appendage, was screaming at Mary.
“You don’t know me” Mary screamed back even louder.
‘Jesus H Christ’ I thought to myself. We had left the church only five minutes earlier. Eddie’s funeral mass. Mary was seven months pregnant. Every one could hear them, I would have been surprised if the whole of Rathfarnham hadn’t heard them. The screaming continued louder than I had ever heard anyone scream. I hesitated, I knew Iris was in the same room as them, surely she’d put a stop to it. The other people in the room stared into their cups or at the floor. Iris didn’t stop it. Eventually I led Mary away by her arm.
Later on that day we were back in the house. The place was full of people. I over heard Iris tell the story again. It was the second time that day. She had gone to the home place and discovered kittens. Iris hates cats. Before she left the kittens were dead. Iris killed them. She put them in a bag and tossed it into the Shannon. Killing defenceless little animals and talking about it was altogether too nasty a story to tell on the day she buried her husband and I wasn’t the only one to notice. It was by far the strangest funeral I had ever been to.
***
Mary and I were in the Mater Hospital. We were both hooked up to oxygen. The nurse had telephoned my parents and told them to go to Temple Street Hospital where Leah was. The same nurse telephoned Iris. Joe and Anne were there in well under an hour. One of them stayed with Leah in ICU. The other came to us. Iris never turned up. Mary challenged her months later.
“How was I to know how serious it was” she dismissed Mary.
“How serious did it need to be?” I asked Mary “it’s her way of punishing you, you know that?”
I had no clothes, I’d come sixty feet down the fire engine ladder as naked as the day I was born. Mam had the foresight to bring some old jeans, boots and a jumper. I had to wait until eight in the morning before they let me out of the Mater. I promised I’d come straight back, but I had to see Leah. A nurse in Temple Street led me to her cot. They had moved her from ICU two hours earlier. She was lost in the cot. She was tiny, barely five pounds. Someone had wiped her down with a wet wipe but it hardly made a difference. Black smoke residue in her nostrils, her ears, in all her beautiful baby wrinkles. I couldn’t let Mary see her like this. I got cotton wool, cotton buds and warm water. For the next hour I gently cleaned her up. At times it was hard to see because tears kept blurring my vision.
***
“There has to be something you want to do”.
Leah had started primary school. I wanted to go back to college and get a degree. I’d done first year counselling and it would only take another two to finish. There were plenty of evening classes but shift work meant I would only manage it every other week. I needed to change jobs, which would mean a drop in income.
“I can earn more in the long run” I explained to Mary “but you have to do something to make up the shortfall”.
“I’d like to act” Mary replied “my aunt always said I’d be good at it”.
It was the first time Mary had expressed an interest in doing anything. In the early years Iris had booked several things for Mary to do but Mary had dropped them all. College, secretarial course, and more. Mary would go for a while and then stop.
“Ok, so how do you go about it?” I asked, I was genuinely interested in seeing Mary do something other than obsess about the house.
Within a few weeks Mary started at an acting college. It didn’t come cheap. We didn’t have a whole lot but I thought it was important so I scrimped and saved to pay for it. She spent a year learning the ropes and another six months working on unpaid pieces for students earning their stripes. By the second year Mary was getting paid work. Not a lot, but in a cut throat business she was doing ok, it was a start. Somewhere shortly after she lost interest. Over the course of a couple of months she sabotaged her own chances. First it was a reluctance to go. Every audition, it was a struggle to get her out the door. Then she got a part on a show. The first day of filming Mary was late back from lunch. Some one bawled her out for holding up production. Mary wouldn’t say what happened after that but she never went back to acting. I suspected Mary had shouted at the wrong person. It’s a very small pond in this country and a bad reputation is impossible to get rid of.
“You need to work” I insisted “It can’t always be just me”.
“She doesn’t have to work full time” Iris lectured me a few days later “She’s lucky she only has to work part time”.
“I want to go to college” I told Mary “I can’t do that and support you at the same time, you have to pull your own weight”.
“You have tickets on yourself”.
Chapter Six
Confusion and Contagion
Ten stone on the button. Six months on interferon and I had shed two stone. Food and I were enemies. Fatigue weighed me down like an old nags yoke. Some days were worse than others but none were fun. I was still able to do things but I was slower and needed frequent rest breaks.
Cheap, tacky, plastic statues of the Virgin Mary had appeared in the kids bedrooms. Iris again. My home was no longer my own, it wasn’t even Mary’s. Iris had taken over. She planted plants in my garden put condiments in my fridge and dragged my kids to church. Mary was as glued to her as Kathleen always was.
“You’re even dressing like her” I told Mary. Mary used to be a stylish dresser, it was a big turnaround to see her wear the same drab stuff as Iris.
“I have to do what my mammy says” she told me “I have to conform”.
“Why?”
No answer forthcoming and then she was gone. Mary could barely hide her disgust.
“Cancer is not I crime” I was left talking to myself “it’s not contagious”.
My body wasn’t my own. Weight was dropping off but I was only remotely aware of it. When I looked in the mirror I didn’t see a difference. The weighing scales told a different story. Once a month I went to day oncology. Bloods were checked, a once over from the doc and I was at home again. Leah and Judy were great. Judy hadn’t yet started school and we spent lots of time together. I was teaching her how to play chess. Leah was good at chess, she’d learned the basics at about the same age. Digging holes out in the back garden Mary was oblivious to us. If someone called to the house Mary feigned concern, when they were gone it stopped.
I was proud of the en-suite bathroom. DIY is not my best thing, I can fix an engine but hanging a shelf straight might take a few tries. Despite not being bob the builder I persevered. Some things worked out better than others, it was a trial and effort process. The en-suite was a success story. I’d covered the floor with marine ply spending hours with a hand saw cutting out every tricky angle around the loo, the sink and the shower tray. I got someone else in to do the tiling. The shower doors were a bargain. I’d seen them on sale in a DIY store. There was only a display model left. I haggled the sales assistant down to a hundred quid and helped him dismantle it. I was chuffed. I drove home with the doors hanging out of the boot. When I put them up in the en-suite they fitted perfectly.
Years on and the shower doors became the focus of Mary’s attention. Over the years it had been different things, certain foods, the house, pretty much everything and anything she chose. When Mary focused on something she was unrelenting. Screams, tantrums and stamping feet were all par for the course.
“It has to be perfect” she once explained to me, “everything needs to be perfect”.
The shower doors were bugging her now. She couldn’t stand to see any water marks on them she told me. So there I was, down to nine stone, skinny, sick and sore, after every shower I had to stand there buck naked, dripping wet, shivering and scrubbing the inside of the doors. If I didn’t