You Then, Me Now

by Nick Alexander

  It was nine thirty when I finally stepped outside, and the day was already hot. There wasn’t a hint of breeze.

  I stood and, as every morning, stared out at the shocking blue of the horizon. I doubted that the view from Oia was one you could ever get tired of, or even used to. I honestly reckon that you could live there your whole life and still think Wow! every morning.

  I pondered this for a while in that sleepy way you think about things when you’ve just got up and, deciding to ask Baruch about it later, I locked up the room and headed for the hotel restaurant.

  Mum was seated at the back of the room sipping tea and reading a copy of the Mirror.

  ‘Morning!’ I said, on arriving at the table.

  She looked startled at first, then smiled and folded the newspaper and laid her hands across it in an elegant, placid gesture. ‘Morning,’ she said. ‘It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? The first of September!’

  ‘It is,’ I said, reminding myself that I still needed to wrap the gift I had brought from home. ‘Anything happening in the world?’

  Mum looked puzzled for a second and glanced down at the newspaper. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘In the paper? I’m not sure. It’s three days old, so . . . I found it on the table, that’s all. Did you sleep OK?’

  I told her that I had and headed off for a tour of the buffet, returning with toast, grilled tomatoes, and a slightly rubbery fried egg. In the meantime the waitress had filled my cup with coffee.

  I ate in silence for a while and when that started to feel too uncomfortable, I began to speak. ‘I found—’

  At that precise moment, Mum spoke too. ‘Did you find my note?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Mum said, looking genuinely contrite. ‘I . . . I don’t know . . . It’s such a difficult subject. For you. For me. For everyone, really. But I should be better at it by now. So I am sorry for yesterday.’

  I nodded and smiled weakly at her as I continued to eat, expecting her to continue and say whatever she was going to tell me. Instead, she asked, ‘Did you have a nice time last night? With Baruch?’

  I nodded and, once I had swallowed, replied, ‘Yes. It was lovely. He took me to a special restaurant only Greek people go to. The food was amazing and it was only ten euros a head.’

  ‘Ten euros?’ Mum said. ‘Wow! Perhaps we should go there tonight?’

  I shook my head. ‘Like I said, it’s for Greek people only, I’m afraid. I was OK because I was with him, but otherwise, I don’t think I would even have got in.’

  Mum pulled a face. ‘That seems a bit unfair.’

  ‘I think what’s unfair is that the Greeks don’t earn enough to eat in any of the normal restaurants.’

  ‘Right,’ Mum said. ‘Yes, of course. Yes, I can see that. So you had a nice evening, anyway. That’s good.’

  ‘Yes, it was fine,’ I told her. I didn’t really want to talk about my evening with Baruch. I wanted her to cut to the chase. ‘You said you had something to tell me,’ I prompted. ‘In your note?’

  Mum nodded and blinked rapidly a few times. She cleared her throat and glanced around the room as if to check if anyone was listening, prompting me to follow suit. But we didn’t seem to have caught anyone’s interest.

  She cleared her throat a second time. She chewed her bottom lip. ‘I’m not sure where to start,’ she finally said. ‘I’m not really sure what you want to know.’

  I shrugged and sighed deeply. I sipped at my coffee, trying to find the right words. ‘I don’t know, really . . .’ I said. ‘Just—’

  ‘He was Norwegian,’ Mum blurted out, speaking quickly as if the words were a train that could be missed if she didn’t get there in time. ‘That’s what you wanted to know, wasn’t it? His nationality? Well, he was Norwegian. He was tall and skinny and blond, like you. He was incredibly gentle and kind. And he was Norwegian.’

  I put down my cutlery so that I could fiddle with my fingernails. I stared deeply into Mum’s eyes while I tried to work out how I could possibly fit the two narratives – Mum’s and Baruch’s – together. Mum held my regard unblinkingly. Her eyes looked a little shiny and I wondered if she was going to cry.

  Almost immediately I realised the stories couldn’t be merged. Mum’s gentle, blond Norwegian was not Baruch’s English drunken thug and that was all there was to it. And when I tried to work out which of the two had the most reason to lie, I could only come up with one answer.

  ‘Is that better?’ Mum asked concernedly. ‘I mean, does that help?’ She seemed genuine enough, but then she had always been a pretty good actress.

  My breath was quickening and I realised that I was starting to feel angry. I regretted having this conversation in such a public place because I was starting to feel really angry.

  I was angry for all of the times she had shut down my attempts to discuss this in the past. Because it had never been easy for me to ask about my father. It had always taken days of trying to formulate a suitable question and then a couple more to pluck up the courage to ask it. And Mum had always closed the subject down with a short, sharp, often mean retort.

  I felt angry for the wedge that I now realised she had driven between us, too. Because though I loved her, and though for much of my life she had represented pretty much my whole world, I understood that morning how, just like with Brian, she had always held something back from me.

  Out of nowhere came a third wave of anger, an anger I had suppressed so effectively that I had barely been aware it existed. But I let myself feel it in that moment, and found I was quite furious that I didn’t have a father – spitting mad that I was the only person amongst my school friends not to have had one. And for all my games, for all my fictitious astronaut or fireman fathers, I was incandescently angry about that, too.

  Norwegian, I thought suddenly, remembering that my fake father had briefly been the president of Norway. Was that where Mum’s lie had sprung from? Had she simply tried to think of a country and, remembering my fake president father, plumped for the first place to come to mind? It was shocking enough for her to still be lying to me. But to choose such a cheap, facile lie felt humiliating.

  ‘Becky?’ Mum prompted, wrinkling her brow and leaning in to attempt to take my hand. I snatched it out of her reach and only then realised that I was crying.

  I wasn’t sobbing. I wasn’t even snivelling. I felt cold as ice as I sat there staring at my mother and hating her, really hating her, for the first time in my life. But I was, silently, against my will, crying.

  I pulled a napkin from the dispenser on the table and dabbed at my cheeks, but the tears kept coming – there was nothing I could do to stop them. I felt like something had been definitively broken, as if something had snapped deep inside me.

  ‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’ Mum asked.

  ‘I’m just tired of it,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m just so tired of it all.’

  Mum looked confused, so I expounded. ‘I’m exhausted by your lies. By all the pretence. By the constant . . . I don’t know . . . the constant obfuscation, I suppose, is the word.’

  ‘But I—’ Mum said.

  ‘I used to think you were protecting me,’ I interrupted.

  ‘I was. In a way, I am.’

  ‘Only, you’re not. You’re protecting you, aren’t you? And that’s not fair, Mum.’

  ‘But you wanted to know and—’

  ‘It’s not fair, Mum,’ I said again. ‘I’m twenty-three. I’m twenty-three years old and I’m the only person I know without a dad. And you can’t even find it in you to tell me honestly who he was?’

  My voice had risen at the end of my sentence, so we both glanced around the room once again, but no one, it seemed, had noticed.

  ‘Maybe we should continue this conversation downstairs?’ Mum offered, nodding towards the exterior.

  ‘Carry on what conversation?’ I asked mockingly. ‘This isn’t a conversation, Mum. It’s just today’s bullshit. It’s just the latest batch o
f utter rubbish you’ve decided to chuck at me.’

  Mum covered her mouth with one hand. She looked into my eyes for a moment and dabbed her little finger at a single tear, which had formed in the corner of her left eye. ‘I don’t know what you want from me,’ she finally said.

  I laughed sourly. ‘Only you do,’ I told her. ‘You know perfectly well what I want. But you’re just not prepared to give it.’

  ‘But I told you,’ Mum insisted. ‘I know I’ve . . . Look, I know I’ve avoided it in the past. And maybe that was wrong. I mean, it’s complicated, as a parent. Your child’s too young to understand, and then too young to need to know. And then suddenly you’re not too young any more, but it feels like it’s already too late. There’s never a right time for this sort of thing, but I have just told you.’

  ‘Norwegian?’ I said with disdain.

  ‘Yes,’ Mum said, nodding sincerely.

  ‘Was he . . . I don’t know . . . was he the president by any chance?’

  Mum frowned. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Was he the president? The president of Norway, maybe?’

  ‘No!’ Mum said. ‘No, of course he wasn’t. Now you’re just being silly. He was a student. And his name was Leif.’

  I gasped at this. My mouth actually fell open. I thought, God, I don’t know you at all.

  ‘What?’ Mum asked, seemingly exasperated.

  I pushed back my chair and began to stand but she leaned over the table and gently grabbed my wrist, and I don’t know why – the contact with her skin, or just years of trained obedience – but I sat back down, albeit with my arms angrily crossed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Mum asked. ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘I can’t believe you,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe you just did that.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Invented a name for him. I mean, it’s only taken you twenty-three years to come up with it. Is Leif even a Norwegian name? Do you actually know?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Mum said. ‘I’m not making anything up, sweetheart. He was Norwegian. Nothing to do with your make-believe president, but he was Norwegian. And his name was Leif. I’m not lying to you.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Because lying to your own daughter would be so shocking, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘English, Mum!’ I spat. ‘He was English!’

  Mum frowned and silently mouthed the word ‘What?’

  ‘He was English,’ I said again, feeling proud and righteous and strangely pleased with myself. ‘And he wasn’t gentle. He was a drunk who got into bar brawls. Baruch’s bloody grandmother remembers him only too well. She remembers it taking five men to pin him down and she remembers him driving off the cliff here in Oia. She even remembers the date, for God’s sake, give or take a week. So you’re lying. You’re still lying to me after all these years.’

  I looked her straight in the eye until she turned away. She sighed jaggedly and covered her eyes with one hand. She worked her mouth silently, and I thought, Fuck you. This is enough! Twenty-three years of this bullshit is enough.

  I started again to stand, only this time I felt peculiarly calm. It felt like my relationship with my mother was ending, and I wanted to savour the moment, the way you savour pushing your tongue into a bad tooth. I wanted to feel the pain of it. I wanted to twist the knife, even if the knife was in me.

  I leaned forward, grasping the table with both hands, and waited for her to look at me. I was going to tell her that I hated her. I was going to tell her that our cutesy little relationship, a relationship based on her lying and me pretending not to notice, was over. But I wanted her to look at me first.

  When finally she slid her hand from her eyes to her mouth and turned to look at me, she spoke. ‘That was Conor,’ she said, speaking through her fingers.

  The words made no sense to me so, still glaring at her, I simply shook my head a little.

  ‘That was Conor,’ Mum said, lowering her hand and speaking more loudly. ‘And he wasn’t English at all. He was Irish.’

  ‘Great!’ I said. Then, ‘Who the fuck is Conor?’

  ‘Conor?’ Mum said.

  But suddenly it was all too much for me – my emotions overflowed. I spun, almost knocking my chair over, and stormed out of the restaurant. Mum came running after me, trotting down the stairs.

  ‘Go away!’ I told her when we reached the unit. ‘I’m just getting some stuff then I’ll be gone for the day. But in the meantime, please, just leave me the fuck alone.’

  Once I’d opened the door and headed inside, Mum, of course, followed. ‘Look, I lied to you,’ she said from my bedroom doorway. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I know you did!’ I said, raising my voice now we were in privacy. ‘I worked that much out for myself!’

  ‘Becky, please sit down,’ Mum said. ‘What are you even looking for in there?’

  I was rifling through my suitcase and in truth I’d forgotten what I was looking for. It had become nothing more than a way to avoid dealing with my mother.

  ‘Becky,’ she said, sitting on my bed and trying to touch my arm. ‘Becky!’

  ‘What?’ I snapped, dropping the clothes I had in my hands and spinning around to face her. ‘Would you like me to sit down, Mother, so you can tell me another fairy story? Is that what’s on your agenda for today?’

  ‘There was another man,’ Mum said. ‘His name was Conor. He was an Irish boxer. Not English. Irish. But he wasn’t your father.’

  ‘Because my father was a Norwegian called Leif?’ I said sarcastically.

  ‘Yes,’ Mum said. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. And it’s the truth.’

  I froze for a second as an internal battle raged, a battle between wanting to know more and wanting to hear nothing more from her hated, lying lips. It was the second option that won out, though. ‘Can you please just leave me alone?’ I said. ‘I’m an adult and this is my room, and I’m asking you to leave. So just leave, will you?’

  Mum chewed her bottom lip for a moment and then, shaking her head, she stood and left the room, gently pulling the door closed behind her.

  I lay on my bed for almost an hour. I stared at the ceiling, at first too angry to think straight. Later, as I calmed down, I began to analyse, or at least try to analyse, what little information I had gleaned. But if she had been telling the truth, what she had told me created far more questions than it provided answers. Was Conor the same person as Baruch’s drunken Englishman? Who had driven off the cliff? How did my mother know Conor, or Leif for that matter? And if my father was Leif, not Conor, how come he was dead as well? Could they have been in the car together?

  I still wasn’t sure I believed any of it, but I was regretting not having been calmer. I was regretting not having let her tell me more.

  I was lying there trying to formulate a face-saving way to continue, something that didn’t involve me apologising, when Mum rapped gently on the door.

  ‘Becky?’ she called out. ‘Can I come in?’

  My pride wouldn’t let me answer, so I just waited for her to open the door as I knew, from experience, she would.

  After a few seconds, the door creaked open and Mum’s face appeared. She had panda eyes and I could see that she too had been crying. ‘Are you sleeping?’ she asked.

  ‘Hardly!’ I said.

  ‘Then can I talk to you?’

  I didn’t say she could, but I didn’t say ‘no’ either. And so she crept into the room and sat on the edge of the bed with one leg on the ground so that she could face me. ‘You’re right to be angry,’ she said softly.

  ‘I know I am.’

  ‘I lied to you.’

  ‘I know that too,’ I said. On hearing my own voice, I suddenly felt ashamed. There’s nothing like an argument with your mother to reduce you to the status of a sulking five-year-old, but at least at twenty-three I had begun to catch myself doing it.

  ‘So, do you want me to tell you or not?’ Mum asked.

  I
shrugged and tried to think up some word of encouragement I could use which wouldn’t sound like I’d forgiven her completely.

  ‘All right,’ Mum said, starting to stand again. ‘Maybe later on then.’

  ‘I do,’ I told her, reaching out for her arm to stop her leaving. ‘But only if it’s the truth, Mum. I don’t think I can stand any more lies. I don’t think our relationship can, either.’

  ‘The truth,’ Mum repeated, sitting down again. ‘Of course.’

  She fidgeted for a moment on the bed, then licked her lips and began to speak.

  ‘So, I didn’t go away with Aunt Abby. I told you that I went with her, but it’s not true. I came away with Conor. I’m not proud of the fact, which is why I suppose . . . But I came away with Conor. I’d met him a few weeks earlier, and stupidly thought I was in love with him. Of course, I wasn’t at all. I’d been infatuated, I suppose you’d call it. He could be quite charming when he wanted to be. And I had no idea what being in love was supposed to feel like. But anyway, once we got here I realised that he wasn’t very nice. In fact he turned out to be bloody awful.’

  ‘You’re telling me you came to Greece with a guy you barely knew?’ I asked.

  Mum nodded. ‘I was stupid. And immature. And inexperienced. And desperate to get away from your grandmother for a bit. And he seemed nice at first. He was generous – he paid for the whole trip – and I’d always wanted to come here. And I liked the idea of him, the idea of having a proper boyfriend, so I convinced myself, I suppose. I don’t know, really. I can’t explain it. Sometimes we do things that aren’t logical. Sometimes we get things wrong. But I misjudged him.’

  ‘OK . . .’ I said slowly.

  ‘He drank a lot,’ Mum continued. ‘He was an alcoholic, I think. It was the first time I’d ever met anyone with a really serious drink problem. And he got really nasty when he drank. He forced himself on me one time. He hit me a couple of times, too.’

  I sat up in bed at this point and propped myself against the headboard, pulling my knees to my chest. ‘He hit you?’ I said. ‘But that’s awful.’