And I felt so, so relieved to have met a man as benevolent as Garv was.
But some people went a bit weird when we got engaged. Emily, in particular. ‘I’m afraid you’re playing it safe by marrying him,’ she said.
‘I thought you liked him!’ I said, wounded.
‘I love him. But you got so badly burned by Delaney, and Garv is so cracked about you… Look, I just want you to be sure. Just think about it.’
I promised I would, but I didn’t because I knew what I wanted.
So we got married, moved to Chicago, moved back to Dublin, got the rabbits, started trying for a baby, had one miscarriage, had a second miscarriage, then watched my past come back to haunt us.
For a long time, I was the only person I knew who’d had an abortion. Then, when she was twenty-five, Donna had one and Sinead’s sister had one when she was thirty-one. Both times I was called on to relate how it was for me and I told them honestly what I thought: it was their body and they had the right to choose. They shouldn’t give any credence to those pro-life bullies. But – at least if they were anything like me –they shouldn’t expect to emerge unscathed from the experience, but should brace themselves for fall-out. Every emotion from guilt to curiosity, shock to regret, self-hatred to wretched relief.
Though I was glad no longer to be the only one, both those terminations churned up memories, so I almost felt as if I’d gone through it all again. But it passed and, mostly, I lived with being someone who’d had an abortion. As the years went by, I thought about it less. Except for every anniversary, when I felt awful, sometimes without even realizing why, at least not immediately. Then I’d remember the date and understand, and wonder what the baby would be like now, aged three, six, eight, eleven…
But I thought it had been absorbed safely into my past –until that last visit to Dr Collins, the day of reckoning, when I had to vent the worry that had been gnawing away at me.
‘Could I keep miscarrying because… because… I’ve damaged myself?’
‘In what way, damaged yourself?’
‘By an operation?’
‘What kind of operation? A termination?’
I flinched at his bluntness. ‘Yes,’ I mumbled.
‘Unlikely. Very unlikely. We can check but it’s highly unlikely’
But I didn’t believe him and I knew Garv didn’t either, and though we never discussed it, that was the very moment our marriage keeled over and died.
Some time later – I don’t know how long – the phone rang in the darkness of Emily’s front room; I had no intention of getting it. I let it ring, waiting for the machine to pick up, but someone had switched it off so, cursing, I dragged myself over to the phone.
The second I answered, I remembered Emily’s ban and said a silent prayer that it wouldn’t be Larry the Savage. But it was Shay.
‘Oh, hi.’ He sounded surprised. ‘I thought I’d get the machine.’
‘Well, you got me instead.’
‘I’m real sorry about tonight.’ He sounded so contrite that my bitterness began to melt. ‘It was a work thing, it came up suddenly.’
‘You could have rung me.’
‘Too late,’ he said easily. ‘You would have already left.’
‘You’re going back on Tuesday?’
‘Yeah, so we’re out of time.’
‘But there’s tomorrow. Or tomorrow night?’
‘Bu–’
‘Just for an hour or so.’
He was silent and I was holding my breath. ‘OK,’ he finally said. ‘Tomorrow night, then. Same arrangement.’
I put down the phone feeling marginally better and decided to pop next door and see how the barbecue was going. To my great pleasure, I was given a hero’s welcome, as though it was years since they’d seen me, instead of a few short hours. Then it dawned on me that they were all scuttered; red-faced and rowdy, exhibiting the kind of aggressive drunkenness engendered by drinking tequila on an empty stomach. The smouldering grill was abandoned and a dozen shrunken, blackened things that might once have been burgers lay upon it. When Dad sidled up and asked if I’d any chocolate in my handbag, it transpired that no one had been fed.
Troy and Helen were curled up on the flowery couch, looking very cosy; there was no sign of Kirsty. Either Troy hadn’t brought her, or she’d refused to enter the house on the grounds that it was a health hazard. Anna, Lara, Luis, Curtis and Emily were ensnared in a hard-to-follow discussion on the merits of brunch over TV. I would have liked to join in but I was so patently on a different wavelength to everyone else, i.e. not psychotic drunk, that it was pointless.
‘You get freshly squeezed orange juice with brunch,’ Lara said hotly. ‘When has your TV ever done that for you?’
‘But you can watch The Simpsons on TV. Gimme that over French toast any day,’ Curtis retorted.
I wandered away, over to Mum and Ethan, but they were toe-to-toe in a barney.
‘Who died for our sins?’ Mum asked shrilly.
‘But–’
‘Who died for our sins?’
‘Hey–’
‘Tell me, come on, tell me. Who died for our sins? Just give me the name.’ It was like being in an interrogation cell. ‘His name, please!’
Ethan hung his head and mumbled, ‘Jesus.’
‘Who? Louder, I can’t hear you.’
‘Jesus,’ Ethan said angrily.
‘That’s right, Jesus.’ Mum almost smacked her lips with satisfaction. ‘Did you die for anyone’s sins? Well, did you?’
‘No, but–’
‘So you can hardly go around being the new Messiah, can you?’
After a pause, Ethan admitted, ‘No, I suppose not.’
‘You suppose right. Carry on with your computer studies, like a good lad, and less of the blasphemy, if you don’t mind.’ Then she turned the force of her personality on to me and slurred, ‘Where’s Shay?’
‘Working.’
‘Ah, feck,’ she said moodily, lurching away.
I went and sat with the others, and then we noticed that Troy and Helen had disappeared.
‘Where are they?’ Emily clutched me.
‘I don’t know. Gone, it looks like.’
‘Gone,’ she wailed, clapping a hand over her mouth. ‘Gone! He’s going to fall in love with her.’ Her face crumpled with sudden, drunken tears and she was snorting and coughing from crying. When she hadn’t stopped a full five minutes later I said, ‘C’mon, I’ll take you home,’ and led her, bent almost double from hopeless sobbing, back to her own house.
But some people went a bit weird when we got engaged. Emily, in particular. ‘I’m afraid you’re playing it safe by marrying him,’ she said.
‘I thought you liked him!’ I said, wounded.
‘I love him. But you got so badly burned by Delaney, and Garv is so cracked about you… Look, I just want you to be sure. Just think about it.’
I promised I would, but I didn’t because I knew what I wanted.
So we got married, moved to Chicago, moved back to Dublin, got the rabbits, started trying for a baby, had one miscarriage, had a second miscarriage, then watched my past come back to haunt us.
For a long time, I was the only person I knew who’d had an abortion. Then, when she was twenty-five, Donna had one and Sinead’s sister had one when she was thirty-one. Both times I was called on to relate how it was for me and I told them honestly what I thought: it was their body and they had the right to choose. They shouldn’t give any credence to those pro-life bullies. But – at least if they were anything like me –they shouldn’t expect to emerge unscathed from the experience, but should brace themselves for fall-out. Every emotion from guilt to curiosity, shock to regret, self-hatred to wretched relief.
Though I was glad no longer to be the only one, both those terminations churned up memories, so I almost felt as if I’d gone through it all again. But it passed and, mostly, I lived with being someone who’d had an abortion. As the years went by, I thought about it less. Except for every anniversary, when I felt awful, sometimes without even realizing why, at least not immediately. Then I’d remember the date and understand, and wonder what the baby would be like now, aged three, six, eight, eleven…
But I thought it had been absorbed safely into my past –until that last visit to Dr Collins, the day of reckoning, when I had to vent the worry that had been gnawing away at me.
‘Could I keep miscarrying because… because… I’ve damaged myself?’
‘In what way, damaged yourself?’
‘By an operation?’
‘What kind of operation? A termination?’
I flinched at his bluntness. ‘Yes,’ I mumbled.
‘Unlikely. Very unlikely. We can check but it’s highly unlikely’
But I didn’t believe him and I knew Garv didn’t either, and though we never discussed it, that was the very moment our marriage keeled over and died.
Some time later – I don’t know how long – the phone rang in the darkness of Emily’s front room; I had no intention of getting it. I let it ring, waiting for the machine to pick up, but someone had switched it off so, cursing, I dragged myself over to the phone.
The second I answered, I remembered Emily’s ban and said a silent prayer that it wouldn’t be Larry the Savage. But it was Shay.
‘Oh, hi.’ He sounded surprised. ‘I thought I’d get the machine.’
‘Well, you got me instead.’
‘I’m real sorry about tonight.’ He sounded so contrite that my bitterness began to melt. ‘It was a work thing, it came up suddenly.’
‘You could have rung me.’
‘Too late,’ he said easily. ‘You would have already left.’
‘You’re going back on Tuesday?’
‘Yeah, so we’re out of time.’
‘But there’s tomorrow. Or tomorrow night?’
‘Bu–’
‘Just for an hour or so.’
He was silent and I was holding my breath. ‘OK,’ he finally said. ‘Tomorrow night, then. Same arrangement.’
I put down the phone feeling marginally better and decided to pop next door and see how the barbecue was going. To my great pleasure, I was given a hero’s welcome, as though it was years since they’d seen me, instead of a few short hours. Then it dawned on me that they were all scuttered; red-faced and rowdy, exhibiting the kind of aggressive drunkenness engendered by drinking tequila on an empty stomach. The smouldering grill was abandoned and a dozen shrunken, blackened things that might once have been burgers lay upon it. When Dad sidled up and asked if I’d any chocolate in my handbag, it transpired that no one had been fed.
Troy and Helen were curled up on the flowery couch, looking very cosy; there was no sign of Kirsty. Either Troy hadn’t brought her, or she’d refused to enter the house on the grounds that it was a health hazard. Anna, Lara, Luis, Curtis and Emily were ensnared in a hard-to-follow discussion on the merits of brunch over TV. I would have liked to join in but I was so patently on a different wavelength to everyone else, i.e. not psychotic drunk, that it was pointless.
‘You get freshly squeezed orange juice with brunch,’ Lara said hotly. ‘When has your TV ever done that for you?’
‘But you can watch The Simpsons on TV. Gimme that over French toast any day,’ Curtis retorted.
I wandered away, over to Mum and Ethan, but they were toe-to-toe in a barney.
‘Who died for our sins?’ Mum asked shrilly.
‘But–’
‘Who died for our sins?’
‘Hey–’
‘Tell me, come on, tell me. Who died for our sins? Just give me the name.’ It was like being in an interrogation cell. ‘His name, please!’
Ethan hung his head and mumbled, ‘Jesus.’
‘Who? Louder, I can’t hear you.’
‘Jesus,’ Ethan said angrily.
‘That’s right, Jesus.’ Mum almost smacked her lips with satisfaction. ‘Did you die for anyone’s sins? Well, did you?’
‘No, but–’
‘So you can hardly go around being the new Messiah, can you?’
After a pause, Ethan admitted, ‘No, I suppose not.’
‘You suppose right. Carry on with your computer studies, like a good lad, and less of the blasphemy, if you don’t mind.’ Then she turned the force of her personality on to me and slurred, ‘Where’s Shay?’
‘Working.’
‘Ah, feck,’ she said moodily, lurching away.
I went and sat with the others, and then we noticed that Troy and Helen had disappeared.
‘Where are they?’ Emily clutched me.
‘I don’t know. Gone, it looks like.’
‘Gone,’ she wailed, clapping a hand over her mouth. ‘Gone! He’s going to fall in love with her.’ Her face crumpled with sudden, drunken tears and she was snorting and coughing from crying. When she hadn’t stopped a full five minutes later I said, ‘C’mon, I’ll take you home,’ and led her, bent almost double from hopeless sobbing, back to her own house.
