Mother

by S. E. Lynes

  He raised his eyebrows and smiled, as if to say: See? I’m not as nice as you think. But it didn’t change my opinion of him. As I said, I loved him.

  * * *

  But I digress. Christopher was on his way to Leeds, wasn’t he, after his parents had told him the truth of his origins. He recalled nothing of that journey, could not remember how he got from the train station to Devonshire halls of residence. That was the shock, I think, erasing his thoughts, or refusing even to form them in that moment of pure suspended animation. His world had stopped on its axis. And now that very world was waiting for presence of mind to return so it could go on spinning. The next memory he had was sitting on his bed in the room he shared with Adam, although of course he didn’t know Adam yet.

  He was sitting on his bed staring at his open hands, he said. He was studying the way the creases arched across his palms, tracing, some believed, his destiny. He had seen a palm reader once, he told me, on Morecambe pier. He’d have been around sixteen, had gone in for a dare. An old gypsy woman, with a headscarf with thin silver coins sewn into the hem, had held his hand and studied it.

  ‘Here, that’s a shock,’ she’d said after a few moments, pushing her forefinger to the middle of his hand. The thick black kohl under her eyes had smudged, crumbed in the corners of her bloodshot eyes. ‘It’s coming soon. It will change your destiny.’

  He’d dismissed her words within seconds of leaving the booth, but they came back to him now, dissolving, re-forming as another damn sense, yet more invisible particles floating in the air. He was not, no longer at least, the simple, shy eighteen-year-old history student he had anticipated being. That much was certain. Rather, he was a trembling boy scout, no older than twelve, who had been given a penny and a candle and told to get from Land’s End to John O’Groats. He could almost feel the chill wind on some distant hilltop blowing into his face. He was not equal to the task. He was but a child.

  It was a daydream from which he knew he had to wake up, and that this waking up had something to do with being or becoming the man he had now to be. Man. For a couple of years now, people had been referring to him that way. He had left home, which was what men did, but the rite of passage had been marked by a revelation too big to hold in his aching head. And the rope? The rope was still there. Only now he had a diagnosis, and the diagnosis cast a shadow as astonishing as a superpower. Footsteps rang louder on the pavements, strangers’ clothes separated into threads before his eyes, and on the station platform, on the train, on the university campus, people everywhere seemed to stare only at him, as if to ask: Are you family? Are you blood?

  Somehow, in that terrible trance, he had made his way to this twin room, sat down on this worn bed and stared at his open hands.

  ‘Well, well, well!’

  Christopher looked up to see a smiling ginger-haired man bounding into the room. He swung his suitcase onto the other bed, put his hands on his hips and, seeing Christopher, threw back his head. ‘I say, shall we go in search of a hostelry, my good man?’ Northern vowels infiltrated his attempt at a Home Counties accent. He laughed and gave in to them. ‘Just kidding, man. I’m Adam. First man on earth. Never touch apples.’ With two long strides, he was in front of Christopher, one arm out, apparently intent on shaking hands. ‘Pleased to meet you. Hey, do you like T. Rex, man?’

  He wore tight blue flared jeans, a black polo-neck sweater and a black leather jacket with square pockets. He was studying electronic engineering. He was from Newcastle. Outskirts. (That explained his accent.) His mother was Irish. He had family in Liverpool – his auntie on his mother’s side. He liked women. He loved women! He liked T. Rex – did he already say that? Fleetwood Mac, ELO and Queen. Hated ABBA. They were crap, but his sister liked them. His sister was eight – a mistake; his mother had thought it was the menopause. She got on his nerves – his sister, not his mother. His second name was Wells. He couldn’t wait to get stuck in. To what Christopher didn’t ask.

  ‘Thought we could take a wander,’ Adam continued, ‘see if there’s a pub sells beer? See if we can find ourselves a couple of birds? We should stick together, I reckon. Us grammar lads. What do you think, man?’

  Christopher saw his belongings through Adam’s eyes. His peeling case tied with rope, his donkey jacket. No gold-monogrammed luggage where he came from, no woollen coat, no tweed.

  ‘I need to unpack,’ he said.

  ‘You can unpack tomorrow.’ Adam pushed out his bottom lip. ‘You’ve just got out of jail free. Live a little, man.’ He leant in closer and patted the pocket at his hip. ‘Besides, I’ve got some fine weed.’

  A flare of panic. Weed? That meant marijuana, Christopher was pretty sure.

  ‘Don’t freak, man,’ said Adam. ‘It’s not purple hearts, only a bit of grass.’

  Christopher feigned the best laugh he could manage. ‘N-No, really,’ he stammered. ‘You go on. I’m fine. Next time.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Adam shrugged, turned away and loped towards the door, leaving his bed with his luggage still closed upon it. ‘See you later then.’ He left, whistling his way along the corridor. A door hinge squeaked and squeaked again, the whistling faded; his carrot-topped room-mate was no more.

  Before Christopher had time to think about anything else, more chatter echoed in the corridor – two or three boys, he thought, maybe four – arriving to other rooms. One of them could be his brother. His twin, why not? The one his birth mother had kept, perhaps, or given to another family. Was that it? Was that his story? A twin, a brother, who would look like him and like the same things and have his mannerisms even though they’d never met. What a thought.

  Back in Morecambe, on the way to the station, he had stayed silent in the back seat of his parents’ car and all the while they’d waited for the train. Now they were gone, he was full of questions. He had not asked his birth mother’s name. He had not asked his birth father’s name. He had not, come to think of it, asked his own name.

  But he could not. Not now, not ever. The subject had been opened like a library vault, only long enough to retrieve this lone and dusty book before being closed and locked forever. Jack and Margaret would never, could never, speak of it again.

  Out in the corridor, more doors whined open, slammed shut. The smell of floor cleaner, of damp, of sheets washed in different detergent. He lay back on his knitted hands and stared at the ceiling.

  ‘Karen,’ he whispered, to try it. He liked the feel of that name, the shape his mouth made when he said it. ‘Where can I find you?’ he asked of the ceiling. ‘Or are you Denise? Julie? Barbara? Valerie?’

  He did not imagine names for his father. But there, where there had been only air thick with doubt, was now the shadowy shape of a woman. The shadow needed detail, features he could recognise: a broad nose like his, perhaps, or his brown eyes or black hair. If he could only see her, clear the fog – meet her eyes with his. He should register with the adoption agency, or bureau, or whatever it was called. Perhaps the local council was his best bet. Lancashire. No, Liverpool. The letter had said Railton, so it would most likely be Liverpool City Council, wouldn’t it? There was only one way to find out.

  The way he told it, that was the moment he leapt up from his bed, scooped the loose change from his overcoat pocket and headed out. The university rep who had given him his key changed a pound note and pointed him in the direction of the phone, and after several false starts and a few wasted two-pence pieces, Christopher reached the Adoption Records Office in Liverpool.

  After going round the houses, he said, he spoke to a woman called Mrs Jackson, who took his name. After a few more questions, she asked, ‘How does two o’clock a week this Friday sound?’

  ‘Two o’clock next Friday,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there.’

  He took the stairs two at a time, his heart thudding against his ribs. Mrs Jackson had spoken to him kindly, yet as he entered his room, it occurred to him that she had given him no hope. Her only assurance, thinking about it properly now, was th
at they would meet soon and get the process under way. What the process would deliver had been left unsaid. She had promised nothing.

  He threw himself once more onto his bed. No matter what Mrs Jackson had said, he, Christopher Harris, had started upon a journey that would lead him to his mother, and no amount of polite obfuscation could prevent this… this knowledge. He would find her. The certainty quickened the blood in his veins. Blood she shared! Through her he would locate himself in the world. She would tell him his name. She might already have left her details with the relevant officials. She might be waiting for him to get in touch right at this moment. She wouldn’t know him as Christopher, of course, but by the name she herself had given him. His jaw tightened at the thought.

  But then he shouldn’t get his hopes up. His birth mother might not have made any attempt to find him. She might not be expecting him to search for her, might not want him to. Oh, but if he could meet her, he could tell her that everything was all right. He could go to her like Jesus, and say, I forgive you. No, that was too grand. Who was he to forgive anyone? But he could at least make sure she was well, happy, settled. He wouldn’t even have to tell her who he was. He could just… watch her.

  Chapter Three

  I suppose at some point I need to think about Benjamin, whom I found out about too late. Perhaps that’s the real disaster. If I’d known about him sooner, we could have worked something out. I could have prevented all of this – and if that isn’t enough to drive a person out of their mind, I don’t know what is. When I think of Ben, I’ll admit the idea I have of him is romantic. If you never get to know a person well, you can keep them in your mind as a kind of idealised dream, and that’s what Ben is to me. When I picture him, it’s morning, sometime in early 1981, and he’s throwing an espresso down his throat and grabbing his keys from some artsy kitchen table in a boho apartment in San Francisco. He has floppy brown hair and a lopsided, boyish grin and moves with a kind of easy charm that people don’t notice straightaway. It’s only later that they realise they find him attractive, find that they want to be around him, though they can’t pinpoint why.

  I see his apartment somewhere near the bay, on the fourth floor maybe, somewhere with a view. Or maybe he and his girlfriend Martha rent a room in one of those painted-lady houses on Alamo Square with a pot-smoking landlady like Mrs Madrigal from Tales of the City. Whatever, I see him soft-footed and cartoon-creeping into the bedroom where Martha is still sleeping. He bends over her and kisses her soft, warm cheek. It is still dark out. He has brought coffee for her, which he sets down on the bedside table. The steam seems not to snake upwards but to trail down, fanning out into the cup from some invisible point in the air.

  ‘See you later, honey,’ he whispers.

  She stirs and, even in stirring, eyes still shut, rewards him with a lazy smile.

  ‘Are we going out for dinner later?’ Her voice is slurred and hoarse with sleep. He could just crawl back into the bed and press his face against her belly.

  ‘Sure. We’re meeting the others downtown at eight.’

  She opens her eyes. They are green, like his. Oh, how lovely she is.

  ‘Are you going to do what we talked about?’ she asks him.

  ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I’ll do it today.’

  He reaches the office at 7.30 a.m. Outside, the Golden Gate Bridge throws its arcs against the still-black sky. Plenty of time to run through his presentation one last time before the 9 a.m. meeting. Barring any major reversals, he’s just about to win the biggest client in the history of United Graphics: Oakland, a range of olde-worlde kitchen and picnic ware that evokes Little House on the Prairie and capitalises on the current craving for all things Americana. Not bad for someone who’s been in the company less than a year. But if you were to count up the man hours he has put into this project and change them into dollars, that kind of professional victory has not come cheap. Ben has worked so hard these last months that even when he does get some precious leisure time, he barely knows what to do with it any more, can barely recall the long, glorious, smoke-hazed hours he frittered away at college. Seriously, he thinks, as this private moment of pride pushes a grin across his face, what has happened to him?

  He reaches for his cue cards and the acetate slides from his desk drawer, and takes them into the conference suite. He switches on the overhead projector, fusses with the neck angle until he’s centred the white square of light on the white back wall. Outside, lights still twinkle in the bay. But the late-September sky is bleaching now, a nascent pink glow rising from the horizon. Martha will be in the shower. After that, she will get dressed, have her breakfast and go to work, then come home and wait, eager to tell him about her day spent at the mercy of thirty eight-year-old children. He never hears about her days lately. When they first met, he wanted to know every detail, her every move and thought. He still feels the same. He lives with her and yet he misses her. But these last months he hasn’t had or hasn’t made the time to listen. And now the habit has been lost. This afternoon he will make sure he gets home before she gives up and goes to bed. They will walk together to the restaurant, hand in hand. He wonders if they’ll have sex before they go out, a thought that sends a bolt through him. He should take some time off – spend it with her.

  Will you do that thing we talked about? she asked him again this morning.

  I’ll do it today is what he said.

  He will do it. If Oakland goes well, he will do what he’s promised. He’ll do it this afternoon.

  He lays the acetates one by one on the projector, whispering his way through the cue cards, throwing out his hands, pausing for the laughter he knows he’ll get. He’s always a little keyed up round about now, an hour or two before, but the nerves or adrenalin or whatever the hell you want to call it are what make him good at this stuff. They give his performance the edge that has made him stand out, get him so far so fast. The cue cards? No more than a pre-show comforter, a talisman to ward off the heebie-jeebies. Once he’s started, he won’t look at those cards, not even once. He’s a talker – could talk his way into and out of just about anything.

  By the time he’s finished his rehearsal, a flash of Titian hair through the glass office wall tells him that Donna, the office secretary, has arrived. After a brief but flirtatious conversation in which he gives her instructions for the set-up, he leaves her to furnish the conference suite with the white Conran cups and saucers he ordered from London. There are croissants too, from Schubert’s. No expense spared. Important not to skimp on the details. Petty short-term savings most often mean losing out in the long term.

  Over in the kitchen booth he fixes himself another espresso. Returning to his desk, he dials into his answerphone and finds a call from 6 p.m. on Friday – he was here finishing the storyboard but didn’t hear it come in.

  ‘Benjamin, hello darling, it’s your mother calling.’ Her voice slips but is not so slurred as to be incoherent. ‘Could you call me back? I won’t try you at home since I’m sure you’re not there.’

  He checks his watch: 8.33 a.m. If he calls now, he can say he’s heading into a meeting and it won’t be a lie. Plus he won’t have the call hanging over him, and that will leave his mind clearer for the presentation. He punches in his parents’ number, and in the precise moment of realising what a mistake this is, she picks up.

  ‘Benjamin, there’s a surprise.’

  Four words and already she’s breaking his balls.

  ‘Dorothy. Listen, I’m heading into a meeting but I saw you’d called Friday. I only picked it up now. Nothing urgent, I hope?’

  ‘You’re very busy, I know,’ she says.

  He waits. Things being what they are, she will have been up since 5 a.m. Vodka knocks her out by early evening, but the trouble is, it wakes her up early too. Double-entry bookkeeping, Martha calls it, the pluses and minuses of every goddam decision you ever make.

  ‘It was nothing urgent,’ she goes on. ‘You go to your meeting.’

  ‘George OK?
’

  The suck of his mother’s lips on the gold tip of her Sobranie cigarette. ‘You know your father.’

  Ben checks his watch. The guys from Oakland could be here as early as quarter to. He should never have made the call.

  ‘I was wondering if you and Martha would be coming for Thanksgiving,’ she says finally.

  Nuts in the crusher: check. September and she’s talking about Thanksgiving, for Chrissakes. It’s Put your good shoes on; we’ll be late for Mass all over again. On a loop. With different words.

  ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘If it’s nothing urgent, maybe I can call you back later?’

  ‘I don’t know where I’ll be later, but sure, if you’re too busy, I guess.’

  Through the glass wall he sees two suits, Donna’s red hair weaving between them. She is pouring them coffee, her lips moving nineteen to the dozen.

  ‘Dorothy,’ he says, ‘I’ll call you back.’

  He rings off but decides to wait before hitting the conference suite. The rationale behind calling his mother was flawed, and he needs a few minutes to settle himself. She always does this – gets under his skin, makes him feel like he’s doing something wrong. The worst of it is, she thinks she’s easy. Genuinely. If he were to say to her, Dorothy, quit busting my balls, she would fall down with the shock. She would cry and wail. She’s given him everything; all she wants is a conversation once in a while, is that too much to ask? Is it? No, it isn’t worth blowing oxygen into that particular fire – better to pretend he can’t see its embers glowing in the hearth. People don’t change. People never go through those epiphanies you see in the movies. Scrooge would have finished up the same old tight-ass eventually, once he’d gotten over the shock of his crazy Christmas Eve acid trip, and his mother is no different.