by Claire Allan
She opens the door and looks me up and down, her perfect little nose slightly upturned.
“Hey, Schmoo-face,” I grin, belying the fear that is bubbling up inside of me. “Is your mammy in?”
Lily darts a look behind her in the direction of the kitchen and then gestures at me to come closer so that she can whisper in my ear. I get close to her, breathing in the freshly laundered smell of her gorgeous Cinderella pyjamas and feeling her soft curls brush against my cheek. “My mummy is very cross with you, Auntie Grace. I’m not supposed to tell you she is in.”
I’m struck by her honesty, and whisper back, “I know, sweetie. I was a bold girl. But I need to talk to your mammy anyway.”
At this Daisy sticks her head around the kitchen door to see who is chatting to her little one. She looks distinctly unimpressed to see me – in fact she has a face on her that would curdle milk.
“Actually, Grace, we were just about to go out. This is a bad time,” she says, not quite looking me in the eye.
“No, we weren’t, Mummy. I was getting ready for bed,” Lily interjects, garnering a deathly glare from her mum which prompts her to burst into tears and run into the living-room.
I want to run to her and give her a Big Squishy but I’m sensing that Daisy doesn’t want me over the threshold of her house.
“I really don’t think this is a good time,” Daisy says. “But we need to talk,” I answer, waving my bag of goodies at her, hoping the sight of wine and chocolate will bribe her into forgiving me. It’s a time-honoured tradition for us, to show up with a bag of treats when something needs to be talked over, or mended. It has never been known to fail – not until now anyway.
“I really think I’m too angry to talk,” she adds, while the squealing moves up a pitch in the living room as Lily demands the attention of a grown-up to comfort her.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I say, feeling tears prick in my eyes. “I think you’d better go and see to Lily.”
I turn and start to walk down the path. I’m waiting for Daisy to call me back, tell me I’m a big stupid fecker and get the long-stemmed wineglasses out, but she doesn’t. Instead I hear a closing of a door and my tears start to fall.
I climb into my car, throwing my peace offering in the back seat, and try to compose myself. I feel as if I need to get away again, but I know I can’t. I don’t think it would help this time. Instead, I switch on the engine and drive home to seek comfort in the arms of my husband and son but feeling, all the time, that something has gone dreadfully wrong.
Once Jack has gone to bed, after I have comforted myself by cuddling him and enjoying some slobbery toddler kisses, I open the wine and pour myself a glass. Aidan comes in, he knows he doesn’t have to speak, so he just gives me a cuddle and lets me have a little cry. Despite everything I’m remarkably impressed that I don’t get myself into an hysterical mess this time.
“I’m going to run you a bath,” he says, kissing the top of my head, “and you are going to sit in it until you have turned all wrinkly and you have eaten at least half of that chocolate.”
I breathe him in, enjoying this closeness and I get ready for my bath.
Once immersed in the bubbles, candles softly glowing around me, I pick up the phone and ring my mother. I relate what has happened, barely pausing for breath, and she makes the appropriate soothing noises.
“You know I love Daisy as if she were my own daughter,” she begins.
“Thanks, Mammy,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“You know what I mean, dear. But we all know she can be a fiery one. She has been hurt before and she doesn’t like secrets. I can see why she feels aggrieved.”
“But I didn’t know what was going on myself!” I say, in a somewhat exasperated tone of voice.
“I know that,” Mammy answers, “but you know Daisy’s defences can fly up quicker than a rat up a drainpipe.”
“But how do I make it better?” I ask, sinking my teeth in the Galaxy Caramel.
“I don’t know, darling. Give her a little time to breathe and see what happens.”
Damn. You see, mammies are supposed to know what to do. They are supposed to have magic sticking-plasters for almost every situation.
“Grace,” she says, “I love you. Take care, my darling. Tomorrow will be better.”
“I love you too, Mammy,” I say and hang up, realising I’m absolutely exhausted and just too tired to think about this any longer.
Sinking into my bed I feel the cool, fresh sheets envelop me (fair play to Aidan – running a bath and changing sheets!) and I drift off to sleep. I don’t know if it’s the exhaustion of the day, the glass of Merlot or the ‘happy pills’ that have done the trick, but I sleep soundly, putting all worries and stresses to the back of my head. Occasionally I’m aware of Aidan beside me, his soft touch, his occasional hug and even though I’m only half- conscious I hope this means things are on the up for us.
❃ ❃ ❃
When I wake up he is lying beside me, staring at me as I sleep.
“We are going to be okay, aren’t we, babe?” I ask. “I hope so,” he answers.
Given the last few days I don’t think I can ask for fairer than that.
Chapter 9
I am quite shocked at how fast the last three days have passed. I’m sitting outside now, on the fire escape at work, taking a breather and lapping up some of the late evening sunshine.
The September edition has just been put to bed. The rest of the staff are standing around smoking their lungs out and talking about going to the pub. I’m just planning on going home. Aidan is working and Jack and I will have the whole night to ourselves. I’ve promised the wee man that we will go for a drive to Buncrana, to drink in that summer evening air. He doesn’t really understand – he is only two – but it is more important to me than ever that we do these things together, whether I’m tired or stressed or just wanting to lie on the sofa and feel a little sorry for myself.
The atmosphere in the office is buoyant to say the least.
Louise has got over her almighty huff, largely due to a verbal arse-kicking from Sinéad who reminded her I was in fact quite damn fecking good at health and beauty stuff. Of course, being Friday, Louise is also already planning a night on the town drinking until she passes out and her friends have to carry her home. Even grumpy John has a smile on his face. He confided in me earlier he was really proud of how the photos turned out at the shoot – and to his credit they weren’t the worst we’ve ever had – even if the subjects all had a certain look of fear about them.
I find myself smiling along, even though I’ve been fighting a wave of nausea all day which is an apparently recognised side effect of said happy pills, which I’m starting to think should be renamed bokey-feeling-in-the- pit-of-your-stomach tablets. So I’m guessing, even if I was footloose and fancy-free, I wouldn’t be up for a drinking session tonight anyway. But I do feel good inside because I’ve managed four days at work, calm, collected and together. Aidan and I have talked this week, a lot. I’m not saying we have found a magic cure to all our problems, nor am I saying he doesn’t still find me ‘fucking unbearable’, but we are making progress. We did have an ‘incident’ last night where I broke down in floods of tears over some soppy documentary on adopted children and I couldn’t stop crying long after it was over. Aidan had warned me not to watch it, but, of course, I figured I was now a stronger person. He tried to be sympathetic to my sobs but, to be fair to him, there is only so much bawling any man can take in a week from an over-emotional woman. He threw a box of tissues in my direction and stormed off upstairs, leaving me to cry that little bit more.
Usually in circumstances such as these, when upsetting programmes involving children are on the telly, I would phone Daisy and we would cry together, speaking in some hybrid language of our own making, gulping between sobs and blowing our noses in unison. We would put the world to rights and hang up a bit more settled, but Daisy and I are still not speaking.
I
am taking the advice of Mammy and giving Daisy room to breathe and think things over. I am reminding myself on an hourly basis that Daisy can be a stubborn one from time to time. I know enough about the grudges she can hold against those whom she has perceived to have wronged her to know that this could be a long wait. I can’t say it is easy. I miss her terribly. I find myself picking up the phone to text or call several times a day and I have to use every inch of willpower not to.
Aidan says I should be angry with Daisy – after all, I’ve been going through a shit time – but, while part of me wishes she would see things from my perspective, I know that being angry won’t help. I’m also aware that in her eyes I have committed two of the most horrendous sins of all time. First of all, I didn’t tell her I was feeling as if one or two sandwiches were falling out of my picnic basket leaving me a couple short – which was simply because I didn’t have a fecking clue myself it was happening until it had happened. The second, and this dawned on me when I woke on Wednesday morning, rested and feeling brighter, was the more serious of the offences and I knew this was the reason for the callousness and door slamming. I had, in her eyes, abandoned my child. Admittedly, as I see it, I had abandoned him with his granny and his daddy and had been gone a mere twenty-four hours, but this would not cut the mustard with Daisy Cassidy. Daisy has a thing about absent parents, arising from the dreadful TMF (The Mighty Fuckwit) incident which we are not allowed to speak of ever again.
TMF is Daisy’s ex and Lily’s dad. Even though I’ve known her for two and half years I am yet to discover what his real name is. While I don’t know if he is a Billy, a Bob or an Elton, I know that he hurt Daisy more than anyone has ever hurt her. His cardinal sin was not so much that he fell in love with someone else (known in these circles as The Slut) and left Daisy when Lily was eeny, it was that he failed to see his gorgeous elfin-faced daughter as the precious, gorgeous little woman she was and fecked off out of her life. When Daisy upped sticks and moved to Derry, TMF didn’t make any efforts to stop her. He didn’t plead with her at the airport not to take his gorgeous girl away. And when he did decide he wanted her, he just set about breaking both their hearts again.
Daisy says she is glad he is gone, but should the topic ever come up of parents who abandon their children a hard, stony glare sets on her face as she launches into a one-woman attack on “dirty feckers who leave their wains”. Usually I nod and agree with her – of course, I say, I could never leave Jack, not even overnight . . .
Therefore I have realised my leaving of Jack, overnight, with only a stupid wee note to tell him I wasn’t leaping off the bridge, will put me in the same category as “those dirty feckers” and, if I know Daisy like I think I know Daisy, she will be not be thinking about making friends with me right now – she will be planning my demise by firing squad.
I want this to settle, to pass and for us to be friends again. I feel all at sea, and much as Jack listens he isn’t much for answering back with witty one-liners and support. When the dark moods come, as they do, at least once a day, I wonder if Daisy will ever forgive me. I wonder if I will ever see Lily again. I imagine seeing them in town and their crossing the road to avoid me and our becoming ships that pass in the night. The thought of that, and the loneliness that would accompany it, is unbearable. I had already made the decision that should Aidan and I ever have another child I was going to ask Daisy to be godmother even though she is an unholy heathen. The fact that she wouldn’t be there to do that hurts me more than anything. Besides, we have no one else to ask. Aidan’s only sister, Máiréad, did the duty last time around along with Himself’s best friend Jamesie. The rest of Aidan’s friends are drunken ne’er-do-wells and as for mine, well, there isn’t exactly a queue.
Shaking these negative thoughts from my head, in the manner which Dr Dishy has ordered me to do, I say goodbye to my work colleagues and jump in the car to head to Susie’s to pick Jack up. This is not the first time this week I’ve thanked my lucky stars that Daisy had not had a place for Jack in Little Tikes when he was tiny.
The sun is beating down and the inside of my Focus (a sensible, family car, more’s the pity) is like an oven. I open the windows as far as I can and switch on the engine, the radio simultaneously springing to life.
There is an old Harry Belafonte classic playing. I recognise it from the film Beetlejuice, and as I drive I sing at the top of my lungs about shaking my body and jumping in the line, even though I have absolutely no idea what that means. I realise I may be getting strange looks (not least because my windows are down and everyone can hear my not-so-melodic tones), but I don’t give a damn. I imagine myself dancing, shimmying and shaking, wearing nice shoes and a skirt that has loads of movement and makes me look super-sexy and I feel that old longing re-emerge – that dance fever which I’ve hidden for so long. Instead of burying it, however, like I normally do, I allow it to wash over me.
When I pick Jack up, strap him in his car seat and head straight towards Buncrana, I keep the music up loud and I sing, much to his amusement. I guess I figure if I sing loud enough I’ll drown out the bad feelings and concentrate on what is actually working in my life – which right now is my relationship with my gorgeous boy.
Jack was born in the early hours of a Tuesday morning after twenty-eight hours of labour in which I wanted to die. He had been planned for, prayed for and worshipped before he was conceived. (There was fair bit of praying – well, taking the Lord’s name in vain – during the whole birthing process as well.)
If I’m honest, when he arrived, contrary to all my expectations my primary feeling was exhaustion, seconded by a need to do everything the proper way for him. But my feelings were not of overwhelming love. I loved him, yes, I can’t deny that – but this was not the most-amazing- feeling-in-the-world experience I had been told about since the moment I held my first Tiny Tears doll as a young child. Motherhood is tough and the induction period is a real baptism of fire. My personal experience was that I was exhausted and sore and very unsure of what to do best for my child. I didn’t know if I was feeding him enough, or too little, or not winding him properly, not bathing him enough, cuddling him too much or cuddling him too little. I became obsessed with baby books offering miracle routines and spent so much time trying to be the ‘perfect’ mammy that I actually became the perfect basket-case instead. Aidan of course just saw that I did everything I should. He was exhausted between working late shifts and helping with his son and it never occurred to him that I might have been floundering. I remember feeling as if I simply could not manage another feed or another nappy change and, while I did everything the wee man needed, I did it mechanically. Even hugging came down to doing so because whatever daft routine we were on that week dictated it was hugging time. I ignored whatever maternal instincts I did have if they didn’t match the Baby Whisperer’s EASY Routine and the result is I never allowed myself to get to know my own baby’s personality. And if you don’t know someone, how can you fall in love with them?
I don’t know when I realised I was falling in love with Jack, but when it started – as it was a gradual process – I felt that strange mixture of elation and fear normally reserved for falling in love with Mr Right.
Every day brought, and continues to bring, a new joy. The passion I feel for him scares me though. I wonder how on earth would I ever manage if something happened to him and my fear is that, because I didn’t want him with all my heart in those early days and weeks, justice will be meted out to me in the form of having that which I hold most dear stolen from me.
I glance in the rear-view mirror and see him sitting there, his curly fair hair sticky with sweat, his cheeks rosy red, his tiny new teeth a glorious white in his smile and I feel my heart swell. I have to stop myself from crying, from breaking down with the sheer emotion of this love. So I sing louder, and he joins in and when we arrive at the beach, the sun still blazing, I lift him from his seat and pull him to me, breathing his toddler smell (a mixture of Quavers, lavender bubble-bath an
d crayons) before we run hand in hand to the park.
He whoops with joy in the swings, shouting at me to push him higher and higher, and when he is bored with that we walk to the beach and collect shells and stones in his tiny blue bucket. He runs in and out of the water, not giving a damn about getting wet or standing on stones and for a moment I’m envious of the way he embraces life without a care in the world.
Looking at my watch I realise his bed time is long past, but I don’t care. We are having too much fun so we play until he comes and cuddles into me and we watch the sun start to set over Lough Swilly. I wrap him inside my huge cardigan and carry him back to the car, his sleepy eyes staring at me, and as I strap him into his seat and plug his sweet mouth with a dummy he pipes up that he loves me.
Driving home I feel tired, but contented. I don’t care that I’m going to be home alone and, for tonight anyway, I don’t care about Daisy and our falling-out. I go home, put Jack in his cot and climb into a bath myself – not feeling the need for a glass of wine or a bar of chocolate.
I decide I’m going to treat myself tonight, so when I eventually climb out of the bath I light some candles in the bedroom and scent the oil burner with jasmine. I slather myself in body cream and take my favourite, expensive, perfume from its exalted position at the back of the shelf and spray it on generously. It’s the same bottle of Chanel No 5 that Mammy bought me for my wedding day. There isn’t much left now and the thought of the bottle being finished upsets me so I dole it out on special occasions only. Deep-conditioning my hair and slipping into my fluffy robe, I lie back and switch on the stereo, allowing the music to wash over me.
Between the sad songs and the happy songs I find myself singing along at the top of my voice until I fall into yet another peaceful slumber. When Aidan comes home, reeking of beer and cigarettes, he cuddles up close to me and for once I don’t move away. When he strokes my arm, I let him. When he caresses my thigh, I let him. When he turns me towards him and kisses me, softly yet deeply, I let him and then I let him make love to me.
