Friends Like Us

by Siân O'Gorman

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m sure your mother would enjoy them and the other patients.’

  He stood up and put the flowers into the vase on the bedside cabinet. ‘I’ll give these to you so, Mam. It’s seems that Dr Eilis is too important for flowers.’

  He was teasing her, she knew, but she protested. ‘I didn’t say that, I meant…’

  ‘Well, maybe Charles, you could give her some flowers again. What do you think of that? When she’s not working.’

  ‘I could,’ he said. ‘I very well could.’

  ‘Doctor,’ said Mrs O’Malley, ‘Do you have a young man in your life?’

  ‘Um…’

  ‘Because my son is in need of a young lady. He never seems to find anyone special.’

  ‘Mam!’ Now Charlie was blushing.

  ‘I’m only trying to help, Charles,’ she said, blithely. ‘Aren’t you always saying how you would love to meet someone really special? And you’re really special and it would be nice if you met someone who deserves you.’

  ‘Mam, please…’ He looked at Eilis. ‘I am so sorry.’ He turned back to his Mam. ‘Let’s talk about something else, okay? How are you? Feeling better?’

  ‘But aren’t you always saying that all the girls you meet aren’t into the things you are?’

  ‘Mam. Let’s move on.’

  ‘Anyway, I’d better go,’ said Eilis, not wanting to leave but realizing she had to. She found herself imagining her and Charlie together, she had been enjoying this fantasy of the two of them. ‘Get on with things. You’ll get your results soon but I’ll ask Mr Kapil about them as well. Bye, then.’ She began walking away.

  ‘What? I’m only trying to help, put in a good word,’ she heard Charlie’s mother say.

  Later, he was waiting for her at the nurses’ station. She had just finished with another patient and was checking to see what was next on her list.

  ‘I’m so sorry about earlier,’ he said. ‘I hope my mother didn’t embarrass you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I think it’s nice. She loves you.’

  ‘And thanks for looking after her. It means the world to me. She means the world to me and Kate.’

  ‘I know, I can tell. We’ll do our very best.’ She turned to go, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘The gardening class,’ he said. ‘Will you come? Saturdays at five p.m.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, turning around. ‘I might see you there.’

  He was standing there, smiling, looking so handsome and gorgeous and sexy. She didn’t dare make eye contact but she longed to look at him and feel that connection again.

  ‘Flowers,’ he called to her. ‘I owe you flowers.’

  She knew she wasn’t going to go to the gardening classes because she couldn’t, could she? She had a boyfriend and you didn’t go round fancying other men when you did. She had to work on her and Rob. It wasn’t over yet and maybe they would get through this sticky patch, if that’s what it was. She was committed to him. And she was going to see it through. But flowers would have been nice.

  26

  The girls

  Plans for the reunion were still going on. Steph had a notebook and was crossing off jobs done and writing jobs to do.

  ‘Is this something we should be doing?’ asked Melissa. ‘You know a reunion. Forcing people to see each other who, if they wanted to see each other, would have stayed in contact.’

  They were eating burritos in a Mexican place that Melissa knew. They were the oldest people there by a good two decades.

  ‘You make a very good point,’ said Eilis. ‘Are we manufacturing fun? And isn’t fun something that cannot by its very nature be manufactured. Because then you take the fun out of the fun.’

  ‘You’re getting philosophical, now, Eilis,’ said Steph. ‘And I don’t think Sister Attracta and the Reunion Committee do philosophy.’ She pushed away her burrito.

  ‘Not eating that?’ said Melissa.

  ‘Not hungry,’ said Steph. ‘Just can’t eat lately.’

  ‘We’ll share it, so,’ said Melissa. ‘Food is the only thing keeping me going these days.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, Liam is being his usual annoying self and I just don’t think there’s a place for me at the paper. I don’t fit in. I am trying but the paper keeps moving further and further away from me, and I can’t keep up.’

  ‘Could you leave?’ said Steph. ‘Go somewhere you’re appreciated?’

  ‘I don’t know. Jobs aren’t leaves.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They don’t grow on trees.’

  ‘What about freelance?’ suggested Eilis. ‘Could that work?’

  ‘What work from home all day?’ said Melissa. ‘Make cups of tea and not have to ever see Liam’s face every again? Sounds awful.’

  ‘So, what about it?’

  ‘I don’t think I’m brave enough,’ said Melissa. ‘I like the safety of an office, the security of my little desk and not having to make decisions about paying tax or looking for work. I don’t think I am brave enough to be out there, like starting my own business or anything.’

  She thought immediately of Cormac and wondered how he and the bakery was going. It was coming up to opening day soon, he must be busy and excited. She was hating life without him. It was as though her right arm had been cut off. She missed him more than she could ever have imagined. She woke up every morning with a feeling that something was missing, that there was something wrong and it took her a few moment to realize what it was. And she had to go through that feeling that he had said those things to her, that he didn’t want her anymore. And she began each day feeling crushed.

  ‘I can see you running a business, Mel,’ said Eilis, ‘all in charge and your own boss. Like being a freelancer or something.’

  ‘Really?’ Melissa was pleased that she would have so much faith in her.

  ‘Yeah, you’d be brilliant. You’d be in charge of you.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ said Melissa, smiling. ‘I’d like that very much.’

  ‘Better than being trapped in a hospital,’ said Eilis. ‘But how do you change your life? Get out of the groove you’re in? Jump ship? I sometimes think that there’s no point in changing anything. You just have to stick with what you know.’

  ‘I like the thought of jumping ship,’ said Steph. ‘And adventures, sailing away…’

  ‘Into the sunset,’ said Melissa. Her and Cormac, sipping pina coladas and laughing.

  ‘Sounds amazing,’ echoed Eilis, thinking of Charlie, the two of them diving into the warm water. The fantasy of swimming in warm water with Rob simply didn’t have the same appeal. She had to find a way of falling back in love with Rob before she got too caught up in this silly fantasy of Charlie. But the way they had looked at her in the hospital, that intensity had been so strong that she could still feel it, it was still there, that power of connection.

  Steph, meanwhile, was thinking of Rachel and how much pain she and Rick had caused her.

  ‘I’m going to get one of these burritos to take home,’ she said. ‘For Rachel. She could have it tomorrow for her lunch. She’d love it.’

  But a burrito wasn’t going to be quite enough to make things better. She was going to have to do better than a tortilla wrap.

  27

  Melissa

  Mary was sitting on the armchair in the kitchen by the patio doors, looking out at the pots of lobelia that Gerry had planted. Melissa felt her throat seize up. And she thought she was going to cry, she wasn’t quite sure why: was it Cormac, work? General existential angst? What?

  Without Cormac to talk to, Melissa felt totally alone. She needed Cormac to help her make sense of the world, Mary’s mysterious letter, everything that was happening to her at work, even the Jimbo thing. She would have loved to tell him about it, but that would be so wrong. In a previous life, she might have. No wonder he was so sick of her. Erica, she hoped, was worthy of him.

  Seeing her mothe
r brought a rush of emotion, the helplessness of it all, the wasted life, the unhappiness. A sadness that was too deep, too embedded to be relieved by a half-hearted yoga class once a week or even sinking a bottle of red. Thankfully, she had some Minstrels in her bag.

  ‘How are you feeling, Mam? Better?’ she encouraged. ‘Worse? Same? Okay to middling?’

  ‘Better than when?’

  ‘You know… last time. The letter… you never told me what it was about.’

  ‘No,’ said Mary. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘So…?’ Melissa could feel her heart beating.

  Her mother shrugged, a resigned drop of her shoulders.

  ‘Right…’ Melissa didn’t know what to say, becoming frustrated. She tried a different tack. ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea?’ she said, thinking that maybe the softly-softly approach was the better idea.

  ‘If you want one.’

  ‘I do.’ She began to fill the kettle.

  She poured the Minstrels into a bowl and laid the tea tray between them on the sofa. As Melissa sat down, she realized she was going to cry. She poured the tea and stretched out her eyes, trying not to give in to the tears forcing their way out.

  ‘Mam?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘So, what’s going on… what is it you can’t tell me?’

  Her mother looked at her and sucked air in sharply. ‘I should have told you years ago… for God knows I had nothing to be ashamed of. I know that now.’

  Melissa didn’t twitch a muscle. Her mother had opened up to her and she was afraid that if she made any sudden moves, the spell might be broken.

  ‘I died a long time ago,’ her mother carried on. ‘Before you were born. Does that make sense?’ Melissa didn’t feel able to shake her head. ‘I’ve been alive all this time wishing I wasn’t.’

  ‘What?’ She ventured. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was in 1968. Life was over before anything had had a chance to begin.’

  Melissa stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They took my baby.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Not you, my other baby,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘My first. They took my baby from my arms. They took my daughter, my little girl, and left me to die.’ She stopped to try and cough away the emotion.

  Melissa looked at her mother, eyes wide with shock.

  ‘You had a daughter? Before me? Another girl?’

  ‘Yes, I had a daughter. I thought she was dead. I never thought we would meet again. But she wants to. She’s alive.’

  For the first time ever, there was a light behind Mary’s eyes. She looked alive. Melissa felt the world was shifting. Her mother looked happy, excited. And she felt jealous. Somebody else was making her happy.

  And she had a sister. It was all too much. Her hands shook as she reached for a handful of Minstrels and crammed them into her mouth. It’s all I have these days, she thought, bloody Minstrels.

  He mother carried on speaking. ‘She wrote to me. She wants to meet. I don’t know what to do. I have never been so terrified in my whole life. I can’t breathe.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Mam, you might have said something. Why didn’t you tell me years ago… it might have…?’ She didn’t say anymore.

  It might have helped, is what she was going to say. It might have helped me.

  ‘Once she was mine,’ said Mary. ‘And then she was not. She was taken from me. My baby, my daughter, was taken from me. A little girl, she was small, tiny, in my arms, and seeing her, holding her, I didn’t care about anything. Nothing. Not what had happened? Not what was ahead of me, with this girl, I was free. Tara Rose I called, her. A beautiful name, don’t you think?’ Melissa nodded. ‘But the Sisters didn’t like it. Called her Frances…’ her mother’s voice trailed off.

  ‘And the father… who’s her father?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘No one?’

  ‘No one worth remembering.’

  ‘Right. Okay.’ Melissa tiptoed gently through the conversation, she was desperate not to scare or startle her mother back into silence. So many questions were vying to be asked and so many feelings were fighting for primacy but she kept everything under control and remained as calm as she could. ‘And you were alone and pregnant…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘You see, I gave her away. I said I didn’t want her. I told the nuns that I didn’t want her. And so they took her. It was my fault.’

  ‘How old was she when you… gave her away?’

  ‘Six days.’

  ‘Tiny…’

  Her mother nodded. ‘Yes, tiny, so tiny. I thought that I would feel relief that it was all over. I wanted them to take her and I thought it would be like it was all over, that it had never happened.’

  ‘But…?’

  ‘But, it was though my heart was broken. Like I was broken. I gave myself away that day. I broke myself.’

  ‘You couldn’t get her back?’

  ‘Where would I go? I had nowhere. My mother wouldn’t take me back with a baby.’

  ‘And the baby’s father?’

  ‘He’s nothing. I was alone.’

  ‘Mam, were you raped?’ she asked, worrying about her mother, that young girl she was, with no one to look after her. She hoped she would say no, she wasn’t. That it some boy she was in love with and they didn’t know what they were doing.

  But her mother said nothing.

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘I suppose that’s the word nowadays. I didn’t know what was going on.’

  Oh no, that was exactly what she hoped had not happened. Her mother. Defenceless, alone and raped. ‘Who was it?’ Melissa felt sick at the revelation.

  ‘A friend of my father’s,’ said Mary, quietly. ‘A big, foul-smelling friend of my father’s. His breath. I will never forget the smell of his breath…’

  ‘Oh my God. I am so sorry.’

  ‘He’s dead now,’ she said, bitterly. ‘What’s the point of being sorry?’

  ‘And the baby… Tara Rose… my sister… She’s written to you?’

  ‘Yes, she wants to meet me. But she’s going to know that I drink… that I can only drink… it’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at.’

  ‘You haven’t cared about me knowing that.’ She knew she sounded angry and she was immediately sorry that she had brought her own feelings into this. ‘Sorry, Mam,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

  Her mother stopped. She looked at Melissa.

  ‘No,’ she said. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to stop.’

  Melissa didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to feel about this Tara Rose. The person who had caused so much upset and loneliness for her mother. It wasn’t Tara Rose’s fault, obviously, but if she didn’t exist, her mother might have been different and Melissa’s life would have been so different, happier, perhaps. ‘I don’t understand why you never told me… all those years. It might have helped me, understand why you drank. It was pretty lonely having an alcoholic for a mother.’ This was the very first time they had ever spoken about her mother’s drinking but Mary said nothing and Melissa realized that she had probably got more out of her mother on this subject that she was every likely to.

  ‘Mam… this baby. Tara Rose…’

  ‘She’s called Frances now, Frankie she calls herself.’ Her mother’s voice sounded cracked and strange, as though she was unused to speaking.

  ‘This Frankie, then… how do you… how do you feel about her?’

  Mary looked at Melissa straight in the eye.

  ‘Like I’ve been living without my soul. They took my soul that day. They took away my ability to live.’

  ‘But I’m your daughter too! Don’t you every think about me? Haven’t you ever thought about what it’s been like for me? Living with you? Your silences? Your depressions? Never any affection, or pride in me. You’ve been a nightmare! A fucking
nightmare!’ That’s it, she thought, sitting back, slightly shocked and slightly ashamed at her outburst, but that’s it, I’ve finished with her forever, I’ve tried to make her love me, to want me, but I’ve never been good enough. I can never be Tara Rose and she’s the one Mam wants. She felt a stillness in the air, as though all the life had been sucked out. She waited for her mother to respond.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Her mother was suddenly crying, the cold façade that Melissa had been used to for years and years was gone, and she was faced with a mother she had never seen before. A woman who had been through almost unimaginable trial and had coped as well or as badly as she had.

  ‘For what? What are you sorry for?’

  ‘For everything. For you. For you being landed with me as a mother. Look at me. This life, who I am. I did it all badly. You, your father… Tara Rose, Frankie… I’ve let you all down, Melissa.’ Mary wiped her eyes with her sleeve and tried to breathe. ‘Oh God…’ she wailed.

  Melissa watched her and wished she could put her arms around her. She noticed her father had come in from the garden and was standing outside the back door, listening to them.

  She wished everything had been different, that her mother hadn’t gone through that terrible time, that Tara Rose hadn’t been taken away, that her mother hadn’t turned to the comfort of alcohol. It had been a waste of so much.

  ‘No one can blame you,’ she said. ‘You did all you could. You weren’t looked after, you weren’t minded.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have drunk. I shouldn’t drink now. I shouldn’t…’

  ‘But you did. You do.’

  ‘Yes, I did. I do.’

  ‘I want to stop.’ Her mother, her old lined face, her cool grey eyes still filled with tears. ‘But I don’t know if I can. I don’t want to.’ She looked terrified, real fear was etched on her face. ‘It’s the last thing I want to do. I don’t want to stop. But I can’t die being this… this person.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the baby, about Tara Rose?’