My other mother is horrified by how she sounds, what is coming across from everything she is saying and not saying. ‘I did not mean it like that. I would not make the same choice if I was in that position again.’ She looks at me like I’m an adult, like Clemency. ‘Please believe me when I say I made the right choice at that time for all the wrong reasons. I would make a different choice if I was in that position again. I know that now. What I am trying to say is that your grandmother was an adult with more experience of the world and more opportunities than I. She was like a second mother to me but when I displeased her she showed me how little she thought of me.’
‘Did she scream at you when you told her?’ I ask.
‘I didn’t have the opportunity to tell her. She asked me had I missed my time of the month and when I said yes, she knew.’
‘That must have been hard.’
My other mother gives me the type of smile I give Mum when she is minimising something Nancy has done. ‘ “Hard” is not the word I would use.’
‘What did my … your … what did he say to her about your condition?’
‘She called a meeting to shame me in front of the family, to tell them all what a dirty girl I was and how I had disgraced them and myself. When she asked me the boy’s name I … I thought your father was going to tell them. To claim me. But he did not.’ The expression on her face shows the hurt she must have felt then, still feels now. ‘He was too scared. She discovered it in her own way, in her own time.’
‘What did she say? Did she take it back once she found out it was her son?’
‘One thing you must know about the Zebilas – once their mind is made up, it is almost impossible to change it. Your grandmother decided that I was a dirty girl who had led her son astray – nothing has changed her mind about that in all these years.’
‘But you did end up married to him,’ I state.
‘Yes, I did. Because it was what your grandmother wanted.’
‘I don’t understand, sorry.’
‘Your father proposed to me and said once we were married and he had finished law school we would find a way to get you back. In the meantime, I had to let you go to people who could take care of you. Your grandmother …’ My other mother stares at her hands, at the unassuming gold band on the fourth finger of her left hand. She is wearing the family metal. ‘Your grandmother made it clear that he was right to offer me that. It was the right thing to do. And she would have to ask my father for my hand in marriage. To do that, she would have to tell them about what I had done.’
The shame would have killed them.
‘I see …’ I say. I do as well. What she is saying is: when you do what my grandmother wants she is fine, but when you deviate from her plan for you, she makes your life a misery.
‘I don’t think you do, Clemency. It was the right choice because it was ultimately right for you, but I made that choice out of fear for myself mainly. I should have put you first. I may have made the same decision at the time, but I did not realise back then that you must always, always put your children first, no matter what you are offered. And your grandmother, she wielded absolute power over me from that moment on. This is the first time since I signed those papers that I have felt free.’
My grandmother isn’t all that bad, I try to remind myself. I actually quite like her. But if what my other mother is hinting at is true then I have no real idea who my grandmother really is, nor what she is capable of. But then, do any of us know what we’re capable of when our lives are threatened with change?
‘I need to go now,’ I say to my other mother. ‘I have work to do.’ And I don’t emotionally know what to do with all that you have confessed.
‘Will I see you again soon?’ she asks.
Considering the conversation, I’m so surprised she has asked that I have to stop moving and replay the question in my mind and think about it before I answer. ‘Is that what you really want?’
She wants to see me, but unlike my grandmother there doesn’t seem to be anything obvious she wants from me except maybe to spend time with me. This whole time with her has been so confusing, muddled, full of confessions and regrets and certainties about the right thing being done, and I don’t know how to feel about my other mother right now.
‘I would like that very much,’ she says.
I nod. ‘OK, then, I’ll come back and see you again soon.’
She grins at me as I stand.
‘I’ll just go and say goodbye to—’ I point towards my grandmother’s room.
My birth mother replaces her grin with a tight-lipped smile and offers me a sharp nod. She’s probably hurt that I have heard what she has said but I am still choosing to engage with the woman who possibly pressurised her to give me up for adoption. I have to see her, though. I can’t explain to my other mother why, that I’ve started to bond with my grandmother, that I’ve been trying to stop her ending her life early, that I have promised to think about helping her to die. That there is all this stuff going on which means I couldn’t cut out my grandmother even if I tried.
My grandmother doesn’t answer when I knock on her door the first time. The last time I came here it took her a while to reply when I called out from the corridor. But even as I wait, the sound of the clock counting out time, I know she is not going to answer. The other side of the door seems too silent, too still. Each tick of the clock seems to resonate into the bedroom, and return a hollow sound.
I hear my heart in my chest. It echoes, too, into the room behind the door. Each beat takes longer to sound out, and when it does, it seems to be magnified. My knuckles rap loudly this time. The knock ricochets around the corridor and is loud enough to bring my other mother to the door of the kitchen.
‘What is the problem?’ she asks.
‘There’s no answer.’
Her eyes flick to the clock. ‘It’s not time for her sleep. She will need her medication soon.’
She is down the hall in a few strides, she knocks on the door but doesn’t wait for a reply before opening it. I wait on the threshold, not sure how much a part of this I will be.
‘Clemency,’ my mother says loudly but calmly. ‘Call an ambulance.’
It begins then, the nightmare that she said she didn’t want to happen. My grandmother wanted to look Death in the eye while she went, she didn’t want Death to sneak in and take her slowly and painfully, leaving her powerless and afraid. Or to take her in even more minuscule increments, by making her a prisoner in her own body. That nightmare is being set in motion.
41
Smitty
‘Would Madam care for some white wine or red wine with her Spaghetti alle vongole?’ With a flourish, Tyler whips the pale cream napkin that sits in a fan shape next to my fork and spoon, and lays it gently and expertly across my lap. With an equally elaborate flourish he indicates to the wine bottles in the middle of the table.
He has pushed most of the low coffee tables away and has moved a circular dining table into the middle of the darkened café. Along the counter there are small tea lights in crystal holders, whose flames come together like embers from the Olympic flame to create a gentle wall of light behind him. In the middle of the table stands a silver candlestick with three arms, holding long, red tapered candles. The entire scene is romantic and thoughtful, and I’m honoured.
Like the lights on the counter, a flame of excitement dances and flickers inside me because this is thrilling and new and, well, thrilling. I can’t think outside of those basic, almost teenager-like, terms otherwise the rest of the world where I am adult with adult problems and responsibilities will come gushing in like water into a cracked dam, and spoil it.
Time with Tyler is all about uncomplicated, new, exciting stuff. Time away from him is adult and scary and real. It has been two days since I had to call an ambulance to take my grandmother away and no one from my other ‘family’ has updated me on her condition. Not even a text to let me know if the worst has happened, if she is hanging on, if the
doctors are still working on her. I am clearly not part of them. That has been a stark, adult lesson to learn in the last two days. I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything without knowing what is going on. This has also changed everything: the decision might have been taken from my hands, which would be a relief. Or it might have become more pressing, I may need to speed up the deciding process because this is a signal that she doesn’t have much time before something happens and she is as helpless as she fears.
Adult stuff, adult fears and decisions, have no place in the teenagery world of being with Tyler. Being with him is all about hoping my hair looks nice, wondering if my dress is flattering enough, choosing the right wine to go with this pasta dish.
‘Vino bianco is the correct wine to have with vongole, I believe,’ I say to him.
‘Ahh, I see, a woman who is well travelled and well eaten,’ Tyler says. ‘Which could present a problem for me because you actually know what this is meant to taste like.’
‘I do, I’m sorry. It’s one of my favourites.’
‘Well, nothing ventured, no one impressed by the brilliance I have managed to cram into this dish.’
In front of me, on top of the cork place mat, Tyler places a large white bowl into which he has curled spaghetti, with small, black clams studding the creamy-white strands. It is seasoned with flecks of bright green parsley and tiny, almost transparent pieces of garlic. The scent of a decent wine, which will have infused itself into the food, wafts up to me from my plate as it had been doing from the kitchen. ‘You used good wine,’ I say.
‘Only the best for you, my dear – it was on offer for £2.98 in the local shop.’
‘Oh, poor wine,’ I reply, ‘so cheap they couldn’t even get away with charging the extra penny to make it ninety-nine.’ I turn my mouth downwards. ‘I feel sad for the pathetic bargain-bucket wine.’
Tyler’s smile is unexpectedly intimate and affectionate, the beam of someone who has been in love with the person they’re in front of for years. I avert my gaze to the silver fork I have picked up and am about to plunge into the stringy depths of my food.
‘You’re pretty silly, you know that?’ he says, an equal amount of affection in his tone. I stop my fork making contact with my food. Without looking directly at him I watch him unfold his napkin fan, lay it across his jeans-covered lap. ‘It was one of the first things I noticed about you. Not many people are silly in a charming way.’
I say nothing to him, instead I concentrate on finding a Zen state. On bringing calming breath into my body. On not getting up and walking out. This is not teenager-ish, this is adult and serious and not what being with Tyler is all about.
‘That was a compliment, in case you were wondering,’ he tries again.
‘Thank you,’ I mumble into my chest.
Seth and I have split up. It is over between us; we couldn’t be together any more. I am not cheating on him. I am not, I am not, I am not.
White wine glugs softly into my glass, and the lights from the candles flicker throughout the café. Outside is black but I know out there is the sea. If I strain, I’m sure I can hear it, shushing the sky, pouring calm over the pebbles.
‘Are you not having a good time?’ Tyler asks. ‘Is this a bit too much after we’ve only really talked over coffee?’
Brace yourself, I tell myself. Look up. He smiles at me, nervously.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m in a bit of a strange place, my head is a bit fried at the moment. Lots of other things going on.’ I open my mouth to start to explain. Then shut it again. Where would I even start with the tangled, knotted mess that is my life at the moment? I open my mouth again and: ‘But I’m having a great time. This is all amazing. Especially for someone who makes questionable coffee at the best of times,’ comes out.
‘Lady, you can insult my cooking and my taste in décor but never, ever insult my coffee.’
‘I wasn’t insulting your coffee, the coffee can’t help it, I was questioning your ability to make it.’
‘I am wounded,’ he says. ‘Especially after I imparted my expert knowledge, that is usually only handed down from barista to barista, to you.’
‘I’m sorry for wounding you,’ I say.
‘No, no, nothing short of loving my vongole will make up for it,’ he says.
I grin at him. I slip the fork into the waves of the spaghetti, twirl them into a ball on the end of my fork using my spoon. Tyler watches me slip the food between my lips and chew. ‘It’s divine,’ I say.
‘You got yourself out of trouble there,’ he states.
‘Phew!’ I can do this. Honestly I can.
‘How about you try to leave all that head-frying stuff to one side for the rest of tonight?’ Tyler says. He is suddenly serious, his dark, velvety eyes trained on me so I can’t look away even if I want to. ‘If it’s truly important, it’ll still be there to worry about in a couple of hours.’
He’s right. All of it: my grandmother, my other mother, Seth, Mum, Nancy, and all the ways they touch and influence my life will still be there in a couple of hours. If I set them to one side, I’ll be free to exist, to be a teenager, to even be an adult who has fun. I can almost taste the liberation of that.
The next bite of vongole tastes incredible now that I’ve been unhooked from the rest of my life.
‘I thought you said you’d done this before,’ Tyler states.
‘When, pray tell, did I say that?’ I reply.
‘I asked if you’d ever been roller-skating along the promenade and you said …’
‘I said nothing. I shook my head because I hadn’t ever been roller-skating along the promenade or anywhere else in fact.’
Tyler has lent me skates with white boots, red wheels and red ribbon laces. The rubber stopper at the front is red, too. So much cooler than Hillary Senton’s. When he produced them as my designated pair for the evening, I wondered if he probably took all his dates roller-skating and I would be wearing a dumped woman’s skates. But no, they had the label on and as soon as we’d checked to see if they fitted me, he removed and binned the label.
‘I suppose I should have asked if you’d been roller-skating anywhere, ever,’ Tyler states.
‘Yes, I think you should have.’ I am clinging on to the clammy sea wall that runs along the promenade outside his café. He’d laced me into the boots while we sat on this bench because locking up in roller skates would have been too difficult. Once the last lace was tied, I’d got up and had promptly fallen over. I had made progress in the last ten minutes in that I had now managed to go from the bench to the wall without falling over. I am currently working on letting go of the wall.
‘In my mind’s eye,’ Tyler says wistfully, ‘I saw us skating up and down here, undaunted by the lack of light, holding hands, showing off to each other, maybe one of us “accidentally” falling and bringing the other one down with us, landing in a happy heap and …’ His voice trails off.
‘Oh, no, don’t stop. You were just getting to the good part. You weren’t making me feel at all guilty for not having a clue how to do this. Not one little bit.’
‘Revenge for the coffee dig earlier.’ Tyler skates nearer. ‘Haven’t you ever been ice skating?’
‘Yes. I ended doing this that time, too. I’d completely forgotten how much I didn’t like that out-of-control feeling then, how anything can just go off in any direction it pleases and you can’t do a thing about it.’ My left leg, as if to prove my point, decides to slide away and I have to bring it back sharply while my fingers grope for purchase on the wall. This is actually worse than ice-skating. This is a different kind of powerlessness that I’m having to navigate.
Tyler stands in front of me. Slung across his body is the large black messenger bag containing our shoes and my bag. Despite the cool night, he’s wearing a white T-shirt so his arms are bare – I’m sure he’s wearing it to show off the sleek muscles of his upper body. (I don’t blame him, they’re pretty impressive arms and I’m surprised I’v
e managed to avoid running my fingers over them for so long.)
‘Take my hands,’ he says.
‘Yeah, I’m not going to do that.’
‘Trust me, do it one at a time. Just reach out and take my hand.’ Gingerly, carefully, I reach out for him and his hand is there, immediately, clamped around mine, holding me steady. My legs wobble, slip a little, but mostly I am fine, I am upright, I am not sprawled all over the promenade showing myself up. ‘Now, the other hand. You’ll be fine, trust me.’ That’s twice he’s asked me to trust him, twice he’s used the word as though trusting someone is the easiest thing in the world. That when you need to, all you do is close your eyes and believe and everything will be tied up in a happily ever after bow. Trust, blind trust, is easy to give when you’re young and naïve and have never been hurt, it’s even easy to give when you’ve met someone new when you’re not so young. But when you are older, when you have been hurt, when it seems every incidence of trust you’ve given to others has been betrayed in some way, you don’t become jaded, you become suspicious and mistrustful of every act of trust you’re asked to perform – even the most trivial ones. I don’t trust Tyler not to let me fall. But there’s also a part of me that needs to let go so I can prove that people always, always let you down if you trust them.
I push myself away from the wall slightly as I reach for his other hand and it is there. His hand, strong and sure, encircles mine and holds me safe and upright. ‘I told you,’ he says. His hands tighten around mine. ‘First thing, stop looking down,’ he tells me. Reluctantly I raise my head. Looking down lets me check what my feet are doing and it prevents me from … looking directly at him.
That Girl From Nowhere Page 26
