women’s magazines and board books and a GameCube and goldfish. Behind the desk there’s a nurse dressed like someone at a playgroup, in a green top and trousers. She has a gentle face.

  ‘You’re seeing Dr Taylor,’ she says.

  ‘That’s not the consultant?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Dr Taylor is Dr McGuire’s registrar.’

  She takes Daisy to be measured and weighed; and there is special anaesthetic cream and a big transparent plaster to be put in the crook of Daisy’s elbow, in case there are blood tests. When Daisy moves her arm it makes the plaster wrinkle, so it looks like an old woman’s skin.

  We sit by the goldfish tank and Richard opens his newspaper. A white board lists the doctors who are taking the clinic. Daisy looks yearningly at the GameCube, but it’s been monopolised by a lanky boy with exuberant hair like Bart Simpson. A sticker that says he was brave today is fixed to the front of his sweatshirt.

  ‘You could read a book,’ I tell her.

  She shakes her head. ‘They’re baby books,’ she says.

  Two of the children waiting are in wheelchairs, and there’s a pale wild girl, with a crooked body and thick glasses. Her father speaks to her in curt commands as he helps her get a drink from the machine. You can tell it’s a technique he has perfected over years, the only way to get through. There’s something in me, something scared and primitive, that is alarmed by these children, as though their misfortunes and sadnesses could in some way injure my child. I tell myself we’re so fortunate that we are not like them—that whatever is wrong with Daisy, soon it will all be over.

  The doctors come to their doors to call for their patients. Dr Taylor is a woman in her twenties, in a flowered skirt, with a vague uncertain air. Dr McGuire has the red door; I watch as he comes out. He’s thin and fair-haired and cerebral-looking, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He doesn’t smile, but he has an acute clever face. I know I want this doctor for my child.

  A sense of purpose forms in me. I get up and go to the nurse behind the desk.

  ‘I’m so worried about Daisy,’ I tell her. ‘She isn’t eating and she’s scarcely been to school. Is there any chance we could see the consultant?’

  She shakes her head. ‘He’s all booked up today.’

  Tears well in me and I don’t swallow them down. ‘I mean, I’m sure Dr Taylor is great…It’s just…’ I can’t finish the sentence. A tear spills down my face. It’s not exactly deliberate, but I don’t try to stop it. I don’t like being this pleading, tearful person, but I feel I have no choice. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I tell her.

  Her eyes rest on me, tender with concern.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ she says. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  I watch as she knocks on the red door and goes in. I sit by Daisy and blink away my tears and we talk about the goldfish, their three-second memories, their frilled and opalescent tails.

  The nurse comes out. She’s smiling.

  ‘I’ve fixed it,’ she says. ‘He’ll see you. You may have to wait a little longer though.’

  ‘Thank you.’ This is a gift: I want to hug her.

  I turn to Richard. ‘You don’t mind the wait, do you?’

  ‘Of course not, darling,’ he says. ‘You must do what you think best. Eleven is my absolute limit, though.’

  There’s a wide French door that leads to an inner courtyard. We can see a play-tunnel and some plastic pushalong vehicles, their colours singing out in the dense grey day. Daisy pulls at my hand; she wants to go there.

  The toys are inviting, and there’s a surface that looks like tarmac but yields to the feet, so you wouldn’t get hurt if you fell. We look around for a while, but now she’s out here, there’s nothing she wants to try. It’s starting to rain, the kind of gritty, insistent rain that sneaks in under your collar. It’s somehow sad out here, with no-one playing; a sense of desolation washes through me. We wander back inside. Bart Simpson is still intent on the Nintendo, so we skim through Prima, searching for pictures of cats. Richard looks at his watch.

  But then the red door opens, and Dr McGuire comes out and calls Daisy’s name. I take her hand and we go in. I smile and say hello, but he doesn’t return my smile. I tell myself this doesn’t matter, that this clever unsmiling doctor will help us, will heal Daisy.

  There is a sofa for patients; we sit on it, with Daisy in the middle. It’s meant, I suppose, to be casual, to put us at our ease, but really it’s too low. Dr McGuire sits at his desk, looking down at us. His arms are folded on the desk in front of him.

  ‘So, Daisy, how are you doing?’ he says.

  She clears her throat. ‘All right.’

  ‘Dr Carey tells me you’ve not been feeling well.’

  She nods.

  ‘And how are you today?’

  ‘A bit better,’ she says.

  ‘Well, that’s good news,’ he says.

  I don’t know whether to speak. But he has to know how things are, or he won’t be able to help us.

  ‘It’s not quite true. She was feeling very sick last night,’ I tell him, my voice high-pitched, insistent.

  He raises his hand, as though to silence me.

  ‘Be quiet,’ he says. ‘You’ll get your turn in a minute.’

  I feel a quick spurt of rage.

  He talks to Daisy about school: whether she’s happy, w
hat are her favourite subjects, whether she has friends. She replies in hushed monosyllables. None of this seems to have anything to do with her illness. I think how little time we have, and there’s so much to get through. I worry I’ve made a mistake in being so pushy, that we should have stayed with the vague young woman with the flowered skirt.

  Then at last he asks us for the history of her symptoms. I take the notes out of my bag. I tell him how it started with flu and how little she eats, about her nausea and the pains in her legs and not going into school. Richard sits there silently, nodding or murmuring agreement, his Financial Times beside him on the sofa. When Dr McGuire responds to what I say, or asks a question, it’s Richard that he looks at. This makes me feel like I’m not really there.

  ‘Obviously we need to investigate further,’ he says then. ‘I want to repeat those blood tests and I’d like to X-ray her legs and do a barium meal. And we need to get her digestive symptoms properly under control. I’m going to prescribe three medicines,’ he tells Richard. ‘There’s one for stomach acidity and one for nausea and one to increase lability. And I’d like to see you again in one month’s time. If she isn’t better then, maybe we’ll have to approach things rather differently.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Richard. He’s starting to get up.

  But I don’t move. ‘Daisy doesn’t find medicine very easy to take,’ I tell him.

  He looks at me then. His gaze is pale and cold. I know just how I must seem to him, as though there is some uneasy empathy between us. That I’m fussy, overprotective, speaking for my daughter, my coat too long and grungey, my voice too shrill.

  ‘She can’t keep any kind of medicine down,’ I say. ‘Not even Calpol.’

  ‘Well,’ he says briskly, ‘give her a sweet or a biscuit to eat afterwards. All right?’

  He half rises. His impatience with me crackles in the air between us.

  But I need him to hear. ‘I’ve tried. It doesn’t help. The medicine just comes up again.’

  ‘How old is she? Eight?’

  I nod.

  ‘Most children can take medicines at eight. I’m sure you’ll manage,’ he says, and smiles at Richard. He gets up, moves to open the door. ‘Right, then,’ he says.

  We go back to the waiting room.

  Richard puts on his coat.

  ‘And now I really must be off,’ he says. ‘I’ll give Francine a ring to say I’m on my way. You’re happy to handle the rest on your own?’

  ‘Of course,’ I tell him.

  ‘You were brilliant, munchkin.’ He kisses Daisy’s cheek. She rubs her head against him, basking in the warmth of his approval.

  ‘Feeling happier?’ he says to me.

  I nod. We can’t talk here.

  ‘At least we know it’s being properly investigated,’ he says. ‘I’m sure he’ll find out what’s wrong. I think we can relax now. You just feel he knows what he’s on about, don’t you?’

  He goes. I hear his footsteps moving briskly down the corridor.

  We’re taken to the treatment room, where cotton-wool sheep hang from the ceiling, and there are two nurses, one to take the blood and one to be reassuring.

  ‘These are really really good veins,’ says the nurse who’s taking the blood. ‘Daisy, your veins are beautiful.’

  Ridiculously, I am proud of her, for having such beautiful veins.

  She gets out the sticker that says how brave Daisy’s been. Daisy gives me an eloquent look, raising her eyebrows a little, but lets it be stuck on her jacket.

  We go to Radiology, where Daisy’s legs are X-rayed, and then to the pharmacy where we are given a numbered ticket, like in a children’s shoe-shop at the end of the holidays. They ask for Daisy’s weight, so they can work out the dose. There’s a lot of medicine, some of it with a syringe so you can measure it down to the very last drop. This amazes me—that you could give medicine to a child with such precision. They hand it to us on a polystyrene tray.

  ‘You didn’t like him, did you, Mum?’ says Daisy, in the car.

  ‘You could tell?’

  In the rear view mirror, I see her nod, and the ghost of a smile.

  ‘But I’m sure he’s good at his job, and that’s what really matters,’ I tell her. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I liked the sheep mobile. But this sticker is awful.’ She pulls it off and screws it into a ball. ‘You looked ever so cross,’ she says.

  When we get home and Daisy is watching television, I put all the medicine bottles out on the kitchen table. I taste the medicines. There’s one that’s bitter, and one that sticks to your teeth, but the third one isn’t too bad, though it has a strange aftertaste, like a stale boiled sweet.

  I tell myself this must be possible: eight-year-olds can take medicines; everybody says so. I measure some into a spoon. I get a glass of water and a chocolate flake. From the back of the cupboard I find some aromatherapy oil, a Christmas present from Nicky, and sprinkle it on a tissue.

  I go to get Daisy.

  ‘Shall we just do it?’

  ‘OK.’ She’s resigned.

  I sit her at the table.

  ‘The water and the flake are to take the taste away,’ I tell her. ‘And if you like you can sniff the tissue as you take it, so you won’t smell the smell. You do it in your own way. Just in your own time. Perhaps just a tiny sip today, that would be fantastic.’

  I sit by the window and flick through the Tuscany brochure, trying to lose myself in those sunflower fields and dazzling skies: trying not to watch her.

  She picks up the spoon, looks at it for a moment, raises it to her lips. She takes the tiniest sip. Immediately she starts retching. She rushes to the sink. She’s shivering with nausea. I hold her, smooth back her hair.

  ‘We’ll leave it for today,’ I tell her. ‘You did so well.’

  She’s retching still but nothing’s coming up. We go into the living room and I bring her duvet and wrap her up on the sofa. It’s Diagnosis Murder on the television. There’s always something so bleak about these daytime programmes: you think of all the other people who are watching with you, people who are old or lonely, people without purpose. I sit for a while with my arm around her. The nausea shakes her. The medicine has triggered her retching and now it won’t be stopped.

  Eventually, I go to the kitchen to make myself a coffee. It’s only one o’clock, but the light is so low it feels as though dusk is falling. My house is drab in the raw grey light. Outside, water drips from the branches of the birch tree and the lawn is full of wormcasts. We’re stagnating here: life is passing us by. I let myself think for a moment of how Daisy’s life should be, of the rich familiar rhythms of primary school: choir practice and spelling tests and raw scraped knees from running and skidding in the playground, and noisy rainy lunchtimes, drawing extravagant cats on the backs of spare worksheets with Megan, squabbles and making up—not sitting wrapped in a duvet watching Diagnosis Murder and feeling sick. A sense of loss tugs at me.

  The medicine bottles are lined up on the table, like a reproach. The chemical sweetness of the one I tasted is still on my tongue. I wonder what happens now: I don’t know how to do this. Perhaps like with a baby—pinching her nose so she has to open her mouth, forcing the spoon in, tipping her head back, holding her while she retches? Is that what I have to do?

  I pile the bottles up on the polystyrene tray and shut them away in the cupboard.

  CHAPTER 13

  When Daisy is sleeping and Sinead is on the Internet—in theory researching a project on the Weimar Republic, though almost certainly on Facebook—I go up to the attic. Richard is still not home: there’s no one I can talk to. The night sky through the skylight is black and unforgiving, with spiky stars. I can still see Dr McGuire’s acute clever face, as though his eyes are on me. I feel a child’s futile rage: I’m repelled by his voice, and his coldness and the way he silenced me.

  There are some narcissi that I had in a vase in the living room. They’re fading now, and I’ve brought one here to dr
aw. Maybe this will calm me. It’s waiting on my table. In the dim light you can scarcely see the stem, the flower looks as if it’s floating. I shall draw it in pen and ink, just tracing out the form, trying to capture that lightness, that lovely effortless intricacy, the way it moves upwards like breath.

  I start to work, but the light isn’t good enough really, the overhead light bulb’s gone and I’m using just the table lamp; and I’m restless, full of anger, and the drawing goes all wrong. The shape that I draw is lumpen, solid; it sits squat on the page, weighed down and bulbous. I feel disgust with what I’ve done. I draw a line straight through the drawing, then again and again, all my anger coming out through my hand. I go on like a furious child, crossing out over and over, the feeling moving through me like a charge—my rage that Daisy is ill, that no one seems able to help us, that no one understands.

  Then suddenly the mood burns out; it starts to seem strange, excessive. I put down the pen. I look at what I’ve done, my crossings-out. The lines are like hair being blown, like matted branches or the tendrils of vines. The misdrawn flower is hidden; only hinted at beneath this thick tangled texture of my crossings-out: a ghost-narcissus, a shadow. I find I’m drawing again, the pen moving over the page, adding to my drawing as though my hand is separate from my mind. The lines circle, swirl, the tunnels open out into whirlpools, labyrinths. There is a space in the centre of this shape, in the middle of the vortex. I need to fill in the space: something has to go there. I doodle, playing around, almost at peace now, curious, waiting, the anger all out there in the lines on the page.

  I look at what I’ve drawn. A face, young, bony, scared, with shadow patches round the eyes. A sharp face, like an alien in a cartoon: a thin wild child. I don’t know who she is, this child in the heart of the labyrinth.

  I look at my picture, and see that it is interesting—the vortex and the child. I draw another child, and another, tiny, in the margins of the picture—but these are complete, not just faces, their bodies twisted, shadowed. I’m doodling really, not trying, letting it happen. The children’s arms and legs are slender, sharply angled; their limbs fly around, they are full of movement, of energy, but there is nowhere they can go to, they are trapped, imprisoned, by the lines like tumbled hair or forests. They surprise me, yet they are also familiar: as though I dream these children sometimes, and then forget my dreams.