Something I Need to Tell You

A short story by Guylaine Spencer

When you were little, and anxious to avoid bedtime, you would often ask me for the story of how I met your dad. Back then, I told you a short version that would satisfy a child’s curiosity. It was funny, and true, but I left some things out.

Now that my life is coming to an end – and we can’t deny that, my darling girl – I need to tell you the full story. I may not be able to do that without breaking down, so I’m going to write it out for you.

Let me back up a little, first, though, to help you make sense of what I did.

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A travel writer once wrote that whenever he met an Australian on the road, they were always heading home. I’m not sure who wrote that or what he meant, but when I met your dad, I was an Aussie on the road and I sure as hell had no intention of ever going “home” … at least not if home meant where I was born.

I left Australia as soon as I could. It was 1980 and I was in my early twenties. After finishing my scholarship-funded university education, I was armed with a business degree. I could have applied to any of the big companies that came calling at the job fairs, but I didn’t want to join the “suits” quite yet. I only took the scholarship because it was a free way to get out of the house I shared with five other unrelated kids and a couple of adults who called themselves our den parents as if we were a pack of wolves. In a way, they were right. We were a bunch of wild animals, always slashing and nipping at each other, but we had less of a sense of family than a pack of wild dogs did.  

I enjoyed university and made a few close friends. After graduating, I stayed in the cheap rooming house I’d occupied as a student and worked day and night waiting tables for a year to save up money to explore the world. My friends had moved out of the city to their new jobs and even though we kept in touch, this was before cellphones and cheap long-distance rates. Calls were infrequent and brief. We began to drift apart and I started to feel lonely.

Without any detailed plans, only a vague sense of yearning for “life” to start, I began my travels in Malaysia and Singapore. I skipped over to Hong Kong for a brief stop, and then travelled slowly west through Europe, finally ending up in Ireland in the summer of 1981.

I was in Galway, working part-time at a bar to make cash for further travel, when I met David. We happened to be staying at the same hostel. I shared a room with five other girls. We slept in bunkbeds. The rent was cheap and there was a kitchen where we could do some light cooking. Travellers came and went regularly. Among them, I found some drinking buddies, but no true friends.

I was making macaroni for a solo dinner in the hostel kitchen when David and his pal Sean walked in.

David was on the scrawny side, with a long narrow face and hair that was shoulder length, brown and scruffy. It looked like he was trying to grow a beard but it wasn’t quite working out yet. He might have modelled as a Jesus figure for the painter El Greco if it hadn’t been for his wide goofy grin. He was laughing over something with Sean when they walked into the room. It was the smile that caught my attention, and held it.

We made the usual chit chat that young travellers make when they’re still enthralled with the excitement of “seeing the world” for the first time and their amazement at themselves for being so courageous and open-minded, as if no one had ever travelled in the history of the planet. I miss that self-confidence and ignorance, now that I’m old and cowardly and weighed down with experience.

Both of us wanted to explore the area around Galway, and after dinner and a few drinks in the dining room, David asked me if I’d like to join him. I was planning to quit my job at the bar after my next shift, and move on, so I said sure. Sean had other plans so he didn’t join us.

Together, we wound up going to the Aran Islands one day and then rented bikes and rode out to small towns surrounding Galway on the day after that. David was American but had Irish roots, he said. I never knew who my birth parents were, but I guessed that I had Irish genes too, because I was often mistaken for being Irish. Strangers would approach me, looking for directions, and were always surprised when I opened my mouth and the Aussie accent came out.

After our third day together, David and I wound up back at the hostel having a very late dinner. David said Sean had gone to the Aran Islands for a couple of nights so he had their shared room to himself. The implication was obvious and even though it was my last night in Galway – or maybe because it was my last night – we wound up in his bed.

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Everything was great … until the end.

I can still hear David’s voice as he swore: shit shit shit.

He was standing by the bed, peeling off the condom and shouting loud enough to wake the rest of the house. Trust me, this is not what you want to hear after a session of what you thought was protected sex.

“It broke,” he said, in a lower tone. “I’m sorry.”           

I groaned. There wasn’t a lot I could do at that point. The morning-after pill wasn’t available in Ireland, and I hadn’t even heard of it anyway. I wasn’t on the birth control pill. My Australian doctor had told me that with my migraines, I stood a high risk of a stroke. Even if I had no plans for my life, ending up dead or paralysed wasn’t part of any picture I might imagine. I had heard of douching but had no idea how to do it, or if it even worked. I’d used spermicide but I knew it was only partially effective.

I went into the washroom and cleaned myself as thoroughly as I could, adding a bit of spermicide, not knowing if it would help after the fact. I popped my head back into David’s room and said I was tired and was going back to my own room and would see him in the morning. I tossed and turned all night.

Over breakfast in the dining room the next morning, David and I made awkward small talk. I packed everything I owned into a backpack. We had a quick kiss on the doorstep of the hostel and said goodbye.

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Two months later I was staying at another hostel in Glencolumbkille and working in another bar. My first missed period hadn’t worried me (much); I was often irregular. But the second one did. When the pregnancy test came back positive, my first reaction was disbelief. I was starting to feel sick all the time, but I told myself it wasn’t morning sickness. It was something my stomach always did when my brain was having a panic attack.  

I was polishing pint glasses behind the bar when David’s pal Sean walked in. I recognized him immediately. He smiled and waved and came up to the bar.  

Sean was Irish. He’d been travelling around, too, working odd jobs like construction, renovation, carpenter’s assistant, mover, trying to “figure out what to do with his life”, he said. He’d finished high school but hadn’t gone to college or university. He was older than me. Short and a bit chubby, with red hair and pale and freckled skin similar to mine, he gave the impression of a solid sort of buddy, someone you could share a joke or secret with, and who wouldn’t let you down.

I asked him about David. It turned out that they didn’t know each other that well, and had only been travelling together for a few short weeks, mainly to save money on room rentals.

It didn’t really matter, I told myself. The decision was mine. Abortion was illegal in Ireland, so if I wanted that, I’d have to leave the country. To England? I’d never talked to anyone about matters like this, and didn’t even know where to go for information. Ireland in the 1980s was different than it is today. As for raising a baby, I felt like I was in no position to take on that responsibility. It was too much. After living in foster homes, I also wasn’t prepared to just give a child to the system and hope for the best. I thought about calling some of my university pals, but it had been so many months since we’d talked and I felt weird about calling up out of the blue with such a huge dilemma. I’d never felt so alone in my life.

Sean was staying in town at a B&B and working on a house renovation. He liked working with his hands and creating something, he said, and was starting to feel this was going to be his career. He could go back to Cork where his mum and dad lived, or he could live somewhere else. He wasn’t sure. Ireland was small enough that he could easily get home to see his family on weekends. They were close, he said, with him being an only child. He was ready to settle down somewhere in one of the bigger Irish towns or cities where he could get steady work and maybe get on as an apprentice somewhere so he could acquire more skills and make more money.  

We went out for walks in the countryside and had lunch at some of the teashops. I talked about getting a permanent job in a bar, and maybe working up to managing one myself. Could I become a partner in one some day, have my own business maybe? I’d learned about business in school and I enjoyed the bar setting. I could see myself running a place with regular entertainment, drawing locals and tourists as well. Creating a little community.

Sean told me about his hometown of Cork, the little neighbourhood where he lived with his family. It was a big city but it was also like a collection of villages. He had a slew of aunts and uncles and cousins he saw regularly. He even sounded a bit annoyed at times about how many there were and how much energy and time he spent visiting this one and the other, and listening to the advice and criticism of so many relations. I could tell by his tone that he didn’t really mind them, though. To me it sounded like a rich life. I told him a bit about my five foster families, including the last one, and how I couldn’t wait to escape and find a home of my own. I hadn’t found that yet, but once I decided on a career of some sort, I’d settle down and find an apartment and make a real home at last. It didn’t have to be fancy, just mine.

One day in conversation, Sean reached across the table and placed his hand gently over mine. When he rubbed his thumb along the blood vessels at my wrist, the tingling sensation swept up my arm and through my body. I shivered and he must have taken my reaction for displeasure, for he quickly removed his hand. To assure him it was ok, I smiled and reached out, and did the same to him. The grin on his face made words unnecessary.

I wasn’t about to start something new with anyone until I had things resolved, though. That evening, I felt comfortable enough with Sean to share my quandary about the pregnancy.

I wasn’t at all prepared for his reaction. When he asked me to marry him, I thought he was joking. We hadn’t even kissed. Had I been so taken up with my predicament that I’d missed some signals from him?  

Of course, I said no. He said he understood, but even if we didn’t marry, he’d like to be “more than friends” and be with me if I decided to keep the baby.

For the next few weeks, he kept hanging around the bar and showing up at the hostel on my days off. He managed to get more time off work than he usually would, just to be with me. Much later, he told me he’d made it his “full-time job” to win me over. His boss understood.

Time was critical. I couldn’t let my decision go on forever. We were sitting on the rocks down by the ocean one day and Sean was playing a harmonica. The tune was a lullaby, and when I began to cry, he put down the harmonica and took me in his arms. I sobbed like a baby. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d let go like that. At the end of the weeping, I looked into his eyes and said “Yes”. I didn’t need to say anything else. He knew what I meant.

  When we went to register the birth, I put Sean’s name on the record. A year later, we made it official, and married.

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When Sean got sick two years ago, we talked about telling you. He said it should be my decision, since it was my secret. I said it should be his decision, because the truth would affect your feelings towards him too. He had always been your father, in every sense, you believed. Even though he’d still be the man who raised you, wouldn’t something change between you? We knew he only had about six months to live, and we couldn’t make up our minds, even after discussing it endlessly, so we did nothing.

Now my time is coming, too. I can’t give you anything more than a name, a country and some old photographs. I don’t know if you’ll even want the information. I never sought out my birth parents. I decided sometime in my teens that if I wanted a family, I’d have to make one of my own. I’m glad I did. I never went back to Australia, either, not even for a visit. I stayed here in Ireland with Sean and made it my home.

You’ll make your own decision about what to do, and I can only wish you the best of luck and love.

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Guylaine Spencer's fiction has been published in several journals including The New Canadian Stories Magazine, CommuterLit and Literally Stories. She graduated from McGill University with a degree in English Literature and has written non-fiction articles for magazines for twenty years. Learn more at her website.

Images:

Aran Islands, horizon by Klaus Birner

Aran Islands, vertical by Jonathan Borba