The Meaning of Purple Tulips

by Bláithín O' Reilly Murphy

  ‘How is Chloe, is she ok?’

  ‘In surgery, the baby got into distress, would you take Ella, they won’t let me in with her.’

  ‘Of course, what happened to Stacy?’

  Another great sob from Mrs Jenner.

  ‘Having stitches, she fell against the hall table.’ Anthony looked at Mrs. Jenner warily. ‘I have to head back, Chloe’s in an awful state. I’ll come back with news as soon as I can. Thank you so much for coming.’

  I sat down beside Chloe’s mum, Ella snuggling into me.

  ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen. The poor girl and Chloe, there was so much blood everywhere and then Ella started crying. I tried to soothe her, but she wouldn’t come near me.’

  ‘She doesn’t know you, she’s funny with strangers.’

  ‘But I’m her grandmother...’

  ‘But she doesn’t know that.’

  I still had a lot of anger towards this woman. She had treated Chloe so badly. Even after Ella was born, Chloe had tried to make amends with her mother but she wouldn’t budge. Her father had come to the hospital and the christening and made every effort to visit them at least once a week, all in secret from his wife of course but Mrs. Jenner had never sent so much as a card.

  ‘I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens Chloe or the baby.’

  It wasn’t aimed at me, at least I don’t think it was, but as I sat there, I realised that I would never forgive her if anything happened to either of them. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to her, instead, I sat there in silence holding little Ella as she slept in my arms. Time ticked by so slowly and what felt like days was only an hour at most. Anthony walked back through the doors; this time with Stacy who had been stitched back together and looking a little worse for wear.

  ‘How are they, are they ok?’ I looked up hopefully.

  ‘They’re doing well.’ Anthony sat down beside me, clearly shaken. ‘They nearly lost him, he’s very small. Tiny. Longest 2 minutes of my life as they worked on him He’s a fighter.’

  ‘A boy, she had a boy.’

  ‘She did!’ Tears glistening Anthony’s eyes, ‘I have a son.’

  ‘Congratulations.’ I said, turning my face to his to give him a kiss, trying my best not to disturb Ella.’

  ‘How is Chloe?’

  ‘She’s ok, exhausted. Wants to see you, but they won’t let anyone down but me. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s ok,’ I smiled; her wanting to see me was enough. ‘Give her my love won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Stacy, why don’t I drop you home, you look like you could do with a good night’s rest. I’ll take Ella for the night, if that’s ok with you Anthony?’

  ‘Faye that would be great! If you don’t mind?’

  ‘Of course I don’t, I’ll bring her in with me in the morning. We can see how Stacy is then, if you’re not up to minding her with your arm, I’m off for the rest of week.’

  Stacey smiled gratefully at me.

  ‘What about me, can I do anything to help?’ It was the first time that Mrs. Jenner had spoken since Anthony had reappeared.

  ‘I think you have done enough, don’t you?’ He didn’t say it with vengeance in his voice, more with intense pain. ‘I think it would be best if you went home and stayed away until Chloe has had a chance to recover. If she wants to get in touch with you then she knows where you are.’

  Mrs. Jenner looked at me. I said nothing. I still couldn’t believe the mayhem she had caused.

  Brandon woke up as I came through the door and about 4am. He padded gently into the room next door where I was setting up a travel cot for Ella.

  ‘What is she doing here?’

  ‘Stacey got injured; I said, I would take her for the night and see how her arm is in the morning.’

  ‘How did she get injured?’

  I relayed the drama to Brandon.

  ‘I hope you won’t have her for the week!’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘They pay someone to look after her.’

  ‘She’s injured, besides its good practice for us and Ella is no trouble.’

  ‘I don’t want to practice on someone else’s child.’

  ‘Go to bed grumpy!’

  Brandon stormed out of the room. I tucked Ella in and gave her a kiss good night. Getting back into bed, Brandon turned to me.

  ‘I don’t want her here for the week Faye, I mean it!’

  ‘It’s my house Brandon.’

  He went deadly pale in front me.

  ‘I’m going to sleep.’ He said and turned over.

  Chapter 29 – I need a rock.

  The following morning, I woke up to the sound of Ella gurgling in the room next door. Brandon’s side of the bed was empty. Distinct baby giggles filled the house and I went to check on her. In the room next door, Ella lay on the bed playing peek-a-boo with a teddy. I had somehow hoped that I would find Brandon playing with her; that at some point during the night or morning he had gotten curious and come in to check on the sleeping baby. But no, he hadn’t and when I went down stairs I found a note on the counter from him to say that he would be working late and not to bother waiting up.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this I thought as I wrestled Ella out of her clothes and into the bath. We were supposed to be happy newlyweds. We were supposed to be full of the joys of our new life together, not obsessing over whether or not to have babies and trying to lose weight and succeeding at neither. Everything just felt wrong! How was it that a one night stand between two people who didn’t even know each other, let along love each other could result in a baby and I was married to the love of my life and a baby wouldn’t happen? Life just wasn’t fair. I was exhausted with it all. I wanted to stop all the fighting and moodiness that was going on and just be happy and have a baby – naturally!

  I put all thoughts of myself and the mess that was my marriage out of my head as I put a washed and freshly dressed Ella in the car seat ready to take her to hospital. Stacey had rung me earlier and said she was absolutely fine to take care of Ella and would collect her from the hospital later that morning.

  Arriving at the hospital, it was considerably busier than it had been the previous night. Parking was a nightmare and by the time I had managed to find a spot, and pull the buggy from the boot and get Ella into it, I was exhausted walking through the doors. Anthony met me in the lobby, delighted to see Ella.

  ‘Faye, thank you so much. Such a weight off to know she was in good hands.’

  ‘How is Chloe?’

  ‘She’s good. Better after the nights rest.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘Stable, in ICU.’

  I nodded.

  ‘This way, I’ll take you to her. Stacey is here, just having a bit of brekkie in the canteen.’

  Chloe looked pale and worn in the bed. The place where her neat bump had sat proudly now looked hollow. She managed a smile when I arrived. Ella giggled and leaped in my arms when she saw her.

  ‘Mama, Mama.’ She cried.

  Chloe burst into tears.

  ‘What’s wrong Chloe?’ I asked full of concern.

  ‘I can’t hold her. I just want to hold her.’

  She sobbed into her pillow.

  ‘The c-section.’ Anthony explained.

  I sat down beside here. ‘How are you?’

  ‘OK I suppose, the whole thing has been a bit of a shock. I thought when I woke up this morning that it would all be a bad nightmare. Did you see my mother?’

  ‘Yea, she sat with me in the waiting room.’

  ‘Did she say much?’

  ‘Only that she was sorry and she didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I think she really meant it.’

  ‘Did she tell you she went off on me again? When she saw I was pregnant.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I got such a shock; I thought I had wet myself! Then I saw Stacey in a heap on the floor covered in blood, I think I fainted then.’

 
; ‘Oh my god, you fainted!’ It was only then I noticed the bruising on the side of her face.

  ‘Yea, I’ve been through the wars.’ She smiled, weakly.

  ‘How is the baby, have you seen him?’

  ‘Just pictures, they don’t want me to move yet. I’m hoping they will bring me down later.’

  ‘Have you named him?’

  She smiled broadly, ‘Liam, after my dad. It’s a surprise for him, we’ve had the name picked out ages, not sure how it will go down with mum now; she’ll probably find out all about his visiting.’

  ‘That’s lovely, he’ll be chuffed. Has he been in?’

  ‘No, not yet, he phoned first thing this morning. Made me mother sleep on the couch! He’s coming in later.’

  ‘Is your mum coming with him?’

  ‘No, I asked him to ask her to wait. I’m just not ready to deal with her yet. Not until I feel strong and I know that Liam is going to be ok. I haven’t even held him yet.’

  I patted her hand, what do you say to that? I didn’t stay too much longer, Chloe was very tired. Stacey came for Ella and I bid them all a good bye and headed back home. I decided on my way home that speaking with the councillor wouldn’t hurt matters. Even watching Chloe and how traumatically she had been thrust into motherhood a second time only hammered home for me how much I wanted it.

  I turned the card over in my hands before dialling; Maisy Rocke, aptly named councillor. She sounded warm on the phone, almost happy to get my call. I felt a little better, maybe this would help me.

  It better, because it was getting to the stage where every way I turned there were pregnant women, or people telling me that their sister’s mother’s cousin’s aunt had PCOS and they had 6 kids – that there was nothing to worry about. It was the last thing I wanted to hear. Just like no one wants to hear ‘there are plenty more fish in the sea’ when you’ve just been dumped – why on earth do we say that?! I felt like everyone knew my business. Everyone had their tuppence worth to say about us ‘trying to conceive.’ It was supposed to be private. It was supposed to be personal but I felt like my ovaries and womb were out on show for everyone to see. I hated it and as a result, I began to resent it.

  I broke down in the first session with Maisy. She disarmed me, got right to the root of the problem. I told her everything I was thinking. The stuff I had never verbalised. The way I didn’t feel like myself, the way I felt forced into having a child so unnaturally. Not by Brandon, not by one person in particular, by the circumstance, by myself. I told her that I wanted it really badly, wanted nothing else, but I didn’t want it, not all, not ever, not like this at least. I was totally mixed up. I was devastated when nothing happened and secretly overjoyed at the same time. I watched Chloe with Ella and as she glowed as her pregnancy had progressed. Witnessing the joy she and Anthony had, made the possibility of not having children, all the harder to bear. Maisy listened carefully and let me say everything that was on my mind, even if it was contradictory.

  Over the weeks and months that I went to her, I began to realise that I was beginning to resent the child before it was born. Resent it for all that it was putting me through and the way my life was turning out, because of it. This made me feel like the worst person in the world. How could I resent something so perfect, so innocent? How could I feel that about my own child before it was born or conceived for that matter?

  I went to hell and back. My grasp of day to day life was fine but grasp on my fertility problems was pushing me over the edge. My life was spiralling out of control, and I allowed it to, because I genuinely didn’t know what I wanted. One minute I wanted a child, the next I didn’t. I was a mess. The whole situation was a mess. I was so stressed out by the whole situation, I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t face anything.

  The sessions with Maisy were helping, but only so much. I wanted to talk to Chloe but she had her hands full juggling study, work, Ella and the baby.

  Brandon... Well I couldn’t now say to Brandon that perhaps I might be changing my mind, that maybe he was right, that maybe it wasn’t the right time. If I did that and then decided that I had been mistaken about thinking I was mistaken, well that was a rollercoaster he didn’t deserve, I didn’t deserve it but I was living it.

  Lost in thought on the couch one evening, Brandon interrupted my train;

  ‘Hey Faye, I was thinking of having a boy’s night out of the 6 th – do we have anything on?’

  ‘Let me check my diary, one sec.’ I said reaching for my phone.

  Scrolling down my phone to the 6 th, we didn’t have anything on that night, but I had my check up with Dr. Fraser. Six months had gone by already. I groaned internally. Great, just what I needed, to be told I’m fat again. I hadn’t done anything about the weight. There just didn’t seem to have been time. I always meant to do something but I never got around to it, time to face the music. Maybe I was self-sabotaging, maybe I had unconsciously not done anything about losing weight so that I couldn’t go for IVF – what the hell was I doing?

  Chapter 30 - I’m still fat – ok!

  There are times in all our lives where all we want to do is wallow in our own self-pity. We want to rant and rave and feel sorry for ourselves. We want our friends to listen, but we don’t want them to tell us it will be ok, that we aren’t the first and won’t be the last. What we really want for them to say is; ‘that’s awful, you poor thing, I can’t believe it, of course you have every right to feel like that.’ – Why can’t people just get that!!

  I had gotten to the stage where I was sick of the whole baby making thing. Talking about, thinking about, doing it – it was all exhausting. By now, I had also started temping. Taking my temperature every morning to establish a pattern, it was supposed to help with trying to figure out if and when I was ovulating. It was supposed to be easy. It wasn’t. It wasn’t easy because we had no starting point, no period to use as our guide. It took a while for me even to remember to take my temperature before I got up – you’re supposed to do it before you move.

  I eventually decided that enough was enough one day when I asked Brandon to hurry home, he thought something was up, and I was like ‘no, I’m ovulating! I burst out laughing once I said it. I had turned into one of those overly obsessed women, badly portrayed in films, who rang their husband’s up and ordered them home immediately to ‘do the deed’. I needed to take a step back from it all and enjoy life and just breathe again. I needed a girl’s night out!

  Getting ready to meet the girls I felt like it was a life time since I had seen them properly. Chloe of course, I spoke with every day. Her poor ear was bent with me asking questions about my condition and although she had chosen to go into surgery, she answered me as best she could. Lucy I missed dearly. She was mid-way through a beautician’s course, having left Perfect Designs, six months ago. She had grand ideas about dominating the Irish Spa Industry and was planning on buffing and waxing her way to the top. I planned to help her out anyway that I could and was perfectly happy for her to perfect her waxing technique on my yeti like body.

  Siabh Joyce was coming along too. She was an old mate from school who had just moved back from the US. We’d bumped into each other in a hair salon a couple of months back and had become firm friends again. Carole completed our group. Since moving to Windmill Lane, she, Chloe and I had become firm friends.

  The night was going swimmingly! We had started with a liquid dinner, continued with a liquid desert and were now well into our ‘after dinner drinks’ and the dancing. It was exactly what I needed to let me hair down and enjoy myself. It was about 1.30 in the morning and we were all a little worse for wear but I was feeling on top of the world. Standing in line for the toilet, I began to wish I had asked one of the girls to come with me. It was never ending and I was surrounded by tall, gorgeous and extremely slim girls; nothing like a line of emancipated beauties to make you feel like a total frump. Arriving back at our table, I slumped into the booth.

  ‘God, I feel fat girls!’ It was more of a st
atement then an actual moan.

  ‘Why?! You look amazing?!’ Lucy whaled.

  ‘Thanks… but being surrounded by skinny minnies in the loo’s has made me feel like ten tonne tess.’ I said it more in acceptance than a retort.

  ‘Don’t be daft Faye you’ve lost loads of weight’ Sue commented.

  ‘No I haven’t. I haven’t done anything about my weight and my six months are up. I have to go back to the Doctor next Friday and for him to tell me I’m still fat and too fat to have a baby.’ I just slumped down on the table.

  ‘Seriously Faye, you’ve lost loads of weight recently.’ Chloe said trying to pull me back up.

  ‘No I haven’t!’ it came out a little more forceful than I intended but something clicked in me. ‘Would you all stop trying to be so nice about it, I’m fat! I know I’m fat; telling me I’m not is really not helping! Why won’t my own friends be honest with me?’ I had enough then, getting up and grabbing my bag, ‘I’m going home, I’ve had enough!’

  ‘Faye wait! Please don’t be like that. We didn’t mean it like that.’ Chloe was the one who spoke for them all.

  ‘Just leave me alone!’ I whaled like a 5 year old.

  I ran out of the club and straight into a taxi that someone had just gotten out off. As we pulled away, I saw Chloe in the mirror of the taxi run through the door after me. My phone rang immediately. It was Chloe. I powered it off.

  Brandon opened the door as the taxi pulled into the drive.

  'Faye, are you ok? Chloe phoned me.’

  ‘I’m fine!’ I snapped.

  ‘She said you left rather abruptly. She said she didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘Well she should have thought of that before she started lying to me.’ I’d had enough now.

  ‘Lying to you? What happened?’

  ‘Saying I’ve lost weight when I haven’t. How is that supportive? Friends are supposed to be supportive. Lying to me isn’t supportive!’ I shouted at him.

  ‘But darling you have lost loads of weighting. Haven’t you noticed?’ he said surprised.