As much as it pained me to admit it, Joan was right, I didn’t make much of an effort with my appearance. When I had worked in the bank, I used to treat myself to a blow-dry every week and sometimes my nails too, but doing all of that seemed pointless now when I was mostly in the house with the kids. Back then, I used to nip into the shops on Grafton Street on my lunch break. Now I couldn’t remember the last time I had bought new clothes for myself instead of the kids, but my priorities had changed since I had become a mother.
I stood up and walked over to the mirror that hung above the dining table. Although I usually avoided looking directly at myself, I forced myself to look at the reflection staring back at me. My lines were deep, like valleys, my face starting to sink as it lost a battle with the forces of age, and shadows had appeared where I never had them before. I caught hold of the skin on either side of my face and pulled it back, making my face instantly more youthful. When had I got so old? I had never been obsessive about my appearance; I hadn’t really worried about lines and wrinkles the way some women did, but maybe I should have. If I had, my husband might not have left me for a younger woman.
‘Why is your face weird, Mammy?’ Robyn asked from behind me as she came into the room.
‘Oh, I was just making silly faces in the mirror, sweetie.’ I lifted her up and we stuck out our tongues and pulled at our eyes to make funny faces. We were laughing so much as we contorted our faces and I was so glad to see Robyn was back to her usual happy self again. As we giggled at our reflections, I couldn’t help thinking, what the hell did a few wrinkles matter when I had the most perfect children?
After we had collected Harry from school, the three of us set off for Dr Peters’ surgery. Robyn had been in great form for the rest of the day and I had been about to cancel my appointment, but I knew the surgery would charge me a no-show fee if I cancelled so late in the day.
‘Maaaaam,’ Harry called. ‘Tell Robyn to stop!’
I glanced in the rear-view mirror where Robyn was poking Harry.
‘Robyn, stop annoying your brother,’ I warned.
She sat back in her seat with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes as she began swinging Mr Bunny around by his ears. That poor, tortured rabbit. I smiled, but I was glad she was back to her sparky self.
We took a seat in the waiting room where there were ghostlike children sitting on their parents’ knees, patients too sick to keep their eyes open. Meanwhile, Robyn continued trying to wind Harry up. I cringed, feeling silly for being there. She was definitely not a sick child.
We were eventually called in by Dr Peters and we followed him into his surgery and took a seat while Harry ran over to play with the Lego that he kept in the corner of the room for children to play with.
‘How are you today, Mrs McIntyre?’ he asked.
I replied with my standard line: ‘I’m good, thank you.’
‘What can I do for you?’
Dr Peters was an older doctor, nearing retirement age. Wispy tufts of white hair sat on either side of a kindly, round face. He had been our family doctor since Harry was born and I trusted him with my life. Robyn too had been going to him since she was just a few weeks old and, as I sat in front of him listing off her symptoms, he didn’t seem too worried. I felt like a fraud as she chatted away to him, telling him about her friends in school and how she and Lily both wanted to be Elsa when they were playing together yesterday, but Lily wasn’t wearing the right dress so how could she could be Elsa?
Dr Peters chuckled as she chatted. ‘Look, it’s probably just something viral that she picked up. If you saw the number of children that I get coming through the doors here with all sorts of crazy things.’
I sent Robyn over to Harry to play with the Lego. ‘Well, it’s just… a few things have happened lately…’ I said once she was engrossed in playing. ‘I was wondering, well… do you think kids can, you know… experience… imaginary symptoms if they’re worried about something?’ I was trying to ask as tentatively as possible. I wasn’t ready yet to tell Dr Peters about JP, I didn’t trust myself not to get upset if he showed me any sympathy.
‘How do you mean?’ He peered at me over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses.
‘Well, it’s just it’s the second time it’s happened, and she’s been a bit lethargic recently… and sometimes she complains of headaches… but, well, I don’t know… maybe she’s just looking for attention?’
‘Well, if you want, we could get some blood tests done, just to give you some peace of mind?’
I shook my head. I felt embarrassed for wasting his time when he had a waiting room packed full of really sick people outside the door. Even just saying it out loud made me realise how ridiculous I sounded. I was starting to feel like a hypochondriac. Like I was imagining everything – wishing my children sick as a cry for help. Wasn’t there a name for that – Munchausen syndrome by proxy or something?
I picked up my bag ready to leave, but then I felt a little wobble in my resolve. There was something niggling at me in the back of my brain. ‘Yeah, maybe… I think so.’ I placed my bag back down on the floor.
‘Okay, we can’t do paediatric blood tests here, so I’ll write you a referral for the Dublin children’s hospital,’ he said as he clacked away on his keyboard, and I knew by his tone that he thought I was another overcautious parent clogging up the health system. And I probably was, but I just wanted to be sure. After everything that had happened over the last few weeks, the ground underneath my feet had been shaken and I just wanted some certainty in my life. I needed to know that Robyn was okay.
10
One Sunday evening a few weeks later, Fiona and I were sitting in the living room as rain ran down the windowpane in rivulets. I was keeping an eye on the driveway for JP’s car. He had taken the children over to see his parents for the evening. I knew Joan and Richard found it difficult not seeing them as much as they usually would. It had taken a lot of persuasion, but I had eventually managed to convince Robyn to go along with them too. Although they had only been gone for a few hours, it still felt too long. I missed the children when they weren’t there, the house was too quiet. It was hard to imagine that in a previous life whenever the kids were being noisy and spreading mess like a tornado, I had sometimes fantasised about living alone in a quiet, orderly house. Now I hated being by myself. Sometimes I would meet Linda or Mel for coffee; I had finally plucked up the courage to tell them and they were being a great support. I had been worried they would look upon me with pity, but they had rallied around me and bolstered my shattered self-worth and reminded me of the good things about myself. Other times, Fiona would call over to keep me company; she knew I found it lonely without the children’s laughter echoing around the walls.
I couldn’t believe that JP had been gone for almost two months. February had pushed out January and in some ways it felt like it was only yesterday since he had left, but in many more, the last few weeks had been the longest of my entire life. He was still living with Megan and thinking about them together hurt as much as it did the first time I had found out about them. Valentine’s Day had stung, going into shops decorated with paper hearts and red balloons and seeing ads full of loved-up couples on the TV. It wasn’t helped by a florist knocking on my door asking if I could take in a delivery of a dozen red roses for my neighbour because she wasn’t at home. The kids had tried cheering me up by making a card and picking snowdrops and daffodils from the garden, so I had plastered a smile on my face for their sake. Even though JP and I had never made a fuss about Valentine’s, he would always arrive home with flowers to mark the day and it was a reminder of all the little things I missed about my husband.
JP was a person I didn’t recognise now; he dressed differently, acted differently, like he had erased our whole life together. I was getting through each day as it came to me. I couldn’t think too far ahead because if I did that, I would feel an overwhelming sense of suffocation and fear about what the future held for me. For all of us. So, I took one
day at a time and, somehow, I got through. I had had a roller-coaster few weeks, but I was slowly starting to see the light. Fiona had helped me to update my CV and I was keeping an eye out for part-time work. I was emerging from the awful darkness and was able to see a future for me up ahead in the hazy distance that didn’t involve JP. The pain still felt raw and some days were worse than others, but I was learning to accept my new life. Life didn’t seem as bleak as it had back in January, and I thought, with time, one day I might even be able to smile again.
Eventually, just after eight, I saw the lights of his car in the driveway and I hurried out to meet them. JP and I exchanged the usual awkward greetings that were our new normal. We were able to remain civil to one another and I was very grateful for that.
‘Did you have a good time?’ I asked the children as they climbed out of the car.
I was glad to see Harry had a big smile plastered across his face, but Robyn was more subdued, and I could tell she was tired.
I had just turned around to head back into the house when JP called me back.
‘Can I talk to you for a sec?’ he asked. Nothing good ever followed when JP asked to talk to me.
‘Go on into the house before you get soaked,’ I called to Harry and Robyn. ‘I’ll be in in a sec.’ I turned back to JP.
‘Everything okay?’ I asked as the rain landed in cool droplets on my skin.
‘I think we might need to take Robyn to get her eyes checked… she seems to be squinting,’ he continued.
‘She’s just tired,’ I said, folding my arms across my chest. ‘It’s way past her bedtime.’ I glanced pointedly at my watch.
‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ he agreed.
We stood in awkward silence for a moment, each of us stuck for words and eventually he got back into his car and I went into the house. Although I didn’t like to admit it to JP, I had noticed Robyn squinting too and it wasn’t just when she was tired, sometimes she would be sitting eating her cereal in the morning and her eye would start to close on one side. Then there had been the strange vomiting episodes when she woke in the mornings but would be fine again moments later. I had been putting it down to tiredness or the viral bugs that tended to swarm around preschools at this time of year, but maybe it was all connected? There had been so many little things niggling at me lately. Alarm bells were starting to fire in my head, and I was beginning to think I was going crazy.
Two weeks previously, I had taken Robyn to the Dublin children’s hospital to have her blood tests as Dr Peters had suggested. She had screamed the place down as the phlebotomist had tried to locate the vein. Although I did my best to distract her, it was futile. We had passed really sick children in the corridors on the way in; a bald girl not much older than Robyn had been walking along beside her mother with drip attached to her arm and, in that moment, I was so grateful that hospitals and needles weren’t part of our daily life. When Dr Peters had called to tell me the results, I had hardly dared to breathe.
‘Sarah, I was just calling to let you know that the hospital has forwarded the results of Robyn’s blood tests and I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that everything looks good.’
I had exhaled heavily, feeling my shoulders climb down from my ears. It was a relief to know that I had been worrying about nothing.
‘How’s she been since?’ he had continued.
‘Good, she’s been great,’ I’d lied. For some reason I didn’t tell him that she had got sick again the previous morning. If her blood tests were good, then she was good, I had thought. They would have shown if there was something wrong. That day I had breathed a huge sigh of relief as I had hung up the phone, but now there it was again, that nagging voice was back, telling me that something wasn’t right.
‘How’re my most favourite people in the world?’ I said, swinging my arms around both children as I went back inside the house. ‘Did you have a good time?’
Robyn smiled up at me, but her face didn’t look right. I rubbed my eyes, thinking that perhaps my vision was blurry, but when I looked again, Robyn’s face was definitely drooping slightly on one side, causing her eyelid to sag down above her eye. I could see why JP thought she was squinting. I felt a prickle of goosebumps breaking out across my body. This wasn’t right.
‘Fiona,’ I said. ‘Is her face okay?’ I mouthed.
‘What?’
I pointed at my own face and then at Robyn’s.
Fiona dipped her head to get a closer look. She stood back and cocked her head to inspect her further. ‘Now that you say it, it does look a bit funny, doesn’t it?’ she said.
‘What looks funny?’ Robyn asked.
‘This…’ Fiona said, sticking out her tongue so that Robyn began to giggle. As I looked at Robyn’s beautiful face lit up with laughter, I still felt unsettled.
‘Maybe she needs glasses?’ Fiona suggested later while the kids were in the bath. ‘Remember I had a lazy eye when I was around her age and had to wear a patch for months – you used to call me Pirate Girl.’ She laughed at the memory.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I said, forcing myself to laugh along too.
‘She’s grand, Sarah, stop stressing,’ Fiona assured me.
‘I know,’ I replied, trying to shake off my unease. ‘She’s fine.’
Harry
Mam has stopped crying every day now, she smiles more, and she got her hair cut too and she looks really pretty again. She’s like the way she used to be before Dad went away, but I don’t want her to look too pretty though in case she gets a new husband before I get Dad home. On Valentine’s Day I made Mammy a card and Robyn picked flowers for her in the garden because we didn’t want her to be sad again if she didn’t get any cards or flowers and she said we were the best kids in the whole wide world.
We went to Granny and Grandad’s house today and Robyn actually came with us. She never wants to go with Dad when he picks us up, she always pretends she is sick. I tried doing it a few times too, but they wouldn’t believe me. She’s a reeeeally good faker. She even made her eye go all funny when we were over there!
I’m still working on the next step in my plan to get Dad home, but today Step Two kinda just happened. When he was dropping us home, Megan rang him on the speakerphone in the car. Dad was meant to pick her up, but he was late dropping us home so then Dad and her had a big fight. Then Dad said the F-word and then Megan said the F-word twice! His face went all red and he told Megan to ‘calm the fuck down and stop making a scene with the kids in the car’ and she screamed back ‘how dare you tell me to calm the fuck down and maybe you should calm the fuck down’. Robyn and I were trying so hard not to laugh, and we have a new nickname for her now we’re calling her Crazy Megan. I think my plan to break them up is working…
11
The following morning, I walked down the footpath outside the playschool, feeling the winter sunshine warm my cheeks. I stood chatting with some of the other mums while we waited for the door to open. It was a glorious day. Wispy clouds stretched like pulled cotton wool hung suspended in the sky. We were on the cusp of spring and over the last few days the strengthening sun had started to push out the colder winter days.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ I asked, crouching down in front of Robyn as I went inside the playschool. Her eyelid was still drooping, and I hadn’t slept all night worrying about it. I couldn’t ignore the bleeping in my brain. It was getting louder. I had made an appointment with the optician in town for that afternoon and I really hoped she would be able to tell me what was going on with my daughter. I just wanted some kind of explanation, something that could be fixed with a pair of glasses or even an eyepatch like Fiona had had, if that’s what it took. Whatever was wrong, I just wanted to get it sorted before I lost my mind completely.
‘Yes, Mammy,’ she said. ‘Look, there’s Lily, I want to go now.’ She wriggled away from me and ran off to play with her friend.
I waited until the other parents had left and her teacher Louise had all the childr
en settled so I could have a word with her.
‘I just wanted to check that Robyn has been getting on okay lately?’
‘She’s fine – she’s full of beans, always first to share her news with the class too! Why? Are you concerned about something, Sarah?’
I looked over to where Robyn and Lily were playing with Lego blocks. From this distance, her face looked the same as it always did. I couldn’t see the lopsidedness. Perhaps it had all been in my head? Maybe I was looking for things that didn’t exist, but then JP and Fiona had noticed it too…
I hesitated for a moment, then shook my head. ‘No, sorry, it’s nothing…’ I gathered up my bag to leave.
‘Wait, Mammy!’ Robyn cried, running after me and throwing her arms around me. ‘You forgot my kiss.’
‘Oh, silly me!’ I bent down and felt the press of her soft, wet lips against my own. I was relieved to see she was her usual spritely self once more. ‘I love you, baby girl, have a great day.’
She turned and ran back to her chair, but she didn’t make it and instead collapsed beside it. Louise and I both hurried over, assuming she had tripped on something, but we soon realised that there was no hazard in her way. I reached out to help her up, but it was as though she couldn’t get her legs to work. I felt my own legs get weak with shock and I held on to the table to steady myself. I knew by the way Louise stepped in and lifted her onto a chair, that she was just as concerned as I was. Something was wrong with my daughter and it wasn’t just in my imagination.
‘I need to call her doctor,’ I said. On the periphery, I could see a sea of small, round, curious expressions staring at me, wondering what was going on, but it was only Robyn’s drooping face I could focus on.
‘Go and use the staffroom,’ Louise said, as she pointed me towards a door at the back of the room. ‘I’ll sit here with Robyn.’
The Last Days of Us Page 6