The Last Goodbye (24 page)

“Thank you, Doctor O’Keeffe.” Noel shook his hand gratefully.

My handshake was a bit more lacklustre.

“What is wrong with you?” Noel blazed as soon as we got back into the car. “You have three children at home you need to think about and yet you’re putting a small risk to this unborn baby ahead of all of them! That’s not fair, Eva. You need to think about this – about what you’re doing here!”

“I am thinking about it – all I do is think about it! Do you think I can escape it for a minute? But I can feel the baby kicking away in there now and I can’t do it, I just can’t. The fate of the baby is in my hands.”

“Well, you’re selfish. Your other children need you just as much as that baby – if not more!”

“Please don’t call it ‘that baby’,” I said wearily.

“Well, that’s how I feel – suddenly it has taken priority over everyone else in our family!”

“Noel, please stop, I’m just trying to do my best by everyone.”

“Everyone? The baby isn’t even born yet, you don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, you know nothing about that baby but you do know that you have three beautiful children – and a husband – who love you more than anything else in the world and yet you are choosing the baby before all of us!”

I was exasperated. “I’m not choosing anyone over anybody else – I’m trying to be fair. I’m trying to weigh up the risks that Doctor O’Keeffe spoke about and, when I do that, then I can’t take the risk of surgery. It seems unwarranted.”

“You’re infuriating, do you know that?”

I said nothing.

“Come on, Eva, you don’t need me to spell it out to you – he thinks that you have cancer.”

“But he doesn’t know for sure.”

“He has seen enough of these things to know what he’s dealing with here.”

“Look, Noel, call me what you want but it’s not going to change my mind. Now please, I’m asking you to support my decision.”

We drove home the rest of the way in silence. I could see by the way his whole body was tensed up that he was furious with me. His shoulders were raised up around his neck and his hands were clamped around the steering wheel as he drove. It took a lot to get Noel mad – he was usually very easygoing – but when he did, he could brood for days.

He slammed the door of the car shut and stormed into the kitchen ahead of me. I followed in behind him and went straight for the kettle – I needed it after that.

Seán came in from school singing “We Will Rock You”, oblivious to the tension between his parents. Freddie Mercury had died the previous November and Seán had since discovered his music. At the time it had been played on every radio and TV station and Seán was now obsessed with Queen. He kept on singing away to himself as he went about pulling apart the fridge and making himself a sandwich.

“Will you ever give it over, Seán!” I snapped.

“What?” He was in his own world. “Oh, sorry, Mam.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Noel glaring at me.

“You’re all right, love, maybe just pick another song,” I said contritely.

Mam called down to the house later on. I knew she was anxious to know how I had got on in the hospital again. Noel had headed out to the fields. He usually came in for his tea around five but there was no sign of him today. Patrick was down in his room doing his homework. There was no sign of Kate either, although that wasn’t unusual and today I was glad of it – it gave me a chance to talk to Mam without fear of being overheard.

“It wasn’t good news, I’m afraid, Mam.” I served her up a plate of buns and a cup of tea. “It’s grown bigger again.”

“Lord above! And I was praying round the clock for you – I even asked Father Ball to pray for you during Mass yesterday.”

My mother was a devout Catholic – there was nothing that couldn’t be cured by prayer – even potential cancer, it seemed.

“What did he say to you – the doctor?”

“Well, he wants me to have surgery to remove it but it’s risky for the baby and I don’t want to take the chance.”

“And what does Noel say?”

“Stop – we’re arguing over it. He wants me to have the surgery but imagine if I had the operation and something happened to the baby and then it turned out that the growth was nothing after all?”

“It’s a hard decision, Eva – I don’t envy you.”

“What would you do, Mam, if you were in my shoes?”

“God, I don’t know, Eva, it’s a tough one.” She sighed heavily. “I mean Noel is right – you have three beautiful children to think of as well –”

“But the risks are so small when you think of the stats Doctor O’Keeffe mentioned.”

“I suppose so . . .” She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“You don’t think I’m doing the right thing, do you?”

“Ah Eva, I can’t say . . . sure none of us can know how we’d react in your situation until we were going through it ourselves.”

“I can feel the baby kicking now, Mam. I couldn’t live with myself if anything were to happen to it.”

“And what if it were to happen to you?”

“Stop, Mam. Look, you’ll just have to pray a bit more for me. I’ll be right as rain, I know I will.”

“Well, you can’t knock that spirit.” She took a sip from her mug. “I’ll get a Mass said for you in Knock. Have you told the kids yet?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. I’m trying to work out how best to tell them. And I need Noel and me to be on the same page first or God knows what way they’ll react –”

The back door opened then.

“Oh hiya, Gran!” Kate said, coming into the kitchen in her navy tartan school kilt and woollen blazer. I noticed she had the waistband folded up on itself so that the skirt was a couple of inches shorter than it should be. She was wearing make-up too – a bit of foundation that was too dark for her and mascara on her lashes. She chatted away to her grandmother, all sweetness and light. You would never think that she was the same girl who screamed and roared and backchatted at me constantly. She adored her gran – they had a great relationship and Mam thought she was an angel. She never saw the side to Kate that I saw here at home. No, that was reserved for me alone.

“How are you, love? Did you have a good day in school?”

“I did thanks, Gran. What are you two talking about? You look very serious.”

Kate hadn’t mentioned the baby since. Not to me or to her dad or even Mam. It was as if it didn’t exist for her.

“Ah, this and that,” said Mam. “Boring stuff that would be of no interest to you.”

“Do you want a cup of tea, Kate?”

“Yeah, I will, thanks, Mam.”

I was amazed how she could switch on and switch off her personality as she felt like it.

My mother would go home now and then the Devil Kate would return as soon as the door was closed behind her.

Chapter 33

Three days later and Noel still wasn’t talking to me. That left Patrick and Seán as the only members of the family who deemed me worthy enough to talk to. Noel would exchange a few words as necessary if there was something about one of the children but that was the extent of our communication. I knew he was still seething. I was constantly asking myself if I had made the right decision but then when I thought of the little baby inside me I knew that I had. Noel didn’t see the baby as a person yet but for me it was very real. I could feel it moving and turning – it was already a little person to me – we just hadn’t met yet.

Kate on the other hand just gave me filthy looks as if I was the scum on the soles of her shoes. I knew we needed to talk so one day I went down to her in her bedroom. I knocked on the door but she couldn’t hear me over the music being played on her stereo so I just walked straight in. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, her head bowed deep in concentration as she used permanent marker to graffiti her schoolbag. The room was like a shrine to Nirvana and posters of a strung-out Kurt Cobain took over every spare inch of the walls. She didn’t hear me come in so I walked over and lowered the volume. Her head shot up.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped at me.

“I thought you’d like to go into Galway at the weekend – just the two of us?”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Well, I thought we might do a bit of shopping, get you a few new clothes?” I sat down on the edge of the bed.

“All right.”

I knew she would never be one to turn down the opportunity of getting new clothes. Although God knows we couldn’t afford it.

It had been so long since we had done anything together. The thing was that I missed her – Kate and I used to be so close. She followed me everywhere as a little girl. She would stand beside me at the bathroom mirror when I was putting on my mascara and I would have to let her put some on too – or she would traipse around the house in my ‘hee-highls’ as she called them, with my beads draped around her neck so that they were almost trailing on the floor and I was afraid of my life that she was going to trip up on them. She was my shadow and I loved having a little girl who wanted to try on my make-up and clothes. It was only when she had gone to secondary school that the mood swings had started and I became the enemy. I was hurt and upset at first but when I talked to friends they assured me it was just a phase – that all teenage girls go through it with their mothers but they come out again the other side of it. I also hoped, if we had a good day, then she might become more accepting of the baby. I still hadn’t told her about the other thing.

The following Saturday we set off for Galway. We had a great morning, just the two of us. I ended up spending far more than I had planned. She saw a long peasant skirt that she liked so I got that for her, then there were a pair of runners she wanted and black nail varnish too. I knew I was probably buying her affection but I didn’t care. We went for lunch in a fast-food place just off Shop Street that Kate chose. We both had fries and burgers and Kate ordered a milkshake.

“You’ve got a bump now.” It was the first reference she had made to the baby since we had told her that I was pregnant.

“I do – it’s big enough, isn’t it?” People in town were starting to notice that I was pregnant even though I was wearing loose clothes. At Mass the week before I observed people’s eyes being drawn to my bump as they wondered was I or wasn’t I. The look of shock on their faces was amusing – they were almost as bad as Kate.

“Uh-huh.” She nodded. “You look massive.” She sucked up her strawberry milkshake noisily through the straw. Oh to be a skinny thirteen-year-old! I just had to look at a milkshake to feel the weight going on.

“Well, cheers, Kate!”

She smiled at me, her beautiful smile that reminded me of when she was a little girl.

“I’m nearly halfway there now,” I said.

“I can’t believe there’s going to actually be a newborn baby in the house.”

“Me neither.”

“I suppose it’ll be okay.”

“Yeah?” This was a breakthrough.

“I’ve told Aidan and all my friends and they actually thought it was kinda cool – not the fact that you and Dad are still having sex, that’s just gross, but that I’m going to have a new baby brother or sister.”

“I see. Well, I think we’ll all enjoy having a new lease of life around the house. This baby will be very lucky to have an older sister and two brothers all doting on it.”

“But there’s no way I’m bringing the baby out in case people think it’s mine. And I’m definitely not going to be baby-sitting for you – I have my own social life to think about, y’know.”

“Don’t worry, no one is asking you to baby-sit just yet!” I laughed.

“What’s wrong with Dad? He’s been in a bad mood for ages now.”

I didn’t think she’d even noticed the tension between us. I decided while things were going well it might be best to come clean about what was going on.

“Look, Kate, during one of my scans – the doctor . . . well, he found a growth.”

“What kind of growth?”

“Well, it’s hard to say without doing a biopsy but that would be a risk for the baby so I’m not going to do it and your dad is just a bit annoyed about it, that’s all.”

“What’s his problem?”

“Ah, you know what he’s like.”

“Sure, can’t you just check it out after the baby is born?”

“Exactly!”

I didn’t want to worry her with the risks – best to keep it simple.

When we came out of the burger bar we strolled arm in arm over the cobbles. It was so good to have my daughter back – it was times like these that lifted me to the top of the world and my heart would swell with love for her. I knew that in a couple of days she’d be back to being a raging hormonal teenager but every now and then I got to see a piece of the daughter I knew and loved so well and I was making the most of it.