Thirteen Stops Read online

  While she’d been decanting cereal into the girls’ bowls from the plastic cereal tub Barbara insisted on (Why not just leave it all in the boxes, she always wanted to ask her but never did –– Barbara had her particular little ways), Paul had crept into the kitchen from the garage, shamefaced and unshaven.

  “I need to get ready for work,” he mumbled as Jessie rushed at him, delightedly crying, “Daddy! Daddy!”

  “I’m not stopping you,” said Suzanne coolly.

  “Pooh, Daddy, you smell stinky!” Jessie recoiled from him, wrinkling her tiny button-nose in distaste.

  “That’s because I need a shower and a change of clothes,” Paul said ruefully as he patted his daughters’ curly heads and headed for the kitchen door.

  “You can use the bathroom in the guest bedroom,” Suzanne cut in when she realised that he intended to go upstairs and probably disturb Barbara with his morning ablutions.

  “But all my stuff is in the master bedroom. All my shaving things and the clothes I need for work!”

  His protests sounded to Suzanne’s irritated ears like those of a whingy schoolboy. “I’ll get your things for you. Barbara needs to sleep.”

  “I don’t see why,” Paul said sulkily. “She’s not the one who’s spent the night freezing her fucking hole off out in the garage. It’s like the fucking Arctic Circle out there.”

  “Daddy said a swear, Daddy said a swear!” Jessie cried gleefully.

  Not wanting to be left out of any fun, Lucy in her highchair promptly upturned her cereal bowl, leaving a soggy mess for Suzanne to clear up.

  Suzanne shot Paul a look that she hoped conveyed the words: Listen, you whingy little prick, do you really want to talk about why you were sent to sleep in the fucking garage last night?

  He shut his mouth, obviously thinking better of that tactic, and said not another word as she ushered him upstairs to the guest bedroom and made him wait while she quietly fetched his clothes and shaving things from the master bedroom.

  Later, as he was waiting for Suzanne to do the girls’ hair and get them into their coats for school (Jessie) and crèche (Lucy), he said, “Will you talk to Barbara for me, Suze?”

  “What about?” she said coldly, attempting to coax Jessie’s long brown curls into an elaborate series of slides and hair ribbons.

  “Well, all this, of course.” He shrugged and threw his arms wide to indicate that he meant the general situation in which he found himself.

  Not through any fault of his own, of course, Suzanne thought sourly. That was so typical of Paul. He never took responsibility for bloody anything if he could help it. Every time he got Barbara pregnant, he went round for weeks afterwards wringing his hands and saying how could this have happened? She and Barbara laughed about it together every time as they mock-explained: Well, Paul, you see, it’s like this. When a Mammy Rabbit and a Daddy Rabbit love each other very much . . .

  “All what?” She was determined not to make it easy for him.

  “You know what,” said Paul. He turned to the children. “Jessie, be a good girl and take Lucy out to the car and wait for me there, will you? It’s open. Be careful now.”

  “Are you in trouble, Daddy?” Jessie asked, before skipping off to the garage, trailing her toddler sister in her busy wake.

  “You could say that,” muttered her father glumly.

  He turned to Suzanne when the kids were gone. “Look, I know what this looks like but I swear to God I was breaking it off with this girl and that’s when she decided to go all Glenn-Close-in-Fatal Attraction on me and squeal on me to Barbara.”

  Squeal on you? thought Suzanne, disgusted. What are you, a fucking schoolboy who’s been caught cheating on a spelling test?

  Aloud, she said: “Spare me the sordid details, please. All I care about is that Barb and the kids don’t get dragged down as well just because you’ve fucked up.”

  “I care about that too!” He took a step closer and held his hands out to her, palms up, in the traditional gesture of openness and honesty, neither of which qualities he possessed. “I swear to God, Suze. Just help me out this once, please, will you? For Barb’s sake, and the kids’. Just talk to her for me, would you? Persuade her to give me another chance? I swear on the kids’ lives I won’t fuck up again.”

  “Don’t say that! Swearing on the kids’ lives like that. I hate it when people do that. What if you’re lying, or if for some reason you can’t keep your promise? It’s sick, saying things like that.”

  “Okay, okay – but you’ll do it, won’t you?” He was pleading now. “You’ll talk to Barb for me?”

  He looked so pathetically eager, like a puppy begging to be let in out of the rain, that Suzanne felt herself weaken. Making a clicking noise of disgust with her tongue that was as much for herself as for him, she nodded. “All right, Paul, all right. I’ll do it. For Barbara and the kids, not for you. As long as we’re clear on that. But, for now, I think it’s best that you go to work and keep out of her way for a while. Give her a bit of space to think and don’t be bombarding her with any texts and phone calls. I’ll talk to her later, when she wakes up, but only if she’s ready to talk about it, okay?”

  “Whatever you say, Auntie Suze.” The little weasel was all smiles now that he’d got his own way. He hurried away through the door that led to the garage. A minute later, she heard his car pulling off down the driveway.

  After clearing away the kids’ breakfast things, she went quietly up the stairs and into the master bedroom to see if Barbara was awake yet and ready to have that talk.

  They’d had their talk, during which Barbara had raged and sworn blind that she never wanted to see that cheating, lying scumbag again, then reversed her position and declared that she couldn’t live without him and would do anything to keep him, even if he wanted to bring that knocked-up strumpet to live with them both in their very own house. (Barbara had apparently read in a magazine about something like that happening once and she’d never forgotten it. Some woman in England had taken her husband’s pregnant, much younger mistress into her home, because it was the only way she could hold on to her man. There’d been a group photo of the three of them. None of them had looked even slightly happy.)

  After persuading Barbara that no such drastic action would be necessary, and that all she needed to do to keep Paul was simply to agree to give him a chance to talk things through with her that evening when he got in from work, Suzanne had managed to get away, promising faithfully that she’d be back again by dinnertime at the latest to keep Barbara and the kids company, and even to stay over with them again if necessary.

  “Please move down the tram,” said the automated female voice now over the tannoy, but nobody moved. Nobody ever moved or took a blind bit of notice of the announcement. Which way was down, anyway? Suzanne had always wondered. Was it going away from the driver, or was it going towards him? Did anyone know or ever bother to find out? The posh automated woman was pretty much wasting her breath, but she was just doing her job.

  Now the tram was passing through Ranelagh on its way into town and Suzanne tearfully craned her neck out of the window to see if she could spot their house. She could and did. There was a white blob in the garden which might have been Ida hanging out the washing on this breezy autumn day. She chose to believe that the white blob had indeed been Ida. Suzanne wanted nothing more at that moment than to be at home in the dinky little two-bedroomed house with Ida, coming up on her from behind and enfolding her in a big cuddly bear-hug, there amongst the sheets, towels and pillowcases billowing in the breeze. Instead, she was going into town, to one of those big old Georgian buildings that encircled St. Stephen’s Green, the tall imposing buildings with four or five storeys and the servants’ quarters at the very top, which had once housed the rich families of Dublin but that now mostly served as boring old office space. Suzanne had been there before, and she was dreading the thought of going there again.

  She tried to distract herself with the passenger-watching that s
he normally enjoyed. There was an attractive young couple sitting across from her who were having one of those muted, passive-aggressive arguments that people have when they’re in public, when they don’t want to be seen fighting but they nonetheless can’t help it because the matter is so pressing. Suzanne watched the lad (they both looked like college students) try to take the girl’s hand in a gesture of affection, but she snatched it away.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked, holding up his hands as if he genuinely didn’t have a clue why she was upset.

  To Suzanne’s amusement, the girl, sounding upset and annoyed, replied, “If you don’t know, then I’m not telling you!”

  Suzanne would have sworn that women never really said that outside of books or films, but here was living proof that they did.

  To which the lad answered, perplexed, “But if you don’t tell me, then how the fuck am I supposed to know what’s wrong with you?”

  “You should already know,” persisted the girl.

  “Ah, fuck this.” The young man glowered, turning away from her and folding his arms to indicate that he was now closed for business and he wouldn’t be extending the hand of peace or friendship again.

  Tears were now forming in the girl’s eyes, but it was obvious that she was going to continue to let the boy stew in his own juices, that she wasn’t going to tell him what it was that was upsetting her because she’d rather bite off her own tongue than be the one to back down.

  Thank God I’m done with all that teenage angst, Suzanne told herself as she allowed her glance to drift away from the squabbling couple to a young mother across the aisle who was having trouble comforting her crying baby. Everyone else was scrolling frantically on their phones or listening to music, their earbuds firmly in place. Don’t disturb me, they were saying without words. I’m not amenable to any social overtures today, thanks. The chubby little baby boy didn’t want to sit in his buggy and he didn’t want to be lifted out and hugged. He didn’t want his dummy, his rattle or his bottle. He just wanted to kick and scream and lash out at his embarrassed mother, much to the annoyance of some of the passengers nearest to them, who were shooting the poor mother filthy why-can’t-you-control-your-own-child looks.

  Suzanne dug around in her bag until she found what she was looking for – an orange lollipop, still in its wrapper, that she’d bought for Jessie but had forgotten to give her. Barbara was very Sergeant-Majorish about sugary sweets and drinks, so the treat would probably have found its way into the bin at some stage anyway. It might as well go where it would do someone some good.

  “Is he allowed to have this?” she said, extending the lollipop across the aisle to the harassed mother. “I know it’s sugary but . . .”

  “Thank you!” the mother cried gratefully, taking the treat from Suzanne and proffering it to the fractious, red-faced toddler, who was already holding out his grubby little paw for it. “He’s teething at the minute, you see, and everything makes him cranky. He normally loves going on the Luas but not when he’s like this. Anyway, thank you. You’re a life-saver.”

  “No worries.” Suzanne settled back in her seat and closed her eyes, enjoying the blissful silence.

  The sight of the vociferous little baby boy reminded her of the conversations she and Ida had had lately about maybe one day having a child of their own and the different ways that that could be achieved. They had just about hit on the idea of asking a woman they both knew, who had been a surrogate mother once before for someone else, to have their baby for them (they felt it would be fairer to have a surrogate – that way, the baby would ‘belong’ to neither and yet both of them) when Suzanne had suddenly found the lump, the stupid fucking lump that had her haring over to St. Stephen’s Green in the middle of the day in a mad panic, when she should have been at home with Ida. Was this lump going to snatch everything away from her, just when she was the happiest she’d ever been in her life? She had Ida, she had her painting, she was living as her true self for the first time ever, a gay woman who loved and lived with another woman. Life had never before been so rich, so fruitful.

  She wasn’t without her problems though. Her father had stopped talking to her when she’d come out to her parents two years before. Her mother she still saw from time to time, but it had to be in secret so that Suzanne’s father wouldn’t find out. They’d meet in coffee shops and restaurants and exchange bits of gossip on ‘safe’ topics (nothing whatsoever to do with the ‘g’ word), then maybe do a bit of shopping on Grafton Street, but the meetings were strained and overshadowed by the fact that Suzanne’s father seemingly wanted nothing more to do with her, simply because she’d come out as gay. It hurt Suzanne more than she ever would have thought possible. He’d been her father for thirty-six years by that stage but suddenly he wasn’t any more, and just because he’d found out that she preferred women to men in the romantic and sexual sense. “It’s just his way – he’s from a different generation,” her mother said, but it still hurt. Her mother was from the same generation as her father, but she hadn’t cut off all contact with their first-born child over Suzanne’s being gay. It was obvious that she was still very uncomfortable about her daughter’s sexuality, but at least she made the effort to keep seeing her. Suzanne longed for the day when she would be able to take Ida to meet both her parents, but that day was still a long way off. Barbara had been fine about the whole thing, had even laughed and said teasingly that she’d always known Suzanne was gay, that she was just waiting for Suzanne herself to find out. Barbara had met Ida and loved her, and so had Paul and the two little girls. Paul hadn’t even disgraced himself, as Suzanne had half-expected, by making sly, sleazy remarks about what lesbians did in bed and the so-called ‘girl-on-girl action’ he probably watched on his computer when no one else was around. He’d behaved like the perfect gentleman and welcomed Ida into the family in a genuinely friendly manner that had gladdened Suzanne’s heart. He wasn’t all bad, even if he could be a total moron at times and lose the run of himself. The two little girls had adored Ida on sight. Ida was brilliant with children. She never patronised them or talked down to them. She treated them with respect, as if they were individuals in their own right with opinions and important things to say. Barbara had told Jessie and Lucy that Ida was their Aunty Suzanne’s ‘special friend’ and that was exactly how they saw her.

  Barbara didn’t know about the lump, though. Nobody did, not even Ida. Suzanne hadn’t told a soul. Her reasoning, she’d decided, was sound. If the biopsy came back negative, then there would have been no need to alarm everyone with tales of insidious lumps found by chance in the shower – and she would have been right to keep things to herself. If it came back positive, however, well, she’d make her plans then and tell the people who needed to know. Barbara first, of course, and then Ida. And then Ida . . .

  The poetry reading where they had met had been a crashing bore. Suzanne, who’d had the event recommended to her by a friend who worked in the library where the reading was taking place, nearly dozed off while the female poet droned on endlessly about a cat she’d had in her childhood. He’d died, this poor unfortunate moggy, and been replaced by a succession of other cats who had all kicked the bucket as well. Suzanne liked cats, even loved them and was thinking of getting one of her own, but this never-ending dirge was almost more than she could bear, and nowhere near as funny as when Lisa Simpson had talked about her own bad luck with felines in The Simpsons. Suzanne felt herself nodding off. It had been a long day for her, working non-stop on a recalcitrant painting that just wouldn’t come right, and then correcting some essays on art theory from the students at her college night classes. Her head sank lower and lower onto her jumper, until a gentle nudge in her side caused her to jerk upright, her eyes suddenly wide open.

  “Sorry,” whispered the woman who’d been sitting beside her, a woman with a wide smile and glasses. “I didn’t want to wake you, but I was afraid for you – you know, that you might start snoring . . .”

  She spoke
with a slight accent that Suzanne immediately warmed to.

  “Thanks,” Suzanne whispered back. “That would have been embarrassing.”

  “Yes, wouldn’t it?” The woman grinned mischievously. “Still, it might have livened up this place a bit. I’m only just managing to keep awake myself.”

  Suzanne giggled, earning herself a stern glance from the reader of the interminable poem about cats.

  Suzanne didn’t know why she said what she said next. She only knew that her mouth opened and she said it. “Would you like to get out of here? I mean, um, go and grab a coffee somewhere?”

  Suzanne felt her face blush a fiery red. She would just die if the woman said no or recoiled and looked at her as though she had two heads or something, but she just smiled and said yes, she’d love to. They gathered up their coats and bags and left the room, much to the disapproval of the poet, who tsk-tsked audibly before going back to her poem. It seemed there were plenty of deceased moggies remaining to be mourned publicly in iambic pentameter.

  Coffee had certainly been interesting. They sat in the café beside the library for nearly two hours, drinking coffee and eating Danish pastries, chatting non-stop with virtually no awkward silences. Suzanne learned that the other woman’s name was Ida Mueller and she was thirty-eight, the same age as Suzanne. She was a computer programmer from a part of Switzerland where they spoke mostly German (the accent, Suzanne thought, was out of this world – she could listen to it for ever) and was working with a Swiss company based in Dublin, and she loved to ski but had broken both arms and one leg at one point or another in different skiing accidents. The accident in which she had broken her leg had left her with a slight limp, which was noticeably worse when the weather was cold and wet, or when she was tired.

  “Why did you keep doing it, if it’s so dangerous?” Suzanne asked.

  “Life is better with a little risk, you know,” Ida said, her eyes gleaming behind her glasses. “You cannot always play it safe.”