Moving On

Reconciliation

Reconciliation

ON HER THIRTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY IN JULY, IN HER eighth month of pregnancy, the hospice nurse who had been dropping in every day for the past while told Ellen to prepare herself. ‘A week or so,’ she said, ‘two at the most.’ After she’d left, Ellen went into the dining room and sat by the bed there and looked down at the wasted face of her mother. She saw small jerking movements behind the closed eyelids, little twitches of the cracked, bloodless lips.

She reached out and touched a bony shoulder. ‘Mam,’ she whispered, and after her third attempt, the eyelids fluttered open.

‘Mam,’ she repeated, and then stopped, not knowing where to go next. Not knowing what she wanted to say, after years of saying nothing of any consequence.

She lifted a corner of the bedclothes and found her mother’s cold, white hand. She took it in both of hers and cradled it. ‘Mam,’ she said again, ‘I wasn’t always . . .’ stopping to push down a sob, beginning again ‘. . . I know I was hard on you after Dad left.’

Her mother’s gaze roamed about. Ellen had no idea whether she could still see. She hadn’t asked the nurse, afraid of the answer.

‘I’m . . . I just want to say I’m sorry, Mam. I treated you badly. I blamed you for everything.’

She felt, or thought she felt, a tiny pressure from the hand she held, a hardly-there pressing of fingers into her palm. Maybe it was another involuntary movement.

‘You did the best for us, for Joan and me. You did what you thought was right, and I couldn’t see that.’ Tears ran freely down Ellen’s face now, dripping onto the blankets. ‘I just wanted to say sorry, and thank you. Thank you, Mam.’

Her mother closed her eyes, and again Ellen felt a small movement from the hand she held. Had her words been heard, and if so, had they been understood? She sat on, listening to the shallow breathing, seeing how the ravaged body took up such little space in the bed, its bulk hardly affecting the line of the blankets.

Eventually she relinquished her mother’s hand and tucked it back in. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and decided the time had come to phone her father. He needed to know, whether he deserved it or not. She had to tell him – which meant she also had to tell Joan about their chance encounter.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Joan said. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.’

‘Sorry, Joan. I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear.’

There was silence on the line for a minute, and then Joan asked, in a different voice, ‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s still . . . himself.’

He was still their father. Whatever he’d done, he would always be that. She told Joan about the affair, and the child that had resulted from it, and there was more silence while Joan digested that.

‘Joan, I think I need to tell him about Mam. I think he should know.’ She braced herself for an angry retort, but it didn’t come.

‘Phone him,’ Joan said. ‘Tell him to come,’ so Ellen did, later that evening.

‘Ellen,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to hear from you.’

‘It’s Mam,’ Ellen said, and told him.

‘Oh,’ he said quietly. ‘Oh.’ She heard a catch in his breathing, and thought he might be crying.

‘Do you want to come and see her?’

‘I do.’

He arrived the next day, while Juliet was in playschool. He sat by the bedside of the woman he was still married to, and he bent towards her and spoke in words that Ellen, standing uncertainly in the doorway, couldn’t hear. She closed the door softly, and didn’t ask him anything when he emerged later, swollen-eyed.

They sat in the kitchen waiting for Joan to arrive from Cork. Ellen felt terribly conflicted, wanting so much to find the father she’d loved again, but needing now to forgive him too. She didn’t know where to start.

She told him about Leo’s infidelity, feeling an explanation was needed for her presence here.

‘I’m so sorry that happened.’

‘He’s the father of this baby too,’ she added. Even if she didn’t know how she felt about him, she realised that she didn’t want him to think her promiscuous. ‘He’ll still have contact with his children.’ She stopped. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘I know,’ he said quickly. ‘You’re doing a wonderful thing, looking after your mother.’

‘I owe her,’ Ellen replied deliberately. ‘I didn’t make life easy for her when you left. She was the one I blamed.’ When it should have been you. It sounded in her head, every bit as loudly as if she’d said it.

‘Can you forgive me?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied honestly. ‘I want to, but . . .’

‘If there’s anything I can do, tell me. If I can help in any way—’

She nodded. He was trying to make amends, she could see that. She must figure out how to meet him halfway.

When they saw Joan’s car pulling into the driveway her father went out to meet her, and when she stepped from the car Joan walked straight into the arms of the man she’d said she never wanted to see again, and they stood close together like that for a long time, as Ellen watched them through the kitchen window and thought about how complicated and unpredictable and devastating love was.