by Freya North
‘Whatever,’ Cat muttered. ‘I’m not hungry,’ she said, thinking fast that she could find if there was a flight from somewhere to take her to Boulder.
‘That’s totally irrelevant and you know it,’ Pip snapped.
‘But we don’t know her at all,’ Cat said, cross with Pip for her reaction.
‘What we do know is that she ran away with a cowboy from Denver when we were small,’ said Pip. ‘Here’s our chance to find out why.’
In their fantasies, over the years, they’d created an image of their mother that was far from flattering. They’d never quite given her form – a stereotypical warted wicked witch seemed too contrived – but they’d created the world in which she lived. Most damning of all, they’d given her a world with no style. With the cowboy-from-Denver situation always to the fore, they’d positioned their mother in a poor and tacky version of Dynasty. An ostentatious driveway in a boring flat land. A preposterous fountain flanked by disparate figures from antiquity, poorly copied and made from resin. Fake Corinthian columns and disproportionate pediments. White leather sofas. Reproduction furniture with ubiquitous claw-and-ball feet. Lots of gilt. Lots of guilt. Uniformed staff, who all secretly hated her, addressing her as ‘ma’am’. The cowboy himself, laughably repulsive in a rhinestone-encrusted ten-gallon hat; corpulent, porcine and with a gait dictated by gout.
But how reality can let a daydream down. For a start, they had to relocate their fantasy from a dull and nondescript landscape to America’s lush and hilly smallest state. Then, on entering Penny’s house, the girls were immediately shocked and humbled by the utter contrast to their fantasy. Their sense of control of the situation was compromised. Reality was staring them in the face and they had to swallow hard and meet it eye to eye. No stuffed bison heads. No rifles, crisscrossed, above vulgar stone-clad fireplaces. No white leather anywhere. No staff. Most poignantly: no cowboy. But how they could feel his presence, how noticeable this man was by his absence. The house was tidy and clean, the furniture simple with a slightly dated Scandinavian feel; but no amount of messiness or belongings could change the haunting feeling that this was a lonely house; a place, a space, essentially designed and designated for two.
‘Shall I show you around?’ Penny offered. The four of them had been gathered in the hallway for some time, taking silent interest in each other’s footwear whilst practising what to say. ‘We built this house in ’74.’
It was the same in every room; the house and its contents seemed to be putting on a brave smile, a bit of a show. Crisp linen, pretty curtains, handmade cushion covers and warmly worn rugs were easy on the eye in a futile bid to keep the solitary sadness from view. Everywhere appeared airy and light but a pervasive sense of melancholy cast metaphorical shadows which were long. Following behind Penny, Pip wondered whether this was their mother’s home or her purgatory. Fen thought of their childhood house at Farleymoor; the scamper and warmth there, the welcoming dishevelment, the flow of company; the ring of home. The last room Penny took them to was the sitting-room, with its picture windows presenting a painterly and flawless view to a nicely tended garden rolling gently down to a thatch of trees that swathed its way up to the skirts of the hills beyond.
‘Take a seat,’ Penny said. ‘Can I fix you a coffee? Something soft?’ and she hurried off to the kitchen to compose herself and gaze quietly out of the window at the hire car of her daughters who were currently making themselves comfortable just across the hallway.
Cat stared at the chair. It was truly monstrous, the clumpy wood lacquered until it looked plasticized, embalmed even. She couldn’t help but admit to herself that it was the sort of piece that Django would declare marvellous. She turned her attention to other features: the low table in burr oak laden with three neat piles of large-format coffee-table books; framed photographs on the mantel that would need to be seen up close; a large selection of board games piled on the lowest shelves either side of the fireplace; a chess set on an occasional table, its players standing to attention as if a game was imminent. Cat would have liked to peruse the photographs but a perverse desire to appear in Penny’s eyes not remotely interested in her life kept her sitting on the sofa, looking at the chair.
‘So,’ said Penny breezily as she came into the room with a tray, ‘here’s your juice. I mixed cranberry and apple. And some cookies.’
Everyone sipped awkwardly and nibbled self-consciously.
‘We were looking at the chair,’ Fen said at length. ‘It’s – unusual.’
Penny regarded it for a moment. ‘It’s revolting,’ she colluded, ‘but it was Bob’s most favourite possession. And though I found it easy enough to give all his clothes to the mission without so much as a sentimental sniff to his shirt collars – the chair, well, I just couldn’t do it. I had to keep it.’ They all looked at the chair, as if willing it to talk. ‘Try it,’ Penny said to Fen, ‘go ahead.’ Fen glanced at her sisters, then balanced her cookies on the rim of her glass and went over to sit down. ‘Well?’ Penny enquired.
‘It’s not designed for my shape,’ Fen said diplomatically.
‘I’m more of an Eames lounger girl,’ said Pip, when Penny gestured for her to try. Cat avoided eye contact.
‘My mother used to say every pot has its lid,’ Penny said, ‘so, perhaps every backside has its chair.’
Pip considered this. Then she thought about their maternal grandmother. ‘When did she die? Your mother?’ she asked.
‘When I was fourteen.’
‘Your father?’ Pip asked.
‘When I was very young.’
‘Do you have any siblings?’ Pip continued to probe.
‘No, I have not.’
‘Any other children?’ Fen asked.
‘No,’ said Penny, ‘I have not.’
‘Stepchildren?’ Pip asked.
‘Nope,’ Penny said, seemingly engrossed in massaging her cuticles, ‘none. That’s it. No family left.’
Pip thought to herself that if this was Hollywood, there’d be soaring violins and group hugs to accompany them proclaiming Hey! We’re your family! We never stopped loving you! Love means never having to say you’re sorry! Oh Mom, it feels like we’re home! But the thought held no attraction and she reminded herself that this was not a journey to reconciliation, it was a fact-finding mission.
‘I don’t know if I was the lid or the pot,’ Penny was saying, her thumb playing anxiously over her fingertips, ‘but whichever I was, Bob was certainly the other.’
‘We thought you lived in Denver,’ Cat said, speaking for the first time. ‘I lived in Denver for three years. We thought you lived with a cowboy.’
‘Bob?’ Penny looked incredulous. ‘A cowboy?’ She mused this over. ‘I mean, he looked the part, when I first met him, in his blue jeans and his boots and his buckle belts and boot-lace ties. And he was from Denver. But he wouldn’t know one end of a horse from the other. He never got close enough anyway, on account of his asthma.’
‘Oh,’ said Cat.
‘All these years you’ve been thinking I’ve been living with John Wayne on a ranch out west?’ Penny started to giggle. It was Fen’s giggle – Cat and Pip could detect it in an instant and they both glanced automatically from their mother to their sister; intrigued, disturbed. ‘Oh my!’ Penny continued. ‘Would he have loved that.’
‘Was it something to do with asthma?’ Pip asked. ‘How he died?’
‘No my dear, he had cancer,’ said Penny. The sisters looked at their laps and said sorry. And then they privately hoped that Penny wouldn’t ask after Django because they didn’t want to say the cancer word out loud. They hated saying the word. It was impossible to say it without a hush. And that seemed to dignify the dreadful disease. And anyway, his results weren’t in. They didn’t want to jinx Django.
Penny had crossed to the mantelpiece and selected a clutch of photographs. She passed them around. They studied the pictures, looked hard at Bob. He did not look anything like they’d imagined. The photos showed
a tall, slim man in sensible V-necked sweaters, with a tidy slate-grey beard, round spectacles, silver glinting hair neatly clipped short beneath a smooth, tanned pate. Smiling. Easy, open, attractive smile. In most pictures, his arm was warmly around Penny. He looked normal and nice and Pip was surprised by how easy it was to tell Penny so. Cat wanted to say that he looked nothing like Django but she didn’t. She felt slightly offended that there was no physical similarity at all. Instead, she focused on an old photo, from the seventies perhaps, in which Penny could well have been Pip, the same tilt of the head, the identical sparky smile.
‘If he wasn’t a cowboy,’ Fen said, ‘what did he do?’
‘We had a business,’ Penny said. ‘We were very good at it. Tubing.’
‘Tubing?’ Fen looked disappointed.
‘Yes,’ Penny confirmed, ‘plastic tubing. Bob Ericsson sure was the king of plastic tubes and components! Now would you look at the time – I’m going to fix our lunch.’
For the first time in their lives, Pip, Fen and Cat did not act like sisters; they did not huddle together to confab and support. They didn’t even look at each other. They sat in their own heavy spheres, with thoughts spiralling nearly out of control. It was like having nothing to cling on to after a lifetime of clutching at straws which, when looked down, had opened onto a fantasy world of imaginative exaggeration and convoluted details. All of which had been comforting in their negativity. Yet in the space of an hour, the McCabe sisters had had to let the vulgar cowboy go, and the revolting ranch and the obsequious staff and all the rhinestones with him. Plastic tubes now replaced their hollow straws. They had a face to put to a name and the face was friendly. And though they’d been staring at their mother, noting all the details of her face, computing all her mannerisms, what they could see most vividly was her sadness and loneliness. It was all a bit disconcerting. A great love had been lost, and it was this love which defined this woman – not them. It was clear they never had done. The bluntness of this hurt. But the fact that a great love had existed also gave the protagonists qualities that Pip, Fen, Cat and even Django had spent their lives denying them.
Penny had started to sing. They could hear her. They didn’t know the tune. But the sound broke their hermetic isolation from one another.
‘I’ve just realized – we’ve probably never asked Django much about her or her cowboy because our family folklore of “Your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver when you were small” had served as an answer in its own right,’ Pip said. ‘And I suppose we’ve always held her and the evil cowboy as somehow responsible for our father’s death – like they caused the heart failure.’
‘But there was never a cowboy,’ Fen said flatly, ‘there was just plastic tubing and now there’s just a lonely widow. Who’s currently cooking us lunch.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ said Cat and her voice was hoarse, ‘and I no longer want to be here.’
‘We’ll go after lunch,’ Pip said.
‘Yeah right,’ Cat muttered. ‘I want to go now. Not after lunch.’
‘Well we can’t,’ Pip whispered in a hiss.
‘Why the fuck not?’ Cat whispered back.
‘We can’t,’ Pip said.
‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!’ Cat objected. ‘You two bloody stay then – I’m not.’
‘Cat!’ Pip said.
‘Fucking hell, Pip,’ Cat said, ‘just because I can’t be as big as you or react in your controlled way.’
‘Calm down, for goodness’ sake,’ Fen said.
‘It’s hard enough dealing with what I do know,’ Cat said. ‘It’s like with Django – you two want to know all about the tests and the treatment and the prognosis. I don’t. OK?’
‘I know it’s difficult,’ Pip started.
‘Don’t patronize me,’ Cat said, pointing her finger. ‘I’m going for a walk. I’ll wait by the car. Or I’ll go back to the hotel. I don’t know. But I’m not staying here.’
And she left.
And when Penny heard the front door shut, she wondered if they’d all gone. She felt almost jubilant to find that two of her three wanted to sit at her table and eat lunch with her.
‘Cat’s just—’ Pip paused.
‘It’s OK, honey,’ Penny said, ‘you don’t have to explain for her.’
But Pip felt duty-bound to. ‘It’s sort of hit her the hardest, perhaps,’ Pip said, ‘on account of her not knowing about – well, her father.’
Fen was suddenly terrified Penny would say, Ah and how is Django? and she didn’t want her to so she changed the subject urgently. ‘Gorgeous bread!’ she exclaimed.
‘Bob’s favourite,’ Penny revealed and from then on she talked only about Bob. She said she’d map out Bob’s route to the Falls for them. She asked how the guest house was – because Bob had always said that the town lacked a really good hotel.
‘He’d say, “If you build it, they will come”,’ she reminisced.
It was more exhausting than tedious – Pip felt obliged to nod sympathetically at every mention of this woman’s late husband. They’d long finished eating but they remained at the table, which Bob had shipped over from Denmark where he used to do a lot of business, so Penny said.
‘Well, we ought to make tracks,’ Fen said after a coded glance to Pip.
‘Perhaps we’ll take Bob’s route to the Falls tomorrow,’ Pip said, standing, ‘if we decide not to take an earlier flight home.’ She gave Fen a little smile.
‘When you due to fly?’ Penny asked.
‘Monday evening at the moment,’ Fen sighed.
‘The red-eye? You know, Bob swore by Melatonin to combat jet lag. Wait – I’m sure I still have some.’ Penny disappeared upstairs, leaving Pip and Fen to stare at each other and shrug.
‘Thank you for coming,’ Penny said, giving Pip a pot of pills. ‘It’s nice for me to talk about Bob. Feels like I can honour his memory by recalling the minutiae – like I’m bringing him back to life by describing him to folk who never met him.’ She paused, consumed by some deeply private thought. ‘Too bad you never met him.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Pip heard herself say, edging across the hallway towards the door.
‘Thank you,’ Penny said, opening the door and shivering a little though it was a warm soft breeze which trickled in.
Fen stopped at the threshold. ‘How old was he?’ she asked. ‘And had he been ill for very long?’
‘He was seventy,’ Penny said, ‘and he’d been ill five months.’
‘Five months!’ Fen exclaimed. ‘That’s terrible.’ She thought of Django and felt panic.
LOVE AT LONG DISTANCE
‘Marjorie? It’s Dr York’s wife – it’s Cat. I’m sorry for phoning reverse-charges. I’m in a phone box and I want to speak to my husband.’ She began to cry. ‘I want to speak to Ben.’
‘My dear, he’s consulting at the moment. The Saturday evening clinic is very hectic.’
‘But I’m phoning long-distance.’
‘Are you all right? Is everything OK? Is this an emergency?’
Cat cried silently while Marjorie said Hullo? Hullo? down the phone.
‘How long will Ben be? How long will Dr York be – do you think?’
‘Is it an emergency, dear? I can call through if it’s an emergency.’
Cat thought about this. And she thought about her husband, with some rugby player’s prize tendon in his hands. ‘It’s not an emergency,’ she had to sadly admit, ‘I’m just lonely. I miss him.’
‘Can I take a number for you?’
‘This is a pay phone,’ Cat said, ‘in Vermont. I can’t remember the stupid place I’m staying.’
‘And when are you coming back?’ Marjorie asked in her best soothing voice.
‘We fly Monday night.’
‘That’s lovely and soon,’ Marjorie enthused.
‘But I miss him now,’ Cat stammered, crying again. ‘Is he almost finished? Do you think?’
‘I’m afraid not,’
said Marjorie. ‘All these sportsmen with their strains and pains from today’s games. Why don’t I send him a nice message for you – like that other time.’
Cat brightened a little.
‘I could say, “Dr York, your wife says absence is making her heart grow fonder,” or something along those lines.’
Cat thought about it. ‘Will you tell him I called, Marjorie? Tell him I miss him. Tell him I love him. Tell him it’s rubbish here. But tell him I’m fine. Tell him I can’t wait to see him.’
‘I’ve written it down,’ said Marjorie, ‘word for word.’
‘And tell him that for me, family means him,’ Cat said. ‘Tell him I love him.’
When she stepped away from the hood of the pay phone and turned to consult her whereabouts on the edge of town, Cat saw that the hire car with her sisters in the front seats had pulled up and was waiting. As she regarded them, tears still wet on her face, Pip wound down the driver’s window.
‘Hullo my pretty girl,’ she said in a commendable Bill Sykes voice. ‘Want to come and see my kittens and puppies?’
Cat was at once helpless not to giggle.
‘Get in the car goddammit!’ Fen leant across Pip, drawling in a deep American accent, as if they were about to start a cops-and-robbers chase. ‘Get in the goddam car goddammit.’
So Cat got in the car, drying her eyes on the way.
For there is no friend like a sister,
in calm or stormy weather,
to cheer one on the tedious way,
to fetch one if one goes astray,
to lift one if one totters down,
to strengthen whilst one stands.
NO-BRAINER
Bob’s route was certainly scenic and the view from the Falls was postcard wonderful the next morning. Fen stood with her eyes closed, her hands clasped behind her head, breathing deeply, the air feeling thinner, finer, than down in town. Cat murmured that Ben would love it.
Pip thought to herself how Tom would too. ‘They look like Hornby model railway hills,’ she said, gazing at the spread of tree-clotted hills, ‘like great big sponges dipped in green poster paint.’ Her voice faltered.
