Page 2 of A Miracle on Hope Street
My dad loves routine and I love it too. I cling to it like a security blanket, safe in the knowledge of knowing what I am going to do when I wake to face each day.
Tuesdays like today mean an early morning walk around the block before breakfast, then three hours picking through problems sent from the general public to me to give advice in my daily agony aunt online blog, lunchtime here with Dad and a quick dash home for more admin and work for my weekly city magazine column, then back here where I help supervise bingo night for the residents before tucking my dad in for the night. When he’s settled, I set off home where I’ll squeeze in another few hours at my desk, solving more of the city people’s personal problems and file my daily copy to my editor before bedtime.
Most nights of the week are routine like that, minus the Tuesday bingo which is replaced on every other evening with my ‘other life’ of nonstop list of product launch events, movie premieres, dinner dates and other necessary ‘profile building’ occasions that my newspaper publisher and manager, the infamous Margo Taylor, insists I partake in to keep the problems pouring in from readers who are convinced I can help change their world with my wise words.
In the snug of this room, a sense of routine is as regular as clockwork and worlds away from the life I lead outside, so I cherish these moments with my one true hero, my dad, whose life was once like mine with not enough hours in the day, juggling his commitments to his university day job and the students he helped to advise, with looking after my sister and I, whether that be our own education or cooking and washing for us, always making sure we had everything we needed.
I go back to Poirot and my crisps and wait for Dad to tell me to ‘stop munching’ like he used to do, but of course he doesn’t notice if I’m making noise any more. His mind is mostly now only a muddle of faces, faraway places and a whirlwind of random thoughts which he expresses through pigeon speech that is becoming less and less frequent. He is lost in a fog of oblivion and it’s only those who love him and remember the man he once was who suffer so much by watching his whole self-crumble from the inside out.
I turn down the volume as the credits roll, feeling overly smug with myself that it was indeed the husband who committed the deadly crime and ponder for a moment how much more exciting it would be to be a private eye than a super busy ‘celebrity’ agony aunt, a job I fell into almost by accident after a feature I wrote on dealing with a break-up which had the newspaper’s readers banging down the door for more. Is it a bad idea to change career when you’re flying high and kicking the ass of thirty-three years old? I probably wouldn’t change it even if I could. Or would I?
I think of my biggest dream of running away from this world that I know and living in a cottage by the sea where I’d write to my heart’s content with the sound of the waves lapping outside and gulls flying up above. I might even run a little bed and breakfast and I’d marvel at everyone who came to stay with me, hearing all about them and probably trying to solve their problems as it’s what I’m best at these days.
I check my phone briefly and a message from my sister reminds me again of my evening plans.
‘Guess who is coming to see you tonight?’ I say to my father, his smiling face and innocent wide eyes staring back at me like it really doesn’t matter, because it reallydoesn’tmatter to him. He has very little concept of who or why or when any more.
‘Elena,’ he says, reaching his frail hand up to touch my face.
He isn’t answering my question by suggesting her, but mistaking me again for her and my heart skips a beat just like it does every time he mentions my mother’s name. I put my hand on his and take a deep breath in and I remember that the best thing about his stroke is that he doesn’t remember her leaving him. The worst thing about is that every time he mentions her name, I am reminded all over again of the agony he felt when she left.
‘She isn’t coming back, Dad, I’m so sorry,’ I say to him, just like I’ve done for so many years now. He’d insist she would change her mind one day, but I soon came to accept that she wouldn’t.
It is cold now, despite the clammy room, and when my eyes meet his, mine fill up and I shake my head and smile, grateful in so many ways that he forgets how long it has been since we’ve seen her and the pain her leaving caused all those years ago when my sister and I were just getting our heads around periods and puberty and girlhood crushes. She left just when I really needed her most and I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for it.
‘I won’t be here for bingo but Ally will be here tonight! Super Ally?’ I say with a bright smile and his face mirrors mine. His navy-blue eyes, his smooth forehead and his head tilted as he drinks in my every word but understands very little that I have to say about my sister, the daughter he used to call his other super hero. Super Ally and Super Ruth . . . we were always quite a team of three.
I feel that old familiar choking sensation and my bottom lip trembles as I look into my father’s ailing eyes which are so far away from me.
‘I wish you could talk to me, Dad,’ I tell him. ‘Please just say something. I miss you so, so much. Why are you so far away?’
Chapter Two
‘Did I hear from someone that you’re missing tonight’s bingo?’ a familiar voice says, and I look up to see Oonagh, one of the staff here at the nursing home who looks after my darling daddy like an egg. She pulls down the covers of his freshly made bed and puts a jug of water and a clean glass on his tray.
‘Believe me, Oonagh, I’d actually rather be going to bingo night than where I have to go,’ I tell her. ‘The very thought of getting dressed up and painting on a smile when it looks like it’s going to snow pains me right now. How’s the family? Looking forward to Santa?’
Oonagh’s eyes light up at the chance to tell me about her children.
‘Well, Harry can’t decide if he wants Superman or Spiderman stuff this year. Talk about torn between two lovers,’ she says, laughing. ‘And Molly, well anything that involves music is what she’s been asking for. Where will you be spending Christmas this year, Ruth?’
I try to answer but she does it for me.
‘You do know that all our residents are welcome to have their families come here for dinner?’ she says. ‘We have volunteers who come and help with music and craic and we even have a visit from Santa which everyone loves. I’m off this year on Christmas Day but I’ve worked it before and it can be really lovely.’
I look at Dad, who has no clue of what we are saying and is still focused on the TV.
‘Ah, that does sound nice,’ I reply to Oonagh, ‘but I’m going to be cooking up a storm this year at home. We’re going to take Dad home to Beech Row for Christmas Day.’
‘Now that’s a much better idea,’ says Oonagh. ‘You’ve told me how much he loved that house and his garden.’
‘Yes, it was once a pretty special place,’ I say with a distant smile. ‘My sister, her husband and her sons are coming home for Christmas too, so I’m really looking forward to it. For the next while, for as long as we can, we’ll be having every Christmas there together, just like it used to be. Just how Dad would like it.’
We both look across at him, so innocent and childlike, watching the dancing colours on the television that make very little sense in his weary mind. Oonagh knows she has pressed a sentimental button and I try to hide the tears welling up in my eyes as I remember how Christmas used to be in the home I always returned to for the last week in December, no matter where I was in the world at the time. The house would be bursting at the seams with decorations and trees and lights as my father really did go overboard, in a way that I just know was to compensate us being a one-parent household. He always did go that extra mile to make life special for us.
‘So, tell me, what do you have on tonight then that could possibly beat bingo?’ asks Oonagh, changing the subject tactfully. ‘I always point you out in the newspaper and I tell everyone who will listen how I know you personally now, so you’re my official claim to fame.’
We both laugh.
