The Stepmother

by Carrie Adams

  “Come and have a cup of tea. Mum’s wrapped up and sitting in the garden. Did you speak to James?”

  I put my arm through his. “Yes. For hours.”

  “You were supposed to stay in London for a good night’s sleep.”

  “Just doing what my daddy told me.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Better than okay. Thanks to you.”

  “Don’t thank me. I can only make suggestions. The rest is down to you. Go out to the garden. I’ll bring you tea.”

  “You sure you’re not getting tired, Dad?”

  “Me? I feel on top of the world.”

  MY MOTHER WAS LYING ON the recliner normally reserved for summer. Her head was tilted back, her eyes were closed, and she’d been tucked tightly under a blanket. She looked so peaceful that I didn’t want to disturb her. I took a seat at the other end of the terrace and watched her. That was what my parents were to me: a blanket, tucking me in against the elements. I closed my eyes and listened to the wood pigeons’ guttural song. Someone was mowing a lawn in the village. I could hear the sound of the radio drift through the open kitchen window. These were moments to cherish. I heard Dad’s footsteps on the flagstones, and a cup of tea floated into view. He looked at my mother.

  “I think she’s dozed off,” I said.

  “The pace of life is so much more frenetic than it used to be. It’s become a privilege just to stop and think occasionally,” he said, sitting down next to me.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “It’s why I loved the fishing. Me and nature. I thought at first I’d get bored, but my mind soon steadied and my soul opened up. I watched a water boatman skate across the water and was mesmerized.” I didn’t speak.

  “I came to a realization there that ultimately we’re all responsible for one another. It was incredibly powerful, but peaceful too. I learned an important lesson. At eighty-four, that’s not bad. If we take care of our world, our world will take care of our souls. That’s happiness. That’s what we’re all searching for. Comes down to care.”

  “And hope,” I said.

  My father took my hand. He smiled, nodding. “I feel boundless,” he said.

  “That’s what it feels like to lie spread out like a starfish, naked in the grass, and stare at the sky.” My mother’s face was pointing our way now, but her eyes were still closed.

  “Hi, Mum,” I said.

  “How long have you been listening?” asked Dad.

  “Since the beginning of time,” said my mother in a faux-spiritual voice.

  “I think she’s taking the piss,” said Dad. He stood up and went over to her. He made her budge up, then sat down next to her, took her hands and rubbed them. “You warm enough?” he asked. She nodded.

  They appeared to be gazing at each other intently, though Mum kept her eyes closed. If I watched carefully, I could see the perpetual movement under the lids, but it didn’t worry me so much now.

  “Bea has called a couple of times,” said my mother.

  “Sober?”

  “Darling,” said my mother, reprimanding me in one word, “the woman has been through a lot. Did you know she had five failed pregnancies between Amber and Lulu?”

  “Yes. But that’s not why she drinks.”

  My parents waited for me to expand. But I couldn’t.

  “Don’t be so sure. Nothing in life happens in isolation. The scales are always moving. Sometimes the good and the bad balance each other out. Sometimes you reach tipping point,” my mother said.

  “It was very hard on us,” said my father.

  “What was?” I asked, sitting up a little straighter.

  “Hugh,” said my mother softly.

  He patted her hand. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Perfection is a very hard thing to live up to. Your mother and I have had a great marriage, but it’s not been without difficulties.”

  “Well, obviously ups and downs—”

  “No, Tessa, I’m talking bottom of the crevasse. Like everyone else.” I was going to interrupt, but Dad quieted me. “A few years after you were born we decided to have another child.”

  “You told me you’d only ever wanted one.”

  My mother placed her shades back over her eyes and sat up. “Hugh?”

  “Liz darling, Tessa needs a little of the sheen to be rubbed off. As a wedding gift.”

  My mother didn’t say anything, but she didn’t stop him again.

  “If we’d told you the truth you would have felt you weren’t enough, and we didn’t want you to feel like that, because you were and are. But we still tried and we kept failing.”

  I watched my parents share a thousand painful memories in the space of a second. “It was hardest on you, Liz darling,” said Dad. “I didn’t want to go on putting you through it.”

  “You weren’t putting me through it,” said my mother.

  “That was how it felt to me.”

  “It’s hard for a man to understand what a woman goes through in successful pregnancies, let alone the ones that fail,” said Mum.

  “But I only seemed to make things worse. It was easier to bugger off to the pub.”

  “Like James,” I said quietly. “He pulled away from Bea.”

  “It was my fault,” said Mum. “I locked you out. I was the one who felt a failure.”

  “You were never that. You were always so brave.”

  “I made you feel surplus to requirements.”

  Dad nodded. “Maybe. That’s no excuse, though.”

  My mother reached up to stroke his thin hair. “What made you stay?”

  “Stay?” I said, unable to stop myself interrupting.

  Dad shifted.

  “You were going to leave us?” I asked, stunned.

  “I thought about it, yes.” I was reeling. Dad had been going to leave us? “How did you know?” he asked Mum.

  “Well, you could have gone and had lots of children with anyone else. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out.”

  “Liz, you daft thing, it was never about that. I only thought about leaving because I’d lost you.”

  My mother lowered her hand. “The hardest thing to do when you’re angry is reach out. We both retreated. I’m sorry.”

  “My darling, you’ve nothing to be sorry for.”

  “Why didn’t you leave?” I asked, still sitting forward. I noticed my mother sit a little straighter too.

  “Nothing dramatic. Mum had gone to pick you up from school—you must have been seven. You and she were walking up the garden path. You were talking nonstop as usual and pulling your mother’s arm out of its socket.” I couldn’t help smiling. I could almost taste the memory. “I realized this was where I belonged. Maybe not right at that moment, but time moves on, things change and settle and change again, and I knew that I would belong again.” He turned to me. “Not rocket science.”

  It felt pretty profound to me.

  “I thank the gods every day for that moment of clarity. When doubts resurfaced, I clung to that moment and it got me through.”

  “You had more doubts?” I asked.

  “It’s a long journey, Tessa. Everyone has times when they wonder, ‘Is this it?’” said my mother, coming to my father’s defense. “You need to know that. Dad’s right. The perfect union doesn’t exist. Sure there are relationships that check most of the boxes most of the time, but not all and not always.”

  “So I’m learning. But isn’t it good to aim high?”

  “High, yes. But not unreachable,” said Dad.

  “James is a wonderful man, Tessa,” said Mum. “But be under no illusion. Marrying him will be the toughest thing you ever do.”

  Dad took my mother’s hands again. “And the most rewarding.”

  She smiled, and in that smile I saw the girl she’d been and the woman she’d become. It was all and nothing to do with me. My father leaned over and gave her a kiss.

  “I’ve got to make a work call,” I said, standing up
.

  “Don’t worry, we’re not going to start getting jiggy with it,” said Dad.

  “‘Jiggy with it’?” I asked, laughing. “Where did you pick up that lingo?”

  “Fisherman-speak,” he replied.

  He was right, I didn’t have to call anyone but I wanted to leave them alone. Perfect unions may not exist but perfect moments do. This was one of those, and they were entitled to have it without me. I felt strangely elated, despite their dire warnings of difficulties ahead. If perfection didn’t exist, then life was what you made it and with whom. I found that empowering, not daunting. Daunting was when your fate was in the hands of others. Was James the only person in the world for me? No. He’d just happened to turn up at a time when I was open to the idea of finding a pod partner. Not very romantic, but realistic. It was up to us to find the romance in it, James and me. From the window seat in the sitting room I watched my parents talking and thanked them silently for finding their way back to each other. I realized now how easy it was to get lost.

  MY FATHER DIED THE FOLLOWING morning. The most shocking thing about it was that it came as no shock at all. I had gone into their room with their morning tea on a tray. They were just stirring. I put it on the dressing table and went to my mother’s side of the bed to give her a cup. Daddy turned back his covers and, in his worn blue pajamas, stood up and stretched. We discussed how well we had slept, and I agreed that Mum’s eyes were now roaming idly rather than searching frantically. She said she could see sunlight coming through the curtain.

  Dad needed no more encouragement. He went to the window and threw open the curtains with gusto. “Good heavens,” he said. “What a perfectly beautiful day. Liz darling, the daffodils are coming up.” He turned and smiled at us, then looked back. “Just when the winter months start taking their toll, Mother Nature sends us bright yellow flowers to remind us to hold fast, summer’s coming, all will be well.”

  I was just standing up to join him when he took two quick steps backward. He didn’t make a sound, simply sat on the bed, one hand steadying himself against the old mattress, the other held over his heart. I caught a flash of something in his eyes, and then he dropped backward. His eyelids fluttered and closed.

  The doctor told me the “flash” I had seen was his pupils dilating rapidly, common in sudden massive heart attacks such as this had been, but I knew differently. His soul was returning to the universe, to the water boatman skating on the skin of a river, but on the way it had passed through me. I like to think a little of it remained there.

  My mother was exceptionally calm. She said his name once. He didn’t answer, so she didn’t ask again. From the dent in the mattress she found his head, resting a few inches from her left thigh, and put her hand on his forehead. There it stayed, occasionally stroking, while I sat on the other side and held his hand. How or why we knew not to run screaming to the phone, pummel his chest, breathe frantically into his mouth, I can’t imagine, but we did none of those things. Later, the doctor told us that nothing would have brought him back after that attack. We knew that too. I had seen him go and my mother had felt it.

  After a while I picked up Dad’s legs and swiveled him around on the bed. Mum placed his head on his pillow. It was easy. He had died as he had lived, with his womenfolk’s well-being in his heart. All I had to do was straighten the sheets and blankets. Only then did we speak.

  “We need some breakfast,” said my mother. “It’s going to be a long day.” She turned down my offer to help her dress, which I took as a silent request to leave them alone. I went downstairs and cooked a breakfast the English would be proud to call their own.

  Outside, those early daffodils nodded gently at me.

  I nodded back. Hold fast, Tessa. All will be well.

  Eighteen

  For Better for Worse

  AFTER BREAKFAST, I WENT INTO AN ORGANIZATIONAL OVERDRIVE. I called the doctor, the vicar, the publican. It was the perfect pyramid scheme. Within half an hour, ladies with casseroles and bunches of wild-flowers began to ring the doorbell. I texted my few good friends who had particularly loved my father. Ben’s flowers had arrived first, just as the tide of death-related bureaucracy had threatened to engulf me. Early-spring daffodils. Hold fast, and all will be well. Their color and sweet scent had got me through the rest of the morning. I held fast. There was a note attached: I can be there in an hour if you want me to be.

  I tried James several times, but his phone was switched off. He was fast asleep in L.A. What good would it do to wake him? I wished he was there, though.

  I went back upstairs with a cup of tea for my mother. I knocked on the door to my parents’ bedroom and went in. My mother sat in the armchair under the window, facing the bed. Dad was still lying there, unchanged, but I checked. My mother had drawn the curtains across the south-facing windows. The breeze made them flutter. It felt cool in the darkened room. My more macabre side might have called it refrigerated, but I was doing my utmost to keep that voice quiet. There was an open photo album in Mum’s lap. “Luckily, I know them by heart,” she said. “I was going over a few favorites.”

  I put a mug of chamomile tea beside her to cool. “Not an easy question this, but the vicar wants to know whether Dad is to be buried or cremated.”

  “Cremated,” said Mum immediately. “I’ll keep him in a jam jar.”

  Perhaps she wasn’t dealing with this as well as I thought.

  “Don’t look at me like that, darling. We made the decision together. Obviously, he didn’t specify the receptacle, but he loved my jam, so I think a jam jar’s apt, don’t you?” I hoped a reply wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t. Mum went on: “It’s to be kept until I go. Then, and I am sorry to ask this of you, we’d quite like to be sprinkled somewhere together. Or planted with some new fruit trees.” No way. I was not going to make jam out of my parents. “I didn’t think you’d like the thought of that, but we do love our fruit trees.”

  I leaned closer to her. “Can you see me?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re weird,” I said.

  She smiled. “My dear girl, I’ve always known what you were thinking. I used to be able to tell by the type of silence in the house whether you were being conscientious or up to no good.”

  I heard a car pull up outside and wondered absently who had sent flowers now. Incredible how word got out.

  “Are you all right, Tessa?” asked Mum.

  “I don’t think I really believe this is happening.” I knew my father’s lifeless body lay a few feet from where I stood, but I had such a strong sense of him that the word “death” could not be put into the same sentence as his name. “I called Human Resources at work, to tell them I wouldn’t be in, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell them why.”

  “It’ll take a while to sink in,” said my mother.

  “I don’t want it to sink in.”

  “I know.”

  There was a loud knock on the front door. “Are you up for more visitors?” I asked. People had been turning up all morning. I’d not known my parents had so many friends in the area.

  “Actually, I might rest now.”

  “Good idea. The vicar will be over later to talk about the funeral.”

  I ran down the stairs, expecting another lady from the village with a hot pot. It wasn’t until I saw James standing on the flagstone next to the boot scraper that I knew for sure my father was dead. He dropped his bag on the ground, opened his arms, and I fell into his chest. “Daddy’s dead,” I mumbled.

  “I know,” whispered James into my hair. He kissed the top of my head. “I know.”

  I rested there for a while, listening to his heart, feeling his strong arms around me. “I don’t understand, I thought you were going to stay in L.A. till the end,” I said.

  “The moment I put the phone down after speaking to you I changed my mind. I don’t need to play golf to prove I’m good at my job. A very strong voice in my head was telling me to get on a plane. I have a pretty good idea whos
e it was now.”

  “I’m so glad you did. I tried to call you but the phone was switched off. I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was in the air,” he said. “I got the last flight out by a whisper.”

  “You must be exhausted. Oh, James, I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “I’m sorry it took me this long to get back.”

  “How did you know about Dad?”

  “Bea told me.”

  I waited for the monster to growl and noticed, as I took James’s hand and led him inside, that it didn’t. Bea had called to see how my mother was doing and I’d picked up the phone. She hadn’t expected me to be there, so I told her why I was. “Amber rang me in tears,” I said. “At first I thought something had happened again with Bea, but she was beside herself at the thought that I no longer had a daddy. It’s really freaked her out. James, you mean the world to her.”

  James pulled me toward him. “We still have a lot to talk about but right now my main concern is you.”

  I tried to speak, but he put his finger to my lips. “All I could think about on the plane home was you. I want you to know that I’m here for you. I’ll make tea, run you a bath, leave you be, hold you tight. I love you, Tessa. I don’t want to lose you.”

  I shivered.

  “Come here, beautiful. You’re freezing. It’s probably shock.”

  “He was eighty-four,” I said. It was not shock.

  “I know, but he seemed so robust, so dependable,” said James.

  “I’d started to notice things, small things. His hand trembled, he was tired, he’d shrunk a bit. I know this will sound cold, but in a small way I’m happy for him. Is that weird?”

  He shook his head, but I wasn’t sure.

  “No incontinence, no senility, never having to watch Mum…”

  He hugged me again. “Ssh,” he said. I didn’t really want to ssh. I wanted to talk about all the thoughts that had flooded my head since Dad had collapsed onto the bed, but it was hard to when I was pressed against a suit jacket.

  “Where’s Liz?”

  I pulled away. “Upstairs with Dad.”