by C. S. Barnes
And then I had to sit alongside her while she calmly presented her overwhelming evidence for how true this remark actually was. My mother, in a way that mothers are wont to do, could even recall incidents that had long since faded from my own memory store. She discussed my inappropriate enthusiasm when my father, having found a dying fish in the outside pond, had suggested that we freeze it.
‘You were so excited,’ she said, almost affectionately. ‘I should have done something then, really. I do know that.’
Three minutes after the fish, and a sample of the pond water, had been scooped into a sizeable bag and deposited in the freezer, my mother had found me – a small me, perched on the tips of my toes – peering into the top drawer of the freezer, trying to garner a look at the creature. The way my mother told the story, she had shushed me away with a ‘You don’t want to see that, love’ and, defeated, I slid down to sit on the kitchen floor, my knees pulled up to my chest and my back firmly against the freezer unit. I stayed there until my father removed the bag later in the evening. And as I listened to my mother retell this for a second I thought she was right; she really should have done something.
‘You know that it’s not normal, don’t you, Gillian?’
I swallowed a laugh as my mother, of all people, approached the topic of normality.
‘At university, we do these things.’
‘Things like what’s in that box?’
She had me on that one, I’ll admit. I couldn’t say yes, and I think she knew it.
‘I want you to talk to Louise about this.’
‘Mum, I can’t–’
‘It’s a not a suggestion, love, it’s a stipulation.’ Her tone was curt, more serious than I had heard it in years. ‘Don’t you want to stop doing this? Christ, Gillian, do you even know why you’re doing it?’
‘Because I like it’ didn’t feel appropriate. She wanted a concrete explanation, something she could understand. I already knew by then that the experiments were a compulsion. And I knew that I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t know how I could communicate such thoughts to my mother. The only comfort I could offer her was a half-promise.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll mention it to Louise.’
I couldn’t tell her about it explicitly, that much we both agreed on. Our compromise was that I would discuss my ‘anger issues’ with Louise, which is what my mother had decided this was – an inappropriate method of dealing with feelings of rage.
‘You must have some – how could you not – with your father and all?’ she said, creating a causal relationship between his behaviour and my own that I wasn’t comfortable acknowledging.
I was – I am – nothing like him. But my mother needed to disassociate herself with this part of my psyche, and I had to allow it, despite the offence caused by her accusation. Anger was a base emotion, and there was a level of complexity here that rage didn’t quite fit; I had never hurt anything out of anger, as far as I could recall, but again that hardly seemed like a point worth voicing aloud. I let my mother debase the whole process into something she could understand, something she could pass the buck on – because, I suppose, that’s what she needed.
‘So we’re agreed?’ she finished.
Agreed seemed like something of an overstatement but I nodded all the same. An awkward hug followed and I made for my escape. I muttered something about being hungry as I moved to leave the room but my mother pulled me back in.
‘Gillian?’
I retraced the three steps I had taken into the hallway and peered back at her.
‘You need to get that box out of this house.’
I opened my mouth to dispute this, but before I could find a starting point she concluded: ‘It’s not a suggestion, love. It’s a stipulation.’
Chapter 13
My mother had shown a sparkly new aspect of herself that evening, and I felt inclined to conduct myself in a manner that would keep her firmly on my side; having an enemy was difficult but living with one would surely be impossible. After that, I scheduled a follow-up meeting with Louise for two weeks’ time; my mother was dismayed by the wait for an appointment but, as I told her, they only had emergency slots free between now and then.
‘You don’t think this is an emergency?’
‘No, Mum, I don’t.’
As instructed, I removed the box from our family home. My mother watched me cart the thing out to the back seat of my car, and nothing more was said on the matter. I suppose she assumed I’d disposed of it somewhere, which in a fashion was true; I took them straight to Daniel’s house. I told him that they were university experiments and that he was welcome to take a look if he wanted to, but before I could launch into a more comprehensive explanation of the contents, he held his hand up.
‘You mean, like, dead animals and stuff?’
‘Well, bits of them.’
He swallowed hard.
‘I know all I need to know, GT. Just leave the box at the bottom of the stairs.’
Psychology is frequently assessed as a fake science of sorts, but so-called reverse psychology certainly has some merits when employed in real-life situations.
‘Won’t your aunt mind me leaving them here?’ I asked.
I was yet to meet Daniel’s aunt, but from what he had said of her already – namely her insistence on meeting me coupled with her incessant questions about the neighbours – she seemed the type of woman who was likely to pry.
‘Mind? She won’t even know. As soon as you’ve gone I’m putting those babies in the back bedroom where no one is likely to stumble across them.’
Daniel, as it turned out, was the best excuse for leaving the house with little to no explanation of where I was going or with whom. My mother, in fact, came to assume that whenever I left the house now Daniel would somehow be involved. Even on the evenings when I offered to stay housebound, to make a determined effort at being a present and fully functioning daughter to my mother, she was all too aware that my head was elsewhere.
‘You can’t stop thinking about him, can you?’
I was midway through a mouthful of dinner and suddenly quite confused. ‘Who?’
She arched an eyebrow before lowering her head and tucking a chunk of chicken into her mouth. She chewed over the meat thoroughly before speaking again.
‘Gillian, it’s okay to be thinking about a man. You know that, don’t you? In fact, love, I’d go as far to say that it’s actually quite normal.’ She seemed disproportionately pleased by the assessment, trying but failing to hide a smirk. ‘Why don’t you go and see him when we’re finished?’
‘But what about our evening?’
‘Gillian, there will be other evenings.’
And it was that simple. We finished our dinner over more polite and mumbled conversation and then I left, without any vague questions or wild accusations. And this, I thought, was perhaps my first practical reason for keeping Daniel.
The moment I stepped outside I was grateful that I had decided to walk rather than drive. The warm emotion plastered around my house that evening had wrinkled and peeled away from me during the forty-five-minute saunter. It was unexpectedly cold out; the type of cold that would prevent too many people from walking around.
At the front of the house, the porch light bounced about inside its plastic shell. Another light in one of the front rooms peered out from behind nearly closed curtains. Directly above this was a room with no curtains at all, and through this uncovered frame I could see a bulb hanging bare. I watched this window for longer than the others, but when a full minute had rolled by I decided that the light had been left on by mistake. He was probably distracted, perhaps tending to her, and I couldn’t reason why that thought provoked me so much. I wondered what he could be doing, how he was busying himself, whether he was giving her all of his attention, or whether they spent their evenings in separate rooms. That would explain the amount of lights flickering about the house. Another one appeared then, this one at the side of the building. An ups
tairs bathroom, perhaps? The light tumbled out through the open window for just under two minutes before it snapped off again. I was convinced I’d heard a toilet flush.
Would he close the window later, when I’d gone?
Was that window always open?
Or was that just a slip? After an unusually difficult day?
When I had seen him earlier there had been something different about him, although I
couldn’t work out the specifics at the time. He was usually so focused away from her, devoted to getting through the task at hand, so that he might get back to her. I had seen that determination several times now: during the food shop, once on a walk home, twice while he was out running. I wondered whether it was this sudden difference that had made him forget about the window that he’d opened.
I followed the lights around the house for twenty-three minutes and the same ones remained switched on, the same window still open. What was he doing? Pacing around, or watching television? Was she pacing around with him – was she even a pacer? I couldn’t envisage her trailing about the house after him. Instead I saw her tucked away, in her own little room, where she could stare longingly at the door and wait for him. I imagined him walking in to check on her, and how her whole body would lighten when she saw him; how her head would perk up, how she might shake with happiness. And then, I thought, they’d probably sit and stare through the window together.
It must be beautiful to be so simple.
I checked my watch and made a note of the time; I was a little earlier than usual. In the future it would be better to visit later again, to see whether that top window was still open. Several minutes passed before my mobile phone shook inside my pocket. A new voicemail had arrived. I’d been so engrossed in my viewing that I hadn’t even noticed it ring.
‘Hi, Gillian, it’s me. I’m sorry that I’ve been a little quiet today. It really has been a funny old night with Emily and – and I definitely didn’t call you to moan about that. Ah, I called your house phone but there was no answer there either. Guess you’re out or something. So, call me, when you get this? Oh, it’s Daniel, by the way. I can’t remember whether I said that.’
Nothing appeared to have flickered or altered in the time it had taken to listen to Daniel’s message. And it looked like nothing was likely to. I took down one last mental blueprint of the building, to be sure, and then I skimmed through my phone book to Daniel’s name. By the time I looked back at the house, what I assumed was the bathroom light had flicked on again. The open window wasn’t a mistake, I thought; he wouldn’t have forgotten it twice. In perfect synchronicity, Daniel’s ‘Hello’ coincided with the male silhouette appearing in the illuminated patch of glass. I sucked in a stream of air that I couldn’t bring myself to expel.
‘Hello? Gillian?’
It was a little louder than his previous attempt.
‘I’m here, yes. I’m sorry, I was distracted by something.’
‘It must have been something good.’
He was fishing.
‘Fairly good, yes.’
‘Oh, well, ah, I can call you back another time, if I’ve caught you at a bad time now? Because – wait, no, you called me. Right?’
I half-listened to Daniel tie himself in knots and I half-watched the silhouette as it bobbed in and out of the window frame.
‘Sorry, yes, I called you.’
Why had I called him?
Paul disappeared from the frame and snapped the bathroom light off behind him. I could concentrate on Daniel now. I half-listened to his chatter about how modern technology only seemed to work when it suited itself, then I started my pace home, walking with more determination than I could really explain. I had walked as far as Runner’s Route when something on the pavement in front of me caught my eye.
‘How’s Emily?’ I asked, filling the empty space in our conversation.
The something was a small bird, covered in fur-like feathers; it was attempting to launch itself, but failing every time. On its third attempt it managed to lift itself several millimetres into the air. I had lifted my own foot three inches off the ground when Daniel started to speak, but then lowered my boot a good two inches clear of the creature. It wouldn’t have done much for me, I knew, but there was certainly something tempting in the opportunity.
‘Can we not talk about Emily?’ Daniel’s voice cracked midway through the question and I felt inclined to push for an explanation why; he had, after all, mentioned her himself in his voicemail.
‘Has something happened?’
‘Things just aren’t very good, GT.’
‘With her cancer, you mean?’
Daniel breathed heavily into the phone. ‘Yes, Gillian, with her cancer,’ he said, his tone more curt.
I looked at the bird again, considered Daniel’s tone, his anguish, then said: ‘Do you mind if I come over to your house?’
Daniel took a beat longer than I expected to answer.
‘I really don’t want to talk about Emily, Gillian. The whole thing is a mess and she’s really unwell at the moment and I just don’t know how much sense I’ll string together out of all of that. It’s just really difficult and she’s not even herself at the moment, and it’s crazy to try to piece someone else’s feelings together, you know?’
I didn’t know much about what he was trying to say, but I could see that for something that he didn’t want to talk about particularly, he had already found a fair amount to say. Noting my silence, Daniel started again. ‘I’ve not long got back from the hospital either. It’s late. I don’t want to drag you out at this time of night, really.’
‘I’m already out,’ I told him. ‘You’ll be keeping me company.’
I took one last look at the bird before I continued pacing along the pavement. Pulling my coat a little closer around me, I promised Daniel I wouldn’t be long before I ended the call.
Chapter 14
The front door opened so promptly that I thought Daniel must have been looking out for me. When he stepped out to greet me, I saw that his hair was a little more ruffled than usual, and he looked particularly boyish in his Batman pyjamas. His smile offered great reassurance but as he raised his right arm to rub at the back of his neck, the smile gave way to a nervous laugh.
‘Consider me your hero?’ he said.
‘Do you have tea?’
‘Brewing in the kitchen.’
‘Then you must be a hero.’
Daniel tried to smile; there was something inauthentic about the expression. He stepped away from the doorway and gestured me inside but, even though I was the person who initiated this visit, there was a moment of hesitation on my part.
‘Do you want me to bring your tea outside?’
‘No,’ I said, forcing a smile.
There was something new here that I was struggling to decipher, but I knew that I couldn’t communicate that. I stepped through the front door and hovered as Daniel pushed it shut behind us both; he edged past me and walked along the hallway towards a closed door.
‘Come in and we can set the world right.’ I didn’t respond, and so Daniel added: ‘Or we can just sit and drink tea; that’s okay as well.’
He pushed open the door to reveal a display of aging worktops and well-worn wooden cupboards. It may even have been the same kitchen that had been here when the house was first built. He pulled out a seat at the table then and wandered into a corner to fill cups and pour milk. The seat looked like it might collapse underneath me but it would have been rude to ignore the gesture. I watched Daniel fish out the tea bags and thump them down on a saucer before carrying the cups to the table. The finished product was such a deep brown that I wondered whether my memory of watching him add milk had been imagined. But there was something dangerous about criticising someone’s ability to make tea. I lifted the cup, took a restrained sip, and set it back down on the table.
‘Too strong?’
‘It’s perfect.’
In the less-forgiving light of the kitchen I c
ould see now that there was something wrong with Daniel’s face; more specifically his eyes. The skin that surrounded them was pink, irritated, maybe even a little swollen, and I remembered what these three things usually meant.
‘Something’s upset you?’ I asked.
He pursed his lips into a thin line and shook his head. But I spotted his lie this time.
‘What were you doing out and about at this hour anyway?’ Daniel asked, making it sound much later than it actually was.
‘Why don’t we talk about Emily?’
‘I thought we were going to talk about you?’
I couldn’t remember agreeing to that. ‘Haven’t we got time to talk about you as well?’
He expelled a long stretch of air, sipped his tea, and said nothing.
I could appreciate the heavy burden of upset, and I understood the knock-on effect that was having on his ability to perform adequately in a conversation. However, I lacked the skills required to build an exchange on a foundation of one-word responses, and so I waited until Daniel was ready to say more.
‘I’m sorry, GT, I’m not much of a talker at the moment.’
No, I thought, you aren’t.
Neither of us spoke for some time, but instead sipped our respective cups of tea until we reached the dregs of the drinks.
‘Do you feel like talking yet?’
‘I’m not sure what there is to say, Gillian.’
‘You could say what happened.’
He swallowed so hard that a thudding noise emerged from his throat.
‘This is too heavy, GT. We’ve known each other for five minutes, and this is really not your stuff to deal with.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
Daniel tilted his head and smiled at me in a way that felt a little patronising. I couldn’t understand what was so heavy, or why sharing the weight was such a terrible idea.
‘You’re sweet,’ he said, which I took to be patronising again.
‘I don’t mean to be.’
Daniel took a hard look at me and sighed. ‘They found another tumour. They can’t, or won’t – whatever, I don’t suppose it makes a difference; either way it’s not coming out. They’ve offered her more treatment, chemo and the rest of it, but it won’t cure her. It’ll never cure her, they say, it’ll just keep her alive a bit longer, and she doesn’t want that any more.’