The Mask and Other Stories

by Nesta Tuomey

  Grace smiled weakly in return. To show how broadminded she was, Aideen supposed. She watched as her sister adroitly changed the subject to the results of Garry’s Christmas tests glancing in a deferential manner at Brother Dominick as she spoke. This late pregnancy had suffused her face with harsh colour but added little flesh to her bones. Her arms in the short-sleeved maternity dress showed fragile and blue-veined, out of proportion to her increasing girth.

  ‘His math mark was the highest in the class,’ she spoke with pride. ‘No mean achievement for a boy just ten.’

  Aideen was familiar with her sister’s manipulative use of numbers. Whenever her son excelled Grace chopped months off his age and, in the same way, added them on again with interest when he got into trouble. ‘How could you do such a thing, a big boy of eleven,’ became her anguished cry. In this numerical inconsistency Grace was most like her mother, Aideen often thought, aware of Mattie’s attitude to her arthritis. ‘Crippled at sixty,’ was how she dramatically put it, shedding several years in the telling. But let anyone compliment her on her sprightly walk and she attained seventy with alacrity. ‘Not bad for an old lady,’ she would simper, showing moist gums, eager for approbation. Neither mother nor daughter saw anything contradictory in their behaviour. It was merely a question of best arranging truth to reflect back credit upon themselves.

  Now Mrs. Hennigan, who was already acquainted with her grandson’s genius and more interested in hearing youth denigrated than praised, interrupted to say with flattering emphasis: ‘I would be most interested to hear your opinion, Brother Dominick, on today’s terrible teenagers,’ laughing in a jolly fashion to indicate she was not wholly serious.

  ‘Indeed!’ cried Mattie, aligning forces, eager to hear some vengeful tale in which the rod had prevailed. Only too willing to please the ladies Brother Dominick complied at some length.

  Garry’s expression became doleful as he listened to the depressing list of misdemeanours on the part of his generation. Aideen was glad when Conor set about distracting the boy with talk of football scores. What was it about these so-called happy family occasions, she wondered, that brought out the savagery in adults?

  It was a dull lunch, relieved only by the wine Aideen had brought. She soon got up to pour more. To her annoyance she discovered her step-nieces helping themselves on the sly.

  ‘Now, girls,’ Killian cautioned his daughters weakly.

  ‘Yes, Dada,’ Sara said submissively. Leaning out of his line of vision she put the glass to her lips and winked merrily at her sister.

  ‘Yes, Dada,’ they both chorused whenever their father looked their way, exploding helplessly into cupped hands.

  Brother Dominick discreetly drew Aideen’s attention to his empty glass and as she filled it, mused in philosophical manner on the power of wine to transform the simplest of repasts into something better. An abstract observation but in view of her sister’s surprisingly lavish feast, open to misconception by his hostess.

  Fortunately Grace was not heeding him.

  ‘If you like I can warm the punch,’ she offered selflessly, moving with care about the table, cautiously heel-toeing the ground, the slope of her pregnancy more pronounced with each ponderous movement.

  ‘Mulled punch, how lovely,’ Mrs. Hennigan enthused. ‘Perhaps you might add some cloves,’ she dared to suggest.

  ‘Whisky would be even better,’ murmured Conor, with a discreet wink in Aideen’s direction. Sighing, she ruefully returned his grin, having too optimistically presumed the subject dead.

  At her other side Brother Dominick sipped and smiled. ‘Never forget, dear child,’ he told her dreamily, ‘the ever watchful vigilance of the Lord. Even the hair on your heads is counted.’

  Garry’s delighted giggle was taken up by his step-sisters, slyly tippling again.

  ‘Head,’ Brother Dominick quickly corrected himself, a betraying flush darkening his already puce cheeks. He shook his finger waggishly at Garry. ‘Now, now, young man. Make fun of your elders, would you.’ He soon got up to go, perhaps fearing even greater indiscretions.

  ‘I don’t like to see a priest drinking,’ said Mattie, when Grace had gone with him to the door. Despite twice being told that he had not taken holy orders, she insisted on getting it wrong.

  Garry upended the wine bottle to catch the last drops. ‘Just a sip,’ he wheedled, eyeing Aideen’s glass hopefully. ‘Please!’

  Aideen had to laugh at his roguish eyes over the rim.

  ‘Garry’s been drinking Auntie Aideen’s wi-ine,’ cried Sara’s traitorous younger sister as their mother came back into the room.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Grace met Aideen’s eyes in despair. She was still disturbed by her son’s refusal to take the pledge that morning and had meant to discuss it with Brother Dominick. Conscious of having permitted the true culprit to escape unchallenged she vented her annoyance now. ‘Really, Aideen, how could you! I mean to say, giving alcohol to a child of barely ten.’

  She was doing the numbers thing again, Aideen noted in irritation.

  ‘It’s obscene,’ complained Grace, making it sound like child abuse.

  ‘It was only a sip,’ Aideen protested, aware of their brother’s amused expression.

  ‘See what comes now of not taking the pledge,’ Grace fretted. ‘Believe me, Garry, it’s the downward path.’

  ‘Honestly, it was just a sip,’ Aideen said again, wishing her sister was not such a hypocrite. Grace had been only too ready to turn a blind eye to her step-daughters’ drinking.

  ‘It’s all very well for you,’ Grace cried, laying her hands protectively over her swelling stomach as if the developing child was at risk. ‘You don’t have to answer for your children in the hereafter.’

  Sighing, Aideen rolled her eyes heavenwards. ‘Oh no! Not all that claptrap about God and vengeance, Grace..’

  ‘There’s no need for blasphemy,’ Grace said stiffly. ‘You may speak flippantly, Aideen, but one never knows the moment or the hour.’

  To Aideen the warning was clear. God will get you if you don’t look out! Not a very friendly way of regarding someone whom from babyhood had been held up as fatherly and all forgiving. In whose arms, Aideen remembered lulling herself to sleep in those early years when feeling lonely and rejected.

  She listened dubiously as Grace went on to tell them about her next door neighbour, a woman in her early forties, active and outgoing, suddenly stricken down with cancer. Grace attributed it to the hand of God. She would! thought Aideen.

  ‘So what you’re saying is that God sends cancer but not the massacres or pillaging rapes?’ she queried with interest, wanting to get it straight.

  Grace nodded. ‘I certainly do, there’s no doubt about it,’ she cried, as if receiving personal confirmation of this from heaven. The others were acts of fate, call them what you will, but the dreaded cancer – that was a godsend.

  In the worst possible way, Aideen considered, feeling confronted by something unresolvable, a yawning void greater than any generation gap. For heaven’s sake, she thought, who could warm to a God that sent cancer!

  Aideen was not, and never could be, reconciled with the unpleasant image of a deity doling out pestilence and disease. As if for one reason or another – mostly vengeful - He singled out people to give them a blast of the big C.

  She tried to inject a jocose note, ‘So the masses expiring at the hands of murderers and extortionists are not, so to speak, God’s territory. But cancer now, that’s His special concern?’ And if cancer, why not AIDS, her unspoken thought.

  A shadow passed over Grace’s face. She paused as she prepared to carry a tottering pile of plates to the kitchen, ‘That’s right,’ she nodded, her eyes sombre, almost frightened. ‘Make no mistake about it, Aideen, God sends cancer.’

  Future Generations

  Have you ever spent wakeful nights pondering on the density of life, the sheer abundant tenacity of it? All those children thronging the public parks and main thoroughfares clutching on deter
minedly with sticky fingers. I do all the time.

  How is it some people have so much libido and others barely enough? That’s another nocturnal question currently engaging me, having had so much myself but very little of the other kind. What astonishes me is the way some women throw themselves into the business of reproduction as though that was the strenuous part. Believe me, it takes a lot of energy to rear children.

  Which brings me to something else. The way the father’s genes always seem to predominate in the children. I have made a study of this and I can vouch for it. Have a look for yourself and you’ll see. That’s how it was in my own family.

  We were all of us my father’s lookalikes, each of us endowed with the same high-bridged nose under beetling black brows, the same stick-out ears, which, by the way, he inherited from his father. I admit some of us bore a slight resemblance to mother with her fair colouring but none of us have reproduced her hazel-coloured eyes. Not one of the litter. Here again father’s blue iris predominated.

  I knew it would be the same with my children. They would all be saddled with my husband’s squint and receding chin and possibly, God forbid, my grandfather’s ears. I did not feel I could take the risk. For that my unborn children have me to thank.

  I suppose Jack is not a repulsive-looking man merely nondescript. He has some attributes. His manner is mild, I’ll say that for him, his intellect not unintelligent. His way of smiling at perfect strangers is really quite endearing and leads to all kinds of possibilities. But if I am to be honest I would have to say that a squint may be all very well on a tall virile man, or a receding chin on a bearded Adonis but when linked to a balding five foot nothing, it’s quite another matter. Yes, I thought you would see it my way.

  He said he wanted children but I wonder. He has a way of saying something one minute and contradicting it the next. You don’t need to pay too much attention to him. Where would I be if I had? Once children are there you can’t send them back. No, the waste of his reproductive equipment was all that bothered him. He often said so.

  The notion that we contain inside ourselves the seeds of countless generations induces in me a certain pelvic heaviness, I must admit, but little else. I have never felt overburdened with responsibility for being the storage bank for the human race nor imagined my life any the less rich for having no one to call me mother. Astonishing that so many women do. Judging from what you read in the newspapers there is no shortage of surrogate mothers rushing to take on another role. And mind you, not always for money.

  I saw in The Telegraph where a sixty-eight year old woman with ten children gratuitously offered her womb as a breeding sack for the fertilized ovum of her childless daughter. This at a time in her life when most people would agree she had already done her bit for humanity, there she was, climbing energetically back into maternity wear. And all for the reward of being called Granny. I don’t hold with it all.

  Having said this you won’t be surprised to learn where I am now. I am in the waiting area of a clinic primarily devoted to the sterilization of women. With me, lounging in various attitudes of nervous expectation, are a number of others also awaiting curtailment. There is about them an air of suppressed excitement as though what they are about to undergo is the beginning not the end. And judging from their whispered conversations, I suppose, in a way, it is.

  They are speaking of a life that is not a life but bondage. Years of swollen bellies and sleepless nights, cancelled holidays and unrealized ambition. Their hands beat the air, their eyes fill with emotion, their tongues wax eloquent as they acknowledge the seductive power of wine and sweet kisses, the disillusion of failed methods. Now this is not my story I hasten to tell you although it might have been.

  Prevention rather than cure has always been my motto. Before I was obliged to test it out, I made a study of my reproductive system, familiarizing myself with the obvious pitfalls. It was not difficult. I’ll tell you something. Anyone can do it. Forethought like foreplay is the secret. All you need is knowledge and perseverance.

  So I told my friend Sally. She is persevering but about the wrong things. Mainly in her efforts to get back her husband when with a little forward planning she might have held on to him in the first place. The last occasion we met was on the anniversary of her wedding date.

  “Well here’s to another twenty good years,’ I cried in a well meaning attempt to infuse some jollity into the gloom. How did she react? Not well.

  ‘You expect me to drink to that?’ she asked, her expression, by turn, irritated and aggrieved.

  I admit the toast was a little foolish when you think how the man had deserted her all of five years ago but the thought was kindly meant. Besides there must have been some happy moments in those years, if only Sally were more honest. But Sally likes her moan.

  Five children have done that that to her. Five boys and none of them resemble her at all. Not much compensation for all the pain and sacrifice you might say, and I agree. You must have some reward if only in the recognition of your ancestral nose on your second eldest.

  Which brings me back to Jack. Why did I marry him you may ask? I suppose because he asked me. No one else had. And he was rich. What I did not allow for was his changing attitudes. You start out with one man and end up with another. It can affect your confidence.

  I wonder if the woman sitting opposite me with the twitchy smile has been through it too? I can tell by the way she has twice asked the nurse to check her urine sample in case of already fertilised ovum that she no longer takes anything for granted. By my forethought I avoided all that.

  At the beginning I saw myself like a fruitful vine, bursting with womb fruit, the original Earth Mother. You can believe me when I say I gave it my best shot. What’s more I tackled it with science. My temperature chart was a joy to behold, each dip and rise faithfully recorded, my vaginal mucous stretched like runny egg white between inspecting fingers. For one whole night I lay prone, giving his sperm right of way, regardless of my own natural disinclination. You can’t do fairer than that.

  When our union was not blessed I went on the Pill. What would you have done? One tiny tablet each night at bedtime, just what the doctor ordered. No more playing snakes and ladders with calendars and thermometers, no need for self-denial, it couldn’t have been simpler. I know women who forget to take it but I took pride in remembering. ‘I take mine and you get yours,’ I was in the habit of thinking. Jack never spoke of it but then he never knew. And that’s the way it should be. Women’s affairs are no concern of men’s and vice versa.

  My actions beat this out. Even when he believed his sperm was a fault not a critical word emitted from my lips. I laid no blame, it could happen anyone. Take me as you find me, I’m fond of saying. It was not his fault after all. He had only to ask and I would gladly have had my own insides inspected. But he never did. For this I can’t quite forgive him. I never could stick a quitter.

  And now after fifteen years I am told I can no longer have my bedtime pill. Why should I have to forego it because of old wives’ tales of lumps and clots? I have never felt or looked better in my life. Which brings me to why I am sitting in this clinic waiting for the operation which will make my barrier methods a thing of the past. I suppose I must thank Sally for this though, at the time, credit was the last thing I wished to give her.

  What has always annoyed me about Sally is her unwillingness to put herself in my position. ‘It’s not the end of the world,’ she said when I told her, ‘Why don’t you get a diaphragm. I’ve used one for years. Or better still,’ she adds with unbecoming tartness, ‘Have your tubes tied. That’ll solve all your problems.’

  Now isn’t that just like Sally? Always the extremist. When her husband ran off for a weekend with his secretary she declared her marriage over and did not even wait to hear his side of things. Jack disappeared for much longer but did I rush to divorce him? Not a bit of it. I knew it was only a hiccup in our marriage.

  Now here is Sally advocating a drastic solution to
a simple problem. There is besides a touch of sarcasm in her tone which confirms me in a suspicion I have held for some time that she is not wholly in sympathy with my dilemma.

  ‘No,’ I tell her firmly, ‘no need for that. I will try this diaphragm you recommend. You know that I am all for trying anything once.’

  She looks dubious but that is her natural expression these days. I imagine hours of fruitless watching for a husband who does not return would make anyone so.

  Nothing comes easy in this world as I know only too well. The diaphragm that Sally advocated was not for me. This I did not find out immediately but I should have been warned by the difficulties experienced on first encounter. It simply would not stay in.

  Why me? I asked myself. Why should I be discriminated against and not Sally who bore merely five biological children to the billions I have mentally conceived and delivered? Why should she have the requisite muscular shelf to sling her durex hammock and not I? You might as well ask why the course of true love never runs straight. But there is always a way out.

  Looking at the garishly-coloured plastic anatomical model the nurse held out I tried to concentrate on what she was saying as she slid an alternate solution up the narrow tunnel and neatly capped the cone.

  ‘We’ll try you with the Dutch cap,’ she suggested brightly. ‘Your husband would only feel the other.’ Such tender concern for my spouse is touching but misplaced, I feel. Still my fancy is caught by images of windmills and demure white bonnets with folded-back lacy wings. The reality was very different.

  Instead she handed me something nut-brown and bowl-shaped. With it, she explained, went a kind of sperm-killing gel. She rolled the word on her palate as if relishing it and sent me away with an injunction to wear my new appendage for short spells, to break it in. ‘Like a new pair of shoes,’ she suggested, with a jolly laugh.

  Oh the difficulty with which I carried out her bidding. It became my homework of an evening while Jack snoozed before a flickering television screen oblivious of what slippery tortures I endured in an overhead room. With dispiriting regularity my nut-brown bowl kept coming back, delivered punctually into my expectant fingers like a boomerang or an aborted foetus. I all but despaired.