Now and Then

by Mary O'Sullivan

  “Tina, this is so thoughtful. I appreciate it very much.”

  “Enjoy. I’ll mind the salon until you’re ready.”

  She walked out the door in that elegant way I had thought of as affected, but now recognised as a natural grace. How many other things had I got wrong? How far off track had I come? How far away had I pushed my husband?

  I took a sip of coffee and rang Ben.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Not for the first time Ben cursed the fiddly buckles and belts in the children’s car seats. Tying Josh in was easy but keeping Anna quiet for long enough to secure all the bits and pieces was a challenge.

  “We go for Rob now?” she asked when at last he had both of them strapped in safely.

  “Rob,” Josh echoed.

  The twins idolised their older brother.

  “Robbie, Robbie!” they chanted in unison as Ben switched on the engine.

  Rob was five and had started primary school that year. The daily journey to collect their big brother was the highlight of the twins’ day. As he carefully guided the jeep down the narrow lane from Cowslip Cottage, Ben noted, as he always did, that he hated the house name. Like everything else, Leah’s opinion had prevailed. She said it had been named one hundred years ago and tradition must be respected. Besides, she informed him, cowslips had the most delicately beautiful perfume she ever smelt. None of this stopped Ben thinking ‘Cowshit Cottage’ every time he saw the age-worn stone plaque on the front of their home.

  The primary school was built on the outskirts of the village. Out past Leah’s salon. The twins waved, as they did every day when passing the place where their mother spent most of her time. Ben frowned, remembering her phone call just before he left the cottage. Being summoned to a ‘talk’ by Leah was ominous. It would most probably be about money. Or lack of it.

  “Ellen,” Anna said, clapping her hands together as they approached the school.

  Ben smiled. Ellen’s car was parked in her usual spot outside the school gates. Right beside her Nissan was a vacant space which was generally accepted as Ben’s by now. When Ben had parked, the riot of colour that was Ellen jumped out of her car. She was wearing a lime-green raincoat, rainbow-coloured wellingtons and her dark curls spilled out from underneath a pink floppy hat. She was, as ever, smiling as she opened the passenger door of the jeep and hopped in.

  “How are my favourite twinnies?” she asked, turning to the children in the back seat.

  Anna leaned forward and reached a hand towards Ellen.

  “I think she wants to touch your hair again. And –”

  Ben suddenly stopped talking, forgetting the words he had been about to say, admitting to himself, that he, not his daughter, was the one who needed to touch Ellen’s hair. He had a fleeting image of himself stroking her face, breathing in her perfume. He recognised it as a fragment of a dream he had hidden in the safety of his subconscious. A dangerous, unsettling dream. He blinked to clear it away quickly, as if Ellen could see his shame. She was looking at him, concern in her green eyes.

  “Ben? Are you alright?”

  Alright? What the fuck did that mean? Had he been alright pre-Paircmoor? When every day had a focus, a worthwhile reason to get up. When he had a respected role in the life of a vibrant city, establishing his career with Walton, Walton and Meade architectural firm. When he had ambition. Self-respect. A future.

  Ellen was looking at him with concern. He attempted a smile.

  “I’m fine, Ellen. Still waiting to hear from Maine but, like they say, no news is good news. How about you? Any developments on that exhibition in Dublin?”

  “Yes. No. Well, something’s come up –”

  “Me, me!” Anna shouted. “Take me out! Him must get out too!”

  Ellen laughed. “First things first. We had better free this pair before little madam has a tantrum.”

  Ben checked the time on the dash clock. “It’s almost time for Rob and Finn to be out anyway.”

  They took the excited twins to the gate of the school yard, where other parents were waiting for junior class to be released. Ben nodded and smiled in reply to the many salutes. That was Paircmoor for you, salutes, smiles, stares and invisible barriers that said keep your distance, you’re not one of us. Perhaps that was why he and Ellen had forged a friendship. She too was an outsider.

  The school doors opened and a stream of little people wearing blue-and-navy uniforms poured out. Finn led the charge and raced towards his mother. He had Ellen’s dark hair, her smile and those sparkling green eyes. Impossible to say if he resembled his father in any way. Ellen and her son lived alone and never mentioned anything about their personal lives before they had come to Paircmoor from England.

  Ben looked to the back of the group. That’s where he knew he would find Rob. Taller than his classmates. Ambling along. Content in his own company. Anna ran towards her older brother. A smile lit Rob’s face as he caught his sister’s hand and brought her to the gate.

  Ben, busy putting the twins back into their seats and Rob into his booster seat, did not get a chance to talk to Ellen again. She wound down her window as she reversed out of her parking space.

  “What I have to tell you will hold until tomorrow. See you then.”

  “Same time, same place,” he said.

  It was their joke. Their private joke.

  She waved and drove away. The colour went out of his day.

  I checked that the immersion was off, dryers and straighteners unplugged, towels loaded in the laundry bag for washing at home, floors swept clean for the morning. Everything was in order. Thanks mainly to Tina. I could not have managed today without her. I turned the door sign to CLOSED, then switched off the lights.

  Standing in the dimness of the salon, I breathed in the quiet. This was my favourite time of day, especially if I’d been busy. It was when I could pat myself on the back and say, yes, I had made the right decision in opening the business. In leaving my children. My stomach muscles clenched, a physical reaction to the emotional pain I rarely allowed myself to acknowledge. It wasn’t as if I had abandoned Rob and the twins. I would be seeing them shortly, would be putting them to bed, listening to the stories of their day, reading to them. They were being cared for by their father, not some stranger whose job it was to mind the children of busy parents. But yet, my heart ached with the knowledge that they were growing up without me there to hold them when they cried, to kiss away hurt, to laugh with them and show them the wonders of nature, to protect them from the dangers of life.

  I eased onto one of the leather salon chairs. Headlights from passing traffic played on walls and ceiling, then left me in blacker darkness.

  I wrapped my arms around myself, then relaxed into the darkness, holding my secret close.

  Cowslip Cottage was five kilometres outside the village of Paircmoor along a picturesque winding road, bordered by mountains on one side and forest on the other. I sensed, but could not see, the shapes of hills and trees looming in the black night as I drove home. The nearer I got to the cottage, the more slowly I drove. Yes, Ben and I had to talk. Not bicker. Not a one-way conversation with him silent and me laying down the law. Not a repeat of the upsetting shouting-match the last time we tried to really communicate beyond shopping lists and duty rotas.

  I slowed down even more as I approached the skew bridge. It was narrow, humped, and spanned a deceptively docile stream. I had seen the water rage and surge up onto the road in the bad storms last winter. Sometimes I believed Mags’ stories about a workhouse that had once been on the banks of the stream, and that the restless ghosts of the dead poor still haunted the area.

  As I turned the car into the laneway we grandly called our avenue, I faced the truth I was reluctant to admit. I was unfair to Ben. Just as Mags managed her daughter’s life, I organised Ben’s life for him, telling him how to be a stay-at-home dad, what the children were to wear and eat. I had little or no interest in his new business. That worked both ways as he had scant regard for my salon
, despite the fact that the income from it was putting food on the table. And there I went again. Judging. Condemning without knowing all the facts. But neither did Ben. Tonight, when our children were in bed, I would have to tell him.

  I switched off the engine, gathered up my handbag and the salon laundry, took a deep breath and stepped out of my Mini. As I approached the front door the sound of a car sweeping up the front avenue startled me. I knew by the speed, the very arrogance of the way it hurtled into the gravelled front yard, spewing chippings as brakes were suddenly applied, that my plans for this evening were now scuppered.

  The very last person I wanted see waved to me. The front door opened and the outside light flooded the yard. Ben stood there, ready to welcome the visitor. His. Not mine.

  “Why didn’t you warn me your mother was calling?” I whispered to him.

  “I didn’t know,” he said and that was probably true. Della Parrish had a talent for turning up uninvited at the most inconvenient times.

  “As far as you’re concerned, Leah, there is no good time for her to visit.”

  He got that right. I passed him by and went to see my children.

  Della Parrish was the epitome of a glamorous gran. Nothing of the stereotypical rounded, cuddly grandmother about her. She insisted the children call her Della, as if in denying grannyhood she could also deny the passing years. I had to admit she was very generous to the children. And also to Ben. She had bought and insured the jeep he drove. In Dublin she had paid our mortgage when we could not. I knew she could afford to do so, but we might well have been homeless without her help.

  The three children rushed into the hall as I came in, led of course by Anna. I smiled, as I always did, when I saw her peculiar way of bobbing along, her blonde curls bouncing. So full of energy that she created a force field around her and dragged Josh and Rob along in her wake. I stooped down, ready to gather her in my arms.

  “Must see Della,” she told me as she and the boys sped past, leaving me to haul myself tiredly up from my stooping position.

  In the kitchen, I put their abandoned suppers in the fridge, then went to the utility to put on the salon wash. Judging by the pile of mucky little clothes on the floor near the machine, Ben had been gardening with the children again. All good, healthy and educational, if only he could manage to put their soiled clothes into the machine instead of on the floor in front of it. He seemed to think that was a domestic chore too far for him, but not for me after my long day at work.

  Back in the kitchen, I heard excited squeals from the children and knew that Della had played her usual Lady Bountiful routine and had come laden with gifts for them. Rob was first in, waving a new game for his junior computer.

  “Look, Mom! Della brought me this. My very fave!”

  He kissed me quickly on the cheek, then ran to his room, clutching his precious game close to his chest. There would be no need to follow. He could manage that little computer so much better than me. The only problem would be getting him to turn it off at sleep time.

  Josh arrived in next, a shiny, red, remote-control car in his hand. He put it down on the floor and then ran over to me, his arms raised. I picked him up and held him close, his head nestled into my neck.

  “Wov you, Mom,” he whispered.

  “I love you too, Josh,” I said, conscious that words could never, ever express the depth of love I felt for him.

  He wriggled out of my arms and picked up the control pad of his new car. In a matter of seconds he had figured out how to work the forward and reverse controls without any help from me. I shook my head, wondering, not for the first time, if babies were now being born pre-programmed with tech-savvy brains.

  A swishing sound accompanied by the tap of high heels approached. Anna and her grandmother stood just inside the kitchen door, backlit by the hall light. I stared at the pair of them. Awestruck by their beauty, I noted the strong resemblance between my daughter and mother-in-law. The likeness was not physical. Anna looked like me. Petite and blonde. Della was tall, auburn-haired. Imposing. The resemblance was in their posture, the proud tilt of the chin, the straight backs, the utter self-belief.

  Anna was hopping from foot to foot now, waving the wand of the princess costume Della had brought her.

  “I Princess Anna, Mom,” she said.

  “And so you are,” I said, smiling at her. “Did you thank Della for your present?”

  “Princess give her magic,” Anna said, waving her wand at her grandmother.

  Della laughed and hugged Anna. “You did, my princess. Now, you have supper with your mom while I go have a private talk with your dad.”

  Bitch, arrogant cow, I thought as Della turned without saying one word to me and went back down the hall towards the sitting room.

  “I do you magic, Mom,” Anna said as she waved her sparkly wand in my direction.

  I smiled at her. I needed all the magic I could get to sort out the mess that was my life.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I stood outside the door of our sitting room and hesitated. Etiquette demanded I knock. Della had made it very clear that her conversation with Ben was private. But this was my home. How dare they shut me out? I could compromise by kicking the door to satisfy my anger, while at the same time being mannerly enough not to burst in unannounced on their secret chat. Tempting. Common sense won out. I tapped on the door, then opened it quickly. My husband and his mother were seated side by side on the couch. Both turned towards me with slightly surprised expressions on their faces as if they had forgotten I too lived there.

  “Sorry to intrude,” I said. “The children want to see you both before they go to sleep.”

  I turned my back on them. As I reached the kitchen I heard Della make her way towards the children’s bedrooms.

  Ben came into the kitchen.

  “Are you not going to say goodnight to the kids?” I asked.

  He dropped onto a chair at the table and hung his head, much like Rob did if he had misbehaved.

  “Ben? What’s wrong?”

  He looked up at me and I caught a glimpse of panic in his eyes. Ben never panicked. He was cool. Sometimes too cool. I leaned closer to him.

  “Has she said something to you? Done something?”

  “Mum? Of course not! When has she ever done anything but help us?”

  I managed to bite my tongue and not to mention the thousands of insults she had thrown in my direction since first I had met Ben. Her youngest son. Her baby. An architect like Gavin Parrish, his late dad. Doing the Parrish family proud in every way, except in his choice of bride.

  “Supper?” I asked, going to the fridge to get the food Ben had not touched earlier.

  “Not for me, thank you.”

  “I brought Sachertorte, Ben. Your favourite. You’ll have that?”

  I turned around to see Della standing beside Ben, a cake box in her hand. He smiled up at his mother.

  “How could I refuse?”

  Just like you refused supper, I thought, then almost laughed at the pettiness of the competition between Della and me. Let her have her fancy-chocolate-cake victory. At least she had brought a smile back to Ben’s face.

  “Sit down, Leah,” she said so imperiously that I automatically sat at the table across from Ben. “We have something to tell you, but first I’m going to make you both cappuccino and cake.”

  I was too taken aback to protest about the cappuccino. Caffeine after six in the evening was guaranteed to keep me awake for most of the night. But instinct told me that whatever the Parrish mother and son were about to tell me would steal my sleep for a lot longer than a few hours. I looked at Ben but he deliberately avoided eye contact with me. So I sat and watched my mother-in-law potter around our kitchen, opening drawers and presses, tutting occasionally.

  Cake and coffee served, she sat down beside Ben.

  “Eat up and enjoy,” she ordered.

  “Not until I know what all the mystery is about,” I said.

  I sat back, wond
ering where I had found the courage to challenge Mother Parrish. Her nose twitched, exactly as it had done the first time Ben introduced me to her. It was such a tiny movement only I was aware of it. The momentary flare of Della’s delicately shaped nostrils had told me she had got the stench of poverty and ignorance from me. Obviously the intervening years and three grandchildren had not changed her opinion. I noticed her nod in Ben’s direction, giving him permission to speak.

  He swallowed a mouthful of the famous cake and at last looked me in the eye.

  “Leah, Mum’s going to the U.S. tomorrow. Over to see Hugh.”

  I waited. There had to be more. Della made bi-annual trips to see her eldest son in California. A big shot in Silicon Valley. Married to Piper, a banker’s daughter who also did something lucrative in finance, when she wasn’t lolling by the pool at their seven-bedroomed villa. Ben was shuffling his feet underneath the table. He cleared his throat but no words came out. Della was being suspiciously silent.

  “So, Della’s going to see Hugh?” I prompted.

  More throat-clearing and foot-shuffling from Ben before at last he blurted out the words that had been stuck in his throat.

  “You know Piper, Hugh’s wife? Well, her brother is a developer. Zach Milberg. Really, really big. He’s done federal buildings and libraries, shopping malls and tower blocks. A legend in the US. He employs thousands in his company.”

  I put up my hand to stop him as it suddenly dawned on me where this might be going.

  “Let him finish,” Della said.