Rainy Days & Tuesdays

by Claire Allan

  Of course, well-intentioned as her threats were, they made the bullying worse. I became a laughing-stock – but I never told Mammy. It would have crushed her and even at that stupidly young age I knew she had been crushed enough in her life.

  I can’t remember the first time I really became aware of the fact that I was the only one of my friends who didn’t have a brother or sister, but I do remember Mammy excitedly telling me she was pregnant and letting my pudgy four-year-old hands pat her tummy and say hello to my little brother or sister. At the time Mammy and Daddy used to hug a lot and I remember Daddy saying more rosaries than normal, praying for a miracle.

  Mammy blossomed. She was never sick. She just had this radiance about her, this maternal glow and I loved the feel of her, the smell of her, the warm cuddles, the smiles that rained down on me. I wanted to call my little sister Hamble or Jemima after the characters on Playschool and I was determined I didn’t want a brother – boys were smelly.

  Then one day I came home and Mammy was crying. She was sitting on the bathroom floor, her face pale as the white porcelain behind her. She was crying, “Not again, please, not again!” and Daddy was rubbing her hand comfortingly, crying too.

  I didn’t understand it at the time. I ran to my room, hid and spent a good hour trying to figure out what had happened. It was then that Daddy came in, gave me a hug and told me Mammy had gone to see the doctor. An ambulance had been called and I was going to have to be a brave girl.

  There was no mention of a baby after that, no patting of tummies, no maternal glow, just a sadness that lasted for what seemed like an eternity until one day, dusting herself off, Mammy turned to me and told me that from now it was just us Three Amigos and that was how it was going to stay. Sometimes I wondered if she’d had the baby and he had been a little boy and she was so keen to keep me happy that she sent him away.

  When I saw the sadness in her eyes, I planned that upon my sixteenth birthday I would hunt him down and reunite us all and tell him that I was sorry for being such a dreadful sister. And once I said this to her and wondered why she looked so hurt. I think I was twenty, and Mammy was slightly pissed, when she finally told me the dreadful truth that after I was born she had suffered four miscarriages – finally being told by a doctor that she would be better to save herself the heartache and accept that her family was complete.

  If anyone understands sadness, it is Mammy, and when she walks into my hotel room I know I don’t need to explain anything. I just need to curl up in her arms, laying my head on her shoulders, feeling her soft arms around me, and sob until I can sob no more.

  We cry together, she tells me to let it all out and when the crying is done we fall asleep on the great big king-size bed. I’m struck by the fact that, even though I’m twenty- nine, I’m comforted beyond words to be there beside my mother, feeling secure in her presence. Perhaps there is a feature for Northern People in that, I think wryly before falling off to sleep yet again.

  Chapter 6

  I have a mad love for hotel breakfasts. I get giddily excited at the sight of the buffet table, laden with all its tasty treats. From the warmed croissants, begging for a good battering with the butter knife, to the sautéed mushrooms peeking out beside the juicy sausages, I am in Overeater’s Heaven.

  The greatest joy of our relationship is that Aidan has the same, if not more, affection for hotel breakfasts that I do and any time we are together we spend a good hour and a half stuffing ourselves stupid with fifteen courses of cornflakes and yoghurts and fried stuff before heading back to bed again to sleep it off. Therefore I know something is wrong when I realise today I don’t want the company of a hotel dining-room, the clatter of breakfast dishes, the jolly chat of the young waiting staff. Mammy, being the super-efficient woman that she is, orders us some room service and busies herself getting that wee table in the corner ready for our repast.

  I have reverted somewhat to the mental age of a thirteen-year-old, nodding in reply to any questions my mother throws at me, and bursting into snottery tears when she suggests I phone Sinéad and let her know I won’t be in today.

  “Go’n, you do it!” I splutter, perfecting my best puppy- dog-eyes look that I know has always worked a treat.

  “Okay then, you rest there,” Mammy replies, patting my head and lifting the phone.

  I like that she is taking care of me. I like that she is in control, and I’m almost expecting the famous blue blanket of my childhood to come out of her Mary-Poppins-style bag of tricks so that I can wrap it around myself. She phones Sinéad and I mentally cringe while I hear her say that I’m not well. I hope that if I cringe enough my ears will pop inside my body and I won’t be able to hear her make the excuses. I know Sinéad won’t be happy, you see, not with five days to go until deadline but I know I can’t face it today – not least because I’m in the back-hole of nowhere and it has gone ten o’clock.

  She hangs up and a knock comes to the door, with perfect timing to save me having to ask what Sinéad said. Mammy opens the door, takes our food off the scruffy- looking waiter and tells me to sit down. I’m not in the form to argue. She serves breakfast while I nod and shake my head at the appropriate moments, my teenage-style sulk remaining. As I start to try and eat my bacon-and-egg combo, the food sticks in my throat and I start to cry again. “Oh, darling – you really are having a crisis, aren’t you?”

  Mammy says, putting her knife and fork down.

  I nod, sobbing. “What’s wrong, Grace?”

  There is that fecking question again – What’s wrong, Grace? – looming over me, forcing me to think about things.

  You see, on paper, nothing is wrong. Everything is tickety-boo in the personal and professional life of yours truly. My career is going great guns. I’m even asked on the radio from time to time to talk about vaccinations, nits and schools and other such child-related issues. With the exception of Louise, I get along with my colleagues. We even have a laugh from time to time. Even though I can’t go to the pub for the post-publication piss-up any more, I think they still regard me as one of their own. Aidan is lovely, if a little irritated by me most of the time, and I have a gorgeous healthy son. We own our own house, have two cars between us and I am blessed with fabulous parents and a surrogate sister in Daisy.

  So why then am I unhappy? Why do I always wake up wishing for an hour more (or several) in bed? Why do I question myself day in and day out? Why have I, in Aidan’s words, become so fucking (not fecking) unbearable?

  And so you see, the only answer I can give my mother is that I don’t know.

  But my mother is a tenacious old baggage and she isn’t about to give up that easily.

  “Grace, it’s perfectly obvious to all and sundry that something is wrong and, if you’ve got yourself into such an unholy state about it, then I’m pretty sure you have a wee notion as to what it is.”

  “I’m tired,” I sob, making for the bed, clambering under the duvet and pulling it over my head petulantly.

  “So am I,” she replies, pulling the duvet back down, “but I’m not flouncing about making a holy show of myself about it.”

  She has a point. Strike One to Mammy.

  “I’m – I’m – I’m fed up with everything,” I stutter. “Like what?”

  “Like life, the universe and everything,” I reply. “Grace Anna Adams, you do not get away with it that easy!” Mammy says, her tone stern. “What do you mean by life, the universe and everything? Because, believe me, young lady, you don’t know everything about life.”

  I see the old glint of pain in her eye and I realise she has a point.

  Strike Two to Mammy.

  “Like being me, like being fat and useless, and being angry at myself for being angry all the time!” I shout. “And being scared and not being good enough for anyone or anything!”

  “You are good enough for me,” she replies. Strike Three to Mammy.

  After I’ve stopped blubbing, I’m informed we will be driving back to Derry and we will be g
oing to see the doctor – where we will talk about my unresolved issues and see what help we can get. Then Mammy is going to sit down with myself and Aidan and we are going to talk like proper adults and, when all that is done, I’m going to brush myself off, prepare myself to face the world again and go back to work.

  I have no part in formulating these plans – I just know better than to argue with them. So I pack my bag, pay my bill and drive up the road – Mammy all the while just behind me in case I look like doing a runner again.

  I’m embarrassed talking to my doctor, not least because he looks younger than I am, but also because he looks as if he wouldn’t be out of place as one of the leads in ER.

  I would have preferred an appointment with the nice lady doctor, but as Mammy had a hard enough time convincing the po-faced receptionist that this was in fact urgent and we were not, repeat not, going to leave the surgery until we were seen, I realised that I would have to endure this – if only to stop her humiliating me further.

  I sit on the edge of the seat in his stark room, trying to avoid his gaze, and feeling exceptionally self-conscious. Perhaps all I needed all this time was a talking-to and a hug, because somewhere on the drive to the doctor’s I’ve realised I just may have been overreacting over the last couple of days and I may, if you pardon my crude use of language, have made a complete tit of myself.

  “Grace isn’t very happy,” Mammy splutters and the doctor has the good grace not to laugh.

  “How long have you been feeling like this?” he asks. “Months now, but it has been really bad the last few days. I think she may have had a wee breakdown,” my mother answers and I shoot her a death stare which shuts her up.

  “Grace, can you tell me about how you’re feeling?” he asks.

  I take a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

  “I’m not too bad, honest,” I say, “but sometimes I feel like nothing I do matters.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m tired all the time, and I can’t seem to shift weight and I just feel lonely and inadequate and all I want to do is crawl under a table and hide.”

  I can’t believe I’ve just said that. I’m not sure where it came from. But I force myself to shut up because I don’t want to get committed to the local loony-bin, so I resume my slightly manic staring at the floors and walls.

  “How long have you been feeling this way?” Dr Dishy asks, shooting my mother that same death stare I just used in a bid to keep her quiet.

  “I don’t know,” I reply.

  “She says that a lot,” Mammy interjects before we both glare at her.

  “I guess I’ve felt like this a few times before, but not as bad as now. Well, I felt bad after Jack, my son, was born but I put that down to the baby blues – but I feel worse now and I’m pretty sure there is no such thing as toddler blues.” I give a lame smile and he has the decency to smile back.

  “Let’s see what we can do to help you.”

  I feel at once euphoric and exhausted. In my hand rests a bluey-greeny slip of paper emblazoned with the name of a tablet which will, it is alleged, help me feel better, but more than that I have the reassurances of Dr Dishy that I’m not going insane and there’s lots that can be done to make me feel human and normal again.

  I am Charlie Bucket and this, I hope, is my Golden Ticket. Things are going to be better from now on. Apparently, according to Dr Dishy, I am suffering from depression and anxiety. You would, wouldn’t you, have thought that as the former Health and Beauty Editor of Northern People I would be kind of well up on the symptoms of depression? But, you see, I didn’t feel depressed. I didn’t have the urge to curl up in a corner (under a table, yes, but not in a corner) and phone the Samaritans.

  I never contemplated killing myself. I didn’t cry at the drop of a hat (with the exception of the last three days obviously). I didn’t mope around in black (except for the RBTs which were more an effort to hide the girth of my arse than anything else) and I washed my hair whenever time would allow which admittedly wasn’t as often as it should have been. I felt down, but my down-ness, my sadness has, I realise, become so much of a normality that I didn’t even notice it had got worse.

  I’m sitting in my car, outside our house, and I know Aidan and Jack are inside because Aidan’s car is parked in front of my own and through the window I can see Bob the Builder playing on the TV. I wonder to myself when did it get so bad that I had to feel nervous faced with the prospect of going into my own house and talking to my own husband and my own son?

  Mammy squeezes my hand and I know it is time, so holding on to my Golden Ticket tightly, I get out of the car and walk through the door, Mammy in my wake.

  Jack squeals with excitement and runs to cling to my legs, while Aidan just looks at me with a mixture of affection, worry and anger. I want to run to him, to hug him and have him comfort me, but I’m unsure of myself now.

  “The doctor has some ideas to help,” Mammy says, breaking the silence, which for once I am grateful for.

  “He’s given me tablets,” I say, offering my prescription to Aidan for inspection.

  “And we are going to look into a few therapies,” Mammy adds, before scooping Jack up in her arms and whisking him into the living-room to see what crazy japes Scoop and Dizzy are up to now.

  “I was worried,” Aidan says, looking at me with genuine concern. “I didn’t mean to push you away – I just didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You did nothing wrong,” I answer, stepping that little bit closer. “If anyone needs to apologise it’s me. I don’t know what has happened to me, Aidan. I’m scared and I just couldn’t listen to it any more.”

  “Listen to what?”

  “Listen to people telling me I’m not good enough.” “I never said that.”

  “I know that now,” I said. “I just couldn’t hear anything else before.” And I walk towards him, stretching my arms open to him, inviting him to hold me. For the first time in a long time I’m allowing him in, allowing him to see my vulnerability, welcoming his touch instead of pushing him away and when he holds me in his strong arms, I breathe out. His skin, warm from the afternoon sun, feels so good against mine. His lips, brushing against the top of my head, feel so tender – despite the stubble which shows he hasn’t shaved today. I realise I’ve been missing out on so much. I’ve been so afraid to allow him to love me that I almost lost him.

  “I can’t pretend I understand,” he says, “but I’ll try.”

  And that about sums it up, because I don’t really understand it either, but I’m going to try and from now on things are going to be different – but, more than that, they are going to be better.

  Chapter 7

  Aidan and I hold each other through the night. We don’t leap on each other’s bones and make mad passionate love – we just allow ourselves to be together, to talk a little, but to cuddle more, remembering what it is like to be a couple – not just parents, or overworked professionals – and it feels so nice.

  I sleep so peacefully, smiling for the first time in a long time when I wake up. Yes, I’m still tired and I’m still unsure of myself but I realise that a little part of me, somewhere deep inside, is feeling just that little bit hopeful.

  Of course, the glow can’t last forever. I know I have to face Sinéad, who by now will be at high risk from cardiac arrest as deadline approaches. I know I should have had the proofs for the Messy Play feature on her desk by now, and that problem page is still not finished. I’m also painfully aware I wasn’t there to supervise the ‘Mummy and Me’ photo shoot the day before where famous mums and daughters were going to celebrate their friendship for the benefit of Liam and his trusty camera.

  I pull up into the carpark and take a swig of cold Diet Coke to settle myself, before lifting my bag and walking into the office. I consider just sitting here at my desk, with Dermot for company, and saying nothing – but I’ve known Sinéad long enough by now to know she appreciates a quick “Hi there and hello” if someone has been
off sick. In cases such as these, when someone (aka me) has been off sick five days before deadline, she appreciates a “Hi there, hello” and a grovelling apology before the day begins.

  “Wish me luck, big man,” I whisper to Dermot before making my way into the lion’s den.

  Sinéad’s office is a strange place. It has a soft leather sofa which you sit on if you are feeling relaxed, discussing up-and-coming features for the month and sharing a bit of gossip about the other staff members.

  There are also stiff, proper office chairs, moulded plastic and cold steel, which you most certainly sit on if you have taken a day off on the sick and need to let your boss know you are still serious about continuing your employment at Northern People.

  I sit on the hard seats, while Sinéad finishes a phone call, and I look around me.

  On the walls there are past covers of our bestselling issues and a smattering of awards, one of which is rightfully mine for a feature on being a ‘Have-It-All Mummy’– how ironic that seems now!

  On the right-hand wall there is a whiteboard, carefully marked out with page numbers and ad plans. I see a big question-mark in gaudy red ink beside the page reserved for my Messy Play feature and I start to feel uneasy.

  Sinéad hangs up the phone, sits back and looks me up and down and I know she is waiting for me to start talking as she lights up a cigarette and inhales deeply.

  “I’m really sorry, Sinéad, I just couldn’t come to work yesterday,” I start, waiting for her to voice concern.

  But she sits there in stony silence.

  “I was feeling really out of sorts,” I continue, realising I am making myself sound like perhaps the biggest tit in the history of the world. Who the feck uses the expression ‘out of sorts’ any more, apart from old women who wear cardigans and live on tinned prunes?