But before I got to call James I had another treat in store for me on Monday morning.
My six-week, postnatal checkup with the doctor. The fun just never seemed to stop in my life.
This was a kind of symbolic, watershed type of event. It was a form of recognition that the birth had been a success. Sort of like the launch party they have after the release of a new film. Except at the party after the release of a new film, members of the cast and crew don’t have to go around putting their feet in stirrups and have strange men examine their private parts.
Not unless they really want to, of course.
Kate also had an appointment, at the Baby Clinic, so off the pair of us went in the car.
My parents had taken Kate to the clinic a couple of times already, so it was old hat to her. But I wasn’t really prepared for the cacophony of crying that greeted us on arrival. There seemed to be several thousand bawling babies with harassed and distraught mothers in the waiting room.
In fact, some of the mothers were crying louder than their children. “If only he’d stop crying,” one women was saying tearfully to no one in particular. “Just for five minutes.”
“My God,” I thought in horror. I suddenly realized how lucky I was.
Kate had her checkup before me, so I carried her in her car seat into the examination room. The nurse was a glamorous red-haired young woman from Galway. Why are nurses always good-looking and sexy?
I’m sure there’s some old legend that explains it.
Long, long ago there was a tribe of women who were excessively beautiful. The men were maddened by lust for them and they made all the other women feel inadequate and horrible. All kinds of riots and outbreaks of violence occurred. Homes broke up as previously happily married men fell in love with these babes. Women from the non-good-looking tribes killed themselves because they could never compete with these sirens.
Something had to be done.
So God decreed that all the good-looking women had to become nurses and wear truly awful lace-up shoes and revolting A-line dresses that make their butts look huge, so that their attractiveness would be toned down considerably. And to this very day good-looking women have to become nurses so that their beauty is diluted by the hideous uniforms. Although how this little fable of mine squares with supermodels and their revealing and flattering clothes, I’m at a loss to explain.
Anyway, never mind.
The nurse closed the door firmly behind us, but the noise of the roaring children in the waiting room was still perfectly audible, interspersed now and again with wails of “Just five minutes, that’s all I ask.”
“Doesn’t the noise drive you mad?” I asked her curiously.
“Not at all,” she said as she examined Kate. “I don’t even hear it anymore.”
Kate was so good, she didn’t even cry.
I was very proud of her.
I felt like opening the door and saying, in schoolmarm fashion, to all the children out there, “Look, this is how you’re supposed to behave. Observe this model child in here and imitate.”
I watched the nurse as she inspected Kate and her vital signs.
“She’s putting on weight just fine,” said the nurse.
“Thank you.” I beamed proudly.
“She’s a perfectly healthy baby.” The nurse smiled.
“Thank you,” I said again.
I opened the door to leave and a fresh wave of screeching sent me reeling.
We fought our way back through the throng of red-faced and yelling children. From what I could gather, a bunch of them were getting their shots and this was contributing to the general upset.
I picked my way carefully through the deafening crowd, carrying Kate.
As I thankfully closed the door on the racket behind me, the last thing I heard was that poor woman wailing “Even three minutes. I’d settle for three.”
Then we had to wait for a while until it was my turn to see the doctor. I read a copy of Woman’s Own that dated from sometime around the turn of the century (“Crinolines are definitely out this autumn”). Kate had a little sleep.
Eventually I was called and in we went.
The doctor was a nice old codger. Gray suit, gray hair, vague kindly manner.
“Hello, ah yes, Claire, yes Claire and baby er Catherine,” he said, reading from the notes on his desk. “Come in and sit down.”
After a moment he looked up at the chair in front of him and when I wasn’t there his glance darted anxiously around the room, wondering where I had gone.
I had placed Kate’s car seat on the floor and I was over at the examining couch with my underwear off and my feet in the stirrups with a speed that left his head spinning.
Old habits die hard.
The next time I’d have to go to the doctor, no matter what my complaint, from an earache to a sprained wrist, I’d be hard-pressed to stop myself from whipping off my underwear and clambering up onto the couch.
The doctor did whatever it was he did, involving that old friend of mine, the lubricated glove.
I’m sorry if I’m being revolting.
There was a time when I would have felt faint at even the thought of having a Pap smear. But after being pregnant and giving birth, I think I could have a hysterectomy under just local anesthetic and still be sitting up and cheerfully discussing last night’s TV with the surgeon.
Hell, why bother with the anesthetic?
“You’ve healed beautifully,” he told me, making it sound like a great achievement.
“Thank you,” I said, glowing, smiling up at him from between my legs.
I felt as though I was five years old and had got all my math homework right at school.
“Yes, no complications there at all,” he continued. “Has all the bleeding stopped yet?”
(sorry about this, I won’t go on about it for long.)
“Yes, it stopped about a week ago,” I told him.
“And the stitches have healed perfectly,” he said, continuing to peer and poke.
“Thank you.” I smiled again.
“Right, you can get down now,” he told me.
“So is everything else all right?” he asked as I got dressed.
“Fine,” I said. “Fine.”
“Um, when can I have sex again?” I suddenly blurted out.
(Now why did I ask that?)
“Well, your six weeks are up, so anytime you like,” he said genially.
“You could start right now.” He threw back his head and guffawed loudly.
Then he stopped abruptly as—I assume—visions of the medical council hearings and motions to have him fired began to swim before him.
There’s a very fine line between an acceptable bedside manner and a lewd suggestion. Perhaps Dr. Keating hadn’t quite grasped the difference yet.
“Ahem,” he said, calming himself down. “Yes, anytime you like.”
“Will it hurt?” I asked anxiously.
“It may feel a little bit uncomfortable at first, but it shouldn’t feel painful as such. Ask your husband to be particularly gentle with you.”
“My husband?” I asked the doctor, in surprise.
I hadn’t even been thinking of my husband.
“Yes, your husband,” he said, sounding equally surprised. “You are a married woman, aren’t you, Mrs., ah, Mrs. Webster,” he said, consulting my notes.
“Yes, of course I am,” I said, blushing. “But I was, er, you know, just making general inquiries. I wasn’t actually planning on having intercourse with anyone.” I thought if I said the word intercourse instead of the word sex it might help to neutralize this embarrassing and awkward atmosphere that seemed to have suddenly developed.
“Oh,” he said baldly.
Silence and Dr. Keating’s bewilderment hung heavy in the air.
Time to leave, I thought.
Come on, Kate.
“How did it go?” asked Mum as she answer
ed the door to us.
“Fine,” I said. “Fine. Kate’s putting on weight nicely, the nurse says.”
“And how are you?” she asked.
“Couldn’t be better, apparently,” I said. “I’m in tip-top condition. I’ve a vagina to be proud of.”
Mum gave me a look of distaste.
“There’s no need to be vulgar,” she tisked at me.
“I wasn’t being vulgar,” I protested.
“Come and have a cup of tea with me before Neighbours comes on,” said Mum.
“Er, did anyone call for me while I was out?” I inquired of her, oh-so-casually, as I traipsed behind her into the kitchen.
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Why, who were you expecting to call?” she asked, looking at me closely.
“No one,” I said, setting Kate’s car seat down on the kitchen table.
“Well, why did you ask, in that case?” she said in a tone of voice which reminded me that, however much she might act like one, my mother was no fool.
“And take the child off the table!” she said, whacking my arm with a tea towel. “People have to eat off that.”
“She’s perfectly clean!” I protested, outraged.
How dare she.
So Adam hasn’t called, I mused as I drank my tea. I wondered if he was still annoyed with me. Maybe he was never going to call me again. Not that I’d have blamed him, with me behaving all neurotic and argumentative.
And I didn’t have his number, so I couldn’t call him.
So that was probably the end of that.
The fling that never was.
The passionate affair that was never consummated.
The soulmates who were divided by circumstances.
The lovers who loved from afar.
Although then again it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.
Give the guy a chance.
But he didn’t call.
I hung around all afternoon feeling bored and dissatisfied.
I didn’t want to do anything.
I couldn’t be bothered reading.
And Kate was whining and crying and I didn’t feel very patient with her.
I halfheartedly watched the afternoon soaps with Mum, because I couldn’t come up with a good reason for why I shouldn’t.
I think I would have preferred to sit through several third- rate Antipodean dramas, with the same actors reappearing in each successive program, than get into another conversation with Mum on how my university education had made me a snob.
And she knew that something was wrong.
“You’re very gloomy-looking,” she said.
(Although her actual words were “Claire, you’re like a tree over a blessed well.”)
“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?” I snapped back.
“Sorry,” she said. “God knows it’s not easy for you.”
Well, she was quite right, it was not. But she was obviously referring to my situation with James. And not my lack of one with Adam.
“No, I’m sorry,” I told her, feeling rotten for biting her head off.
It was six o’clock and Dad’s key was in the door before I realized with horror that I hadn’t called James.
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
I really had meant to do it but because of all the things going on—the big event of going to the doctor and the major event of Adam’s not calling—I had just totally forgotten.
I resolved to do it first thing in the morning.
The debacle that was dinnertime took my mind off things for a while.
Helen came home with Dad and was demanding McDonald’s.
“No, Helen,” shouted Dad. “We only eat McDonald’s on holidays.”
“Well that’s stupid,” she shouted back. “Other families, normal families, eat there on ordinary days.”
Oh, but she could be very cruel.
So the upshot was that Helen got her way as usual and Dad drove off like a Grand Prix driver with a long and complicated order to McDonald’s.
Helen roared after him, “No pickles on the Quarter Pounder!”
But he was already gone.
I shamelessly latched onto Helen for most of the evening, hoping that she might say something about Adam. Of course, I could have taken the bull by the horns and just asked her for his number, seeing as she wasn’t going out with him or anything. But I still couldn’t bring myself to do it. Although I had established that he had no interest in her, I wasn’t at all sure how Helen felt about him.
After dinner, which by the way, poor Dad had got all wrong—pickles on Mum’s apple pie, cheeseburgers instead of Quarter Pounders with cheese (which, of course, gave rise to the accusation of “Cheapskate”), Coke instead of diet Coke—Dad ordered Helen to go to her room and study.
Poor Dad.
He must have been doing some kind of assertiveness training.
Amazingly enough, Helen went with only the most cursory of protests.
She called Dad a bastard and made references to the regime in the house being similar to the one in Nazi Germany. But she actually went to her room.
That was nothing short of miraculous.
I gave her a few minutes, then I took Kate and we went up and knocked on her door. There was a major scuffling. She seemed to be stuffing something down the side of the bed.
“Oh Jesus, Claire, don’t do that! I thought you were Dad,” she exclaimed, her eyes big and wide in her white face.
She retrieved a magazine called True Crimes or something similar from the gap between her bed and the wall.
“Do you ever study?” I asked her with curiosity.
“Noooooh,” she said scornfully.
“What’ll you do if you fail?” I asked her as I sat on the bed.
“Here, give me her,” said Helen, taking Kate from my arms.
“I won’t fail,” she continued.
“How do you know?”
“I just know,” she assured me.
Oh God, to have had her confidence.
“So how’s college?” I asked her, willing her to talk about Adam.
“Fine,” she said, looking surprised by my interest.
She said nothing at all about Adam.
And really, I couldn’t, just couldn’t, ask.
Then I heard the phone ring.
The first time it had rung all day. I was off that bed and down those stairs like greased lightning. Thank God I hadn’t asked Helen for Adam’s number, I congratulated myself in relief. I would have given the game away entirely and now there was no need!
“Hello,” I said, trying to sound pleasant and unneurotic and apologetic all at the same time.
Sorry, Adam, I’ll never be mean to you again.
“Yes, hello, can I speak to Jack Walsh?” said a voice.
My first thought was why on earth did Adam want to talk to Dad.
But then I realized that it wasn’t Adam at all on the phone.
The bastard!
How dare he!
Getting me to practically break my neck coming down those stairs only for him not to be him at all.
“Yes, hold on Mr. Brennan. I’ll get him for you,” I said.
And I trudged miserably back up the stairs.
A lot slower than I had come down.
I went back into Helen.
I was suitably humbled.
I still had every need of her.
She was playing with Kate and didn’t see fit to comment on my death-de-fying flight down the stairs. That was one of the great things about being with someone as selfish as Helen. She so rarely took notice of anything that wasn’t happening to her.
Just then Anna arrived, all flowing hair and traipsy skirt and vague expression on her face.
I was delighted to see her. We hadn’t crossed paths since sometime the previous week. She tramped across Helen’s pink and fluffy bedroom in the boots that were breaking Mum??
?s heart and sat down beside us on the bed.
Out of her bag (embroidered, covered in mirrors and beads) she took about a hundred bars of chocolate and proceeded to efficiently eat her way through them.
I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
I could only assume that it was drug-related in some way. “Anna, do you have the…um…the munchies?” I asked, feeling like an old fuddy-duddy.
“Um,” she said through a mouth that was crammed to capacity with chocolate.
“Gerumph!” She gesticulated angrily as Helen started ripping papers off the bars and practically inhaling them whole.
“Get your own, Helen,” she finally managed, as her mouth was moment-arily empty.
“Just give me this Mars and a Milky Way and I won’t take any more,”
said Helen.
Lying, of course.
Anna agreed.
Poor Anna.
I spent the rest of the evening thrown on Helen’s bed, eating chocolate, half listening to the good-natured bickering between Helen and Anna, waiting for Adam to call.
But, guess what, he didn’t.
It doesn’t matter, I told myself, he didn’t say he would call me. He’s bound to call tomorrow. He’ll definitely call in the next few days, I tried to comfort myself. It’s obvious that he really likes you.
But underneath all my bravado I knew he wouldn’t call.
I don’t know how I knew, I just did.
Obviously my ability to sense approaching disaster had improved slightly since James left me.
The practice must have helped.
nineteen
The next morning the house was like Grand Central Station.
Helen was going to Belfast for two days on a college trip and obviously believed that her preparations should not only be a last-minute affair but should also be a family event.
Instead of being woken by Kate, I woke to the sound of stealthy rustling at the foot of my bed. Someone was in my room and up to no good. I sat up sleepily.
“Who’s that?” I yawned.
It was Helen.
I might have known.
She was making for the door with an armful of my new clothes.
“Oh, Claire!” she said, jumping guiltily as she dropped one of my new boots on the floor. “I thought you were asleep.”
“So I see,” I said dryly. “Now put them back.”