All That I Leave Behind (41 page)

She’d gone to her mobile phone and scanned the numbers, a little thumbnail of his strong face and bright smile popping up beside his number. She’d stared at it for a long time, running her finger across the numbers, finding it hovering over the call’ button but then, she’d stopped herself, because how would she tell him that she was four months pregnant with someone else’s baby? The thought was ridiculous. But there was something about the situation that called for his stoic presence, the completely logical way he’d have of working through the problem. He’d probably devise a spreadsheet for it, she thought to herself.

Mark, on the other hand, would not. He’d have kissed her bump and nuzzled his face into her belly, making gentle farting noises with his lips and singing to it in Vietnamese. He’d have told it jokes and cooked it spicy noodles and called it silly names. He was as light-hearted as Craig was glum, Rosie knew. And then she understood why she’d wanted to call Craig – because she so badly wanted to tell Mark but knew that she couldn’t. She knew that if she told him about the baby, he’d come back for good – at least, he’d promise her that, but she couldn’t ask it of him. Oh, he’d come back, she knew he would, and then one day he’d wake up and look at her in the bed beside him and he’d think, ‘I missed my one chance, and all because of you.’ She couldn’t be responsible for that. She just couldn’t.

He’d written her a letter, posting it through the letterbox early one morning before Christmas. She’d been awake, the way she was every morning since that day in November, staring up at the ceiling or peering into the grey gloom that shrouded the canal. She’d tried to run downstairs in time to catch a glimpse of him, but by the time she’d pulled on her tracksuit bottoms, shuffled downstairs and opened the door, all that she saw was an empty front path to the gate, which had been left open. She’d called out his name then, but her voice hadn’t carried.

She didn’t open the letter for a while. Not until she’d had a cup of tea and two digestives to give her strength. Her hands were shaking as she’d opened the light blue envelope and pulled the letter out. She’d almost smiled as she scanned the few lines written in a terrible scrawl on the paper. He never had been much of a writer.

I
love you too, she’d thought, reading the few lines again and then again, you know I do. And I remember the competition – you took two breaths before you dipped your head into the water and then you grabbed my ankle, so I had to lift my head out of the water to scream. You cheated too, don’t you remember? But maybe you were right when you said that loving each other just isn’t enough. Maybe I can’t love you the way you want me to because I’m not happy. Or maybe it’s you – maybe you just don’t love me enough to stay, no matter what. Maybe you just wanted one night with me for old times’ sake. But what the hell did it matter anyway, she told herself, folding the letter up and pressing it tightly into her hand. It was too late now in any case.

The only way she could think to manage all of this was to write a list. On it were just three things: See GP. Get job. Talk to Daddy. Three things. She could manage that. She knew that she should have added a fourth, but she just wasn’t ready for that yet. One thing at a time, as Mary-Pat used to say to her.

She’d tackled the doctor’s appointment first, a nice clinic in Portlaoise where, if they’d wondered why she’d wandered twenty miles out of her way to see a doctor, they were good enough not to say it. She’d opted to go to Dublin for her antenatal appointments because she was less likely to meet someone she knew than if she went to Portlaoise. Pius had gone with her that first time. He’d insisted on it, driving her there and waiting outside while she saw the doctor and then taking her to the chemist afterwards, the big Boots on the roundabout. He had a list in his hand and she followed him around the aisles as he picked things out and put them in the basket.

‘Pi?’ she said, as he scanned the rows of maternity pads.

‘Yeah?’ he replied, picking out a large pack with a smiling lady on the front and putting it in the basket, then ticking the item off on his list. When he saw her looking at the pads he cleared his throat and said, ‘I did some research on the Internet. They said you’d need them.’

At the birth, she thought, trying hard not to smile at the idea of her brother boning up on the essentials of pregnancy and childbirth. He’d taken to the subject with enthusiasm, ordering books from the Internet via Nancy Brady at the library and giving Rosie instructions about the best ways of avoiding heartburn. He was her rock, Pi.

Next, she went up to see Breda O’Hare. She hardly knew Breda but remembered a sunny girl with bright red cheeks and straw-coloured hair who’d sat beside her in junior infants, who was now deputy head of St Conleth’s secondary school. Rosie couldn’t think why the notion of teaching had occurred to her, but it seemed plausible enough and one thing she had learned from being the worst social worker in the world in that other life of hers was that she liked kids, teenagers in particular. She liked the way they thought they knew everything and the way they gave backchat all the time.

Breda had greeted her like an old friend and had led her into her office, a tiny room filled with the detritus of school life – lost gym kits, a handful of trophies and a large year planner filled with little red dots. ‘I just need to do something useful,’ she said. Not to mention the fact that I need the money, as my savings have almost run out and I have no idea how I’m going to support my baby. ‘I’m pregnant, you see, so I won’t be looking for much before the baby arrives. But I thought you might have some advice for me. She’d bitten her lip. ‘Sorry, it’s been a while.’

‘That’s no problem, but I’m afraid you couldn’t teach without a HDip. You see, you’re not qualified and even if you were, then you’d have to be put on a roll of sub teachers. It’s difficult because of the cutbacks and all,’ she explained.

‘You must think I’m a complete eejit,’ Rosie had said, feeling like one of the school kids who’d been hauled into the office for detention.

‘Not at all,’ Breda had said diplomatically. ‘Sure the system here isn’t like the States at all. But my sister works in a private language college in Mullingar and they’re always looking for teachers.’

‘And they’ll take anyone?’ Rosie half-smiled.

‘No, you’ll have to do a TEFL course, and they’re very particular about vetting, but you won’t need a HDip.’

Oh, I’ve offended her, Rosie thought. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’

‘Don’t be silly. I know what you meant. And you know, I think you’ll make a good teacher, Rosie. You have a great way with you. A lovely energy that people would enjoy. Good luck with it.’

In the event, Breda’s sister did have a slot, providing she was prepared to spend a month, and another chunk of her savings, on a TEFL course, and to wade through the finer points of past participles and countable and uncountable nouns, before being unleashed on a class of students. The teaching gave her a boost of energy that carried her through the next three months of her pregnancy, when she began to flourish, her hair silky, her face beginning to fill out. She lost her sharp, bony edges and began to resemble a freckled marshmallow. She liked that, she thought, looking at herself in the mirror, wondering what Mark would think of her new figure.

Pius found her a little second-hand car for the drive to
Mullingar, refusing to take any money for it – ‘I called in a favour or two’ was all he would say about it. A vision of that weed he grew out the back flickered into her mind, but she let it drop, faced with the prospect of a comfortable drive. Anything was better than the Beetle, which was killing her. She thought the baby would be rattled out of her if she went on any longer. And as she stood up in front of a class of mystified newcomers to Ireland and pretended she was
au fait
with the present perfect tense, she felt as if she were learning with them. Except while they were learning how to communicate in this new country of theirs, she was learning to take responsibility for herself, to find her own path. It felt good.

She knew that teaching English wasn’t going to be her life’s work, and so, as she drove back and forth every morning and evening, she began to ask herself what might be. And then one evening, she took out her old biology textbooks and she pored over them, remembering the hours she and Pi had spent together, examining his stag beetle collection, or trawling the canal bank for evidence of otters. After so many years of sociological waffle when she was in the States, the careful facts of sixth-year biology soothed her. She felt entirely at home with genetic mutations and the chambers of the heart. There was nothing that didn’t fit a pattern in biology, nothing that wasn’t expected, and if it was, it was called a ‘mutation’. Something that departed from the norm. Rosie wondered where this put her and if studying the subject was an antidote to her own life, where mutations were the order of the day.

Finally, she plucked up the courage to enrol in a university conversion course. The nice lady in the admissions office told her that as she was a mature student, she wouldn’t need ‘the requisite number of honours’, which was fortunate, as she didn’t have them. The course wouldn’t begin for another nine months. Oh, she’d thought. I’ll be a mother then.

She’d forgotten how much she liked study; how totally it could absorb her. She’d open a book to take a quick look at a diagram for an essay and, the next thing, she’d look up and see that three hours had passed. She could just dive into it and forget about everything else, balancing her bump on the huge claw-foot chair that Pius brought down from the attic, because it would ‘accommodate her’, as he said politely. Pius might have been her rock, but he was a faintly embarrassed one in the way that only a brother could be.

Daphne, on the other hand, continued to be typically blunt about the whole thing, discussing flatulence and other symptoms with glee. ‘I could have farted for Ireland and, Jesus, my sex drive went through the roof,’ she said one day over coffee. ‘Kevin was exhausted by the end of it. I was forever ringing him up in Dublin to come down and service me at all hours of the day and night – what?’ she said, as Pius cleared his throat. She glared at him. ‘I’m only telling her the truth. That’s what pregnancy is like. Your whole body is just consumed by it. You’re not a woman at all, you’re just a … vessel.’

‘Aha,’ he said, getting up and twiddling the knobs on the coffee machine, his face tomato red, while she and Daphne snorted with laughter behind his back. Rosie wasn’t quite sure what was going on between the two of them, but she knew it was something. They bickered constantly and yet there was a light in Pius’s eyes when he spoke her name, and he made Daphne relax and laugh a bit. They’d be good for each other, she knew they would.

Pius had only asked her about telling the others once. ‘Have you spoken to your sisters?’

Rosie had shaken her head. ‘Nope. And don’t ask me to.’

‘Don’t you think we have enough secrets in this family?’ he’d tried.

‘I can’t, Pi,’ she’d said. ‘I just can’t.’

He hadn’t persisted, just nodded and squeezed her gently on the shoulder.

She left item number three on her list until last, until late spring, when she was beginning to show, needing to push the driver’s seat a bit further back, pulling the seatbelt across her bump as she drove out the Dublin Road to the home. The girl at reception didn’t recognise her, a frown knitting her brows as Rosie explained who she was. ‘I don’t think you’ve visited before,’ she said grimly, a disapproving look on her narrow features.

‘No, I haven’t,’ Rosie lied.

‘Right, well, he’s in the day room now,’ the girl said, looking at her watch. ‘The horse racing’s on,’ she added by way of explanation.

‘Thanks.’ Rosie half-smiled.

‘I’ll get someone to show you,’ the girl said, pressing a buzzer on the desk. After a few moments, a plump, pretty nurse appeared through a set of double doors. The badge on her immaculate scrubs told Rosie that she was Imelda.

‘So when’s the big day?’ she asked, eyeing Rosie’s bump.

‘Oh, in four months or so.’ Rosie was distracted, hesitating as Imelda opened the double doors of the day room, a bright smile on her face, and urged her in. ‘Summertime is just the best time to have a baby,’ she said cheerfully, scanning the room for Daddy.

He was sitting in a large green vinyl armchair, arms folded across his chest, staring into space. He was wearing a knitted cardigan and a pair of brown trousers that looked three sizes too big for him.

‘Now, John-Joe, you have a visitor,’ the nurse said gently.

Rosie had been half-hiding behind the woman, afraid, but when he looked up at her and beamed, she thought she’d faint with relief. He doesn’t recognise me. Thank God, he doesn’t know who I am.

‘You must be the new girl!’ He reached out a hand and shook hers, his hand warm and smooth, his grip firm. He’d been a great believer in firm handshakes, Daddy.