Grown Ups

by Emma Jane Unsworth

  “Is that why her father’s never been around?” he said. (I heard that part.) “You were too extraordinary, were you?”

  “No, he was too dead.”

  My friend’s father’s face dropped. “Oh God, I’m sorry, Carmen, I had no idea.”

  “That’s your problem,” my mother said, her parting shot. “You have no idea.”

  She got back in the car and started the engine.

  “My father’s dead?” I said.

  “No,” said my mother, shifting the car into drive. “But it was a great line, don’t you think?”

  I stared at my friend’s father as we drove away.

  I SAY

  “Look, Mum, that text was a mistake, and even if it wasn’t, even if it was on some level some weird Freudian cry for help, it just would not work you staying here, even for one night. I’m sorry.” I say it quietly, like I’m not sure whether I believe it.

  My mother is nodding, yes yes, in that way she does, after which she just does whatever the fuck she wants. She is staring at Sid.

  “The treasure of your life,” my mother says, “is everyone’s to steal. Because she only steals from her point of view. It’s her experience of your treasure, so it cannot be stolen.”

  “It’s a garbage thing to do,” says Sid. “It’s not the truth.”

  “The truth doesn’t exist. Now, go put your lady balls in a bag and skedaddle.”

  Sid says: “I bet you voted for Brexit.”

  “Good-bye!”

  As I watch Moon, Sid, and Frances, one by one (in that order), leave the hall and make their way to their respective rooms to pack, glad to be going, I feel creeping sureness that I might want my mother to stay, even if just for one night.

  Don’t let her in, says a small voice inside of me. Remember. Always remember that Christmas.

  THE OUTRAGE

  Christmas, 1999. The thick tinsel was coiled around the banister. The angel chimes were motionless on the sideboard, their candles unlit. She was by the front door, her Louis Vuitton case packed, her makeup pageant-perfect. Around her head clustered a halo of framed qualifications to impress clients as they came into the house: her certificates from the Institution for Mediumship, Orange County. Healer of the Year 1997 from the Spiritualist Church of Great Britain. Photos of her with soap stars … The overall effect was of a try-hard pizzeria wall.

  I called her a gold-digging slut, and she called me cold, hard—the usual things she said when I had her over a moral barrel of some kind or other.

  “I know you’re practically a grown-up now,” she said. “And you have your friends.”

  I didn’t really have friends. I had lots of people I stood with in school, lots of messages on my yearbook page, but no one I could really talk to.

  “Why the Bahamas?”

  “Roger is taking me! Well, he’s already there, so I’m meeting him!”

  Everything was exclaimed; she was so excited, I wanted her dead. I looked at the opposite wall, where there was a dreadful photo of the two of us—dreadful of me, anyway. The two of us at Disney World, three years earlier. I hadn’t put enough sun cream on and my face burned so badly I got blisters that joined up across my nose, like the scales of a snake. You can’t really see at the distance of the shot, the photo’s only saving grace; what you can see is my forehead and my shapeless Aztec-patterned shorts-and-T-shirt set. I had yet to discover the power of belts. My mother is next to me, wasp-waisted in shorts and a sleeveless top, sporting a pair of inexplicably cool aviators. Not even the men of  Tinder would choose the younger woman out of that lineup.

  “Two weeks is a long time.”

  “The freezer’s full.”

  “What if the millennium bug happens?”

  “There’s long-life milk in the cupboard under the stairs. Come on, darling. Do I not deserve a bit of happiness? Can you allow me that? Please?”

  I watched the taxi turn the corner and then I cried my heart out. I couldn’t say it. Stay. What was the point? Her bag was packed. She wasn’t one for unpacking once she’d packed.

  I’m not saying I’m wise. That would be a stretch. But I know that the above scene is the ghost that walks through all my rooms. This Heartbreak 1.0 is a loop I cannot cut, no matter how much therapy, how much distance, how much steel. It comes back, and back, and back again for my heart and my happiness.

  What are you scared of ?

  Of being left behind.

  Of not being wanted.

  Of coming second.

  And the disappointing utter fucking childishness of that.

  BABY ELEPHANT

  My mother and I sit, gin-loosened, in the lounge. There is a nature program on the TV. African elephants trekking across the heat to find food and water. A small baby at the back of the herd is slowing. It desperately needs a drink. The narrator tells us how just a small amount of water would save it from near-certain death.

  “Dear God!” I cry. “Whoever is filming this, do they not have a bottle of Evian in their knapsack? This is unbearable!”

  “It’s nature,” my mother says. “You can’t interfere.”

  “Of course you can! That’s what makes us human! GIVE THE BABY ELEPHANT A DRINK, YOU MONSTROUS FUCKS.”

  “Elephants are matriarchal,” my mother says, “they’re smart. They won’t let it die.”

  “So why don’t they stop?”

  “Because they have to get to the watering hole to save the whole herd. She knows what she’s doing. That big old one at the front. She knows.”

  The baby elephant collapses. “I don’t think she does. Change the channel. I can’t watch. Whoever made this should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.”

  My mother shakes her head. “It’s like what I do. I can’t pick and choose what might be painful for someone to hear. I just channel. I am a conduit. That’s all they’re doing. They’re presenting life as it is.”

  “CHANGE THE CHANNEL, A BABY IS DYING I DO NOT WANT TO SEE A DEAD BABY.”

  “The baby is not dying. See, the older elephants have spotted the watering hole and they’re going to bring some water back to it in their trunks.”

  “They won’t be quick enough. CHANGE THE CHANNEL.”

  I close my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears. La la la.

  “Jenny, they’re saving it!”

  “CHANGE THE CHANNEL!”

  She changes it. “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”

  “F ine! Sure! Over there somewhere! I don’t have to see the horrors of the world to know the world is fucking horrible.”

  She flicks back over quickly. I scream.

  The baby elephant is prancing around, spraying water out of its tiny trunk, in the watering hole.

  “THERE!” my mother says, standing up. “TOLD YOU.”

  “Well, I still think whoever made that needs to do the psychopath test. How could you just ‘channel’ when something needs you and you have the power to help it? Does your integrity only stretch as far as your sense of what’s right?”

  She shrugs, then goes to the kitchen to make more drinks.

  When she comes back, she stands in front of the painting of herself and says: “Do you think I still look like that?”

  “Mum, that painting was done twenty years ago.”

  “I felt old then. You were fifteen.”

  “I remember.”

  “I think I stopped at twenty-five, in my mind. I think my personality set at twenty-five and I’ve never got a day older. That’s why the outside catches me by surprise sometimes. I don’t feel like I look.”

  “You look great.”

  “You’re a love.” She sits down, still looking at the painting. “So,” she says, “how are you doing?”

  “F ine.”

  We look at each other. As always during these mandatory catch-ups, I imagine her thinking of my life as a museum through which she is being selectively tour-guided by me. What’s in that room? Can’t go in there, Ma. What about that one? Sorry, not part of th
e tour.

  “Still working at that womany website?”

  “Yep.”

  She sips her drink and says, “And you’re … still in touch with Art?”

  “Of course. It’s perfectly amicable. We speak regularly. E-mails, mostly.”

  “Still lovely long e-mails like before? I loved hearing about those.”

  “Yeah.”

  She waits.

  “So, what happened? I haven’t seen you since, and it’s—well, it’s such a shock, darling.”

  “We wanted different things.”

  She sighs. “Have you considered the fact that sometimes relationships need work, darling?”

  I stare at her. “I’ve had longer relationships than you.”

  “Have you considered that your fertility halves at the age of thirty-five?”

  I look surprised. “Does it? Surely not. I thought women’s fertility increased the older they got, no? Tell me more.”

  She laughs. “You know you can tell me anything.”

  I laugh.

  “What happened exactly? I’m trying to process it. He meant something to me too.”

  “Look, do you mind if we don’t talk about it?”

  “Whatever you want, darling.”

  “What did you get up to today?”

  “I just called in on a few old London friends.”

  “Who?”

  “You won’t know them. Before your time.”

  She lived in London, a few years before I was born. She had a few small parts in the West End and almost got a big break. Then she met my father. “Another actor?” I’d asked her, hopeful. No, she’d said. That would have been even worse. She said she did his tarot cards the night they slept together. “And what did they tell you?” I’d demanded. She’d said, “Well, I wasn’t really paying attention.…”

  “And I brought some champagne. Shall we open it?”

  “What for?”

  “Our new chapter.”

  She gets up and goes to the kitchen again. I watch her go.

  What do I remember about living with her, before? Her warmth. Her violence. Her loyalty. Her barbs. Her largesse. She always had to have the last word. Her moods were riotous. Every now and then over the past twenty years I have felt, suddenly, how far apart my mother and I are, and a wash of cold has flooded over my entire body. Then I remember that this happened when I lived with her too. Sometimes I’d make myself look more scared than I was, just to guilt her. (Later, I did this a few times with Art too. I cowered. I shrank from him; or rather, from his fear of himself. Worse: his fear of the fatherly part of himself. I must admit that now. I was aware of that sly leverage.) I knew that what I felt for my mother was, long-haul, in danger of distilling down to the purest of feelings—a feeling that, after her death, would feel like the bleakest, most pointless seclusion.

  ART SAID

  “Are you crying?”

  I was. I was openly weeping, in front of the TV.

  “What is it?” he said, his face open, his hand on my hand as he dropped to his knees. “What?”

  “This,” I said, weakly gesturing to the screen. A manatee was swimming in a school. A smaller manatee was swimming behind it.

  “Oh, babes, you know you shouldn’t watch nature documentaries!”

  “No, it’s fine! I’m not sad. It … makes me want to have a baby.”

  Art’s face changed. He stood up. “What?” he said, laughing.

  “IT MAKES ME WANT TO HAVE A BABY,” I bellowed.

  “A great ugly sea cow?”

  “I don’t know why. Order amongst the chaos? Blame Darwin. David Attenborough. I don’t know!” I wept more.

  He looked around my feet. “Have you had … wine?”

  “No!” I said. I noticed him noticing the empty glass. “Well, not to a traumatic degree.”

  He put his arm around me. “Why don’t you put some comedy on? Leave these delightful creatures to it.”

  He switched channels. It was Frasier. Daphne-supposedly-from-Manchester was affectionately abusing Niles and he was affecting not to love it.

  “What do you think?” I said. “About babies? I hate to be prosaic but I am approaching my midthirties, and once you hit thirty-five you’re technically a geriatric mother. They actually call you that.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. I mean, yeah! I haven’t given it loads of thought.”

  “So what should we do?”

  “I was thinking we could order a takeaway and demolish a box set.” He got up. Canned laughter erupted from the TV.

  I said, “You like hanging out with Kelly and Sonny, don’t you? You enjoy that dynamic. That … role.”

  “Yeeeaaah. Kelly’s a tough cookie sometimes, but I don’t mind seeing them the odd weekend. Let’s just relax and try to be creative right now? That’s the life we said we wanted, isn’t it? I don’t want us to lose the mystical parts of ourselves.” He said, “I’m really hungry, are you not hungry?”

  He had been eating a banana in the bedroom that morning, standing there by the window, his back hairs striking out a coarse aura. I had felt a stronger sexual attraction than I have ever felt, before or since, to any human; any ape. Was this raging estrogen? It was a valid question. My desire for a child—where had it sprung from? Was it a desire for a lifestyle upgrade, or the wish to do what my mother couldn’t? It was an autumn feeling, that’s the best way I can describe it. That joy. That terror. That rush. That silence. That peace. That fear. Everything in a puddle and a pile of leaves. Everything dying and coming up gold. You know when you see a beautiful view and you sort of surrender to it—you feel yourself slacken and weaken, and you slouch a bit like you’re broken down. Reduced. Mortalized. Remembered. And it’s awful but it’s also … a fucking relief, you know? I want to be reduced by my biology, sometimes. I want the pressure of my higher understanding switched off. Does that even make sense?

  Later we lay in bed, our faces inches apart, breathing each other’s breath.

  “I suppose I would like to create something I didn’t have, for someone else. And myself, by proxy,” he said. “But I’m scared I don’t have the necessary skills.”

  I said, “Me too.”

  “What else do you want?” he said.

  Sometimes I think I want to walk down a school corridor in autumn-time and see construction-paper drawings tacked to walls and recognize their inspiration. Sometimes I want that more than anything. Other times I just want to be alone with my imagination. Mostly, though, I just want to not care what every single person thinks of me all the time, and I want to not have so many people’s opinions whirring round my brain, and I want to share my life with someone and not get bored, and I’m so scared that isn’t possible, because that is a lot of boxes to empty and sort. And sometimes I just want to have a shower and put on a clean pair of jeans and eat a sandwich in a café and feel like a normal fucking person.

  I can’t even remember what I answered in real life.

  MY MOTHER SAYS

  “Wait for it! Ooh!”

  She is straddling a bottle of Bollinger. The cork pops out and we both smile in shock. She pours out two coupes. She says it as we cheers:

  “Champagne is a verb.”

  Her credo. She used to say it the evenings when she had people round. The séances and tarot nights that descended into social orgies. She didn’t just have people round. She hosted, like a gigolo on a yacht. Those parties. All those people down in the lounge. There was Alan with his mesmerizing tracheotomy; Donegan with her granite stare; Glynn with his glowing pate, luminous as the nose cone of a rocket on reentry; and old Miss Lunt, who used to teach Latin and still came out with the odd phrase when she was startled (or possessed). It sounded like hell itself. A gabble of voices. Catastrophic singing. I’d sit on my bed, trying to read, willing them all to leave. One time I got up and yelled, “SPOONBENDER!!!!” down the stairs. She shot up two flights like a rabbit, mojito muddler in hand. Other times, when they wouldn’t leave, I used to go to the bathroom, t
ake her toothbrush out of the cup, pull down my pants, and dab the bristles on my anus like it was giving it a little kiss. Mwa mwa mwa.

  “So, how is Unton?” I ask cordially, to move things along.

  “Still the happiest small town in the world.”

  Small town is right. After Hiroshima happened, the local rag, the Unton Chronicle, ran the headline: “UNTON MAN INJURED IN JAPANESE BOMB BLAST.” Which tells you everything you need to know. Unton’s other claim to fame is a tall black pole in the town square. I showed it to Art one of the few times I brought him up to visit. “Is it a maypole?” he said, eyes wide. Oh no, I explained, this was the “Meat Pole”—so-called because in ye olden days it was the custom to annually grease the pole and fix a large piece of meat to the top, then watch members of the community attempt to scale it. Sort of like the Wicker Man, but without the craftsmanship. If the climber reached the top they could take the meat home as a prize. That’s my cultural heritage.

  My hand grips my glass. I look at the folds of skin around the stem. In my teens, two separate psychics (friends of hers) told me I’d have four children because I had four creases on the side of my hand. Hilarious. And what did she want for me? A career as a doctor or a lawyer or, as she put it, “even a fucking accountant would do, Jenny.” What was it she said? “An English degree will only deepen your female disadvantage. You’ll end up a teacher, or something else entirely that you’ll get into quickly, untrained. Something lowly. Women are expected to nurture and teach. We are the so-called architects of society. You know what I say? Fuck that. I’m shit at relationships and I’m proud of that. I am an ideas woman. An entrepreneur. And I didn’t work my arse off for fifteen years for you to become a cardie-wearing woodland creature.”

  (Becoming a cardie-wearing woodland creature was my rebellion, you understand.)

  I text Kelly:

  Hey

  She texts back:

  SHE LIVES!

  Get this for a curveball: my mother has come to stay