Read Online The House of Memories by Monica McInerney - Free Book Online

bedroom.
    Mum turned thirty-five three days before Jess was born. Walter was forty-two. They were older parents, with older-parent energy, and they needed every bit they could summon. From the second Jess was born, she needed a lot of attention. “What changed?” as Charlie said later. She was three weeks premature, and had to spend her first two weeks of life in an incubator.
    We were taken into the hospital to meet her. Charlie was more interested in the technology on display than his new baby half sister. He put both hands up to the glass and peered in at the row of incubators. Mum, standing beside the one on the far left in her dressing gown and slippers, waved at us. We couldn’t see our new baby sister, but we waved back, encouraged by Walter.
    When Mum came out into the corridor, Charlie fired questions at her. About the incubator, not the baby. I mostly remember being amazed that Mum was a normal size again, and just as amazed that the huge bump she’d had was now out of her stomach and lying fast asleep in that glass box. The incubator kept the baby warm, Mum explained to Charlie. Walter went into a more complicated technological explanation about the importance of keeping the baby germfree while her lungs were still so fragile. Charlie listened and nodded.
    “Got it,” he said. “It’s a combination of warmth and sterile conditions.”
    On the way in we’d noticed a big sign about some fund-raising the hospital was doing.
    “I’ve got a great idea,” he said to me as we peered in through the glass at our new half sister. Mum and Walter were still deciding whether to call her Jessica or Molly. “They should put eggs in there to hatch at the same time. Raise money on the side as chicken farmers. It would kill two birds with one stone. Metaphorically speaking.”
    I got the giggles, at the mental image of hundreds of newly hatched chickens roaming the hospital as much as the “metaphorically speaking.” He’d recently taken to saying it as often as possible. “Yes, thanks, Dad. I’m full, metaphorically speaking.” “Yes, I’m ready for school, metaphorically speaking.”
    Standing beside us, Mum wasn’t amused. She told us both off for being so silly.
    Walter told us off again when we got home. “Your little sister is very fragile. It’s veally no laughing matter.”
    She—Jessica, they finally decided, who quickly became Jess—might have been fragile when she was first born, but by the time she came home, it was as if she’d been in the superstrength incubator. I’d never heard a noise like her crying. The walls seemed to shake. I also don’t think she slept for more than two hours at a time in her first year. Which meant we didn’t either. She needed to be held all the time, and she had her favorites. I wasn’t one of them.
    One Saturday afternoon, when Jess was about four months old, Charlie and I were working on a jigsaw puzzle together. Walter was at his office in town. He often worked six days a week. Mum was folding the wash while talking on the phone. Jess started to cry in her room. Mum called over to me, “Ella, darling, go in and check on her for me, would you?”
    I reluctantly put down my jigsaw piece. I was just getting to the interesting corner bit. I winced at the noise as I went into Jess’s room, which I secretly still thought of as my room. As I lifted her out of her crib, she started to cry more loudly. The more I jiggled her, the louder she got. I brought her into the living room. Her cry turned into a shriek. Charlie put his hands over his ears.
    “I think something’s wrong,” I said, as loudly as I could. “Is she sick?”
    Mum said something into the phone and then hung up. She was barely visible behind the piles of baby clothes. It amazed me how much laundry Jess generated. “Of course she’s not sick. You’re just holding her wrong. Ella, really, how many times do I have to show you?”
    “I’m
not
holding her wrong. I’m doing it just like you told