All the Bad Apples

by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

  “But no,” Rachel said, her tongue suddenly too big, blocking the air behind her teeth. “I’ve done this in biology class. At nine weeks, it’s just a blob. It doesn’t have hands or a face.”

  “If you’re certain you want to go through with this,” Joyce went on, “you should be aware of the side effects.” She turned the leaflet over for Rachel.

  Increases the risk of breast cancer by 78%, a list of bullet points said. Increases the risk of future miscarriage by 62%. Increases the risk of sterility by 67%. Studies have shown that women who have terminated pregnancies are five times more likely to show abusive behavior toward children, including their own future children.

  “But this can’t be— Is it true?” Rachel asked.

  “These are some of the risks involved,” Joyce told her. “Not all of these might happen to you, maybe even none of them will. But it’s important to be aware of the risks. Would you like to have children someday in the future?”

  Rachel nodded. “Someday, yeah,” she said. “But I’m seventeen. I’m still in secondary school. I’ve my exams in June. I want to get the points for Trinity. Study journalism.”

  “That sounds very exciting.” Joyce smiled. “I can tell you’re a very intelligent person. I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful mum.”

  “Someday,” Rachel repeated.

  Joyce smiled once more, rummaged around in a drawer again. “Have you picked out names yet? For your future children, I mean. I knew what I wanted to call my children since I was just a child myself.”

  “Um,” said Rachel.

  Joyce came out of the drawer with a TV remote. “Here we are,” she said. “I want you to watch this video, to prepare you for the procedure. They don’t always show this at the clinic, but it’s important you realize what you’re going to put your body through. Just so you’re prepared.”

  “Um,” Rachel said again. “Okay. Um. Are you, um, affiliated with a particular clinic in the UK or . . . ?”

  Joyce pressed PLAY. On the television on a shelf in front of Rachel, a woman in a hospital-issue paper gown screamed in pain.

  “We just want to give you all your options,” said Joyce, smiling again.

  * * *

  —

  Rachel came out of the counseling agency with screams stuck in her head. The video was graphic. Terrifying. It didn’t matter that Rachel knew, logically, that what she’d been made to watch wasn’t what was going to happen to her. That at nine weeks all there was in her womb was a small blob. That there was no way abortions led to child abuse. Or breast cancer, sterility, or miscarriage, like the pamphlet had said. That she’d been tricked. But it didn’t matter. The seeds of doubt had been sown. That was probably their plan all along.

  She let herself be led by muscle memory down O’Connell Street, past the shiny big windows of Clerys department store, but something made her look up. Made her keep walking toward the bridge, toward the angels sitting stony on their pedestals. The angel that Rachel was sure had been staring straight across the River Liffey when she’d gone to her appointment was now staring straight at Rachel.

  That couldn’t be right.

  Very slowly, almost unnoticeably, the angel inclined her head.

  Rachel turned and ran for her bus like she was about to miss it, like the number 130 from Abbey Street didn’t leave every eight minutes, like her life depended on her making that very bus. It was the stress. It had to be the stress. The hormones. The emotions. It had to be something like that.

  Rachel watched the coast go by from the top deck of the bus. Cranes and ferries, the wooden bridge leading out toward another statue, Our Lady, Star of the Sea. Rachel was glad she couldn’t see the statue’s face, couldn’t see where she was staring. Probably the same place she always stared, following the boats across the Irish Sea. The boats to England. But Rachel could feel a strange and faraway gaze on her all the way home. A nod of the head. A benediction.

  The following morning, Rachel booked a round trip to London.

  * * *

  —

  The clinic sent a taxi to get her from the airport. They suggested she book a room in a hotel if she could, rather than travel straight home, but Rachel didn’t want to spend any more money than she had to.

  After she’d contacted the clinic, she’d told her boyfriend, who had agreed that they shouldn’t have a baby together at seventeen. But, when she asked if he could spare some money to put toward the cost of the procedure, he suddenly had a lot less to say.

  “Donal,” Rachel said. “This is your problem too. Nobody gets pregnant by herself.”

  “Yeah,” said Donal, wincing. “But abortion? Really? Like, my mam’ll want to know what I used the money for.”

  “So tell her we’re going on holiday. One night in London. Nice romantic break before the exams.”

  Donal’s face fell. “You want me to come with you?”

  “Well, yeah,” Rachel said in disbelief. “I sure as hell don’t want to go through that alone.”

  He said he’d think about it. He said he’d see how much money he had saved up in his account. He said he’d get back to her. The day before her appointment, she hadn’t heard a word.

  She took out all her savings. She went alone.

  * * *

  —

  Rachel’s abortion was nothing like what the video the crisis pregnancy agency had shown.

  There was no hospital gown, no screaming, no legs in stirrups, no surgical instruments that looked like medieval torture devices. Instead, she swallowed a small pill in the morning and came back in the afternoon to be given another set of tablets.

  Her flight home was later that night. She spent the hours in between at the cinema, staring blankly at a film she’d forgotten before it was halfway through. The nurses had given her pills to take for the pain and pads for the bleeding, and before the film’s credits rolled she was starting to feel the need for both.

  * * *

  —

  Rachel was supposed to fly home that evening, but the flight got canceled. The pain was still blurring the edges of her vision, so she was glad. She called her best friend, Sorcha, from the phone in the hotel room she’d booked from the airport.

  “Oh my God, Rachel,” was the first thing Sorcha said. “Donal’s mam’s told everyone.”

  “Told everyone what?”

  “About your—” Sorcha lowered her voice. “Abortion.”

  The pain in Rachel’s abdomen came in waves, rocked her like a boat. “Everyone who?”

  Rachel could hear her best friend’s hesitation.

  “Everyone who, Sorcha?”

  Finally, Sorcha said in a rush, “Mrs. Cleary had us praying for your soul in homeroom. I’m sorry. She told everyone.”

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  “He swears he begged her not to tell anyone. I cornered him the second I heard. He says she freaked out when he told her, kept saying she would’ve raised the kid or whatever, like that was even the point. So then when he said you were already on your way to England, she went and told the school.”

  “I’m going to kill her.”

  “Want me to do it for you?”

  Rachel gave a hollow laugh. “Thanks, but one of us breaking Irish law is enough.”

  There was silence on the other end for a moment. “You know you didn’t do anything wrong, right?” Sorcha said softly.

  Rachel sighed. “I know.”

  “Aisling O’Donnell out of Ms. Simmons’s class had one last year. And Gary’s older sister.” Gary was Sorcha’s boyfriend. “And I’m pretty sure Sarah’s aunt Jenny did too.”

  “But Mrs. Cleary’s praying for my soul.”

  “And the baby’s.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  Rachel watched the city settle into evening outside her hotel room wind
ow. She wrapped her arms around her legs, drawn up to her aching abdomen. She wrapped her arms around the bones of her life plan. Virginity, exams, university, breakup, studies, journalism, career, marriage, eventual babies. She could still do this. She could keep to the plan. So what if the whole class was praying for her soul? In a few short months, the exams would be over and she’d be on her way to the rest of her life.

  “You still there?” Sorcha’s voice came through the phone, over the Irish Sea, under the airplanes, over the ferries.

  “Yeah,” said Rachel. “Yeah. Can you do me a favor, before I come back?”

  “Anything,” said Sorcha.

  “Just make sure my dad never finds out.”

  31.

  The funeral that felled the family tree

  Dublin, 1995

  Sorcha was true to her word. She threatened Donal until he told everybody it had all been a big misunderstanding, that Rachel had been studying with her best friend all weekend. He somehow even managed to convince his mother because, sure, wouldn’t Dr. Jones, the local GP, who was his mother’s uncle, know if Rachel had been pregnant? It couldn’t possibly have been true. Not studious, hardworking Rachel. Good girls didn’t get abortions after all.

  At Monday morning assembly, Rachel led her fellow prefects in a prayer for the unborn. She held her head high and her hands clasped: a carbon copy of her father. She talked about the constitutional right to life of the unborn and about the sanctity of motherhood, and she hated herself every second, but knew this was the best way to protect herself. She was extremely convincing.

  Only Rachel knew how much she bled and how long the cramping lasted, how the exhaustion became a large rock inside her ocean, holding her down.

  She still kept hold of her plan. She was no longer pregnant. Her exams were coming up. If she could get through this, she could get through anything. She could have the life she’d always wanted. If she just focused on sticking to the plan.

  But all this was leading to a funeral: the funeral that felled our family tree, that sent our father running, that broke the two sisters apart, that changed everything. There was no plan in place for this.

  * * *

  —

  Our mother had had a small stroke the week before, had recovered in the hospital before coming home, had insisted our father not tell their children how bad it was. That was who our mother was, to Rachel. The peacemaker, the mediator, the quiet force that balanced the family (just about) and that above all didn’t ever want to worry anybody. Worry wasn’t worth it, and besides, what would the family think?

  “I’m fine,” she told her husband. “Stop fussing.”

  But the only reason our father stopped fussing was that Mandy showed up suddenly after four months away, the day their mother came home from the hospital.

  “The Mandy drama-wagon,” Rachel told her friend Sorcha. “Every time she comes home, I could parade around the living room naked and nobody’d ever notice.”

  There was always a lot of shouting and slammed doors when Mandy was home, so Rachel made herself scarce the moment she heard the telltale sounds of a fight, before even seeing her sister. She stayed over at Sorcha’s house, where she could study in peace. Her mother would still be resting, and Rachel didn’t particularly want to see Mandy.

  The day after Mandy returned, Rachel came home just to get a book and a change of underwear, presuming her parents would hardly notice her absence when Mandy’s presence filled the house with all its might.

  When she walked past the kitchen, her father called her in. He was sitting at the table in his flannel dressing gown and slippers, drinking a tall glass of whiskey.

  He said, “Your mother’s had a baby.”

  Rachel was sure she’d misheard. “A what?”

  “A baby.”

  “A baby?”

  “Yes. A baby. A baby, I said. Are you deaf?”

  “I’m not deaf—I just don’t understand. How could Mum have had a baby?”

  He chugged his whiskey. “The feckin’ stork came,” he said gruffly. “And now your mother’s had a baby.”

  “But how could Mum have had a baby? She wasn’t pregnant. She’s almost fifty. That’s not possible.”

  Our father placed his whiskey glass down carefully on the table. “Now you listen here, lass,” he said slowly, enunciating every word. “Your mam has had a baby. A baby girl. A little sister for you. She’s tired after the labor and you’ll have to mind her, and mind the baby. You hear me?”

  Rachel shook her head. “I hear you,” she said helplessly. “I just don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to understand. You just have to do as I say. Now come upstairs and kiss your new sister.”

  * * *

  —

  Rachel’s new sister was small and red with a wrinkled, alien face that wouldn’t stop crying.

  “Colic,” said our mother fondly. “I remember you were just the same.”

  “How is this possible?” Rachel asked.

  Her question was met with a smile. “Bodies are miracles, Rachel,” our mother replied. “I didn’t think I’d ever have another child. It had been so long since I’d been pregnant my body mustn’t have known how to react. I thought it was the change—you know, the menopause. It hadn’t come yet. I was always a late bloomer. But then I went to the hospital last week and—surprise! Here is little Deena.”

  Rachel touched the baby’s cheek and said, “Hello, little Deena.”

  Little Deena cried and cried.

  * * *

  —

  The house was loud suddenly, louder than it had ever been. Those were weeks of baby cries and adult tears, doors slammed and plates smashed and harsh words shouted up stairs. Those were weeks of bottles and bibs, dirty diapers and sleepless nights.

  Rachel spent entire days in the library, studying after school, and most weekends at Sorcha’s. Her exams were six months away. Her entire future depended on her study, her results, her constant focused determination. She wouldn’t let herself be distracted now.

  But on top of the noise of her parents fighting with Mandy and of the baby’s constant crying, her mother’s parents and siblings and aunts and uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews came in droves to see and congratulate the new mother on this unexpected miracle—and to chastise her husband on the state of their eldest (so rude, so unruly, and there had been rumors she’d run away, and were there drugs involved, and what kind of a teenage girl dressed like that these days, and what was our father going to do about it, that girl brought shame on the family).

  As for Mandy, she loved the baby. Because her mother was so tired, it was often Mandy who woke in the night to feed her, who got up early in the morning to take her for walks, along the blustery seafront, across the wooden bridge, and all the way to the Dollymount Strand, down to the statue of Mary at the edge of it, staring out across the water.

  The only time the baby stopped crying was when she was being rocked, or when she was submerged to the chin in the warm water of the bath.

  “That kid certainly hates staying still,” Rachel observed one morning to her sister. “Must take after you.”

  Mandy stared at Rachel for a full minute before answering.

  “Yes,” she said. “I guess she does.”

  * * *

  —

  Two months after Deena was born, when the family had just about become used to her presence, their mother suffered another stroke. A cerebral aneurysm, like the one before. She slipped into a coma and stayed that way for almost eight weeks.

  It was January, bitterly cold. For weeks, the wind had screamed in under the rafters, echoed around the attic. Nobody could sleep.

  Mandy, who had been so attentive to the child until that point, disappeared the moment their mother fell ill. Their father was just as absent, splitting his time between the pu
b and the church, as if one canceled out the other.

  There are things that hold you, and there are things that you hold. Their father held on to pints and prayers, one after the other in rapid succession. Mandy held on to the hands and lips and wallets of any man who’d take her. And Rachel held on to the plan for her future as best she could while caring for the baby.

  After almost two months, their mother slipped away. There was no plan in place for this.

  * * *

  —

  The day of the funeral was crisp, uncompromising, so dry and cold the ground snapped mourners’ heels off their shoes and sent them skidding.

  Our father shook hands with our family, nodded, stalwart, at their tears. Beside him, poised and graceful in her black pencil skirt, Rachel held her baby sister, rocked her so she wouldn’t cry.

  Mandy was almost late, slipped into the church after most of the mourners, skulked up the far wall to the family pew, slumped down beside her sister.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Rachel snarled as the congregation settled. Mandy’s hair was lank and tangled, her black shirt wrinkled, her face a pale gray marked with red like she’d been scratching at her skin.

  “What do you mean what the hell happened to me?” she snapped back. “My mother’s just died. We can’t all become Polly Perfect at times like these.”

  Rachel’s mouth grew thin. She sat as straight as a statue, rocked the baby. Halfway through the service, Rachel’s arms began to shake. She was glad of Mandy then; how she knew without asking to take the baby gently, to make the exchange from one sister to the other without disturbing the rhythm of the rocking.

  * * *

  —

  In the pub for the wake after the burial, the baby finally slept. Rachel slipped into the bathroom to once more attempt to dry her tears, splash water on her face. The door to the bathroom slammed open and Mandy stalked in.