String Bridge

by Jessica Bell

  “You cooked?” I asked, furrowing my brow; the taste of the unpredictable stung my tongue like the end of a magnet.

  “Yeah. You know I can. I’m just usually really busy every time you come over. But this weekend I’m all yours. No tuna pasta this time. Ya hungry?” She rubbed Tessa’s belly with a wink.

  We all cried out “yeah,” even Dad, who apparently had no idea Mum had cooked either by the look of his deracinated smile. Nor did I blame him. Something wasn’t quite right.

  “James, set the table,” Mum ordered, her tone switching from bouncy biscuit baker to authoritarian chef.

  “Okay,” he said, as if someone had shoved a whisk down his throat and got it caught in his vocal cords. He reached for a set of placemats in a drawer, eyebrows raised, lips pursed, and something like a fleck of tissue hanging from his nose hair.

  “No! Not those ones, you idiot. We never use those! The real ones!” Mum barked as she cut up the lasagna and then burned her wrist on the edge of the tray. “Ouch! Shit! Fuck!” Bang went the spatula in the sink after it’s quick two-meter journey through the air.

  Dad looked at me as if I should know where the “real” placemats were and could signal him in the right direction. But I had no idea and shook my head in silence. I stroked Tessa’s hair as she watched with amused intrigue.

  Mum caught sight of the fleck of tissue hanging from Dad’s nose and squeezed her own nose with a “tsk” as cue for him to brush it off. Dad, seeming to take his uncoordinated tendencies into account, cupped his knobbly-knuckled hand, speckled with tiny tufts of wiry sprouting black hair, over his whole face, and loosened the fleck of tissue with one swift downward swipe.

  “They’re in there! Next to the … the things!” Mum pointed in the general direction of the drawers with such a hard flick I was amazed she didn’t dislocate her elbow.

  “Where? We have fifteen drawers.”

  “Oh look, you’ve learned how to count,” Mum snapped putting her hands on her hips. “They’re in this drawer.” She pointed again, without actually indicating the drawer the real placemats were in or what things they were next to. Dad opened and closed all the drawers and inspected their contents, but to no avail. Tessa giggled. She loves her grandparents’ bickering. Especially the way Dad makes faces every time Mum talks. Tessa started imitating him one day, in reaction to one of Mum’s obsessive fits. Mum then scolded Dad for subjecting their granddaughter to bad habits. She’d hit him with a wooden spoon.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Mum muttered and accidentally dropped her oven mitt on the floor. Dad picked it up and looked at her as if to say, see I’m not the only one who drops things, and Mum snapped back, “They’re in this drawer, you dipshit. They were staring you right in the bloody face. An’ I drop things by accident—you drop things because you can’t coordinate using two hands at once. For Christ’s sa—”

  “Since when do you guys set the table?” I asked, wondering why I was putting myself in the middle of an argument. If there’s anyone in this world who knows why not to, it’s me. But my mouth overpowered my mind for a second too long. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you set the table. How would Dad know where the placemats are if you never set the table?”

  Mum spun round on her Birkenstock heel and glared. Her jaw clenched as she flashed a disapproving glance toward Dad, who was grinning in triumph by default. She sighed and said through gritted teeth, “We. Invite. Colleagues. For. Dinner.”

  I mouthed the word oh, removing a strand of hair from the corner of my mouth and gave Tessa a little wink. She wriggled in her chair, straightened her skirt, took a napkin from the table, and hooked it into her collar like a bib.

  What? Was my daughter having an identity crisis? Most of the time, it takes Tessa throwing a five-minute tantrum and a succession of threats to get her to do that at home.

  Thankfully, as Mum served the food, Serena, my best friend from Australia, called. I grabbed my cell phone out of my bag by the couch, silently thanking my piano spirit for saving me from Betty Boo Hoo. But what saved me from one psychological torment sent me full-throttle into another.

  “Hey hunk’a’spunk. Where you at? Been calling your house for ages.”

  “Hey. I’m on the island. Just a sec and let me go outside where there’s better reception.” As I approached the front door, Mum gave me her hurry-up look—the one that makes her look like a confused ferret.

  “What a surprise! What’s going on?”

  “Just checkin’ to see how you are, Hon.”

  “I’m good. I’m in the middle of dinner with my folks, and my mum’s getting … well I’m sure you can guess. So, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, but my grandfather died,” Serena said in a flippant tone.

  “Oh? I’m sorry. When?”

  “This morning.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for years. But apparently he’s left me something. I have to go and claim it at some point. Feel a bit weird taking something of his. We hardly knew each other.”

  “Didn’t he always send you birthday cards? Full of money?”

  “Yeah. And I always called to say thank you, too. But otherwise, we never spoke.”

  I could hear the faint calling of my mother for me to come back inside like grilled greasy whinnies from tavern kitchen chimneys. Yoo-hoo! Melody! Come back inside before I sear your father’s cheek with my scorching hot spatula.

  “Serena, I’m really sorry, but I have to go … oh, wait, you said you were calling my house for ages?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “And there was no answer?”

  “No. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Alex should be there.”

  “Oh? He’s not there with you?”

  “Alex? With me? On the island? You kidding?”

  “Well, I just assumed … ”

  “Yeah, well … . Maybe he’s just gone out with his mates.”

  “Probably,” replied Serena, clearly trying to not make me worry.

  “Okay. I’ll call when I’m back in Athens.”

  “Okay. Ciao, Bella!”

  As soon as I hung up, I called home and there was still no answer. Then I called Alex’s cell and it was switched off. My stomach imploded like sinking pavlova. A common reaction of mine when Alex and I are apart. I’m making irrational assumptions, I thought. Do not get sucked into your mother’s absurd psychological framework. Such as: getting angry over an overflowing bath, and screaming about a piece of burnt toast that pissed her off two years earlier.

  The moment I got back to the dinner table, my mother said, “Now, Melody, I know it’s a lot of money, so I’ll give it to you if you can promise me that you won’t waste it on investing in one of Alex’s stupid business ideas.”

  What? Did I miss her first sentence, or did I phase out?

  She took hold of my hands above the salad bowl and looked at me as if we had just been informed I had two months to live, stroking my knuckles with her silky smooth thumbs. I sucked my tongue till it stuck to the roof of my mouth, then twisted it upside down, which resulted in me puckering my lips. Mum smiled—showed her teeth. Dad and Tessa stopped fidgeting with their cutlery, and looked at their plates. A spiny silence ensued. Like a paper cut. You don’t notice it’s there until it really stings.

  “Um, what are you talking about?” I asked, glancing at my father for some sign of moral support. But he didn’t look me in the eye. He knew what was coming and he knew how I would react. Any time my mother jumps straight into a conversation without any lead-in, she has an ulterior motive. I’ve learned to recognize the signs.

  “The twenty-thousand Euros I’m giving you.”

  “What? Are you kidding me?”

  “Not at all,” she said.

  “You want to give me a gift with conditions?” I screeched, snatching my hands away and shaking my head. “I’m sorry, Mum, but I don’t want a gift like that.”

  Dad and Tessa rolled their ey
es at each other.

  “Come on, Tessa,” Dad said, “let’s take a walk to the village and get some yummy cake.”

  “Yeah!” Tessa jumped into Dad’s arms as he stood and scraped his chair backward.

  Mum winced. “Melody, can you not jump to conclusions and just hear me out? You see, it would be great, because you’d be able to quit your job and maybe invest it in a property and collect some rent.”

  “Mum.” I laughed, trying to trick myself into gaining composure. “First, if I quit my job, how would I support Tessa when the money runs out and I can’t find another? Second, twenty thousand Euros is nowhere near enough to buy a property. And third, I paid your rent for a whole year when you were going through that financial crisis, so, sorry if I expect a gift like that to come with no strings attached.”

  With each sentence my voice grew louder. I almost regretted it, but knowing that it was high time I stopped holding back, I just let myself go. Perhaps I was overreacting. Perhaps I should have been less defensive, but being so hardened to my mum’s usual manipulative behavior, I suppose I just couldn’t perceive the offer as a gesture with no strings attached. All I saw was her attempt to control me. And all I could foresee was her forgetting about me when she got what she wanted. Such as the time she forced me to take a waitressing job to pay board when I was a teenager, and then wouldn’t let me make any choices about what food to buy, and I did the cooking!

  Alex and I had been tossing around the idea of opening a live music venue/bar together and I had mentioned it to Mum. She didn’t like the idea and thought it would ruin my life, and brain bashed me with all the horrible things that could go wrong. It worked—we never did it. Another effort of Alex’s to bring us closer together flushed down the proverbial toilet of fabricated doom.

  So. I had to turn the money down—out of principle. If I was going to have a spare twenty thousand to play with, I’d like to be able to do with it what I please.

  “Melody, don’t be silly, I really want you to have it. I want the best for you and Tessa.”

  “And what about Alex? Why the best for me and Tessa, and not Alex?” I narrowed my eyes, focusing on the hairline wrinkles bordering Mum’s dark brown penciled lips.

  “Well, Alex too … of course, Alex too. It’s just … he makes a lot of decisions on the spur of the moment without thinking them through, and he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, does he? I just don’t want you to risk losing my money over something that is going to make you work too hard—”

  “Pardon?” I craned my neck forward, “my money” echoing in the rear of my sinus cavity.

  Mum extended her hand, palm up, toward me.

  “I want to give you a gift—that means …,” Mum sniffed, shaking her head as if she’d just snorted stinging cocaine, “it should give you the chance to work less, not more.” She scraped the leftovers into my empty plate, avoiding eye contact.

  “Mum, twenty grand isn’t going to help me work less. What you’re suggesting will make me unemployed and then broke when I can’t find another job when the money runs out. And what are you basing your opinion on anyway? One, just one, failed venture on Alex’s part? Come on, you can give him a little more credit than that, can’t you?”

  “I don’t mean it like that. I don’t mean to put Alex down—”

  “Yes, you do. You’ve never liked Alex. You’ve never said it, but I can tell. You pretend when you’re around him. Who are you trying to protect here? You usually just tell me how you feel straight out. But ever since I met Alex you’ve stopped. It’s like you’re pretending he doesn’t even exist.”

  “Excuse me?” Mum yelled, slamming a fist into a cupboard by her head. “And that is bad? How is that bad? I’m just trying not to create any friction between you two. You look happy with Alex. I didn’t want to stick my nose in like I did with all your other boyfriends.”

  “Well, thanks, thanks a lot. Thanks for saving my marriage.”

  I stood, removed the chair from behind me with an aimless flick. It wobbled, threatened to topple over, but regained balance, proving I maintained restraint. I walked over to a window by the couch and stared at the mountains—the real mountains, the real place where insecurities seem to melt like caramelizing sugar.

  “Oh, get off your high horse, Melody. I’m trying to do something nice for you here! And this is the thanks I get? You’re such a—” Mum screamed, smashing a plate in the sink by accident. Was it by accident?

  I turned around to glare at her. “Such a what? Such a selfish little bitch? Jesus, when have I heard that before?”

  “You’re such … AN AWFUL PERSON!”

  Mum groaned and belted her microfiber cloth against the sink over and over as if tenderizing an octopus. With squinted eyes her face flushed. If there was anyone on Earth who could convincingly emit smoke from their ears I’d have to say it would be my mother.

  I watched, blank-faced, wondering when we could ever be in the same room without having an argument. She went over to the piano and sat, poised, facing straight-ahead and closed her eyes. Her fingers rose through her inward sigh, hovered above the keys, searched them for the correct notes like Braille. She began to play Joni Mitchell’s “Blue.” A song I’ve always wanted to learn; one I’ve asked her to teach to me on so many occasions I’ve lost count. But she never did teach it to me; she rolled my requests into tiny little balls of dough, put them in the oven and forgot to set the timer—burned them to a crisp. My desire to love Joni was charcoal to her—brittle, lightweight, void of oxygen. Could I not share the love? And it wasn’t just the song I wanted to know how to play; I wanted to be taught, by my mother. I wanted to see music through her eyes, too; for her to take me under her wing, and say “See, this is how I feel. Understand this, then you’ll understand me.”

  I approached Mum from behind, hugged her shoulders, and held my cheek to hers. She kept playing, but moved her face like a delicate brush stroke against mine.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered and sat beside her. “I really can’t afford to lose my job. Twenty thousand Euros is a very nice gesture, but I’m afraid I can’t do what you want me to do. I have Tessa to think about. I can’t risk the possibility of not finding another job once the year off is over with.”

  Mum stopped playing and held my face in her hands.

  “I know. I just wanted you to know what it’s like to not feel burdened.”

  Money issues don’t burden me, I thought. You burden me.

  We both stared at indistinct areas of each other’s faces. My lips buzzed with letters aching to be strung together in words, sentences, pleas, confessions of dissatisfaction. I wanted to tell her how she has ruined my life. That I can’t live a single moment without wondering how it might be different if she had been “normal.”

  “I still want you to have it,” she said closing the lid over the keys.

  “Mum—”

  “No, no, no. You can put it toward your music.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Twenty grand should be plenty to cover the expenses of recording an album. Shouldn’t it?”

  Eleven

  It’s just another manic Monday, Oh oh oh, I wish it was Sunday, ’cause that’s my funday, my I-don’t-have-to-run day … I reach my desk at UTD, humming The Bangles. As much as I don’t like to admit it, 1980s pop-culture lines my veins like milk to an acidic stomach. The buzz of future possibility is sweating through fear and materializing into song. And I’m so preoccupied with what lies ahead, that I don’t realize what is directly ahead—my swiveling chair. I spill coffee all over my keyboard.

  “Damn it!”

  The girls’ heads turn. They stare. I stare. The coffee stares. Then, as if blessed with the momentum of freedom, its mercury-like globule separates, and cascades down the side of my desk.

  Sonia’s pending smile is threatening to emerge at my expense, her too-long shaggy ash-brown hair covering her eyes. I wonder if she’s related to The Addams Family’s Cousin It.

 
Lucy, another assistant, is kind enough to offer me help, but can’t seem to find a way to help and just stands behind me, watching, pushing her bifocals up her nose, as I shake the keyboard upside down and spread used tissues from my handbag all over my desk.

  Jodie, the other Project Manager, pokes her head out of her office, and I can see Dianne through the slightly open door.

  “Melody?” Jodie asks in her ornate Scottish flair. “Could ye come in here for a wee moment?”

  I gulp down what’s left in my Without Music Life Would B-flat mug, and buoyantly gurgle, “Sure! Just a sec!” managing to suck escaping coffee in from the corner of my mouth. I shuffle into Jodie’s office. Everybody stares at my flip-flops as if willing me to trip over.

  “Good morning, did you both a have a nice weekend?” I ask in a jovial editorial tone—a voice I save for meetings in the PMs’ office.

  “Luvley, thanks, Melody,” Jodie says, mirroring my merriness. She creates some space on her desk to rest her folded hands.

  “Fine, thanks,” Dianne says, nodding her head, careful not to let her hair-sprayed fringe fall in her face. Ugh.

  I take a seat, watching Dianne flip through some papers on her lap, biting the end of her pen, screwing up her nose, and then flipping some more. Jodie is watching her too, with pursed lips and one raised eyebrow. She pinches the concave between her bottom lip and oily chin as if trying to burst a pimple, or pluck a menopausal hair.

  “Right, are we ready then?” Jodie directs the question to Dianne, and winks at me, crossing her stocky bare legs and hitting her knee under the table. She winces, “D’ye want to get ye coffee before we start?”

  “No, it’s okay,” I smile, clicking the sole of my right flip-flop on my heel. “I accidentally spilt it. I’ll make another one when we’re done.” My dry lips stick to my teeth as I try to compose myself. Should I be worried about this sudden meeting?