The Family Gift

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘Good point, Mildred,’ I mutter, as I pull up outside our house and prepare to get out to open the gate.

  Dan is working late because there is a big economics conference in town and he’s one of the speakers. It’s a three-day thing and to be honest he adores these conferences. It gives him a chance to sit in on other people’s talks in ugly conference halls and have animated discussions with others for whom economics is their very life.

  ‘Economics is not my life, Freya,’ he always insists in a wounded voice when I say this and I grin back.

  ‘Not your life, sweetie,’ I say, ‘but you know if it was a toss up between me, say, losing a limb and you having to miss all these conferences forever, I’d probably have to learn to do things with just one hand.’

  ‘I am hurt,’ he says, pretending to be wounded.

  ‘I’m only kidding.’

  I know stuff like that isn’t his life but he does love it. So tonight it’s just me and the three children at home. Teddy is in bed and for once she’s tired and appears to be going to sleep without asking, ‘Why isn’t Daddy reading me my story tonight, I want Daddy,’ because Daddy of course isn’t there.

  But she’s gone to sleep, miraculously.

  Liam is reading on the couch in the kitchen because I’ve said he has to cut down on Super Mario to half an hour on school days. He really is such a good kid – I must have done something right, I tell Mildred bitchily. There is no comeback. She must be having her dragon wings resprayed or something.

  Lexi is in her room, possibly doing something with make-up. I know this because when I run up to tell her to turn her music down as her little sister is in bed, Lexi’s dressing table is covered with Surella products. At this point, she hasn’t actually applied anything and I manage to rein in my temper, an irrational temper I fully agree, and hope that she is just doing a little bit of messing around.

  Lots of girls practice with make-up and do crazy things with their faces that freak their mothers out. I didn’t but Scarlett, at age sixteen, was a great one for traffic-stopping lipstick and enough mascara and eyeliner so that she could barely blink.

  My mother, typically, never batted an eyelid and would say: ‘That’s interesting, honey,’ whenever Scarlett emerged from her room looking like she was about to go on stage on Broadway. If any of us thought we were going to get a screaming: ‘You will not leave this house looking like that’, lecture from my mother, we were mistaken.

  It was, my mother told me later, a little bit like hearing small children say rude words.

  ‘If you sound shocked, they say it again one hundred times, possibly in front of their teacher. But if you largely ignore it, then the desire to shock goes. Scarlett usually rubbed most of it off in the cloakroom under the stairs before she went out.’

  Mum had taught me well.

  So I am ready for this phase. Or at least I think I am.

  Now that Lexi has a bag full of appalling Surella products, I am no longer as primed as I’d hoped to be.

  I go upstairs half an hour later to say that she only has twenty minutes more before bed.

  ‘Lexi, honey,’ I whisper, giving the lightest of knocks on her shut door. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Her voice sounds different, as if she’s practising a part in a play. The lights are all on and I stare at my Lexi in horror. She looks unrecognisable from my beautiful little girl.

  She’d borrowed a skimpy silver camisole of mine, which is far too big and falling down off her shoulders. She’s clearly used all the limb-bronzing gel so that now she is a bizarre golden shade all over. Her face, her beautiful face . . . it’s caked with base. Literally caked.

  She’s managed to put on false eyelashes, although I don’t know how they’ve stuck with the amount of positively glittering eye make-up on her delicate eyelids. And her mouth is outlined into a parody of a mouth, a mouth that looks as if it’s been injected with chemicals to make it swell up.

  She’s tried contouring and while her artistic skills can’t be faulted, she’s given herself cheekbones that gleam and hollows in a still-baby face that shouldn’t be hollowed. Worse, she’s tried to contour her narrow collar and breast bones, creating shadows as if she’s inviting people – boys – to look down.

  She’s trying to look sexy and it’s that bitch Elisa’s fault, all of it.

  All my Thursday-night-calm goes out the window and though we’re standing on the landing, mere yards from Teddy’s door, I can’t keep my voice down. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

  ‘I’m wearing my make-up. I thought I’d try something new, I am fourteen, you know,’ says Lexi defiantly.

  ‘But you just look . . . it’s not good, you’re hiding your beauty and it’s . . .’ The words come out of my mouth before I can stop them racing out like an express train. ‘It’s cheap. I can’t believe you’ve done this to yourself.’

  Lexi’s little chin gets higher.

  ‘I sent Elisa a picture on Instagram,’ she says, ‘and she replied right back and said it was fabulous and maybe they’d use it in their marketing.’

  ‘What!’ The explosion that comes out of me now must surely wake Teddy and possibly the whole street, but I really don’t care. ‘You did what? Give me your phone.’

  ‘No.’

  I try to breathe.

  ‘Give me your phone.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lexi, I want that phone right now so I can WhatsApp that stupid Elisa and tell her that under no circumstances are any pictures of you to go up anywhere as part of her marketing campaign for that shit make-up.’

  ‘She’s not stupid and you can’t do that.’

  ‘I can, because I’m your mother.’

  ‘But she’s my mother too,’ she hisses back at me.

  There’s absolute silence apart from some half-waking wriggling from Teddy in her bedroom.

  It’s like being knocked to the ground in a car park all over again.

  I don’t know what to say and I’m afraid of hurting Lexi.

  I can’t believe what I’ve already said, so I go for a different approach.

  ‘Honey, you’re too young for all of this—’ I begin.

  ‘Elisa says I could be a model,’ she hisses.

  That old canard, I think.

  You could be a model. You too could be a thirty-nine-year-old woman without a proper job to her name ever.

  Stop! Somehow, I come back to earth. What have I said?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I begin, the mother part of me rising up out of the shock. ‘I should never have used the word cheap. It’s horrible. I apologise. You’re so beautiful, darling. You don’t need all that make-up and you need to grow up a little bit more before you use it so heavily. I just got upset—’

  ‘You think I’m a baby,’ she yells at me. ‘I’m not. Elisa doesn’t treat me like a baby.’

  ‘She doesn’t know you,’ I say, unwisely.

  ‘She does!’

  I think of all the things I should say and of all the articles I’ve read about teenagers, about independence and moving apart. This doesn’t have to be so brutal. Why have I messed this up so much?

  ‘Can we talk?’

  ‘No.’ She turns from me. ‘I’m going to bed now. Goodnight.’

  ‘Darling—’

  ‘Goodnight. I’m tired.’

  A hand snakes out and she switches off her light.

  We’ve never ended a day like this, not ever.

  But I can’t grab Lexi and make her hug me, make it the same way it always was.

  ‘Please forgive me, Lexi,’ I beg. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. I got a shock. You know how much I love you—’

  I’m saying this to her back but she refuses to turn around.

  I decide that the best thing I can do is go downstairs.

&nbs
p; ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God,’ I whisper to myself as I take each step.

  You really screwed that up, Mildred says.

  I don’t answer. If Mildred were not in my head, were not me, I would rip her out and dismember her for stating the bloody obvious.

  Liam is still sitting in the kitchen, reading.

  ‘Liam: bed,’ I snap.

  ‘But it’s not time.’

  ‘Liam, just go to bed, right?’

  ‘OK,’ he says crossly and hugging his book to him, he turns and stomps upstairs.

  Great. I should put myself up for Mother of the Year. That’s two of my three children I’ve upset.

  Cheap? I called my beautiful Lexi cheap – what kind of a mother am I? So I open the fridge, find an opened bottle of white wine, wrench the cork out of it and pour some into one of those filament-thin enormous glasses that they only half fill in expensive restaurants.

  I really don’t drink during the week because it’s a slippery slope and besides, I like my tea at night. Jasmine, proper jasmine.

  But this is perfect for now. I curl up on the couch in the tiny study and wonder how I am ever going to make up for this. Where do we go from here and how do I get my Lexi back? Damn you, Elisa, I think, damn you to hell for coming into all our lives and screwing it up again.

  You need to think of an alibi, says Mildred helpfully. Unhelpfully.

  And a way to kill her. Remember all those thrillers you read when you were younger, pre-kids? Ground-up glass? Digitalis? An injection containing air to hit her lungs? Arsenic? Only fifty per cent of the population can smell arsenic, you know.

  Thank you, Miss Marple, I say. No to glass. Where do you get digitalis? How, precisely, am I supposed to inject the stupid cow, and arsenic, really?

  One of us needs to think straight, and where were you when I was running my mouth off?

  Inner voices interrupt after the fact, Mildred explains unhelpfully.

  As if I didn’t know.

  Mildred, I need help and so help me God, I will do mindfulness all the time and you’ll be out of a job!

  Mildred is silent.

  Tell Dan immediately, she proffers. So I do.

  Dan is clearly having a world-class discussion over the dinner table with a group of economists, so he doesn’t answer my text till very late, when I am just slipping into Zimovane world.

  I’ll talk to Lexi tomorrow, Freya – I totally get what happened. We’ll fix it.

  We’ll fix it, I think sleepily. I do love that man. Me and him against the world.

  17

  ‘Normal’ is just a setting on the dryer

  We are all late to school the next day. My head hurts from the combination of two giant glasses of white wine and from the tension surrounding me and Lexi, who is refusing to speak to me.

  ‘I’m really sorry, darling,’ I say, standing outside her door which was firmly shut when it was time to tell her to get down to the car as we were leaving. ‘I just . . .’ I search for how to say this. ‘Mums can overreact too and I was worried about how you looked. I shouldn’t have said what I said.’

  From the other side of the door, there is no reply.

  I stand outside the door listening, knowing that Lexi can hear me standing there because the landing in the house is very creaky. I’ve just been such a stupid cow, inadvertently hurting one of the people I love most. That’s not normal. Then I think of what Mum always said whenever one of us moaned as teenagers that we weren’t a normal family.

  ‘Normal’s just a setting on the dryer,’ she’d say calmly.

  This might be true but somehow it doesn’t cheer me up as much as it used to when Mum said it.

  She wouldn’t have done this: lost the run of herself and let her rage at another woman come out in that way.

  Somehow, my mother was always calm and together as if being a mother was the centre of her universe.

  At least Mildred is keeping schtum.

  Upset, I then shout at the other two for dragging their feet when it comes to brushing their teeth. Liam looks stunned but Teddy blithely ignores me.

  ‘Mummy cross,’ she says with a sweet smile as if this is ammunition that she is saving up for later. ‘Mummy very cross, I’m going to tell everyone in skool.’

  Everyone ‘in skool’ will know that I screamed this morning. I have no idea what the other things are that people hear in there.

  Once Babs from Little Darlings confided that she could write several books on the details given out by the small children in her care.

  ‘I have had children tell me that Mummy hits Daddy with a frying pan regularly and if only for the fact that Daddy generally does the drop off and never seems to have any suspicious dents or bandages on his head, I’d believe it. There’s a fine line between make-believe and the real world with small children.’

  Liam is suspiciously quiet, so I go into his room and he says: ‘Are you and Lexi fighting?’

  I bite my lip.

  ‘Yes, and it’s my fault but I have said sorry, and I’ll fix it,’ I say, hoping I can.

  ‘She’s not coming out of her room,’ he adds, ‘and we’re going to be late, Mum. We do sums first. I can’t miss sums.’

  I feel the pang of knowing it’s my fault and there was no need for it. I sit on the bed.

  ‘I’m really sorry, darling,’ I say. ‘I want to apologise for being so grumpy this morning. There was no need for it and I love you so much and I’m really sorry. I’ve apologised to Lexi. I’m going in to Teddy now.’

  At this he giggles.

  ‘Teddy is going to tell everyone you hit her over the head with something,’ he says, grinning, sounding a bit like his old self.

  ‘I dare say,’ I agree gravely, ‘or that I locked her up in the dark cupboard with all the spiders.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he says, perking up. ‘She’d like that.’

  In the car, we go, as usual, to Lexi’s school first and then drop off Liam. I want to go in with Lexi but she’s not talking to me and as far as I know, she hasn’t eaten any breakfast.

  At Liam’s school, I womanhandle Teddy out and we go in together because, as we are so late, some explanation has to be given. We get to Liam’s classroom, he goes in and I motion to the teacher that I need to talk to her. Teddy, wandering around beside me, is fascinated with this big school because she both really wants to go to big school and doesn’t want to go to big school.

  As she says to herself: ‘Does big school have a kitchen in the corner where I can play?’

  Liam always says no, at which point she decides she doesn’t want to go there.

  ‘Ms O’Reilly,’ I say to the teacher who is young, fresh-faced and looks as if nobody ever threw her to the ground in a horrible garage: ‘I’m really sorry we’re late, it’s my fault, bit of a family emergency and just keep an eye on Liam today to make sure he’s OK. He’s so sensitive.’

  ‘Of course, Ms Abalone,’ says Ms O’Reilly. She has my phone number, my email, the house number, Dan’s number. I check just to be sure she has all these things.

  ‘I’ll talk to you if there is anything we need to do and I’ll talk to the headmistress too. But he seems all right.’

  We look through the glass-paned window at Liam who is sitting in his seat smiling, talking to his friend Jake. Jake and Liam are quite alike – both quiet children. Jake hasn’t been round to see the house, I realise, except that one afternoon when his mum dropped by. I should organise more play dates. I haven’t been thinking.

  ‘Ms Abalone,’ says Ms O’Reilly, ‘just . . . er, your little girl is going into another classroom.’

  ‘Blast,’ I say and run off and grab Teddy, who has decided that she will go into one of the bigger classes because that’s where she’s obviously suited to be. I carry her giggling out of the school.

  ‘I know there
’s a kitchen for playing,’ she said mutinously. ‘They’re hiding it somewhere, I know they are. Liam said if I go in there he would be able to be with me in the playground and we’ll have loads of fun and you can swap lunches.’

  ‘Swap lunches?’ I say, shocked, thinking that I make such an effort with the school lunches.

  ‘Liam says your lunches are the best, but everyone swaps, so you have to swap.’

  Pride restored.

  I bring Teddy to Little Darlings, semi-explain the circumstances and leave her delightedly in the care of Babs where she happily explains about being screamed at and how she had to hide in a shoebox with beetles. Back in the car, I ring Lexi’s school and explain why she was late in or a limited version of it.

  ‘Just a little mishap in the house this morning, really sorry she’s late, all my fault,’ I say. And then I sit in the car outside Little Darlings and sob because it’s half nine and look at what I’ve managed so far today.

  ‘You really hit that one out of the park,’ says Mildred, ‘go big or go home.’

  Listen Mildred, I say, just shut up. Why do some people have inner voices that tell them they are fabulous and wonderful. Why am I stuck with you, who bitches at me the whole time, tells me I’m not good enough and makes me think I am a prime candidate for imposter syndrome?

  Mildred does not answer this. Your inner voice doesn’t really answer. It’s only there to tell you that you’re useless, unless you have been doing shedloads of mindfulness in which case it tells you that here and now is precious; you are a wonderful spiritual being whose very presence on life gives light to other human beings. Oh yeah, and that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

  ‘Mildred,’ I say out loud, ‘why couldn’t I have gotten one of those inner voices?’

  You never did the mindfulness, she says. Don’t blame me. Why do you think Buddhists are all so happy?

  Damn it, she’s right.

  Dan is on the phone to me almost as soon as I get home.

  ‘What exactly happened?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I, I just, I just turned into the bitch from hell, I don’t know why,’ I say and as I say it, I know exactly why. It’s because I’m so stressed and anxious and I haven’t let anyone in and I’m lying to my husband whom I don’t lie to. Have been lying non-stop. I hate myself for this.