by C. S. Barnes
Attending two funerals over the course of one summer was not quite how I had imagined my time at home would play out, I’ll admit. The link she was making still felt tenuous. It was clear she was moving somewhere with this. After too much silence on my part my mother turned to look at me and found me frowning over her response. Returning to the peeling, chopping, whatever she was doing, she added: ‘Bit close for comfort, love, that’s all I meant.’
The comment didn’t clarify anything so much as complicate it further.
‘I see.’
‘How are you feeling about things now?’
The question was on the tip of her tongue long before I had even decided on my own non-committal reply. And this, I thought, must have been the reason for the link: she wanted to discuss feelings.
‘I try not to think about Dad, if I’m honest, Mum.’
My mother prepared the rest of dinner in such a determined silence that I wondered – or perhaps hoped – that the conversation had fallen from her head. She finished dicing, successfully boiled and mashed as appropriate, and even wandered to and from our utility room with washed and to-be-washed clothes without uttering anything in the vein of a response. But when she set the food-laden plate down in front of me, I realised she had been saving this talk for the intimacy of dinner.
‘Gillian, do you really never think about what happened?’
That’s not what I said, I thought, as I threw a sizeable chunk of chicken into my mouth to buy myself thinking time. Did we always have to have these conversations over, or immediately after, the consumption of food? I wanted to ask. Did my mother not appreciate how indigestion worked?
‘Of course I do.’ I maintained eye contact with my plate. It hadn’t escaped my attention that my mother had more roast potatoes than I did and I was disproportionately irritated about that. ‘I wouldn’t be normal if I didn’t think about it, would I?’
‘I just thought that all of this with Emily might have brought some things up.’
‘They’re hardly similar situations, Mum.’
‘Aren’t they?’ she asked. I frowned into my dinner, confused by her insinuation, and she must have noticed. ‘Death is death, isn’t it? That’s all I meant,’ she added. But it wasn’t all.
I speared chicken, a carrot, and a potato one after the other and threw the medley into my mouth before I could say anything inappropriate or damning. The companionship I shared with Daniel had evolved into something that allowed us to say (almost) anything to each other. My mother and I, however, had no such relationship, and I compartmentalised those two states before saying: ‘I’m not sure death is death. That makes the whole thing sound quite inconsequential.’
‘Don’t do that, Gillian.’ Her response was firm. I thought she must have been ready with it for some time, depending on what I contributed to this talk. ‘You’re being clinical again.’ A fine criticism, I thought, from someone who had boiled death down to a simple and derivative process. ‘All I’m asking is whether it’s brought any feelings up for you,’ she finished.
‘And it hasn’t.’
‘Well good, because that’s all.’
We both knew it wasn’t all, but it would have to do for now.
‘So Daniel has family there at the moment?’ she asked between mouthfuls.
‘Mm – not his parents, though.’ I spoke around a mouthful of over-boiled carrots, knowing my mother would fill the silence should I wait too long to respond. ‘Which I think is peculiar. Emily was related to one of them, after all, and your parents should be there for you during difficult periods in your life,’ I said, unaware of the accidentally snide comment that I had just made about my own parents, more driven by my protective feelings for Daniel. My mother had noticed the potential malicious remark.
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘Well, you’d think his family would support him.’
‘Even families have to draw a line, Gillian. We can’t always support you.’
It felt like we were discussing something else now.
‘Mum, is everything okay?’ I asked, trying a different tactic.
She considered the question for longer than seemed necessary before offering an unconvincing ‘Yes, love’ and returning to her meal.
‘I feel like there’s something you want to say but you aren’t saying it,’ I pressed. I was being stifled by this elephant in the room, one that now seemed to be swelling at an alarming rate. I was gripped by a sudden need to gun it down, gut it, and harvest its ivory.
My mother placed her knife and fork down either side of her plate and finished chewing with slow and deliberate movements. She swallowed and rubbed at her eyes, giving over an expression of exasperation, or maybe tiredness, and said: ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment, Gillian.’
My time with Daniel had well-informed me about what came next on my part. ‘Would you like to talk about it, Mum?’
I can’t be sure – it was just a flicker, really – but I think that she flinched.
‘Gillian, what did you do with the box?’
My face, despite my best efforts to hold back, must have looked startled. It hadn’t been the starting point that I was anticipating and I now found myself reassessing what it was that my mother was worrying about, for this to be her chosen point on which to build whatever came next. I thumbed through stock responses, frantically looking for an answer, when it occurred to me that they were hazardous. The animals, that is, not the answers I was looking through. It wasn’t a case of simply hauling them into a non-recycling bin. Would my mother know that?
Even so, could I risk her knowing that?
‘They’re in the boot of my car.’
She definitely flinched then, as if she were physically pained by the answer.
‘Why are they there, Gillian? Why didn’t you get rid of them?’ Her tone was measured and controlled but taut, as she held back the emotion that threatened to crack through.
‘They’re hazardous. Technically. I can’t just throw them in a bin.’
‘So how can you get rid of them?’
‘To be honest, Mum, I don’t really know.’ And why should I have known? It never occurred to me that I would need to get rid of them. ‘When I’m back at university I can ask one of my lecturers, or maybe even dispose of it through the university.’
She closed her eyes, shook her head slightly. ‘That’s not good enough.’
Nothing ever is, I thought, feeling an unfamiliar stab of bitterness towards her.
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Your lecturers have emails, don’t they?’
I nodded, understanding her implication. ‘I’ll email one of them first thing in the morning to see whether they can advise me on the matter.’ I flinched at my own tone, noting how clipped it was a little too late to edit it. With the final roast potato left on my plate I chased around a dribble of gravy, dabbing the liquid into the food before tucking it into my mouth. When my mother didn’t offer any further remarks, I pushed a little harder: ‘Is there anything else that’s on your mind?’
‘Plenty.’
‘I’m here to talk, if you feel like expanding.’
She spat out a puff of air, rolled her eyes, and shook her head in rapid succession.
‘I don’t know what that means, Mum.’
A similar gesture followed but this one was accompanied by the rattle of cutlery as she placed utensils on the plate in front of her. She had left two roast potatoes, and I tried to not be aggravated by this as she pushed the plate towards me, indicating that it was my duty to do the washing up. I made off in the direction of the sink, which was already stuffed with various pans and paraphernalia. So much so, in fact, that I wondered whether my mother had created such a mound in an attempt to keep me out of her way for a while, but I shook the thought away as idle paranoia. I was midway through filling the washing up bowl full of water when my mother spoke again, in such a quiet tone that I had to turn off the tap and ask her to repeat
her remark.
‘I said: I’ll be ready to talk soon, I think.’
And then she left, saying something about an early night, and needing the extra rest.
Chapter 23
Louise’s office was a medley of smells. There was tomato, garlic, coffee, perfume. I had interrupted her lunch and I thought I should feel a stab of guilt, or something, for that. But I was also sure that at some point – despite not being an actual doctor, I know – Louise must have taken one oath or another where she solemnly swore to protect her clients from harm. It was, perhaps, disingenuous to use this in my bargaining to see her. I wasn’t in harm’s way, I didn’t think. But I couldn’t be sure that someone else wasn’t. The receptionist had asked whether it was an emergency. A moot question, I thought, given that I was standing directly in front of her having arrived unannounced without an appointment demanding to see my therapist – which shortly gave way to pleas of, failing that, any therapist at all. Does it look like an emergency? I wanted to ask her. Are these not urgent actions?
‘She said she’ll see you now if you pop down,’ the woman said after hitting several keys on her laptop. No sooner had she uttered the sentence I was gone.
We sat in our usual positions on opposing sofas. Louise wiped at the corners of her mouth, inspected her thumbs – presumably for any remnants of food that she had just wiped away – then dropped her hands, folded, into her lap. She was evidently waiting for me to say something but she hadn’t given me anything to answer.
She sighed, uncrossed and then re-crossed her legs, and said: ‘Do you want to tell me what’s wrong, Gillian?’
I tilted my head left and then right as if attempting to shake an answer loose. ‘I think it’s my mother.’
‘Okay. Has something in particular happened with your mother?’
I performed the same head shift as before but nothing came out this time. I wasn’t aware of anything particular having happened with her, no. But I nevertheless felt certain that she was the reason I had needed to see Louise. Since Emily’s funeral my attachment to my mother had slackened, for want of a better phrase, while the attachment I felt towards Daniel was growing stronger by the day. So much so that too much physical proximity from him sometimes gave me literal heartache – romanticised phrasing for anxiety, of course, but still.
Despite our distance – or perhaps because of it – my mother had in fact been making what seemed like a determined effort to redress the balance of communication in our household. She cooked dinner for us both, sometimes for Daniel as well. She suggested that she and I should spend more time together, and she made an effort to maintain a conversation even when my ability to feign interest in such a thing had long faded. But she also asked, on an almost daily basis, how exactly I was feeling about ‘things’ – she was never more specific about what she was asking, but there was always an undertone of something suspicious beneath the question – and, in addition to this, it had not gone unnoticed that she checked my room intermittently. For tiny carcasses, I thought, with more amusement than I should have felt. Nothing had happened, no, but I couldn’t stifle the feeling that something was about to.
‘There’s something in the pit of my stomach that I don’t recognise.’
‘Something, meaning a feeling?’
I nodded.
‘And it’s not a feeling you’ve had before?’
‘Not that I can recall.’
She paused here to make a note of something.
‘Talk me through it, Gillian. What is the feeling like, what does it remind you of?’
Every phrase that I tried to wrap around the sensation sitting in my lower abandon felt like an uncomfortable cliché. It was the dip in a rollercoaster, there was an eager beaver in my stomach – something that was champing at the bit, bouncing off the walls, with bells on, on the cusp of hitting fever pitch. I pulled the words around me, scratched at them like they were cheap fabric, and then I stripped them away, discarded them on the floor, leaving a trail of intangible feelings behind me as I paced Louise’s office, incapable of sitting still.
Interiors. 1978. Mary Beth Hurt. ‘I feel the need to express something, but I don’t know what it is I want to express. Or how to express it.’
‘It might not be about my mother.’
She nodded.
‘Okay, what else could it be about?’
‘Someone I felt close to died recently,’ I said, reaching for the first thing I could find.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Gillian. I assume we’re not talking about your father here?’
‘I said someone I felt close to,’ I snapped, instantly regretting the remark.
‘Gillian, I want you to close your eyes for me.’
I cocked an eyebrow at her suggestion. An almost-laugh escaped her and left behind the traces of a smirk. She set the pen and paper down alongside her in its usual spot, uncrossed her legs, and leaned forward so that her elbows were balanced against her knees.
‘Trust me?’ she said. And so I did. I leaned back against the welcoming cushions that were wedged on the sofa and I closed my eyes.
‘I want you to breathe. But not normal breathing. I want you to inhale for me, and hold it until I tell you otherwise.’
And so I did. I pulled in a greedy amount of air as if fearing that this may be the last time I would have the opportunity to do so. My chest expanded until my once-slouched position was nearly upright as my lungs flooded. In the dead silence of the office, I could just about hear Louise counting – ‘One, two, three, four, five, six’ – before she said: ‘And exhale for me, Gillian.’ We repeated the process for longer than I realised at the time, although I remember thinking that these were likely to be the most expensive breaths I had ever taken, would ever take. When Louise was satisfied with my efforts, she said: ‘Without thinking too much about your answer now, I want you to keep your eyes closed, and I want you to tell me why you’re here.’
‘Daniel. I’m here because of Daniel.’
I hadn’t thought about the answer, but immediately after spitting it out my eyes snapped open with the startled expression of a cat on the cusp of being garrotted. Where did that come from? I thought. Between Louise’s questions and my non-committal answers, we spent the remainder of the session trying to work out just that.
‘Gillian, is this your first boyfriend?’
‘He isn’t a boyfriend.’
‘No? Then what is he?’
I considered this, and then begrudgingly admitted defeat. ‘Okay, he’s a boyfriend.’
‘So this dynamic isn’t something that you’ve had before?’
‘No,’ I said, again begrudgingly.
‘Is it one that you find easy, or could this perhaps be a source of the struggle here?’
I considered this for a second. It hadn’t been easy, no. ‘It might have been easier if Daniel were the only man in my life.’
‘There’s another man in your life?’ Louise probed. Understandably so, I had just announced what I imagined to be a conventionally gossip-worthy piece of information, but I instantly felt like I should have kept it to myself. ‘Are you romantically involved with this other man, too?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘So, what is your relationship with this other person? Physical?’
A penny dropped. Yes, it was physical. That was exactly what it was.
‘How often do you see this other man?’
‘As often as I can, around Daniel.’
‘Surely that’s a source of conflict?’
‘It can be, especially with time.’
In the four days before this meeting I hadn’t been able to see Paul at all, because I hadn’t been able to leave Daniel. Not that I hadn’t wanted to leave but more that I couldn’t bring myself to; one need outweighed the other, but it was only temporary. I could never make it stick. There was a peculiar out-of-sight feeling with Daniel now – when I was with him, the thought of leaving was uncomfortable. But when I wasn’t with him,
I didn’t always feel like I needed to be.
‘Do you expect to always feel that way?’ Louise picked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘And this other man, do you always need to be around him?’
‘No. But I’d like to spend more time learning about him.’
Louise scribbled something down ahead of saying: ‘That’s interesting, Gillian.’ She paused to write something else down, suddenly latching onto an additional piece of information, then she continued in a different vein: ‘And this distance with your mother, this has coincided with this new relationship – relationships, rather. Do you think that could be anything to do with this?’
‘Why?’
‘Because we grow up, Gillian, and we move away from our parents as we experience life away from them. We’re independent entities, aren’t we?’ It hadn’t previously been Louise’s style but there was something slightly too kumbaya about her current perspective and it made me nervous. ‘Perhaps we can discuss how this impacts you and your mother next time. If the focus is on Daniel, and this other person, then I’m interested in unpacking that further.’
‘I have these urges,’ I found myself admitting to her, some thirteen minutes later when Louise had finished with her stream of carefully constructed questions. They must have been effective, I thought, because I was suddenly outpouring feelings I had previously been unaware that I even harboured. ‘I have these urges and I’ve never had anything like it and I don’t understand where they’re coming from or what I’m meant to do with them. And it feels wrong, I think, to act on them or to consider acting on them because is that behaviour actually allowed? Really? Or am I trying to convince myself it is, because it’s obviously deep-seated in the human psyche to such an extent that I’m feeling it, so, does that by default make the whole thing natural somehow, normal even?’
Louise looked at me sympathetically, as an older sister or perhaps even a mother might look at their younger female relative. ‘I think I understand what you’re talking about here, Gillian.’