Chapter 10
Aisling held the phone away from her ear as Mammy berated her for having given her a terrible fright. It seemed her husband having put his back out lugging a guest’s suitcase upstairs didn’t qualify as a medical emergency, despite Quinn’s groans from the sofa.
‘You’ve no idea the day I’ve been having, Aisling, and then you go and say something like that to me. I’m not a young woman anymore, you know. There’s my heart to think of.’
Aisling rolled her eyes. ‘Sure, you’ve the heart of an ox and you’re always after telling us you’ve the physical constitution of a woman half your age since Rosi got you doing the bendy yoga.’
‘Leave the smart remarks to your younger sister, Aisling. It doesn’t suit you. And it was after the yoga class this morning that Moira rang me on my mobile. I was having a grand day up until then — counting my joys instead of my woes, so I was.’
Moira had a lot to answer for, Aisling thought.
‘My day started well too.’ It had started with a bang, literally.
Just as well too, given the present state of her husband.
By the looks of him, she was facing a drought to rival the Sahara.
‘Then she started giving out to me about cornflakes. Mammy, there’re wars and disasters happening all over the world and there she is copping a face because of cornflakes. ’
‘Aisling O’Mara—’ Maureen began.
‘O’Mara-Moran, Mammy. How many times?’
There was a tsk-pffttt sort of noise down the line and Aisling pictured her mammy flapping her hand as though shooing something away.
‘The double-barrelled name is for the landed gentry. I hope Bronagh doesn’t run with Hanrahan-Walsh. ’Tis a mouthful. Do you hear me introducing myself as Maureen O’Mara-McCarthy? Or Rosemary Farrell saying, “Hello there, I’m Rosemary Farrell-Carrick”? No, you don’t.’
‘That’s because you’re both living in sin with your manfriends, Mammy.
The commitment ceremony you and Donal were after having on the cruise wasn’t an actual wedding.
Myself and Patrick are the only two family members who are legally wed in the eyes of the Church.
Bronagh will be too.’ It pained Aisling to paint her selfish eejit of a brother in a good light, but she’d a point to make.
She’d only added that last bit about the Church for sanctimonious effectiveness.
‘Oh, and when was the last time you were sitting in the confessional box telling Father Fitzpatrick all your sins then?’
Aisling mumbled something non-committal. She’d not stepped inside a church since baby Brianna’s baptism.
‘And your memory is terribly short, Aisling. Did you or did you not telephone me last week to blather on about how your sister never takes a loaf of bread out of the freezer when she’s after using the last slice for her toast?’
‘That’s altogether different, Mammy, because it means I’m after having to defrost a couple of slices for my lunchtime sambo and the bread always winds up hot and soggy. And don’t get me started on Tom and the toilet roll.’
‘I’ve had words with Donal over that myself. Anyway Moira was after telling me Bronagh’s mam, God love her, is giving her a headache. Apparently she’s insisting that sister of hers, Hilary, who lives in Tramore, should be her matron of honour.’
‘But her sister’s a selfish mare whom she hardly ever hears from.’
‘Exactly, Aisling. Moira told me it’s myself, Lenny’s sister Joan and you girls she’d like in her wedding party.’
‘Ooh, I haven’t been a bridesmaid since Patrick’s wedding.
I’d like to put a posh frock on again.’ Aisling drifted into a daydream in which she floated over the haloed flagstones of St Patrick’s Cathedral clad in dreamy green.
It set her colouring off a treat. No matter it didn’t do much for Moira and Rosi with their olive complexions and dark hair.
‘I think it’s a strong word in Bronagh’s ear that’s needed, and your sister’s too.’
‘Well, you’d be the right woman for the job where Bronagh’s concerned, Mammy. And can I take it you’re going to give Moira what for over her annoying habit with the bread?’
‘No, you can’t. It’s Roisin who’s needing the strong word.’
‘Roisin?’
‘You heard right.’
Aisling sensed a long story was on its way and dragged a chair over to listen.
Maureen began with, ‘After I got off the phone to Moira, I realised I’d left my house keys on the floor back at the studio. I travel light when I head to the bendy yoga class.’
‘Mammy, please don’t be saying things like “I travel light”. You’re not an American bikie hitting the road.’
‘Would you let me tell my story?’
‘Sorry.’
Eventually, after a long and winding road, Maureen’s story came to its conclusion. ‘Roisin has only decided to have a home birth.’
‘Really? Rather her than me. Although I’m not surprised. She is an earth-mother type. She would have had Noah at home if Colin hadn’t insisted on booking her into that private maternity home.’
‘Champagne tastes on beer money, that one.’
‘No money, more’s the point.’
‘No chin either, and that’s true enough.
Personally, I’d have pegged Moira as being the one out of the three of you to opt for a home birth with her always needing to be awkward, not our easy-ozy Rosi.
But the point of the matter is a home birth is not a good idea, what with your sister being a geriatric and the pumpkin-head gene running through the family. ’
‘Mammy, my babbies weren’t born with pumpkin heads. They’d very nice heads, thanks very much.’
‘A mother’s love is blind, Aisling. That’s the way God intended it. And they’ve grown into their heads lovely now, so they have.’
‘Listen, Mammy, with all that bendy yoga the baby’s liable to fall out. Don’t be worrying. And Rosi’s not that old.’
‘She is by medical standards and I am worried. There’re increased risks with labour at her age.’
Aisling twisted in her seat to check on the twins.
They were inching steadily closer to the sofa where their daddy was occasionally letting out a pitiful groan.
It was like watching two leopards on the savannah stalking a warthog, she thought, before quickly upgrading the warthog to an impala out of kindness to her husband. ‘Aoife, Connor. No. Leave Daddy be.’
Quinn’s face was contorted in pain, but his eyes were trained on his children as, between gritted teeth, he hissed, ‘Get back.’
Aisling wondered if she should make him a necklace of garlic and give him a crucifix while she was at it.
She frowned at her daughter, who hadn’t paid her the slightest bit of notice.
Aoife, with each passing week since she and her brother had become proficient crawlers and bottom-shufflers, was proving to be the ringleader when it came to getting up to shenanigans.
Connor was the sheep, happily following along.
They’d become adept at hauling themselves upright by holding onto furniture too, and it was only a matter of time now until they were up and running.
God help them all then, because nothing would be sacred.
Just last night she’d turned her back for a minute — a minute, like — only to find that, with the speed of Evel Knievel on hands and knees instead of a motorbike, they’d made it from the opposite side of the room to the coffee table.
Okay, so she took responsibility for leaving the bag of Snowballs lying open like so.
It was like leaving a bone lying about at Mammy and Donal’s and not expecting Pooh the poodle to snatch it.
Initially, she’d taken fright and had been about to holler for Moira and Tom, thinking her children were suffering an allergic reaction given their cheeks were swelled up like Noah’s gerbils.
Then she’d seen the coconut down their fronts.
Aisling would have liked to have laid the blame for the Snowball theft at her niece’s feet because, to date, she’d been the one to watch when it came to leaving food lying about.
Sometimes Aisling likened living in O’Mara’s family apartment with her younger sister and co.
to camping in an American national park.
Instead of signs saying, ‘Bear Country — Keep Food Stored Properly,’ theirs should read, ‘Kiera with a K Country — Keep Food Locked Away.’ Now it seemed she could add two more names to that signage.
As much as she’d have liked to point the finger at Kiera for being a bad influence, just as Moira had at her older sisters growing up, she couldn’t.
Kiera had been in the bath at the time. It was also becoming glaringly apparent Aoife had a mind of her own.
‘Aisling, are you still there?’
‘I was seeing what Aoife and Connor were up to Mammy, but I’ve a bone to pick with you about the amount of Tupperware you left behind when you moved out. I spend my life picking the stuff up off the kitchen floor.’
‘You’ve a small fortune sitting in your cupboards there — or on the floor. You know Donal likes to browse the Buy & Sell Ireland magazine?’
Aisling didn’t, but she said yes anyway.
‘Well, there’s always people wanting the vintage Tupperware. It goes for a pretty penny.’
Another groan sounded from the sofa.
‘Oh, never mind the Tupperware, Mammy. What should I do with Quinn?’
‘Well, leave off him with the bedroom demands for one thing, madam. Moira said the pair of you have been going at it like rabbits since the twins started sleeping through the night.’
‘Mammy!’
‘I’m just saying. You could start by making him a hot-water bottle and giving him two anti-inflammatories. The Deep Heat might help too.’
‘Ah no, not the Deep Heat again. I’ve only just got the wintergreen smell off the sofa, no thanks to Tom and Quinn.
But I will make him a hottie and I think we’ve still some tablets in the first-aid box.
Although the pair of them were eating them like lollies when they were training for the marathon. ’
‘So, we’re agreed then?’
‘On hotties and tablets, yes?’
‘No. On you and Moira talking some sense into your sister.’
Aisling couldn’t recall agreeing to that, but she’d been on the phone long enough. It was time she donned her nurse’s hat. ‘Fine, but I’ve got to go. Bye now, Mammy.’ She put the phone back in its charger and turned towards the sofa. ‘I’m coming, Quinn.’
‘Thank feck for that.’