Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
Bernie
The baby wakes. It starts to snow. And we reach a row of the smartest, poshest houses I’ve ever seen. I bet folks pay top dollar just to breathe the air in a neighborhood like this.
“I need to do a wee-wee,” Elizabeth announces loudly. “It’s coming. It’s coming.”
“Don’t pee in the pram,” Marie shouts, sounding much older and wiser than her six years.
“Too late,” Elizabeth says, almost triumphantly.
I glance at the blanket wrapped around the baby. The soft pink has turned a wet, dark cerise and I’ve no doubt it’s soaked through to the bedding underneath. I lift Elizabeth out of the pram. She’s drenched from the waist down. I could cry and I think Maura knows it.
“Why don’t we all go inside out of the cold?” she says, untying her headscarf to reveal a perfectly styled blonde bob. I’d give my right arm for hair so perfect, and I wonder why anyone with a gift of such beauty would want to cover it up.
“We can get Elizabeth cleaned up, and I’ve some freshly baked apple tart just waiting to be shared,” Maura adds in a cheery singsong tone.
I’ve never had help with the kids. Not from anyone. Dan works all God’s hours and my family live at the far side of the country. I’m lucky to see my ma and sisters twice a year. Maura’s simple suggestion that she help me with a wet-knickered toddler is the kindest thing anyone has said to me in years, and try as I might, I can’t hold the tears back.
“Thank you. Thank you so much.” I sniffle.
Maura places her hand on my back and smiles. “Let’s get inside, eh?” She pulls a key from her bag, which is even fancier than her coat, and opens the door. The girls charge inside first and Maura helps me with the pram.
“Are you rich?” Marie asks when Maura closes the door behind us.
“Marie,” I scold, “don’t be rude.”
Maura’s lips curl into a subtle smirk, but she ignores the question as she leads us into a kitchen so large I think I could fit my whole flat inside. The walls are painted cool white and the lime green cupboards pop like something from a magazine. There’s even a fridge. Big and tall with some magnets stuck on the front. Maura opens it and places the bag of meat inside. Dan says you can keep all sorts fresh inside a refrigerator for days, even weeks. He says we’ll buy one just as soon as we’ve saved up some.
“Would you like something to drink?” Maura asks the girls. “I think I have some Coca-Cola in the cupboard.”
“What’s Coza-Cola?” Elizabeth says.
She turns to me and shoves the chewed and soggy stick from her lollipop into my hand, then draws the sleeve of her coat across her mouth. Some fluff sticks to her sugary lips.
“It’s fizzy pop,” Marie tells her, with a superior smugness. “I love Coza-Cola.”
“And where would you be drinking fizzy pop?” I ask, shoving the lollipop stick into my coat pocket and knowing I’ll regret it later when I have to fish it back out.
“School.”
I fold my arms and stare my daughter down. “Stick out your tongue.”
Marie’s confidence falters.
“Stick it out.”
Marie opens her mouth just the tiniest bit and pokes the tip of her tongue out.
“There. See. Black as coal,” I say. “That’s what fibbin’ gets you. A dirty black tongue.”
“I wanna see, I wanna see,” Elizabeth demands, tugging on Marie’s coat to turn her around.
Marie pulls her tongue back and her bottom lip quivers. “I don’t want a black tongue.”
“Well, no more fibs, then,” I say.
Maura covers her mouth and does a terrible job of hiding her amusement. “Is every day like this?” she asks.
“Like what?” I say, bending against a protesting round belly as I pull off Elizabeth’s shoes and then her wet tights and knickers.
“So busy,” she says, almost wistfully. “And so lovely.”
Elizabeth almost slips as she stands with one leg on the floor and the other wriggling away from sopping tights. I catch her arm and steady her and she looks up at me with a loving grin and a wrinkled button nose.
“Oopsie.” She giggles.
I lift Alice from the pram and sit her on the floor, telling Marie to watch her as usual. Then I rinse the wet clothes and the baby’s bedsheets in the sink while Maura heats some apple tart in the stove. She adds log after log to the stove and I think soon her kitchen will be as warm as a summer’s day.
“You can dry those here,” she says, pulling a fancy white clotheshorse into view.
She opens it like an accordion filling its lungs and hangs the clothes. I imagine what it would be like to have a fancy contraption like that in my flat, instead of some twine tied from one side of the kitchen to the other.
Maura plates up generous slices of tart and fills some cups with Coca-Cola, and the girls and I sit to the table. I bounce the baby on my knees as we eat and drink.
“This is lovely,” I say genuinely.
I’ve never tasted black fizzy pop before, but I don’t admit that out loud.
“More, please,” Elizabeth says, shoving her empty plate toward Maura.
“Elizabeth,” I scold, so sternly it makes the baby jump.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Maura says, on her feet again to cut another slice. “Christy and I can’t possibly manage all this on our own.”
“You made a tart this big just for the two of you?” I say, chasing crumbs around my plate with my finger and popping them into the baby’s mouth. She kicks her legs with approval.
Maura passes Elizabeth more tart and sits down. “I like baking,” she says, seeming delighted that my little girl is enjoying the treat so much. “It fills the hours.”
“You’ll have to give me the recipe,” I say, equally enjoying Elizabeth’s delight, although my happiness is short-lived. Apples are expensive and I’m not sure how often I could afford to make such a fancy tart. Nonetheless, I click my fingers and Marie fetches my scrapbook from the bottom of the pram. I flick it open, quickly finding the middle, where there are pages from cookery books torn out and stuck in and several other recipes already jotted down. There isn’t room for much more. When Maura passes me a pencil and begins to recite the recipe from memory, I make my writing as small as possible.
“Is it a recipe book?” Maura asks, pointing.
I smile. “Yes. And a photobook, and somewhere to keep my girls’ artwork. All the scraps that make up life as a McCarthy girl, I suppose.”
“That’s lovely,” Maura says with a longing sigh.
“Well, when your little one arrives you can start your own. A Davenport scrapbook. Although I’m sure you’re probably much too busy,” I say, glancing around her pristine kitchen with cupboards that gleam like shiny pennies.
A bright smile lights up her pretty face as she mulls the idea over and I wonder if she knows she’s rubbing her tummy again.
“I just wish the wait wasn’t so long,” she says.
“Do you miss working?” I ask.
Maura forces down a lump of tart that she hasn’t quite finished chewing and places her fork on the table, next to her plate. My question has upset or offended her, I can tell. I’m about to move on when she takes a deep breath and looks me in the eye.
“Yes,” she whispers as if the walls have ears. “I miss it a lot, if the truth be told. But I’m hoping all that will change once the baby comes.”
I take her hand and squeeze it gently as Alice squirms and demands I bounce her on my knees some more. Elizabeth is a half-dressed mess and Marie is not far behind as crumbs gather at the corners of her lips and on the collar of her coat, and yet their grubby faces, lit up with the joy of full bellies, fill my heart right up to the top.
“I can’t promise every day will be wonderful,” I say. “But there will be some wonderful moments in every day, that much I do know. It’s enough for me. I hope it will be for you too.”
“It will be, oh I just know it will be. I can’t wait to fill a scrapbook of my own,” Maura says, her eyes as bright and as full of innocence as my daughters’.
The girls become restless, beginning to fidget and spin and swing on their chairs.
“We should get going soon,” I say.
“But Elizabeth’s clothes aren’t dry yet. Stay. Please. Have more cake? Christy won’t be home for hours yet.”
“I couldn’t eat more if I tried,” I say, itching to open the button on the side of my skirt.
Maura’s face falls and my heart sinks. I look around the upmarket kitchen, out into the lush garden, and finally I bring my eyes back to settle on Maura’s expensive clothes and fancy haircut. At first glance you’d assume Maura was a woman with everything you could possibly wish for, and maybe she is, but what good is snazzy bric-a-brac if you’re full to the brim with loneliness?
“Girls, why don’t you go play outside?” I say, realizing that my curious daughters are listening with cocked ears to every word we say.
Marie looks over her shoulder and out the window, noticing for the first time that the green space behind us is an enclosed garden. A safe place to skip and jump and run. A place we don’t have outside our flat. She jumps down from her chair and grabs Elizabeth’s hand, almost toppling her over as she pulls her to her feet.
Maura glances at Elizabeth’s bare legs. “She’ll catch her death out there.”
“Ah, she’ll be fine. Running around will keep her warm.”
Maura doesn’t seem convinced. “What about some television?” she says. “Would you like to watch some telly, girls?”
“What a telly?” Elizabeth asks.
I look at Marie and wait for another smug explanation, but she’s stumped. Her eyes are wide and curious.
“What’s a television, Ma?” she says.
“It’s like a wireless, but you can see the people moving around inside the box.”
“There’s people in a box?” Marie’s delight is contagious and Elizabeth begins to jump up and down on the spot.
“I wanna see a box of people. I wanna see.”
Maura leads the girls out of the kitchen and soon I hear sound carrying through the walls, followed by the delighted squeals of my daughters.
“Thank you,” I say when Maura returns. “I think this might be their best day ever.”
Maura sits back down, picks up her fork, and takes a mouthful of tart. “I’m having a rather lovely day too.”