The Family Gift Read online

  ‘Eileen lost her daughter fifteen years ago,’ Ariel says, as we walk down the stairs.

  I can’t even comment on what Eileen has gone through – since having children, the concept of losing a child means I cannot even look at news of war on the TV.

  Copping out? Definitely. But right now, I can’t. Still, what’s happened to Eileen is hideous and my mind turns to Lexi, Teddy and Liam: what if this happened to them? I feel weak. I don’t think I could continue to exist if they weren’t in the world. But nothing is happening to them – except that Lexi’s birth mother is back in Ireland and really, is that the end of the world . . .?

  ‘And you were mugged too,’ I say to Ariel.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Ariel, ‘but I have had that other stuff happen to me too, it’s just this group, I sort of like this group best because we talk about all different sorts of stuff. I go to another group too. They all help.’

  I want to ask her what other stuff but I’m afraid to in case I hurt her or insult her. Down on the street she looks me in the eye. She really is so young and pretty and I can imagine some mother going out of her mind at Ariel’s insane ugly clothes and the hair that does nothing for her beautiful little pixie face. But it’s clearly a way of hiding herself.

  ‘I was raped,’ she says, really quietly as we leave, ‘so I go to a rape support group and that’s great, but everything leaves a mark you know, lots of marks.’

  ‘Raped?’ I repeat.

  Ariel shrugs and doesn’t meet my eyes, as if she’s used to this reaction: the reaction of people who suddenly realise they have nothing they can say because how can two terrible things happen to a person, one far more soul-destroying than anything that’s happened to me.

  ‘Can I hug you?’ I ask.

  Ariel’s face brightens.

  ‘Yes. It’s men I have a problem with. But I like you, Freda/Freya/telly person.’

  There is a points system for pain, I think: Eileen and Ariel win. If they can function in the world and smile, I can too.

  Be the happiness? It’s worth a try, I guess.

  16

  Many people are in pain – you just can’t see it

  Watching my mother laying out the lavender hand cream for my father hits me in a way nothing else does: the hospital bed, the scent of the invalid’s room, all of it.

  It’s my day to give her a break and she has a new routine, thanks to a lovely organic cream a friend brought.

  ‘I know he feels it,’ she says, sitting on the edge of the chair beside his wheelchair and patting his hands as if she cannot bear to leave him. ‘I have this little routine going since I got the cream. It’s far nicer than the oils I used to use. His skin gets so terribly dry,’ she adds. ‘Maybe his system doesn’t operate the same way since the stroke. Or maybe it’s the heat of the house since the dry spell, I don’t know. But at night I rub cream into his legs and massage them a little bit, do some lymphatic massage, helps them not be swollen from being in the wheelchair all the time. But I love to do his hands too, makes them soft, and you know how your father never looked after himself like that.’ She smiles affectionately at him as if he’s listening to every word. ‘So I like to do it for him now, just a lovely treat and touch is so very important, isn’t it?’

  The first time she explained the whole leg massage system to me, I had nearly fallen apart. My parents had loved each other so much and my mother still loved Dad. Here she was taking care of him and there was no glint of recognition in his eyes, no awareness that he knew her or any of us, bar the fact that he was generally calm. Although, as the doctor said when he came on his visits, a lot of that could be down to the medications. Nobody knew the answer but my father had no anger or rage or frustration. No obvious emotion at all. Not since the stroke.

  ‘Will I bring you a cup of tea?’ Mum says as I take her place beside Dad.

  ‘Oh, that will be absolutely lovely.’

  I don’t want tea but she hates leaving and I’ve discovered it helps her to slow down her departure. Make her feel as if she isn’t a woman racing out the door for freedom – a concept she hates – but merely a woman who is taking a little normal ‘me’ time while her daughter visits her father.

  She is, I think, trying so hard not to think about the reality of their situation, even if she handles the logistics of it all so well.

  ‘I’ll make a cup for your father too,’ she says cheerfully. ‘Just in the last few days, his swallow isn’t so good so we’ll just go very slowly with the little sippy cup.’

  I should have made the tea and not Mum, I thought as I sit down beside Dad and begin to talk to him. It was, as ever, a one-way conversation, but I have learned to be good at it because Mum has taught me.

  Con still finds it hard to sit and talk to Dad, because he needs that response. But Scarlett, Maura and I are better.

  ‘Talk to him as if he’s still listening to every word you say,’ Mum had said fiercely in the beginning. ‘Maybe he can hear you, maybe he can’t move anything but he will find comfort in listening to us and we will be there.’

  I tell him about my day, about how that naughty little Teddy had got into the shoes and had decided that several of mine were much better off in her room. She’d painted quite a few of them, both the inside and the outside with nail varnish. It’s Lexi’s nail varnish and she’s supposed to keep it up on a high shelf away from Teddy’s reaching arms. The colours, because they’re Lexi’s, are all terribly delicate and pretty, but still there are quite a few pairs of shoes that will never be worn again. The nail varnish did not come off with remover or any sort of kitchen cleaner.

  ‘Look what she did,’ Lexi said, furious at her things being purloined.

  I tell this story, then move on to Dan and me piecemeal painting the upstairs of our new house, which my father had not seen and probably never would.

  Dan and I are almost back to where we were before Elisa returned to Ireland but not quite. She’s still here, WhatsApping him and Lexi, avoiding me and with Lexi at least, I have to pretend that this is all right.

  With Dan, it’s between us, a subtle wall that exists because I don’t trust Elisa and he feels he must let her into our daughter’s life. Yet I have moved a millimetre away from my rage against Elisa. My children are all alive. Healthy. In the grand scheme of things, as per my Thursday night support group, I can live with Elisa’s presence.

  ‘Teddy’s bedroom is closest to ours and I have managed to paint the walls a subtle pale pink, and not the Peppa Pig colour she wanted, and put up very nice curtains. She still has one of those little princess net yokes over the bed. Remember it, Dad? She loves that thing. It’s a complete nightmare because if she wriggles up in the night the whole contraption is in danger of falling down. I’m going to try and move it back a bit so it’s less over the bed and more of a decoration that shouldn’t be pulled around.

  ‘Anyhow, my shoes were all over the bed and the smell of nail varnish was unbelievable. And poor Angela who minds them for me in the afternoon, well, she was in bits at this having happened on her watch. As if she could stop Teddy when the child moves at the speed of light. If you take your eye off her for a minute, she’s into some mischief. Angela kept apologising: to me, to Lexi, then to me some more. Then she kept saying, “Teddy, I thought you were being good having a little rest with your teddies where I left you.” And you know me, Dad?’ I say. ‘Well, I laughed, I can’t help it, laughing gets me into trouble in the worst situations. So then Teddy laughs and Lexi’s not impressed and Angela finally laughs and I have to warn Teddy that nail varnish is for big girls.’

  Mum arrives with tea in an ordinary cup for me and in what looks like a child’s cup, but is really a special invalid’s cup for my father. She brings it over to him and carefully helps him to some tea.

  Another sight that makes me want to cry: he’s young, he shouldn’t be in a wheelchair being fed, sta
ring into the great unknown.

  ‘This hand cream is lovely, Mum,’ I say, as I open the tube and take a sniff.

  ‘There’s lavender in it,’ she says. ‘I love lavender. I know you’re not such a big fan of it, Lorcan,’ she says lovingly to her husband. ‘But it’s so calming.’

  Dad doesn’t react either way.

  Can he smell the lavender, can he hear my voice?

  It doesn’t matter. He will be talked to and have his hands stroked and caressed as I rub the cream into his skin.

  ‘You go and have a rest now, Mum,’ I say. ‘I’m going to sit here for an hour and you just lie down on your bed.’

  ‘I have things to do, pet,’ she says.

  ‘No, I’m here for the morning. You’re going to lie down and then I’m going to make sure the baby monitor is turned on and I’m going into the kitchen to do some cooking. Because what’s the use of having a trained chef for a daughter if you don’t get a bit of good out of her?’

  For a moment, I think I see tears glitter at the corners of my mother’s eyes, but I must be mistaken because Mum doesn’t cry, not anymore, not since the early days in hospital. Which is unnatural. Maura, Scarlett and I all agree on this.

  ‘You’re dead right,’ she says with unnatural brightness, ‘what’s the use of having this fabulous chef if I don’t get the use out of her. I’ll go up and have a little lie down, sweetie, but I won’t be that long.’ Smiling brightly, she twirls and is gone.

  No, I thought, she couldn’t be crying.

  An hour and a half later, with the ingredients I’ve brought, I have twelve shepherd’s pies made and in the oven, all in separate little tinfoil containers, so that they can be defrosted. A single portion each. I was making chicken soup now as well as a lamb stew. The freezer will be full, even if I can do nothing else.

  ‘Women’s work,’ says Eddie, appearing in the doorway and sniffing the air. ‘Any tea and biscuits going?’

  ‘Sure, Eddie,’ I say cheerfully, ‘as long as you sit with Dad.’

  ‘Sit? We have an Alaskan adventure taped.’

  ‘I’ll wheel Dad in, then,’ I say.

  ‘I am perfectly capable of wheeling my son—’ begins Eddie but I cut him off deftly.

  ‘Someone has to carry the biscuits,’ I say.

  Eddie’s face lights up.

  ‘I made them myself,’ I add.

  ‘You’re a great girl to have around the place,’ Eddie says, which is high praise indeed from him.

  Once he and Dad are installed in the living room, and Eddie has his snack, I give Dad a little of the liquid protein drink he gets two cans of every day.

  ‘Awful muck, that,’ says Eddie balefully.

  Our eyes meet.

  ‘But, sure, he needs it. Never thought he’d be in one of those blasted chairs before me, Freya,’ he says hoarsely.

  ‘It is what it is, Granddad,’ I reply.

  With all this pain around her, how does my mother not cry, I think?

  She can’t let herself. What good are happy thoughts here?

  You’re on the money, there, Mildred.

  Once all are sorted, I go back into the kitchen, to my soup and stew.

  Granny Bridget comes in carrying Delilah, her tricky and elderly cat, who instantly clambers out of Bridget’s arms in order to cough a bit near the vegetables.

  ‘Bridget, you need that walker and you shouldn’t be carrying the cat,’ I say gently, and race off to get it for her. ‘Delilah will manage.’

  ‘What if she goes before me?’ Bridget wails.

  How is your mother not on the gin by ten in the morning, Mildred says now.

  Because she’s strong.

  There’s strong and there’s avoidance.

  I prescribe strong tea for Bridget, check she’s had all her medication, then give her a piece of fruit cake, which she has always loved. I tune the radio to Lyric FM because she likes it when they play waltzes sometimes and she reminisces about how she and Granddad Leo used to dance at the Classic Ballroom.

  After an hour of telly, Eddie moves on to reading one of his ‘most horrible animals ever’ books and Bridget and I grin.

  ‘He loves those daft books,’ Bridget says, fixing her pinky blonde bouffant. ‘Mad as a bicycle, he is. Always was.’

  By the time Mum comes downstairs, I hear her first go immediately into Dad and Eddie.

  Via the monitor, I can hear her chat to Eddie and kiss Dad, all the while talking to him gently.

  Mum comes into the kitchen smiling, and she smiles even more when she sees that I have made a comfy bed for Delilah on a big old kitchen chair.

  ‘Granny and I decided that Delilah only gets onto the table because she’s nosy and likes to see what’s going on, so this nest means she can be safe, closer to the floor, less close to the food, and not break anything getting down.’

  ‘Isn’t Freya clever?’ says Granny delightedly. ‘And sniff. She’s been cooking. There’s enough food to feed the multitudes.’

  ‘All of this smells wonderful. Freya darling, you’re just fantastic. What would I do without you?’ She plants a kiss on my temple. ‘What can I do to help?’

  ‘Sit down,’ I command. ‘you do enough.’

  ‘No really, I mean—’

  ‘No, just sit, or go out and potter around the garden for a little while with a cup of tea to wake you up.’

  Mum loves the garden, although she hasn’t much time for it lately. But I know it’s a place of great refuge for her, where she can walk slowly through the quite often overgrown bits where weeds grow frantically, strangling all her beloved plants. But neither Maura nor I know anything about gardening, so we’re afraid to go out in case we pull up the wrong thing and besides, we keep hoping that Mum will get a chance to go out and do it.

  ‘Weeding is terribly therapeutic,’ she’d always said, although I couldn’t see it myself. But she sits down on the kitchen chair. We listen together to Eddie’s voice coming over the monitor from the living room as he reads his latest grisly ‘true facts’ book with great relish.

  Bridget chatters as I cook but Mum says nothing, which is unusual because normally when we’re together we always have a million things to talk about. But she is tired today – that much is obvious.

  Bridget goes off to sit with Eddie and my father, and Mum hovers until she’s safely installed in the other room.

  ‘Call if you need me,’ Mum says.

  She never stops. She does not have one of those fitness watches but if she did, I imagine her step-count per day would rival a marathon runner’s.

  ‘Will I make you a snack, Mum?’ I ask when she comes back and I turn away from the stove top so I can really look at her. This time there’s no mistaking it, the glitter of tears in those beautiful eyes and one solitary tear sliding down her cheek.

  ‘I never thought it was going to be like this,’ she says. ‘I knew exactly what it would be – that’s not what I mean, but the grief, Freya . . . the grief is so hideous. It’s as if I’m grieving and he’s not gone because he’s there in front of me but I am anticipating grief. Waiting for it. And living it at the same time. I’m so busy taking care of him and Mum and Eddie and yet, I look at your father and there’s nothing there. He’s still there physically but he’s not there and I think of what it’s going to be like when he’s gone.’ Her voice breaks.

  I pull my mother into my arms and let her sob. Then, with one yell into the other room to say we are going into the garden, we head for the back door: the garden is the only place I think we can go and not be interrupted.

  Outside, it’s gloriously sunny and under normal circumstances, Mum would be out here in it if she had a spare moment. But there are no spare moments in her life now.

  I get her to an old bench seat that’s been there my whole life, from where we can see the now defunct
vegetable garden – an old project of Dad’s – and the stalks of plants that should no doubt have been pulled up, cut back, whatever.

  I’m ready to deliver my speech, the one that’s formed in my head in just a few moments, but she beats me to it.

  ‘Freya, darling,’ she says, sitting upright, wiping her eyes with one hand. ‘Forgive me. I’m tired. You know how hopeless I am with naps. Some people can do it and wake up refreshed. I wake up feeling as if I’ve been bashed by a couple of heavy books.’

  Her smile is bright, she’s breathing deeply, determinedly.

  ‘But Mum—’ I begin.

  ‘No.’ She takes my hands. ‘I’m fine. Honestly. I feel so guilty at all the cooking you’ve done.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But nothing, darling. Go. It’s time you got home to work. That book won’t write itself!’

  This is all delivered with a beaming smile.

  My mother has pulled up the drawbridge.

  On the way home, I think about my social media feeds and the much worked-upon ‘happiness’ I am displaying with every photo of me making muffins, bashing the stems of lemongrass, having coffee in Giorgio and Patrick’s. None of us feel we can be honest anymore. My mother is hiding her pain and so am I, from behind the screen of my so-happy life on Instagram.

  What if I posted something totally different?

  ‘Devastating day – my father’s so ill and it’s destroying my mother.’

  I could illustrate it with a picture of hands: four pairs of hands holding on to each other – my father’s limp ones, Eddie’s and Bridget’s elderly ones, my mother’s thin and veiny ones from overwork. That would be real.

  Not ‘aspirational’ as bloody Nina would call it. But does Nina know everything, I think?

  Does she know anything at all? asks Mildred.