‘No.’ She shakes her head and her face crumples.
‘Oh sweetie,’ Sharon says, reaching for her and embracing her.
I haven’t seen the old bubbly Denise for a few years. She is tamer, quieter, distracted. I see her less often. She’s exhausted, constantly putting her body under stress. This is the third course of IVF that has failed in six years.
‘That’s it, we can’t do it any more.’
‘You can keep trying,’ Sharon says, in soothing tones. ‘I know somebody who went through seven courses.’
Denise cries harder. ‘I can’t do this four more times.’ There is pain in her voice. ‘We can’t afford one more time. This has wiped us out.’ She wipes her eyes roughly, sadness turned to anger. ‘I need a drink.’ She stands. ‘Wine?’
‘Let me get it,’ I say, standing.
‘No,’ she snaps. ‘I’m getting it.’
I hurriedly sit.
‘You’ll have one too, Sharon,’ I say in a tone that I hope she can decipher. I want her to order the wine, sit with it, pretend to drink it, anything to draw attention away from the fact Sharon currently has something growing inside her that is the only thing Denise wants. But Sharon isn’t getting it. She thinks that I’ve forgotten. She’s making ridiculous wide-open eyes in an attempt to secretly remind me, but Denise watches this pantomime act and knows at once that something is up.
‘Sparkling water is fine,’ Sharon says to Denise finally.
I sigh and sit back. All she had to do was order the damn thing. Denise wouldn’t have noticed. Denise’s eyes run over Sharon’s body, as if she’s carrying out her own ultrasound.
‘Congratulations,’ Denise says flatly, before continuing to the bar.
‘Fuck,’ Sharon says, breathing out.
‘You should have just ordered the drink,’ I sing. ‘That’s all you had to do.’
‘I know, I get it now, but I couldn’t figure out what you were doing – I thought you’d forgotten. Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ she says, holding her hand to her head. ‘Poor Denise.’
‘Poor you.’
Denise returns to the table. She sets down the glasses of wine and the sparkling water, then reaches over to hug Sharon. They hold each other for a long time.
I take a large gulp of wine that burns going down my throat. ‘Can I run something by you both?’
‘Sure,’ Denise says, concerned and happy to be distracted.
‘After the Magpie podcast, a woman from the audience was so moved by what she heard she set up a club, called the PS, I Love You Club. It’s made up of people who are ill, and they want to write letters to their loved ones, the way Gerry did.’
‘Oh my …’ Denise says, looking at me with wide eyes.
‘They reached out to me and want me to help them write their letters.’
Sharon and Denise share a concerned look, each trying to figure out how the other feels.
‘I need your honest opinions, please.’
‘Do you want to help them?’ Denise asks.
‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘But then I think about what I’d be helping them with, I know the value of what they’re doing and I feel slightly obligated.’
‘You are not obligated,’ Sharon says firmly.
They’re both pensive.
‘On the positive side,’ Denise begins, ‘It’s beautiful that they asked you.’
The beauty of it we cannot deny.
‘On the realistic side,’ Sharon steps in, ‘for you, it would be like reliving the entire thing. It would be going backwards.’
She echoes Gabriel’s podcast concerns and half of my family’s feelings on the matter too. I look from one to the other like it’s a tennis match, my two best friends replaying the exact same conversation I’ve had in my head all week.
‘Unless it would actually take her forward. She’s moved on,’ Denise defends it. ‘She’s a different Holly now. She has a new life. She works. She washes herself. She’s selling her house, she’s moving in with the sexy tree-man.’
The more Denise speaks, the more nervous I get. These are all things I worked hard to achieve. They cannot become undone.
Sharon is studying me, concerned. ‘How ill are they?’
‘Sharon,’ Denise elbows her. ‘Ill is ill.’
‘Ill is not ill. There’s ill and then there’s …’ she sticks her tongue out and closes her eyes.
‘Ugly?’ Denise finishes.
‘They aren’t all terminally ill,’ I admit, attempting a hopeful tone. ‘One guy, Paul, is in remission and Joy, has a life-long … deteriorating condition.’
‘Well, isn’t that a rosy picture,’ Sharon says, sarcastically. She doesn’t like it. She fixes me with one of her scary mummy faces that takes no nonsense. ‘Holly, you need to be prepared. You’d be helping these people because they’re sick and they’re dying. You’re going to have to say goodbye over and over again.’
‘But imagine, how beautiful it could be,’ Denise changes the tone, to our surprise. ‘When they write the letters. When they die knowing they achieved it. When their loved ones read their letters. Think ahead to that part. Remember how we felt, Sharon, when Holly would open an envelope on the first day of every month? We couldn’t wait to get to her. Holly, you received a gift from Gerry and you are in a position to pass it on. If you are able to, if you feel it’s good for you, you should do it; if you think it will set you back, then don’t and don’t feel guilty about it.’
Wise words but a straight yes or no would have been more helpful.
‘What does Gabriel think?’ Sharon asks.
‘I haven’t told him yet, but I already know what he’ll say. He’ll say no.’
‘No?’ Sharon says, huffily. ‘You’re not asking him for his permission.’
‘I know but … I don’t even think it’s a good idea.’
‘Well then, there’s your answer,’ Sharon says in a final tone.
So why am I still asking the question?
I tune out of the rest of their conversation, my mind racing back and forth as it chases the options, grasping for a decision. I feel as though I should, I know that I shouldn’t.
We part, back to our lives, back to our problems.
To weave and unravel, to unravel and weave.
11
It’s 2 a.m. and I pace the downstairs rooms of my house. There aren’t many. Living room to dining room to small U-shaped kitchen that only has enough standing room for two people, a toilet and shower room under the stairs. Which is ideal for me because it’s only me, and occasionally Gabriel. His house is nicer and we stay there more often. Mine and Gerry’s was a starter home; a new build in the suburbs of Dublin for us to begin the rest of our life together. Everything was shiny and new, clean, we were the first to use our shower, the kitchen, our bathroom. How excited we’d been to come from our rented flat to our own home with stairs for the first time.
I walk to the staircase and look up.
‘Holly!’ Gerry calls me.
He was standing where I’m standing now, at the foot of the stairs, hand on the banister.
‘Yes!’ I yell from upstairs.
‘Where are you?’
‘In the bathroom!’
‘Where? Upstairs?’
‘Gerry, our only bathroom is upstairs.’
‘Yes, but we have a toilet downstairs.’
I laugh, understanding. ‘Ah yes but I’m in the bathroom upstairs. Where are you? Are you downstairs?’
‘Yes! Yes, I’m here downstairs!’
‘OK great, I’ll see you in a minute when I come downstairs, from where I am upstairs!’
‘OK.’ Pause. ‘Be careful on the stairs. There’s a lot of them. Hold on to the banister!’
I smile at the memory, running my hand up and down the banister, touching all the places he touched, wanting to rub him on to me.
I haven’t done this late-night room wandering for years, not since the months after he passed, but now I feel the house is owed my attent
ive farewell. My mind is whirring with ideas. Bert’s quiz, Ginika’s letter, Joy’s trees and flowers notions; I didn’t ask Paul what he wants to do. They had more questions for me than I for them, about the dolphins, the holiday, the sunflowers. Sunflowers. My October letter from Gerry. A sunflower pressed between two cards and a pouch of seeds to brighten the dark October days you hate so much, he’d written.
When Gerry was alive, I hated winters. When he died, I embraced them. These days, I simply take them at the natural rhythm they arrive. The seeds were included with Gerry’s eighth letter. I’d told everyone it was because sunflowers were my favourite flowers. They weren’t. I’m not really the type of person to have a favourite flower; flowers are flowers and they are mostly all attractive. But the sunflowers had a meaning, a story. They started a conversation. Gerry had managed to start a conversation from his deathbed, which was Gerry’s gift.
The first month in our house, we had very little furniture. Most of the furniture in our apartment had belonged to the landlords and so we had to start afresh, which meant we couldn’t afford to buy everything at once, but also we weren’t the best at managing delivery times, expecting couches to be available the moment we chose them from the shop floor, all the usual beginner mistakes. And so we had three months in the house without a couch or coffee table. We sat in the TV room, on bean bags, drinking wine, using our unpacked moving boxes as side tables.
‘Sweetheart,’ I say one evening when we’re snuggled on a bean bag with a bottle of red wine after eating steak and chips for dinner.
‘Uh oh,’ Gerry says, looking at me sideways, and I laugh.
‘Don’t worry, it’s not bad.’
‘OK,’ he says, reaching to his plate on the floor to spear some left-over steak.
‘When do you want to have a baby?’
His eyes widen comically and he immediately puts the steak in his mouth, chewing slowly.
I laugh. ‘Come on. What do you think?’
‘I think,’ he talks through his chews, ‘we need to start marinating our steak.’
‘OK, if you’re not going to be adult about it, I’ll speak. We’ve been married for two years, and apart from one horrible summer, and the two weeks we broke up when I saw you kissing Jennifer O’Brien, we’ve been together—’
‘I did not kiss Jennifer O’Brien.’
‘She kissed you.’ I’m smiling. I’m really over it by this point. We were fourteen years old at the time.
‘She didn’t even kiss me. She leaned in and brushed my lips, and the reason we brushed is because I moved my head away. Let it go,’ he besieges me, mockingly.
‘Hmm. Anyway. Let me continue.’
‘Please do.’
‘We’ve been married for two years.’
‘You said that.’
I ignore him, continuing: ‘And we’ve been together twelve years. Give or take.’
‘Give. Always give.’
‘And we said as soon as we left the rat-infested apartment—’
‘One mouse. One time.’
‘And bought our first house, we would discuss when to have a baby. We have now bought a house, which we won’t own for another one hundred years, but isn’t it time for the discussion?’
‘And no better time than right when Man United have just kicked off against Arsenal. No better time at all.’
I laugh. ‘You have a stable job—’
‘Oh, you’re still talking.’
‘And when I’m working, my jobs are stable.’
‘Between the instability,’ he agrees.
‘Yes. But I currently have a job that I dislike intensely and won’t miss while on maternity leave.’
‘I don’t think you get maternity leave in temp jobs. You’re covering for somebody else’s leave.’ He looks at me, his eyes laughing at me.
‘OK, so maybe I don’t get maternity leave, but I do get leave,’ I reason. ‘So all I have to do is get pregnant and leave …’
He laughs.
‘And you are beautiful, I love you, and you have powerful super semen that should not be kept away from the world, hidden away down there, in a dark place, all alone.’ I make a sad face.
He chuckles harder.
‘They’re ready to create a super species. I sense it.’
‘She’s still talking.’
‘And. I love you. And you’ll be an amazing daddy.’
He looks at me, serious now. ‘Are you finished?’
I think some more. ‘And I love you.’
He smiles. ‘I want to have a baby with you.’
I start to squeal and he kills it.
‘But what about Gepetto?’
‘No!’ I move away from him and throw my head back, frustrated, and stare at the ceiling. ‘Do not bring up Gepetto again.’
‘Gepetto was a great beloved member of our family and you … frankly, Holly, you killed him. You took him away from us.’
‘Gerry, can we have an adult conversation for once?’
‘This is an adult conversation.’
‘Gepetto was a plant.’
‘Gepetto was a living, breathing life form that needed air, light and water, like us. He also happened to be a very expensive bonsai, exactly the same age as our relationship. Ten years old. Do you know how difficult it was to find that bonsai? I had to drive to Derry to get him.’
I groan and pull myself up out of the bean bag. I carry the plates to the kitchen, half-irritated, half-amused by the conversation. Gerry follows me; eager to ensure he hasn’t really annoyed me but unable to stop when he’s in this zone, prodding, poking away like a stick at the fire.
‘I think you’re more annoyed that you had to drive to Derry to a dodgy bonsai dealer than you are at me for killing it.’ I scrape the food from the plates into the bin. I put the plates in the sink. We don’t have a dishwasher yet, the basis of most of our arguments.
‘Ah! So you admit to murdering him.’
I raise my hands in surrender. ‘Sure, I killed him. And I’d do it again if I had half the chance.’
Gerry laughs.
I swivel around for the full reveal. ‘I was jealous of the attention you were giving Gepetto, how the two of you left me out. So when you went away for two weeks, I planned it. I left him by the window, the place that gets the most sun and … I didn’t give him water.’ I fold my arms and watch Gerry double over laughing. ‘OK, seriously, if this conversation about Gepetto is a distraction because you’re not ready for a baby, that’s fine with me. I can wait. I was only bringing it up for discussion.’
He wipes his eyes and the smile off his face. ‘I want to have a baby with you. There is no doubt in my mind.’
‘I’m ready.’
‘You change your mind a lot.’
‘About what dress to wear, and whether I should get tinned chopped tomatoes or whole peeled plum. About work. About wall-paint colours and tiles for the bathroom floor. Not about babies.’
‘You sent the dog back after one week.’
‘He ate my favourite shoes.’
‘You change your job every three months.’
‘It’s called temping. It requires that I must. If I stay longer they’ll have me forcibly removed.’
He leaves a silence. The corners of his mouth twitch.
‘I won’t change my mind on this,’ I say, getting agitated, finally, with this conversation, with having to prove myself – me a grown adult – to my own husband. ‘In fact, I already waited three months to have this conversation.’ Because he’s right, I do always change my mind. Apart from a commitment to Gerry, pretty much any other decision that involves long-term change scares me. Signing the mortgage on this house was terrifying.
He reaches out to stop me from leaving, and pulls me back to him. I know he’s not deliberately trying to wind me up. I know he’s trying to ensure I’m serious, in the only way he feels won’t cause an argument. We kiss tenderly and I feel this is the time for decision, a life-changing moment in our lives.
‘But,’ he says mid-kiss.
I groan.
‘I still can’t help but feel we need to prove it.’
‘I need to prove shit to you. I want a baby.’
He laughs. ‘First,’ he holds his finger dramatically and I roll my eyes and try to move away from where he’s pinned me against the counter. ‘For Gepetto and for the future of our super child, you will do one thing. You must prove you can grow and keep a plant alive. Then and only then can we make a baby.’
‘Gerry,’ I laugh, ‘I think that’s what they tell people who are leaving rehab who want to start new relationships.’
‘Yes, unstable people like you. It’s good advice. In the name of Gepetto.’
‘Why are you always so dramatic?’
‘Why are you … not?’ His lips twitch.
‘OK,’ I say, getting into the game. ‘I want a baby, so I’ll see your ridiculous dare and I’ll raise you. We both have to plant and grow our own seeds to prove we can both care for a baby. I will surprise you.’
‘Can’t wait,’ he grins. ‘Game. On.’
‘Mum,’ I whisper, down the phone.
‘Holly? Are you OK? Have you lost your voice? Do you want to me send over some chicken noodle soup?’
‘No, my throat is fine,’ I reply, then rethink it. ‘But I’d still love the soup. I’m calling because Gerry and I are doing this thing. Kind of like a competition.’
‘Honestly, you two,’ she says, chuckling.
‘What’s the fastest seed, flower thing, I could grow?’ I ask, making sure Gerry’s out of earshot.
Mum laughs loudly.
I clear out a jam jar. Gerry watches me while he drinks a coffee before leaving for work. I stuff the jar with cotton wool, then place two butter beans among the cotton wool. I pour water inside, just enough to make the cotton wool damp.
Gerry roars with laughter. ‘Seriously? If that’s how you think you grow flowers, I’m worried about how you think babies are made.’
‘You watch,’ I say, carrying the jam jar to the windowsill. ‘My little butter beans will blossom where Gepetto perished.’
He holds his heart as though he’s been shot. ‘I only hope the cow that you sold was worth these magic beans.’
Postscript Page 7
