by Maria Goodin
***
Fifteen minutes later, I am on the 9:10 p.m. train back to Cambridge, eating a Cornish pastry I bought from a stall in King’s Cross station and feeling strangely optimistic all over again, having worked myself up into a state of excitement.
What if I really am onto something here? What if my mother really was a groupie and Wizz is my real father? What if he’s been looking for me all these years but just didn’t know where to find me? Maybe my mother has been trying to hide the truth from me because my father was a hard-partying rocker living a life of hedonism, playing his electric guitar night and day, and throwing TVs onto tramps? I might have an emotional reunion with my father and discover another side to myself. Maybe I’ll start throwing TVs out of windows, too. I’ve never demonstrated any musical talent, but perhaps that’s just because I’ve never tried.
Through a mouthful of pastry I start to hum, measuring my voice for any possible potential. I think I at least sound in tune, until I start choking on a flake of pastry and end up coughing and wheezing while the woman next to me slaps me on the back.
By the time I walk in the front door, I am buzzing. This is it! I’m sure of it. Mark was right. He always is; I should never have doubted him. My mother’s distress at seeing that flier clearly was a clue. I’m like a detective unraveling my own past. Who knows what secrets I’m about to uncover? If Wizz is my father, perhaps I’ll be able to reunite him with my mother for a final reconciliation. Whatever happened in the past will surely be forgotten, and, for a short while at least, we’ll be a family! Once my mother knows I have discovered the truth, there will no longer be any point in lying, and she will throw her hands up in the air, say, “All right, then, I give in!” and tell me all the missing details to fill in the gaps. And her final moments will be clear and lucid, and we’ll be honest with each other once and for all, together in those final moments of peace and understanding.
On the kitchen table sits a plate of lamb chops and vegetables and a bowl of pink blancmange dusted with sprinkles. Both are covered with plastic wrap, and I feel a pang of guilt. My mother would have made the blancmange just for me. It’s my favorite, but it’s about the only thing she cannot stomach.
“It gives me enough wind to blow a forest down,” she always says rather inelegantly.
I eat the blancmange and then tiptoe through the hallway. It’s silent and the lights are all out, apart from the little lamp by the telephone, which my mother has left on so that I can make my way safely upstairs. But just as I am passing the lounge, I see her in there, lying asleep on the sofa, a tartan rug covering her legs. I am about to switch the light on and tell her to get up, that she will get a backache sleeping there all night, when I pause, my hand lingering over the light switch.
She looks so fragile. So childlike and vulnerable. She’s not the mother I once knew, who carried me on her shoulders and lifted me up every time I fell. She’s not the mother who swung me around, or raced me across the park, or turned me upside down while I shrieked with glee.
She’s weak now. A shadow of the woman she once was.
What am I doing? I should have been here this evening. I should have been thanking her for making pink blancmange and spooning it down while she watched me eat each mouthful as if I were still a little girl.
“I get just as much pleasure from watching you enjoy it as I would if I were eating it myself,” I can hear her saying.
I listen to her breath catching in her chest each time she inhales, a sound like the tiniest bit of air being released from a balloon. She looks small underneath the rug, and I remember all the times we snuggled up on the sofa in our flat, that rug wrapped so tightly around us that we felt like one person. She seemed big then, much bigger than she looks now, and she used to tell me that it was a game, that we were pretending to be a sausage roll. As I got older, I realized we had to snuggle up because the heating had broken down again or because she couldn’t afford to pay the gas bill. But I never told her that I knew. I wasn’t ready to stop being a sausage roll.
What if she had fallen tonight and I wasn’t even here? What if she had suffered another bad turn? Mark was right. I am running out of time. But it’s time I should be spending with my mother, not running around searching for scraps of information.
What would it do to her, anyway, to destroy this world she has created for us? What would it mean to tear it all apart? They make her smile, these silly stories. They make her happy. And I can’t take that away. Not now.
I feel selfish and guilty for going behind her back.
I take the flier from my pocket and crumple it into a ball, squeezing it tightly in the palm of my hand.
This clue to the past has come too late.
chapter ten
I sit at the little table on the patio, the warm midday sun on my back, looking at the rather strange flower display that my mother has created. A large serving plate full of red, orange, purple, and yellow flower heads sits in the center of the table, and I wonder why my mother has decided to decapitate all these poor flowers. She’s never been a fan of formal flower arrangements, preferring the natural, unruly look, but tearing the flowers to pieces and scattering them on a plate is not something I have ever known her to do before. Perhaps she’s “expressing” herself again, like the time she painted an enormous mural of an octopus on her bedroom wall, or the day she insisted on communicating only through the medium of song.
She has been strangely excited about lunch today, and when she emerges from the kitchen, squinting in the sunshine, clopping down the back steps in her flip-flops, I pick up my knife and fork in anticipation, expecting her to place some culinary delight in front of me. Instead she just plonks a decanter of vinaigrette on the table.
“Tuck in, then, darling,” she says, sitting down opposite me and gesturing to the plate full of flower heads.
I stare at her, feeling suddenly rather worried. Is it possible the cancer could have spread to her brain?
“These are flowers, Mother,” I tell her, as if she is a senile old woman. “Or they were, before you destroyed them.”
“Now,” she says enthusiastically, picking up her knife and fork and ignoring me. “Here we have the flowers of chives, marjoram, nasturtium, and marigold. And underneath are gingermint, red orach, sorrel, and rocket leaves. It looks rather pretty, doesn’t it? Seems quite a shame to eat it.”
“Eat it? They’re flowers,” I tell her again.
“Ewan says they’re all perfectly edible. Honestly, darling, I’ve learned so many fascinating things these last few weeks. Imagine growing all these lovely flowers in your garden and not even realizing you could eat them.”
I’m not surprised that this was Ewan’s idea. It sounds exactly like the kind of thing he would suggest. At least that means my mother doesn’t have brain cancer; she sometimes just misunderstands things.
“Are you sure that’s what he said?”
“Oh, yes. Lesson number four. Edible flowers. I wrote it all down.”
Over the past few weeks, my mother has taken to following Ewan around the garden, asking him questions and scribbling down his so-called words of wisdom in a little notebook. She claims they are “gardening lessons,” although I’m not sure Ewan was ever consulted or given a choice in whether he wanted to be my mother’s teacher. He appears to have the patience of a saint and tolerates her with infinite humor and kindness, for which I am secretly very grateful. It keeps her occupied and gives me respite from her bizarre stories, which seem to have become increasingly frequent ever since her fainting fit.
“Oh, hello there, Mr. Butterfly,” my mother chirps as a red admiral flutters down into our lunch. “Have you come to join the feast?”
“I’m not eating that bit,” I tell her. “He probably has dirty feet.”
“Oh, and Mr. Sparrow! You like the look of our lunch, too, do you?”
A little brown bird land
s on the table and eyes the dinner plate, nervously hopping back and forth.
“Of course they like the look of lunch,” I tell her. “They’re used to seeing it in the flower beds. Where it’s meant to be.”
“Oh, this is just like Snow White!” my mother says, beaming. “All we need now is a little deer to come trotting up to the table. Do you remember that, darling? Disney’s Snow White, with all the animals in the forest? We watched it when you were a little girl. And there was a song. How did that song go again?”
“I have no idea.”
My mother starts to hum something with no apparent tune. She has never been a very good singer, but I remember I used to love it when she sang me nursery rhymes and made up silly songs.
“A spoonful of sugar,” my mother warbles. “Oh no, I think that was Mary Poppins, wasn’t it? The birds and the bees are a-humming in the trees…no, that was something else. How did it go, Meggy? That song? La la la…”
I watch my mother singing away to herself, lost in thought of times gone by, of fairy stories and cartoon characters and enchanted forests. The sun brings out the red tint in her unruly hair and makes her eyes sparkle. Today even her cheeks have a rosy tint I haven’t seen in a while.
Today is a good day.
Today my mother got out of bed without a problem and didn’t complain that every inch of her body ached. I didn’t once hear her say There must be something wrong with my mattress; it’s the only explanation or Perhaps I’ve started sleepwalking and bumping into things. Today she’s not exhausted, which means she hasn’t had to say It’s the heat; it makes me sleepy or If I have started sleepwalking, that would explain the tiredness. Today she doesn’t feel sick or nauseous, so there has been no reason for her to ask me Do you think there’s a stomach bug going around, sweetie? or to tell me I think I ate too much cheesecake last night. Today there are no symptoms and no excuses to accompany them. Today, if I ignore how thin she looks, it’s almost like nothing is wrong.
But it’s not today that’s the problem. It’s tomorrow. Because there’s always a tomorrow yet to come.
“Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work we go…that was the other one from Snow White, wasn’t it? With the little people. Elves. No, dwarves. And there was Sneezy and Happy and Lumpy…no, was there a Lumpy? Bashful and Grumpy…”
I’m pleased I made the decision to stop running around after clues to my past. This is where I should be, sitting in the sunshine, listening to my mother babbling away, enjoying a beautifully prepared lunch of…well, sitting with her, anyway. I feel better, less guilty, more relaxed. Less like a terrible daughter out to destroy the very essence of our lives together. These past weeks, my mother and I have been enjoying our afternoons lazing in the garden, doing crosswords, playing Monopoly, and talking about all kinds of things from global warming (which my mother blames on “farting cows”) to the queen’s latest dress (which I thought befitting of a lady in her position, but my mother would have brightened up with a tie-dye scarf). And when my mother aches, or feels tired, or has a headache, I’m glad I’m here to put the kettle on, or to order her to sit down and rest, or to simply be around, just in case.
I didn’t tell Mark what happened in London. I reasoned there was no need. After all, he would only tell me to track down Chlorine, to follow the next clue, to keep searching…and there really is no point. I am resolved now to just let things be. Instead, I told him a slightly amended version of what happened. In fact, I told him the house I was looking for had been knocked down and turned into a Chinese takeout. There was very little he could say to that. Or at least I thought there would be very little he could say to that, but Mark, being Mark, actually told me to call the council, to demand to speak to someone in urban planning or town housing or something like that, and to quote some law that gives me the right to know who lived on that site previously.
I haven’t done it, though, because I no longer feel the need. I don’t even think about the information that might be out there waiting for me, or whether my real father might be one of the members of that band, or who the mother and baby were who lived in that house. It doesn’t cross my mind that, this coming Friday night, Chlorine will be playing at the Frog and Whistle and that a mere forty-minute train journey could be the only thing separating me from the truth. It’s not important. Because, as I watch my mother’s smiling face beaming at me over a plate full of flower heads, I know that all that really matters is that I’m here, watching out for her, sharing this final time together, just as it should be.
“Eat up then, darling. Don’t let your salad get warm.”
She laughs. I don’t know why, but she always finds that line amusing.
“You go first,” I tell her.
“Are you doubting my culinary skills with a flower bed?”
“Not at all. I just want you to have first pick of these delicious geraniums, or whatever they are.”
She eyes the plate of flowers as if she’s not entirely convinced herself before plucking a large orange flower head from the plate and popping it into her mouth. She chews slowly, a look of intense contemplation on her face, and I try not to laugh at the sight of orange petals protruding from between her lips. She continues chewing for what seems like a very long time, running her tongue around the inside of her mouth, making the expression of someone who has just bitten into a lemon, before finally she swallows.
“Was that nice?” I ask innocently.
“Umm,” she nods, trying to look convincing. “Lovely.”
“Liar.”
A smile breaks out on my mother’s face.
“I’ll go and make us beans on toast,” she says, and we both start to laugh.
***
Ewan comes twice a week. I hear him at the far side of the garden, digging, mowing, sawing, hacking, singing Paul Weller, or talking to the plants and insects. I glimpse him from my bedroom window pulling up roots, trimming back bushes, dismantling the old shed, and putting up a new one. I avoid him at all costs, the memory of the twenty-pound note and our last, frosty exchange clouding my mind, along with my shame. Each time he comes, I take him his coffee and cake, always with the intention of clearing the air, but instead of seeking him out in the orchard or between the rows of beanpoles, I leave his snack nearby where he will find it, always making some excuse to avoid him for another day. My pride, stubborn as an ox, rarely allows the word “sorry” to pass my lips.
Today I leave his coffee and banana cake on the grass near his bag—an old canvas satchel that has been left open, revealing a lunchbox, a bottle of water, and a Barbie doll dressed in pink knickers and a bra. I am staring curiously, wondering what my mother would think if she knew this young man she thinks is so wonderful has a fetish for busty blond dolls, when I hear the voice of a little girl coming from somewhere in the orchard.
Cautiously, I tiptoe into the trees, where I find a girl with honey-colored hair dressed in pink shorts, a pink T-shirt, and a pair of pink tennis shoes with flashing lights on the heels. She doesn’t notice me, being so absorbed in playing her game, so I hide behind a tree and watch, wondering who on earth she can be. The thought that Ewan—with his tendency to talk to trees, his holey socks, and his clapped-out old van—might have a child is frankly terrifying. Besides, Ewan’s father is a scientist. He may have failed to instill much sense into his son, but I have to believe he at least managed to raise his son with some common sense. Surely Ewan can’t be a father at such a young age.
“Welcome to my castle, Prince Robbie!” exclaims the little girl, opening an invisible door. “What a beautiful unicorn! Leave him on the doorstep, and I will ask Rosie, my servant, to feed him a carrot. Please, come inside. Rosie, will you fetch us some tea? The prince has traveled from very far away to come and see me. But then, who can blame him? After all, I am the most beautiful lady in the world.”
I can’t help but raise a smile at the absurdity of this little
girl’s imagination. Easy to see how she might be Ewan’s, after all.
“Now, I understand there is something you wish to ask me, Prince Robbie,” says the little girl, talking to a tree. She gasps and throws her hands up in surprise. “Oh, of course I will marry you!” She extends her hand, graciously. “What a beautiful ring! This must be the only pink and purple diamond in the world. It’s worth how much? One billion trillion zillion pounds? Oh, I am so lucky to be marrying the most handsomest, richest prince in the world! Now I must get some beauty sleep, for tomorrow is our wedding day and ten thousand guests will all be looking at me.”
The little girl lies down on the hard ground, closes her eyes, and pretends to snore. Then, only seconds after she has gone to sleep, she jumps to her feet again, stretching and yawning. Eight hours have apparently gone by in less than eight seconds.
“It’s my wedding day! Rosie, help me into my wedding dress.” She pretends to pull on various pieces of clothing before adorning her head with an actual daisy chain that she must have prepared for the occasion. “Oh, I look beautiful! Look at me! Are my forty bridesmaids ready? And are they dressed in pink like I ordered? Then fetch my unicorn, who will fly me to the church. Come on, Rosie, you can ride on my unicorn with me, as you are my most best friend in the world.”
She slings her leg over an invisible unicorn, checks over her shoulder (presumably to make sure Rosie is safely aboard), then runs about in circles, ducking in and out of the trees, dodging low-hanging branches, and shouting, “Giddyup!” After a few seconds, she grabs a tree trunk, swings herself around and around, and screams something about a tornado. The foolish unicorn appears to have steered them into a storm on the way to the ceremony.
I shake my head and chuckle under my breath, baffled but mildly amused by the way little girls choose to waste their time. Part of me wants to step out from behind my tree and put an end to this silly game to spare the poor child any further loss of dignity, but in spite of myself I continue watching, curious. There is just a tiny part of me that wants to know what happens next.