Stand by Me (15 page)
Brendan was caught between sympathy and impatience and he didn’t know what to do. Before the birth, he and Dominique had sat on the sofa and thought about baby names and joked about how their lives would be changed for ever when he (they’d always thought of the baby as a he and hadn’t asked to be told otherwise) arrived home. They talked about having him in the carrycot in the room all the time, not leaving him alone ever. They’d put the pine crib in the bedroom and hung a brightly coloured mobile above it. They’d talked about playing with the baby, laughing with him, enjoying having him as part of the family. Brendan had dreamed about coming home to his wife and child and feeling as though he was master of the house. An old-fashioned dream, he knew. But one he liked. He wanted the security of a family. He wanted them to be happy together.
‘Why?’ he asked her every single day. ‘Why are you crying?’
And she would shake her head and say that she didn’t know.
Evelyn told her, although with an unaccustomed note of concern in her voice, that she had to pull herself together.
‘Your baby needs you,’ she said. ‘Brendan needs you. You can’t sit around in your pyjamas all day.’
‘I don’t want to get dressed.’ Dominique found it hard to talk. It was as though the words were stuck somewhere in her head and she had to struggle to speak.
‘You have to make an effort,’ said Evelyn. ‘I know it’s hard. I was exhausted after you were born, but I still did my best.’
Dominique shrugged helplessly.
‘Every mother gets the baby blues,’ Evelyn told her. ‘It’ll pass. It always does. But you have to snap out of it.’
She picked up the baby from the pine crib, which Brendan and Dominique had chosen with such love and care.
‘Hold her,’ she said.
Dominique flinched.
‘She’s your daughter,’ Evelyn said. ‘She needs you.’
‘I know that.’ Dominique raised her big dark eyes to her mother. ‘I know she’s my daughter. I’m responsible for her. I know that too. I have to feed her and clothe her and look after her because it’s my fault that she’s here. I know. I do feed her. She’s clamped to me half the day.’
They’d encouraged breastfeeding at the hospital. They’d told her it would be best for her baby and it would be good for her too. Much better chance of losing that bulge, they said cheerfully, if you feed her yourself.
Dominique had looked down at her stomach then. It was a war zone. Scarred and bruised from the Caesarean, of course. And still podgy and wobbly and patterned with stretch marks. She knew that she’d been incredibly naïve to think that everything would simply spring back into place after the baby had been born, but she’d expected some change. As it was, she still looked pregnant. Which was horrifying, because every time she looked at herself she remembered the terror she’d felt when the doctors had rushed her to theatre and she’d been sure that she was going to die.
And more than that terror was the guilt that her first thought had been for herself and not for her baby. Everyone knew that mothers thought of their children before themselves. It was an instinct. Only Dominique’s instinct had been to be afraid for herself. And to want to get rid of the baby because it was killing her. She was, she knew, the worst mother in the whole world. A disgrace to the name. She didn’t deserve a baby. And it was no wonder that both of them cried morning, noon and night.
The thoughts came to her when she least expected them. Thoughts of picking the baby up and throwing her against the wall. Of putting her in the car and driving off a cliff. Of bringing her to the supermarket and just leaving her there. She tried to push them away but she couldn’t. Sometimes she even felt comforted by them; sometimes it was nice to allow them to take over her mind.
It wasn’t all in her mind, said Lily Delahaye. It was post-natal depression and she needed to see a doctor. Dominique replied that the doctors wouldn’t understand. They had been so great at the hospital, saving her and saving the baby. They’d worked miracles to keep them both alive. How could she possibly admit that now she wished they’d both died? They’d be angry with her and she couldn’t blame them, because everyone was supposed to be happy.
‘They won’t be angry with you,’ said Lily. ‘You’re not well, Domino. You need to get better.’
Lily had come to Dublin immediately after the baby was born, and although Dominique had been quiet and a little weepy in the hospital, Lily had put it down to the drama of the birth. She’d gone home with pictures of both of them, thinking that the baby was definitely a Delahaye and hoping that her daughter-in-law would pick up when she got home. But then Brendan had phoned and told her that things were actually worse and that Dominique was spending the entire day sitting on the sofa chewing on strands of her hair. That the only time she touched the baby was when she was feeding her, and when she changed her daughter’s nappy she did it in a way that made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want to be doing it at all.
Brendan was worried about Dominique, but even more worried about the effect her behaviour was having on their daughter. He didn’t know what to do. Dominique refused to talk to Evelyn. She refused to go to the doctor. She refused to have anything to do with anybody. That was why he’d asked his mother to come and see her. He knew that Domino liked Lily. He knew that she got on well with his mother. If anyone could help, Lily could.
But Lily hadn’t been able to get through to her either.
The dreams had started after they’d left the hospital. They were always the same. In them, the baby had been taken away from her and they were telling her that she wasn’t her real mum. That she couldn’t be. And she was saying that she was, she knew she was. But they replied that there was no proof. She hadn’t given birth to her, had she? She could be anybody’s baby. Besides, they said, she wanted someone to take her away. Didn’t she think that every single day?
She would wake up from the dream frightened and sweating. She would get out of bed and look into the cot and tell herself that this was her baby, that she’d loved her when she was pregnant with her and that she loved her now. But no matter how often she said the words, how many times she tried to force a connection, she simply couldn’t make it happen.
Emma had called to the hospital but Dominique hadn’t wanted to see her. She phoned when Dominique was home and Brendan told her that she wasn’t ready to see people yet but to call back in a week or so. Maeve called too and he said the same thing. But Dominique never wanted to talk to them or see them and eventually both of them stopped trying.
June turned up with her own baby, the angelic Alicia, who chuckled and gurgled her way through the visit. June said that she knew how Domino felt, that childbirth was scary and painful and not at all an empowering experience. Not until afterwards, she said, when you realised that you’d actually done it and they put the baby in your arms. Then, June told her, you felt it, the rush of love so primeval and overwhelming that you knew you’d walk over broken glass and hot coals for your baby. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
Dominique stared at her. She’d thought June might be different, might say different stuff. After all, she hadn’t really enjoyed being pregnant. She’d said that it was boring and uncomfortable. So she’d thought that maybe June understood what she was going through now. But she didn’t. Her sister-in-law was in love with her baby. Dominique could see that in her eyes. She wondered what June saw in her eyes. She hoped she didn’t see how she really felt.
She heard the front door opening and she pulled her dressing gown around her shoulders. Brendan came home at all hours during the day to make sure she was OK. At least that was what he told her. Dominique was certain he was coming home to make sure she hadn’t done something terrible to the baby. She understood why he’d be worried. She’d be worried about what she might do if she didn’t already know that she hadn’t the energy to do anything at all.
‘Domino?’
It wasn’t Brendan, she realised. It was Greg. Even worse. What was he doing here? Why had Brendan given his brother the key to their house? She pulled the dressing gown even more tightly around her shoulders. If Greg had come up to Dublin, Brendan had probably asked him to check on her. She kept her eyes tightly closed. She didn’t want to see Greg. She didn’t want him to see her. Not like this.
‘Hey, Domino.’ He walked into the kitchen and put some bread and milk as well as a bouquet of flowers on the table. ‘How are you?’
She knew that he was doing his best to hide his revulsion. She knew that she looked truly dreadful. She hadn’t got out of her pyjamas in a week. She hadn’t washed her hair in more than that. She smelled of baby milk and baby sick. She was disgusting.
‘I’ll put the flowers in water,’ he said.
She was going to cry. She’d only just stopped but she was going to start again. Her cheeks were raw from her tears.
‘I like flowers,’ said Greg as he arranged them carefully in the Waterford crystal vase that had been a wedding present from one of Brendan’s friends. ‘I like the colours.’
He was trying to lift her mood. But it wasn’t a mood. It was the way she was now. She was a mother who wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in her baby. She hated herself for that. She hated herself for being such an awful person. For not appreciating the miracle of life. For not being grateful to the doctors and nurses at the hospital. She hated herself for not loving Brendan any more because it was Brendan who’d got her pregnant and Brendan who’d married her and Brendan who’d gone on and on about how fantastic their life would be with a baby in it but who’d been utterly, utterly wrong about it.
‘So.’ Greg sat down beside her. ‘It’s all been a bit of a shock, hasn’t it?’
She opened her eyes slowly. She did everything slowly these days.
‘The way you were brought into hospital. The whole emergency thing. Not at all what you expected, I suppose.’
She stared blankly at him.
‘It must have been terrifying,’ said Greg. ‘It’s not surprising you’re reacting like this. Men are so lucky not to have to go through it.’
She closed her eyes again. She wasn’t going to listen to him. She was going to stay in the space that she’d found. The quiet room inside her head where nobody, not Brendan, not Evelyn, not Lily and most of all not the baby, could get to her. She was going to be by herself.
She didn’t deserve anything else.
‘I feel like you do sometimes.’ Greg’s voice drifted into her head. ‘Sometimes I want to lock myself away and sit on the sofa and cry.’
Her eyes flickered open again.
‘I guess it happens to everyone at some point in their lives,’ he told her. ‘We think we’re able to cope with everything, that we’re ready for the challenge, and then things don’t turn out the way we expect and we don’t know how to deal with them at all.’
She couldn’t help listening, wondering what had happened in Greg’s life that he hadn’t been able to cope with, that had left him sounding so sad.
‘But the truth is that in the end we have to move forward with our lives, don’t we?’ He was watching her closely. ‘We can’t just give in.’
‘Give in?’ Her voice came from miles away.
‘To the darkness,’ he said carefully.
‘It’s not dark.’ A tear trickled down her face. ‘It’s not dark, it’s just . . . wrong.’
‘What?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong, Domino?’
She covered her face with her hands. ‘Everything.’
‘Tell me.’
Why would she tell him when she couldn’t even tell Brendan? Brendan was her husband. She should be able to tell him. No secrets, he often said. But sometimes the secret was so terrible that you couldn’t share it. Especially not with the man you were supposed to love.
‘I hate myself.’ The words were out, and suddenly she couldn’t stop. ‘I hate myself because I don’t love my baby. She nearly killed me. Everyone was shouting and yelling and they were talking about blood and haemorrhaging, and I knew it was me. They were all afraid and so was I, and it was her fault, only of course it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t ask to be born, did she? But she was killing me, and I hate myself for being afraid of her and afraid of dying and for not being happy because both of us are absolutely fine. I hate not wanting to hold her and I hate that every time I do she reminds me of being in the hospital. I hate that she’s a girl, because we picked names for a boy and Brendan wanted a boy so’s they could share things. I hate that I don’t want Brendan near me. I hate that I think about killing myself. I hate the blackness and the numbness and that everyone is looking at me and talking about me ...’ The tears were streaming down her face and hands. ‘I hate that I was so stupid as to get pregnant in the first place. To think that just because Brendan married me everything would be perfect. I hate that my mother was right and that I’m being punished for being a wilful, selfish person who wore dresses that were too short and heels that were too high ...’
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