Islandbridge (30 page)

She remembered Breda's reaction that night, the night when she'd told her about her plans. The bewilderment on Breda's face, she remembered, and the anxiety too. Breda wore her heart on her sleeve – always had – and she said things on the spur of the moment, often laughing or apologizing later on. It was actually endearing. But even if she'd tried her best that night, Breda couldn't have held back that look. It was a kind of a pained frown, and she had sat there completely still, trying to smile or something, but obviously thinking the unthinkable. It was the was-Eimearmad look.

That reaction, from her oldest friend from primary school, had stayed with Eimear, and she knew she would never again try to explain it to anyone. She couldn't tell anyone how it felt, like she was away from everything but surrounded by it too. To be floating here amongst people, able to do and say the normal things, but to feel it was someone else they were talking to. A ghost really, some sort of a living ghost.

Breda was logical though, as well as everything else.

“Eimear,” she'd said. “Maybe it's the tablets they gave you, that treatment? Maybe it's time to stop. I heard they change you. That you get used to them.”

“No,” she remembered replying, and she was astonished at the words that came out of her own mouth then. How calm she had sounded, how reasonable.

“I've thought about it a lot. It's the only way, Breda. I can't go on like this, it's like I'm sleepwalking or something. I won't.”

That part had definitely freaked Breda. She could tell straightaway, because Breda tried to change the subject. Still, she was drawn back into asking her things that led into what Eimear had told her. Was she eating right? Had she been able to get a few hours' solid sleep? Was the breastfeeding wearing her down or something? “Wanting to start over, well great,” Breda had said after. “But changing your name? You mean back to your maiden name?”

“I do, yes.”

“Do Declan's parents know?”

“Why do they need to know?”

Breda hesitated.

“They might think,” she began. “Well, you know.”

“I know they're worried, I know. We're all worried. But in the end of the day, it's up to me to do something. I'm not trying to hurt anyone.”

“You mean it, really, don't you?”

“I do.”

“But why, Eimear? You sound like it's part of some plan you've come up with?”

“It's not a plan really. It's just that I'm so tired, it's like I'm carrying this huge something. I want to be a different person, somebody new – or I want to get my old self back. I can't explain it totally.”

“But what will you do?”

“I don't mean a big rigmarole. Just something simple. I'll get a job, maybe back in the insurance business, and see where that'll go. I'm going to use my middle name as well. Remember I used to do that, back in school, after Confirmation?”

“But that was a lark, Eimear! That was our Hollywood-star stuff. Come on!”

“I'd still be
me
. I just want another start. That's not a bad thing to want, is it?”

Breda's look stayed with her over the years. That effort of trying not to stare, but with still a stricken look on her face that she couldn't hide. It felt like Breda had actually shrunk, shrunk physically, in front of her. It saddened her, but in a strange way it also gave her a hope, that Breda would probably never come around to accepting this.

“Eimear, have you talked it over with anyone?”

She understood the tone as much as the words her friend used, and knew then that she wouldn't be able to go on with trying to persuade her. It was just another thing to let go of, she thought. Sadness certainly, and she had felt herself want to cry then and there, but it was just another stage, she knew, and it had to be endured. Breda asked her something about a doctor talking to her about postpartum, or that sort of thing?

She listened, and she went through the motions. It didn't shock her anymore to see how quickly things changed, even in moments. It was another veil lifted, she understood. Whether you liked things the way they were, whether you feared them, or whether you wanted to change them, none of that mattered. There was no going back. The panics that came suddenly, like the one the other day in the supermarket, and the feeling of falling into something that would not let her out again – those might never go away. There'd always be the anxious looks on her family's faces, the smiles that were too watchful, and the kindly, distant looks from the doctor murmuring questions and advice.

“Will you go back and see that, em, doctor?”

“The psychiatrist? No, I don't think so.”

Breda had looked around the kitchen, biting her lip. Eimear knew she was trying not to cry again.

“Rent this house out, Eimear, and you could go home awhile. That's found money, and you'd have, you know– Look, how about a girl from down her way, one coming up to study in Dublin? Babysitting, all that . . .?

Breda's words trailed off. She began to shake. Maybe it had been seeing the baby things around the counter, the toys, that had put her over the edge, Eimear thought, while she held her.

Breda hugged her long and hard in the hallway again later.

“Oh, Eimear. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I wish, oh, I don't know how to help.”

Sorry for what, she thought, and looked back into her friend's streaming eyes. She wanted Breda to leave here thinking she'd done good.

Later, in the early hours, she realized that Breda had joined that group of people she knew she'd keep things from. The family things, she meant. It would have happened anyway, probably, once married life started for Breda. It was just another milestone.

She heard the baby stirring, a small cry. At least her mother had gone back home now for a week at a time. She didn't have to feel her mother's worry too, how she watched her with her baby. Around her, everyone worried and cried and talked amongst themselves. What'll we do about Eimear? She's depressed. It's the medication. She should try something else. She won't go to the psychiatrist anymore. She never cries now. She needs to get it out of her. Will she harm the baby? Soon it'd be: why does she want to get a job now, a new job? Doesn't the baby need her? And on, and on.

The sniffling would turn to those little gasps soon. She'd wait, and let him have his say. Declan would have gotten up; that was the way he was. Everyone expected women to be soft, to fall apart, she had learned. It gave her no satisfaction to know it now, this knowing that she'd never get over this, but that she'd just go on.

She sat up and reached for her dressing gown. The baby was in his own room now, and down to just one bottle at night. Had he sensed her calmness, the very thing that her own family were agitated about, and Breda, not four hours ago. He was a good sleeper. She loved him; it was as simple as that.

The carpet was cold. She reached out her toes for a slipper, and the sharp sting of what she had learned came to her unexpectedly. She stood there to let it sink in.

It wasn't just Breda, no: they were all of one mind. Eimear was to be pitied, fretted over. Only nice things would be said, and the awkward things let slip away, forever, if possible. But she would never forget what she'd seen in that Superintendent's eyes that day he'd come out. He couldn't wholly hide his true belief about Declan.

Nor could they. Even under the gentle talk and the hugs and the telephone calls, and the endless things they brought, she'd seen it, and she'd known it: Declan was not one of them anymore. He'd never say it outright, any more than the people close to her would say it, that it was good that Declan was gone.

She found the other slipper. The air in the baby's room was close, and tangy from the used nappies in the bin. She listened to see if he had heard her, but the small coughing cries did not slow.

“It's all right, love,” she said. “Here I am . . .”

March 28, 1986

There was a spell of warm weather early that spring. Eimear spent a lot of time in the park, Marley Grange, with Róisín and the baby. Sometimes, too, it was with their mother, or Breda, or Declan's sisters Bridget and Anne. There was a good view over the city in many places in the park. The mountains and Pine Forest were close behind.

Doctor Dempsey changed her tablets. For a while she noticed the change, but then things went back to being the same. She didn't like anybody asking her how she felt, or how it was going, no matter how much they cared or wanted the best for her.

The baby: for some reason, it bothered her mother the most that Eimear still called him “the baby.” She told Róisín, who told her. Then Eimear told Róisín to tell their mother back that it was just words. Couldn't they see she did love “the baby,” and was taking the best care of “the baby,” and not to say things like that again because it upset her to hear them secondhand? She was satisfied, and not too guilty, when she head later that her mother was mortified for days.

It was actually funny, she knew, but only for someone who could laugh.

Everything was too easy sometimes, on the outside, in that world, and that alarmed her. Dinners made, the shopping done, the bills paid. She was regular again and her breasts weren't sore anymore. The stitches were long gone.

After the episode where she'd told Breda she wanted to change her name, to be someone else, there was always someone calling to the house. It had taken her a while to catch on. She thought that Dempsey had given her different tablets for a while. From time to time she began to skip the tablets. All she noticed was a bit more energy or interest, and a feeling of being very heavy too though, along with a frightening feeling that she was not far from panic over simple things.

She looked over at her baby cradled in Róisín's arms, and Róisín talking and cooing as she set the swing to a gentle glide with her feet. If she ever told Róisín to keep him because she loved this nephew so much – even as a joke – that'd have them all on her again.

They were keeping some things from her. She didn't mind. She didn't want to know anything about the Guards, even Declan's pals. But she had heard Breda and Róisín talking about something to do with the Guards, how they were all like that, or something.

Was it for her sake they had not fought to get proper benefits from the Guards? Maybe they had no heart to, because they wanted her to be as far as possible, forever probably, from the Guards.

Róisín lifted the baby and laughed. There, she had heard a little something, a gurgle of pleasure. Eimear felt that she was surrounded by love, and such concern and minding. She sometimes thought she should say it out loud, how grateful she was. Something stopped her at those times, and it had disturbed her. She should never, ever say to one of them that sometimes she felt suffocated by it all.

What nobody had said, or hinted at, would never be said to her now either: that she had brought this on. It wasn't about how Declan wanted to emigrate, and her so against it, not knowing. It was the stupid belief she had, and in her addled state couldn't possibly have thought it out. She had shown them Declan's letter from the tin. She remembered one of the two detectives, the man, asking for the loan of a spade.

She'd sat with the woman, Marie, who turned out to be a sergeant, looking out the kitchen window, as a small mound grew bigger. Marie smiling, reaching out to pat her hand when she'd keep coming back to it: there was no other tin, just the one. The next day there had been a half-dozen men out digging. Still, even then as they dug up every square inch, she kept on thinking all the while that somehow, this would help.

Weeks later, that Superintendent sitting across from her in the kitchen, asking her again; almost accusing her. What did they think? There was nothing she could say that'd persuade them. You can never prove you didn't, she had realized. And in a smaller way, it would be the same with even her own. They wanted it behind them, to just move on. Proof of that, she supposed, was that her mother hadn't been asking her why she wanted to go out and apply for a job now. Maybe she understood now, the need to change in Eimear, to reach toward a new start.

She wondered again about the name. Surely to God they'd know now that she wasn't trying to disown them or anything, or that she wasn't gone cracked. It was the name she'd used when she was a little girl, for heaven's sake – they'd remember that, at least. Symbolic, that was the proper word: that's what she'd say.

The baby's giggles drew her out of her brooding. Róisín had a way with little ones and that was obvious: a real gift. Here she was now, with the baby and him laughing nearly, sputtering away.

She smiled and held her arms out. For a moment it felt as if she were holding them out to the fields and woods, the hills and sky.

“Here she is, your mammy,” cooed Róisín. “It's your mammy. Isn't she gorgeous, isn't she?”