Now and Then

by Mary O'Sullivan

  “Not!” Anna insisted. “Josh say bum too.”

  “Sorry, Hugh,” I said. “As you can hear, this pair need sorting. I’ll be going to the hospital as soon as your mother arrives. I’ll tell Ben you were asking for him.”

  “Tell him I’ll see him soon. And, Leah, take care. It was nice talking to you.”

  “And you too,” I said.

  When the call was finished, I realised that we had spoken in riddles and hints. Della’s plans. Ben’s past. An urgent need for Hugh to travel from San Francisco to Paircmoor. I had also forgotten to ask him when he was due to arrive here. I assumed he would be staying in the hotel in town, like his mother.

  A squeal from Anna told me her Della radar was on high alert. I was convinced she was capable of hearing her grandmother’s car from as far away as the bendy bridge.

  I closed my make-up drawer. It was time for me to go to my husband and for both of us to face the truth together.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  While driving through town to the hospital, I noticed groups of people in high-vis jackets, clustered around ladders here and there. They were obviously volunteers, Tidy Towns’ members, stringing up Christmas lights from poles and shop canopies. The sight made me shiver. I had been putting some Christmas money by whenever I could for the past few months. It came nowhere near what it would take to give the children, not just what they wanted in toys, but what they needed in clothes and shoes. I shrugged off those thoughts. Christmas was a month away. The situation with Ben was now.

  I was in a determined frame of mind when I tapped on the door of Room 5. No more pussyfooting around the facts. No more hints and half- truths. Hugh had said ask Ben about his early years. That was exactly what I would do.

  I strode into the room to find Ben asleep. He looked peaceful. Vulnerable. His features relaxed. He did seem thinner than I had ever seen him, but that would soon be sorted when he got home. I took off my coat, hung it in his wardrobe, and sat. I watched him sleep, his breath slow and even, his mouth slightly open. I had an urge to lie down beside him, cuddle into him and sleep. For a long time.

  His phone was beside me on the locker top. I checked it. The screen was blank. He had let the battery run down, not caring about people wanting to contact him. His brother for instance. That was the thing about Ben. His life, his real, thinking, feeling life, was lived privately in his head. His interactions with the world around him and the people in it were superficial. I sighed, knowing I was being unfair to Ben. And I would soon be angry also, if I was forced to sit here and wait much longer.

  I shook him gently by the shoulder. He woke slowly, rubbing his eyes, stretching and then turning towards me with the slow, gentle smile I loved so much.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked. “I got tired waiting so I had a snooze.”

  He pulled himself up in the bed.

  I leaned towards him and kissed him. His eyes were glazed. I assumed he was still being sedated.

  “Not long,” I said. “Your mother was a bit late coming out to Paircmoor. She must be tired at this stage from all her travelling around.”

  “Hmm. There’s no need for her to be here. She could still be in Hugh’s house if she wanted.”

  “Don’t be nasty, Ben. She went to a lot of effort to be here for you.”

  He pushed back his bedcovers impatiently and swung his legs out. Sitting directly in front of me, he looked at me, all traces of sleep now gone.

  “I think we should take up where we left off yesterday, Leah. There’s a lot to tell.”

  “That’s what Hugh said.”

  “Hugh? When were you talking to him?”

  “He rang me today. Said he had been trying to get in touch with you. You do realise your phone battery is flat, don’t you? The charger is in your locker. You’ll see Hugh soon anyway. He’s coming home.”

  “Here?”

  I was becoming annoyed. We were allowing ourselves to get side-tracked again.

  “Yes, here. Forget about that now. Just talk. Tell me what you’ve been hiding from me. And why.”

  “I’ve been ashamed to tell you the truth, Leah. Terrified that you would reject me if you knew the real me.”

  He took my hands in his. His fingers felt bony. Cold. I was finding it difficult to control the trembling in my limbs. The longer it took Ben to tell me ‘the truth’ about himself, the more I anticipated unbearable news. A criminal conviction? A previous marriage? He squeezed my hands and I felt him tremble too.

  “Imagine I’m sixteen,” he said. “Trying to recover from cutting my wrist. Because my mother had given a plausible explanation to the hospital about me messing around with tools, there was no real follow-up. She tutored me so well on the electric-saw cover-up story that I had almost come to believe it myself. Shortly after, we went on a family holiday, an Easter break cruising on the Shannon.”

  He shivered. I heard his breathing quicken. I didn’t want to say anything in case my words were the wrong ones and would stop him talking.

  “Dad and Hugh always had a close bond. It was even more apparent than usual on that trip. They laughed together, shared the work of piloting the boat, played golf in one town we docked in. Mum just basked in the glow of their camaraderie. And me? I had never felt more alone, or more devastated that I had not bled to death from my cut wrist.”

  I winced, hearing an echo in his voice of what he had suffered.

  “I waited until they were all asleep. Then I slipped overboard, into the black, cold water. It wrapped around me. Over my head. Into my lungs. Down. Down. But it spat me up to the surface again and my mouth opened to gasp for air. My mind did not want to fight for life, but my body did. My arms and legs flailed. Splashed. I spluttered, spitting out water. Lights went on in the cruiser. I saw Dad’s face appear at the rail, shadowed by Hugh. The water closed over my head again. That’s all I remember until I woke up on board. Mum was crying and Dad was shouting at her about having me sectioned. I wasn’t sure what that meant until I heard him mention the mental hospital. Then I was doubly angry that I had neither bled to death nor drowned.”

  He let go my hand and lay back on the bed. Eyes closed, so that I could not see the pain in them. I lay down beside him, held him close, and felt his pain by osmosis. I was holding the boy. The sad and lonely teenager. Isolated in his difference.

  “They reached a compromise,” he said. My parents. They booked me into the Booly Clinic.”

  “I heard of that. It’s where the rich and famous go for rehab, isn’t it?”

  He opened his eyes and smiled at me. “And where the not so rich and famous can go for discreet treatment for their son’s mental health problems. Didn’t stop me trying though. I stashed my medication and made two more suicide attempts. As you can see, I never managed to get it right. Typical. I’ve always gone along with Mum’s need for cover-up. I felt I owed her that for being such a burden to her. So my stay in the Booly Clinic was always referred to as a three-month unsuccessful trial at boarding school. I even failed in that imaginary task.”

  His self-hatred was tangible. Eating him up, like caustic bile pumping through his veins. I moved away from him and sat on the side of the bed.

  “So how long were you in the Clinic?”

  “Three months. I had intensive counselling, medication, and eventually a pass back into the great big world. I was still sad, but no longer suicidal.”

  “Until last Friday. Am I right, Ben? Did you mean to end your life then? Is that why you went to the beach?”

  He pulled himself up in the bed and sat beside me.

  “No, Leah! No! I had no great plan on Friday night. All I wanted to do was run away from the pressure. My scale model business was a joke, the only friend I had in Paircmoor had turned out not be a friend at all, my mother was pimping me out to a rich developer in the US. Begging him to take me on. For fuck’s sake! Who would employ a thirty-six-year-old man whose mother has to go touting for a job for him? Certainly not Zach Milburg. He
has a reputation for being ruthless. And successful. Maybe they are the same thing. I just had to get away from it all.”

  I felt like distancing myself from his bitterness, but knew I could not. It was good that he was talking, even though it was hard to hear that Ellen Riggs was the only friend he had in Paircmoor. I would have named Ben as first on my list of friends, no matter where we were living. “The cave you were in. Is that the one the children told me about? Where Ellen Riggs taught them the names of the fish in the rock pool.”

  He nodded. “Yes, that’s the one. I went there to think. To sort my head out. I stayed too long. The tide blocked my exit. I wasn’t suicidal, Leah. I’d have gone into the water if I was, wouldn’t I?”

  Would he? I didn’t know. He seemed he didn’t either. What I did know was that he had probably gone to that cave to relive that happy day with Ellen and the children.

  “The worst thing, Leah, is that my mother is still trying to control me. I’m not blaming her. I’m just saying she’ll have to work things out for herself, but I’ve reached the stage where I must take responsibility for my own life.”

  “No, Ben. Not just you. I’m with you every step of the way. And there is so much help available now. But no more lies and cover-up. You’ve nothing to be ashamed about. Have you seen a counsellor here? Or a psychiatrist.”

  “No. They offered the service but I refused it. I don’t need it. Do you remember I went to the GP in Paircmoor about the pains in my neck and shoulders? Doctor Kelly. He knew straight away that I was suffering from stress. Unemployment, money worries, looking after the kids, Paircmoor. All that shit. I told him I had previously suffered from depression. He gave me the name of a counsellor and wrote a prescription for me.”

  I was stunned. “I didn’t know you were taking medication.”

  “That’s because I wasn’t. I didn’t fill the prescription. But I will. I’ll go back to the GP, good old Doctor Kelly, and tell him I’m ready to listen to him now.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, you won’t. I must do this myself, Leah. Mum never let me take control of the situation, so I never took responsibility for it. I must do it now. For you and for the children.”

  “And for yourself.”

  “Exactly.”

  We were silent then. Each of us isolated in our separate pool of thought. Mine was about all the lies I had been told and the truths that had been withheld for so long. Was this it? Did I now know all the Parrish family secrets? While Della had manipulated her vulnerable son in his teens, he had been an adult when I met him. Confident, successful. It was unfair of him now to let his mother take all the blame for hiding the facts. Just as it was unfair of me to withhold my news. Our news.

  “We’ll get through this, Leah. I’ll do the right thing for you and Rob and the twins. I love the four of you so much.”

  The four of us. Rob, Josh, Anna and Leah. How could I tell him about the embryo? About the soon-to-be foetus. About the baby that I had not planned and did not want. And yet, I yearned to grow and nurture and give birth to this baby. To hold it in my arms and love it. Protect it. I smiled at Ben.

  “We love you too, Ben. The four of us. The Paircmoor Parrishes.”

  I left then. Quickly. Taking with me the fifth, unacknowledged, unwanted, member of the dysfunctional Paircmoor Parrishes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Wednesday 1st December 2010

  The sound of my phone ringing woke me at six o’clock in the morning. I panicked, sure it must be the hospital. It could only be bad news when they rang at that hour. I grabbed it after two rings, worried it would wake the children, afraid to hear what the caller had to say.

  I was relieved but puzzled to hear Della’s voice.

  “Sorry to wake you so early,” she said. “I want to let you know I won’t be available to babysit for you this afternoon.”

  “Good. I-I don’t mean good that you can’t babysit. It’s just that I thought there might be bad news about Ben when the phone rang. I mean an emergency. A new crisis. Or something . . .”

  I winced as I listened to myself waffle.

  “I’ve some business I need to attend to in Dublin. I’m not sure how long it will take but it will probably be late when I get back down here. It may even be tomorrow.”

  “That’s no problem, Della. Thanks for letting me know. Have a safe journey.”

  Then she was gone before I could ask her if she was going to pick Hugh up at the airport. Swanning off to do her ‘business’. Now I had to cope with the ‘no problem’ of minding the children. Mags and Tina were holding the fort at the salon, so they would not be available. Claire Hoey was probably gone back to work. Unless her back was still giving trouble after her car accident. One way or the other she would not be available to babysit. I considered asking Vera and Walter Sanquest but the children did not know them. Neither did I. Besides, they had already done enough for this family.

  That left me with the option of bringing the brood to the hospital with me. I would have to quell my fear of them picking up all sorts of bugs. They would be delighted to see Ben. Or would they be upset at seeing him in hospital? He might be moody. Angry. Not something the children should see.

  I threw back the duvet and got out of bed, suddenly struck by the thought that the children might already have been subjected to Ben’s moods. The depression I had failed to note. The anger. The resentment. I shook my head in denial. They would have mentioned it to me. Not the twins of course. They would not have the vocabulary to describe such behaviour, but they would have shown signs of upset. Bed wetting maybe. Or aggression. I immediately thought of Anna. How she manipulated the two boys. Especially Josh. Occasionally making Josh cry. It had never dawned on me that she might be copying behaviour she had seen. I shrugged off that thought. Rob had been very upset on Friday when he had heard Ben shout and smash Ellen Riggs’ vase. If he had previously seen aggressive behaviour like that, he would certainly have told me. Wouldn’t he?

  I put on my dressing gown and tiptoed along the corridor to the twins’ room and checked on them. They were still asleep. Even Anna, unusually for her, was motionless. Rob, also, was sleeping peacefully when I checked on him. I continued on out to the kitchen, then to the lounge. I stood in the doorway and looked directly across the room at the door opposite. The one that led into Ben’s office. That quaint little room which had once been a dairy, where butter was churned and cheese made for the family. Or so Mags Hoey had told me. It was obviously true, as we had found some beautifully carved wooden butter moulds and paddles on the shelf there. I displayed them on the dresser in the kitchen now.

  I stood staring at the door of the ex-dairy as if I could discern from across the room if it was locked or not. Or if I had any right to go in there and poke through Ben’s work. His computer. Anything else he might have in his private space. He kept it locked in case the children interfered with his work. He said. And why would I do that? What was I looking for? More secrets? The sad fact was that I did not really know Ben at all. As I stood there staring at the door of his office, I realised I did not trust him either. How could I? He had withheld the truth of his teenage years from me for as long as I had known him.

  Suddenly making up my mind, I strode across the room and tried the door handle. It opened inwards. I shivered. I always found that room to be exceptionally cold, maybe because it was north-facing and had not yet been insulated. Another job for when our luck changed. By that standard, it would be cold for a long time. There was an electric radiator by the desk. I ignored it, conscious of the electricity bill. A filing cabinet, printer, a few shelves over the desk, chair, walls still whitewashed in respect for the dairy tradition. That was it. Ben’s office. His escape space.

  The filing cabinet was not locked. Feeling like a traitor, I opened the drawers and flicked through the files. Drawings, plans, proposals. Every single file work-related. Even though I was not sure what I was looking for, I knew it was not in the filing cabinet. Next
I sat at his desk, staring at his laptop. This was where he spent his private hours. The times when he could stop pretending to be content with his lot. Mostly at night, after the children had gone to bed. The fact was, he could not have much time during the day to sit here soul-searching. Or working on his scale models. The children were a full-time job, at least until the twins went to kindergarten next year.

  I began to think what it would have been like for me to look after the children at the same time as I was trying to establish my salon. I had never thought of it that way before. I imagined the conflict, the time pressure, the sheer frustration of catering full-time to the needs of three children while trying to manage a start-up business. I shivered again, but not from cold this time. Guilt put its icy fingers around my heart and squeezed. In that moment of honesty, I knew I had not supported Ben as I should have. If nothing else, I could have shown interest in his scale models. Given him encouragement. Instead I had side-lined him. Put him at the bottom of my long list of priorities. I saw my reflection in the laptop screen. My face looked mean and pinched. That is exactly how I felt.

  Now that I felt so bad about myself, I decided to go ahead with turning on his laptop and snooping there. It flickered into life. The start screen image flooded the dreary room with sunshine and light. I gazed at the photo of the children, the three little Parrishes. Plus Finn Riggs. They were on the beach, in swimwear. All happy and smiling. In front of them was a little pile of sandcastles, one with a bunch of sea thrift stuck on top, and another decorated with cockleshells. Behind them stood Ellen Riggs. In a bikini. Her body was perfect in every curve. No stretch marks. She was smiling at the photographer. At my husband. I leaned forward and peered more closely at the background. It was as I suspected. They were standing in front of a cave, the dark slash of the mouth sinister in the otherwise happy picture. A family photo. Now I knew for certain what had drawn Ben to that cave.