The Week I Ruined My Life Read online

  I wave at Jenny on reception as I leave through the front door of the centre and put my free hand out to hail a cab. The Steffi Street gang are just arriving as I look down the road; Mick the handyman is taking them today, showing them maintenance management. As I stand in the bitter cold, hand turning blue as it waves about for a cab, their noisy bus coughs to a halt and I watch them all emerge. Some without coats, some with hoodies pulled up over their heads. Owen is so incredible with them; he really should be an art teacher in a school. I see Zoe, the little girl Owen is always on about. The one who lives with her granny in the flats in Old Bond Street. Both her parents are heroin addicts, doing time. James Rafter irritating her by standing on her lace that has come undone.

  Or maybe that’s the look. Open laces. I think of my beautiful Jade. She just seems so angry towards me right now. She has so much to be grateful for but I think all she really craves is for Colin and me to be happy. She’s eleven, she gets it, she feels the rows and the anxiety and I hate myself deeply for making her live through this. I know she doesn’t have it as hard as these kids, nowhere near it, and I know I can’t pop her inside the perfect bubble ending of It’s A Wonderful Life, but still. Speaking of which, I reluctantly remove my phone and dial Colin’s number, holding the phone under my ear with my chin and shoulder. The bitterly cold, hard breeze blowing my fringe into my eyes.

  ‘Yeah?’ I can hear an animated breakfast talk show on the radio in his car.

  ‘Good morning to you too.’ I am trying.

  ‘Traffic was an absolute bitch, I couldn’t even get onto the M50 for half an hour, I’m only pulling in here now,’ he pants. ‘Thank God for Maia, she was early so I prepped her over the blower and she’s in there already.’ I hear his engine die. Talk show terminated.

  I wave frantically at a taxi with its light on. He doesn’t stop.

  I gesture wildly to him to turn off his fecking light!

  ‘Can you meet for lunch today? We need to talk. Will you be back in Dublin in time?’ I start walking in the piercing cold, heading in the direction of the centre, still eyeing up the traffic for a free taxi.

  ‘Maybe, not in that City Arts Centre though. That food yer one, Patricia, cooks is rancid.’ I hear him opening the car door.

  ‘OK, how about the Pepper Palace at half past two, after the lunch rush and that will give you time to get back from Dundalk?’ I suggest hopefully.

  ‘Grand. I’ve a call from Maia coming in here, I need to take it, Ali. See ya later.’ He rings off. Hallelujah. A cab pulls in and I wave at a latecomer from the Steffi Street gang, who is meandering down the road as I hop in and give my destination. Sitting back, I try to compose myself. This cab doesn’t smell too great, stale cigarette smoke and coffee. Perhaps a vomit or two not properly taken care of. Springs in the back seat stick up into my bottom. I shut my eyes. Deep breathing.

  After I’d finished messaging Owen last night, lying there in the dark listening to my children brush their teeth, I was overcome with emotion. What was I doing? Even though nothing has happened or, I hope, ever will happen, this is all wrong. It was one thing to fantasise about him but now I’m telling this man I don’t want him to leave, to take a fantastic job in France, flirting with him over Facebook, am I completely off my head? I had listened to Colin putting the kids to bed with a lump in my throat. He is a caring, loving father; he adores his children and they adore him. He works really hard to give us a comfortable life. I listened harder to Mark’s very loud whispers.

  ‘But, Daddy, please … I want Mummy to put me to bed, she does nosies,’ he’d pleaded with his father.

  ‘Mummy had a very long day, dude. She’s very tired; she can do nosies in the morning, little man,’ Colin had told him.

  My eyes popped open. I hadn’t drawn the bedroom curtains because the sky was as black as coal now and it would be the same in the morning.

  The stars in the dark sky made a pattern of a giant climbing a large hill. I have to try and fix this mess, I promised myself, as my eyes fell heavy, that I would talk to Colin today. I don’t know what I’m going to say over lunch later. It’s nothing to do with Owen really; I just can’t go on like this any more.

  ‘Sort it!’ I say to myself inside the cab. ‘You are a mother first, remember that. Your own mother did that for you, she put everything else on hold to raise you.’

  And she did. Daddy dearest, Paddy O’Dwyer, left Bernie O’Dwyer and me when I was eight years old. He moved to Blackpool to live with his childhood sweetheart, who he had reconnected with through the Thin Lizzy fan club. Over to Dublin, came the pair of them once, by the B&I boat, when I was ten years old, and took me to see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at the Olympia Theatre. I was seated behind a huge white pillar, it was uncomfortable and I wasn’t very communicative. Daddy dearest bought me one of those glow sticks and I sat, my hand gripping it so tightly, the mark stayed for days. She was nice enough, Marie, or Mar’eeeee. A slim woman with short curly mauve hair. She’d had a large packet of strawberry bon bons in a small square brown paper bag that she offered me at various times during the show. I declined. Even though I desperately wanted one, I was too shy to dip my hand in. Whenever I hear ‘Bless Your Beautiful Hide’ to this day I can see Marie, or Mar’eeee, chewing away like a sucky calf.

  That was the last time I saw them. As far as I know they still live in Blackpool and run a B&B near the North Pier. Mum wouldn’t accept the pitiful offered maintenance from Daddy dearest and never met anyone else either. She wasn’t a qualified accountant but she was brilliant with figures and she did people’s books from our small three-bed semi-detached house in Rathfarnham. Mum never moaned, never told me her life was shit. In fact, I don’t think it really was shit. Hard, for sure, but not shit. I think Bernie O’Dwyer quite enjoyed being a single and independent mother. She was always a mother first. That was her one true gift. She was an exceptional mother. She used to read poetry to me all the time but especially at night when we’d be cuddled up in her big bed. She loved romantic poems. She always read that famous one by Forest Witcraft, but she expecially loved ones by unknown authors. We must have read them all a thousand times.

  When she came across a new one she’d enthuse, ‘Oh, fabulous … author unknown, how truly poetic and moving that a nameless, faceless person left behind such magnificent art.’

  Why can’t I be like her? Or is this a part of me wanting to be too much like him? Would a shrink tell me I’m following a pattern? Just as well I don’t buy into all that BS. My father isn’t in my life and nor will he ever be. Am I damaged by this? No. I’m really not. If I want to go and see him and sit on his knee with yellow ribbons in my hair sucking on a fizzy cola lolly, I know where he is. I am happy to talk out my marital issues with Colin to a professional but I’m not interested in delving back to find the cause in our respective childhoods. I know why: Colin’s being a dickhead. Full stop.

  ‘Eight fifty, love, when yer ready there.’ The taxi man wraps his arm around the passenger seat as he turns his head. Flat cap and yellow fingers. I hand him a tenner and thank him. The cold fresh air is suddenly welcoming after the stench in the cab. I rush into the resource centre and down to the back into Room 2. The music hits me before I open the door.

  ‘Ohhh, the hokey-cokey-cokey!’ I literally do a double take. Corina Martin is in the middle of the floor doing the hokey-cokey as the old folks all make a wide circle around her and put their left legs in and take their left legs out. An iPhone plays the music propped up on a desk against a large jigsaw box.

  ‘Come, come! Join us, Ali!’ Corina beckons me into the circle as she puts her right leg in and takes her right leg out. Her knee-length red skirt is flowing and flapping to the beat. I join in. I laugh hard. Corina is dressed in a bright red wrap-around top too, her knee-length skirt is red wool and her knee-high black boots expose a flash of green tights as she hokey-cokeys her legs around. Santa’s little helper.

  When we are finished Corina runs out to make tea for us a
ll and I ask everyone to relax and take out their pictures. They all place them on the long trestle table at the back of Room 2 and then sit down. Those in wheelchairs or on frames stayed seated and placed them on their knees. I walk around and look. Everyone has tried. Everyone has drawn something. I am proud and I am mesmerised. I am fascinated. I am humbled. Nanny Farrell has drawn herself as a young girl; partially blind now, she managed to sketch from her mind’s eye a small girl sitting by the canal and a huge yellow sun beaming down on her. Mary Clancy, seventy-nine, drew in pencil. Mary drew seven stick children and a small box. I question her.

  ‘The box, Mary?’ I run my fingers over the sketching.

  ‘Ahh, that’s me eighth born, Kathleen, she was took from me when she was three-year-old … TB.’ Mary smiles at me a watery smile, her tear ducts now stretched with age and sadness of the memory of a lost child and I reach down and hold her cold hand, bulging blue veins and wedding rings that haven’t been removed in years.

  ‘Tell me about Kathleen.’ I keep hold of her hand and kneel down beside her.

  ‘Ah she was a beaut, the apple of me eye, so she was, hair as white as snow. She was never well from the day she was born … her chest. She slept in me arms for them three years. I miss her today the same as I did the day the good Lord took her from my arms as we both slept …’ Huge fat tears drip softly and slowly down Mary’s face. She doesn’t wipe them, it’s as though they are a part of her face.

  ‘I never forget it, Ali. ’Twas the start of spring and the seagulls were bleating outside. The room was warm and bright. She was nestled into me. I didn’t want to move as I was happy she was gettin’ sleep, her breathin’ had been so bad the night before … up all night me and her were. Walked the floor with her I did till the sun came up. I lay there for over an hour but little did I know she left me durin’ the night. It was only when I tried to move to go down and put 50p into the gas meter for the breakfast … only when I seen her little face …’ Her chin wobbles and her nose starts to run.

  ‘C’mon now, Mary,’ says Eileen Kilkenny, an eighty-one-year-old leaning on a silver frame, placing one slow orthopaedic navy lace-up shoe in front of the other toward Mary.

  ‘Won’t she be waiting for ya with her little arms raised when you leave this world?’ Eileen reaches Mary and puts her hand on her shoulder. Then she leans on the frame, panting.

  ‘She will, Eileen, an’ yer right a’course.’ Mary’s face lights up. The tears rest in the deep crevices on her face. She doesn’t feel them. Mary unclasps her old-fashioned bag and removes her rosary beads, she knits them around her old fingers and becomes lost in prayer.

  I stand up. There is nothing to say.

  Brian Drennan, eighty-one years old, has drawn a river and what appear to be a lot of machines or cranes high in the skyline.

  ‘The docks.’ He blows his red thread-veined nose loudly into his clean white linen handkerchief. ‘Fifty year I spent on dem docks, man and boy.’ He examines the contents before he folds it away up into his sleeve.

  ‘It’s great, Brian, thanks,’ I say. ‘Have you been down there at all recently?’

  ‘Sure I can’t get around anywhere with the hip. Only me daughter runs me here. I’d be looking at dem four walls, day in day out.’

  I will take him down the docks in the New Year. Nothing surer than that.

  Kitty Tead, eighty-four, has drawn a large cross and coloured it in perfectly, all in black.

  ‘A cross, Kitty?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s for my Lord, I give thanks every day for what he did for us. I hope you go to Mass and bring yer chil’er’dren?’ She wags a bony finger at me.

  ‘I try … and that is wonderful, Kitty,’ I add. Her faith is inspiring. No fear of death. Awaiting reunion with past loved ones. Amazing.

  Corina bursts back in.

  ‘Tea is up, my party of spring chickens!’ She is holding a round silver tray with a huge old-fashioned silver teapot on it. The old-school one, you know, the one with the really long narrow spout. Like a baby elephant’s trunk. Behind her a young, petite Asian girl, Shirushi, is carrying cups, with matching milk jug and sugar bowl designed with brown-and-orange stripes along with a box of Jaffa Cakes on a large wooden tray. We break for tea and Corina hands me a cup. I walk around and look at the drawings as I sip my hot drink.

  How can Colin say this isn’t important work? These are our people, our elderly, that can be so quickly forgotten, but they have so much to say and to offer and to teach us. I want them to be heard and seen. Generations should be fussed over not forgotten. One day we will all, if we are very, very lucky, be them. There are various pictures I can’t wait to show Owen. He will be fascinated! By the time twelve o’clock comes and family members and friends arrive to take them all home, we have had another round of the hokey-cokey, Kitty Tead sang ‘Paddlin’ Madeline’ and everyone had a chance to see each other’s pictures.

  ‘That was a lovely morn’nin’,’ Kitty Tead tells me as I help her to her son’s car. He’s double-parked, hazards flashing and stressed-looking, speaking loudly on his phone. A builder, I see by his clothes and hard hat. He’s in a hurry to get back to work. He shouldn’t have had to leave. There should be transport provided for these people.

  ‘Will we be gettin’ ’nother project to do, love?’ Nanny Farrell pokes her wooden cane into my shin.

  ‘You bet, this is only the start of it. If we can get the funding for the bus on a weekly basis, you can all come over to the City Arts Centre and we can do loads of stuff there. Have a whole plan of activities for next year,’ I shout into her good ear, as Nanny is also almost stone deaf.

  ‘No need to shout, I’m not deaf, ya know.’ She bangs the cane on the ground as it supports her move to the car.

  When they are all gone, I walk Corina down to her car.

  ‘I’ll drop you back,’ she offers and I accept. It’s bitterly cold again and sleet has started to fall.

  ‘What have you on now?’ I ask as I pull my seat belt across in her little car, blowing onto my cupped hands.

  ‘Oh wait for this: Masked, the dating service, are launching their new app. I have been working on the event last few weeks and the owners are rather weird. A married couple with a lot of quirky outlooks on life. They want everyone to come today in masks and I’m, like, eh, no press are interested in masked faces: those pictures will not land anywhere. They are literally making my job impossible.’ She turns on her engine, checks her mirrors and indicates to pull out.

  I laugh and I turn to her. ‘So … ’ows Trevor, chuck? Eh? Eh?’ I put on my best Coronation Street accent.

  She stares straight ahead, the windscreen wipers speeding up as she pulls out.

  ‘Not interested.’ She tries to pretend her visibility is bad and shifts forward in her seat closer to the windscreen.

  ‘What?’ I ask her.

  ‘Nope, I dunno, Ali, I really don’t. Like I told you, I held off sleeping with him, played the good girl card. We got on like a house on fire … had amazing sex and then nada! There’s obviously something very wrong with me.’ She shifts up into third gear.

  ‘There isn’t … What did he say?’ Idiot, I think.

  She indicates again and turns down the quays.

  ‘Are you ready for this? So we had sex, really great sex, he stayed the night. I got up early, did the whole Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids routine on him, re-did my mascara, brushed my teeth, rolled on deodorant, Jo Maloned myself, fixed my hair and snuck back into the bed. I gently woke him. We chatted and kissed, but I dunno, I immediately felt he wanted to get out of my bed. Which he quickly did. When I offered to make him a fry-up he said he had to get to work. There were no more questions about me, or what I liked and all that previous stuff. He was monosyllabic. I told him I really liked him and that I’d had a great time. He didn’t say anything back to me except, “Where’s my watch, d’ya know?” In a strange sort of defensive tone. Anyway, then he hurriedly left and just said, “See ya,” but me being me – oh,
wait for this, Ali, Corina Martin strikes again! I texted him a few times during the day and when he never replied to any of them, I left it until after I left your house to call him but he didn’t answer. Then in the taxi I swapped to private number – don’t judge me, I was drunkish and feeling very suspicious. Just as I thought, he answered and when he heard my voice, he was like, “Yeah, what d’ya want?” I was tipsy and said a few naughty things to him, and then he said, “Look I have a girlfriend, it’s serious, so ya know … that’s that, love. Don’t call me again or I’ll block your number.” And he hung up on me.’

  ‘Oh, Corina!’ I exclaim. She is driving faster and I have to hold onto the tiny handle above the passenger’s window. We drive in silence.

  ‘Shouldn’t have rang him after him not texting me back all day. Will I ever learn?’ she says eventually as she pulls up fast outside the arts centre and pushes on her hazards.

  I shake my head.

  ‘No, probably not, love … but you know what: better to know he was a waste of space, yeah?’ I click my belt.

  ‘I guess … I just feel … I dunno … used … again! He made such an effort to get know me, like, seriously spent ages asking about my family, my job, he wanted to know it all … my favourite film, favourite food, and for what?’

  ‘He’s a prick,’ I say.

  ‘Like, was it his mission just to ride me and then just dump me?’

  I shake my head at her.

  ‘C’est la vie, eh?’ she says. ‘I’m … maybe I’m just not long-term loveable, Ali.’ She winks at me but it’s a slow, drawn-out wink. Her eyes aren’t dancing behind it.

  I stare at her gorgeous splattering of freckles.

  ‘I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone as loveable as you, Corina. You are an amazing woman and any guy would be so blessed to share his life with you.’ I mean every single word.