‘Yes, go.’ Why was she crying?
Because of the delayed arrival of Mom’s brother, Erin had to go back to Boston before Grandma’s funeral, and Dad went with her. Erin got very little holiday or bereavement leave, and Dad had itchy feet. Kathy was calling him constantly. Dad had business to attend to and church on Sunday. Mom was grateful to him for coming. I said goodbye to Dad and Erin at the airport drop-off. Dad said I should come home for a visit soon, and Erin said I could stay with her in New York. I didn’t commit. I had made my life in Ireland, lost touch with my friends. The Ruby I had left behind in Boston was not me. At least, I hoped not.
Uncle Dennis, when he eventually came, distracted Mom. It turned out that Mom and her brother had different experiences of Grandma. Dennis obviously wasn’t a planned baby, arriving eleven years after Mom. The way he told it, he didn’t get much warmth from his mother. Mom admitted that she had resented his intrusion into her life and especially when their dad died a year later of a sudden heart attack while on his way to the bus depot where he worked as a driver. The way Mom told it, Dennis took up all of Grandma’s time and, as he got older, Mom was put in charge of him as Grandma tried to reclaim her life. That was why Mom took a job as a nanny in the US, in Worcester. She was doing the job anyway; she might as well get paid for it and earn a little independence and money. Mom and Dennis resented each other, and Grandma resented Dennis for driving Mom away. My saintly image of Grandma dissipated as I learned more about her rejection of her son. No wonder he was an alcoholic. Every family was messed up in some way,generations of us. But it wasn’t genetic in my case. I was the one who broke my family.
The funeral went off without a hitch. The priest read a eulogy to a loving mother who capably brought up two children on her own after their father’s death. I caught Dennis and Mom exchanging looks. The church was half full. My friends Jane andSinéadcame as well as Nasrin and Jack. I was glad to see Jack. I accepted his apologies this time. I had lied to him and then acted offended. I was the dishonest one.
Of my friends, only Jack came to the burial and to the small reception I had organized in a hotel. I knew he was checking up on me. I passed him the glass of sparkling water I was drinking. ‘Taste it,’ I said, ‘no gin.’
‘Any vodka?’
‘No,’ I said firmly. He was the one who had relapsed. But I guess by then we both knew there was the foundation of a friendship. I’d have checked on him too, if I’d known about his mother dying, but he hadn’t told anyone.
A week later, Jack offered me some teaching work in his Academy. I was delighted. Lucy was eighteen months old and I needed to spend more time with adults. He asked me to devise a programme for first years. He warned me they were the trickiest. But he thought they might relate to me better because I wasn’t that much older than them.
By now over her ear infection, Lucy showed off her new head-over-heels skills to Jack. He cheered, clapped his hands, and she copied him.
Mom and Dennis established a relationship over those days and promised to keep in touch with each other. Grandma was in the ground and I was heartbroken, but also relieved in a way. Now only Mom knew the truth. And Milo.
34
A few weeks after Grandma’s funeral, out of the blue one day, Mom said, ‘I wonder what would happen now if you confessed.’
We were in my local playground, watching Lucy playing on the slide, clambering up the ladder, sliding down, clapping her hands and laughing, before running back to take her turn and climb the ladder again. We’d been up all night because she had a temperature. She showed no sign of it now, but I was exhausted and completely unprepared for this bombshell of a statement.
‘What do you mean?’ I said, though I knew.
‘Maybe they wouldn’t give a young mother a prison sentence, or maybe it would be a very short one.’ She stumbled over her words. She had been thinking about this. ‘We could go back. I’d be there if you were sentenced, to take care of Lucy. I’m sure they wouldn’t treat you so harshly. You were only sixteen years old.’
‘Mom, no –’
‘Do you ever think of Milo?’
‘Yes, of course –’
She cut me off. ‘Eight years. What would happen if you told the truth, Ruby?’
‘Why are you saying this now?’
She shifted on the bench so that she was facing me.
‘Mam’s gone. I don’t want to go back to Boston, but if I had to, I could. I’d confess my part too. Perhaps they’d only imprison me. I shouldn’t have panicked. I should have told yourfather. He would have done the right thing, even if it destroyed everything he’d built. I don’t think it’s too late to do the right thing, Ruby.’
I beckoned Lucy to come and join us. I needed to use her to show Mom what she was suggesting I sacrifice. She climbed easily on to my lap. ‘You’re not thinking straight. Dad would never forgive us; Milo would sue us. You said at the time, Dad would lose everything, and what if we were both jailed, what then, Mom?’
She started to cry. She’d been crying a lot since Grandma died. ‘We did a terrible thing, you and I,’ she said.
‘Mom, it wasn’t your fault. You did whatever you could to protect me. It was a mother’s instinct. I have a mother’s instinct too and it’s telling me to stay here with my daughter. There is no guarantee that either of us would get off with a light sentence.’
Lucy reached towards Mom and stroked the tears from her face. ‘Granny sad?’ she said.
‘Yes, and it’s Mamma’s fault.’ I wrapped her up in my coat and she was quiet. ‘Mom, I’m so sorry. Please don’t think about this any more. You’re not to blame. And, you know, there’s another way to look at this. They say that ninety per cent of rapists get away with it, either because the rapes are never reported in the first place or because they cannot be proven in court. It’s most often a case of her word against his. If one innocent man goes to prison, doesn’t that redress the balance a tiny bit? One or two wrongs don’t make a right, but maybe a thousand wrongs do?’
‘No. No, they don’t. I can’t force you to do the right thing and I can’t do the right thing without you.’
‘Mom, I’m sorry, but I can’t take the risk of losing my daughter.’
‘You never mentioned Erin, what it did to her.’
