by Elske Rahill
Cara opens her mouth to speak and her voice comes out low and trembling.
‘Does it? I don’t know… I don’t want to be, you know, dramatic. I just – I’m worried and I don’t know what to do. I need advice.’
‘Are you alright?’
‘Yes, I just, I don’t know if this is as serious as I’m making out, or if it’s even something that I should be taking up your time over. I just want advice.’
‘You said your grandmother has dementia?’
‘I don’t know if she’s been… diagnosed or whatever. She doesn’t know who we are a lot of the time. She tells me people have been asking her to sign things. She says she’s signed things and she can’t remember what… that’s dementia, isn’t it?’
‘It certainly sounds like it. Has she been assessed?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, this is the thing. My aunts are in charge and they don’t tell us anything. One of the carers said that the dementia wasn’t on her file. She said she told my aunt that, but my aunt told her she’d lose her job if she didn’t show a bit of respect.’
‘In charge?’
‘They say they are executors.’
‘So they have taken power of attorney?’
‘No. This is the thing. They are pretending my grandma is fine; they haven’t taken power of attorney. And they are moving around her money, getting her to sign things, selling her property, having her house redecorated…’
‘And they are selling her house?’
‘No, her—’ Here Cara falters for a moment, embarrassed, ‘—other properties. She is quite wealthy. My grandad was a painter. He was quite successful… they became quite wealthy.’
‘Oh! Would I know him?’
‘Dennis Kearney?’
‘Rings a bell… I did art for my Leaving Cert…’
‘The thing is – the thing that the carer said to me, is that my grandmother has no idea what’s going on, but all these things are happening under her name, you know? Because she says they get her to sign things. You see, there are some family things… family issues.’
The lady nods and clicks her tongue. ‘Oh I know!’ she says gravely, nodding at the metal filing cabinet, as though there are dark, untellable stories running on in there in the drawers. ‘I know only too well… you see the worst in people in this job. It’s usually the mother who is the victim, it’s usually the kids, they see it as their right, and it’s usually about money.’
‘It must be a hard job. It must be so tiring. I don’t know how you do it. I couldn’t.’
‘Thank you. Yes, it’s – it has its difficulties alright.’
‘Well, you know, I don’t want to take up your time. I don’t know whether to be worried, or whether this is their right, you know? And in a way, my grandmother doesn’t really know what’s going on so she’s not that upset about it so maybe it doesn’t really affect her. She gets upset but then she forgets completely.’
The social worker has gained interest. She’s leaning back on the windowsill, her hands knotted in her lap. She is looking hard at Cara and nodding.
‘Oh, look, I don’t know what’s relevant. I just need advice. What say do I have in my grandma’s care, for example? And is it illegal, what they’re doing?’
‘Yes, it is certainly illegal. Now who are we talking about here – just your aunt?’
‘I have two aunts. I think they’re both in on it, but one is sort of the ringleader… and my mother. My mother has taken Grandma’s cheque book. Maybe for safe keeping, but I don’t think so. I think she’s using it. The carer said my mother got Grandma to sign them before she took it. She says she bought herself a bus, but I don’t know.’
Cara cannot read the expression on Bernie’s face now.
‘And why are they doing it? Do they need money?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. My aunts are extremely wealthy… my mother less so, maybe. But, you see, my Aunt Aoife, she doesn’t think it’s fair, that my grandmother looked after us more than my cousin, helping us out financially as well, I mean. We – see, myself and my sister – we grew up with our grandparents. Our mother is – she is strange. She joins cults and things. My little sister was taken away from her by social services, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘Well, they were involved. They were calling over and interviewing my mother and things so my mother just left my sister with my grandparents and left the country.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘My sister?’
‘Your mother. Your sister. Both.’
‘My mother is Eileen Kearney. My sister is Freya Kearney.’
Bernie writes it down. ‘I’ll find out.’
‘So, our grandparents, I think they paid for a lot of things for us growing up and certainly as adults. I mean, I couldn’t have managed without Grandma, and my little sister is a single mother you know, and still in college and all. She lived with Grandma – my grandmother – and last summer my aunt kicked her out, and there was really nothing we could do because Grandma had broken her hip and she was fragile and couldn’t walk or anything and there would have been a fight and, at the time, you know, we thought it would be too stressful for Grandma if we argued… but my aunt… she’s settling the score, I suppose. According to my grandmother, you know, she made this… list. She worked out how much my grandma ‘owes’ her and her daughter, and she’s organising it now that she has the chance. I suppose that’s how she sees it. She’s making it fair, as she sees it.’
‘Well, that’s not right.’
‘Well, no. Because she’s taking advantage, I suppose. But what I’m wondering is – is it really bad, what they’re doing? And how I can address it without upsetting my grandmother.’
‘And in your email you said there was a large cheque?’
‘Yes, my grandmother gave me this letter.’
Cara has it folded in her back pocket – God, the social worker must think she’s such a flake, carrying a thing like that around in her back pocket. She hands it over. Bernie frowns with a kind of glee as she reads.
‘Who is Davitt Dunlin?’
‘My grandmother’s solicitor, she knew his father… so as you can see it’s a letter confirming the cheque for €100,000 to my mother. He says, “You assured me you were of sound mind and were certain that you wished to transfer the money…” or something like that, doesn’t he?’
‘That’s what he says, yes. He says Eileen – that’s your mother, is it?’
Cara nods.
‘He says she called him to the house, saying that your grandmother wished to change her will, but that “we agreed to leave the will as it is until you are feeling better”. This is really strange. I’ve never seen a solicitor carry on like this before.’
‘He’s a family friend. He grew up with my mother, and aunts.’
‘Well, I need to get in touch with this man.’
‘Okay. I think he really believes it though, you know. I think he just doesn’t know… but what I’m saying anyway is that I only know these things by fluke.’
‘Mmmmm,’ says Bernie, and suddenly Cara is afraid that the social worker will misunderstand; she will think Aoife and The Lily are all Grandma’s fault, that Grandma must be that way too, if her daughters are, that they are just a mad family doing mad things and that her grandmother deserves them.
‘You were right to contact us.’
‘Look, I don’t want to be dramatic, I just—’
‘I’ll get you some water.’
Cara had no intention of crying. And now there is a wash of mascara on her hands, and her face must be a mess. Does she even feel the emotion running out of her? And now she is shaking and cold and for no reason she can understand.
While Bernie has gone to get water, it occurs to Cara that she may sound mad; that Bernie may think she has made it all up, that it is she who is after Grandma’s money somehow. And then a cool terror trickles though her – this is exactly the kind of thing her mother would do. Her mother
would come here, weeping like this, saying the first thing that came into her head, and believing it. What if Cara is doing the same? What if she has imagined it all? But no. There will be records. There is the letter from the solicitor.
When the social worker comes back Cara takes the water and sips, but it is too cold and her stomach seizes up.
‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘I must seem mad to you.’
‘Not at all.’
‘I might be making a big deal out of nothing.’
‘No. You’re certainly not.’
‘So, I suppose the question is then, as the grandchild, you know, where do I stand? What do I do?’
‘Well, it’s out of your hands now.’
‘It is my responsibility. My grandmother looked after me all my life.’
‘Yes, no I understand all that, but in terms of addressing this situation with your aunts and your mother. I will look into it.’
‘Do you need anything from me? Proof of anything?’
‘I will get all that. I just need you to fill in a statement for me.’
‘But I’m not accusing them of anything, exactly, it’s just what I told you – it’s not so clear.’
‘You just list everything you told me. Tick the boxes there for what your concerns are – emotional abuse? Financial abuse?’
‘Both, I suppose.’
Again the reassuring, knowing nod, the heavy eyelids. ‘Usually is. I’ll leave you to fill that in at your own pace. Wait till I get back before you sign it. I need to witness it.’
‘My grandmother would be heartbroken if they told her I’d said she was unfit. She would be humiliated. Do you see?’
‘That’s not what we would say to her. But you need to protect her, if people are taking advantage.’
‘Will my aunts see this?’
‘It’s confidential. Don’t worry. You’re not implicating yourself in anything. You just list your concerns and then it’s out of your hands. You owe it to your grandmother, you know.’
*
By the time she gets out of the HSE office, she only has twenty minutes to get to the music school. She should feel relieved after unloading all the shameful dealings of her family, but instead the meeting has left something pressing like a stone on her tongue, a queasy satisfaction tightening in her chest and a fear – as though she has exposed herself. What does she imagine they can do to her – the aunts? Money is all they have. Her grandad’s money to fight her with, but they cannot hurt her babies and they cannot take Pat away, so why does she feel afraid? They could upset Grandma. They could tell her that Cara said she was unfit.
At the end of the road she has to pull up and get out.
It’s just pregnancy sickness, perhaps, the nausea that has clenched her whole body suddenly, making her kneel by the car and retch at the tarmac. She is shaking. It’s a thing she’s never felt before, this sanctimonious dread that feels so like guilt; the loneliness of being right on her own terms.
There is a little garden on the corner of a street. A sign on the railings saying ‘Community Garden’. It looks like an explosion of weeds, the green tangles tumbling out under the gate and coiling around the bars in a crazed celebration of vegetation. She wants to give the garden something, so she pulls up again, the little car almost toppling as the side of it mounts the kerb. She releases her seatbelt. She is late – late for her little girl; she is late and still she is stopping. She takes the matchbox out of the glove compartment, opens the car door and leans towards the garden. She will leave the little ladybird to feast on all the greenfly. Now that she is closer, she sees that the garden is growing parsley and rosemary and mint, and some strangled peas, with limp, frost-bitten pods. She slides open the little box and already she knows what has happened. She can feel the dry weightlessness of the box. The ladybird has died, its little legs clamped to itself, the flat black underside and the shell a frank crimson red, light as confetti.
39
MEGAN HATES DADDY.
Megan wants Mammy to be listening to her but Mammy bees closing together with Daddy on the Big Bed and does not be hearing her and as well does not be looking at her and just bees closing together with Daddy and kissing him and cuddling also.
Lots of the days Daddy has spikes on he’s face. Megan does not like Daddy to be giving her kisses when there be spikes on he’s face and Mammy should not kiss him when him has spikes or cuddle also acause the spikes can be hurting.
Daddy has telled Megan to go in her room and get in her jammies and Mammy has said, ‘Yes, go and get your jammies on, Megan,’ and Megan is hating Daddy so so so much she will cut off he’s head maybe and maybe poo on it, maybe.
Megan is not be allowed in the Big Bed now acause she be a big girl now. When Megan beed two, Baby Peig has popped out and Megan has been wanting to lie aside the basket and watch when Baby Peig be sleeping, but Mammy has sayed no. Now she be sleeping aside Baby Peig and she can be watching her hands so squidgy soft and her breathing as well up and down, and Mammy sayed Megan bees such a big girl and a good girl for to be having Baby Peig in-with-her but that is a bit cheating acause actually Megan is happy to be getting Baby Peig in-with-her and even more when the little boy comes.
There be no goblins in Megan’s whole town, but sometimes she splains to Baby Peig anyway, just for to be sure, so Baby Peig does not be being scared: ‘I will mind you little baby,’ she says, ‘no goblins in this whole town and no bad fings in my woom.’ And as well, when she gets a snail feeling on her neck, and on her feet, she remembers really really hard that there be no snakes in Ourland and she tells that to Baby Peig also.
Megan loves her doggie jammies but it is a hard jammies to put on, because it be having a bottom and a top stuck together and buttons on her front – so many of holes in for legs and arms and hard to know which one. Her daddy has comed to the door and he be saying something and Megan say, ‘What you have sayed?’ acause he be doing that talking again that is gloopy and far away and hard to listen out the words. Her daddy walk in her room with Baby Peig sleeping and put Baby Peig down in her crib and then him pick Megan up on he’s so high arm and does a sloppy kiss on her cheek but otay cause he’s face bees not spikey today. Then he plops her down on the bed and open her jammies – the hole for one foot and then the other foot.
Then she be buttoned up so cosy and she loves Daddy.
‘Stowy Daddy.’
She does not so much hate Daddy when he not be spiking her cheek and when he bees reading her story. Daddy says yes to story so Megan says, ‘Two stowy?’ and he laughs and says, ‘Two quick stories then, but quick,’ and Megan loves Daddy and Daddy be so cosy warm. ‘Please will you lie with me, Daddy?’
Megan knows the little boy is be coming tonight – and she knows him is not be holding her hand and smiling and picking mushrooms with her together in the forest this night. Afore him come and pick mushrooms with Megan in the night, and they be having a basket for the mushrooms and a stick for pushing away the forest, but now when him comes him is just an open mouth like trying to make sounds and even like Megan is sometimes finding it tricky to pick out sounds she is knowing there be no sound in he’s froat and that is making him sad and angry as well and he’s eyes be very big and black and he’s hands be fat and small and dirty and she does be frightened some of the times when him be reaching out to touch her froat.
PART 3
40
THE BIN BAG HAS fallen away from the window; a slow, clumsy rustle in the night. Freya tried to stick it back up but the tack has hardened. She’ll get more tomorrow. Or maybe she’ll use duct tape.
From the garden outside, a picket of solar lights, chillingly white, jumbles shadows across the bedroom wall: the slanted tower of the ironing board, the spindly forest of an old hamster cage.
The fold-out bed joggles and yelps when Freya turns on her side. She’s clutching her phone in both hands. Sticking out from the cowl of her blanket, her fingers are cold, and her nose. She’ll send the email. She’ll read over
it one last time, and then she’ll send it.
From: Freya Kearney
To: [email protected]
Dear Valerie,
Hey Cos! I hope everything is going well over there? Grandma tells me you have a job on Love/Hate, and that you are engaged to be married? This may or may not be the case – it is hard to know where she gets some of the things she comes out with these days – but anyway, I hope things are good. Did you hear that Cara and Pat are expecting a baby next summer? In the last scan they said it looked like it’s another girl, but they couldn’t be certain.
Anyway, I am really emailing about Grandma. I want to explain my recent actions, ask your thoughts and fill you in on stuff you might not be aware of.
About a month ago, I received a letter re power of attorney. You probably received the same letter? Basically, it says your mum and Aunt Sinéad are to take power of attorney, but you, myself and Cara each have a right to object to it.
I think I should let you know all of the following information:
As you may or may not know, before Christmas there was a HSE enquiry into elder abuse regarding Grandma. I think only your mum and Sinéad were investigated and they both refused to co-operate. I don’t know why my mother wasn’t. She should have been.
Freya deletes She should have been.
Your mum sent an email about it saying there had been false allegations, but I am not convinced that they were false and I’m not sure if the HSE are either.
You may or may not be aware that my mother extracted a €100,000 cheque from Grandma very shortly after her fall. I am not sure if you saw much of Grandma after her fall, but I can assure you she was in no fit state to be making financial decisions. At a later date Grandma also told me that she thought they had sold her houses in Monkstown and Wicklow, and asked me to explain to her what was going on, adding ‘they tell me I gave you money and they want to make it fair on Valerie.’ Since Grandma moved out of her house, your mother has not let me in, even to collect boxes of my things from the attic.