Sing me to Sleep

by Helen Moorhouse

It was after ten before Ed poked his head around the bedroom door and observed the scene before him. He was taken aback by the sight – he had thought that Rowan would be calmly meditating as she liked to do sometimes – after today, he could probably do with a little meditation himself.

  But she wasn’t. She was moving around. Silently, and intently. Packing clothes into a suitcase.

  Ed thought at first that Rowan hadn’t heard him enter, and he coughed quietly so as not to alarm her. But Rowan had. She responded by glancing briefly at him before crossing again to the wardrobe, removing an armful of dresses and skirts and carrying them to the bed, focusing her attention on removing hangers and folding the clothes vigorously before placing them into her case.

  “I just got Bee to bed,” Ed mumbled hesitantly, pointing through the wall in the direction of her bedroom, next to theirs. “She was okay after a banana split. Really tired actually. She conked as soon as her head hit the pillow.”

  He received no response. Not even a grunt of acknowledgement. Rowan continued her silent movement.

  “Rowan, what’s going on?” Ed managed to say.

  Again, there was silence. Rowan paused what she was doing for a moment, then proceeded as before, but with a confused expression on her features. Ed watched, growing more nervous by the second, as she picked up a bundle of coat hangers from the bed and returned them to what he could now clearly see was an empty wardrobe.

  Still silent, she turned her attention to a chest of drawers, removing a handful of underwear from the top drawer and crossing to the bed, bundling the lot into the case and turning back for more.

  Ed couldn’t watch any longer. He suddenly felt panic rise in him and he stepped toward her, grasping her wrist as she reached in again, pulling her gently, but firmly, closer to him, willing her to look at him. When she did, her eyes sparked with fear for a moment, blinked away in an instant to be replaced by confusion and anger. Ed saw that they were red from tears, her cheeks blotchy and flushed.

  “Rowan, please, what’s the matter?” he asked, loosening the grip on her wrist.

  Rowan responded by sinking down and sitting on the end of the bed, clasping her hands firmly together on her lap. Ed sank down beside her.

  “You’re stressed because of today,” he began gently. “I know – my family are a fucking nightmare. They are completely out of line and I’m so sorry about what happened . . . if I’d thought for a second they’d be that bad then I’d never have invited them.”

  Rowan’s eyes brimmed with tears again as she met his eye. “You did nothing to stop them, Ed,” she said, her voice breaking a little as she spoke. “You sat there and let them say all of those horrible things to me . . . to upset Bee like they did . . . and then you let Bee run off on her own. You’re a grown-up – you’re her dad – how can you let them behave like that in your home?”

  Ed frowned and squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. “I know, I know. I don’t know what gets into me when they’re around . . . I revert to being six years old . . . I tie myself up in knots around them. Sometimes I say nothing, do nothing, because I’m afraid that if I do I’ll actually kill one of them with my bare hands.” He grasped Rowan’s shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. “I swear to you that I won’t let them do that to me – to us – the three of us, again. I promise. Please don’t go anywhere, Rowan. Were you planning on staying with Judith for a while?”

  Rowan swallowed hard, sat up straight. “No, Ed,” she said. “I’m not going to Judith’s – not ‘for a while’ – I’m going – leaving. For good.” She had to stop herself for a moment, to control a loud sob that she could feel rising. She tried to stand, but Ed’s grip held her where she was.

  “What . . . what do you mean for good?” he whispered, his breath quickening, his eyes searching her eyes which wouldn’t meet his. He raised his hands to her shoulders and squeezed them. “Rowan, come on. I’ve said I’m sorry and I am, I swear! They’re awful but we don’t have to see them. Or I’ll have a word with them – that’s what I’ll do – they were like this with Jenny too . . .”

  From somewhere, Rowan found the strength to stand up. She turned her back on Ed and walked over to the window where she stood, arms folded. She hadn’t bothered to pull the wooden blinds shut and she peered out between them to the street light below outside the house. She could see herself, her own reflection in the glass.

  “It sure didn’t sound that way to me,” she said suddenly, her voice low, as if she were trying to maintain control.

  Ed frowned. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  She remained silent again for a moment. Thinking twice before saying something and then thinking once again as was her habit, as her grandmother had instilled into her. She turned suddenly and pointed at the wardrobe.

  “Jenny’s,” she said simply, her face like stone. She pointed to the chest of drawers: “Jenny’s.”

  She swallowed hard as she swept her arm around the room. “All Jenny’s. Jenny’s paint. Jenny’s space. Jenny’s house . . .” She paused, her breath heavy and her eyes filled with fire. “It certainly didn’t feel like they hated Jenny, like she used to get the same treatment as I got today. And anyway, that’s by the by . . . This, Ed – you and me – I’ve realised today that it can’t work.” She was speaking now in a hurried fashion, each word chasing the other as she stood there, her arms folded against her chest again, as if they were physically holding her together, as if she might collapse if she unfolded them. “It’s never going to, so we may as well end it now and just move on. I’m packing to go back to Claudia’s for a couple of days, to figure out where to go. I’ll come back for the rest of my stuff – the Corkscrew stock, my computer –”

  “Rowan!” Ed exclaimed, interrupting her flow. “What on earth are you on about?” His expression darkened and he, too, stood. “Don’t you think this is a total overreaction? Don’t you think that you’re just taking things a step too far? I mean, my family are hideous but I’m not my family.”

  “How do I know that, Ed?” she barked in response. “How could you possibly be different from them? You were all born from the same womb, grew up in the same house, went to the same school –”

  “Chose a completely different path in life,” he finished, raising his voice to silence her.

  It worked. A silence fell between them for a couple of moments. Ed waited to see would it last before he spoke again.

  “Rowan, I am not – I can’t repeat it enough – not my family. Now do you see why I held off so long before having you meet them? And yes – all of those things that you said are true – we came from the same house, but that’s where anything I have in common with those people you met today stops.”

  He paused again, his eyes fixed on her face to make sure she was listening. Her skin had flushed on her neck and chest, the colour climbing up the underside of her chin. She looked frightened, angry, determined. And so vulnerable. Once he was sure he had her attention, he carried on, his voice calm, even though he trembled inside.

  “My family is run by those women,” he said. “And when they’re together, when they’re under the one roof, it’s like they have some sort of energy, some vibe that they feed each other. My mother and Vicky are the worst. Growing up in that house was a nightmare – it was always filled with fighting and raised voices and insults between Vicky and Betty too, although you wouldn’t think it of Betty now – not sibling banter – we’re talking horrible stuff here – ripping each other’s clothes up because one wouldn’t let the other borrow something, or spreading vicious rumours about each other around school. They’re terrifying. I swear to you, I’m not like them. I was the only boy and it gave me the opportunity to back away, to get out of there as much as I could. I mean, it’s not like my dad is much use – you saw that yourself. And yes, before you say it, you saw a trace of that in me today . . . but when I say that I revert to being six years old around them . . . it’s horrible. I can’t tell who’s going to do the next most vicious
thing and I tune out – just like my dad, except he’s made it his life’s skill because he can’t get away.

  “But I did. From the time I was small – football practice, the school band, extra art classes, an art club. I was lucky. My school was great – I could even stay there in the evenings to study rather than go home, which was a bloody miracle, because it meant I got all the right A-levels and then got to college. Once I was there, I’d stay at Darvill’s to study and work on my portfolio too – as late as I could every single night – until the janitor would practically have to kick me out. And then I’d go hang at my friend Guillaume’s until I thought they’d all be gone to bed and I could go home without having to speak to a single one of them. In turn, they called me Edmund the Swot – they jeered at me, and made fun of me. I got a reputation among my peers, my lecturers, my teachers in school as Mr Dedication. And it’s stood to me – I know that. But it wasn’t dedication. It was far from it. It was because I didn’t have a bloody choice. I just couldn’t bear being around my own bloody family.”

  Ed paused for breath, his eyes still fixed on Rowan. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought that she had relaxed a little. He was wrong.

  “But Mr Dedication went off and found himself the perfect wife . . . I’m sorry, Ed, I shouldn’t have said that. I really don’t mean to be disrespectful about your wife . . .” Rowan fell silent, her apology genuine. “I didn’t mean to say that. But they obviously loved her – that was clear today.”

  She was stunned by his response. By the hollow laugh that he emitted.

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” he replied, his expression growing deadly serious as he looked her in the eye again. “They are poison,” he whispered. “They hated her. They absolutely hated Jenny.” He paused to scratch the end of his nose. “Betty was fine – but my mother and Vicky, they were like terriers on a rag doll with Jenny. Just like they were with you today.”

  “And how did Jenny cope? How could she have done?”

  Ed shrugged. “I dunno . . . she reacted to them, I guess. She’d dig her heels in – get stubborn. Even more stubborn than she actually was and Jenny was like a mule. But my family somehow made her worse. It was awful. All that conflict – all that passive aggression and tension and waiting for something to kick off. It never really did – things might have been better if the air had been cleared by a big ding-dong – but that wasn’t the game that they were playing. This was long-term tactical warfare. I know that Jen and I were young – maybe too young – when we got married, but we were pretty sure it was what we wanted. But our wedding, for example . . .” He rubbed his hands down his face. “It was awful: my mother versus Jenny, and I was caught in between. My mother wanted a church wedding; Jen didn’t. If I’m completely honest with myself, I wanted one too – it sounds like a girl’s fantasy, but I wanted to turn and see my bride walk up the aisle to me . . . look, you don’t need to hear all that. In the long run it was Jen’s way or the highway. We had our wedding at a registry office. A fifteen-minute . . . procedure . . . was what it took for us to be married – supposedly the greatest moment of our lives. The reception was in a function room over a pub which had sticky brown carpet and a jukebox. You could count the guests on both hands. And that’s because for months, my mother and sister cried and screamed and tried to sabotage things to get their way. A few days beforehand, I caught Vicky on the phone to the venue pretending to be Jen calling to cancel everything. Jen never found that out – I never told her – their relationship was bad enough for Christ’s sake. Anyway, on the day itself, they couldn’t have behaved more badly. They commandeered the photographer. They never spoke to Jen. My mother cried out loud at the ceremony and Vicky dressed like a – like a prostitute. Thinking back, barely a second of it was the wedding day that I wanted, but I needed to – I wanted to make Jen happy.

  “My whole life, you see, has been trying to keep people happy – and to distance myself from them, while keeping them too – they’re the only family I have. Despite that, though, I couldn’t wait to get away from them – to get them at arm’s length – to move out and escape. And marrying Jen and buying here – buying this house, that’s all that I’d ever wanted. But maybe I didn’t do it for the right reasons . . .” His voice trailed off as the thought struck him, as if he had never realised this before.

  “I can’t live like that,” Rowan said quietly. “I can’t live my whole life prepared for battle. Waiting for the next landmine that they’ve laid for me to explode.” Her voice grew angry. “You should have told me about this before, Ed. Should have warned me. That’s not my kind of thing and you know that. I can’t bear conflict – I don’t know how to deal with it.”

  “But that’s not true,” sighed Ed. “You mightn’t know it but the way you dealt with them – with me too – at dinner earlier – just going ahead and taking control, being confident – it completely floored them. It was a brilliant technique –”

  “I don’t want to have to employ techniques, Ed. I don’t want – don’t need to have to have strategies for how to cope with the people closest to the person that I love . . .”

  She paused. Their relationship was still young, the phrase still fresh.

  She uncrossed her arms and stepped back to the chest of drawers, continuing with her packing where she had left off.

  Ed watched her with alarm, watched this new resolve that she seemed to have. “Please don’t,” he began, a tinge of panic to his voice.

  It might have been the words, or the tone, but Rowan suddenly froze and raised her hands to cover her face. She couldn’t hold the tears back any longer.

  “I have to, Ed,” she sobbed into her palms. “I can’t do this. It’s not just your family, it’s you . . . it’s your past . . . all the baggage. It’s Bee – taking her on – I can’t do it, can’t be the replacement in her life . . .”

  She paused to take a deep breath, lifted her face from her hands and looked at the ceiling as she desperately tried to stop the flow of tears.

  “It’s being second, Ed,” she whispered. “Being the second – and whatever that brings – second best, second fiddle, second-rate – I don’t know.” She turned to look at him, her eyes filled with sadness.

  “I just can’t do this. Because no matter how far we go together, no matter what we do – as long as it lasts, I’m always going to be the replacement. And that’s not good enough for me, Ed. I not only cannot live with you and Bee . . . I cannot live with Jenny.”

  There was a long silence between them. A silence that said it had to finish there. A silence that said even louder that neither of them really and truly wanted it to. It was Ed who broke it, his eyes filled with pain, and longing and love.

  “Please, Rowan,” he said, a new seriousness to his voice. “Please sit down with me for a little while. Because I need to tell you about Jenny.”

  They went downstairs and he made her tea. Camomile. Jenny had been a coffee-lover, he thought to himself as he boiled the kettle and drowned the teabag, steam rising around his face. He knew he shouldn’t have allowed the comparison to the front of his mind, but he couldn’t help it. Rowan’s words, his family’s actions – it had all ignited something in his mind, made the scar – if not re-open, then feel painfully tender again. And he knew he had to eliminate that pain.

  Rowan sat at the kitchen table, her head in her hands. Once the tea was made, Ed placed it wordlessly on the table in front of her before opening the fridge and removing a beer for himself. It hissed as he opened it. With a sigh, he placed it on the table and he sank into the chair opposite her. It was moments before he spoke.

  “When Jenny died,” he began, “when I lost her, the world ended.” He paused, eyes turned toward the ceiling, struggling for the next sentence. “I don’t mean that in the trite way of love songs . . . like things got bad for a while but I knew that they’d be okay. It literally ended. Beyond the next day – the next hour in fact – there was no world, no time, nothing to me. I couldn’t bear going onward,
going forward . . . making a cup of tea . . . I wouldn’t want to drink it because there was no point in sustaining myself. And the further down the cup I got, the more panic I’d feel because it meant that time was going forward and I didn’t want that. I was being propelled through time against my will, away from where I really wanted to be – because I wanted nothing more than to go backwards. I hated everyone – they were pushing me on through time – and away from her, away from the minute I had left her that morning to go to work. I’d been in a hurry. I’d gone without giving her a kiss because I was eager to get out and get the day done with so I could come home and begin Christmas proper. I shouted ‘Bye’ from the front door and she shouted ‘Bye’ from the landing and that was it. The last words we’d ever say to each other.”

  He paused for a moment to swig from the beer, aware that Rowan’s eyes were by now fixed on his face. He rubbed his temples with the tips of his fore and middle fingers and continued.

  “I can’t . . . verbalise the sorrow that I felt. I don’t know if it’s even possible. All of the words just seem so meaningless because they’re so overused – lost, sad, broken-hearted – but take each word and make it stand alone – think about what it means – what it really means – and you’ve got a fraction of how I felt. I couldn’t allow there to be a tomorrow – because it couldn’t be yesterday – it wasn’t acceptable. Yet tomorrow just kept on coming like an unstoppable wave. I felt like . . . you know, on a windy day when you turn a corner and a gust catches you and stops you in your tracks, and you’re trying to push against it but it’s in control, not you? That makes me angry and so did this endless ‘things will get better’, ‘time is a great healer’ nonsense that everyone was peddling – Christ, you should have heard the stuff that my family said. They just couldn’t understand that my world had stopped. That everything I wanted from life was now no longer possible and that there was no one to blame for that. I couldn’t believe that all of my future – my plans, had been taken from me. And I couldn’t for the life of me see what to do instead – so I didn’t do anything. I just got through that nightmare – Christmas, the funeral, birthdays, anniversaries – all of them the first one without her, all of those significant dates that I couldn’t escape . . .” He paused to control his lip which had begun to tremble.