by Hayley Doyle
As we drive away from Jim’s house, the electric gates open to begin our journey, and Jim’s phone rings. He puts it on loud speaker and continues to drive.
‘Hey Mam, what’s up?’
‘What’s up with me? Don’t you mean what’s up with you?’
‘Me phone was dead. That’s all.’
‘I thought you were dead.’
‘Don’t be soft.’
‘I’ll give you soft. Soft lad.’
I can’t help but snigger, for that’s such a great expression. Soft lad. Jim’s mom’s voice is melodic, filled with warm gravel. I can imagine her with a rolling pin tight in her grip, using it to threaten her son.
‘Mam, I’m coming over.’
‘Why?’
‘Yes, why? Don’t we need to get to London?
‘I need to make sure you’ve taken your tablets, that’s all.’
‘Ethel’s here, son. You know, Ethel Barton?’
‘Yeah. Of course, I know Ethel Barton.’
‘Her daughter Yvonne’s here, too.’
‘Quite the party.’
‘What was that?’
‘I said, it sounds like quite the party.’
‘No, the party is tonight. Yvonne’s sixtieth. You coming with me?’
‘No. I’m busy … Look, have you taken your pills, all the blue ones?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the white? The big tablet ones?’
‘Four already.’
‘Good.’
‘Ethel knows, she’s here.’
‘Yeah. You said. Well, don’t forget. And make sure Ethel doesn’t forget either.’
‘I won’t. Love you.’
‘Love you, too.’
Jim hangs up and turns the radio on. I’m a bit disappointed. I’d been quite enjoying listening into that conversation. It was so real. I’ve honestly never spoken to my mom like that before, or my papa for that matter, never finished with, ‘Love you, too.’ And Jim is so concerned, so focused on making sure his mother is okay. I’ve been stuck with him for five, almost six hours and I have to admit, it’s nice to see this side of him.
‘Hey,’ I shout over, from two rows back. ‘Is your mom okay?’
He catches me briefly in the rear-view mirror.
‘Chronic irregular heartbeat,’ he says, his diction strong on each syllable.
I don’t want to shout, though, I want to talk. Why was I so hasty to move here, to the back of the minibus? All Jim had done was call me a princess. And as far as insults go, I could be given a lot worse.
My mom was young when I came along and seriously messed up her plans. On a good day she affectionately called me ‘her little mistake,’ and on a bad day I was ‘an inconvenience.’ Then she became a new mom for the second time around.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said to her, before attempting any sort of salutation. I was fourteen, freshly expelled from boarding school, and just landed at Boston Logan where my mom had had to drive four hours with a three-month-old baby to come and collect me.
‘Let’s just get to the car,’ my mom said. ‘I need to feed Paige.’
‘I feel awful, Mom. I didn’t do anything wrong. I promise.’
‘Well, if you didn’t do anything wrong, why do you keep saying sorry?’
I sat up front of my mom’s car in the airport parking lot while my mom nursed Paige in the back. I listened as my mom cooed and sang ‘You Are My Sunshine’, softly, a little out of tune, so clearly enjoying motherhood now that she was ready to embrace it.
Unlike the first time.
She was April Abbot, a young flight attendant stationed in New York City for only six months when she fell pregnant to a charming salesman for an international oil and gas company. Samir Khoury’s dark, handsome features and French Arabic accent were simply too irresistible for a small-town girl from the coast of Maine. They married quickly, quietly, and I was born in the Big Apple.
‘I wanted to see the world,’ my mom had told me, often. ‘It didn’t seem fair that your papa got to live his life to the max, but I had to stay home. I didn’t want to become my mother. Or her mother.’
So to make up for that unfairness, my papa hired a nanny.
And my mom got exactly what she wanted.
She returned to flying and got to accompany her husband on certain business trips. But his job was demanding and we had to move to Hong Kong when I was two. Another nanny was hired, followed by another when the first quit due to me biting her. Obviously I don’t remember doing that. Then we moved on to Singapore, on to Dubai, and as the number of nannies increased, so did the number of hobbies my mom took up. Tennis, pottery, yoga, volunteer work, all to fill some sort of gaping hole in her life.
‘I see the way you look at other men,’ my papa would say, as I hid in the bathroom, listening to their arguments each time they came home late from dinners, from galas, from those many occasions where my mom looked so enchanting, like a movie star with invisible wings. ‘How is all this not enough for you, April? Tell me?’
One of the ‘other men’ inevitably ended up lighting a spark in my mom and my parents divorced. My papa stayed in Dubai and I went with my mom back to her home town of Rockport, Maine. At first, I was delighted about this new arrangement, believing I’d get a whole parent to myself. My mom was infinitely happier, keen to show off her new fiancé – an ear, nose and throat specialist called Hank – to old friends. It’s always baffled me how adamant she was to see the world. I mean, my papa gave her that on a plate, and yet, she ended up settling in the lobster town where she was born.
There was a lack of affordable nannies in Rockport, and the last thing a woman preparing for an East Coast white wedding needed was a ten-year-old not settling into the local elementary school. All the other kids had been attending since they learnt to write their name and I was the new kid. The one with the weird accent. The one who asked too many questions.
‘I’ve spoken to your papa and he wants to help you,’ my mom told me, smiling. ‘He’s going to let you go to boarding school in England. This is every little girl’s dream. I couldn’t get enough of Malory Towers when I was your age.’
Malory Towers it was not. I lasted a few years before I was kicked out.
With Paige settled and asleep, my mom began the long drive north to Rockport.
‘Paige is really beautiful,’ I said, secret code for another apology.
‘She’s an angel, isn’t she?’
‘I can babysit her whenever you want. You know, whenever you and Hank wanna go out to dinner, or to a party, or something?’
My mom shifted in her seat, adjusted her breast within the bra cup, then the other side.
‘That’s better,’ she said to herself.
‘I really like babies,’ I continued.
‘There’s more to babies than just liking them.’
‘I know. They’re hard work.’
‘They can be.’
‘But liking them’s a pretty good start, right?’
‘You also like ballet, Zara. It doesn’t mean you’re Anna Pavlova.’
I counted the gas stations, the motels, and waited for my mom to ask me about what happened at school, why I was forced to leave. Paige needed feeding again, so I decided to make myself scarce and hung out in a roadside McDonalds for a while, picking at some nuggets, licking the salt off the fries.
‘Are you okay?’ my mom asked when we started the final stretch home.
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
‘If I was okay, people would want to be around me. But they don’t.’
‘Zara, that’s ridiculous. You choose the wrong people to be around, that’s your problem.’
‘But, I don’t mean to choose the wrong ones. They always seem so nice.’
‘And a teacher old enough to be your father? That didn’t seem wrong to you?’
‘He was nice to me, Mom. That’s all.’
‘I don’t want to
hear it, Zara,’ she snapped, holding her hand up to my face. ‘I only asked if you were okay. Why can’t you just be okay?’
‘I was only being honest.’
‘And that’s fine, honey. But, I can’t get into this right now. I need to concentrate.’
Paige woke up, started crying, but the road leading into Rockport was congested and there was nowhere to pull over. Leaning across into the back seat, I found the pacifier and slipped it into my baby half-sister’s tiny mouth, but Paige spat it out, unable to be soothed. The radio crackled, the country song playing becoming disjointed as the singer sang about loving you forever and ever, Amen. My mom started crying, too.
It was never going to work.
It wouldn’t have been fair on Paige. She was a blank canvas, whereas I was spilt paint, too much of a mess to start cleaning up amongst diapers and lullabies. So, it was back to Dubai where I could attend a school with a British curriculum, picking up at the point I was booted out, my papa once again giving my mom exactly what she wanted. Freedom.
But it wasn’t freedom to see the world.
It was the freedom to become a good mom; to get it right this time.
The journey to Heathrow continues smoothly.
We’re making good time, hitting no congestion, not getting slowed down by the bad weather, which has cleared up a little further south. I’ve been attempting to paint my nails with the polish Marina gave me as a leaving present. ‘To remind you of me, Zara-Baby,’ the card had read, attached to the gift box containing three bold colours. Marina frequents nail salons at least once a week and occasionally invited me along. It was our bonding time, a chance to talk, except Marina always ended up talking to the nail technician (rudely) or to the woman beside her (in Russian).
I abruptly jerk forward, drawing a line of Purple Mystery down my left hand, the little bottle spilling its contents all over the thigh of my black jeans. Jim has pulled over into a gas station, various food outlets welcoming us to eat, drink, rest.
‘I need petrol,’ Jim says, twisting around to look at me. ‘Would you mind …?’
I fish out my purse. A deal is a deal.
‘I’ll fill up and wait here,’ Jim says.
It amazes me how men never need to use the bathroom. I’m bursting and run across the parking lot into the main hub, enjoying the chance to stretch my restless legs. It’s heaving, a long line of hungry travellers streaming from Burger King, from KFC, from Costa. A small, dark arcade jingle-jangles in the corner, a few truckers leaning against the one-armed-bandits, throwing away their money for no reason other than to feed their addiction, a kid crying because his dad won’t let him go on the Postman Pat ride. I buy two tuna melts and two cappuccinos to go.
When I return to the minibus, I slide the side door open and get back into my seat, two rows away, and lean over to give Jim his snacks. Silently, he gives me a double thumbs up and I realise he’s chatting on the phone.
‘Come on, Snowy lad, what’s the big news?’
‘Get your arse round here, mate,’ the voice is shouting back through the loud speaker.
‘Just tell me now while I’ve got you on the phone.’
‘Where are you, mate?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Spill the beans.’
‘Okay … okay … okay …’
‘Go on!’
Whoever ‘Snowy’ is falls silent, a hiss of air crackling through the speaker.
Jim lowers his voice a touch. ‘Is Helen pregnant again?’
‘Jimbo. Helen’d rather take a vow of celibacy than get preggo again. You know what she’s like, mate. Christ! You know what the twins are like.’
‘So, what’s the big news?’
‘James. I’ve bought a ring.’
‘A ring? As in jewellery?’
‘I’m gonna ask Helen to marry me.’
Strangely, my heart skips a beat when Jim’s glance catches mine in the rear-view mirror. His head falls back onto his headrest, releasing a long, silent sigh.
‘Jimbo? Did you hear what I said?’ Snowy shouts.
‘I did.’ Jim swallows.
‘I’m gonna propose to Helen.’
‘I got that. Fucking congratulations, mate. I’m – I’m made up for you.’
‘And so you should be. You better start writing that best man speech.’
‘No pressure then?’
‘And, I was thinking, we should reunite! The band! Do a turn at the wedding, like.’
‘What? “Video Killed the Radio Star”?’
‘Yeah, Jimbo, haha! Now, come over. The bubbly’s on ice.’
‘She hasn’t said yes yet.’
Snowy laughs – a hearty, explosive laugh – and it travels through Jim’s phone and bounces off the soft grey interior of the minibus. Jim joins him, and I almost do, too, for this Snowy guy’s laugh is infectious. I bite into my tuna melt, burning the roof of my mouth.
‘I’ll come over after work on Sunday, mate,’ Jim says. ‘I’ve got a lot on at the mo.’
‘Since when have you got a lot on?’
‘Look, piss off and go and make an honest woman of your girlfriend.’
‘Are you with a bird?’
‘No, I’m not with a—’
‘HELEN! HELS!’ Snowy was shouting. ‘Come here! HELS—’
‘Snowy, stop it …’ Jim says, trying clumsily to take his handset off loud speaker.
I can hear a woman in the background telling Snowy to shut up or he’ll scare the kids.
‘HELEN, OUR JIMBO’S GOT A BIRD.’
Jim grabs his phone. ‘I haven’t got a bird, mate.’
But, Snowy hangs up and Jim tuts, putting the phone back in the dock.
Another minibus loaded with children in matching sports kits parks up beside us and I clock a bunch of kids banging on the window and pulling faces. I go all cross-eyed and stick out my tongue back at them. One kid gives me the finger. I’m actually way more offended than I expect to be. Embarrassed, I take my tuna melt and my cappuccino and warn Jim that I’m changing seats, coming to sit up front with him.
‘Christ,’ Jim says, aloud but not directly at me. He’s staring at the signs ahead for Burger King, KFC and Costa, but seems a million miles away. ‘Snowy and Helen are finally gonna to do it.’
‘Congrats to them,’ I say, getting myself settled in the passenger seat. ‘And sorry for listening. Your friend was kind of loud.’
‘You’re not wrong there.’
‘You don’t seem too happy about it.’
‘What?’ Jim turns to me. His eyes are narrow, scowling.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I just spoke when I shouldn’t have … I do that. Sorry.’
‘I am happy,’ he says, his tone quite the polar opposite of happy, as he starts to drive off. ‘I’m very, very happy.’
‘Yeah, you sound it.’
‘I’m just, you know, under a bit of fucking pressure now.’
‘Okay …’
‘I mean, I’m gonna have to stand up and talk about Snowy to a room full of people. That’s not easy, like. And I’m gonna have to tell the very best – and the very worst – tales about him to the likes of his nan.’
‘Yeah, I’d hate to be best man, or maid of honour … well, no I’d actually like to be asked to be maid of honour, I’ve never been a bridesmaid for anybody. But hold on. Forgive me for overhearing, but did Snowy mention you guys used to be in a band?’
‘Nope.’
‘He did! Don’t deny it. Come on, tell me. You were in a band?’
‘Okay, fine. Yeah. I was in a band.’
I fight the urge to laugh as an obvious tint of red rises from Jim’s neck to his cheeks. He must have been the lead singer. With that hair and that smouldering glint? I remember the photo I’d seen back at his house. Jim was head and shoulders above the other three guys when it came to looks.
‘I bet you were the lead singer, right?’
Jim gives a small groan.
‘Oh, Jim, I’m not asking you to reveal your
inner secrets to me, I’m just making light conversation about a band you were in. Don’t be so uptight.’
Jim’s mouth drops open into one large, round O.
‘Well, you are uptight,’ I justify. ‘You’ve been uptight all day.’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘No, that’s right. I don’t. Because you haven’t told me.’
‘Look, I’m bad at hangovers. Okay?’
‘Where did you go last night?’
Jim winces. ‘The Titanic. It’s not a ship, it’s a—’
‘A hotel,’ I give a little whistle. ‘Yeah, I saw it when I was looking for somewhere to stay last night. That place was way over my budget. You don’t do anything by halves, do you, Jim?’
‘Not anymore, it seems.’
I hang onto Jim’s words, hoping for an opening, or just more of a chat. I turn in to face him, lifting my right knee and getting comfy nuzzling into the passenger seat, holding tight onto both cappuccinos. He puts his foot down and speeds up, overtaking the slow lorry ahead of them.
‘Why are you watching me?’ he asks.
‘Why do you turn my every move into something sinister?’ I cry, quite eager to spill his drink into his lap. Why is he so damn difficult? And besides, the tuna melts are going cold. If I make a choice to eat carbs and cheese, then I want them piping hot and juicy. Instead, I can’t find a cup holder so have to sip my cappuccino whilst also holding Jim’s, offering it to him now and then. My stomach rumbles as the delicious smell of hot bread gives way to a warm odour of cooling cheese, and eventually, just stale fish. The radio doesn’t even work in this minibus. The luxury of that BMW is sorely missed.
‘You wanna know about me?’ Jim asks suddenly, although the way he says it makes me not want to know. ‘Well, guess what? There’s nothing to know.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘I don’t do anything, haven’t really done anything—’
‘That’s totally impossible.’
‘It’s not.’
‘How did you get a car like a BMW if you don’t do anything?’
‘I don’t wanna talk about the fucking car.’
‘Okay, fine. I get that. It’s a sore point. But how do you not do anything? What does that even mean? You live, you breathe, you have a mom, you have friends, how does any of that mean you do nothing?’