If she can feel me looking at her, she ignores it, and I see she has earphones plugged in while she reads a battered-looking copy of The Great Gatsby. The train rattles on—tick, tick, tick. I can’t stop looking at her, wondering why she decided to make what was beautiful, ugly, and what might have been ugly, beautiful. Perhaps it is her own version of a balancing act.
Mum smacks me rather smartly on the knee. “For God’s sake, stop staring at the poor girl, you’ll give her a complex,” she stage-whispers.
“She doesn’t mind,” I say, gesturing at the girl, who catches my eye for a second. “Look, she wants to be looked at. I think it’s rather wonderful.”
“Perhaps, but not like an animal in a zoo,” Mum hisses, although the train is noisy and the girl is listening to something very loud and heavy on bass in her earphones. Maybe she likes the same bands as Caitlin. Maybe she knows Caitlin.
“Who are you listening to?” I tap her on the wrist and she takes out her earphones.
“I’m sorry,” Mum says, but she stops short of giving my diagnosis.
“It’s fine.” The girl smiles. “I don’t mind. I’m listening to Dark Matter. Do you know them?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “When was your surgery?”
I reach out and, just for one heartbeat, place a finger on the topmost jeweled stud.
“Claire!” My mum reaches across me, perhaps in a bid to physically restrain me, or maybe just to stop me talking. I shake her off.
The girl smiles again. “Four years ago now.”
“I like the jewels on your scar,” I tell her. “I don’t like the studs on your lips, though. You are so pretty, they spoil you.”
She nods. “That’s what my mum says.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mum says again. “We’re getting off at the next stop.”
“It’s fine.” The girl chuckles and looks at me. “This isn’t a phase I’m going through. This is my face and my body, and this is my statement about my life and the way I want to live it, for the rest of my life.”
“You think that,” I say, nodding at Mum. “But see that woman there? She used to be a hippie, dancing around naked in fields taking LSD. Now she wears support tights and listens to The Archers.”
The girl’s eyes widen and she laughs behind her book.
“And she’s got early-onset Alzheimer’s,” Mum retorts, which, let’s face it, is something of a trump card. The train slows to a halt at our station, and Mum grabs my wrist like I’m a naughty child, pulling me off the train. I wave at the girl as the train departs, and she waves back, the studs above her top lip sparkling. I’d like to be able to put jewels on my scars. But my scars are all in my head. Perhaps I can have that put in my will: after they’ve sliced me up, maybe they could pop in some diamantés along with the formaldehyde.
—
Mum knows the way, or at least she has the map. Apparently it’s not far from the tube station, so I let her tuck my hand in hers, and follow her like a little girl on the way to school, the fine rain misting our skin, gently soaking us through as we approach what Mum tells me is the University College London English Department office near Gower Street.
“When we get inside, let me do the talking,” she says, which makes me laugh.
“I do still possess the power of speech,” I tell her.
“I know you do, but you don’t possess the power of filtering out what you are thinking from what you are actually saying.” She arches an eyebrow. “Then again, I suppose you never did.”
“Thank you for being here,” I say. “For letting me do this.”
“I think sometimes you forget that I’d do anything for you.” Mum’s smile softens as she reaches out and touches the back of my cheek with her cold hand. “You are still my baby, you know.”
“I don’t know about that, although you may be feeding me mashed-up food with a spoon before we know it,” I reply, before I really think about what I’m saying. Mum tucks her hand back in her pocket, her face closing again, and I follow her into the building. Guilt crawls over me. Mum lost years of her life nursing one person she loved into an early grave because of this disease, and now she is set to do it again. I want to tell her not to bother; I want to tell that I will be fine in some sort of home, cared for by strangers. But I don’t, because she is my mum, and I want her. And I know I will want her, even when I don’t know that I do.
The sight of us approaching does not ruffle the substantial-looking woman behind the front desk; if anything, she seems to puff herself up a little more, like a hen preening her feathers. In a brilliant tactical move, she drops her gaze from us and begins to stare intently at her computer screen, as though she is doing something terribly important.
“Hello,” I say politely, repeating the word again when she doesn’t look up. “Hello?”
I am greeted with a single raised finger as the woman presses something on the keyboard, waits for two more beats, then finally graces me with her attention. A lot of the time lately, I don’t know if the way I feel about things is the way I really feel about them, or the way the disease is making me feel about them. But on this rarest of occasions I am sure that I—the me that still remains despite the disease—do not like this woman, and for that reason alone, I also rather like her.
“How can I help you?” she asks, looking distinctly put out that she is being required to do her job.
“My daughter is a third-year student here, and I need her address,” I say pleasantly. “It’s a family emergency.”
“We don’t give out personal information.” The woman smiles benignly. “I mean, you say you are someone’s mother, but for all I know you could be the queen.”
“Well, no, if I were the queen, I’m almost certain that you would know I was me,” I say. “And the thing is, while I completely agree with your policy, I don’t know her address and I need to contact her urgently. I mean it’s really urgent: she needs me.”
The woman sniffs. “You say you are this person’s mother, and yet you don’t know where she is?”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I am a shit mother.”
The woman prepares to look offended, but before she has time, my mother steps in. “Please excuse my daughter,” she says. “She has early-onset Alzheimer’s.”
I know exactly what my mother’s tactic is: she is planning to blindside the receptionist with my disease, go straight for the sympathy card and circumnavigate time-wasting tactics from my new nemesis. But still it smarts. I wanted to outwit her with my wits, not my lack of them.
The woman’s plump little mouth forms a silent pink O, but no sound comes out.
“It’s quite simple, you see,” Mum continues. “All we need you to do is contact Caitlin, wherever she is on campus, and tell her that her mother and grandmother…just tell her we are here. It’s a family emergency.”
“Caitlin?” The woman sits up a little. “Caitlin who?”
“Armstrong,” I say. “Do you know her?”
“Caitlin Armstrong is this poor lady’s daughter?” The receptionist has stopped looking at or talking to me directly. “Well, she’s not a student here anymore. She dropped out at the end of the summer term.” She lowers her voice, and all but raises a hand to stop me reading her lips and seeing what she says. “Maybe the lady forgot,” she whispers.
Mum and I exchange shocked looks, which I can tell are thrilling my little receptionist friend.
“Dropped out? Are you sure?” I lean over the desk with a hint of menace, on the basis that as an AD sufferer, it’s fine to have no idea about personal boundaries. “My Caitlin? She’s tall, like me, but with big black eyes, long hair all over the place…She’s a…She’s a…words student. She’s studying words. My Caitlin?”
“Sorry, dear.” The receptionist slides on her wheeled seat. She smiles at my mother. “Are you her carer? Does she get very confused? Must be hard for you.”
“I’m not confused,” I tell her, although she is still looking at my mother.
“You’re sure it’s the same girl?” my mum asks. She takes my hand under the desk, out of sight of the receptionist, and squeezes my fingers. She is telling me again to let her do the talking.
“Quite sure.” The woman nods, pressing her lips together to form an expression that is a mixture of empathy and quiet glee at being the bearer of bad news. “I remember because I was here when she came in to see the head of department. Never seen a girl cry so much. She failed her end-of-term exams. Probably something to do with a boy, I think—it usually is. She came in to talk about retakes. But as she didn’t enroll for them, I assumed she’d gone home to lick her wounds, make a withdrawal from the bank of Mum and Dad. I can see why she didn’t want to tell you.” Her voice drops to a whisper again. “No need to upset her any more.”
“I am standing here, and I still have ears,” I say. “Which aren’t deaf.”
The woman looks at me fleetingly, but still doesn’t address me directly, and for a second I wonder if I have turned into that other ghostly woman on the tube train—the one that no one looks in the eye anymore. The one that might not be real.
“You could try her best friend,” she says, with a flash of inspiration. “Caitlin was with her every time she came here last term. Becky Firth, her name is. I can’t give you her address, though. Like I said, that’s against our data protection policy. But she’s supposed to be on campus today. If you go to the canteen, ask around, you’ll probably find her. Nice-looking girl, blond, ponytailed, pretty.”
“Thank you,” Mum says, still gripping my hand.
I turn and look at the receptionist for one last moment, and I know this is absolutely the right time for me to come out with a witty and stinging one-liner that will make her see I am not a pitiable person, and not just a disease. But nothing comes to mind, which reminds me, only too clearly, that I am both.
—
It turns out that there are a lot of pretty, blond, ponytailed girls in the canteen, so many that I wonder if we might be politely escorted from the premises as we approach one after another.
Fortunately, this is one of the rare occasions when being female and over forty is actually a plus, because no one expects us to be there for nefarious purposes, although it takes several baffled, bored, and disdainful “no”s until we finally find a blond, ponytailed girl who knows who—and, crucially, where—Becky Firth is.
“She’s not in today,” the girl who reveals herself as Emma tells us. “Literary Crit lecture. No one comes to that one, if they can help it. She might be at home, though.”
“Do you know where home is?” I ask her, relieved that Emma is clearly not remotely concerned about Becky’s privacy, since she happily writes Becky’s address and number down for us.
I snatch it from her hand and I feel purposeful: I am doing something, for me, and for Caitlin. I’m finding her, rescuing her, bringing her home. I am being her mother. I feel strong and free for a little while—seconds, even, perhaps as many as ten. And then I realize that I have absolutely no idea where I am going.
—
Fortunately, Becky is in when we arrive, after a fraught bus journey, which I undertake begrudgingly, for the greater good, since I am clearly not the maddest person on the bus. The afternoon has grown steadily darker and wetter; water glazes the streets, turning them into a grimy mirror, reflecting the world back, perhaps as it truly is, with colors bleeding into one another—a fluid place, always on the brink of being washed away. That’s how I feel now: like I am on the other side of that grimy mirror, trying to wipe away the smear to see more clearly and be able to understand.
“Filthy weather,” Mum says, and I try to remember a time when it has not been raining. Becky answers the door wearing a T-shirt, underwear, and little else. I want to tell her to put a sweater on. She looks freezing, and her long bare toes, curled on the tiled floor, are enough to make me shudder.
“I’m not religious,” she says, looking from my mum to me.
“Me neither,” I tell her. “Or at least, if I do believe in God, right now I’d quite like to have some mostly four-letter words with him that have got nothing to do with spreading the Gospel.”
Becky begins to close the door.
“It’s about Caitlin. You know her, don’t you?” My mum jams her foot in the door with the sort of hard-core determination to get results that I thought only East End cops and door-to-door salesmen have. Becky looks at Mum’s sensibly clad foot and warily opens the door again.
“I’m Caitlin’s gran,” Mum says. “Please, if she is staying with you, if you know where she is, please tell us. We know that she’s not at university anymore, and we know she’s pregnant.”
“What the f—” Becky’s eyes widen as she bites her lip hard to stop the swear word, clearly still enough of a good girl not to want to swear in front of somebody’s mum and gran. Becky did not know Caitlin was pregnant. Perhaps that means she isn’t. “Oh my God. I thought she’d got a…”
“Got a what? Morning-after pill? Condom? Education on safe sex?” I ask.
“You’re a fine one to talk,” Mum says. “We think she might be pregnant, but we don’t know for sure. That’s what I should have said. She’s not at home, and we’re worried about her. Please, Becky, we don’t want her to be alone, not at the moment.”
Becky nods and opens the door wider, her freezing bare feet taking steps back. “Come in out of the rain.”
Her house smells of curry and wet washing. We stand in the hallway, and in the living room I can see Caitlin’s wash bag on a squat little table. My heart leaps and I close my eyes, waiting for the threat of tears to pass. I didn’t know what I’d been thinking might have happened to her.
And then I feel angry. Surely there is nothing so bad that she would be happy to let us all worry about her so much?
“She’s here,” I say, turning to look at Becky. “Her stuff is here.”
“No, I mean yeah, she is staying here. But she’s at work at the moment.” Becky looks uneasy; she grabs a hoody from the banister and slips it on, hugging it around her. “She said she just needed a place to stay, to think until she got herself straight, got a place, and stuff. She said there’s been some…trouble. She hasn’t really talked to me much, or at all. She’s been working all the time, so…” Becky peers into the front room, in which I can see a sleeping bag and some clothes strewn across the carpet. “She’s not said anything about being pregnant to me, and, well, she’s been here two weeks…. She tells me everything.”
“Where is work?” I ask her, guessing from the way she is talking to me and not my mother that Caitlin doesn’t tell her everything at all.
“Oh.” Becky’s shoulders slump and it’s obvious this is one piece of information she truly doesn’t want to divulge to her friend’s mother and grandmother. “Um, well, it’s in this…”
She says the last two words so quietly that I’m not sure I’ve heard them correctly until my mother repeats them.
“A strip club?”
friday, december 15, 2000
claire
This is the program from Caitlin’s first ever school play that she had a part in when she was eight. Caitlin was the Red Queen in the school’s production of Alice Through the Looking-Glass. I remember very clearly the day I picked her up from school and she came bouncing out of the classroom to tell me she had a part, and lines to learn, and a song to sing all by herself. Instantly I felt my stomach knot with fear. Caitlin had always been a happy-go-lucky, cheerful little girl—in situations that she was comfortable or familiar with. But as soon as you put her in a place she didn’t know, or in front of unfamiliar faces, she’d close up, turning her face away from conversations, hiding in my skirts, behind my legs. She told me she didn’t like people looking at her if she didn’t know who they were. Think who they might be, she’d told me, her eyes big and fearful. It took me too long to realize she was afraid of seeing her father and not knowing who he was.
Her first few weeks at school had been a ni
ghtmare: she’d wept with such genuine grief every morning as I dragged her into the playground that I’d wanted to, almost had, taken her out of school completely. “I don’t know anyone here,” she’d sob. “I’m going to be so lonely. Why can’t you come with me?”
It had taken a good many dreadful days like that, but gradually Caitlin had made friends, with the other children and her teachers. She’d slowly come out of herself to be the funny, cheeky, popular little girl that I knew she could be. But nothing had changed in the last few years; she’d even had the same class teacher. And although she’d made a charming donkey, and then sheep, in the two previous nativities, no one had made her stand alone on a stage and remember lines, or sing. I knew she would fail, I was certain of it, and I knew how upset she would be because of it. My only thought was to rescue her from experiencing this crushing disappointment at such a young age. I had to protect her. The next day when I picked her up, I had a word with her teacher while Caitlin ran off to chat with some of her friends before they left for home. I watched her skip and twirl, laugh and hop as I talked.
“I don’t think she’s up to this,” I told Miss Grayson. “You remember how she was at first? I think this is too much for her. Can’t you maybe think of a reason to change her role?”
“She’s so happy and proud about it, though,” Miss Grayson said to me. “And she’s doing really well in the rehearsals!”
“Yes, but that’s not real, is it? That’s not like seeing all those strange faces looking at you.”
“I think you underestimate her,” Miss Grayson said. And she said it with a smile and warm tone to her voice, but I knew she was criticizing me for not having enough faith in Caitlin. I didn’t ask her again to take Caitlin out of the play, and I remember thinking, she’ll see. When Caitlin freezes with terror or runs off the stage in floods of tears, she’ll see.
Costumes for school plays, I think, were invented and put on this earth to test mothers. I hated putting together school costumes, so Mum came over and we made the costume together, all three of us. Mum was bossy and controlling, Caitlin was honing her diva skills, and I kept sewing the wrong bits of material together. But it was a happy time, a laughing time. Caitlin rehearsed her lines and sang for us while we fitted her into her little red shift dress and painted her cardboard crown.
The Day We Met Page 11