by John Clanchy
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she says. ‘But you haven’t come here to listen to my anxieties.’
‘No,’ I say.
‘So?’ she says.
‘You asked me last time to think about some things – about what I’d want to say to Mother if I could.’
‘And have you – thought about it, I mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘And have you reached any conclusions?’
‘No.’
‘Good,’ she laughs. ‘I always suspect quick resolutions. Would you like some tea?’
We make it together. In one corner of her room by her morning window, there’s an electric kettle, a tea-pot, cups. In her colours. We stand side by side in the soft filtered light while she boils the jug, prepares the cups. I watch her hands as she does this. Her hands are heavy, square-ish, her fingers thick, but they are also precise and capable. Unhurried. She turns her head and smiles at me, without speaking, just looks at me as though she’s wondering what I’m thinking.
‘You look different somehow,’ she says, though this time without looking. As she pours.
‘Do I?’
‘More … I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Self-possessed maybe. Less edgy?’
‘Perhaps it’s just that I’m not wearing any make-up.’
‘Ah,’ she says. ‘Is that it? It suits you.’
I blush when she says this, suddenly a child again beside this confident, mature woman. Whom I want so much to like me, to approve of me. ‘Shall we take our tea back to our chairs?’ she says, and lets me go in front of her. Which is wise. It allows me the space to recover, and the face I present to her as we sit is composed once again, our relationship more equal. Perhaps, I think, she knows all this, and I’m just relaxing into this thought when she says:
‘So. Tell me about your crises of the moment.’
As I speak, I focus on Mother. I tell her about the students offering to sit and maybe, in the telling, I give myself more credit for this than I deserve.
‘That’s wonderful,’ she says, ‘that’s brilliant, Miriam,’ and I find myself not blushing this time but glowing, with simple pleasure. ‘You could create a whole new paradigm of geriatric care,’ she says, smiling. ‘Think of your mother, with all those bright, alive women. The stimulation for her.’
‘Philip says she thinks they’re all the same person.’
‘No comment,’ Jane says.
‘He was joking.’
‘But it must take some pressure off you.’
‘It does – for the moment anyway. But I’ve actually been thinking …’
‘You have time for that as well?’
We smile.
‘Yes. For a few minutes anyway,’ I say, ‘just before I pass out each night. I’ve been thinking I might stop teaching for a while. Or formal teaching at least. I feel so … I don’t know, hamstrung by things, I suppose. The courses, the restrictions on teaching, the whole atmosphere of the college is pretty sour at the moment.’
‘But you do mean to do something else, don’t you? Professionally?’
‘Oh God, yes,’ I say. ‘Full-time care of Mother would be death for me, and torture for her. She thinks that that’s what she wants. That’s why Bloodbath had to go –’
‘Bloodbath?’
‘Mother’s name for Mrs Johnson, the previous sitter. Alongside Bloodstock and Bloodgum.’
‘Why so much Blood?’
‘I have no idea. She gets stuck on certain words, but what the original association is, is usually beyond me. Katie can often work them out. She says Grandma Vera’s thoughts are like fish in the river.’
‘Fish?’
‘There’s a river at the back of our house – across a park actually. And a little lake. If I get a chance, I walk with Mother there. Katie comes along too. Mother’s thoughts are like the fish below the surface, Katie says. They flash about all over the place – it looks random – but all the time there’s a pattern, the way they move, the way they communicate, you just have to be able to see it. It’s all still there, I think Katie’s saying, it’s just a different way of thinking from us.’
‘Like a child’s in some ways?’
‘Yes, I suppose. Anyway, the two of them seem to be able to communicate in ways that are beyond me.’
‘Interesting, isn’t it,’ Jane says, and reflects for a moment. Then brings me back to where we were. With Bloodbath, Bloodstock, et al.
‘Though Mother,’ I tell her, ‘also throws in the odd Fatso from time to time.’
‘That must be a relief for both of them,’ Jane says. And how about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Names for your mother. Apart from Mother. Tender names – do you have some? Mum even?’
‘Never. I could never bring myself to say that. I couldn’t get it out. I’ve even tried once or twice in the past months, but I’d go to say it and catch myself with this absurd, immovable stone on my tongue. I could never spit it out, get it out past my teeth. It made me feel so –’
‘So what?’
‘So fake, Laura would call it. So much in bad faith. If I were to turn around now and suddenly start calling her M – See? Even now the word won’t come out.’
‘If you were to turn round now and suddenly start calling her Mum – what then, Miriam? What would happen?’
‘I … I don’t know. I only know it’d be wrong.’
‘Fake?’
‘Yes. Fake – I say. ‘God, what an undiscriminating word. I sound like a typical teenager, don’t I?’
‘Fake will do for the moment,’ Jane says. ‘But fake to what? The life you’ve already lived with her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would it be different perhaps if you’d been able to express the anger you feel towards her in a way she could understand?’
‘It might, I suppose. But it’s too late now.’
‘Oh?’
‘I couldn’t do it now. I couldn’t say to her now, I hated you.’
‘The real enemy’s escaped? Slipped away into the forest?’
‘Yes.’
Jane’s house itself is like a forest, I think. Its silence is so deep. You could lose yourself, just sitting and listening, in it. If you were allowed.
‘You hated your mother at times?’ Jane says. ‘Hated her for what? Think of something specific.’
‘I can’t. I’ve put all that away now. I’ve locked it away.’
‘So it’s secure, it’ll stay there forever? Even after she’s gone.’
‘I suppose.’
‘What will you do with it then?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Miriam, you have an attic, a lumber room of anger, just sitting there. Anger’s energy, isn’t it? It’s hard to contain for very long. Where’s your anger going to go, Miriam?’
‘That’s what Philip’s afraid of.’
‘Is he?’
‘That’s why he won’t enter into any decisions about Mother. He leaves it all to me. I know what he thinks – at least I’m guessing I do because he’ll never come out and tell me – but he’s afraid, if we discuss it, we’ll have almighty rows, tear ourselves apart over it.’
‘Because he thinks your position is fixed? Non-negotiable?’
‘I suppose.’
‘So he supports you, he says he’ll support anything you do, any decision you make?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does it feel like support?’
‘Sometimes it makes me so angry.’
‘You must be like a tinderbox some days.’
‘I try not to show it.’
‘This lumber room of yours must be getting pretty crowded, mustn’t it? Boxes of gelignite and semtex all over the floor …’ We take a moment and laugh. Drink tea. ‘Brian,’ she says then, apropos of nothing. ‘Your brother. You felt he was always favoured –’
‘I was never good enough,’ I hear myself suddenly blurting over the top of her. ‘Whatever I did, it was never enough. It never satisfied, it just set up m
ore tasks, more hurdles.’
‘Give me an example.’
‘An example?’
‘A voice, then. What would she say?’
‘Well, I was really good at sport. I was strong, I loved to run – is that surprising?’
‘No. Not with a figure like yours.’
‘We had the school sports, and I trained with a friend, a boy, secretly, on an oval halfway between school and home, often missing music and other things, and on the day of the sports – this was in the senior grade of primary – I won nearly everything, sprints, jumps, the lot. I had cups and medals and ribbons, and I knew this was the way I wanted to live – in my body as much as my mind. I loved it, the exertion, the struggle, the exhaustion – the pleasure of it all.’
‘Pleasure?’
‘Excitement. Pleasure.’
‘And when you got home and told your mother, and showed her the ribbons, the cups –?’
‘She said, ‘‘That’s nice, Miriam.’’ She barely glanced at any of the prizes. ‘‘You mustn’t neglect your piano, you know.’’ ’
‘Okay, that’s disappointing, but it’s not …’
‘Savagery? Child abuse? No, but day after day, in everything she wanted me to do, I knew I’d never be good enough. I’d never meet whatever it was she had in mind for me, some vision she had –’
‘Which you would always fail? In her eyes, and therefore in yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that meant … ?’
‘I could never …’
‘Never what?’
‘Never …’
‘Okay, take a moment. We can come back to it.’
‘To what?’
‘To what you can’t say. The hard word. There’s a box of Kleenex on the shelf just beside you.’
I snatch at a tissue. Use it. Them. The minutes pass. Humidly. With sniffling, ashamed glances, tea. Jane sits, offering nothing. But her hands are open, I notice, in her lap.
‘You okay?’ she says finally.
‘Yes, I’m –’ I say. And am about to say sorry, but choke it off. She smiles.
‘You can be abstract now,’ she says. ‘It’s a lot safer.’
‘It’s just that everything I do,’ I say, ‘is reactive to her. Still. Isn’t that crazy?’
‘No. Not crazy.’
‘Even now. I’m thirty-nine, I’ve got two girls of my own to bring up, and when I do something, especially if I think it’s good, something for them perhaps, or even for myself – a new marriage for Christ’s sake, after a disastrous first attempt – or something at work, something simple like a successful class or a new program, the first thing I think of is not them, or my students, or Philip, it’s running off to her with it, showing her, saying, Look there, isn’t that good, isn’t that enough – Being something, Making something of myself for you? Isn’t that enough?’
‘Enough for what?’
‘For …’
‘Enough for what, Miriam?’
‘Enough to make you …’
‘Say it.’
‘Love me. Oh, fuck –’
‘Can I ask you a question, Miriam?’
‘You must be joking,’ I say.
‘Can I put a proposition to you, then? It’s all right, it’s abstract – something to think about.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Anger. Do you think it’s ever possible to give anger away?’ ‘That sounds like a question to me.’
‘There’s a proposition behind it.’
‘You mean, give it away like a present? Here’s some anger. I know how much you like it, so when I realized your birthday was coming up, I –’
‘Unlocked the lumber room.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘It sounds impossible to me. Just to give it away like that.’
‘Oh, it may take some effort.’
‘Wrapping it up, you mean? The paper, the ribbon, the bow. Writing the card?’
‘Writing’s possible. Some people give away their anger that way.’
‘You mean stories, poetry, journals, that sort of thing?’
‘For some it works.’
‘Jane, I simply don’t have the time or energy for that. Coming here is about the only thing I do for myself now. I don’t even swim any more. If I were to sit down and write, something else would have to go. The family, Mother, Philip –’
‘I see that.’
‘It’s not that I don’t accept the point. I do. It would let me say things to her in a way that I can’t say now. That I’m unable to say …’
‘Because?’
‘Because now it’d be cruel. She wouldn’t understand, she’s a child. She’d have no way of fighting back. I’m not nice, easygoing Mrs Johnson. I know how to crucify her. Besides, it’d make me –’
‘Her torturer?’
‘Yes,’ I say. And can’t we take a break now, please? I want to say, but Jane gives me no chance.
‘But if unexpressed anger blocks the path to love,’ she says, ‘what does that leave – pity?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’
‘For you or for her?’
‘I’ll do everything I can for her. Anything.’
‘Including fighting her to the death for moral superiority?’ ‘What a bitch of a thing to say.’
‘Yes,’ she says, and looks at me. What is she saying, I wonder. One thing she’s not saying is sorry.
‘When you’re with her now,’ Jane says, ‘what annoys you about her?’
‘Everything,’ I say. Snappily, still angry at her for her moral superiority crack.
‘Be specific,’ Jane says. ‘Something your mother says, or does. Or something she doesn’t do, but should.’
‘The tiger grin,’ I say without thinking.
‘Tell me.’
‘She’s developed this habit of baring her teeth, her upper teeth particularly, when she tries to smile. I don’t know really whether it’s a muscle problem or what. But she’s lost the capacity to smile. She tries, and she looks like a wild animal. I hate to see her doing that.’
‘You hate to see her, or hate to see her doing it?’
‘Don’t you ever listen to something straight?’ I say wearily to Jane. ‘Without complicating it? Twisting it?’
I sit there, waiting for her to react. She won’t say sorry, she doesn’t seem to believe in it. But I’m not going to say it either. She can just sit there, for all I care.
She looks at me. Waits. Sits. I give up.
‘I hate her doing it,’ I say. ‘I hate to see her like that. Trying to express pleasure, enjoyment …’
‘Love?’
‘And not being able to do it.’
‘You’re a good person, Miriam.’
‘Where did that come from?’ I ask.
‘Do you think she’s capable – your mother – of learning again?’
‘To smile? I don’t know, I suppose so.’
‘Children learn, after all,’ she says. ‘From their mothers.’
‘What are you suggesting? That I should try and teach her to smile? How would that help me to express my anger?’
‘I don’t know. But it might shift your view of her somehow. Give her something –’
Give her something?’
‘Instead of just minding her. You might even find in giving a small part of yourself away, you can give other things away as well.’
‘Like anger?’
‘Maybe that’s enough for today?’
Philip
I don’t actually believe in telepathy. Nor does Miriam. But it is weird, as Laura would say, how often some kind of transfer does seem to take place. It’s a Friday night, Mother’s in bed, Katie and Laura are in their rooms. I’ve been in the kitchen for the past couple of hours helping Miriam prepare stuff for her barbecue tomorrow. She really wants this lunch to go well. We’ve diced and skewered chicken and lamb and a little beef, and they’ve now been laid overnight in various marinades and sauces that she has prepared. There are bit
s and pieces of other things, including fish that has to be dressed just so, and some special dessert – Greek or Middle Eastern, I’m not sure which – that Miriam’s been practising the recipe for all week as though her whole professional reputation depended on it. Laura and Katie have been her collaborators and tasters and, between the three of them, they claim they’ve at last got it just right.
I’ve had my shower and am lying in bed. Miriam’s sitting on the edge of the bed, beside me, her back to me. The towel in which she came from her bath has fallen away, and she’s naked now. Her hair is still up from the bath, and her neck and shoulders and back are exposed to the cleft in her buttocks. She has deep dimples, low in the back, two hollows so marked and shaped you feel you could lay your lips in them and they would fit perfectly. She looks very beautiful this way, and very vulnerable. I lie there, admiring the perfect cello of her back, its immaculate unpolished wood still tinged with pink from the warmth of her bath. And I’m thinking how stupid we human beings are – visually, aesthetically – when the magazines on every stall you pass thrust these gross, ballooning tits in your face, and all the time there’s the magic of this, the back, its perfect musical shape. Painters, I realize, know this – that Bonnard I saw in the National Gallery a few months ago, Woman in Front of a Mirror, or whatever it was called … And just as I’m remembering this, Miriam sighs and drops an arm to lift one of her feet up off the floor and lay it across her other knee.
‘I stubbed my toe,’ she says.
And as all this happens, the amazing, pliant weight of one breast becomes visible, and I think, okay, backs are okay, I guess –
And I’m still lazily thinking about this, and my prick’s filling just as lazily with the thought, when I become aware that Miriam hasn’t moved now for some minutes, she’s absolutely immobile, her right hand clutching the toes of her left foot, but not doing anything with them, not massaging or soothing or kneading them. It’s as if she’s stuck, super-glued in place – or time. Stuck fast. I once had a dog when I was a child, a grey-haired mutt called Pete that my parents had rescued from the pound – and he’d get stuck in this same way. He had no pedigree whatsoever, but he was a champion nuzzler, a great biter and licker of his own back, his tail and balls. He’d start on some conscientious licking of his backside, stay at it for some minutes and then – get stuck. His eyes would glaze and he’d stay fixed, his head turned at nearly one hundred and eighty degrees, almost in paralysis. What he was thinking of or imagining during this time, I have no idea – but he could stay like that for five, sometimes ten minutes, until I spoke or another dog barked somewhere off down the street and he’d wake and whip his neck and spine around, and I’d wonder why they didn’t snap in the process.