In My Sister's Shoes

by Sinéad Moriarty

  ‘Dad, relax. Now, boys, I want you to promise to eat the cabbage and broccoli that Kate gives you at lunch today. OK?’

  ‘I hate boccoli,’ whined Bobby.

  ‘I hate cabbage,’ whinged Jack.

  Fiona crouched to talk to them at their eye level, something she had told me was very important. ‘Look, boys, if you eat your greens you’ll grow up to be tall and strong like –’

  ‘Your granddad,’ said Dad, seemingly oblivious to his round five foot five frame.

  ‘You have a big fat belly,’ said Bobby.

  Dad bristled. ‘I do not. This shirt happens to be a bit small for me.’

  ‘Anyway, please eat your greens for Auntie Kate,’ said Fiona, and reminded me of the renewed importance of my coming up with stimulating activities for the boys now that school was out for the summer. I nodded while Dad rolled his eyes. ‘At least one hour of maths. Their new exercise books are on the table in the playroom.’

  ‘Don’t be locking them up on a lovely day like today doing maths,’ said Dad. ‘Let them run about outside.’

  ‘Dad,’ said Fiona, firmly, ‘can you please not interfere in my decisions?’

  ‘Fine. I’ll say nothing.’

  ‘Now, give Mummy a hug and I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Are you going to be finished with the bad medicine soon?’ asked Jack, hanging on to his mother’s leg.

  ‘Yes, sweetheart, I am. Only one more session after today, and then I have to take a different kind of medicine, which won’t make me feel so sick.’

  ‘When will you be better, Mummy?’ asked Bobby. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘Get away out of that now and let your mother be. She has to go to hospital so she can get better. Don’t be asking her to stay,’ said Dad, pulling the boys away from Fiona.

  ‘Wait a minute, Dad, let me talk to them. It’s important to explain everything to them.’

  ‘They don’t need to know the details, Fiona. You’ll only upset them.’

  ‘No, Dad, not knowing what’s going on is upsetting. Being lied to about your mother’s health is upsetting. Being told your mother’s going to get better when she only has days to live is upsetting,’ Fiona said, getting worked up as she remembered Mum dying.

  ‘Children need to be protected from bad news,’ said Dad, evenly.

  ‘They also need the opportunity to say goodbye to their mother and not be barred from the hospital because you think it’s too difficult for them,’ said Fiona.

  ‘I did what I thought was best,’ said Dad.

  In a strangled voice, Fiona asked Derek to take the boys into the playroom while she talked to Dad.

  I sank deeper into my chair. This was the first time they had ever talked about Mum dying in front of me.

  Fiona rounded on Dad: ‘You were wrong! You stole my chance to say goodbye to her.’

  ‘I didn’t know she’d die so quickly.’

  ‘Well, she did, and then you put away all the photos of her and refused to talk about her. That was cruel, Dad.’

  ‘I was trying to get you to move on with your lives and not dwell on the tragedy.’

  ‘She was our mother! We needed to be allowed grieve and talk about her,’ Fiona hissed.

  ‘I was heartbroken. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think straight for the grief.’

  ‘So were we, Dad,’ she shouted. ‘We were heartbroken too, and if I die you’d better talk to those boys about me every day of their lives. I won’t be put away in a drawer. I want my memory to be kept alive.’

  ‘Jesus, will you stop that talk? You’re going to be fine.’

  ‘You don’t know that, Dad! I could die of this and I won’t have my kids feeling too scared to ask questions about me, and I won’t have their childhood taken away because their father has buried his head in the sand.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean that because you refused to talk about Mum, and locked yourself away with your own grief, I was left to look after Kate and Derek. You left a twelve-year-old girl to look after two kids. I had no childhood, Dad. I was too busy cooking and washing.’

  ‘I thought you liked being in charge. You were always so responsible.’

  ‘I hated it!’ she roared, as Dad and I recoiled in shock. I had never seen her so angry. ‘I wanted to be kissing boys behind bicycle sheds, not ironing my brother’s school uniform. I had no choice – you weren’t there. If I didn’t look after them, who would?’

  Dad looked crestfallen. I felt sorry for them both. They had suffered equally.

  ‘I’m sorry, pet,’ said Dad. ‘I couldn’t cope without her. You’re right, I did leave you on your own. I don’t know what to say, just that I’m very sorry. I never meant to rob you of your childhood.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Fiona said, breathless from her outburst. ‘I know you didn’t mean it. But if anything happens to me, I want the boys to be able to ask questions about me and look at photos of me and hear stories about me.’

  ‘Please don’t talk like that,’ begged Dad.

  ‘You have to face the possibility that I might not get better.’

  ‘You will get better, Fiona, because God can’t be that cruel,’ said Dad, quietly.

  ‘Dad, you have to promise me.’

  Dad nodded, unable to speak. Fiona went to hug him and I turned away to hide mytears.

  ‘Yo, can you tone it down a million?’ drawled Derek, poking his head round the door. ‘The little dudes are getting stressed out in here with all the hollering.’

  Fiona rushed in to comfort them.

  ‘So, I guess Fiona’s pretty pissed about her childhood,’ said Derek. ‘I have some issues myself.’

  ‘I can’t wait to hear this,’ said Dad, sitting down.

  ‘Is it the drive-by shootings?’ I asked, concealing a grin.

  ‘That’s just it. I don’t feel I’m taken seriously enough. You know? You’re always taking the piss about my music. ’

  ‘It’s not music, Derek. It’s shouting in a fake American accent about things you have no knowledge or experience of,’ said Dad.

  ‘It’s called an imagination,’ said Derek, getting about as het up as he was capable of. ‘My lyrics are widely respected in the underground rap scene here in Dublin.’

  ‘Is it a big scene?’ Dad asked, managing to hold a straight face.

  ‘Quite substantial, actually,’ said Derek. ‘They call me the Poet.’

  ‘Yeats was a poet, Derek,’ said Dad.

  ‘Yeah, about a million years ago. I’m talking about today, like the twenty-first century.’

  ‘Seamus Heaney is a modern poet.’

  ‘Well, I never heard of him.’

  ‘He won the Nobel Prize for his poetry in 1995.’

  ‘What kind of stuff does he write?’

  ‘Prose that requires the use of the English language and not made up, misspelt Americanized vocabulary that you have to be a gangster to understand.’

  ‘So, which is your favourite Heaney poem?’ I asked Dad, and winked at Derek.

  ‘Well, ah, I like all of them. I wouldn’t say I have a particular favourite.’

  ‘OK, then, a favourite quote?’

  ‘Ah, sure I can’t remember them all now. There are so many.’

  ‘You’re a chancer, Dad. You don’t know any of his poems, so stop giving Derek such a hard time.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Fiona asked, coming back in with the twins.

  ‘Dad’s blowing a fuse because I asked him to take my music seriously and he gave me a lecture about some, like, really famous poet called Heaney and he doesn’t even know the dude’s poems.’

  ‘I see what’s going on here,’ said Dad. ‘It’s National Pick on Your Father Day. Fine, so I’m a useless father who ruined his daughter’s life and hasn’t taken his son seriously. Well, Kate, what’s your complaint? Come on, spit it out. What grave injustice did I do to you?’

  ‘Well, it would be nice if you’d considered my fee
lings when you started shagging my least favourite teacher,’ I said, laughing.

  Dad was in no mood for jokes. ‘Well, now, Missy, just wait a minute there, because Sheryl and I have broken up and it’s because of my loyalty to you that we did so.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘She was giving out about you being ungrateful over the scarves and hats she brought over, and I said to give you a break, you hadn’t had an easy time of it lately, and you’d no boy and no job. Well, she said you were the type of girl who was never satisfied and always looking for bigger and better things, and you’d never be happy and you’d no one to blame but yourself. So I told her that no one was allowed criticize my children and that you were all a credit to me and there was no harm in Kate aiming high in life. Anyway, we argued on and she said she couldn’t be with someone who always put his children first, and I said that was the way I was. So she left.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say. Thanks for defending me. To be honest, I think you’re better off without her,’ I said.

  ‘The chick was way too young for you,’ said Derek.

  ‘Are you OK about it, Dad?’ asked Fiona, obviously trying to make up for rubbishing his parenting skills.

  ‘To be honest, it’s a relief, she was too energetic.’

  ‘Was she looking for it night and day?’ asked Derek.

  ‘What was she looking for?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Sex,’ said Derek, as Fiona thumped him.

  ‘Did she find it?’ asked Bobby.

  ‘Ask Granddad,’ said Derek.

  ‘Did she?’ Bobby asked Dad.

  ‘No, Bobby, she didn’t. My back couldn’t take it,’ said Dad.

  ‘You looked pretty agile to me when I caught you together.’ I giggled.

  Bobby was confused. ‘Couldn’t take what?’ he asked, and Fiona said she’d explain it all later.

  ‘Now, Fiona, can we please go to the hospital before I get accused of corrupting mygrand children and ruining their lives?’

  ‘For the record,’ said Derek, ‘I’d like to point out that you still haven’t agreed to take my music seriously.’

  Dad sighed. ‘Lookit, Derek, when you start making a living from it, I’ll take it seriously. In the meantime I’d like to remind you that I am bankrolling this “career” of yours, so you have no grounds to complain. But don’t forget, the funds stop on your twenty-seventh birthday so you’d want to get out from underground and let some over grounders know about your poetic talent.’

  30

  The five weeks that Sam was away dragged by. With the twins at home full-time it was non-stop action. They were easily bored – I wasn’t sure if this was a sign of genius minds that needed to be constantly stimulated, or attention-deficit disorder. At least fifty times a day they stood in front of me and demanded to know ‘what’ll we do now’. I became a full-time children’s entertainer. We played football, climbed trees, painted, did jigsaws, read stories and sometimes, unbeknown to Fiona, watched DVDs that were not of an educational value. Shrek 2 and Finding Nemo gave me a desperately needed break, so on rainy afternoons, when the boys were bouncing off the walls, I put on the movies and got twenty minutes’ peace before they got bored. The downside to this was that I wanted to wring Shrek’s stupid green neck – and if I heard the theme song one more time I’d shoot myself.

  Every day I prayed for sunshine. I became obsessed with the weather. When the forecast was for rain, I was demented, as was Teddy– because when the boys were cooped up indoors with too much energy, he was tormented. If I turned my back for five minutes, they’d paint his tail or glue pieces of paper to his back or try to ride him like a horse, except they were too heavy and he’d collapse, his four legs going in different directions. Then, having almost killed him, they’d turn on each other. An hour of wrestling and fighting would ensue, which led to whingeing, crying and tantrums. Why did anyone have kids, I wondered, at least ten times a day.

  When it was sunny we went to the park and they played in the playground with other kids, and by the time we went home they were tired and happy… bliss. Although I did have to deal with a lot of dirty looks from mothers of gentle children, who were mown down when the twins threw them selves on to the swings, slides and climbing-frames. I spent a lot of time apologizing and dusting sand off bewildered little girls and boys who had been casualties of the twins’ enthusiasm and ‘high spirits’, as Fiona liked to call it – hyperactivity was closer to the truth. I missed Mrs Foley and her grumpy face at the school gate, because at least it gave me the mornings off. Roll on autumn.

  Fiona’s last chemo session dawned and Mark – who had been around even less since he’d lost the precious competition – offered to take his wife and stay with her.

  ‘About bloody time,’ I mumbled, when Fiona told me. I’d tried not to give out about him or interfere in their relationship, but he was being ridiculously unsupportive and it bugged me that Fiona never said anything.

  ‘Leave Mark alone. He’s under a lot of pressure,’ she said, using her standard answer.

  ‘That’s it,’ I snapped. ‘What the hell is going on? How can you not be angry with him? He’s never around. He’s been really unsupportive. This all-forgiving, saintly stuff is wearing thin. You should be furious. We are.’

  ‘Mark does his best,’ she said.

  ‘That is such bullshit, Fiona! He does nothing for you or the boys. What type of a human being is absent at his family’s time of need? He checked out emotionally the minute you got sick. He called me up and passed all of his responsibilities over. Jesus, you’re his wife and they’re his kids. How can he not want to be with them more?’

  ‘They’re not his kids,’ Fiona said quietly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mark isn’t the twins’ father.’

  I stared at her. ‘I don’t understand.’

  She took a deep breath and, with a quavering voice, said, ‘The twins are the result of a one-night stand.’

  ‘What?’ I gasped.

  ‘Yes, Kate. Before I became a frumpy mother I was attractive to other men and I had an affair with a chemistry teacher I met at a conference in Cork.’

  A maths teacher meets a chemistry teacher – it sounded like the beginning of a joke, but it wasn’t. It was real.

  ‘I can’t believe it. It’s so unlike you… You’re so responsible and caring and a devoted wife… and I just…’ I couldn’t find the words to explain how shocked I was. Fiona? Myelder sister? The family’s rock? The person we all went to in a crisis? The perfect wife and mother? Women like Marilyn Monroe had affairs. Women like Fiona baked bread.

  ‘Well, that was exactly why it happened. I was sick of being responsible. Mark and I had been married a couple of years and he was working all the hours in the day to further his career. He was distracted, distant and unaffectionate. The fun and passion were gone. I was only thirty and the idea that this was going to be my life for ever terrified me. So, I did something completely out of character when I met a man who lavished me with attention. He was good-looking, charming, sexy and completely unsuitable. He told me I was beautiful and desirable, so I got drunk and slept with him. It was the exact opposite of what everyone would expect me to do and it was incredibly liberating.’

  ‘Liberating?’

  ‘Don’t you dare judge me. You’re in no position to judge anyone,’ she said, beginning to cry.

  ‘I’m not judging you. I’m trying to understand – but however you look at it, you cheated on Mark.’

  ‘I’m perfectly aware of what I did. Obviously I felt absolutelyawful about it afterwards, and when I discovered I was pregnant, I knew Mark couldn’t be the father because we hadn’t had sex in months. So I had to confess – Mark’s a maths professor so he can count,’ she said, with a watery half-smile.

  ‘What did he say? He must have gone mad.’

  I tried to picture Mark coming in from a day of solving maths problems or whatever he did: ‘Hi, honey, how was your day?’ ‘Fine, by the way we�
��re having twins and they’re not yours. Cup of tea?’

  ‘It was horrible,’ Fiona sobbed, bringing me back to reality. ‘He was shocked. He felt betrayed and humiliated, and threatened to leave me. But I spent weeks on my knees begging him to forgive me, and eventually he did. The strange thing about it was that it brought us closer together for a while.’

  ‘But what happened when the twins were born? It must have been weird for him. Does he consider them his own?’

  ‘At first he pulled away. He couldn’t cope with the babies and he got angry with me, and bitter. He kept being reminded of what I’d done when he looked at them. But they were so sweet and affectionate that after a few months, almost despite himself, he grew to love them.’

  ‘Does anyone else know?’

  ‘Only us and now you.’

  ‘Is Mark’s name on the birth cert?’

  Fiona nodded. ‘Yes, it was a hard thing to do, but he agreed to it. He’s a really good person, Kate.’

  I never thought I could feel sorry for Mark but…

  ‘Whatever happened to the chemistry teacher? Does he have any idea that he has two kids running around?’ I asked.

  ‘No. As I said, it was a one-night stand and he was married with kids of his own. He wouldn’t want to know. As far as I’m concerned they’re Mark’s children.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘I regret hurting Mark more than anything, but those boys are the loves of my life and, in a strange way, theysaved our marriage.’ She blew her nose and wiped her eyes.

  ‘Does Mark want to have kids of his own?’

  ‘The twins are his children,’ Fiona said defensively.

  ‘Well, technically, they aren’t.’

  ‘He’s their father in every way. But to answer your question, yes, he would like more children, as would I, but we tried for a couple of years after the twins were born with no success. It began to drive us apart so we stopped for a while. When I got sick it made us face the issue again and that’s why I was so desperate to freeze some eggs. I want to give Mark a baby. But he said my health was more important and I’m to concentrate on getting better, but we’ve agreed to try again when my treatment is over – if I have any eggs left.’