by Cathy Kelly
Jack’s gaze shifted under the table, where Pixie had settled with her paws around a giant lump of grey splodge, which she was consuming with zeal.
Leila didn’t even want to think about what uncooked dough would do to Pixie’s intestines and where it would all end up ultimately, so she lunged under the table.
‘Pixie!’ she yelled.
But she was grabbing at thin air: Pixie and her bun had legged it.
Delighted at the mayhem, Jack threw back his head and roared with laughter.
Two hours had passed when Leila brought a cup of tea and some biscuits upstairs to her sister. Jack, worn out after an energetic game of hide and seek in the garden with Pixie and Leila, threw himself on to the bed beside his mother.
‘Mum!’ he cried. ‘Me and Leelu had so much fun. Pixie had to be washed, and me too. I got bun in my hair.’
Leila had had to bite the bullet and bathe both Jack and Pixie – thankfully not at the same time – in order to clean them up. She figured that if Susie hadn’t been woken by Jack’s roars when water got in his eyes, her sister must have been truly exhausted.
Jack snuggled in beside his mother, telling her everything.
‘Pixie was shaking in the bath, but I kept giving her biscuits. The small ones Granny gives her. She liked that. I had one too. They’re nice.’
‘Aren’t you wonderful,’ Susie crooned sleepily, holding her son close. ‘Were you good for Auntie Leelu?’
‘I was,’ he announced. ‘Wasn’t I?’
‘Very good,’ said Leila, smiling. She hadn’t taken care of Jack for so long and had forgotten both how much fun it could be and how tiring it was. ‘I’m sorry for waking you now, Suze, but I ought to visit Mum this afternoon. You should go to bed early tonight and I’ll take care of Jack.’
‘No,’ said her sister. ‘We’ll be heading home. I told Mum I’d go as soon as you were here. Thank you for taking over. I’m OK now.’
‘All right,’ said Leila, trying to fight down the feeling that she’d been snubbed. Susie was running away again. What would have stopped her from staying another night so that the three of them could be together?
She’d promised Jack they’d take Pixie for a walk and they could look for beetles. Jack had said he liked beetles and had a library book with pictures of them. ‘Mum is scared of creepies,’ he’d said. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be.’
Leila had felt ten feet tall. Now Susie was dashing it all.
‘And I’m leaving the dog with you,’ Susie added. ‘There are numbers for some local kennels beside the phone in the hall.’
‘Fine,’ said Leila tightly.
She leaned in to drop a kiss on Jack’s forehead and felt ludicrously like wanting to cry. ‘See you soon, darling boy.’
The hospital was busy with people there for Saturday visiting.
Leila had the flowers she’d brought from Dublin, a sweet bouquet made up of yellow and white spring flowers, along with a bag containing some clean nightclothes. She walked slowly towards the ward, and in the corridor outside saw a man talking to what appeared to be a doctor.
A doctor! He looked younger than Leila, but he had the white coat and the stethoscope, and the harried expression of someone who probably worked too many hours a week. Hoping he would be able to talk to her about Mum, she stationed herself at a discreet distance and waited.
Finally the other visitor walked away and into her mother’s ward, and Leila buttonholed the young doctor.
‘Dr …’ she peered at his badge, ‘Whelan. I’m Leila Martin – Dolores Martin is my mother. I’ve been trying to talk to a doctor since she was admitted and I haven’t managed it, but I’d love a word with you. Are you part of her team?’
She said team because she hoped it wasn’t just him; he was too young, surely.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Dolores, yes, I’m familiar with her case. I understand she’s going to need nursing home care afterwards because she lives on her own. The team think the main problem is how she’s coping with this latest flare-up.’
‘Flare-up?’ said Leila, realising they must be at cross-purposes. ‘My mother’s Dolores Martin, sixty-three years old, bed four inside the door, car crash, broken hip …?’
‘Yes, Mrs Martin. I mean flare-up of her rheumatoid arthritis – RA can floor a person emotionally,’ the doctor said, shrugging. ‘Perhaps that’s what’s happened here. It’s obviously been difficult for your mother, especially living on her own. As far as I can remember from her chart, she’s been on painkillers and steroids for a while, but in view of the damage to her hip, her rheumatologist is most likely going to have to discuss other options with her.’
‘Her rheumatologist?’ Leila didn’t think she could have heard him properly. ‘When was she diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis? This is the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘Ah,’ said the doctor, face closing.
‘With all respect, please don’t ah me,’ said Leila. ‘My father is dead, my sister and I are my mother’s next of kin. She’s stressed and I don’t know why; I arrived here a few days ago to find her house in a terrible mess – and she’s always been a woman who kept the place as neat as a pin. Something is wrong and I need to know about it. I thought …’ She hadn’t been able to bring herself to say the word that had been preying on her mind, but now she forced it out: ‘I thought she had dementia.’
‘You should talk to her about it,’ the doctor said.
‘I want to talk to you about it!’ Leila said loudly.
‘I understand, but – it’s possible she doesn’t want you to know.’
‘Of course,’ said Leila grimly, with a look on her face that Devlin would have recognised and steered clear of. ‘Obviously my motives are utterly suspect. Me and my sister want to take advantage of my mother to rob her blind now that she’s ill. Those plates we collected with the supermarket stamps are worth a fortune. And the dog who’s not toilet trained might be pedigree. We’ll make a killing selling off her things while she’s in here out of the way. All I need you to do is tell me how sick she is.’
He gave her a sad look. ‘Talk to your mother, and if she’s agreeable, then we can discuss this again. Unfortunately, I have seen patients fall victim to that kind of asset stripping. You see it all in this job. Some people only care about whether the will’s in their favour.’
Leila was shocked out of her rage.
‘Really?’
‘I had a lovely patient here last year: she was eighty-five, fractured both wrists in a fall. Poor old dear was perfect mentally – as sharp as you or me – but she had no close family. Suddenly a distant nephew rolls up saying he and his wife could look after her, but I could tell he just wanted to get his hands on the inheritance. I put the lady on to Nora Hummingbird – she runs the Hummingbird Nursing Home in Bridgeport – and she sold her home to pay for her care and moved in there. She’s still happy there, as far as I know. That put an end to the nephew with the euro signs in his eyes. You might want to consider the Hummingbird place for your mother until her hip is healed. And no,’ he grinned, ‘I do not get a cut. But if it were my mother, that’s where I’d send her.’
‘So Mum’s really ill?’
‘No, but she won’t be able to go back to living on her own until her hip is healed and she can get about with a stick. After that, well, RA can be limiting, it needs monitoring, drug treatments and special care. People need to manage their pain and be aware of what they can and cannot do.’
He looked at his watch.
‘I have to go. Talk to your mother.’
And he turned neatly and walked off in the other direction.
Leila watched him go. Did they teach doctors that in college: how to cleanly send people freewheeling off into space once they had nothing else to say?
‘Mum!’ Leila managed a smile for her mother, who was sitting up in bed doing the newspaper crossword. ‘You look so much better.’
‘Really?’ asked Dolores tremulously, eyes brimming at the sight of he
r daughter.
‘Really. I just had a chat with the doctor and he told me you had rheumatoid arthritis. Mum, why didn’t you tell us? And how long have you had it?’ Leila’s eyes were as wet as her mother’s.
‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ said Dolores, and the tears began flowing down her face. ‘You were so distraught after Tynan leaving you, and I’m afraid poor Susie isn’t coping at all well with being on her own – not that she’d tell anyone. I worry so much about both of you and I simply couldn’t bother you with my problems in the middle of all that.’
Leila handed her mother a tissue and then took one herself.
‘How could you even think,’ she said, wiping away her tears, ‘that Susie and I would not want to know what’s going on with you?’
She didn’t even acknowledge the statement about her mother worrying over them both. She was fine – lonely but fine. And Susie … Susie was different: sadder, lonelier, and Leila had added to it … No, she pushed that thought away.
‘When were you diagnosed, Mum?’
‘Last year,’ her mother said. ‘I knew there was something wrong for ages. I thought it was normal arthritis and then I began to realise it was worse, but I kept putting off going to the doctor.’ She bit her lip. ‘A bit like Pixie when she knows she’s done something wrong. She hides her head – thinks that will make it go away. It’s funny when a dog does it and denial when an adult does it. I thought if nobody said there was something wrong, then there wasn’t.’
They both sat quietly for a moment.
Denial was clearly in the air, thought Leila sadly. Some part of her kept hoping Tynan would come back and tell her he loved her, even though it was totally obvious that no such thing would happen.
She understood denial all right.
‘I’ve been on painkillers, although they’re hard on my stomach so I have to have stomach stuff, and steroidal injections when it gets bad. But the last month it’s been awful. The pain was horrific. Sometimes it’s as much as I can do to get to the bathroom, and poor Pixie never gets out and the poor little love makes a mess in the house.’
Her mother began to cry again, and Leila felt a wave of guilt at how she’d grudgingly cleaned up after the dog.
‘I know the house is a mess and I hate it, I hate it. You know how tidy I am. I felt so low and everything kept piling up.’
‘Why didn’t you phone me?’ Leila begged. ‘I just don’t understand why you didn’t. You can’t go through this on your own, Mum.’
When Dolores looked up, her blue eyes appeared even bluer against the reddened lids.
‘You grew up with your father an invalid – I couldn’t put you through that again. You need to live your life, not look after me. I know what being a carer can do to you. I want you two girls to have good lives and freedom. Roots and wings, remember? It’s what parents are supposed to give their children. I want you to have that, both of you.’
‘Oh, Mum.’ Leila leaned down till her head was on the pillow beside her mother’s and held her as gently as she could. ‘You don’t have to go through this on your own any more, I promise. I’m here now.’
Even as she said it, she wasn’t sure how she’d sort everything out, but one thing was certain: she would be there in every way she could.
‘Where’s Pixie now?’ asked her mother after a while.
‘At home,’ said Leila. ‘She’s had a great day. She helped Jack make flour and water buns, ate a fair amount of the mix herself, had a bath—’
‘You bathed her?’ Dolores was astonished.
‘Yes,’ said Leila. ‘Susie was exhausted when I got there, so she went to bed and I took care of Jack and Pixie. We baked, then played in the garden, and then I gave up hoping the gunge would just fall off the pair of them, so I washed them. Pixie was very good really. I didn’t know which shampoo to use, so I used that coconut one. Jack fed her dog biscuits non-stop while she was in the bath, and had one himself.’
Her mother laughed. ‘He loves those biscuits no matter how often I tell him they’re doggy ones, not human ones. I checked the label – it’s all harmless stuff. Won’t do him harm to have the odd one. Has Pixie had her walk yet?’
‘Well … we played in the garden with her,’ Leila said.
‘No, she needs a walk,’ Dolores said, distressed.
Leila clamped her mouth shut. Now was not the time to tell her mother that Susie was threatening to refuse to look after Pixie any more and had suggested kennels.
‘I’ll walk her,’ she promised.
‘As soon as you get home?’ Dolores asked. ‘I feel so guilty about the poor thing. It’s not right, getting a dog and then not being able to take care of her. I love her and I don’t know what I’d do without her.’ Her eyes were filling with tears again.
At that moment, Leila made a decision. She couldn’t spend every moment with her mother, but she could certainly cope with dizzy little Pixie for a few weeks. It would be her way of making up for all Dolores’s lonely pain.
‘I’m going to look after Pixie, Mum. She’ll have a lovely bed in my bedroom but I’ll have to get the hang of walking her and feeding her. So far, she’s professed a fondness for Jack’s uncooked dough worms.’
This had the desired effect, and for the first time in ages, Dolores smiled. She put a hand on her daughter’s, eyes wet again.
‘Where do you walk her?’ Leila asked.
‘You go down the road in the direction of Katy’s house, take the laneway on the right at the Mastersons’ and go into the parkland behind. I let her off the lead there.’
Leila brought two cappuccinos up from the canteen, plus a lemon muffin for her mother, along with more magazines, and they talked for a couple of hours, both deliberately staying away from the subject of rheumatoid arthritis.
‘Can we discuss it tomorrow?’ Leila asked before she left. ‘I don’t really know anything about RA and I’ll need to. I’ll be on Dr Google tonight, and by tomorrow I’ll be an expert.’
Dolores nodded, then gripped Leila’s hand with her own unbandaged one. Despite the fact that her hand was misshapen and swollen, her grip was surprisingly tight.
‘You can help, but you are not giving up your life to take care of me,’ she said fiercely. ‘I can’t bear to think about all those years caring for your father and then for something similar to happen to me.’ Her blues eyes glittered at her daughter. ‘I can manage and I will. You need a life and a family, Leila.’
‘You’re my family, Mum.’
‘No, I meant a husband and children. You’re good with Jack, you always were.’
Leila felt the pang of guilt she’d tried so hard to suppress: Susie and Jack. She’d let them down so much, it hurt to even think about it.
‘Men are out of the picture for me,’ she said jokily. ‘I haven’t made a very good stab at that so far.’
‘It wasn’t your fault, lovey. Tynan was no good for you,’ her mother said.
‘I thought you liked him.’ Leila was shocked. Tynan had made a huge effort to charm Dolores, although once he’d marked his territory, he hadn’t wanted to visited Bridgeport again.
‘He was very charming, for sure, but he wasn’t the one.’
Laughter burst loudly out of Leila. ‘The One. Why does everyone talk about The One? There are seven billion people on the planet and we are supposed to find the perfect partner out of the very small pool of our friends and acquaintances. How can anyone be The One? It’s a crazy notion set to addle women’s brains.’
‘You’ll find him,’ her mother said with total assurance. ‘A treasure like you, you’ll find him. I know you will.’
‘You know more than me, then,’ Leila said, leaning down to kiss her mother goodbye.
‘You will, I’m telling you,’ Dolores insisted. ‘Remember what I told you about rain and rainbows?’
‘You have to have rain to get the rainbow?’ Leila’s childhood had been full of sweet sayings from her mother. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
What was the point of rainbows anyhow? thought Leila. They led to nothing – no gold, no contentment. Just a combination of precipitation and physics.
But her mother appeared pleased with the idea.
‘That’s it,’ Dolores said happily. ‘The Martin girls will have their rainbow, darling, I promise you. We deserve it.’
Putting all thoughts of true love and rainbows out of her mind, Leila walked briskly to the car park. Mum was certainly looking brighter, as if a huge weight had been lifted now that her secret was finally out.
If positive talk helped, then Leila could go along with that. She didn’t have to believe in it, though.
It was drizzling, and she realised that, once back in Poppy Lane, she’d have to set out in the rain to walk Pixie. But it was the least she could do, despite how shattered she felt.
Pixie barked hysterically when Leila arrived home, and nothing Leila could do would stop her.
‘Shush, Pixie, I’m here,’ she said, and bent down to the little dog, who was whirling crazily, her long caramel fur flying. ‘Shush.’
Finally the wild barking ceased and Pixie quivered with delight instead as Leila petted her.
‘You are a sweet little thing, aren’t you?’ Leila said when Pixie’s cold nose was thrust into her palm and those dark doggy eyes were shining up at her with adoration. Leila had been happy, although surprised, when her mother had got Pixie just over a year ago – they’d never had a dog growing up because Leila’s father had been allergic to dog fur. But the decision made more sense now that she knew about the RA diagnosis: the puppy had been a way of staving off the fear and loneliness.
She petted Pixie gently. ‘I’ll just grab a cup of tea, and then we’ll have a walk.’
At the word ‘walk’, the hysterical barking started again. There was nothing for it, Leila decided: it would be easier to take the dog out now and leave the cup of tea until later.
She found a raincoat under the stairs, along with wellington boots. A red nylon lead hung from another hook, with a pouch filled with what looked like tiny flesh-coloured plastic bags. Nappy bags, according to the label.