Page 57 of A Miracle on Hope Street
What I didn’t hold on to and remember so clearly were the arguments that sometimes kicked off when we’d go to bed, or the times when Dad’s jokes irritated her instead of making her laugh and she’d looked so confused and lost in translation; or how, after she’d told me those beautiful stories about growing up in Italy, that I’d hear her cry in the downstairs bathroom and then she’d tell me that she was fine and that chopping onions always made her eyes water.
Why have I blocked this all out up until now? Why on earth did I never notice how sad she looked in that thirtieth birthday portrait that hangs in our hallway? Her eyes in that photo, so young, so lost and possibly so lonely, are haunting me now and I wonder should I have understood her more as I got older. Was I so busy being angry with her leaving that I never took the time to stop and try to understandwhyand maybe come to some arrangement where we could still make our family work? Or am I thinking this over too much just out of fear of ever coming face to face with her again?
I’m so afraid that we’ve been too hard on her for all this time. She was miserable here. She was suffocated and trapped and not living out her real potential. She came here just to learn English, not to marry her professor and have two children in a row by the time she was just twenty-one years old.
My phone bleeps through a text message from Bernadette, bringing me back to why I’m here in the first place on an afternoon when I have so many other things to do to prepare for my Christmas dinner.
Focus on Bernadette, I tell myself. Bernadette, who had been suffering for years with her mental health and who asked her family for a second chance but got no reply. Think of Paul Connolly and his poor soul and how important it is to make sure that someone has dinner with us in his place and gets the same comfort and happiness I wanted to give to him.
I’m in the silver car just beside the pier, along where the little blue boats are, Bernadette writes to me. I crane my neck to look over by the pier and, sure enough, I see a silver car just exactly where she said so.
‘Okay, Bernadette, I’m on my way.’
I get out of the car and walk across the car park as the rain falls down on this dark, drizzly day in December, across towards where I see a fragile, shell of the woman wait with her back to me and I wonder how I got here. How did I squeeze this visit in when I’ve so still got so much to do for my dinner party? But this is a big one. This is a woman who has lost it all and who tried to get something back but so far couldn’t and we’ve both travelled a few miles to make this happen.
Poor Bernadette. I hope she has found some peace in coming here at least and I hope that she finds some comfort in strangers if she agrees to join us for dinner.
As I dart past puddles in the car park, I think of how nervous Kelly was when she came to meet me in the cafe, how terrifed Molly Flowers was to accept my invitation to spend Christmas with strangers, of Nicholas and the sheer joy my email brought his way, and of Michael who will now be meeting the mother of his son to plan a reunion. I think of Marian, whose voice shook and who cried when she was presented with just a token of friendship and of twenty-year-old Paul who just couldn’t find the strength to make it to Christmas Day. Ahead of me now is Bernadette, who also has her story to bring to our table, and I now need to reassure her that she will also be very welcome and will no longer be lonely this Christmas.
The smell of a turf fire from the chimney of a nearby pub fills my lungs and the nip in the air makes me wish I’d worn a heavier coat or at least a pair of gloves. I hear traditional Irish music spill out of one of the cosy restaurants and the little blue boats bob up and down on the water as I approach Bernadette who watches them from the pier.
‘Bernadette?’ I call to my final potential guest, hoping that my smiling face is as welcoming as my heart feels knowing how difficult it must be for her to have made this journey alone after all she has been through. ‘It’s me, Ruth . . .’
The woman turns around to face me and when I see her, my cold hands go straight to my face in shock. I cannot breathe, I cannot speak, I have no idea what to say to her.
‘Hello, my darling. It’s so good to see you at last.’
My legs wobble beneath me, my lip quivers so much and my eyes fill up when I see that the person who has been writing to me, the person who so badly wanted to meet her children again, has all this time been using her middle name.
The woman in front of me, is my mother.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘I don’t . . . I don’t understand,’ I mutter as a wave of emotions set in – up, down, up, down, surprise, delight, anger, rage, shock, love, relief, grief, more shock, denial, then back to a simmering rage. ‘How could you do this to me?’
‘But I thought you knew?’ she says to me, her eyes pleading with me from just a few metres away.
Neither of us move, both standing in the rain, both still as statues. This is not how I imagined our eventual reunion would happen. This is nothing like I’d imagined.
‘Bernadette? How on earth would I have known?’ I say with meaning. ‘I thought I was coming here to meet someone I’d never known before. Not the mother who abandoned us when we needed her most.’
She looks away and grimaces when I spell that out to her, as if I’ve just stabbed her in the heart.
‘I honestly didn’t mean to shock you like this, Ruth,’ she says, her voice shaking now. ‘When I got your email my heart soared. I’d hoped that you’d finally clicked that it was me all along and just weren’t saying. I’ve a lot of explaining to do, I know I do, darling—’
‘Don’t!’ I say, shaking my head repeatedly. ‘Don’t you dare call me that. You’re a stranger to me, Elena. I was just a teenage girl when you started your disappearing act, so don’t think you can just turn up like this and call me darling as if this is one of those soppy, happy-ever-after reunion TV shows. You should have told me what to expect today! I would have been more prepared. I was so close to being – I was so close to getting in touch with you! I wanted to so badly!’
My eyes sting and my voice breaks and I just can’t take in, no matter how hard I try, what is happening right now. This is all too much. I want to get back in the car and turn on the ignition and drive away, pretending this has never happened, but it has happened, itishappening and I can’t just run away. I won’t run away like she did. No way.
‘You have no idea how much I have cried for you!’ I tell her. ‘All those nights, the dreams, the nightmares. Do you know how much I wanted to ask you about my exam results or my boyfriends? Do you know how much I just missed having you tell me that everything would be okay, even if you knew it wouldn’t? Do you know? Do you?’
My mother rubs her forehead, looking like she is struggling to breathe. The rain is really coming down now and I’m freezing cold, so cold that I can’t move an inch. I take a long, good look at her through the stinging tears that pierce my eyes and try to take in this person that stands here before me.
She is fifty-two years old, just a young woman who should still be in her prime yet she looks so timid and reserved in her black coat and purple hat, slim dark trousers and flat boots. Her face still looks younger than her years, framed with her dark hair that is now streaked with silver, her large eyes the deepest brown you ever did see, even though they are weary and tired, and if she didn’t look so terrified, she might still pass for someone from the movies. She is still beautiful, yet so delicate, like a flower that needs watering but one that just needs some tender loving care to make it bloom again.
I’ve missed her so, so much, yet I’m so, so angry with her at the same time.
‘Can we go somewhere and talk?’ she asks, her lip quivering now. I don’t want her to cry. I don’t want to see her emotion spill out right now in front of me. It’smewho deserves to be crying. It’smewho has all the questions and it’s her who holds all the answers.
