by Carol Mason
‘My God,’ I say. ‘He completely sold you down the river.’
‘Oh, it was very convincing. His acting was superb. I remember how she just stood there looking from me to him. Looking for a reason to doubt him, possibly. I don’t know. I remember how he took her in his arms and kissed the top of her head, and how she stared at me hard over his shoulder – the anger and disgust.’
’What did you do?’
She looks down at a lap full of crumbs. ‘I could have said no, that’s not the way it happened at all, but by the entire convincing act of him – he looked so morally outraged, I’ve never seen anything like it – I knew he’d do this with my parents and I knew I’d never be believed.’ She shrugs. ‘So I said nothing.’
I try to process the logic of this, wondering what I would have done. Does illuminating someone else’s guilt help mitigate your own? If you stay silent, are you noble or foolish? Either way, I find it very hard to believe I’d have let him get away with his lie.
‘She told my parents, naturally. I don’t even want to get into the outcome of that. I knew I had to leave. But it was a very strange feeling. The minute I walked out of that door I knew I was on my own now, there would be no going back . . . I wasn’t self-pitying. I’d brought this on myself. I’d had sex with him knowing full well she was in love with him, that they were going to be married. Nice people don’t do that.’
‘So that’s why you kept quiet about it? Because letting her believe you were bad and he was innocent was the best way to punish yourself?’
She looks at me as though seeing a new angle she hadn’t seen before. ‘I’m not sure if it was that . . . I could see what I was up against. He was a better actor than Harrison Ford. How were they ever going to believe me when they were disinclined to give me any credit at the best of times?’ She takes a sip of her wine and looks quite resolute again.
‘But if you’d said something it just might have cast doubt. Then maybe she’d have been spared marrying a liar and a cheat.’
‘The way our relationship was at that time – and believe me it really was not very good – I actually thought they deserved each other. And they were married thirty years.’
‘Were?’
‘He had a stroke seven years ago. They were living in Austria.’ Her eyes go to the Longfellow book. ‘When I found out, I suppose I could have got in touch with her to express my condolences but I couldn’t bring myself to. We hadn’t spoken since that day. But I imagine my silence after his death must have stung . . . A couple of years ago she sent me the book with the handwritten poem in it about letters you didn’t write and haunting ghosts.’
I frown, completely baffled. ‘Didn’t you ever want to set the record straight? Why allow her to think that way about you for all these years?’
She picks up her wine glass but just holds it. ‘I had a son. His name was Thomas. I found out I was pregnant almost as soon as I left home and moved to San Francisco. I was young, single, virtually penniless . . . I didn’t even have a job and I didn’t know how I was going to raise a baby without one, or how we’d cope if I got one – who was going to look after him? I wanted him. I didn’t care that Thomas was his child. He was mine too! A part of me! Perhaps the only precious thing I’d ever have who would love me . . .’ She breaks off and I sense she’s going to cry.
I can’t help but think of Jessica. Beth and I would have been pregnant at virtually the same age.
‘I thought of every possible way I could make it work. I gave him up through a private adoption – a fluke, really; someone who knew someone who couldn’t have a family . . . I paid for that terrible decision my entire life. So that’s why I never sent any letter of condolence. I felt I had lost way more than she had.’
I’m surprised to find my eyes flooding with tears. ‘That’s just awful. Good heavens!’ Beth is mourning a child, but one that lives. I want to tell her that all is not lost. I have a sudden urgency to fix this for her. ‘Have you ever thought of trying to find him? He’s out there somewhere, maybe not all that far away. There are lots of ways these days, with the Internet! Endless resources. New laws.’
She smiles. ‘The one condition of the adoption – I signed a legal document – was that I never try to make contact with him. They had insisted on meeting me. I’m sure they saw how ill at ease I was . . . They probably didn’t want to be always looking over their shoulder. Or perhaps they sensed I was bad news.’
I frown. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘I didn’t do a very nice thing to my own sister. And then I gave my baby away. Maybe I’m just a bad egg. Maybe people can see it the moment they look at me.’ She sounds neither melodramatic nor self-pitying.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I tell her. ‘I am sure if your parents always favoured your sister it must have done a real number on your self-esteem. Kids always know who love them. Genuinely love them . . .’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘And I am sure my son had adoptive parents who showed him that love. And I’m sure that deep down in his heart he’s never quite gotten over the fact that his real mother gave him away. That is, if they ever told him . . . Perhaps they never did.’ She turns very pale. Even in this light I can see the colour drain from her face.
I suddenly remember something. ‘You said it was because of Veronica that you set up the club?’
‘Yes. There are two letters I’ve been toying with writing for a very long time. One to Veronica, finally saying what I should have said all those years ago. You see, my failure to speak up somehow broke my spirit. It was the rot that just ate away at me. Not a day has gone by when I haven’t wished I’d just told the truth. The truth is still the truth even if nobody believes it . . . In some ways I feel she needs to know that his lie and my silence had huge consequences – not just for me but for a child. And then the other letter I’m thinking of writing is to Thomas’s adoptive parents asking them if they might let me contact him. I don’t have to be in his life if there’s no place for me in it, but I just want him to know that there was never a day when I didn’t think about him. That I should have done anything – steal, starve, or sell myself – to avoid having to give him away. That my failure to find a way to keep him is a failing I wouldn’t wish on anybody.’
‘You don’t know that there’s no place for you in his life!’ I sit up, spine straight, suddenly fanatical on her behalf. ‘You can’t say that. You don’t know how he thinks or feels . . . You’re his blood! Forget about what you signed and didn’t sign; you weren’t in your right mind. You have rights.’
‘What rights?’ She sounds a little exasperated.
‘You’re his mother! Whatever the circumstances were doesn’t change the fact that you gave him life! And you loved him – love him. Don’t ever imagine that’s less than what it is.’ From her face I can see she doesn’t believe this. She has spent so long thinking badly of her actions that it has formed a shell around her that possibly no reasoning is going to crack. ‘Find your son, Beth.’ My heart blazes with the need to make her see this. ‘Don’t overthink it. Just do it. Tell him there was never a day you didn’t think of him. Tell him because it’s important. Tell him because, believe me, nothing else is.’
After a spell of her being unable to break away from my eyes, she says, ‘Did you say you were offering port?’
When she leaves I can’t help but go on sitting there in a fug replaying her story. I can’t get baby Thomas out of my head, nor a picture of Beth the day she had to give him up – the very thought of this is coating me in the most horrible sadness. I find myself closing my eyes and picturing Beth here in her coffee shop, and Thomas out there somewhere, and trying to join them like they’re dots – magnets somehow attracting each other, with a little bit of help from trusty Google and a dose of divine will.
I simply can’t imagine the guilt, the loneliness, the sense of loss she would have suffered all these years, and it suddenly occurs to me how very, very lucky I am. I was never in a position to have to give my baby a
way. Mark stood by me and even if he hadn’t I would have still had my parents to fall back on until I got on my feet again. I got to be a mother to my daughter. I got to be close to her. I got to have memories. I’ve never really viewed any of that as a gift before.
Then I think, Damn it, it might be a cliché but you must tell your loved ones you love them! Say it. Show it. Do it every day. I have such a crushing urge to say it now. So I jump up from my seat and rush to the kitchen where I think I left my phone. In the darkness I fumble with passcodes and when I can’t immediately find that last text she sent me, I start a new thread.
I love you, I type. Sorry for everything. And then after I let a little heat out of me, I add, No need to reply. Just be well. Be happy. Xx Mom.
TWENTY-ONE
A squirrel is perched on the green mailbox at the bottom of the garden as I come in the gate. I have to get almost right up to him before he gives me a hard blink then flits away. There are two letters for me. Or rather, one of them is a small package and I recognise Mark’s writing on it.
I pluck at the padding as I walk back into the house, closing the door with a donkey kick. Then I go to get the scissors and cut the end off. Inside is a sheet of paper folded into four. I open it curiously like a piece of delicate origami.
Dear Liv,
I was downtown and happened to see this in one of those gift shops in a hotel. It made me think of you and your Correspondents’ Club.
His handwriting is big and sprawling. It is surreal to think of him writing to me, even if it’s short.
I hope you like it. I hope you know how to use it – it’d be more than I do.
Mark.
Inside is a thin brown box. Once I open it I find myself staring at a fountain pen. It’s a thing of beauty – tortoiseshell and shiny. Everything about it speaks of quality and a bygone era. When I pick it up, it’s heavier than I was imagining. I love the feel of it between my fingers. Like I could now take on the world. At the very bottom of the envelope is something small and square: a tiny pot of navy blue ink.
The next envelope is a letter. I don’t recognise the handwriting on this. I tear into it and read.
Dear Olivia,
I am sitting here trying to write to Lisa and failing miserably. Daniel is banging away on that typewriter that’s straight out of the movies. I’ve the sudden urge to be ten years old again. Then there is you, Mrs. Bancroft. You are sitting right behind me, and I suddenly want to watch The Graduate all over again – maybe for the wrong reasons.
Mrs Bancroft! I fumble my way into a chair.
So now I’m finding myself writing a completely different letter. I realise I don’t really know you all that well, despite the fact that I’ve told you stuff about me that some might say is far too much information. What’s more, I recognise you for being a private person, much like myself. But I learnt something in army training school that became the truest and most useful thing anyone ever taught me and I thought I would share it with you. You don’t have to be a soldier to benefit from it, even though we are all soldiers, fighting our own wars, in our own way, aren’t we?
The army has this programme. It’s called Master Resilience Trainer. It’s designed to train resilience skills in sergeants in order for them to pass this training on to soldiers. Resilience probably means different things to different people, but to the army it means the ability to persist in the face of challenges and to bounce back from adversity.
More than a million soldiers have come home from Iraq or Afghanistan over the last decade. Many of them bring home the grotesque memory of war. I read a good quote from an army general that puts some things into perspective. He said that the average soldier is twenty-four years old. He’s been in the army about six years. He’s bought a car and wrecked it. He’s married and has challenges there. He’s been deployed two or three times. He’s responsible for a dozen or so other men, overseeing not just their training but pretty much whether they’ll live or die. Oh, yeah, and he makes less than 40K a year.
The programme tries to teach soldiers to make sense of their lives, to focus on what they can control, and not to catastrophise everything. There are many components taught over the ten-day period. I won’t go into them all or this will become a long letter, but one of them is simply called Hunt the Good Stuff. On one level it’s just a way of looking at life. It might sound simplistic, probably because it is. And yet I’ve actually seen it work, first-hand.
Basically, there’s a common simple truth. If you don’t realise that there are good things that happen to you every day, and if you happen to be under a lot of stress, you can gravitate to only seeing the negative things in your world and at the extreme end of this you can land yourself in a place that you can’t find your way back from.
Most of us are good at this already. We spend so much time focusing on our personal failures that we don’t realise there’s actually been triumphs. Have you noticed that we’re never plagued by the things we did right in life? They are forgotten fast. They’re inconsequential almost right at the moment we are doing them. We worry so much about what’s gone wrong that we don’t actually notice anything’s gone right. Hunt the Good Stuff is about recognising these things through a couple of easy tasks.
Task 1. Make a list of the things that make you lucky.
Task 2. Think of three good things that happened to you today. Think about what they meant to you. Think about what you did, or what someone else did, to bring these good things about. Think of what you can do tomorrow to bring about more of this good thing. Then tomorrow, do it.
After I came home from Afghanistan I couldn’t believe there was any good stuff and I wallowed in that headspace for a very long time. But then I forced myself to do the exercise, and I did it every day. I did find that one small shift in my attitude helped me make bigger shifts and for me that’s the only way I go forward. I am writing this to you as the rain is starting to come down on to the water. I am used to sunshine. I can see how this place could get depressing if you let it. I’ve given up trying to write the letter I was supposed to be writing. For now, anyway. So I’ve decided to pen this instead. I hope you read it in the spirit in which it is written. And don’t worry, I will finish your deck. It’s slow, off and on, but I am getting there. You may doubt me, but I promise.
Ned
TWENTY-TWO
‘It’s beautiful,’ I tell Mark.
‘I thought you might think so.’
‘I’ve been practising my penmanship.’
‘I figured it would take some getting used to.’
‘In a good way.’ I smile. ‘I’ve got this poetry book and I copy verse out. It’s kind of like homework. It’s hard to believe that these days something as simple as a pen could bring me hours of joy!’
‘I’m happy,’ he says. Then he playfully adds, ‘You were always easily pleased.’
Just as I’m grasping for something witty to say, his voice turns more serious. ‘Hey. I wanted to mention something the other day when I rang . . .’
‘Am I going to want to hear it?’ I try to keep the lightness going.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I’ve been thinking. If you come home – if I can persuade you to, anyway – I’d like us to go get some counselling.’ He sounds slightly nervous, if that’s the word. ‘Plenty of people do it . . . I don’t know, I think it might be the only way forward – for our marriage.’ After another pause he says, ‘We need some guidance.’ He is quiet while he waits for me to say something but I am taken aback and can’t really speak.
‘Anyway,’ he says, after a time. ‘I just wanted to put it out there. I’m just asking you to think about it. And even if you don’t come home – I mean, I want you to, obviously, but I’d come there. Maybe there’s someone there we could see. Or even . . .’
I don’t know what the even is. He dries up, probably catching himself giving up.
I am so blindsided by this. I thought we were talking about pens. I don’t want to get into a debat
e about this issue again so I simply say, ‘I don’t want to go to counselling.’ I’m not the one who went looking for something outside of my marriage. It makes me want to add, Why don’t you go? but I don’t. I thought we were at the point where we could have normal conversations again. That would have been my idea of a way forward.
‘I have to hang up now,’ I say. ‘Somebody’s at the door.’
TWENTY-THREE
‘It’s looking amazing.’ I tug at the bell sleeve of my blouse. I’m astonished how fast he’s finished. ‘You’ve done a fantastic job.’ For the last few days the weather has been great. While he has worked I have made a point of being out – in spite of him being here, not because of. Or so I tell myself. I have walked so much that I’ve had to bend over until the nerve pain up my leg stops throbbing. I’ve read at the library until my eyes burned from dryness and tiredness, the state of my marriage on a never-ending loop along with this perpetual, tireless confusion. I have made several trips to the grocery store to buy one-off ingredients for all these different recipes I keep trying out. I am both enjoying the pointlessness to my days, and terrified of losing myself to it permanently.
‘Just need to get the railings on, but yeah, it’s not bad.’ He looks pleased with himself.
‘You have some dirt . . .’ I indicate my left cheek. He rubs it away, holds my eyes for a second – or perhaps I am imagining this now. ‘Thanks.’
‘Well, I kind of feel this calls for a celebration.’ I do an about-turn, hear him set the drill down.
‘What did you have in mind?’
I glance over my shoulder. ‘I’m thinking let’s push the boat out and have two glasses of lavender lemonade.’