Lifesaving for Beginners

by Ciara Geraghty

  ‘It’s not a good time.’

  There’s almost a feeling of relief. When I realise she’s not going to let me in. I won’t have to come up with something else to say. Some explanation. Something that might make everything seem all right.

  I say, ‘I’m sorry,’ again.

  Faith says nothing. Her hand is on the latch. She wants to close the door. I want her to close the door. But, instead, I hear Minnie’s voice in my head. She says, ‘Strap on a fucking pair, would you?’

  ‘I was fifteen when I had you.’

  Faith says, ‘I know.’

  ‘I was . . . very young and . . .’

  Faith says, ‘We were all fifteen at one time or another. Not everyone does what you did.’

  My teeth are chattering with the cold. There is snow on my eyelashes. I blink it away. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry’s not much use to me.’

  ‘I know.’ I don’t say sorry again because she’s right about that. I see Faith looking at me, waiting for me to say something that she can relate to. Something that she can understand. There’s nothing. I’ve got nothing.

  She pulls at the neck of the T-shirt and that’s when I see it. The pendant that Ed bought for her, flashing silver in the pale light of this day. It’s been a long day. The longest day, maybe. But I feel the unfamiliar tug of hope when I see the pendant. That has to mean something. Doesn’t it?

  All of a sudden, Faith says, ‘What do you want?’

  It’s not rude, the way she says it. It’s curious. Like she really wants to know. I sense an opening here. An opportunity. I have to be careful with it. Make it matter. I don’t think there’ll be many of these. I don’t deserve many.

  ‘I want . . . I’d like us to be friends.’ Friends? Why did I say that? It sounds so bloody twee. Is it even true?

  Faith says, ‘Friends?’ Like she thinks it’s twee as well.

  I decide to stick to my guns in spite of a feeling that’s spreading through me. It’s not a good feeling. It’s a combination of hopelessness and foolishness. Despite this, I say, ‘Yes. Friends.’

  Then she says, ‘Are you friends with your mother?’

  And I have to say, ‘Not really.’

  The feeling – the hopeless, foolish feeling – has reached my perimeters. It’s all over the place. I ignore it. I say, ‘But . . . maybe . . . since we’re a bit different . . . maybe that means we could be friends.’

  Her fingers tighten round the latch. ‘I have enough friends, thank you very much.’

  That’s when I say, ‘I don’t. I’ve hardly any, actually.’ I say it like I’m just realising it. I am just realising it. I’m realising a lot of things.

  ‘Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?’

  ‘No, of course not. It’s not something that’s bothered me before. I never thought about it. I don’t think about much, to be honest. Nothing important anyway.’

  A man appears on the doorstep. Maybe fifteen years older than me. Balding, swollen around the middle, exhausted-looking. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human being look so spent. He smells of curry.

  He looks at me and says, ‘Oh,’ and even though we’ve never met, he knows who I am. Immediately. I don’t have to explain.

  He turns to Faith and says, ‘Faith, love, would you let the poor woman inside the door, at least?’ I’d say he’s her father. Her adopted father. Adoptive? I’m not sure of the correct terminology, which seems wrong.

  I say, ‘No, not at all. I don’t want to intrude. I just . . .’

  Faith says, ‘You just what?’

  I have never felt more like walking away in my life, and there’s no better woman for walking away. Let’s face it, I’ve walked away from all sorts. I have never felt less like talking but, somehow, I manage to say something. ‘I just wanted to talk to you, that’s all. I think.’

  ‘You think?’

  The man says, ‘She’ll catch her death, love. She’s not dressed for these temperatures. Look at her hat, for the love of God.’

  Automatically, my hand reaches up to touch my hat. It’s a Fedora. I’m wearing my Fedora. Nonchalant chic, Minnie calls it. I don’t know what I was thinking.

  Faith stands at the door. I see her deliberating. It’s in the way she shifts her weight from one bare foot to the other. Her toenails are a metallic blue but the toes, the toes themselves, they are all mine. Long, skinny things with a slight bend along the second one. The one beside the big toe. At the top, just before the nail. That’s where the bend is. I used to think it was something to do with all the unsuitable shoes I ever wore. Now I know it’s not. It’s hereditary. Genetic. The thought gives me a jolt that seems physical. I feel like I am being felled. Like a tree. In my head, a lumberjack is shouting. ‘TIMBERRRRRRRR!’ as I topple. I put my hand on the glass pane of the porch, to steady myself.

  The man says, ‘I wouldn’t put your hand there, if I were you, love. You’ll leave prints and Celia is just bursting at the seams to find someone to go through for a shortcut, if you get my drift.’ He smiles at me as if I know exactly who Celia is and why she should be bursting at the seams for someone to go through for a shortcut. He leans towards me and whispers, ‘Hormones,’ with one of those winks that some men favour when trying to induce empathy.

  Faith opens the door a little wider. She says, ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’

  Suddenly I am glad about the man. The exhausted-looking man with the winky eye who smells of curry. I am glad that he is here. I step inside.

  The house is a study in modernity. Everything is huge and shiny. You can see your face reflected in most of the surfaces. Where there should be walls, there are either empty spaces or glass. It’s open plan gone feral. There is nowhere to hide in a house like this. I follow the man, who follows Faith. We’re in a room now that spans the width of the house. I don’t know what to call it, this room. It’s got a kitchen, a dining-room table, several sofas, a couple of flat-screens, a sideboard and a dresser. In the corner, a woman with an enormous belly rocks back and forth in a chair. Her legs are stretched in front of her, covered with a tartan blanket, which is the only piece of fabric in the entire, gargantuan room. Her feet are bubbling in a foot massager, like two enormous joints of meat.

  She says, ‘You’re the lady on the telly. You’re Faith’s mother.’ Her voice echoes round the room, bouncing against the chrome and the marble and the glass.

  You’re Faith’s mother . . . Faith’s mother . . . mother . . . mother . . . ther . . .

  I look at her belly. It seems impossible that I was once like that. That the angry young woman in this gigantic room that doesn’t know if it’s a kitchen or a dining room or a sitting room, was once inside me. Was once part of my body. Part of me.

  I hear Minnie’s voice in my head and she’s saying something like, ‘Would you ever cop onto yourself ?’

  I cough. Stand up straight. Extend my hand. ‘Hello, I’m Kat Kavanagh. It’s lovely to meet you.’

  The woman with the enormous belly has the two must-have qualities of ‘the other woman’. She is both pretty and young. Not much older than Faith, I’d say. Late twenties. Thirty, tops. Her prettiness is of the generic variety. Blonde hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones, creamy skin.

  She sits up a bit straighter and holds out her hand and I stretch my hand across her belly, careful not to touch her bump. She shakes my hand and shakes her head, all at the same time. She says, ‘Celia,’ like it’s an order rather than her name.

  I’m about to say something, I don’t know, like, ‘When is your baby due?’ but she cuts me off with: ‘You wrote all those books. And nobody knew who you were.’ She drops my hand but she is still shaking her head from side to side. ‘What a strange thing to do.’ She has a curious look on her face. As if I’m something the cat has dragged in and she’s trying to work out what it is. I find myself thinking about what the man said. About the handprints on the porch window.

  When it is quiet in a room like this, it is except
ionally quiet. Deathly quiet.

  I say, ‘When are you due?’ Are you due . . . you due . . . due . . . due . . .

  ‘I’m overdue, can’t you tell?’ Overdue . . . can’t you tell . . . you tell . . . tell . . . tell . . .

  She sighs. ‘I thought the stress of having this lot up for Christmas would do the trick. But it hasn’t worked.’

  Faith says, ‘Give it time. We’ve been here only a couple of days.’

  In a way that is not meant to be kind, Celia says, ‘It feels like you’ve been here for weeks.’

  One of the doors into this cavern of a room bursts open and a boy runs in. He is wearing goggles. There are swimming trunks over his jeans.

  When he sees me he stops and takes off the goggles. ‘Hello. You’re Kat. I saw you on the telly.’

  I find myself smiling. ‘You must be Milo.’

  ‘I am.’ He walks towards me and reaches his hand out.

  I take it. ‘You have a good handshake.’

  He smiles. ‘How’s Ed?’

  ‘He’s much better. He got home from hospital yesterday. Or the day before yesterday, I think.’

  Faith says, ‘Milo told me he had an operation.’

  I look at her. Force my voice to sound ordinary. ‘Yes. On his heart. He had a pacemaker put in.’

  Celia says, ‘He’s the autistic boy, isn’t he?’

  ‘Ed is my brother. He’s got Down’s Syndrome.’

  Milo says, ‘He’s brilliant at Super Mario Galaxy.’ And now I know what Dad meant when he said that Milo was one of those kids you’d want on your team. I smile at him again and he says, ‘Would you like a cup of tea and some chocolate?’

  I look at Faith and she looks at me and nobody says anything, and then Faith says, ‘Could you make a pot, Milo?’

  Faith’s father chimes in, ‘And some Christmas cake. There’s some in the cupboard.’

  Celia says, ‘You’re not supposed to eat Christmas cake, remember?’

  ‘It’s not for me, darling. It’s for everyone else. It’s Christmas Day, after all.’ He smiles a tight, tired smile that slides off his face as soon as it reaches it.

  ‘Well, Kat doesn’t look like the type of woman who eats cake.’ Celia looks at me. ‘You don’t mind if I call you Kat, do you?’

  ‘That’s my name. And I happen to love cake.’ This is not strictly speaking true. I love cigarettes and I love red wine, but in the absence of both, then Christmas cake and tea made by a ten-year-old boy will do. Besides, Celia is the type of woman who makes me want to disagree with everything she says.

  ‘I’m Hamish, by the way. Faith’s dad.’ I shake his hand. I like that he doesn’t say ‘adopted Dad’. Or ‘adoptive’ or whatever the right word is. He just says ‘Faith’s dad’. And he says it in a way that brooks no argument. Not even from Faith, who, I am guessing, might be the argumentative type. ‘Sit down, for goodness’ sake.’ He puts his hand right into the hollow at the small of my back, the way men of a certain age and disposition do, and leads me to the table, where he settles me into a chair. It’s one of those chairs that’re all style and no comfort. White and hard. Faith is standing at the door, as if she is about to leave. I have to think of something that will make her stay. And I have to try to get rid of Hamish and Celia. Even though I don’t know what to say to Faith, I do know that there are things I need to say. I am hoping these things will come to me when the moment arises.

  There’s a period of about thirty seconds when no one says anything. It’s excruciating. It’s like writer’s block, only worse. Page one of one. The blank page.

  Say something.

  I can’t think of a thing.

  That’s when Hamish pipes up with a timely, ‘So, tell us a little something about yourself, Kat.’

  ‘Well . . .’ And that’s when Minnie says, ‘They don’t want to know your favourite colour, Kat.’

  ‘I had Faith when I was fifteen.’

  I see Faith’s fingers tighten round the handle of the door, but before she can open it and leave the room Celia smiles and says, ‘We had a name for girls like you in school.’ And I nearly kiss her because Faith releases the handle from her grip and approaches the table. She doesn’t quite sit down but she hovers beside a chair, as if she might.

  In my head I’m saying: ThankyouCeliathankyouCeliathankyouCelia. In real life, I say, ‘I thought I was in love.’

  Celia makes a sort of snorting noise. Faith pulls the chair out and asks, ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Elliot. Elliot Porter.’ It feels strange. Saying his name out loud like that. After all these years. I feel nothing. I thought I would feel something. But I don’t. He was only sixteen back then. Just a kid. Maybe he’s changed. People change, don’t they?

  If Thomas could hear what I was thinking, he’d say, ‘You’ve changed.’ I’d deny it but he’d say, ‘You have. You’re giving people the benefit of the doubt.’

  That’s true. I never thought I’d turn out to be someone like that.

  ‘I didn’t realise I was pregnant until I was about seven months.’

  Celia does a proper snort this time. She says, ‘I knew after three days. Hamish came in reeking of that terrible aftershave he used to wear and I just threw up everywhere, didn’t I, Hamish?’

  Hamish nods briefly and says, ‘Go on.’ Celia gives me a look that could curdle milk.

  Faith perches on the edge of the chair. She looks at me for the first time. Really looks at me, I mean. She says, ‘Did you ever think about keeping me?’

  I say, ‘No.’ I say it as quickly as I can. To get it over with. ‘Things were different then. It was 1987. I went into labour on my friend’s couch. It was the first my mother knew of it. I was in shock. We all were. We did what we thought was the best thing at the time. For everyone. I’ve never really thought about it until now. I haven’t allowed myself to.’

  Faith says, ‘What’s different now?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think . . . maybe . . . I am.’ And it’s only when I say it out loud that I realise it’s true.

  That’s when Celia doubles over and emits a screech. It is animalistic in its intensity.

  Faith rolls her eyes. ‘Here we go again.’

  Celia throws herself off the chair, onto all fours, and screams, ‘The baby, Hamish. The baby’s coming.’

  Hamish kneels on the floor beside her and gathers as much of her as he can into his arms. ‘Hush now, hush now, ma wee darlin’.’

  Milo approaches the table carrying a tray with a teapot and mugs and spoons and a plate piled high with Christmas cake. He says, ‘Is Celia having the baby again?’

  Faith says, ‘Yes.’ Then she turns to me and whispers, ‘This isn’t the first time she’s gone into labour.’ She puts the word ‘labour’ in inverted commas. Faith is nearly smiling and, again, I feel an enormous rush of gratitude towards Celia.

  I take the tray from Milo. ‘Should we phone for an ambulance?’

  Hamish looks up. ‘No, they said we’re not to call for an ambulance again.’

  Celia lifts her head. ‘But I really AM in labour this time.’

  Faith says, ‘That’s what you said the last time.’

  Milo says, ‘Yeah, but remember The Boy Who Cried Wolf ? There really was a wolf that last time.’

  Hamish says, ‘Shut up the lot of you. Just . . . help me get her into the car.’

  I’m closest and, even though I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean me, I bend down and arrange Celia’s arm round my neck. Hamish hooks her other arm round his neck and, together, we half drag, half carry the howling Celia to Hamish’s jeep, already blanketed with snow. Just as we are hoisting her across the back seat, water gushes from between her legs. At first, she is delighted. She says, ‘LOOK! My waters have broken. I TOLD you I was in labour!’ to no one in particular, before she realises the import of the leakage and begins to wail and thrash. She locks her arms round Hamish’s neck and refuses to let go.

  ‘You have to let go now, pet. I need to drive to the h
ospital.’ His voice is muffled because his mouth is crushed against Celia’s cardigan, which is a mohair one. Incredibly itchy against his face, I’d say.

  In response, Celia emits a long wail, like a foghorn.

  Hamish manages to push his mouth away from the cardigan long enough to shout, ‘Kat!’ There’s a long hair hanging from his lip.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you drive one of these things?’

  ‘Well, I . . .’

  ‘Could you drive us to the hospital?’

  For a moment, I’m too surprised by the request to reply.

  ‘She has a death grip on me and there’s so much snow. Faith is nervous about driving the jeep at the best of times.’ His look suggests that this is not the best of times and I can’t say I blame him.

  ‘Well, I . . .’

  ‘It’s not far.’

  ‘I don’t know the way.’

  ‘I’ll direct you. Please, Kat. I need to stay in the back with Celia. She’s petrified, the poor wee mite.’

  ‘OK.’ There’s nothing else I can do.

  In the end, the baby comes at a minute past midnight so, technically, his birthday is Boxing Day, but because I hadn’t gone to bed yet when he was born, it was still Christmas Day so me and the baby are sort of half-brother twins.

  The baby is called Christian but Celia says we’re not allowed to call him Chris or Christy.

  In the hospital on Boxing Day, Dad lets me have a go of feeding the baby. He says I have to make sure the teat is full of milk, which is trickier than it looks. I’m not allowed to hold the baby yet in case I squash him, on account of him being so small. The bottle is nearly as big as the baby. He sucks pretty well, though. Dad says he’s going to be a great grubber.

  ‘You’re a big brother now, Milo. You’ll show this young fella a thing or two, won’t you?’ It’s actually nice being somebody’s big brother, even if you’re just a half one.

  Kat and Faith are outside, in the corridor, when I come out. Kat stayed in a hotel last night. Faith went to the hotel this morning. She didn’t even have any breakfast before she left the house. She just got up and went to the hotel. She looked like she’d gone to bed in her clothes and didn’t bother going to sleep.