by Kate Hewitt
One of my earliest memories, when I was five or six, is sitting huddled on the stairs while my mother screamed at my father. I don’t remember what she said, what the fight was about, but with years of later experience to draw on, I can guess – my mother’s drinking and my father’s affairs. They always seemed to relate, and they were the continuing looping reel of my childhood, although I didn’t realise the truth of my mother’s drinking or my father’s infidelity until I was in my late teens.
Often their arguments flew over and around me; they were so wrapped up in their own misery that they seemed to forget I was there at all, although when they did remember, I would have preferred they didn’t. I became a bargaining chip, albeit one that didn’t seem to matter very much. When I was about ten or eleven, I remember my mother dragging me out of my bedroom and downstairs, thrusting me in front of my fuming father.
‘Don’t you care about her?’ she’d screamed. ‘Isn’t this a reason to stay?’
My father looked at me for a moment, and he almost seemed sorry. I hung my head, feeling weirdly ashamed, and then he turned away. ‘I’m sorry, Helen,’ he said over my head. ‘But it’s not.’
It’s. He meant me.
When I was fifteen, they finally divorced. The fighting stopped but life didn’t get much better. My father disappeared from the scene, first working in London, and then, when I was in my twenties, accepting a corporate job in Abu Dhabi. When I was twenty-two, he remarried a woman with two young children; I’ve seen them on social media, although not in real life. I haven’t actually spoken to my father in over ten years, although we exchange texts and voicemails a couple of times a year and call that a relationship.
As for my mother… we keep up the flimsy pretence that we’re family, and somehow that matters, even though we go months without talking to each other, and she knows next to nothing about my life. She doesn’t know about Alice. She doesn’t even know that I donated an egg for Milly. Throughout my school years she was distracted and indifferent, except when she wanted to criticise me, usually when she was drunk, and then, of course, the whole debacle happened with my failed A levels, my wrecked dreams, alienated me even further from her.
After Milly rescued me, and I started to get my life back together, my mother reached out, rather sanctimoniously, her attitude one of noble willingness to have someone as difficult and destructive as me in her life again. And while I had no real desire to be in my mother’s life, I recognised that she was the only family I had, and so I have endured the few visits with her every year, letting her complaints and criticism wash over me, trying not to mind.
Now I wonder why I’m bringing Will to see her. Do I still think I can change her opinion of me? Am I finally hoping to impress her?
‘Maybe we should give this a miss,’ I blurt as we cross the bridge. Will looks at me in surprise.
‘Are you nervous? I thought I was the one who was meant to be nervous.’
‘My mother is a difficult woman, Will.’
‘She can’t scare me, Anna. Why do you think I’m not having you meet my parents?’ He smiles, and I try to smile back, but I’m seriously starting to regret this whole endeavour.
‘She doesn’t even make a nice Christmas dinner,’ I half-joke. ‘The turkey’s always dry.’
‘At least the pudding will be delicious,’ he replies, nodding towards the chocolate log I made that is sitting on the backseat.
‘She’s going to be rude to you.’ I feel obligated to warn him. ‘And most certainly to me.’
‘I can take a bit of rudeness,’ Will answers with a shrug. ‘But if she’s rude to you, we might have to have words.’ He reaches for my hand, lacing his fingers through mine, and I am jolted by his touch, by the simple fact of his loyalty. It’s been a long time since someone has stood up for me.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper.
My mother’s eyes widen when she catches sight of Will, clearly not expecting me to bring home such a catch. A trio of Jack Russell terriers cluster around us, sniffing and wagging their tails. Since the divorce, my mother has become a bit obsessive about ‘her babies’.
‘How have you been?’ I ask, going in for an air hug, where we pretend to embrace but don’t actually touch. It’s a skill we’ve perfected over the years.
‘Oh, you know.’ My mother waves her hand. ‘My knees are playing up. I was hoping you’d visit sooner.’ She sniffs, and I bite my tongue to reply that she never asks me. She gives Will a glance that manages to be both simpering and accusatory. ‘I don’t see her enough.’
‘Nor do I,’ Will returns smoothly. I feel bolstered by his support, but already exhausted by my mother’s attitude. This is how it always is, how it has always been, ever since I can remember – the sniping and the indifference, a particularly painful combination.
We stumble through an hour of small talk and sickly-sweet sherry in the sitting room, before my mother makes a big to-do of checking on the dinner, and I go in to help her.
‘Will seems all right,’ she says, her back to me as she empties several ready-made trays of vegetables into microwaveable bowls. She pauses, her hands resting on the counter. ‘Is it… is it serious?’
I take a quick, steadying breath. ‘It might be getting that way.’ It feels like a lot to admit.
My mother stiffens, almost as if I’ve given her bad news. Perhaps I have. I’ve never understood my mum, how she can seem to both resent my presence and its lack at the same time. I don’t visit enough, but when I do, she can’t wait to get rid of me. I’ve never understood it, but it always hurts.
‘Would that be a bad thing?’ I ask lightly, trying to make it a bit of a joke, even though I mean it. Why is she standing there so still, as if I’ve just struck a death blow? Is my happiness that offensive to her?
‘No,’ she finally says, but she sounds unnervingly hesitant.
‘Mum, what is it? You don’t like him?’ Will has been impeccably polite and unwaveringly friendly since we arrived. He didn’t even bat an eyelid when one of her dogs humped his leg repeatedly.
‘This has nothing to do with Will.’
‘Then with me?’ I can’t keep the hurt from my voice. ‘Why don’t you want me to be happy?’
‘Oh, honestly, Anna, is that what you think?’ She is impatient now, shoving the bowls in the microwave, slamming the door.
‘Sometimes, yes.’
‘Well, this might amaze you, but not everything in my life is about you.’ This huffy accusation is so ridiculously unfair – nothing in her life is about me – that I open my mouth to refute it, but then I realise there is no point.
‘What is this about, then?’
She doesn’t reply and I watch her, taking in the tension that turns her body into hard angles, the way she won’t look at me. She’s not telling me something, but I have no idea what it is.
‘Mum, what’s going on?’
‘Not here, Anna, not now.’ Her voice wobbles and her hands tremble as she takes the bowls out of the microwave. ‘It’s Christmas.’
A ripple of genuine apprehension runs through me, a physical sensation that makes me want to shiver. ‘Not what?’ I ask in a low voice. ‘What is it you’re not saying, that you can’t say here, at Christmas?’ Because clearly it is something, for her to be affected like this.
Will appears in the doorway, the furrow between his brows making me wonder how much he heard. ‘May I help?’
My mum glares at me, her eyes narrowed to commanding slits. Drop it. I read her silent command loud and clear.
And so I do, because the last thing I want is an ugly confrontation with Will there. But throughout the mediocre meal, the requisite walk with the dogs and the stilted conversation and even more awkward pauses, I am wondering about that moment – and what my mother chose not to say.
A few days later, I find out. She calls me, asking me to visit her again, two times in one week, which is unprecedented, and makes me feel even more apprehensive. Whatever she needs to tell me, it sounds
important.
The day is damp and grey, the lowering clouds a dull reminder that Christmas is over. My mother greets me wearily, shuffling into her sitting room with little more than a mumbled hello. I smell brandy on her breath, and my apprehension turns to fear.
Although she drank heavily throughout my childhood, my mother sobered up through a combination of self-help books and yoga, and has only had the occasional tipple – as far as I know – for about twenty years. But right now she is drunk.
She slumps into her usual armchair, one hand twitching towards the remote control. Often the television is on while we talk, a constant low-level background noise, my mother’s gaze flicking to the moving screen every few seconds, but now she keeps it off.
She gazes at me, her face tired and worn, her hair, once a pristine highlighted blonde, now a dirty, dishwater grey. I feel a flicker of pity for her, but no more.
‘What is it, Mum? What is it you didn’t want to say at Christmas?’
‘I’m not sure it’s important now. Yet.’
Yet? ‘You called me out here, didn’t you? Why can’t you just say it?’
My mother leans forward, her dull eyes suddenly sparking with anger. ‘Maybe because it’s difficult, Anna. Have you thought of that? Maybe because it’s painful, and I don’t want to.’ I’m shocked into silence. ‘Did you never think that?’ she says more quietly. ‘Did you never think about me?’
‘I could ask you the same question,’ I retort before I think better of it. Briefly, I close my eyes. This conversation has not got off to a good start. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I don’t want to argue. It’s just… concerning. Whatever you haven’t told me, it seems important.’
‘How serious are you about Will?’
I blink, jerking back a little in wary surprise. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’
‘I need to know if you might think of… of having children.’
I stare at her for a moment, flummoxed. ‘Why are you asking me this?’
‘You’re nearly forty already. Perhaps it’s too late.’
‘You almost sound hopeful.’ I swallow hard. ‘Mum, why…’ I pause to regroup. A feeling of nameless dread is washing over me. ‘I’ve already had a baby,’ I tell her, and I watch as her eyes flare wide and her lips tremble. ‘Five years ago.’
‘You didn’t…’
‘In a roundabout way, admittedly. Do you remember Milly?’
‘Of course I remember Milly.’
‘She was trying for a baby for a long time, and it turned out she couldn’t get pregnant on her own, so I donated my egg. Her daughter, Alice, is five years old now.’ I watch her carefully, my heart starting to thud as her face turns grey.
‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’ she demands.
‘It felt private. And I didn’t think you needed to know.’ I press one hand against my thudding heart. ‘Did you?’
My mum doesn’t answer, just shakes her head as she bites her lips. She looks anguished, and I am starting, terribly, to suspect why.
‘She’s started having some symptoms,’ I say as my mother jerks suddenly, her gaze fixed on mine. ‘Random things, some seemingly little, others not so much… but they’re worried about it. They asked me to give a DNA sample, to check for hereditary conditions.’ I watch her, waiting, afraid and yet hopeful that she’ll just shrug dismissively.
Mum lets out a sound that is half-moan, half-sob.
I clench my fists, the dread overwhelming me now. ‘Mum. What is it? What haven’t you said? What do you know?’
She shakes her head and then says in a low, barely audible voice, ‘What kind of symptoms?’
‘I don’t really know.’ I try to remember all the things Milly said. ‘Vision loss… some problem with small motor skills… clumsiness… forgetting things. I think.’ I shake my head helplessly. ‘Mum, whatever it is, tell me, please.’
The silence stretches on for a minute, and then another. Then my mother rises from her chair. She looks even more haggard than usual, her eyes seeming strangely blank. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she half-mumbles and I wait, stroking one of her Jack Russells, fighting a crashing sense of panic.
A few minutes later she returns, carrying a photograph album with a cover of faded white sateen. She sits back heavily in her chair, the album on her knees.
‘What is that?’ I ask after a moment, when she doesn’t open the book or even speak. Another endless pause.
‘It’s a photo album,’ she finally says, tracing the embossed title on the cover with her fingers. ‘With pictures of your brother.’
For a second the words don’t make any sense. They bounce off me, refusing to penetrate. I’m an only child. I used to wish for a sibling, someone to share the misery with, but then later I was glad my parents only inflicted themselves on one child.
‘What are you talking about, Mum?’ My voice sounds strange and tinny. ‘What do you mean, a brother?’
‘He… he died when you were two.’
‘And you never told me?’
Her lips tighten as her gaze flashes downwards. ‘Your father wanted it that way.’
The implication being that she didn’t. But then why hadn’t she ever told me about him, after the divorce? Why keep my sibling a secret? ‘I don’t remember him at all.’ I sift through my earliest memories, trying to slot a brother in, but I can’t. There’s no one there at all.
‘You wouldn’t. We never told you about him, and he was in a care facility by the time you were born.’
I swallow hard. ‘A care facility? Why was he there?’ But, of course, I already know – not the details, but the awful gist, and that is enough to make my stomach churn and my vision go blurry. ‘Why was he there, Mum?’ I ask, louder this time, because her fingers keep tracing the letters on the book – which I can now see reads Baby’s First Album.
‘Because he was dying,’ she whispers. ‘And we couldn’t care for him at home.’
Dying. The word slams into me, leaving me breathless and reeling. I want to put my head between my knees, catch a few steadying breaths, but I’m afraid it might send my mother over the edge. She is staring at the album as if transfixed, tracing those letters over and over. I manage with one deep breath, exhaling slowly, to ask, ‘What did he have?’ My voice is little more than a thread. ‘What was his… condition?’
‘Batten disease.’ I have to strain to hear the words. I’ve never heard of it.
‘What were the symptoms?’
Slowly she lifts her head and blinks me into focus. ‘There are many. With your brother, it was vision loss, seizures, and then forgetfulness… childhood dementia.’ Two words that should never, ever go together.
My throat is so tight I can barely squeeze my next words out. ‘What about clumsiness? Motor skills…?’
‘Yes, those too.’ She shrugs, as if it is a matter of indifference, but I can see how deeply she is hurting, her body seeming to fold in on itself, her head bowed as she remembers her grief, the grief that has never left her.
My mind is racing down dark alleys, then turning around and skittering back, because I don’t want to go there. I can’t go there, and yet I have to. For Alice, I have to. ‘And this is a hereditary condition?’
She nods. ‘Both parents have to carry the gene.’
Both parents – which means Jack has this awful gene as well. If Alice has it. And yet already I know that she does, she must, and I can’t bear it. How on earth can I give this kind of news to Milly and Matt? How on earth can I live with it myself?
‘Is there treatment?’ I ask, a bit desperately. ‘Medicine? Something…?’
My mother shakes her head. ‘There’s nothing.’
‘But this was a long time ago. Perhaps things have changed…’ It feels like the smallest, faintest ray of hope in this otherwise impenetrable darkness. Surely science has moved on loads in the last thirty-five years. There might even be a cure now.
‘There isn’t, Anna,’ my mother says, as if I’ve
said all of this out loud.
‘How do you know?’
‘Don’t you think I care?’ Her voice throbs with pain. ‘Don’t you think I’d know? That I’d find out?’ I stare at her, the wild grief in her eyes, the way her arms are wrapped around her body as if she needs to hold herself together, and I realise I’ve never known my mother at all.
After a long moment, I nod towards the photo album, my body and heart aching with the weight of my new knowledge. ‘May I see it, please?’
Wordlessly, my mother hands it to me. Despite everything she’s already told me, the first photos are a shock – a tiny, shrivelled newborn, a smiling, chubby baby. He has the same green eyes I do – the eyes of my father – and honey-blond hair that curls about his face, making him look like the proverbial cherub.
Silently I go through the first two years of his life, all the milestones, as well as the little moments. Chocolate cake on his first birthday, tottering steps in a garden. It is strange to see my parents laughing and loving together, a happy family that I have absolutely no memory of.
And then the photos stop, sometime after my brother’s second birthday. The rest of the pages in the book are blank.
I glance up at my mother, and she shakes her head. ‘You wouldn’t have wanted to have pictures then.’ I frown and she continues heavily, ‘He went into the care facility right before he turned three.’ She swallows, more of a gulp. ‘He lived another year after that.’
‘Did you visit him?’ The question slips out unbidden, and my mother suddenly glares at me, her eyes screwed up, her mouth twisted. She is ugly with outrage.
‘Did I visit him? Did I visit my own son, my firstborn child? What kind of question is that?’
I shrink back under the force of her rage – except it isn’t rage at all, it’s grief. Her face crumples and her shoulders shake and I realise she is sobbing – great, heaving sounds of deepest grief that I’ve never seen her make before.
‘Mum. Mum, I’m sorry.’ I haven’t actually hugged or even touched my mother in years, yet now I kneel in front of her and put my arms around her. She submits for a few seconds, but then she pushes me away – which, I realise, has been happening since I was a child, or even a baby. The whole story of my life, encapsulated in this moment.