Wednesday's Child (10 page)

‘Why didn’t anyone tell us?’ Betty asked, incredulous.

‘Sure weren’t the social workers already working with him? You couldn’t be called in when you were already there!’

I winced, knowing how those words would hurt Betty.

‘Dympna, if this … er … placement … needs to be for more than one night, would you be agreeable? We will, of course, organise the full maintenance allowance for you immediately.’ Foster parents receive a small payment for each child they care for, which, while better than nothing, is really just a token. No one gets into fostering for the money.

‘Well, I can take the kids for a few weeks if it’s really necessary, but I wouldn’t really like to have them for much longer than that. I have other commitments.’

‘Of course. We appreciate your being able to help us at all.’

I thought that we could get Max cleaned up within a few weeks and that we would not need a foster placement for any longer than that. Once again, I was allowing optimism to get in the way of reality. Little did I know it, but this case would test me and my personal resources in ways I could never have imagined. As I sat and drank coffee and the night slowly fell upon us, I thought that we had staved off
disaster for the McCoys. For this family, I thought, there will be better days.

I could not have been more wrong.

I was the first to arrive at the McCoy house the next morning, and I parked up the road a bit and finished writing my report on the previous day’s events while I waited. Shortly, I saw Noreen, a social worker who had worked on the case before, pull in and I got out and went over to her car.

‘What happened?’ she asked, abandoning any preamble.

I told her.

‘Shit. I thought he was clean. We put a lot of effort into this guy.’

I shrugged. What did she want me to say?

‘Where’s Betty?’

‘On her way I presume.’ I felt myself begin to bristle. This was not my fault. I had not placed the alcohol in Max McCoy’s hand, and I had not created the policy that said that a social worker needed to sign off on a Voluntary Care Order. I had not appointed Noreen to the case, either.

I pushed the rising anger aside. I was tired and contrary. It was likely that Noreen had either had to cancel or postpone something else to be there, and she probably wanted this finished as soon as possible so that she could get on with her day. Social workers
have extremely heavy caseloads, and Noreen was no exception. I saw Betty’s car turn into the road.

Max McCoy opened the door, looking as if he had spent the previous night on survival manoeuvres with the
SAS
. He stood aside to allow us into his hallway. He had obviously been cleaning, for the smell of disinfectant and polish lingered in a rather unpleasant cocktail in the air. But it was better than the smell of vomit. He silently walked into the living room, leaving us standing in the hall. After some seconds of looking uncomfortably at one another, Noreen followed him, and we trailed after her. He was sitting on the same couch I had found him on the day before, staring into space, his stubbled chin cradled in his hand, his hair sticking up at odd angles. He had rings under his eyes and I could smell his breath from the doorway. It was foul, but the alcohol in it was only a memory.

‘Let’s get this over with,’ he said.

Noreen sat on the arm of one of the chairs and began to riffle through her bag.

‘Your children are fine, Max,’ Betty said, going over and sitting down beside him. ‘I dropped in on Dympna on the way over this morning. She brought them to school and they’re in good form. They’re asking after you and looking forward to coming home.’

He heaved a deep sigh.

‘Thank you, Betty.’

Noreen produced the Care Order and handed it to him.

‘This is a similar Order to the previous one you signed. Do you need me to explain any of it to you again?’

‘No.’

I handed him my pen, and he looked at me right in the eye. I was almost bowled over by the depth of misery I saw in him. I saw loss, shame, anger, bitterness and a terrible awareness that this was a battle he would never, ever be able to win. I saw, in that second, the story of Max McCoy from his own perspective. I saw his own abandonment, his own deep-rooted fear. I saw the little boy he had once been who had never received the love and support he deserved and needed. I saw an infant who had cried in the darkness and cried and cried, but no one ever came. I saw how handing his own children over to the authorities for a second time was driving another nail into the coffin that was his life. I wanted to reach out then and tell him to stop, to shout at him not to sign the paper; we would find some way to work it out. But I knew that this was not my place, and that the child he had once been was dead and gone. There were three other children who needed to be helped, and by signing this Order he
was
helping them, terrible though the cost was.

He signed the paper and pushed it across the table to Noreen, who countersigned it.

‘What now?’ he asked, looking around at us.

‘Well, that’s kind of up to you, Max,’ I said, leaning
against the wall and folding my arms. ‘What happened? I’m told by these two ladies that you were sent to a centre to get you cleaned up. You were released with glowing reports, you seemed ready to get on with your life, and then … this. What went wrong?’

‘Oh God, Shane,’ he said, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles and shaking his head, ‘what kind of a question is that? Do you have any idea? Do you have a clue, man?’ His tone was very defensive.

I was tempted to soften my approach, but I felt that being gentle would not serve him well now.

‘I think that it’s the only question to ask right now, Max. I had to stand here while your children watched you wipe puke from your chin and drag yourself out of a drunken stupor, and then I had to come back out here this morning to have you sign them away for a second time. That makes me feel pretty crappy, to tell you the truth. I think my question is a fairly reasonable one.’

‘Aw Jesus. I don’t know … things got on top of me. I thought I could cope and then … then I couldn’t, you know?’ His tone changed to whining, pleading, pathetic now. The aggression hadn’t worked. He was trying a different tack.

‘How do we know that it won’t happen again?’ Betty asked. ‘How do we know that this isn’t just another lapse in a long line of lapses? Those children won’t be able to cope with this again. Look at what you’re doing to them.’

‘I know, I know. I feel awful. The kids mean everything to me. They’re all I have. I need this sorted out. I have to get them back.’

‘Are you serious about that, Max? Do you really mean it this time?’ Noreen asked. ‘If you are, we’ll help in any way we can. We’ll organise regular access visits, we’ll get you specialist addiction counselling, we’ll make sure that the kids get plenty of help too, but we need to know that you are committed to the process.’

‘Of course I am. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how I slipped back into the drinking. One minute I’m sober and steady, the next I’m coming out of a three-day jag. I don’t know.’

‘Do you have any liquor in the house now, Max?’ I asked.

‘No. I poured it all down the lav this morning.’

‘Are you sure? If I were to do a thorough search would I find any in the toilet cistern or hidden in one of those cushion covers?’

‘Search all you like, man. It’s all gone.’

I nodded. ‘You’d better be telling me the truth, Max. Don’t let me down.’

‘I won’t. I won’t let
myself
down, or my kids.’

I walked over and extended my hand to him. ‘Shake on it.’

He looked at my hand, and then looked at me. In this interaction, I was the biggest threat to him. I was another Alpha Male invading his territory. I wanted us more on an even keel. Max was used to dealing
with women, and I got a sense that he could be quite a charmer when he wanted to be and was not beyond playing the little-boy-lost card. But he was finding me much harder to deal with. He couldn’t quite find an approach that he was comfortable with, and was veering from persona to persona, trying to find one that would get me onside. The man liked to be liked, but felt on very uneven ground with me.

He did not shake, but neither did I remove my hand.

‘We can work together and try to get on, or we can pull against each other,’ I said, ‘but either way I’m in your life for the foreseeable future. It’d be easier if we could reach some kind of understanding.’

He laughed drily and took my hand, shaking vigorously. ‘You’re a tough bastard, Shane, but at least you’re up front about it.’

I grinned. ‘I bet you say that to all the guys.’

He laughed aloud at that. It would be one of the few moments of humour and friendship before the darkness fully descended.

Forty-five minutes later I was sitting in Josephine’s office. She had asked me to come up and had welcomed me in. She was now sitting behind her desk reading the report on my one and only visit to the Kellys.

It was a lengthy paper because I was convinced that an investigation into the circumstances of the events would follow. I wanted to make sure that I
had every point covered. After all, this was a visit that had involved a social worker, a community childcare worker, the gardaí, the psychiatric services and the ambulance corps. A woman had drawn a knife and had ended up cut, albeit shallowly, and had subsequently been temporarily committed (apparently she was due to be released back into society the following week). The social worker who was supposed to be co-ordinating things had had to be escorted home because he was obviously unfit to be on active duty. That left me the Senior Worker, and certainly the only competent worker, in situ. I was not taking any chances.

I sat and waited, looking around the office. It was decorated in a minimalist, almost spartan, manner. In Health Board offices, many features were the same. The carpet was a kind of dark beige carpet tile, the paint on the wall was the ubiquitous magnolia. The desk was standard also. On it sat a small clock that looked to be of Waterford Crystal, a laptop computer and a plastic cube that contained photos I assumed were of Josephine’s family. On the wall was a simple print of a generic cityscape in a plain black wooden frame. Beside it was a large calendar advertising one of the local banks. It was almost as if she didn’t believe that she’d be there for long, and had made no effort to make the space her own. Everyone else had tried to customise their desks and workspaces, so Josephine’s lack of commitment stood out. I thought it was interesting, and decided to keep an
eye on this lady. There was much more to her than met the eye.

She finally finished the document and looked up. Her eyes were a dark blue colour, giving her a deep, thoughtful appearance.

‘Very thorough. You really did have quite a time of it, didn’t you?’

‘It was fun.’

She laughed in a brief snort.

‘Fun is one thing I’m sure it wasn’t. The Kellys are a … complicated bunch.’

‘I gathered.’

‘They have been on the books for a very long time, and there has been a series of workers involved to one degree or another, coming and going as the case moves through different stages and the focus changes from one family member to another. That’s the way of it with long-term cases. You know that.’

I nodded. Continuity of care was always the aspiration, but often there was a rapid turnover of workers with families like the Kellys. When it became obvious that a family would be on the books for the long haul, the practice was usually to channel workers through a series of short projects. Staff would be circulated, moved on to other cases and other children, since these virtually permanent clients were seen as lost causes, simply being maintained – resolution of their problems was too much to hope for. Also, prolonged exposure could result in burnout, as had happened to Sinéad with the O’Gormans.

‘This office is only concerned with the children in the family – other agencies deal with the adults. There are three minors in the Kelly home at present: Denise, who is seventeen, the baby, Christine, and Connie, who is fifteen. That leaves the parents and an older brother, Mike, who’s in his late twenties and who has severe psychiatric disturbance. We, of course, have regular encounters with the other family members because of the nature of the work, but our focus is on the three minors.’