Wednesday's Child

by Shane Dunphy

  She put her arm around Victor, who in turn embraced Ibar, who looked at him as if he were mad and shrugged off the overture. I tried to think what to do. Max would probably show up in an hour or so, but in what condition? It struck me that his regular absences were, more than likely, times he had gone on a bender. His arrival would probably be an intoxicated one. I knew from experience and from my training that trying to talk to or reason with a man in the throes of drunkenness was an utter waste of time and energy. Of course Max may have just gone into town and missed the bus, but that was unlikely. The crux of the matter was that we had three minors in our care who, to all intents and purposes, had been abandoned. There was only one thing to do.

  ‘Betty, would you ring the office and tell them what’s happened?’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Do either of you two have a key?’

  ‘No,’ Cordelia said.

  ‘I can get in,’ Victor said quietly.

  He raised his head and I realised that my initial diagnosis of him was all wrong. He was not intellectually disabled, or even slow. I saw a keen intellect, and suddenly a smile illuminated his face and he was no longer the slack-jawed pre-adolescent who had been with us all afternoon.

  ‘When he doesn’t come home, I get in through the back, and then I let Cordy and Ibar in. If I didn’t do that, we’d be stuck outside until he gets back.’

  ‘Can you show me?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  He led me around the side of the house. The grass was unkempt and the back yard was overgrown with moss and was treacherous. He pointed at a small top window that led into what must have been the kitchen.

  ‘There.’

  ‘You can get in there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay then. Here.’

  I made a step by cupping my hands together. He put his foot into it and I lifted him up so that he could grip the rim of the window. It opened easily – the latch was obviously broken. He gave me that mischievous smile again and then he was through, wriggling into the narrow space as if he were a snake. I waited a second and then the back door was opened. He motioned for me to come in.

  Inside the house was gloomy in the early evening light. The kitchen was neat and tidy, though sparsely furnished. The linoleum was faded but appeared to have been recently washed. Victor was moving ahead of me through the shadows. I followed him, and found him standing in the door of the living room. I saw what he was looking at and, without thinking, placed my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t flinch this time.

  A man I took to be Max McCoy was sprawled half on, half off the couch. The curtains had been drawn, so the room was in darkness, but I could see the almost empty bottle of cheap vodka on the floor near his hand and the puddle of vomit congealing into the carpet. The stench in the room was appalling and I had to take shallow breaths for fear of gagging.

  ‘He does this sometimes,’ Victor said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘I think he does it because he’s sad. I think he gets lonely for Mummy. I do, and I don’t even remember her all that well.’

  ‘Has he been doing it a lot, Victor? Have you and Cordelia and Ibar been left to look after yourselves a lot?’

  ‘Cordy looks after us. She looks after Daddy most of the time too. Daddy says we’d be lost without her.’

  ‘Mmm. Well, Cordelia needs to be looked after as well, you know. She’s only a kid herself.’

  ‘I know.’ I heard the words catch as he fought to keep tears at bay and I squeezed his shoulder.

  I walked over, opened the curtains and the window to let in the air. I then walked over to Max McCoy and shook him, gently at first but progressively harder. Eventually he started and looked at me through fuggy eyes. He was probably in his early forties with short salt-and-pepper hair and several days’ growth of beard. He was dressed in ill-fitting jeans and a check shirt.

  ‘Mr McCoy.’ I said it louder than I needed to, but I wanted him to understand me clearly, or at least as clearly as he could in his present condition. ‘Mr McCoy, I am a community childcare worker with the Health Board. I need to take Cordelia, Victor and Ibar into care this evening. You are not in a condition to look after them. I’ll be back out tomorrow to talk to you some more, when you’re sober. Do you understand?’

  ‘Y … yes … yes …’

  Victor was still standing at the door. A loud banging announced Cordelia’s desire to gain access. I had forgotten that she, Ibar and Betty were still outside. Max seemed to be trying to reclaim dominion over himself, but he was fighting a losing battle. I heard Victor opening the front door, and then Cordelia pushed past me and embraced her father, crying quietly. He looked at me with such shame and self-disgust, I had to look away. Ibar shot past us down the hall to one of the rooms, like an animal into a bolt-hole. Betty was standing beside Victor and motioned with her head for me to step outside. I followed her out to the front step. Victor lingered just inside the porch, watching Cordelia and his father, seemingly sensing that he was not required.

  ‘There’s a woman out by the coast road who will take them tonight. She had them when he was in getting dried out before.’

  I nodded. ‘It doesn’t look like he stayed dry for long.’

  Betty said nothing, fumbling for a cigarette with shaking hands. I took the box from her and tapped out a cigarette, lighting it for her. There were tears in her eyes and she wiped them away, taking the cigarette and inhaling deeply.

  ‘I should have seen this coming. I was supposed to be the contact worker! How could I have been so stupid?’

  ‘You know how manipulative drunks can be. And those three have been colluding with him. Cordelia looks like she would be a very daunting adversary. You saw what they wanted you to see. The only reason we caught it now is because we called unannounced. It was pure chance.’

  ‘It doesn’t excuse the fact that I fucked up, and fucked up badly.’

  ‘I can’t absolve you of that, Betty. You’ll just have to beat yourself up for a while over it. But of course, you know as well as I do that there’s nothing to be gained by torturing yourself. Learn from it. Be more vigilant next time. You know what, though?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There probably isn’t a damn thing you could have done differently. He would have slipped up eventually, or he wouldn’t. We caught him. The kids will be cared for this evening, and we’ll come out here tomorrow and see what we can do. That is what is important.’

  She sniffed and smiled at me. I gave her a quick hug and went into the living room. Max and Cordelia were on the couch. The tears had subsided, but both were still hiccoughing and sighing. It seemed that Max had come to himself a bit in the few moments.

  ‘I’m Max McCoy,’ he said.

  ‘Shane Dunphy.’ I offered my hand but he made no move to take it.

  ‘I am not pleased with myself, Mr Dunphy. I know what I am, and what I am doing to my children.’

  ‘I’m not here to judge you, Mr McCoy. My role is to represent the children. You understand that I must remove them, for this evening at the very least.’

  He nodded. Cordelia wrapped her arms around him even more tightly.

  ‘I’ll come out to see you tomorrow morning and we’ll discuss how to proceed from here. It strikes me that you may need some more therapy to help you deal with the addiction, but that isn’t my decision to make.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not, eh?’

  ‘No. I will have a social worker accompanying me to discuss those issues with you. As I said, my role is to be here for the children.’

  ‘We don’t need you!’ Cordelia spat at me then with such vehemence I almost stepped back. ‘We’re doing fine. Daddy just needs to get better, that’s all. I can help him. We can fix this together, as a family.’

  Max smiled in a tired kind of way and stroked his daughter’s hair gently, hushing her as she disintegrated into tears again, less controlled this time.

  ‘There are things that are too big for anyone to do on their own, Cordelia
,’ I said. ‘Your dad needs some help from people who are trained to give it to him. You’ve done your best, but you’re a child. You shouldn’t have to cope with all this on your own. You need someone to help you, to mind you. That’s what I’m here for, until your dad is in better shape. I know you love him, and I can see that he loves you, but, as you said, he’s not well right now.’

  Max continued to hush the crying girl. Victor stood by the wall, apparently examining the pattern on the wallpaper, blocking out the horrors that were enfolding about him. Ibar was still nowhere to be seen. I doubted that he knew what was going on – but he knew something was up. Betty led Victor back into the hallway, suggesting that he gather some things for an overnight stay, and went to look for the younger boy. I wandered back out into the yard and watched the sun begin to sink below the hills across the road from the cottage.

  We left them in the care of a woman named Dympna Dunleavey. She was not what I expected. I had foreseen a frumpy, spinsterish woman with blue-rinse hair. Dympna was probably thirty-two with short, dark brown hair and a pretty, friendly face. I felt at ease leaving the children with her; she seemed a warm, gentle person. Cordelia seemed, to my relief, to be fond of her, hugging her tightly as soon as we arrived. Ibar went to her for a brief cuddle and then disappeared into the house, first giving me a look that I could not read.

  Dympna made us coffee and when the children had gone to their respective rooms she talked a little about Max, and how he was doing.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for this to happen,’ she said. ‘He’s been going down now for weeks. I don’t think he was ever sober at all, to tell the truth. He was seen in the pub a week after he came back from drying out.’

  ‘Why didn’t anyone tell us?’ Betty asked, incredulous.

  ‘Sure weren’t the social workers already working with him? You couldn’t be called in when you were already there!’

  I winced, knowing how those words would hurt Betty.

  ‘Dympna, if this … er … placement … needs to be for more than one night, would you be agreeable? We will, of course, organise the full maintenance allowance for you immediately.’ Foster parents receive a small payment for each child they care for, which, while better than nothing, is really just a token. No one gets into fostering for the money.

  ‘Well, I can take the kids for a few weeks if it’s really necessary, but I wouldn’t really like to have them for much longer than that. I have other commitments.’

  ‘Of course. We appreciate your being able to help us at all.’

  I thought that we could get Max cleaned up within a few weeks and that we would not need a foster placement for any longer than that. Once again, I was allowing optimism to get in the way of reality. Little did I know it, but this case would test me and my personal resources in ways I could never have imagined. As I sat and drank coffee and the night slowly fell upon us, I thought that we had staved off disaster for the McCoys. For this family, I thought, there will be better days.

  I could not have been more wrong.

  4

  I was the first to arrive at the McCoy house the next morning, and I parked up the road a bit and finished writing my report on the previous day’s events while I waited. Shortly, I saw Noreen, a social worker who had worked on the case before, pull in and I got out and went over to her car.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, abandoning any preamble.

  I told her.

  ‘Shit. I thought he was clean. We put a lot of effort into this guy.’

  I shrugged. What did she want me to say?

  ‘Where’s Betty?’

  ‘On her way I presume.’ I felt myself begin to bristle. This was not my fault. I had not placed the alcohol in Max McCoy’s hand, and I had not created the policy that said that a social worker needed to sign off on a Voluntary Care Order. I had not appointed Noreen to the case, either.

  I pushed the rising anger aside. I was tired and contrary. It was likely that Noreen had either had to cancel or postpone something else to be there, and she probably wanted this finished as soon as possible so that she could get on with her day. Social workers have extremely heavy caseloads, and Noreen was no exception. I saw Betty’s car turn into the road.

  Max McCoy opened the door, looking as if he had spent the previous night on survival manoeuvres with the SAS. He stood aside to allow us into his hallway. He had obviously been cleaning, for the smell of disinfectant and polish lingered in a rather unpleasant cocktail in the air. But it was better than the smell of vomit. He silently walked into the living room, leaving us standing in the hall. After some seconds of looking uncomfortably at one another, Noreen followed him, and we trailed after her. He was sitting on the same couch I had found him on the day before, staring into space, his stubbled chin cradled in his hand, his hair sticking up at odd angles. He had rings under his eyes and I could smell his breath from the doorway. It was foul, but the alcohol in it was only a memory.

  ‘Let’s get this over with,’ he said.

  Noreen sat on the arm of one of the chairs and began to riffle through her bag.

  ‘Your children are fine, Max,’ Betty said, going over and sitting down beside him. ‘I dropped in on Dympna on the way over this morning. She brought them to school and they’re in good form. They’re asking after you and looking forward to coming home.’

  He heaved a deep sigh.

  ‘Thank you, Betty.’

  Noreen produced the Care Order and handed it to him.

  ‘This is a similar Order to the previous one you signed. Do you need me to explain any of it to you again?’

  ‘No.’

  I handed him my pen, and he looked at me right in the eye. I was almost bowled over by the depth of misery I saw in him. I saw loss, shame, anger, bitterness and a terrible awareness that this was a battle he would never, ever be able to win. I saw, in that second, the story of Max McCoy from his own perspective. I saw his own abandonment, his own deep-rooted fear. I saw the little boy he had once been who had never received the love and support he deserved and needed. I saw an infant who had cried in the darkness and cried and cried, but no one ever came. I saw how handing his own children over to the authorities for a second time was driving another nail into the coffin that was his life. I wanted to reach out then and tell him to stop, to shout at him not to sign the paper; we would find some way to work it out. But I knew that this was not my place, and that the child he had once been was dead and gone. There were three other children who needed to be helped, and by signing this Order he was helping them, terrible though the cost was.

  He signed the paper and pushed it across the table to Noreen, who countersigned it.

  ‘What now?’ he asked, looking around at us.

  ‘Well, that’s kind of up to you, Max,’ I said, leaning against the wall and folding my arms. ‘What happened? I’m told by these two ladies that you were sent to a centre to get you cleaned up. You were released with glowing reports, you seemed ready to get on with your life, and then … this. What went wrong?’

  ‘Oh God, Shane,’ he said, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles and shaking his head, ‘what kind of a question is that? Do you have any idea? Do you have a clue, man?’ His tone was very defensive.

  I was tempted to soften my approach, but I felt that being gentle would not serve him well now.

  ‘I think that it’s the only question to ask right now, Max. I had to stand here while your children watched you wipe puke from your chin and drag yourself out of a drunken stupor, and then I had to come back out here this morning to have you sign them away for a second time. That makes me feel pretty crappy, to tell you the truth. I think my question is a fairly reasonable one.’

  ‘Aw Jesus. I don’t know … things got on top of me. I thought I could cope and then … then I couldn’t, you know?’ His tone changed to whining, pleading, pathetic now. The aggression hadn’t worked. He was trying a different tack.

  ‘How do we know that it won’t happen again?’ Betty asked. ‘How
do we know that this isn’t just another lapse in a long line of lapses? Those children won’t be able to cope with this again. Look at what you’re doing to them.’

  ‘I know, I know. I feel awful. The kids mean everything to me. They’re all I have. I need this sorted out. I have to get them back.’

  ‘Are you serious about that, Max? Do you really mean it this time?’ Noreen asked. ‘If you are, we’ll help in any way we can. We’ll organise regular access visits, we’ll get you specialist addiction counselling, we’ll make sure that the kids get plenty of help too, but we need to know that you are committed to the process.’

  ‘Of course I am. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how I slipped back into the drinking. One minute I’m sober and steady, the next I’m coming out of a three-day jag. I don’t know.’