Minding Frankie (14 page)

Noel shrugged. He was off anyway up to the hospital to visit Stella.

Three days later, Declan Carroll was in the delivery room holding Fiona’s hand as she groaned and whimpered.

“Great, girl. Just three more.… Just three …”

“How do you know it’s only three?” gasped Fiona, red-faced, her hair damp and stuck to her forehead.

“Trust me, I’m a doctor,” Declan said.

“You’re not a woman, though,” Fiona said, teeth gritted and preparing for another push.

But he was right—there were only three more. Then the head of his son appeared and he began to cry with relief and happiness.

“He’s here,” he said, placing the baby in her arms. He took a photograph of them both and a nurse took a picture of all three of them.

“He’ll hate this when he grows up,” Fiona said, and John Patrick Carroll let out a wail in agreement.

“Only for a while and then he’ll love it,” said Declan, who had had his fair share of a mother who showed pictures of him to total strangers at the Laundromat where she worked.

He left the delivery ward of St. Brigid’s and headed for oncology. He knew what time Stella was going down for surgery and he wanted to be there as moral support.

They were just putting her on the trolley.

“Declan!” she said, pleased.

“Had to come and wish you well,” he said.

“You know Noel. And this is his cousin Emily.” Stella was totally at ease, as if she were at a party instead of about to make the last journey of her life.

Declan knew Emily already, as she came regularly to the group
practice where he worked. She filled in at the desk as a receptionist or made the coffee or cleaned the place. It was never defined exactly what she did except that everyone knew the place would close down without her. She also helped his mother in the Laundromat from time to time. No job seemed too menial for her, even though she had a degree in art history. He tried to think about her as they stood in a little tableau waiting for Stella to be wheeled to the operating theater. It helped to concentrate on the living rather than on Stella, who would not be in their number for much longer.

“Any news of
your
baby yet, Declan?” Stella asked.

Declan decided against telling her of his great happiness with his brand-new son. It would make things even worse for the woman who would never see her own child.

“No, not a sign,” he lied.

“Remember they are to be friends,” Stella urged him.

“Oh, that’s a promise,” said Declan.

Just at that moment the ward sister came in. She smiled when she saw Declan.

“Congratulations, Doctor, we hear you’ve had a beautiful baby boy!”

He looked like something trapped in the headlights of an approaching car. He could not deny his son, nor could he pretend to be surprised when it would be known that he was there for the birth.

He had to face it.

“Sorry, Stella. I didn’t want to be gloating.”

“No, you wouldn’t ever do that,” she said. “A boy! Imagine!”

“Yes, we didn’t know. Not until he was born.”

“And is he perfect?”

“Thank God.”

And then she was wheeled out of the ward, leaving Noel, Emily and Declan behind.

Frances Stella Dixon Lynch was delivered by cesarean section on October 9 at seven p.m. She was tiny, but perfect. Ten tiny, perfect fingers,
ten tiny, perfect toes and a shock of hair on her tiny, perfect head. She frowned at the world around her and wrinkled her tiny nose before opening her mouth and wailing as if it were already all too much.

Her mother died twenty minutes later.

The first person Noel telephoned was Malachy. “I can’t live through this night without a drink,” he told him. Malachy said he would come straight to the hospital. Noel was not to move until he arrived.

The women in the ward were full of sympathy. They arranged that he get tea and biscuits, which tasted like sawdust.

There was a small bundle of papers in an elastic band on her locker. The word
NOEL
was on the outside. He read them through with blurred eyes. One was an envelope with
FRANKIE
written on it. The others were factual: her instructions about the funeral, her wishes that Frankie be raised in the Roman Catholic faith for as long as it seemed sensible to her. And a note dated last night.

Noel looked down at the tiny baby with tears in his eyes. “Your mam didn’t want to leave you, little one,” he whispered. “She wanted to stay with you, but she had to go away. It’s just you and me now. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but we’ll manage. We’ve got to look after each other.” The baby looked at him solemnly as though concentrating on his words in order to commit them to memory.

·   ·   ·

Baby Frances was pronounced healthy. A collection of people came to visit her as she lay there in her little crib. Noel, who took time off from work, came every day. Moira Tierney, the social worker, showed up at odd times, asking too many questions. Emily brought Charles and Josie to see their grandchild, and they visibly melted at the sight of the baby. They seemed to have completely forgotten their earlier condemnation of sex without marriage, and Josie was even seen to lift the child in her arms and pat the baby’s back.

Lisa Kelly visited a couple of times, as did Malachy. Mr. Hall came from Noel’s workplace; even Old Man Casey came and said that Noel was a sad loss to his bar. Young Dr. Declan Carroll came in carrying his own son and introduced the babies formally to each other.

Father Brian Flynn came in and brought Father Kevin Kenny with him. Father Kenny, still on one crutch, was eager to take up his role as hospital chaplain again. He seemed slightly put out that Father Flynn had been so warmly accepted as his replacement. Many people seemed to know him and called him Brian in what Father Kenny thought of as a slightly overfamiliar way. He had obviously been involved in every stage of the unfortunate woman’s pregnancy and the birth of the motherless baby who lay there looking up at them. Father Kenny assumed that they were there to arrange a baptism and started to clear his throat and talk about the technicalities.

But no, Father Flynn had brushed that away swiftly. The baby’s grandparents were extraordinarily devout people and they would discuss all that sort of thing at a later time.

Charles and Josie Lynch’s neighbor Muttie Scarlet came to pay his respects to the child. He was in the hospital anyway, he said, on business, and he thought he would take advantage of the occasion to visit the baby.

And eventually Noel was told that he could take his baby daughter home to his new apartment. It was a terrifying moment. Noel realized that he was about to stop being a visitor and become
entirely responsible for this tiny human being. How was he going to remember all the things that needed to be done? Supposing he dropped her? Poisoned her? He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t be responsible for this baby, it was ludicrous to ask him. Stella had been mad, she was ill, she didn’t know what she was doing. Someone else would have to take over, they’d have to find someone else to look after her baby—
her
baby, nothing to do with him at all. He had a sudden urge to flee, to run down the corridor and out into the street, and to keep on running until the hospital and Stella and Frankie and all of them were just a memory.

Just as his feet were starting to turn towards the doorway, the nurse arrived with Frankie, wrapped in a big pink shawl.

She looked up at him trustingly, and suddenly, from nowhere, Noel felt a wave of protectiveness almost overwhelm him. This poor, helpless baby had no one else in the world. Stella had trusted him with the most precious thing she ever had, the child she knew she wouldn’t live to see. Nervously, almost shyly, he took the baby from the nurse.

“Little Frankie,” he said to the tiny baby. “Let’s go home.”

Emily had said she would come to stay with him for a few days to tide him over the most frightening bits. There were three bedrooms in the apartment, two reasonably sized and one small one, which was to be Frankie’s, so she would be perfectly comfortable. The visiting nurse came every couple of days but even so, there were so many questions.

Was that horrible-colored mess in the baby’s nappy normal, or did she have something wrong with her? How could anyone so very small need to be changed ten times a day? Was that breathing normal? Did he dare go to sleep in case she stopped?

How on earth did anyone manage to get all those snaps on a baby’s sleep suit in the right places? Was one blanket too much or too little? He knew she mustn’t be allowed to get too cold, but the
pamphlets were full of terrible warnings about the dangers of overheating.

Bath times were a nightmare. He knew to test the temperature of the water with his elbow, but would a mother’s elbow signal a different temperature from his? Emily needed to come to test the water as well.

She was kept busy: she would do the laundry and help him prepare the bottles and they could read the hospital notes and the baby books and consult the Internet together. They would take the baby’s temperature and make sure they had supplies of nappies, wipes, newborn formula. So much of it and so expensive. How did anyone cope with all this?

How did anyone learn to identify what kind of crying meant hunger, discomfort or pain? To Noel all crying sounded the same: piercing, jagged, shrill, drilling through the deepest, most exhausted sleep. No one ever told you how tiring it was to be up three, four times every night, night after night. After three days he was near to weeping with fatigue; as he walked up and down with his daughter trying to burp her after her third feed of the night, he found himself stumbling against furniture, almost incapable of remaining upright.

Emily found him asleep in an armchair. “Don’t forget you have to go to the center every week.”

“They’re not taking any chances with me,” Noel said.

“It’s the same for everyone. They call it the Mothers and Babies Group, but more and more it can be Fathers and Babies.” Emily was practical.

“It’s not just that they think I’m a bit of a risk—past history of drinking and all that?” Noel asked.

“No. Don’t be paranoid. And aren’t you a shining example of what people can achieve.”

“I’m terrified, Emily.”

“Of course you are. So am I, but we’ll manage.”

“You won’t go back to America and leave me here all on my own.…”

“No plans to do that, but I think you should set up some kind of a system for yourself from the very start. Like going to your mother and father for lunch on a Sunday every week.”

“I don’t know … 
Every
week?”

“Oh, at least, and in time you should offer to take Declan and Fiona’s baby one evening a week to give them a night off. They’ll do the same for you.”

“You definitely sound as if you’re going to jump ship and you’re just building me up some support to keep me going,” Noel said.

“Nonsense, Noel. But you have to learn to do it without me. You’ll be on your own soon.” Emily had no plans to go back to New York for a while, but she must be practical and get this show properly launched on the road.

Father Flynn found a gospel choir, which sang at the funeral Mass down at his church at the welcome center for immigrants. Twins called Maud and Simon, who seemed to be related to Muttie Scarlet, prepared a light lunch in the hall next door. There were no orations or speeches. Declan and Fiona sat next to Charles and Josie; Emily had the bag of baby essentials while Noel held Frankie wrapped in a warm blanket.

Father Flynn spoke simply and movingly about Stella’s short and troubled life. She had died, he said, leaving behind a very precious legacy. Everyone who had come to know and care for Stella would support Noel as he provided a home for their little daughter.…

Katie was there with Garry and Lisa. She had only recently found out that Lisa was on the same course as Noel and had begun at the same time. They knew each other, had had coffee together once or twice; Lisa knew the story. Katie had hoped that Lisa would learn something from Noel—like that it was totally possible to get up and leave the safety of the family home. Home was not a healthy place to be, Katie thought, but there was no talking to Lisa, beautiful and restless as she had always been. Katie noticed that Lisa, for once, was not being distant and withdrawn as she so often was. Instead she was
being helpful, offering to pass plates of food or pour coffee. She was talking to Noel in terms of practicalities.

“I’ll help you whenever I can. If you have to miss any lectures I’ll give you the notes,” she offered.

“People are being very kind,” Noel said. “Kinder than I ever expected.”

“There’s something about a baby,” Lisa said.

“There is indeed. She’s so very small. I don’t know if I’ll be able … I mean, I’m pretty clumsy.”

“All new parents are clumsy,” Lisa reassured him.

“That’s the social worker over there. Moira,” he said with a nod in her direction.

“She’s got a very uptight little face,” Lisa said.

“It’s a very uptight job. She’s always coming across losers like me.”

“I don’t think you’re a loser—I think you’re bloody heroic,” Lisa said.

Moira Tierney had always wanted to be a social worker. When she was very young she had thought she might be a nun, but somehow that idea had changed over the years. Well, nuns had changed, for one thing. They didn’t live in big, quiet convents chanting hymns at dawn and dusk anymore. There were no bells ringing and cloisters with shadows. Nuns, more or less,
were
social workers these days, without any of the lovely ritual and ceremony.

Moira was from the west of Ireland, but now she lived alone in a small apartment. When she first came to Dublin, she went home to see her parents every month. They sighed a lot because she hadn’t married. They sighed over the fact that she was working among the poor and ruffians instead of bettering herself.