Rainy Days & Tuesdays

by Claire Allan

  This is the house where Aidan told me I was pathetic and I felt something in me give up.

  Taking a deep breath I ring the doorbell. It seems the best thing to do. I hear tiny footsteps battering down the hallway, a little voice calling, “Mammy, Mammy!” excitedly and I hear Aidan laugh and tell Jack to calm down. It sounds like so many other days when I come home, except that I can’t escape the fact that it isn’t.

  This may never be my home again.

  The door opens and Jack jumps into my arms before I’ve had time to catch my breath. He snuggles close, patting my back with his pudgy hands, reassuring me in my own words: “I’m here. I’m here!” And he licks my face in his attempt at a kiss.

  Aidan is standing awkwardly behind him. I’m both pleased and worried to see that he still looks like shit. He is desperately in need of a shave and he clearly hasn’t been sleeping all that well.

  “Hi,” I say and he nods in response. “How did you get on tonight?” he asks.

  I reply that I did okay without revealing the details. He tells me I’m looking well and I smile back at him, unsure how to tell him he looks like he needs a good wash, a good feed and some clean clothes.

  “Do you want to come in for a cup of tea?” he asks, making for the kitchen before I have the chance to answer.

  I was going to say no. I was going to just leave, put Jack in the car and drive back to Daisy’s to avoid any more weirdness, but since the kettle is on I feel it would be rude to say no.

  Walking into the kitchen I notice that it looks different. The same things are there, but just not in the order I would have had them. There are dishes by the sink and the washing-machine door is open. I push it shut and start running water in the sink to do the dishes. It’s automatic – I’m not trying to make a big gesture, I’m just being the creature of habit I’ve always been.

  “You don’t have to do that, Grace,” Aidan says, placing his hand on mine as if to stop me.

  I shrug him off. “It’ll only take two minutes,” I say and carry on.

  Jack is playing on the floor at our feet, pushing his toy truck up and down the floor and chattering to himself.

  “Seriously, Grace,” Aidan says, his voice still calm but insistent, and he turns the taps off. “Don’t you think we should talk?”

  I’m shocked. Aidan Adams has never in his entire life looked to talk about anything. He is a man. He does not do talking. Occasionally he listens (or pretends to, I notice the glazing of the eyes), but he does not talk. His excuse has always been that he is not a great conversationalist. So he must be serious about things now if he is actually instigating a chat.

  “I’m not sure we have anything to say,” I reply honestly, my voice trembling at the words.

  He looks hurt.

  “Aidan, I just don’t know what is going on at the moment, with us, or with me, but I know that you let me down.” My voice cracks and Jack looks up at me concerned so I compose myself long enough for him to turn his attention back to his toys.

  “How?” Aidan asks and I’m amazed that he seems genuinely confused by this.

  “You said I was pathetic. I had a drink and ate some fecking toast and that made me pathetic,” I whisper and it sounds stupid now to my ears. It sounds like I have walked out on eight years of relationship over a slice of toast.

  “I didn’t mean it,” he replies.

  “Well, what did you mean, Aidan? Because it really sounded to me like you did. I’m trying to change and you promised to support me but you didn’t. You let me down.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I feel like sniping at him, like telling him that damn right he is sorry and so he should be, or telling him he doesn’t even know the meaning of the word sorry. Internally my brain is singing a little chorus of ‘Just you wait, Aidan Adams, just you wait!’ but then I look at him and I want to believe he is sorry. I want this to work.

  “Come home,” he says and I see tears in his eyes, mirroring the ones in my own.

  “I can’t,” I say, using every ounce of strength in me, “not yet. I’m not saying never, but I need to be sure you won’t hurt me again.”

  “I won’t, I promise.”

  “You can’t promise that, honey, not at the moment.” “Can I see you again?”

  “Of course,” I reply.

  “Can I take you out for lunch on Saturday? Can we talk?”

  “Yes,” I reply because I simply don’t have the strength to say no to him any more. I have hurt him, and myself, enough for one day.

  Chapter 17

  I’m barely in the door at Daisy’s when Mammy phones demanding to know how the big meeting with “the ex” has gone.

  She has taken to calling Aidan “the ex” now in a bid to sound perfectly okay with my crumbling marriage, when all the time I secretly know she is pinning all her hopes on a romantic reunion and the birth of at least one more grandchild. Sometimes I swear she has a secret camera trained on me at all times so that she can watch my every move – her timing with phone calls such as these, when I’m tired and emotional, is always perfect.

  Daisy lifts a now-sleeping Jack from my arms, gives me a reassuring smile and takes him up to bed. I walk into the living-room and plonk myself down unceremoniously on the squishy white sofa.

  Sitting beside my favourite seat is a bottle of wine cooling in an ice bucket and some Milky Way Crispy Rolls (a low-fat treat in the eyes of Weightloss Wonders). Daisy has scrawled a wee note saying “Thought you might need these” and I notice a box of tissues is sitting on the floor – proper soft balsam tissues, not the rough stuff that hurts your skin after a good cry. The tears start to fall at this kind gesture.

  “It was okay,” I tell Mammy through muffled sniffs and occasional sobs. “He said sorry and he wants me to come home.”

  “Do you want to go home?”

  “I don’t know what I want,” I say, realising at this stage that I sound like a broken record.

  I decide I’m not going to tell Mammy about the big date on Saturday – I don’t want to get her hopes up that we are going to fall madly in love again and help her fulfil her dream.

  She soothes me with her usual sage words of advice. “This too will pass, pet,” she says. “I know it feels very scary now but it will pass and, you never know, you could come out the other side stronger for it.”

  I know Mammy is speaking from personal experience. I know that she believes love can overcome everything because it overcame her and Daddy splitting up when I was just a bit of a wain. It was after she had lost that last baby – when she spent a lot of time crying and staring into space.

  ❃ ❃ ❃

  One day I came home from school, my Auntie Kathleen having picked me up, and I found that Daddy wasn’t home. I assumed he was working late but things started to slip into place slowly over the coming hours. When I brushed my teeth that night I noticed there were only two toothbrushes in the chipped blue-and-white mug that sat on the window ledge. Daddy’s shaving brush, the one with the stubby bristles that tickled and jagged at the same time, was gone and when I went into their bedroom, to cuddle up on the bed for my night-time story, Mammy didn’t usher me into my own bedroom when the book was over.

  I slept there, in their bed, confused. I waited for my daddy to come home. I couldn’t figure out just where he was and when I woke in the morning, just me and Mammy there together, I wondered had he gone to the same place as all the babies.

  “Has Daddy gone to get my wee brother?” I asked innocently over my Weetabix and Mammy started crying.

  Needless to say I was even more confused when I went to school with Auntie Kathleen who told me not to worry about things but still would not explain what had happened.

  It was only when I started sobbing at break-time that my daddy was dead that the teacher called a rather shamefaced Mammy up to the school who looked eternally mortified as she explained Daddy has simply moved back home to his parents for a while and was, last time she saw him anyway, still very m
uch alive and kicking.

  I was allowed home early that day and Mammy took me into the Chat ‘N’ Chew for a gravy ring and a glass of milk while she explained that while they both still loved me with all their hearts, Mammy and Daddy just weren’t so sure they loved each other any more.

  I nodded as if I understood, but I didn’t because mammies and daddies were supposed to love each other and be together always. I guessed this was just another one of those times when I would have to be brave.

  I saw Daddy that weekend. He looked tired and worn out – the same kind of look Aidan has now, I suppose. His trousers were ironed funny, with a strong crease up the front that let me know that Granny Adams and not Mammy had ironed them.

  He pulled me into his arms and held me so tight that I thought I might actually suffocate and then he told me he loved me and handed me a Crystal Barbie as a present. As the most coveted Barbie among the girls of Primary One, and a present usually only brought by the likes of Santa as it was so expensive, I figured this whole separation lark couldn’t be so bad after all.

  The pair of them over-compensated for their own confusion by spoiling me with treats like trips to Fiorentini’s ice-cream parlour and days on the train to Portrush or the bus to Buncrana.

  It was only when they handed me back to one another, when their eyes met and one of them had to leave, that I saw the hurt creep in and on those days I would always, without exception, cry myself sleep.

  They were reconciled eventually, of course. I came home from school one day and noticed the toothbrush back in the mug and the shaving brush sitting by the sink. Daddy and Mammy were both smiling and it was around that time Mammy told me we were now the Three Amigos.

  In my childlike brain I guessed they had been separated for about four weeks. I was shocked as an adult to learn it had been six months and that they both met with solicitors at one stage to discuss legal proceedings.

  ❃ ❃ ❃

  As Mammy goes to end the conversation, something in her clicks that tonight was the big weigh-in.

  “How did you get on?” she asks and I tell her I’m half a stone closer to the goal. In that unique mammy voice, in the way only mammies can, she tells me she is proud of me and wishes me sweet dreams. “Your dad sends his love, Grace,” she says and I hear him shout that he loves me on the other side of the phone.

  “Tell him I love him too,” I say and hang up before pouring myself a massive glass of wine, and one for Daisy too. I then proceed to retell the whole sorry story again, but this time I tell her about the big date.

  “Are you nervous?” she asks, sipping from her glass. “Of course, I am. I don’t know what he can say to make it better even though I’m not quite sure what he did to break it up in the first place. I know we didn’t split up over a couple of Bacardi Breezers and a half a loaf of toast. Did we?”

  “Grace,” Daisy says, staring me straight in the eyes, “I’m saying this as a friend. You split up because you need to sort yourself out before you can sort out anyone else or your relationship with anyone else. I wish I had a magic wand, but I’m as baffled as you by all this. If you ask me, this has been building for a long time so that something as stupid as a couple of drinks and some buttery toast pushed you over the edge. But it could have been anything.”

  “Did you see this coming?” I ask, not sure if I want to hear her reply.

  “Yes and no,” she says and hands me the box of tissues because she knows as well as I do that whatever she says next is going to make me cry again. “Grace!, don’t you remember me asking if you were happy and you shrugged it all off?”

  I nod in response.

  “Well, I knew things weren’t perfect. I can’t say I knew just how unperfect they were. I suppose I didn’t want to accept that life wasn’t all sunshine and roses for you because you and Aidan have always been my idea of a happy ending. And you, my dear, have always seemed so in control of your life that I couldn’t really accept that perhaps you were spiralling.”

  I smile at the notion that someone has thought I was in control. My whole life I felt like a spectator – pushed along by some mysterious force but certainly never in control. And as for me and Aidan being anyone’s idea of a happy ending . . . well, words fail me to be honest.

  “I didn’t know I was,” I say, but a wee seed of doubt is there now. Had I known all along but just chosen to ignore it, to push it to the back of mind and hope it will go away? I think back to the last few years and I find it hard to remember a time when I was truly happy. Of course there are moments of happiness, of pure joy, but the general feeling is of nothingness – not sadness, not anger, just nothing. Just that spectator watching my life go on around me and not caring that I wasn’t playing an active role in it any more.

  I drain my glass of wine. “I think I’ll phone that counsellor in the morning,” I say, kissing Daisy on the cheek and heading to bed.

  “Grace,” she calls as I leave the room and I turn to face her. “This too will pass. Love you, babes.”

  “Love you too,” I say and head to bed.

  Chapter 18

  “Hello, Cook Counselling, healing you today for a brighter tomorrow, Lisa speaking, how can I help you?”

  I feel sorry for Lisa. Lisa has a lot to say every time she answers the phone and I’m guessing she has to sound cheerful every time she says it as it would not be good for business if she sounded pissed off. Happy voice equals healthy mind.

  “Hello, Lisa,” I say, trying to muffle my voice – which I realise is ridiculous as I’m about to give her my real name. “Is Cathy Cook available?”

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Erm, my name is Grace. Grace Adams.” “Are you a client, Ms Adams?”

  “No, but I was wondering if I could be?”

  Lisa takes a deep breath and still sounding quite chipper but with a certain jaded tone replies: “I’m afraid Ms Cook’s books are full at the moment. There is a three- month waiting list. If you would like I could take your name and get back to you?”

  “Actually,” I say, feeling very daring because I know what I’m about to say is tantamount to a Z-list celebrity walking into a restaurant and doing the whole ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ routine, “Dr Shaun Stevenson said Ms Cook would speak to me. I’m a journalist working for Northern People magazine.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Lisa says, “Ms Cook did tell me to expect a call from a journalist and to schedule you in. Would tomorrow at three suit?”

  “That soon?” I say, suddenly nervous.

  “Well, I did have you earmarked for next Friday, but we’ve had a cancellation. The appointment is yours if you want it?”

  But do I want it? I mean, what would I talk about? The fact that I’m overweight? That my marriage is in tatters? That I’m constantly crying and hating myself?

  “Yes,” I say, “I’ll take it.”

  “Grand so,” Lisa says and I can hear her tapping my details into her computer. “You can bring a friend for support, but they will have to stay in the waiting room during the actual consultation. The fee is £30 per session, but Ms Cook has left a note to offer you the session at £20.”

  “That’s more than generous,” I say and hang up.

  I then tap out an email to Dishy – we have become quite the pen-friends lately as he sends copy back and forth for the feature. Sinéad is so impressed she is considering taking him onboard as our full-time health expert. Daisy and I have had hours of fun imagining the shoot for the photo byline – perhaps we could get him wearing a stethoscope and not much else?

  To: shaun.stevenson@doctors.org

  Subject: Thanks

  Shaun,

  I want to thank you for pulling some strings. I have my first session with Cathy tomorrow. I’m very nervous, but I’m trusting you on this one.

  Daisy (who is there for moral support) will be coming with me for moral support. I will let you know how it goes.

  Grace

  To: grace.adams@northernpeople.co.
uk

  Subject: re: Thanks

  Grace,

  Glad to hear Cathy could fit you in. She owes me a few favours, but that aside she knows her stuff.

  Hope you find it beneficial. Tell Daisy I said Hi. Shaun

  To: onefunkymamma@ntlworld.com

  Subject: He’s horny, horny, horny, horny

  Dais,

  Dishy says Hi. G

  xxx

  To: grace.adams@northernpeople.co.uk

  Subject: So am I!

  Grace,

  Tell him I said Hi back The Daister

  xxx

  To: shaun.stevenson@doctors.org

  Subject: The joy of moral support

  Shaun,

  Daisy says Hi back. Grace

  To: grace.adams@northernpeople.co.uk

  Subject: Give me your answer do . . .

  Grace,