Nines

She stands in her dream kitchen weighing ingredients for the fiftieth birthday cake that she knows he'll never taste.


He'd built this kitchen just as she'd imagined it in her head and she'd loved it, but this morning as bright sunlight streamed through spotless windows, everything felt too harsh, stark and cold. A too shrill tune from a too frequent ice cream van pierced the silence and took her back to when Liam and Siobhain were young.


" Mummy pleeeeease can we have 99's ."


The days when they relied on her, when granite, chrome and the swing area of a concealed fridge door were of no concern. Now as Jackie approached fifty herself, she felt like a mother again to husband Peter who'd swapped his independence for the attractions of the bottle.



The ice cream van cast an ambulance shaped shadow on the dining room wall, she'd grown used to the calling of ambulances to her home.



" Jackie please, please call 999 I'm dying " a desperate Peter would beg as he went through the physical, mental and spiritual torture of his addiction and took Jackie on that journey with him.



There had been times when she'd had to dial for herself when his fists would fly as he raged drunkenly, because she didn't match up to some fucked-up image his sodden mind had created for her.



As Jackie weighed sugar, flour, lemon juice and baking powder she wondered would she walk away.



They had always argued at home and publicly, some were embarrassed by it, but close family and friends thought they thrived on it. Now the passion had left their rows and they were left with just daily spite and recrimination and it seemed there was no making up left to do. She'd lie awake at night hurting and wondering why she stayed and he'd lie oblivious in drunken stupor. Still she'd try and make sure he was ok , fulfilling the mother role once more.


What would become of him if she went ? She foresaw failing health, hospital, loneliness, an early death and weighed it against the love she once felt. A love that had been replaced by pity and sorrow on the occasions when her anger at what he'd become had subsided.



She told herself she'd not leave before his fiftieth birthday, there always seemed to be a reason not to go, how could she leave him alone for that ? She dreamt of taking those first steps to freedom, a new beginning and a time to grow again, how much she wanted to embrace that dream.


She looked into the living room at him sprawled in disarray upon the sofa, half-conscious or what passed for it these days. A bottle at his head, he'd lost the battle with it and the bottle had taken his heart , mind and soul and left no room for her.


Today she felt she could not or would not leave, something like guilt had her petrified. She also knew that all the screws that held the hinges on her married life had come undone, and she was teetering on the edge.


Glimpsing the School Reunion Invitation card on the kitchen table , she'd heard that Paddy O'Connell was returning from America to be there. Her mind was transported back thirty and more years and the draw of being seventeen once again saw the ghost of a smile pass over long neglected lips.