By the Time You Read This

by Lola Jaye

  “Look, I’m sorry, Lo Bag, but it had to be said.”

  “What you’re saying isn’t true, none of it! They never stuck around! No one ever sticks around, Corey!”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “It is!”

  “Think about it, Lois. Every single person?”

  I thought of Dad’s sister Ina, never getting in touch. Charlie, his best friend had also disappeared. Then there was Greg and Erin, who’d soon faded away. Then again, I also hadn’t bent over backward to get in touch with them, by not replying to their initial letters. Okay, that’s a point…Then there was Oliver, Raymond, Biyi; all relatively good men and yet I’d found it easy to push them away because…

  “You never allowed any of them to get close to you in the first place. You made damn sure of that! I’m surprised you’re even friends with my kid sister, considering how difficult she can be. But she’s your only close friend, though, Lois, everyone else is just an acquaintance, right?”

  I felt a tear.

  His expression faltered. “You’re just scared, that’s all—of them all leaving you, just like Kevin.” I scratched my nose and swiped at the tear, confused at all this psychobabble. “I’ve always been there, though.”

  “Except when you were in France,” I rebutted him.

  “I have always been there. Always loving you…”

  I wanted to scream and tell him he was wrong. Laugh it off as a product of a wild imagination and too much Oprah. Instead I said, “I’ve got to go into Mom’s. My cellphone.”

  Because he was wrong. Dad was perfect. My very own Superman.

  I ran away from Corey and back into Mom’s house, where I found the Bingo Caller slumped by the stairs and barely breathing.

  Oh, and England will win the World Cup again, again and again.

  “You saved his life,” said Mom, mascara running down her cheeks. We were both in a hospital room.

  “I’m just glad I got there when I did.”

  Mom rested a weary head on her husband’s thighs as he lay hooked up to a hospital machine. Wires, drips and a cocktail of technical sounds complemented her weeping.

  “I thought you were in Cornwall.”

  “We were, but he wasn’t feeling too good so we came back early. Thank God you were home. What were you doing there cooking breakfast? Not that it matters now. The point is you were.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know it looks bad and he’s unconscious, but the doctors say it’s looking good for him. Thanks to you.”

  “What happened, Mom?”

  “He’s had hypothyroidism for a while now. Not enough thyroid hormones, apparently. It’s got worse as he got older. Then he got an infection and that’s how he ended up like this. I’ll explain more later, I just haven’t got the strength right now.”

  I stayed and Mom talked as she effectively explained the physical changes over the years. Why he was always tired being one. Of course, if I’d ever given him the time of day, I’d have noticed the weight gain, his tendency to get a cold quite easily, I’d have noticed all that. Perhaps if I’d been a better daughter, Mom would have come to me when he was diagnosed and not just gone to Carla’s mom.

  Although Mom looked tired, something in her eyes simmered expectantly.

  “How’s Abbs? I should go and see her,” I asked.

  “No need. Abbi’s fine, she’s with Calvin. You don’t think I’d leave her on her own?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  My eyebrows scrunched as Mom plunged into her bag robotically and retrieved a tissue. “She loves you so much, running after you—telling all her little friends about you. You’re her heroine. And yet sometimes…sometimes it seems like you can’t get away fast enough! It actually makes sense that you’d want to come home while we were away, now I come to think about it.”

  “Mom, don’t. Not now.”

  “Why not now?” Mom was talking to me but looking at her husband as he slept, hopefully miles away from the frost radiating from my mother’s mouth and into the room.

  “Okay, well, how can you say that?”

  “Very easily. Because it’s true. You’ve never really loved her.”

  “I do love Abbi,” I protested with a touch of guilt.

  “If you say so.”

  Because of where we were, we whispered, but the words remained sharp and so very painful. A pain I felt with every syllable. It was as if Corey had opened up this well of emotion inside me.

  “You’ve always been like it, Lois.”

  “Can you blame me?” In hindsight, this wasn’t my best moment and I probably sounded twenty years younger than my age, but at that time I responded to the urge to get things out into the open.

  “Go on, please don’t stop,” she urged. Bloodshot eyes ready for battle.

  “You’ve never been bothered about me.’

  “Is that so?”

  “I even remember you not bothering to attend my thirteenth birthday. Carla’s mom had to put something together for me. I could go on, Mom, but as I said, this isn’t the time or the place.”

  She stared toward the hospital bed again and sighed. “The day of your thirteenth birthday party, I had a miscarriage.”

  My mind attempted a rewind job back to that time, but all I could recall was Corey handing over that LL Cool J cassette.

  “I told everyone it was flu, but it was a miscarriage, Lois!”

  I thought for a moment and whispered, “I’m so sorry.” Quite rightly, I felt truly and utterly pathetic. Poor Mom.

  “So if it seems like I loved Abbi too much, then maybe I do. I’d already lost a baby. And then when she went missing that afternoon…I thought…I thought…” Her body convulsed with emotion.

  I stood. “I know, Mom. It was awful…”

  Before my eyes, my mother became small, fragile, and I wanted to touch her, embrace her and bury my head in her chest.

  “But to accuse me of loving one more than the other…that’s just…WRONG. So very wrong.” She slowly took another tissue from her bag, swiped at her eyes and sniffed. “Anyway, Carla’s mom will be coming soon so you can go on your merry little way like you always do.”

  I could have put down her anger to her husband’s condition, but there was something else.

  “Talk to me, Mom?”

  “Oh, just go! Never mind your sister, you’ve always hated him, her dad, my husband! I bet you’re even sorry you found him. Because even now you can’t look at him. The man who put food on our table. Tried with you when all you could do was spit it back in his face. AND NOT EVEN NOW CAN YOU LOOK AT HIM!”

  I tried to look at him. I really did. But all I saw was a sheet leading up to closed eyelids and an expressionless face. He looked dead, just like my dad would have done all those years ago. “I can’t, Mom.”

  “Why?” she pleaded, among more tears.

  “It’s not what you think, Mom.”

  “So you’re telling me you gave him a chance, is that it?”

  “No, I didn’t…” I was all jumbled up and confused now. A mass of emotions percolating in that hospital room. “I was…I was angry with you for marrying him.”

  “And why? Didn’t I have the right to move on? Did you see Carla and Corey playing up when their mother remarried? No.”

  “They were much older.”

  “So?”

  “Their dad was still alive!”

  I’d raised my voice and felt certain a Sister or someone would come in and chuck us out.

  “Oh, so that means I have to be on my own forever, is that it? You don’t realize how this man—” she pointed toward her husband—“this man allowed me to love again, be as happy as I had ever been in my entire life!”

  That stung. “You were happy with Dad.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “We were having problems.”

  “That’s not true. Are you saying he didn’t love you?” That when Dad wrote about lovin
g her and marrying her and she being one of the best things he’d ever done—that was all rubbish? Was she trying to tell me he lied? My anger simmered just below bursting point.

  “No, he did love me. Once. But as the years went on, we just…”

  “Just…?”

  “Fell out of love.”

  “You just fell out of love?” If I could have seen my face in the mirror it would be one of horror and total disbelief. “Fell out of love?”

  Mom dabbed at her eyes. “It happens, Lois. We both felt the same way—wanting to stay together for you. But it got to the stage where that just couldn’t happen.” I thought I saw Mom’s eyes glistening yet again, but within my own mounting rage I couldn’t be sure. “So, just before he was diagnosed, we…we’d begun proceedings…”

  My eyes widened.

  Mom continued. “Divorce proceedings. It’s what we both wanted, Lois, we were so unhappy. So very unhappy. He wanted custody of you and I said no way, but we vowed to remain friends and bring you up together. He’d even planned on living close by so he could see you every day.”

  My stomach began to contract.

  “But after the diagnosis, I couldn’t…I couldn’t leave him. It just wasn’t an option any more.”

  “You loved each other! You stayed together!” I said, trying to ignore the time bomb that wanted to explode from deep within me.

  “The deterioration was so quick, Lois. It wasn’t easy for him and it wasn’t easy for me either. Especially when you began to pick up on things. Playing up. It wasn’t easy to cope, but I did.”

  “So let me get this straight—you probably didn’t help his illness by threatening divorce?”

  “YOU’RE NOT LISTENING, LOIS. YOU’RE NOT A LITTLE GIRL ANY MORE, YOU’RE A GROWN WOMAN!”

  My tummy contracted. Aagh.

  “It’s what we BOTH wanted!”

  Silence ensued. I needed to digest this. I sat down, ignoring how uncomfortable the arms of the chair felt against my ribs.

  A very deep breath. “Carry on.”

  “The…the deterioration was quick. So very quick. What little strength he had, he saved for your manual.”

  My eyes widened in disbelief. “You knew about my manual?”

  A wry smile. “He was writing away most nights. He even said I could look at a few passages, but I thought it best not to. That was between the two of you—father and daughter.”

  “So you knew about it all the time?”

  “Yes, I did, Lois. Philomena called the day before the wedding to tell me she’d be giving it to you. To be honest I was relieved she had it. I thought it was lost, or packed away somewhere.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Perhaps the same reason you didn’t. I don’t know…” Mom placed her face in her hands and I thought she was going to cry. But just as I felt bad about reducing her to this, a flash of clarity took over.

  “So that’s why he didn’t trust YOU enough to give me The Manual and he gave it to his sister instead! He obviously didn’t trust you. You were hurting him so much by all that divorce talk…” I couldn’t stop the hurtful words from escaping my mouth.

  “Lois, don’t.” She stood and tenderly placed her palm on my shoulder. “For whatever reason, your father thought it best to give it to his sister. I’ll never know why. They were close and, yes, things were a bit strained between us at times. But that is not the issue here.”

  “What’s the issue, Mom? I mean, why have you told me about all this divorce stuff? Do you want sympathy? Is that it?” I looked to her and I felt a single tear stray from beneath my eyelid.

  “No. I just want you to know what happened. That things weren’t always rosy. That he wasn’t perfect. Wasn’t perfect for me. That I had found the perfect man for me in Derek. And he’s lying in front of us on a hospital bed and I’m wishing so hard that he isn’t about to be taken from me.”

  “Are you saying Dad was a bad father?” I asked, the information still not seeping through.

  “He was a wonderful father, just not a great husband as it happens.”

  Tears began shooting from my eyes and nose, like a never-ending river of frustration. The hurt; the grief. I even heard a shrill cry—and it took me a few seconds to realize the sound was coming from my own mouth.

  Everything else after that was a blur. Mom pulling me into her arms. Holding me tight. My body shaking as she soothed me with words. Stroked my hair. Planted wet kisses on my furrowed forehead. Whispered that she loved me.

  And then, peace.

  Everyone will own one of those Kodak disc camera things. Ahhh, to capture those lovely family moments.

  I lay on my own bed and stared up at the ceiling. In twenty-four hours so much had happened. Telling Corey I loved him, Derek’s illness, and then finding out my dad and Mom had been about to divorce.

  My phone rang and I wished it was Carla. It was Corey. I ignored it. It was time for me to read the very last page of The Manual.

  Last words (yes, yes, I know…but I always have to have the last word!). Lowey…

  Well, this is hard for me.

  It’s the end of The Manual and I’ve run out of paper-can you believe it? What am I liiike?

  Anyway, I really hope you’ve enjoyed our time together. I have, because I got to spend the most fantastic first five years of your life with you and the thought of not being around for the rest scared me so very, very much. Writing this manual has helped me to stamp out some of that fear.

  So, I don’t want you to be scared.

  Of anything.

  I’ll always be there for you. Promise. But I have to go now. We both knew this day would come anyway: a) because it had to stop somewhere, and b) I can’t advise you over the age of thirty because, well, I never got past that age!

  But always know you can look back on The Manual, OUR manual, any time for my—at times useless—bits of advice to squirm at or to follow.

  Any time.

  So no grand gestures here, honey…just something I want to share with you. I wrote it some time ago when I started drafting the letter I originally wanted to send to you (which ultimately turned into this manual). So, my beautiful, brave Lois Bates, here’s a few last words from your dad:

  There will be times when everything feels like a struggle, a chore, the ache in your heart just growing bigger and bigger as you experience the absence of a special someone or even something in your life (this can be a person, a way of life, an object) that has stuck around you and been with you for eons. And suddenly, poof!—they’re gone without warning. And what follows is every part of you screaming for them to just come back.

  But they don’t. They can’t. No matter how loud you scream, or how heartfelt your pleas—they just can’t.

  So then what?

  You might sit back and let a kind of depression set in as you secretly wait for the day they’ll miraculously float through the door and into your life again. Or you sit by the phone and wait for someone on the other end to confidently let you know it’s all been some wind-up or a forgivable mistake. Anything to make the now seem unreal. But that just doesn’t happen. And I’m sorry, but it’s never, ever going to happen, is it?

  What a lot to take in. Absorb. Come to terms with. To embrace.

  But you know what? You can and will be able to clinch this reality. Because time’s an inevitable twist to the plot, Lois. At first unwelcome, but soon one of the very things that keeps you going day to day, helping you to pump air into your chest and breathe again. And it’s through time that you notice life having the cheek to carry on as normal all around you; spiky-haired kids still getting excited over a Number One, the mile-long traffic jam toward Blackheath Common still occurring every weekday between three thirty and six thirty. And what’s more, it’s all going on WITHOUT that same thing or person you miss with every waking breath, every dream and with every muscle in your entire body.

  So now comes the best bit: remembering to live again. REALLY LIVE again. Espec
ially when you then begin to fathom that what was lost, taken from you, wasn’t the whole sum of you. I mean, even now, as you read this, you’re actually adding a new experience and feeling to the life, person, being that is YOU. Moving forward and treading a path that will lead you to where you need to be.

  It worked for me, Lowey.

  Everything I tell you in this is from experience. Every feeling. Every knock. Every word. But now it must all become about you.

  So the very end of your life book, if you like, depends on who or what has been popping up in your chapters. You’ve probably met a few of them already, but maybe you haven’t even set eyes on some yet. The ones you love; the ones who love you back. The ones you respect. The ones who influence you in some way, either large or small. Each will play their own important part.

  So, the very last thing I ask is that you allow yourself the chance to really feel and experience these people as they slowly or quickly (and sometimes without warning) become a part of who you are and are yet to become.

  Now the clock is ticking clear

  And our time is drawing near

  My heart is aching for just one more smile

  You’re my girl

  You’re my girl

  All the while

  I knew that our love

  Would never, ever die

  With stars on

  With stars on

  A very special love

  With Stars On

  With stars on

  The only one that comes with stars!

  The only good thing about losing someone at five years old is the strange luxury of not recalling the actual moment it happened. The moment the first man I have ever loved was ripped away from me like an errant chin hair by an angry pair of tweezers. The realization that the man who’d read me stories at night, kissed me goodnight, every night, was no longer breathing in the same air as me. Whatever I was doing the precise moment he took his last breath; thought his final thought; blinked for the very last time, can’t be recalled. And all I can remember are flashes. Flashes that are quick to blur in my mind. Dad showing me how to kick a ball correctly into goal down the rec. Or had it been Carla’s back garden? With Carla’s dad, even? Chastising me for a minor indiscretion involving a pair of treasured clippers—or had that been Mom?