The Whipping Club (9 page)

             
“Blood is good. Blood makes babies,” Nurse said as she wiped off the child.

             
Marian fell back, as Nurse continued to clean him up.

             
Sister Paulinas arrived later, examined Marian, and then placed some cotton swabs in her knickers.

             
“She’d do with a stitching,” Nurse recommended.

             
“She’ll be fine. I’m assigning her to nursery duty. She’ll mind the toddlers and come back up here to the newborns every four hours to express her milk.” Sister took the baby boy, inspected him, and handed him back to Nurse.

             
“I’ll be in the office.”

Nurse placed Marian’s baby gently in her arms, whispering that she’d bring some hot sweet tea, and wiped her forehead with a washcloth.

             
“Thank you, Nurse,” Marian said, clutching her hand.

             
“Ava,” Nurse mumbled.

             
“Ava,” Marian repeated. “A lovely name.”

             
Nurse smiled her awkward smile and tried not to laugh.

             
“His name is Adrian.”

             
Nurse looked into the infant’s red, grumpy face, his tiny fist in his mouth.

             
“He’s bald.” Nurse began to laugh, but Marian interrupted her.

             
“Did you…did you mail my letter?”

             
“I’m hoping to soon.”

             
“Please.” Marian squeezed her hand again. “I don’t know how I would manage without you. Thanks for being here,” Marian whispered. “My da would have loved this little man,” she said. “And my

fiancé, Ben Ellis, will love him, too.”

             
Nurse smiled, told her Ben Ellis was a nice name, though Sister Paulinas already told her that he graduated from Trinity. Even Nurse knew they didn’t allow Catholics at that school. And a Catholic would be damned to Hell if they ever set foot on that university.

Sister Paulinas ranted that Ellis was no Catholic, certainly, and that he lived amongst them.

             
“You can rest assured he'll be well looked after,” Nurse said to play along. Marian seemed so hopeful with that bright smile of hers.

             
“Will you make certain?” Marian said. “Will you help him get to a good place in America, Nurse?”

             
“Only the ones who go fast get to America. And Sister Paulinas likes you, being educated and all and from a good family.”

             
“Leave us alone for awhile, would you?” Marian asked.

             
Nurse nodded and had left Marian sitting in the bed, rocking Adrian.

             
Now Nurse looked at the picture of Beth she had, and then wiped off the little bit of blood resting on her thigh. She’d bathe the babies early tonight, get everything in order. There was so much excitement to this day and she wondered if there would be more tonight. She washed up and combed her hair back, put her nurse’s cap on, studied her face in the glass. For the past year, she’d had the sense that Officer Dolan was watching her and she was starting to get the nerve to look back at him on a regular basis.

It thrilled her that last week he had actually smiled at her before she’d blushed and turned away. It seemed she would always have a way with the men wherever she went, whatever her circumstances, she thought, and smoothed down her uniform, readied herself for her nighttime duties.

             
Much later in the evening, Nurse returned to the shed, wondering if Officer Dolan’s curiosity about her twilight activities would finally arouse him. After lights out she heard muted footsteps, his black shoes buried in soft moss, and without a word, he entered, shutting the door behind him. They looked at each other for a minute before Nurse found her tongue and said, “I’ll be going now. I was just finishing up the cleaning of the shed.”

             
“You’ve taken to fixing up after hours?”

             
“The mess does my head in,” she answered. “It needs doing.”

             
As she moved past him he held out his thick arm, and she stopped. It was then that he kissed her on the cheek, moved to her mouth with the finesse of an awkward teenager, and she responded to his advances. He smelled of smoke and Brut, and she was touched, never before noticing his appreciation for aftershave.

             
“Go on now,” he nodded toward the door. “Wouldn’t want to get you into trouble,” he said.

             
“No, no,” she said as she quietly left the shed, going back out into the crisp night air, back into her small room. She sat there on her cot, impressed by the gentlemanly quality he possessed, certain of his concern for her well-being.

Marian returned to Inchicore and the Silverbridge Orphanage with a compulsion, hoping to spot her son. She noticed a boy, around four years old, who looked as if he was a recent arrival, standing in the middle of the dirt lot staring at the older boys playing cards on the side wall. Two teenage girls were sitting together on the steps that led to the main building, each with a box of shoes by their feet to be shined. Small children in scratchy knickers twirled on an old roundabout. A thick concrete wall surrounded their playground, closing them off from the schoolchildren down the road who walked by in their proper uniforms for outings at Mulvin’s Sweet Shop without so much as a glance at the orphanage kids.

             
For days after her visit with Nurse at Castleboro, Marian said very little. It was as if she’d been flung down a hole and she was lost in that foggy place and couldn’t clear her head.

             
“I’m going to bed early,” she told Ben and Johanna many evenings now. “I must have come down with something,” she said as she cleared the dinner plates. Leftovers and a can of Heinz beans again was all that she could muster. “I’ll take a cold tablet, get to bed early,” she repeated and excused herself.

             
Why had Nurse kept Adrian a secret from me for so long?

             
As time shoved on and pushed her life into the busyness of the present, Marian had thought very little about Adrian, hadn’t cared to interfere in his pleasant life, either. It was enough to have known that he was living in America, and she had been secretly proud, too, that she had provided a child with such a life. She had moved on, or so she thought. Wasn’t that right? No. It wasn’t.
I know that isn’t true, come on.
It had never been true. Something had been missing, something she liked to pretend coincided with the death of her father but had never been that alone. What about that first year, peeking into other people’s prams in the hopes of seeing a glimpse of him? And throughout their marriage, there had been her secret comparisons between Adrian and Jo as infants, and worse, the secret anger that she must pretend Jo was her first.

             
On her fourth visit to the orphanage, Marian was sure she saw him in a rowdy group of boys of all sizes and shapes, pushing and shoving each other, poking a fat one in the stomach. They seemed completely disinterested in a bunch of girls gathered nearby giving them a giggle or two. A stout nun named Sister Agnes tapped the butts of little boys and girls with a stick to keep them in line. In the yard, the one with the freckles who kept shouting that he was going to climb the wall like a hairyman was jumping, trying to hold on to the wall, and then falling to the concrete floor. Sister Agnes noticed him, too. He would be still until she turned her back, at which point he would imitate her, his legs spread apart like a drunken cowboy. The one with the freckles—she could feel it, knew for sure that this gawky preadolescent with the broad shoulders, his eyes red with exhaustion, was Adrian. She saw her father in him, knew that her da would have gotten him the hell out of there, knew that he would have been loved by her da. She was falling in love with her son as well. She waited there until recess was over and watched without seeming to, she hoped. He was entertaining her with his silliness, and she felt—no, saw—something unmistakably familiar in his expressions.

             
Finally, Marian decided to enter the front hallway of this house of horrors to look for Sister Agnes.

             
“Can I help you?” Sister Agnes said as Marian glanced at some teenagers hanging off the stair landing on the second floor making grotesque gestures behind Sister’s back.

             
“No,” Marian said. “Well, I guess, yes, you can actually. I’m looking for someone.”

             
“Yes?” Sister Agnes said, folding her arms across her chest.

             
“Actually, I’ve been told that my son, whom I’d given up for adoption to America, is here in Dublin. I’m his mother.”

             
“You’re his mother but you don’t know where he is?” Sister Agnes said. “Do you know his name?” Sister Agnes said in what Marian

perceived to be a mocking tone.

             
“His name is Adrian Ellis.”

             
“Ah,” she said, flicking a tick off the sleeve of her robe. “Our dear Adrian Ellis. Yes, he’s one of mine. A bit of a Devil, too,” Sister Agnes said.

Marian took solace in the gard
en as the light began to fade.
Her favorite time of day, this period between light and dark, the twilight hour. She listened to the American tune “Lola” faintly coming from the O’Rourke’s open kitchen door. Marian gazed across the way and watched the girls helping Mrs. O’Rourke pin sheets to her clothesline.

             
“Can we go out with the ball and play with Margaret?” Jo suddenly asked Mrs. O’Rourke, noticing her friend from the neighborhood sauntering by.

             
Mrs. O’Rourke didn’t seem to hear her. Someone (must be O’Rourke home yet again) turned the record player on to Roy

Orbison’s hit, “Only the Lonely.” Marian listened as Mr. O’Rourke sang out from the kitchen.

             
“I don’t like this music,” Jo said to Anna. “My ma listens to this every day. Can we change it?”

             
I do not listen to music, period, it seems. Why say that, Jo?
Marian thought about her son, brought up in a Dublin orphanage—raised so different from Jo—and yet, there was a similarity. A spunk, a spark (if Adrian’s mimicking Sister Agnes in the playground was any indication). They both seemed to be rabble-rousers. No doubt in their kids’ genes on both sides.
No one tells you anything, or warns you except by way of joking, about the pre-adolescent years,
Marian thought. Jo was right; she was like a bag of cats.

             
“How about Chubby Checker?” Rona said, putting on one she knew Johanna loved.

             
“Come on, girls, let’s see how handy we are with our feet,” Mr. O’Rourke said, coming out of the kitchen as Johanna skedaddled

toward the front of their house with their red dodge ball. “Let’s do

the twist.”

             
“You mean the mashed potato, Mr. O’Rourke!” Jo called out,

running down the street after Margaret.

             
“All right, then. Let’s do the mashed potato,” he said. As he began to dance, he looked around for her but she was gone.

             
Jo kept running, bouncing her ball, calling to Margaret. The ball came loose as Margaret stopped and waved, and Jo ran to retrieve it from the road, waving at her friend as she went. It was then that Marian heard the sound of a motorcar screech to a halt. Marian ran from the garden and saw Johanna lying on the road. She shouted to Mr. O’Rourke to shut off the music and call an ambulance.

             
Mrs. O’Rourke stood by her front door, aghast, as neighbors

gathered around the street.

             
“What in God’s name?” Marian gasped, running over. “Get a washcloth,” she shouted to Mrs. O’Rourke who seemed frozen by her door.

             
“It’s okay,” Marian said, now by Johanna’s side. “Not a big gash at all.”

Relief. Only a bloody chin, nothing more. Marian looked to her neighbors who had gathered around them. She rose as the ambulance arrived and watched over Jo as the medics cleaned her wound. She was not in need of more than one stitch, thank God. By the time the medics had finished, Jo looked
dazed and what Marian observed
enraged her. Mrs. O’Rourke had not budged from her front yard and was now receiving comfort from the neighbors who migrated to her stoop.
Do my neighbors see me as a mother with a rambunctious imp or as a bad mother who lets her daughter stay out too late?