by Elske Rahill
When I received the letter re power of attorney last week, I sent an email enquiry to the Protection of the Elderly, outlining the situation and asking for advice. The woman who led the HSE investigation phoned me. She told me that there had been a HSE investigation already, and two GP reports which found that there was cause for concern regarding Grandma’s mental state and the behaviour of her children regarding her estate. She strongly advised that I object to power of attorney, and highlighted that, with the HSE recommendation, Grandma would almost certainly be made a ward of court if one of the notified parties objected.
There is limited time within which we can put in an objection to power of attorney, so Cara and I put in the objection this morning. We can always withdraw it. I want to know what you think?
On the one hand, maybe the emotional abuse that Grandma suffered while her children needed to persuade or bully her into changing the will, or writing cheques, would no longer take place if they could simply make the decisions for her? There would be no more tearful phone calls from her about what so and so said about her favouritism, or reminding me not to mention to anyone that she paid for Jem’s creche!
On the other, their behaviour so far has been disgusting and I see no reason why that would change. The HSE officer thinks it would offer Grandma more protection if she were to be made a ward of the court.
The HSE officer is Bernadette Murphy. Her email address is [email protected]
Freya
Freya reads it again from the beginning. The Cos thing is stupid, so she replaces it with How are you?
‘Mammy?’ Jem is hanging onto the door handle with both hands, his chin resting on them.
‘What is it, darling?’
‘Can’t sleep.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Mimi.’
‘Okay, come in here then.’
Freya checks the time – after midnight. She presses ‘send’, and switches off her phone.
41
GRANDMA’S HANDS DANGLE OVER the arms of the chair. Cara lifts one in both of hers, runs her thumb between the bones that fan wicker-fine under the slip of loose skin, the heady blue push of her knuckles. She turns it over and kneads the palm where the flesh is full as a fish belly, lines smoothed plump by the sore swell of tissue, and presses her lips to the skin that doesn’t smell like Grandma anymore, but like piss and perfume and the sediment of breath that settles in rooms like this one, with strangers in it, and storage heaters and closed windows.
The coolness of Grandma’s body makes Cara think of frogs; the pulsing blisters of their throats.
One night, when Cara was little, she and Grandma sat and watched the mating frogs come out in their dozens to croak at the moon. Grandma sat Cara on her lap and wrapped a wool blanket around her shoulders and they listened to the flat, imploring calls, then the bald sloshing of cold-blooded sex. Afterwards, Grandma told her that some frogs can make their own hearts stop beating and it made Cara sick and frightened, as though she might slip on the muddy bank and become a grotesque and beautiful thing like them.
Megan stands close, patting Cara’s cheeks relentlessly with her warm palms. Her face smells unhealthily like snot. She is not over this cold and Cara should get her home.
‘Let’s dow, Mammy. Mimi is tired. She tan’t member us.’
Cara kisses her grandmother’s cheek. ‘We’ll come back soon Grandma,’ she says. Her voice is too public. ‘I’ll bring back your clean clothes. I’ll make you that quiche you like, with the leeks. I’ll bring it tomorrow…’
‘Yes.’ Grandma interlocks her bulky fingers with Cara’s. ‘But wait now, there’s one thing—’
Cara’s other hand is clamped in her daughter’s sticky grip. Megan leans back and pulls with the weight of her whole body, making a performance of heaves and grunts. Cara shakes her off and waits to hear the one thing that Grandma wants to say.
‘—Daddy hasn’t been home in weeks and weeks.’
‘Whose daddy?’
‘Daddy… my husband.’
The colour is seeping out even there in her famously bright eyes – the blue is greying, the white is yellowing. She trembles a little these days. Every cell in her is faltering. She is blurring into death. Cara squeezes Grandma’s shoulder firmly, as though the sensation might align her with this time and place and straighten out something between them.
‘Daddy,’ says Grandma, irritated. ‘You’re not stupid. You know who I mean.’
Her fingers tighten, and in a whoosh of panic Cara has a sense of toppling down, of being weighted into Grandma’s squeaky special chair, the stagnant feet, the muddled world she is sinking into. Cara lifts the hand to her mouth and kisses it again. Over the new smells there is a veil of scented lotion. It’s something appropriately subtle – white musk or wild rose – something expensive that one of the aunts bought her, but still the fragrance is too robust for the dusty skin and the dusty hair and the flabby breath of a body closing down.
‘You know who – Daddy. Who do you think?’ says Grandma. ‘Dinny! My husband, Dennis Kearney. Have none of you noticed he’s been gone now for weeks and weeks?’
Then she raises an eyebrow into a sneering arch, and Cara doesn’t recognise her. She is testing my integrity, thinks Cara, she is challenging me to say it: he is dead. After a pause, during which Megan gives a splutter of exasperation and plonks down cross-legged on the floor, Cara says, ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Worry? Oh no. I don’t worry. I never worry about that. We trust each other. But it is so strange, isn’t it? Still you don’t sleep. It is so hard to sleep alone. You don’t get used to that, you know. Sleeping without them. I think you understand, don’t you?’
She looks intently at Cara with a quivering stare, like the screen on an old television set that needs to be slapped into sense.
Cara tries to force Grandma’s cuticles down a little. Despite all the hand lotion, they are grafted fast to the ridged nail and threaten to split.
‘Will I paint your nails for you, Grandma?’
‘Ha. So you can laugh at me?’
‘No, Grandma.’
‘Look at this stupid thing!’
She lifts her hand to show the plastic ring Aunt Aoife has furnished her with; a wad of mottled blue plastic set in sharp alloy, where her turquoise ring used to be.
‘Stupid thing. Do they think I’m some sort of eejit?’
From across the room, a nurse who is administering tea smiles at her encouragingly, as at an act of charity. Cara kisses her grandma – her face and hands and shoulders. She strokes her hair like a lonely child with a much-loved pet. To the nurses all these grandmothers must look alike. They don’t know what Grandma is; her harsh beauty, her dark eyebrows and sensual lips. All the life there was once in this dying body that has menstruated and sweated and given birth and howled with grief and tugged Cara’s mane violently into a too-tight French plait. Someone removed the painting that Grandma brought here with her – a small oil portrait Grandad made of her when they were young and living in Soho. It was taken down off the wall of her little room and replaced with a clip-framed print. The nurses couldn’t know, from that dull print, the life in that work, the sense of breath and sound, the disconcerting glossiness of her belly and the crimson shadows of her thigh.
Cara kisses the yellow-padded fingertips. She rubs the old palm vigorously as though to stimulate the tired waters and all the oily secretions of a living body.
‘Mammy, tum ooooon!’
Cara swipes at Megan’s nose with a tissue from a big box on the coffee table, but there is no satisfaction in it – the snot is endless. Does she take proper care of Megan? Does she get enough iron? And B vitamins?
‘That child’s not healthy-looking. Blue mouth.’
‘Megan’s got a bit of a cold, haven’t you, darling?’
Megan sits on the floor, glaring up at her. There is a purple tinge beneath her eyes, and her lips are pale.
‘Well, she doesn’t eat enough,�
� says Cara, ‘and she can’t eat eggs. You know I read you can use chickpea flour as an egg replacement. You can even make quiches with it. I bought chickpea flour and I’m going to try it. Megan might like them.’
‘Is that right.’
‘Yes. I’ll bring you one to try. I have to go, Grandma. I’ll see you tomorrow…’ She kisses Grandma briskly, ‘Bye bye.’ But she is tugged back by the hand like a wayward puppy on a lead—
‘What’s that?’ Grandma points.
‘There’s a baby in my tummy,’ says Cara. ‘A baby girl, they think – another one!’ She laughs to try to make Grandma laugh at her for having lots of girls, but she gives a raspy sigh and raises her eyes to heaven.
‘Oh. You think this is funny? I will not get one, you know.’
‘One what?’
‘One of those. I will get nothing in my belly now, will I? We had one once, our little boy, but I will never make anything now.’
‘But you have three children, Grandma. Aoife and Sinéad and…’
‘So you say. Did I tell you Daddy’s been away, for weeks and weeks and not a word? Nothing. And nothing on the news. Not a word about him. Ah no. I’m not worried though.’
She taps her thick fingernails on the arm of the chair with a slow, muted panic that demands an audience.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says, ‘but… well, you know yourself, Cara. It’s the night. It’s the night. At night it’s hard. It’s hard to sleep without him.’
42
FREYA’S PHONE GIVES a little trill and vibrates three times against her thigh, but she resists the urge to pull it out while the woman speaks.
‘Look, love,’ the woman says, ‘we aren’t interested in the ins and outs of people’s private lives.’ She picks up a sheet of printed paper, and waves it. ‘The bottom line is this – these are the documents you need. They won’t process the application without these documents, it’s that simple. That’s just the way it is.’
Jem pulls at Freya’s sleeve and says very quietly, ‘Your phone, Mammy.’
‘Thanks, little man, I’ll look at it in a minute.’
‘Listen I’m finishing up now,’ says the woman. ‘Sorry it hasn’t worked out for you. You seem well-heeled enough. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.’
The reception desk is very high. Freya has put the application form down flat on the marble top, and she can’t look at it without going up on her tiptoes.
‘But do you understand the situation? I have no contact with my mother…’
‘Look, if you’re fighting with your mother it’s really not our concern… As far as we’re concerned you’ve been in third-level education since leaving school – you’re the financial responsibility of your parents. If your parents are under the threshold you can apply for funding by providing proof of their income. If they’re not, you can’t. They can write a letter saying they won’t support you, but that’s not usually very successful… that usually turns out to be a scam.’
‘But there’s no way my mother will write me a letter or give me her bank statements or anything like that… I have no way of getting any proof of anything. I was raised by my grandmother…’
‘Is she your legal guardian?’
‘I’m twenty-four!’
‘I’m sure you get a single mother’s allowance or whatever.’
‘No, you can’t get that if you’re in full-time education…’
‘Well, tell me this,’ says the woman, ‘you’re in fourth year now, is that right?’
‘I just started in fourth year, but I can’t pay the registration fee or buy the books or anything. I’m supposed to be…’
‘I find it very hard to believe you’re hard up, love, to be honest, judging by the cut of you. Your blouse and your accent and all. And three years at Trinity. How did you live for the last three years if you’d no parents and no money?’
‘My grandmother…’
‘Right, so ask her to sort you out for fourth year.’
‘No, she’s in a home now, she’s not—’
Her phone sounds again, and Jem yanks her cuff: ‘Mammy, you got another message.’
‘Yes, thank you, Jem, I’ll get it in a minute.’
The woman lifts Freya’s form between the tip of her thumb and her forefinger, and hands it down to her.
‘Could I write a letter, explaining? I live with my sister, she could verify…’
The woman rolls her eyes and gives a growl of private despair. ‘Look, they have criteria,’ she says. ‘They’re not going to change the criteria because you write a letter. They won’t read it, to be honest. I won’t process it. I’d be shot for wasting time… we have too many applications as it is…’
*
Freya makes her way down the steps of the City Council office, Jem skipping along beside her.
‘Are you going to read your messages, Mammy?’
‘Shit’ she says, ‘it’s nearly six, the parking must be up…’
Jem’s lips pull small in panic. ‘Oh no, Mammy,’ he says, ‘are they going to clamp us?’
‘I don’t know, Jem. Let’s just hurry.’
‘Don’t worry, Mammy! Come on, Mammy, run.’ He grabs her hand and pulls her down the steps, his bony fingers slippery on hers, his feet clacking like a tap-dancer’s – and the guilt nicks her gut. She shouldn’t have said that to him.
43
GRANDMA IS SNORING NOW, jaw open. Her dentures have dislodged, turning her face into a totemic mask with two mouths – one an open cavern, the other baring teeth. Her cheeks have dropped flat to the jaw; long, strained lines running down them.
In another five minutes, her sleep will deepen and Cara will be able to slip quietly away.
Megan, who has been wandering around the perimeter of the room, approaches with a pile of leaflets. She plops them onto Cara’s lap, proud as a cat with its kill.
‘Oh. Where did you get these, Megan?’
Megan points to a tall plastic display by the door. ‘For tolouring,’ she says, ‘tan I?’
Cara nods and roots a biro out from her jacket pocket.
The leaflet is entitled ‘New Cuisine for the Elderly’. It’s about a pilot project – the rest home is going to be one of the first in the country to avail itself of 3D-printed food. On the cover, there are pictures of the dishes they will be serving – a plate of counterfeit sausages, an imitation chicken breast complete with gravy, and a platter of strawberry-shaped and strawberry-coloured foam fruits. The 3D-printed food will taste and look exactly like traditional meals, claims the leaflet, except that the texture is specially designed for those with mastication difficulties. ‘No more mash for Grandma!’ it says. ‘Now the elderly can enjoy a Sunday roast with all the familiar tastes and presentation…’ It will be coming soon to the home at no extra cost.
Kneeling at a low coffee table, her tongue wiping at her upper lip, Megan inks out the eyes of a distinguished old man in a lemon cardigan who is smiling at the camera, a spoon of spongey sausage about to enter his mouth.
There is a rogue leaflet a little taller than the others, and a darker shade of blue, sticking up from the pile. Cara pulls it out: a picture of an old lady sitting in a pool of dim light, her head in her hands.
‘Don’t stay silent,’ it says. ‘Elder abuse is real.’
It has been almost six months since she made that report. A few weeks later there was a ‘family email’ sent about by Aunt Aoife, saying that someone has made false accusations of elder abuse, and that a woman came out and scared Grandma. Bernie phoned Cara that evening. She said there was no doubt there was abuse going on. She said Aunt Aoife threatened to sue her, showed no concern whatsoever. ‘All defence,’ she said. ‘Normally, if there is nothing going on, the family show concern; they want to know what’s happening, they are worried about their relative…’ She asked that any evidence be sent to her. ‘It’s not over. They won’t get away with it… you will have to take action…’
‘What action?’ asked
Cara.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Bernie said. ‘I have to speak to my supervisor. Your aunt has threatened to sue and I understand she is very wealthy… it’s not ideal.’
A week later, the new team of carers was fired, and Grandma was moved in here, and Bernie stopped returning her calls.
Beneath the words ‘Elder abuse’, is a list of all the things that qualify. ‘If you, or someone you know is experiencing any of the above, it is your duty to contact us.’ The list ranges from hitting and stealing to ‘pressure’ and ‘threats of abandonment’.
She slips her hand carefully from her grandmother’s. She needs to collect Denise from her rehearsal at six. She needs to get the dinner on and get the kids ready for bed. Touching Megan’s dark, tangled hair (she needs a bath – when did Cara last wash Megan’s hair?), she gestures with her head towards the exit. The child nods and places the biro softly on the carpet with the leaflet. Before she leaves though, she pats her great-grandmother’s hand casually, as though greeting a good dog, and says softly, ‘Bye-bye, Mimi.’ Grandma’s waking is hardly perceptible – a change in the rhythm of her breath – but then she opens her eyes, and her gums find her teeth, and her face opens in surprise and a look of imbecilic joy. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘oh Cara! You have come!’
‘Yes, Grandma, we just popped in…’
‘And the little one. Which one is this now? Not my little boy, is it?’
‘No, Grandma, this is my little girl. My big girl: four soon. This is Megan.’
‘Cara, here you are! Cara. My Cara. You have no idea how happy I am that you’re here at last. I’ve been waiting for weeks. Now listen, they’re telling me nothing about Daddy… and there’s nothing on the news about him at all.’ She pats her hair. ‘Oh dear… Cara, can you help me? I can’t find the hairdressers.’
‘It’s only open on Thursdays, Grandma. Not today.’
Aunt Aoife explained in her ‘family update’ email that they chose this home because there was a nail bar down the corridor and a hairdresser on Thursdays. ‘Not like an old folks’ home at all! And we all know how vain Grandma is!’ She put an emoticon at the end of the email – a yellow face smiling mutely.