Foster

She bids the Kinsellas good evening and tells them to sit down – if they can find a place to sit – and fills the kettle from the bucket under the kitchen table. We take playthings off the car seat under the window, and sit down. Mugs are taken off the dresser, a loaf of bread is sliced, butter and jam left out.

‘Oh, I brought you jam,’ the woman says. ‘Don’t let me forget to give it to you, Mary.’

‘I made this out of the rhubarb you sent down,’ Ma says. ‘That’s the last of it.’

‘I should have brought more,’ the woman says.

‘Where’s the new addition?’ Kinsella asks.

‘Oh, he’s up in the room there. You’ll hear him soon enough.’

‘Is he sleeping through the night for you?’

‘On and off,’ Ma says. ‘The same child could crow at any hour.’

My sisters look at me as though I’m an English cousin, coming over to touch my dress, the buckles on my shoes. They seem different, thinner, and have nothing to say. We sit in to the table and eat the bread and drink the tea. When a cry is heard from upstairs, Ma gives my brother to Mrs Kinsella, and goes up to fetch the baby.

‘Isn’t there a fine child, God bless him,’ Kinsella says.

‘Isn’t he a dote,’ Mrs Kinsella says, holding on to the other.

Ma pours more tea for them all with one hand and sits down and takes her breast out for the baby. Her doing this in front of Kinsella makes me blush. Seeing me blush, Ma gives me a long, deep look.

‘No sign of himself?’ Kinsella says.

‘He went out there earlier, wherever he’s gone,’ Ma says.

A little bit of talk starts up then, rolls back and forth, bumping between them for a while. Soon after, a car is heard outside. Nothing more is said until my father appears, and throws his hat on the dresser.

‘Evening all,’ he says.

‘Dan,’ says Kinsella.

‘Ah there’s the prodigal child,’ he says. ‘You came back to us, did you?’

I say I did.

‘Did she give trouble?’

‘Trouble?’ Kinsella says. ‘Good as gold, she was, the same girl.

‘Is that so?’ says Da, sitting down. ‘Well, isn’t that a relief.’

‘You’ll want to sit in,’ Mrs Kinsella says, ‘and get your supper.’

‘I had a liquid supper,’ Da says, ‘down in Parkbridge.’

Ma turns the baby to the other breast, and changes the subject. ‘Have ye no news at all from down your way?’

‘Not a stem,’ says Kinsella. ‘It’s all quiet down with us.’

I sneeze then, and reach into my pocket for my handkerchief, and blow my nose.