The Things We Know Now

by Catherine Dunne

  I sat down again, faced her directly. For an instant, I was confused. I didn’t know who she was talking about. Then the very absurdity of her accusation almost made me laugh. ‘Is that what you think?’ I could hear the astonishment in my voice.

  ‘Anyone can see it,’ she almost hissed. ‘Twenty years between you, all that “little girl lost” stuff she goes on with – she’s reeled you in good and proper.’ Rebecca had wrapped her hands around her cup. I could see that the knuckles had turned white, peppered with the startled darkness of freckles. I leaned forward, so that my face was now close to hers. She didn’t flinch: I wouldn’t have expected her to.

  ‘Now you listen to me,’ I said. ‘I had the best part of a year’s counselling with Ella. After it finished, I didn’t see her, didn’t speak to her, for more than six months, because she sent me away.’ I waited.

  ‘What do you mean – sent you away?’ The disbelief in my daughter’s tone was palpable.

  ‘I wanted to ask her out – just a dinner to say “thank you”.’ I raised both my hands in the air, pushing back the force of the attack Rebecca was just about to launch. For a moment, my own hand gesture reminded me, blindingly, of Cecilia in our kitchen on Christmas Eve, all those years ago. But I would not let it deflect me. ‘Let me finish,’ I said. ‘Ella’s sessions made a huge difference to my life. I could function again, smile again, feel a sense of purpose again.’ I stopped, looked Rebecca in the eye. ‘Isn’t that what you wanted for me? You and Frances and Sophie?’

  I was aware that I was not telling the whole truth. Admitting to Rebecca that, even then, I’d felt drawn to Ella – that would have been a disastrous mistake, most particularly on that occasion.

  Rebecca sat up straighter. ‘We’re not talking about us,’ she said, stiffly. ‘We’re talking about her. And you.’

  ‘Her name,’ I said, softly, ‘is Ella. And Ella refused my invitation, said it would not be ethical.’ I paused, watched to see this sink in. ‘She insisted that we have no contact for at least six months. I agreed. I felt she was worth the wait.’

  My daughter looked at me with disgust. ‘And you fell for it.’

  I drew one deep, steady breath. ‘For six months after that, I met her once a week, for coffee.’ I stopped. Part of me was indignant at having to justify myself to my daughter. The other part was just plain angry.

  ‘She played you.’ Rebecca tucked a strand of hair behind her ear: a gesture that was a startling reminder of her mother. Cecilia used to do that, too, whenever she felt upset or nervous. But Rebecca’s face was implacable.

  I sighed. ‘What do you think Ella’s motivation was, then? Money? Security?’ I deliberately used her name. I thought it might help Rebecca to see Ella as an individual – a person – rather than as some anonymous woman whose eye was only to the main chance. Then exasperation overcame me. ‘What is wrong with you?’ I heard my voice begin to rise. I lowered it at once, glancing around the café in case I had been overheard. But it was empty, apart from a young woman in a far corner feeding a toddler. ‘I may not be the greatest catch in the world,’ I continued, softly, ‘but is it that difficult to believe that someone might love me for myself?’

  Rebecca stood up, pushing her cup away from her. Its greying contents spilled over into the saucer. She was shaking her head at me. ‘It’s obscene,’ she said.

  The reappearance of that one word was what made me finally lose my temper. ‘There is nothing obscene about it,’ I said, keeping my voice low with some difficulty now. ‘If anyone’s behaviour is obscene, it’s yours.’

  She bent down, her mouth close to my ear. I could feel the heat of her breath, smell her perfume – the same one Cecilia had always used. She yanked her bag onto her shoulder and began to speak. ‘You are about to be a grandfather,’ she said. ‘Do you realize that if she has a baby, your grandchild will be older than your own child?’

  She’d blindsided me again. I never saw it coming. Suddenly, I had to grapple with a welter of conflicting emotions: joy, anger, sorrow that Cecilia would never see this grandchild, anguish that I was being asked to choose, that I would lose no matter what I did. Because that was what this meeting was about. Make no mistake. My own daughter was forcing me to choose between my grandchild and the woman I had asked to be my wife.

  ‘You’re . . .’ I began, but she would not let me finish.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. And she waited.

  I stood up, reached out for her hands. ‘Such wonderful news,’ I said. My voice was choked. Grief was now taking me by surprise, just as Rebecca had. That old, familiar ambush of pain and loss and yearning. I thought I had done with it all, at least for now. But it had not gone away; merely lain in wait for another opportunity. ‘Please,’ I begged her, ‘don’t ask me to choose between you and Ella.’

  I felt torn in too many different directions. Now was not the time to tell Rebecca that it was unlikely Ella and I would ever have children. How could I even begin? ‘Please,’ I repeated, urging my daughter to look at me, to engage with me.

  But she was immovable. She snatched her hands back from mine, as if she had just been burned. She settled her bag on her shoulder, more firmly this time. ‘You just have,’ she said. ‘You’ve just made your choice.’ She left the café, the glass door swinging shut behind her. I watched her march away, remembered her small white feet on the stairs all those years ago. I could hardly breathe. My eyes filled, over and over.

  ‘More coffee?’ asked a voice at my elbow. I looked down into the sympathetic eyes of a young waitress.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I struggled to pull my wallet out of my jacket pocket. My hands were shaking. I took out a ten-euro note and handed it to the youngster. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

  ‘Your change!’ she cried, as I walked towards the door that led to the street. I didn’t turn back.

  ‘Keep it,’ I said. And the door swung closed behind me. I was aware, even then, of the metaphor. That glass door seemed to cut off any communication, any understanding between me and my eldest child. I felt angry, bitter. Cecilia had always warned about a ‘house divided against itself’ whenever the girls had had a serious quarrel. She always made sure that they made up with each other before bedtime.

  I apologized now to my dead wife. It seemed to me that our house, always so carefully nurtured, had finally turned in on, and resolutely against, itself.

  Frances

  I WAS AFRAID THAT Dad and Rebecca’s meeting would end badly. I said as much to Sophie.

  When Dad called at the house on my day off, I knew that something must be afoot. He’d got so much better about things like that: Sophie and I put it down to Ella’s good influence. He’d learned that time off work was precious and he no longer intruded in the way that he used to. It was such a relief, this new sensitivity of his. Particularly given what our lives were like, Sophie’s and mine, in the immediate aftermath of Mum’s death. Back then, he’d trail after me even if I went to use the bathroom. His hovering used to set my teeth on edge. I’d feel sorry, angry, guilty: all at one and the same time. He did change after those dreadful years, but Rebecca would never hear of it. She refused to see it, to give him any quarter at all. She insisted that the only things that had changed in the previous four years were his allegiances. And that his primary loyalty was still to himself. Heigh-ho.

  Anyway, on that afternoon, Dad asked me if I would set up another meeting between himself and Rebecca. I had my misgivings. The first one had been a complete disaster – his fault, and he admitted it – and I was afraid of a repeat performance.

  ‘Can’t it wait?’ I’d asked. I think I already knew the answer, but I put the question anyway. It gave me a bit of breathing space.

  ‘No,’ he said. And I knew that tone. There was a pause. I decided I would not be the one to fill it. I filled the kettle instead, and put it on to boil.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said, and cleared his throat. ‘The thing is, I’ve asked Ella to be my wife, and she’s said “Y
es”. We plan to marry in the next couple of months, probably sometime in March.’

  I’d already known it was coming. I’d felt its texture in the air for several months – don’t ask me to explain. But I knew it for sure, right in my gut, the moment I’d seen my father’s shadow in the porch on that grey January afternoon.

  ‘That’s wonderful news,’ I said. I put one hand on his shoulder. He reached up and patted it. ‘Really wonderful. Dad, I am so happy for you.’ And I meant it. My sudden, private stab of sorrow for my mother was my own business.

  He looked like a boy, then: proud, bashful. He fiddled with his cup, smiled, cleared his throat all over again. ‘Thank you. I knew you’d be happy.’ There was just enough emphasis on the ‘you’ to let me know what he was thinking.

  I said nothing. Instead, I waited.

  His face was suddenly serious again. I know that look, too: it meant he was ready now to get down to ‘brass tacks’, to use his own phrase. With Dad, that usually meant that he was hell-bent on getting whatever it was he wanted.

  ‘I want all of you to be happy,’ he said. ‘I knew that you and Sophie would give me your blessing. I don’t want this estrangement between Rebecca and me to fester. I want to make things right.’

  I believed him. The problem was that the issue with Rebecca wasn’t the real issue here, if you know what I mean. The decades of strife between her and Dad were the issue – this marriage to Ella was just icing on the top of that old and precarious and particularly explosive cake.

  To make a long story short, I agreed to help. I suggested a coffee shop close to the centre where I did my training days back then: that gloomy and echoing youth centre where I used to spend glorious hours teaching all those little darlings. Preparing them for rewarding and fulfilling careers in the catering industry. Not. Anyway, the local neighbourhood café, Roy’s Place, was just fine, clean and good and wholesome: a bit like Roy himself. It was also a whole world away from those city-centre places which would either evoke a whole raft of family memories or run the risk of Dad and Rebecca bumping into acquaintances.

  I made the call and Rebecca agreed to meet him – but reluctantly. I’d expected that. I latched onto the recent news about her baby as the perfect reason to effect a reconciliation between them before things went too far. We three sisters had already celebrated this pregnancy together, already shared our joy and our plans and our delight at becoming both mother and aunts at last.

  What Dad didn’t know back then, of course, and Rebecca had insisted that neither Sophie nor I ever tell him – we had to swear on Cecilia’s life – was that Rebecca had already suffered a long series of miscarriages.

  The first – an unplanned and accidental pregnancy – happened early in 1992. It coincided almost exactly with Mum’s second anniversary. Then there were two more losses in rapid succession – the last one about six weeks before we all went to meet Ella for the first time.

  I didn’t know it then, but in retrospect it helps explain how incredibly difficult Rebecca was that day. I wasn’t yet a mother at that time, neither was Sophie, and I know now all those precious things that I didn’t know then. How poor Rebecca must have suffered. I regret that I didn’t understand.

  But how could I? All I know is, I would have been kinder to her if I had. That’s hindsight for you.

  Rebecca had just told Sophie and me, quietly, over Christmas, that she was pregnant again. Everything seemed fine, she said. But I could see how nervous she was. Above all, Dad was not to know. She warned us not to share her news without her permission – particularly with him. Sophie glanced over at me, and I felt, rather than saw, her shrug.

  Between the two of us, Sophie and I had also discussed at length the coming baby’s power to do good for our family – to heal the breach, to be the buffer between the past and the present – but naturally, Rebecca had not been part of that conversation.

  On the afternoon I phoned her, I was really anxious that she gave Dad another chance: particularly with his and Ella’s wedding taking place in a couple of months’ time. However, I certainly wasn’t going to deliver that piece of good news either. There were times when I felt very fed up – always having to be the piggy-in-the-middle.

  ‘Come on, Rebecca. Give him a break. He really wants to put things right between you. And he’s made all the running.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him, did you?’

  I sighed. Spiky as ever. ‘No, of course I didn’t. The baby is your news – I wouldn’t dream of saying anything. You should know that by now.’

  Silence.

  I tried again. ‘It feels cruel to cut him off from his grandchild – whatever your feelings are about Ella.’

  I could hear her sharp intake of breath and I began to get annoyed. So we couldn’t even mention her name now, was that it?

  ‘Rebecca—’ I could feel the frost in my voice.

  ‘All right, all right. I’ll do it. Where did you say?’

  The thing is, Rebecca is just so like Dad that their titanic clash of wills was pretty much inevitable. She, Rebecca, came here straight after they met and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so angry.

  ‘How dare he!’ she fumed. ‘He went on the attack straight away. Told me my behaviour was hurting him!’

  I let her rant and rave for a bit. I held back and I didn’t remind her that she had pretty much gone on the attack herself, the first time the three of us had met Ella. I handed her a cup of herbal tea. Rebecca had given up tea, coffee, salt, sugar, alcohol, cheese, seafood and red meat once she discovered she was pregnant. My sister is nothing if not extreme.

  ‘I was ready to meet him halfway, I really was,’ Rebecca said. There was a small catch in her voice, a suspicion of tears. I was surprised at that. My big sister has never been a weeper. She once said she despised crying: it showed weakness, lack of moral fibre. Most of all, it allowed someone to see how much they’d hurt you. It was all that, she declared, or else it was used as a tool of manipulation. Even at Mum’s funeral she didn’t weep. I remember that. She turned to stone, certainly – but she did not weep.

  ‘Did you tell him about the baby?’ I asked. I kept my tone neutral, my voice soft. I needed to bring the temperature in my kitchen down a notch or two.

  ‘I wanted to tell him the minute we met, but all he’d talk about was that bloody woman, and how he’s going to marry her! I never got a chance. And by the time I did, he’d made me so mad it just pushed us further apart. So much for reconciliation.’

  I could hear the exasperation in her tone. Mind you, I have my own views about how Rebecca might have presented the news about her impending motherhood. After that famous Sunday when we all met Ella for the first time, Rebecca declared that if she never saw ‘that woman’ again it would be too soon. So she stayed away, always managing to be busy or out of the country on the three or four occasions afterwards when the rest of us got together with Dad and Ella at our old family home.

  And right then it looked as though we were facing a permanent falling-out between them. Once they’d locked horns, Dad and Rebecca were repeating all the old patterns. One of them is more stubborn than the other. The only person who could ever pull them apart and then draw them back a little closer together again, was my mother.

  I admit that Dad’s new relationship had felt strange at first, but Ella was incredibly sensitive to Mum’s memory on each of the occasions when Dad gathered us all together. She never once tried to take her place. I remember noticing that it was always Dad who went into the kitchen, who opened those familiar cupboards, who served everyone at the table. Ella always deferred to us, to Sophie and to me. I really don’t think she could have done any more than she did to make us all comfortable.

  My view was – and I shared this with Sophie on numerous occasions – that my big sister was indulging in some emotional blackmail.

  It went something like this.

  I, Rebecca, am pregnant. This child is your and Cecilia’s first grandchild. Choose me – choose
us – and we can all share in this joy together. Choose her – Ella – and you are on your own.

  That was it, in a nutshell, as far as I was concerned.

  Another thing was that Rebecca was petrified that Dad and Ella might have a child together. I was mystified by this particular fear. So what? I asked her. But she just looked through me as though I did not deserve an explanation, given that I was stupid enough to ask the question.

  We never saw eye to eye on that, Rebecca and I. How could we? All I saw was that her antipathy towards Ella was extreme, and while some of it may have been natural in the circumstances, there were parts of it that I really did not understand.

  My view was – and Sophie agreed – that it was time we all got on with our lives. Including our father.

  And if Dad were to have another child – would that be such a bad thing, such an impossible thing to get our heads around?

  I am glad that I never asked Rebecca that again. Somewhere deep inside, I think I must have already known the answer.

  Patrick

  WITH FRANCES AND SOPHIE’S blessing, Ella and I married quietly in the Seychelles – on the island of Mahé, to be precise – on 1st March, 1994. We completed all the paperwork the day after we arrived; we were effectively married as we left the registrar’s office. But Ella had wanted a ceremony, a blessing – some sort of traditional ritual that was more fitting to the occasion. I agreed, of course, and we had our ceremony on the following afternoon.

  It was a day of astonishing blueness – sky, sea – all glowing around us. We stood in a secluded corner of our hotel grounds, with the flimsiest of coconut roofs over our heads, and looked out over the ocean. Our minister was a wise and witty old man who made us laugh; our witnesses were shy young Islanders; and our wedding breakfast – late in the evening – was eaten under the stars. Ella wore a simple sheath of ivory silk. I wore a navy linen suit that she liked, complete with bow tie – something I had sworn never to wear again once I had sold the business. I’d always hated ties: no matter how loosely knotted, they always made me feel that my breathing was restricted.