ostracised Mary from her extended family for more than a year after Leah was born and only allowed Mary back in when her own mother died. She wouldn’t let Mary see her grandmother in the last months of her life.
“She’d be scandalised” Iris exclaimed “I don’t want my mother to think bad of me”. Iris never told her mother that Mary was pregnant or that Leah was born.
I thought it was terribly mean and selfish of Iris to exclude Mary. It hurt Mary a lot. Mary wouldn’t stand up for Leah or me with Iris, she wouldn’t even stand up for herself against the all mighty mammy. Iris is caught in some religious and moral time loop. Her religious fervour is matched only by her bigotry. Everyone knows the type, up licking the alter rail on Sunday, the rest of the week bad mouthing and belittling any one who doesn’t fit her obtuse perspective. One of her most used phrases is that so and so “has tickets on themselves”. It’s a nasty little put down which only serves to expose her own haughty attitude. On several occasions when we attended mass with her, Iris would keep us all late for mass waiting on her and then push her way to the front of the crowded church. It took me a couple of years to figure out that she wasn’t doing it for the god in front of her, it was done for the benefit of the audience behind her.
Anyway she was there every time I looked around. Other family members helped out from time to time but they didn’t linger, once the kids were ok they were gone. Not so Iris, since I first went into hospital, Iris had become more and more of a permanent fixture. She was always in the background of our relationship. For years she was a source of friction between us. Now she was more than just a derogatory spectre, she was a daily physical presence. Mary insisted that Iris was just helping out. I should have known better but I was preoccupied with cancer. I didn’t mind too much at first. I actually thought that because her husband had had cancer, she would be a practical help for Mary. That was really stupid and naive of me.
Three months later I was totally isolated. Mary wouldn’t occupy the same space as me. Her indifference to me had turned to repressed anger. Occasionally it would break out in a tirade of eviscerating insults screamed through slammed doors, but mostly she spent her time in the back garden with her mother and when Iris went home Mary would stay alone in the back garden with her back turned to me and the children until darkness forced her indoors and she disappeared upstairs.
I was weak. Fatigue was wearing me down and I was losing weight. I was vomiting frequently. Cancer patients on chemotherapy often talk about ‘chemo brain’. Interferon is no different. By this time I was taking the treatment at home. I injected into the same fatty layer as the bee stings but the fatty layer was disappearing. I was too distracted by illness to see clearly what was going on. I did try a few times to talk to Mary about what was happening, how I felt. On one memorable occasion I asked her why did she walk out on me in Blanchardstown?
“How was I to know how serious it was” she dismissed me.
Somewhere in my illness fogged brain I knew I’d heard that one before, somewhere.
Chapter Five
A tale of two Dads
“I can’t, I can’t” Mary screeched as she flapped around the flat like a bird trapped in a cage.
“You have to, for gods sake he’s your dad” I repeated.
“Nooooo”.
Iris had telephoned earlier. She wanted Mary home for father’s day. Mary wouldn’t go. Eddie was near the end. His cancer had won the battle. I’d met him only once before. He reminded me of my own dad. I didn’t understand why Mary wouldn’t see him. She hadn’t seen him for five months. I began to realise that there was more to the story than Mary had told me.
***
“You didn’t care about dad”. I nearly dropped the cup of coffee I was holding.
“You didn’t care about dad” Kathleen screamed again in the adjacent room.
Eddie was dead. I was in the sitting room with some family and friends. Kathleen, the eldest sibling, Iris’ appendage, was screaming at Mary.
“You don’t know me” Mary screamed back even louder.
‘Jesus H Christ’ I thought to myself. We had left the church only five minutes earlier. Eddie’s funeral mass. Mary was seven months pregnant. Every one could hear them, I would have been surprised if the whole of Rathfarnham hadn’t heard them. The screaming continued louder than I had ever heard anyone scream. I hesitated, I knew Iris was in the same room as them, surely she’d put a stop to it. The other people in the room stared into their cups or at the floor. Iris didn’t stop it. Eventually I led Mary away by her arm.
Later on that day we were back in the house. The place was full of people. I over heard Iris tell the story again. It was the second time that day. She had gone to the home place and discovered kittens. Iris hates cats. Before she left the kittens were dead. Iris killed them. She put them in a bag and tossed it into the Shannon. Killing defenceless little animals and talking about it was altogether too nasty a story to tell on the day she buried her husband and I wasn’t the only one to notice. It was by far the strangest funeral I had ever been to.
***
Mary and I were in the Mater Hospital. We were both hooked up to oxygen. The nurse had telephoned my parents and told them to go to Temple Street Hospital where Leah was. The same nurse telephoned Iris. Joe and Anne were there in well under an hour. One of them stayed with Leah in ICU. The other came to us. Iris never turned up. Mary challenged her months later.
“How was I to know how serious it was” she dismissed Mary.
“How serious did it need to be?” I asked Mary “it’s her way of punishing you, you know that?”
I had no clothes, I’d come sixty feet down the fire engine ladder as naked as the day I was born. Mam had the foresight to bring some old jeans, boots and a jumper. I had to wait until eight in the morning before they let me out of the Mater. I promised I’d come straight back, but I had to see Leah. A nurse in Temple Street led me to her cot. They had moved her from ICU two hours earlier. She was lost in the cot. She was tiny, barely five pounds. Someone had wiped her down with a wet wipe but it hardly made a difference. Black smoke residue in her nostrils, her ears, in all her beautiful baby wrinkles. I couldn’t let Mary see her like this. I got cotton wool, cotton buds and warm water. For the next hour I gently cleaned her up. At times it was hard to see because tears kept blurring my vision.
***
“There has to be something you want to do”.
Leah had started primary school. I wanted to go back to college and get a degree. I’d done first year counselling and it would only take another two to finish. There were plenty of evening classes but shift work meant I would only manage it every other week. I needed to change jobs, which would mean a drop in income.
“I can earn more in the long run” I explained to Mary “but you have to do something to make up the shortfall”.
“I’d like to act” Mary replied “my aunt always said I’d be good at it”.
It was the first time Mary had expressed an interest in doing anything. In the early years Iris had booked several things for Mary to do but Mary had dropped them all.
