Page 60 of A Miracle on Hope Street
‘I really hoped you might read between the lines, but you didn’t, so I took your advice and met with your father first. I was just so afraid. I’m so sorry.’
I can’t take my eyes off my mother, who looks so broken, so delicate, so desperate for all this to be put behind her. Her hands are shaking now. Her eyes are filling up again. She tilts her head to the side and her face begs for understanding.
‘Do you have any idea how much that letter shook me?’ I ask her, feeling my heart sink as I speak. ‘I was on Bernadette’s side, ironically, rooting for her all the way to be reunited with her childrenm and I thought what a brave woman to take the time to write to me to try and find a way out of the final leg of a very foggy and turbulent journey, but never in a million years, not in my wildest dreams, did I ever think it might have been you! In fact, I cursed you more. I cursed you and wished that it could be you!’
‘But it was me! And I waited and watched every day for you to respond,’ says my mother. ‘When I saw your name in my inbox again yesterday it took me until late that night to find the courage to open it and when I did, all I wanted to do was to tell you the truth, that it was me and that I wanted to see you both so badly, but I played along for fear that if you did know, you might change your mind.’
I am dizzy now and my head hurts. The rain has settled a little outside and the pub inside is getting busy. I presume our timing meant we missed their lunchtime rush and now they were setting up for the early evening shift, and I know that we should probably order something else since the waiting staff seem to be getting a little impatient by now but I can’t interrupt how far we’ve come in our conversation. I need to give her the time it takes to get her story across to us, a story that is slowly beginning to make sense to me.
‘You must have met him on a Sunday,’ I say to her, more gently now as I recall the day he went to Dublin. ‘He told me he was going to meet up with an old friend.’
She nods with a painful smile and looks away.
‘An old friend, indeed. He hadn’t changed a bit,’ she tells me, smiling just a little at the thought. ‘Still the same charitable, loving and gentle man that I’d married but who I just couldn’t love any more. I was suicidal for a long time and he couldn’t let you know that in case you blamed yourselves, but the longer time passed, the harder it became for him to tell you at all and he kept putting it off and putting it off. I’m so sorry. He did it out of love and protection. He didn’t mean for it to go on for so long.’
I need to get out of this place as it’s all becoming too much to sit here, cramped in a sticky hot corner listening to my mother tell me what my darling father never got the opportunity to say. I can’t believe what I am hearing. My head is a big tangled web of lies and deceit and all for what? Lost years between a mother and her two daughters because of some sort of shame and embarrassment and waiting game that ran it’s course when my father took ill? And suicidal? My God, I can’t believe that all of this has been kept from me and Ally. I am angry again. I am so angry and so bloody frustrated that all the years I could have been by her side were shoved aside because of some stupid public stigma and foolish pride
But with all my experience of shelling out advice, I can’t be mad at her like I wish I could be. Instead, I’m mad at me for not doing more than I did down the years to find her. I’m confused and I am angry as to how she and my father could have kept this from us for so long, only to decide he was going to tell us but didn’t get the chance to becasue of his stroke. No matter how frustrated and mixed up I am right now, I still have the clarity to see that this was a big fat mix-up of fate.
I close my eyes and absorb it all. I think of Marian and how she grieves for her children who have only gone travelling and I can’t even bear to think of how my mother’s fear compares. I think of Kelly who, this year, will be without her little girl for one Christmas and my heart bleeds for all the Christmases my mother has been longing for us to be near her. I think of Michael without Liam and I realise that there’s just no point in fighting any more.
Each of us are going through our own battles and my God, my mother has been through the wars. I look at her shaking hands and I grasp them tight. Like Molly Flowers told me, it’s sometimes best to live in the present and look ahead to the future instead of always leaning on your past for answers. My answers are right here, right now and I’ve heard what I needed to hear. It’s time to move on.
‘Do you have anyone in your life right now?’ I ask my mother, thinking of my own current plight for the lonely this Christmas and dreading what I am going to hear. ‘Any friends or family?’
She lets out a deep sigh.
‘I have a doctor and nurse who check in on me,’ she explains, giving another nonchalant shrug. ‘They need to be sure I take my medication. As if I wouldn’t. I’ve come on a million miles and I’ve no intention of going backwards.’
I reach across the table once again and touch my mother’s cold hand.How can I preach about loneliness when I can’t listen to my own flesh and blood?
‘And what are you doing for Christmas?’ I ask her, my eyes watering up again at the thought of the only olive branch I can offer that will let her see I want to give her a second chance.
She shakes her head. She shrugs and tries to speak but I can tell she’s scared to death to say that she’ll be all alone again.
‘That email was meant for Bernadette, not me,’ she says apologetically. ‘I didn’t mean to fool you into meeting me, Ruth. I don’t expect anything from you so soon, nothing at all. I’m sorry for bringing you here today. You deserved more honesty than I have given you, I don’t really deserve your kindness.’
But there is no way I can leave this place without some sort of forward plan. I can’t just walk away in anger and spend Christmas with strangers while she sits in some Dublin bedsit all alone.
‘Might now be a good time to start moving on?’ I ask her, wanting at last to put Bernadette to bed and to try and move on with the rest of our lives. ‘ We have so much to still talk about and to still heal from and we have loads of time to work on that, but please don’t spend Christmas alone, Mum. Spend it with me and some other people I’ve invited. Please.’
My mother is too overwhelmed to speak but her eyes do all the talking as fresh tears stream down her face.
‘Are you sure?’ she says to me, her eyes crinkling as tears dot on to her cheek.
‘I’m sure,’ I nod. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so sure of anything before in my whole life.’
She squeezes my hands for the first time, as if she has found a strength that she didn’t remember still existed.
‘I would – I would really love that, thank you, darling’ she whispers, grasping my hands. ‘We can talk this all through more and take our time, I promise you. It’s so good to see you again, my baby.’
I breathe through my nose, trying to control my emotions. I think of her coming home at last and it is tearing me up inside.
‘Then maybe we could go and see Ally?’ I add on, picturing the scene where she sees her other daughter and all she has missed out on. ‘There are two little boys called Owen and Ben who would just love to meet their very own Nonna.’
‘I’m their Nonna,’ she says, gripping my hand tighter and at that we both burst into tears. ‘I’d love to see them and be part of their lives, Ruth, I really would. I’d love that so, so much.’
‘I would too, Mum,’ I reply, and already I feel like a missing jigsaw piece of my life has been found, like everything I’ve wanted is falling into place. If it wasn’t for young Paul Connolly and the tragedy of his passing I wouldn’t have been here today and this wouldn’t have been happening.
