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Authors: Ciara Geraghty
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between lunch and dinner.’
‘Yes, Kat, but we have to clean up after lunch and get ready for the dinner crowd. Chef is showing me how to make croque-monsieurs.’
‘They’re just ham and cheese toasties. I showed you how to make them years ago.’
‘No, they’re not. They’re fancier.’
I say, ‘Do you want to go to the movies?’
‘I can’t. Chef is showing me how to make croque-monsieurs.’
I say, ‘I don’t mean right now.’ Although I would have gone right now if he had said yes. ‘I mean later on. When you finish your shift. Later.’
‘Are you coming too, Kat?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK.’ And even though this is a telephone conversation, I can feel him nodding and smiling and, in spite of everything – being nearly forty, Thomas, the bloody miracle, the pain of shattered ribs – OK, OK, one hairline-fractured rib – I smile back.
I say, ‘I haven’t seen you in ages.’ This is not true. It just feels true.
He says, ‘I’m sorry, Kat,’ and the way he says it causes a swelling sensation inside my nose and eyes and throat. I tighten my grip on the phone and swallow.
‘You have nothing to be sorry for, you big eejit,’ I tell him and I am relieved that my voice sounds like it always does: bored, disinterested, unemotional.
‘Will you pick me up?’ he asks.
‘I’ll pick you up at seven, OK? We could go to the Leaning Tower of Pizza first.’
He sighs and says, ‘OK, Kat,’ and that’s when I feel a bit bad because there’s a chance I’ve been monopolising his time since the near-death-and-Thomas-desertion situations. He hangs up before I can say, ‘Thank you, Ed.’
People say he is Down’s Syndrome. That’s not true. He is Edward Kavanagh. Ed. He is gentle and loving and funny and spontaneous. He is moody and clumsy. He is a great swimmer, an avid watcher of soaps, a teller of terrible jokes. He loves going to the cinema and eating pizza. He has Down’s Syndrome. Down’s Syndrome is not what he is; it’s what he has. There’s a difference.
Ed was born in the spring of 1977. My mother never got over it. I was five and had my heart set on a girl. In a pink dress with blonde curly hair and a matching set of dimples. Instead, I got Ed, who had no hair, one dimple and a hole in his heart. In spite of these discrepancies, I loved Ed from the start and I was not a child given to gratuitous expressions of love.
Dad said he was ‘special’. Mum called him ‘different’. To me, he was just Ed. My little brother. It was only later, when he came home from school with his shirt torn and muck on the knees of his trousers or his lunchbox gone, I realised that the other children didn’t like these differences. They didn’t want anyone to be special.
I don’t think Dad really noticed, bent as he was across his workbench in the lab where he worked all hours, examining intimate pieces of people he never met. Mum was often away on book tours, and, when she wasn’t, she wrote in the attic room and we were not allowed to make any noise. Mrs Higginbotham brought Ed for his check-ups and mended his shirts and washed the muck off the knees of his trousers and bought him new lunchboxes. She told him not to worry. Said it would make a man of him. I didn’t think Ed was ready to be a man.
It is in the middle of the night that I can admit that perhaps it is Thomas, the absence of Thomas, that is the hardest thing. I wake at four. It’s always four. If Thomas were where he is supposed to be, he would wake too and reach out one of his ridiculously long arms until his hand gets a grip on my shoulder, or my leg, or my elbow. ‘You OK, baby?’ he would say and I would let him get away with it. There is something about four o’clock in the morning that lowers my resistance to affection.
‘You OK, baby?’
I’m not saying that I do anything as crass as move my hands along his side of his bed, now cold. Or wrap myself in the shirt he left, like those women in the rom-coms Ed loves,
‘Yes, Kat, but we have to clean up after lunch and get ready for the dinner crowd. Chef is showing me how to make croque-monsieurs.’
‘They’re just ham and cheese toasties. I showed you how to make them years ago.’
‘No, they’re not. They’re fancier.’
I say, ‘Do you want to go to the movies?’
‘I can’t. Chef is showing me how to make croque-monsieurs.’
I say, ‘I don’t mean right now.’ Although I would have gone right now if he had said yes. ‘I mean later on. When you finish your shift. Later.’
‘Are you coming too, Kat?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK.’ And even though this is a telephone conversation, I can feel him nodding and smiling and, in spite of everything – being nearly forty, Thomas, the bloody miracle, the pain of shattered ribs – OK, OK, one hairline-fractured rib – I smile back.
I say, ‘I haven’t seen you in ages.’ This is not true. It just feels true.
He says, ‘I’m sorry, Kat,’ and the way he says it causes a swelling sensation inside my nose and eyes and throat. I tighten my grip on the phone and swallow.
‘You have nothing to be sorry for, you big eejit,’ I tell him and I am relieved that my voice sounds like it always does: bored, disinterested, unemotional.
‘Will you pick me up?’ he asks.
‘I’ll pick you up at seven, OK? We could go to the Leaning Tower of Pizza first.’
He sighs and says, ‘OK, Kat,’ and that’s when I feel a bit bad because there’s a chance I’ve been monopolising his time since the near-death-and-Thomas-desertion situations. He hangs up before I can say, ‘Thank you, Ed.’
People say he is Down’s Syndrome. That’s not true. He is Edward Kavanagh. Ed. He is gentle and loving and funny and spontaneous. He is moody and clumsy. He is a great swimmer, an avid watcher of soaps, a teller of terrible jokes. He loves going to the cinema and eating pizza. He has Down’s Syndrome. Down’s Syndrome is not what he is; it’s what he has. There’s a difference.
Ed was born in the spring of 1977. My mother never got over it. I was five and had my heart set on a girl. In a pink dress with blonde curly hair and a matching set of dimples. Instead, I got Ed, who had no hair, one dimple and a hole in his heart. In spite of these discrepancies, I loved Ed from the start and I was not a child given to gratuitous expressions of love.
Dad said he was ‘special’. Mum called him ‘different’. To me, he was just Ed. My little brother. It was only later, when he came home from school with his shirt torn and muck on the knees of his trousers or his lunchbox gone, I realised that the other children didn’t like these differences. They didn’t want anyone to be special.
I don’t think Dad really noticed, bent as he was across his workbench in the lab where he worked all hours, examining intimate pieces of people he never met. Mum was often away on book tours, and, when she wasn’t, she wrote in the attic room and we were not allowed to make any noise. Mrs Higginbotham brought Ed for his check-ups and mended his shirts and washed the muck off the knees of his trousers and bought him new lunchboxes. She told him not to worry. Said it would make a man of him. I didn’t think Ed was ready to be a man.
It is in the middle of the night that I can admit that perhaps it is Thomas, the absence of Thomas, that is the hardest thing. I wake at four. It’s always four. If Thomas were where he is supposed to be, he would wake too and reach out one of his ridiculously long arms until his hand gets a grip on my shoulder, or my leg, or my elbow. ‘You OK, baby?’ he would say and I would let him get away with it. There is something about four o’clock in the morning that lowers my resistance to affection.
‘You OK, baby?’
I’m not saying that I do anything as crass as move my hands along his side of his bed, now cold. Or wrap myself in the shirt he left, like those women in the rom-coms Ed loves,
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