4
It was going to be one of those days. I kneaded my forehead as I stood at the nurses’ station at the end of the hallway on the third floor of the clinic. I could already feel a headache brewing behind my eyes—and the fluorescent lighting didn’t help.
“You OK, Kate?” asked Shelly, another nurse who worked on the wards with me.
“Ah, just a bit of a sinus headache,” I replied. I had horrible sinus problems that were always exacerbated by changes in weather. On damp days like these, my head felt like it was about to explode. Nothing to do about it, though, except pop some ibuprofen and get on with things. Certainly couldn’t stay at home and rest up—I had bills to pay.
The latest of which, I guessed, was also contributing to the headache. Only that morning, I’d learned that the car insurance on the Astra had almost doubled for this year—simply because it was an older model. And since I didn’t have the funds to upgrade, I would have to pay what amounted to a king’s ransom just to stay on the road. “Don’t mind me.” I smiled, changing the subject. “I’d better check on Mrs. Smyth in 304. She was complaining earlier about her back hurting—I’m worried that she’s been in that bed so long she might start getting bedsores.”
Shelly smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “You take it easy for a minute, I’ll do it.” She headed off down the hallway, her shoes squeaking, and I was unaccountably grateful for great colleagues and a healthy work environment.
It would have been so easy (and perhaps even sensible) after Greg’s death for me and Rosie to pack up our lives and move back to my hometown in West Cork. But despite my parents’ insistence, I couldn’t do it—not least because in a largely rural area, it would be nigh on impossible to pick up a part-time nursing position that would allow me to work around Rosie’s school times, but also because I wanted to retain some sense of day-to-day normality for my daughter.
Despite being newcomers, our little family had slowly but surely begun to make a life in Knockroe—Rosie had made friends in preschool who would also be attending Applewood, and I didn’t want to wrench every last piece of joy and stability from her life.
Granted a rented house wasn’t the best situation long-term, but our landlord—a former Knockroe native who now lived in the city—was fair about the rent and quick to respond to any maintenance issues. My colleagues and superiors at Glencree Clinic had also been invaluably sympathetic and helpful immediately after Greg’s death, so even though sometimes it might have been helpful to have family close by, all in all, the balance was tipped in favor of staying put.
And as Rosie had come on in leaps and bounds since she started school, and was almost back to the sunny, good-natured child she’d been before her father’s demise, I figured I’d made the right decision.
The Easter holidays were a case in point, where we’d had the loveliest time together during the break, and my daughter was the happiest I’d seen her in ages. We’d gone hiking in the woods, taken a trip to the zoo and spent one very memorable day at a dinosaur expo in the Royal Dublin Society, which, of course, was right up her street.
I smiled then, remembering Rosie’s eyes immediately light up at the sight of the dino-exhibits area—life-size renderings of all her favorite prehistoric beasts. She’d been rapt with excitement at the displays and giggled uproariously when a mechanical Dilophosaurus flashed his frills and sprayed us both with water as we passed by.
We’d spent a full hour brushing sand and uncovering “lost bones” in the archaeological dig, and I listened gobsmacked as my five-year-old argued robustly with one of the attendants about how the latest Jurassic Park movie had gotten so many details wrong about a monster I’d never even heard of, let alone could pronounce the name of. Though the tickets for the exhibit had been costly, my daughter’s shining eyes and bouncy gait that day, and even for the rest of that week, meant it had been worth every penny.
I truly had my little girl back.
And now, as the worst seemed finally behind us, I was determined that we should have lots more enjoyable mother/daughter days to look forward to and, depending on finances, maybe even think about taking a real holiday next summer or the one after.
I checked the clock then and realized it was getting close to the end of my duty shift at two o’clock. It was nice to be finished early afternoon, but it wasn’t as if I didn’t have other “duties” of sorts to attend to.
I took Rosie swimming on Wednesdays, and on Thursday nights she had ballet practice. So I knew that I would spend those evenings talking sequins and writing frighteningly big checks alongside the other Knockroe mothers while my daughter practiced her Grand Pliés.
Not that I minded, really (apart from the big checks, of course). It was about the only “girlie” pursuit that Rosie enjoyed—and she was far more graceful than I had ever been at her age. It was just challenging having to play double duty all the time. Greg always used to make sure dinner was on the table no matter what time I got home, and I missed those days. I missed him.
Quickly moving through a final checklist for rounds, I waved goodbye to Shelly as she emerged from Mrs. Smyth’s room.
“We’re all fine here,” she said, giving me a thumbs-up. “Try to take it easy tonight with that sinus thing, and see you tomorrow.”
It only took fifteen minutes to drive from Glencree to pick Rosie up from school. After parking outside Applewood, I left the car running and headed for the gate. Sure enough, my daughter soon pranced over—wearing her boots today, good girl. I gathered her into a quick hug and then hustled her to the car. Buckling her into her booster seat, I kissed one of her pink cheeks. “You’re going to match your ballet tutu if you get any rosier.” I smiled. “So what’s up, buttercup? How’d today go?”
A world-weary sigh. “Clara Cooper went home sick this time. After big break. She was coughing and sneezing all morning, and when we were sitting together for reading time, I told her that she had spots on her neck—here.” Rosie paused, pointing to an area just below her neck at the top of her chest. “I said that she better go tell Ms. Connelly because of Ellie and the chicken pox. Kevin started making fun of her then. He can be so mean.”
I nodded in sympathy. “You did the right thing, and take no notice of Kevin. Even if Clara shouldn’t really be at school if she’s sick,” I added, mostly to myself.
Clara Cooper, daughter of the town’s mini-celebrity Madeleine Cooper, with her popular blog or forum or whatever they called it. A self-confessed “Mad Mum” according to the humorous articles and photographs she posted. Though I couldn’t call myself an avid follower, I’d caught a couple of her TV appearances and radio slots and liked her no-nonsense, slightly madcap approach to motherhood. Her philosophy was that women shouldn’t be too hard on themselves by taking it all so seriously and overthinking every aspect. And while I admired the sentiment, I guess it’s easier to apply such a motto when you have a partner with whom to share the load.
Though I didn’t know the woman particularly well, I liked Madeleine; she was one of the people in the community who’d reached out to me in the immediate aftermath of Greg’s death, not just to offer condolence but genuine assistance. Where so many others seemed uncomfortable around me—afraid even—Madeleine had even given me her phone number and urged me to call her for a gossip, cry, anything at all, and I appreciated that.
Still, I’m sure the teachers at Applewood didn’t appreciate her sending her child to school with a contagious illness, especially when she worked from home. It was one thing to be laissez-faire; quite another altogether to be willfully careless.
Then I thought of something I’d heard in the background at work this morning, a promo on breakfast TV about a later show on the same channel... Madeleine Cooper had been mentioned as one of today’s panelists on Morning Coffee.
Now I got it. Clara’s sickly form and that morning’s impending live TV appearance must have put poor Madeleine in a bind, and I felt lousy for assuming that just because she didn’t physically clock in for work somewhere meant she wouldn’t have the same parenting balls to juggle as the rest of us.
“Yep, poor Clara had an awful cough, and her face looked hot. She really shouldn’t have come to school at all, I think,” Rosie added sagely.
I looked at my five-and-half-year-old, marveling at how wise she was for her age. Again, she reminded me of Greg in that regard. He was always so finely tuned in to everything that was happening around him and very little fazed him.
“Yep. Sounds like she might have caught the pox all right.” I sent some goodwill little Clara Cooper’s way and hoped it was a mild enough case.
* * *
The next few days seemed to fly by in a blur.
On Thursday afternoon, I hustled Rosie home from school, sat with her through homework while also simultaneously preparing a lamb tagine recipe that I had come across on Pinterest the other night. I could put it on and it would be ready for us by the time we got back from ballet later.
She hadn’t eaten much of that day’s lunch and had also refused a snack before we left, so would surely be starving later.
Now I pointed her in the direction of her room so she could get ready for class.
“Make sure you bring a cardie for your arms, sweetheart. It’s always chilly in the studio,” I called up after her.
Looking around the kitchen, I grabbed my checkbook and iPad and threw them both in the way-too-big handbag I carried with me everywhere. Child-free women used bags like this as accessories, while those with kids knew that there was no way to get through the day without a surplus of supplies within arm’s reach. I idly remembered Madeleine Cooper posting something about this one time, except she presented it in a far more humorous and creative way than I ever could.
Moments later, Rosie was ready and we were off. I was feeling in good spirits; I simply loved the days where my organization skills paid off and I didn’t have to run from one commitment to the next like a frantic lunatic. Sometimes I was really on top of my game.
Sometimes.
Upon entering the ballet studio a little way outside town, Rosie and I were met with a flurry of activity. My daughter was pulled in the direction of the practice area by her friends, and I was shuttled to a waiting area where mothers, and the odd father, watched through glass at their whirling-dervish daughters.
“Kate—over here!”
I turned toward the sound of a familiar voice and saw the frizzy red hair of Lucy Murphy: unofficial mayor of Knockroe (by way of the fact that everyone knew her) and one of the few friends I’d made locally. We’d met when our daughters attended the same preschool.
Lucy was a stay-at-home mum and a couple of years my senior. Her husband, Dennis, worked in insurance in Dublin and she had two daughters, Stephanie and Laura. Laura was a few months older than Rosie and a year ahead of her at school, while Stephanie was a couple of years older again.
“Hi, Lucy,” I said, greeting her warmly.
“Great to see you, love,” she said, coming in for a small hug before she got straight down to business. “I’m collecting donations for the recital costumes.” (Of course she was.) “Though I fear for Jennifer, let me tell you, her first choice on the outfits was just way too revealing. Can you imagine? They’re five-year-olds!”
I nodded and murmured my agreement. Jennifer was one of the instructors at the dance studio, and her taste in recital gear was a bit more...liberal than most. While I tended to side with Lucy as it related to what my daughter was going to wear when she strutted her stuff on the stage in front of friends and neighbors, I also knew that I didn’t have to offer any complaint. Lucy would simply handle it for the rest of us and everything would get sorted accordingly. It must be wonderful to be that confident and capable.
I took a seat on the bench along the wall for the parents as Lucy buzzed off, happily barking orders at parents and children alike.
Some people tended to be put off by her bluster, and I realized that it was easy to feel that way. I myself had felt a bit overwhelmed when I first met her a couple of years back. A bit like a hurricane—she comes in really strong, churns everything up and then mellows out. However, over time, she has become one of my biggest advocates and friends. When Greg passed away, she really helped me keep it together and I don’t know what I would have done without her.
Lucy organized my house when I was in too much of a fog to do anything, kept the receiving line of sympathizers moving, made sure both Rosie and I were fed, did my washing, helped me with pretty much everything day in and day out.
In the immediate aftermath, my parents had of course come up to stay, but they’re in their late sixties and in poor health, and were themselves too racked with grief to be of any real help. And while I had others—work colleagues and old friends from Dublin—around at the time willing to do what they could, Lucy was the drill sergeant we all needed.
Now I watched through the glass observation window as Rosie’s class started. This was really the first time this week I had been able to just sit and breathe, I realized.
I reached into my bag, grabbed an elastic and pulled my tousled shoulder-length hair up off my shoulders, tying it into a makeshift bun at the nape of my neck. It was starting to get greasy and I really needed a shower but there’d been no time. Later, hopefully, when Rosie had gone to bed. She usually went up about eight o’clock, and while Greg and I used to relish the few hours together before our own bedtime, now the silence made his absence even more pronounced. So I tended to keep myself busy by cooking, reading or going online and wasting time on Pinterest and the like.
Inside the studio, my daughter was standing in fifth position as normal, but something she was doing caught my eye.
She put her hand up and scratched her back, right along her shoulder blade. I grimaced; she must have grabbed the wrong cardie by accident earlier. That purple one she had on was an itchy wool, and now she was paying the price.
“Is anyone sitting here?”
I looked up to see Christine Campbell. A tall woman with a slightly aloof air about her. Her son, Kevin, was in Rosie’s class and, by all accounts (including Rosie’s), a bit of a troublemaker, constantly causing grief for the teachers. Typical boy stuff, really. She also had a daughter, Suzanne, who was older and in a more senior ballet class.
I didn’t see Christine often, but our daughters’ class times sometimes overlapped. She and Lucy knew each other well, though personality-wise they seemed to me to be chalk and cheese.
“No, go ahead.” I moved my oversize bag and placed it on the floor at the same time that Lucy rejoined us and sat back down.
All at once, I felt like I was smack bang in the middle of a gossip sandwich as the two women tried their utmost to outdo each other for local “news.”
The topics were wide-ranging and flung about rapidly—Christine conveyed her annoyance about a neighbor who had illegally constructed a shed against a boundary wall and how she was going to talk to her solicitor cousin about it, while Lucy condemned a hapless mother who’d promised she would volunteer at the Applewood PTA, but had not turned up to a meeting. I grimaced, making a mental note to be sure to keep any volunteer commitments.
But since I myself was short on scandal, I searched my brain for something to contribute to the conversation.
“I heard poor Clara Cooper went home early from school with chicken pox the other day,” I offered. “Is Kevin OK so far?” I added, knowing that Christine’s son was one of the kids in Rosie’s class who hadn’t had it yet. I glanced toward the dance studio and frowned. My daughter was still scratching.
“I know. I was the one who picked Clara up,” Lucy commented. “Madeleine rang me first thing that morning—Clara woke up a bit poorly, but Madeleine was due at Channel 2 for a TV thing and had to send her in. She asked if I’d do the honors in case she got any worse.”
“Typical,” Christine harrumphed, her horn-rimmed glasses falling down her nose. “Getting someone else to do her dirty work. Mad Mum is right. And I’m sure it’s only a matter of time till my poor Kevin gets it.” She pushed the glasses back up and rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t surprise me that Clara did, either. You know what the bloody Coopers are like.”
I bit my lip guiltily, having forgotten that Lucy and Clara’s mum were also close and had grown up together in Knockroe. And I especially regretted bringing up the subject in front of Christine. Lucy had once confided that Madeleine’s rapidly growing celeb status was a sore point as far as Christine was concerned, and I hadn’t intended to open that particular can of worms.
I started to reply, but Lucy beat me to it. “Ah, leave it, Christine. To be fair, you don’t usually vaccinate for chicken pox anyway.”
At this, my ears pricked up. “What do you mean?” I asked, turning to her. “What’s that got to do with the Coopers?”
Rosie’s allergy or the fact that she couldn’t be immunized wasn’t common knowledge among the school community, mostly because of the inevitable negative reaction it provoked among parents. And I didn’t want my daughter to be singled out in any way because of reasons she (or I) couldn’t control. So when before Easter the school secretary had sent out Health Service permission forms for the MMR booster to be carried out in the school, I had quietly marked an X in the “decline” box and forgotten all about it.
But now I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the Coopers and I had something in common.
“But Madeleine and Tom don’t believe in vaccination full stop,” Christine said bitterly. “Complete nonsense. Not to mention irresponsible.”
My mouth went dry. So while I’d had no choice but to opt out of the standard vaccination program, it seemed the Coopers had willfully declined.
“Don’t believe in... You mean the Cooper children haven’t had shots—for anything?” I asked, feeling more than a little unnerved.
This was what Greg and I had worried most about—the idea that so-called “herd immunity” wasn’t guaranteed to protect Rosie so long as there were parents who chose not to participate. Yet I couldn’t condemn the Coopers for anything when I didn’t know the reasons. For all I knew, their children might also have some kind of autoimmune condition or other valid reason not to go along with protocol.
“Yep. Apparently they don’t trust the HSE and the pharmaceutical companies, even though all that controversy over the MMR jabs was written off ages ago.” Christine rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. They’re just lucky this time that chicken pox is fairly harmless.”
This time.
I swallowed hard, not sure what to make of this. “Well, I hope Kevin avoids it anyway. Nasty, scratchy thing,” I mumbled sympathetically. “But not too hard on the kids if it’s mild enough.”
Lucy had gone unusually quiet and, sensing she was uncomfortable with the discussion, I decided to change the subject. “Oh, look, they’re starting,” I said, turning back to the ballet class and feeling bad for bringing all this up in the first place.
But Christine wouldn’t be diverted. “A bit poorly my ass. Kevin was saying that Clara was coughing the day before that, too,” she said. “What kind of mother sends a sick child to school so she can go off to flatter her own ego? And what kind of parents take their kids out of class for an extra week over Easter so they can go and sun themselves in Florida?”
I remembered Rosie saying something about Clara being absent the first few days back after the break, but hadn’t realized it was because she was still on holiday. Must be nice to be able to fly off somewhere warm and sunny for so long. I could only dream.
“Ah, Christine, it’s not as if the kids missed that much for the few extra days they were away,” said Lucy. “And in fairness to Madeleine the other morning, she really didn’t think there was anything to worry about...”
“Oh, save it, that’s no excuse. A blind man could see that the child was coming down with something, though of course maybe those Prada sunglasses her mother likes to wear messed up her eyesight...”
“Christine, seriously,” Lucy reproached, “there’s no need for that. I know Madeleine. If she honestly felt that Clara was ill, she would have canceled the TV thing, end of story. As it was, the little dear just had the sniffles and a bit of a temperature when I went to pick her up.”
“Well, Kevin said he spotted a cluster of spots on her neck. And if a five-year-old can see it, I don’t understand how the child’s own mother—”
“That could just be heat rash from the temperature,” I said matter-of-factly. “Pox don’t cluster.”
“Thank you, Nurse,” Lucy chuckled, evidently hoping to lighten the mood. “In any case, Christine, Maddie was distraught and full of apologies when she got back from Dublin,” she insisted. “She couldn’t have known.”
As Christine muttered something unintelligible, a thought started rattling around in my head. It was what I had just said: that chicken pox spots didn’t cluster.
They don’t, I reminded myself. There were just individual sores when the rash popped up.
I nodded, affirming my own train of thought. Christine’s son was probably just being a typical five-year-old boy. Making everything seem more dramatic and exaggerated than it actually was.
Returning my attention to the studio where Rosie practiced, I smiled with appreciation as she pirouetted gracefully. She did a slight bow in front of her teacher and classmates and then returned to the barre.
Whereupon once again, almost absentmindedly, my daughter raised her arm and scratched her back.