The Reinvention of Martha Ross

by Charlene Allcott

  ‘I’m here, Mum,’ I say – well, croak. ‘Hey, baby,’ I say to Moses. He scrunches up his fists and waves them in the air in excitement. I kiss him on the cheek and he makes a smacking sound in return. I can feel my mother’s eyes on me.

  ‘Good night?’ she says.

  ‘Not exactly,’ I say, walking to the sink to get a glass of water. I lean against the counter to drink it; the cool liquid feels amazing in my mouth but seems unsure of itself in my stomach. Moses reaches out to me and I pull him from the high chair.

  ‘Eskimo kiss,’ I say, and he rubs his nose on mine, smearing crushed fruit on me in the process. His smile takes the edge off my hangover. If a man ever looked at me the way he does, it’d be game over.

  ‘What will you do today?’ I say, manoeuvring him so that I am holding him under each armpit. Moses wriggles in anticipation. ‘Will you go up?’ I say, lifting him in the air. He shrieks and kicks his legs. ‘Will you go down?’ I let my arms fall and Moses’s eyes open wide. ‘Will you go round and round?’ I spin us both in a circle and Moses giggles throatily. Upon completing it I regret the sudden movement and I sit down on one of the kitchen chairs with Moses on my knee.

  ‘Don’t excite him, he’s due a nap,’ says Mum, taking my son into her arms. ‘I take it you had a bit to drink then?’ I don’t answer and avoid her enquiring eye. ‘Do you think this is an acceptable reaction to your marriage ending?’

  I don’t say anything because this is a rhetorical question. Almost all my mother’s questions are rhetorical because for them not to be she would have to consider the possibility that someone knows more than her. Mum shakes her head almost imperceptibly; obviously not imperceptibly because then it wouldn’t have the required effect of making me feel worthless. Mum then rubs at her right temple. This is her tell – this is the sign that she is about to deliver her killer blow. ‘No wonder he ended it, if this is what he has to deal with.’

  I love my mum – I mean, I would run into a burning building to save her life, even though I know she would scold me for not waiting for the fire service. I love my mum, but I don’t like her. I don’t dislike her because she is judgemental, and I don’t dislike her because (particularly since the onset of menopause) she is unnecessarily spiteful; I dislike her because I will never become the daughter she wants me to be.

  It started with ballet. Mum enrolled me when I was seven. I was many things as a child – spirited, inquisitive and uncontrollably talkative – but graceful I was not. I was curved where I should have been straight and stiff in places where the other girls bent easily. I did the work, though. I had a cassette tape that I would play on my Sony Walkman, practising the steps for hours at a time in our garage. On the day of my first recital I was so full of hope that I could be the type of little girl a mother would be proud of. I was faultless during the performance; around halfway through the butterflies escaped from my stomach and for a minute and a half I really believed I was a dancer.

  After the show I waited backstage for my parents, watching as other children flew into the embrace of their mothers, waiting patiently for my turn. When Mum appeared, tears spontaneously came to my eyes. She stopped short of me; she had a look on her face I had seen many times before, one that seemed to say, ‘Is this really my child?’

  ‘Why did you keep picking your knickers out of your bum like that?’ she asked, and I feel like I have been picking my knickers out of my bum ever since. I want to tell her this. I want to tell her that all I have ever wanted is her love; all I have ever needed is for her to tell me just once that everything will be OK.

  I’m not sure I convey this when I say, ‘Fuck you, Mum.’ I leave my mother sitting with her mouth open and head towards my bedroom. On the way I stick my head into the living room. My father is sitting on the armchair, to which I’m starting to wonder if he’s surgically attached.

  ‘You all right, love?’ he asks, his gaze not shifting from the golf on the TV. His long, thin legs are stretched out in front of him and his hands rest on the small belly he has cultivated since his retirement.

  ‘No, Dad. I’m pretty crap actually,’ I say. He looks at me then, his hazel eyes full of questions that I know he will never ask me.

  ‘I know, love,’ he says, ‘I know.’

  I go to my room, which is no longer really my room but a spare room. My pale pink walls have been replaced with a hotel room grey. The bed is the same though, an antique piece with a wrought-iron headboard – Mum had insisted I would want it when I moved into a home of my own, but I didn’t. Alexander favoured a more minimalist look; he was obsessed with Scandinavian chic.

  From the bed, you can see into several of the upstairs windows of the houses across the quiet, tree-lined street, but the only one that ever concerned me was the house on the right-hand corner. That room, in that house, was the bedroom of Joseph Henchy, and Joseph Henchy was my first ever love. People often say that young people don’t understand love, but I don’t agree. Free of responsibilities, they have nothing to think about but love; I had whole weekends at a time when all I had to do was conjugate a few French verbs and be in love.

  Joseph and I started out as buddies – well, young children aren’t really friends; they just kind of occupy the same space and time – but Joe was a kind lad and, although I was a couple of years younger than him, he would often invite me to be one of the victims in whatever massacre he was re-enacting for the afternoon. Things changed abruptly when he went to secondary school. I guess he was too distracted to notice me, or maybe his growing independence allowed him to expand his social circle beyond our leafy avenue. Whatever the case, he was always friendly and polite, but he never again included me in his war games or brought me out a glass of Ribena and a slightly soggy rich tea biscuit. I imagine hormones played some part but it was at the moment of his withdrawal that I recognized the depths of my affection for him. On this bed I would watch the house for hours; I started to understand his patterns. He would arrive home from school at four, except for Thursdays when he would be given a lift home by someone at around seven. On Saturday mornings he left early, wearing shorts, and returned home late, later and later as the years went on. On Sundays I might catch several glimpses of him; he would nip to the sweet shop on the main road or sit on the front step and chat to his mother as she weeded the front garden.

  Once I had entered secondary school myself, I grew braver. We were not at the same school, but I ensured that he would see me in my uniform and perhaps once again view us as equals. There are only so many excuses to find for loitering around in the front garden of a family home and after a couple of years of casual waves and unmet gazes, I thought that perhaps I should make a move. One Sunday I waited until he stepped outside and then bolted into the street.

  ‘Are you going to the shop?’ I called. ‘Me too.’ Joseph smiled and paused to let me catch up to him. ‘Long time, no see,’ I said, super casual like. ‘What you up to?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Joseph.

  ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’ I asked, looking at my shoes whilst trying to suppress the hope in my tone.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You know Claire Baycock?’ I did. Everybody did. She lived in the flats next to the park; from what I knew of her she was a rebellious redhead with a big fringe and an even bigger mouth.

  I had one question: ‘Why?’ An abbreviation of the full question, why her and not me?

  Joseph looked to the sky before saying, ‘She’s got big tits and a fit body.’ It was so reasonable and so true that I couldn’t really fault him.

  ‘I forgot my money,’ I said, and ran back to the safety of my bedroom, from where I continued my adoration until he left home at eighteen. I thought unrequited love was the saddest thing I would ever have to go through and I was right but I didn’t yet know how right. Unrequited love when you have been promised absolutely nothing is painful, but unrequited love from someone who has promised you the world is a slow death.

  I fish the list from my handbag. It’s
crumpled and smeared with something a little greasy but, even now I’m sober, it still makes a lot of sense. If I had kept it in mind I would not have ended up hungover and humiliated in Hove this morning; if I had written it earlier, I might not have a failed marriage. One thing is for sure: I can’t rely on my own improvisation. I need a blueprint. I don’t know how Joseph would have measured up to this list; I was so uninterested in details back then. All I wanted was to feel something; I had so much passion to give and no one and nothing to give it to.

  I saw Joseph a few years ago, in a restaurant in London. Alexander and I had been to the theatre and Joseph was in the Pizza Express that we had stopped in for a quick bite. It took a few moments for him to connect me to the child he once knew but when he did he broke into a smile so genuine, I almost forgave him for the years of torment. He was eating with a woman I assumed to be his wife. He asked after my parents and talked animatedly about the crust of his pepperoni pizza. He spoke with such enthusiasm about his uninspired dish that I suddenly felt very sad.

  When I was young, I would play incredibly maudlin indie music as I watched Joe from the window. Sometimes I would write embarrassingly overwrought love songs, which I imagined I might develop when I ‘made it’. My CD player and discs are still stashed in a cupboard and so I plug it in and put on Radiohead. The haunting opening bars of ‘Creep’ take me to a familiar, lonely place. I turn to watch myself in the full-length mirror as I duet with Thom Yorke. I imagine Rupert seeing my album in a supermarket and trying to convince his companion that he once slept with me in a squat on the south coast. I see Broad Shoulders blend into the crowd at my intimate East London gig; I feel the band behind me and I open my arms to allow space for my chest to expand and the sound to flow from the bottom of my lungs. I see more and more faces in the crowd; it’s full of all the boys and men that have ever let me down and all the girls with big tits and fit bodies and every teacher that has poked holes through my dreams and every cab driver that’s driven past me in the rain and my mum and my mum’s stuck-up friends and in the centre, at the very front, is Alexander. When I sing the final lines, I’m singing just to him and he’s seeing me, really seeing me, as if for the first time.

  My mother bangs on the ceiling with a broom just as she did twenty years ago. I turn off the music. I crawl under the lavender-scented duvet, in the clothes I have been wearing for a day and a night. I have the sense that I want to cry but I can’t. I am completely empty.

  The sleep I have is dense and dreamless. When I wake it is dark and I’m disorientated for a few moments. My father is knocking on my door. I know it’s him because the rapping is so tentative. I sit up in bed and shout, ‘Yeah, Dad!’ He opens the door a few inches and seems to slip in the room through the gap.

  ‘Your phone’s been making little noises,’ he says. I must have left it in the kitchen. He hands it to me like it’s a bird with a broken wing. ‘Do you think you could come and sort it out with your mother?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say.

  ‘Moses has been asking after you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. My head still throbs but now I think it’s from guilt. From what I understand every working parent feels as though they’re on an eternal quest for balance; I can say conclusively that sambuca doesn’t help. I sit up and try to look as if I’m ready to engage with the world. ‘I’ll be down soon,’ I say. My father nods his head and retreats. I redo my ponytail so my curls look a little less chaotic and decide I’ll make us all smoothies. Moses loves them and it might help replenish some nutrients for me. I’m about to get out of bed when I see an unfamiliar notification on my phone. It’s from Linger and reads, ‘You have a match!’ I have a very broken memory of swiping wildly in the cab on the way to the club, the girls cackling gleefully and the driver watching us apprehensively in his rear-view mirror. For a few moments, I think about deleting my account and all the potential for heartbreak it holds within, but curiosity gets the better of me. I open the app; it takes a few seconds for my match’s face to appear but it’s worth the wait. He has such an easy smile; it’s like he’s not just smiling at me but sharing something between us too. He’s looking straight at the camera and his eyes are a truly dreamy shade of blue. His hair is mostly cropped out of the photo but from what I can see it’s the perfect shade of strawberry blond. It’s electrifying, it’s mystifying; it’s him. Below the picture is a message.

  Undeterred83: I’m sorry. I haven’t used this before and I can’t think of anything to say but I had to contact you because I was so intrigued by your profile.

  It’s not clever or funny but that makes it better because it’s real. He’s real. The man of my dreams, and on my list, may have been within ten miles, all this time. I don’t reply right away because I want to savour the feeling, a jittery light-headedness I have not experienced in many years. It’s a complicated mix of thrill and comfort wrapped in a soft, warm blanket of expectation.

  6

  ALTHOUGH I SPEND Saturday doing my best impression of a pious daughter – being on hand to facilitate channel changes and offering weak teas hourly – the atmosphere between my mother and me remains slightly frosty. To avoid the chill and try to re-establish an image of responsibility, I offer to do an extra shift at the call centre on Sunday. I’ve never worked a weekend before – I’ve always reserved this time for poorly playing happy families – but I’m pleasantly surprised by how relaxed the atmosphere in the office is. Generally, there’s a constant stream of people to pretend you have an interest in interacting with; today my whole bank of desks is empty apart from Greg and a girl called Tashi, a part-time worker also studying for a degree at the local university.

  ‘Hello, stranger,’ says Greg as I sit down.

  ‘I saw you on Friday,’ I say.

  ‘Feels like longer, buddy,’ he says. ‘What you doing here on a Sunday?’

  ‘I need the money,’ I say. It’s not until I say it that I realize it’s true. I am officially a statistic: a poor, single mother in a dead-end job.

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ says Greg, ‘but it’s a nice surprise.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask. ‘Isn’t there some sort of Disney On Ice you should be seeing?’ Greg is always emailing me discount vouchers to tedious-sounding children’s events. After each one he tells me how much his girls enjoyed it and asks me what I ended up doing with my weekend; I always lie and say I was visiting friends as opposed to watching Come Dine with Me reruns.

  ‘I work weekends when I don’t have the girls,’ he says. His words are like a glass of ice-cold water in my face. This hadn’t occurred to me, that Alexander and I will need to split our time with Moses. It is heartbreaking and also exhilarating.

  Bob is in the office too. When he sees me, he throws me a quizzical look and waves his hand around in front of his crotch. I give him a thumbs up in return. Greg looks at me with concern.

  ‘Don’t,’ I say firmly. Tashi eyes me over the partition between us.

  ‘I’m feeling there’s a lot of stuck energy within you,’ she says.

  ‘It’s probably the dodgy breakfast burrito I had,’ I say.

  ‘No,’ she says brightly. ‘You have this kind of cloud over you. I’m going to this retreat in a couple of weeks – it’s an aura-cleansing camp, based on this wonderful meditation practice developed by my guru. I’ll send you the details.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ I say.

  ‘It’s run on donations and I’ll drive, it won’t cost you anything. Just think about it. Before I found Tula Shiki I was closed so tight, just like you.’ I look at Tashi with her beaded hair and I decide I’m happy being closed. I yawn.

  ‘I’m just tired,’ I say, and I am. I was up late messaging my match.

  Marthashotbod: Where did you go to school?

  Undeterred83: Everywhere really. We moved about a lot when I was a kid. Even spent some time in Singapore. I moved to Brighton three years ago and it might be the longest I’ve been anywhere.

  Marthashotbod: Tha
t’s so interesting. It must have been an exciting childhood.

  Undeterred83: It was actually kind of lonely a lot of the time. Always felt like I was on the outside looking in but it made me interested in people. What makes us different, what makes us the same.

  Marthashotbod: What does make us the same?

  Undeterred83: I think we’re all trying to work something out.

  Marthashotbod: What are you trying to work out?

  Undeterred83: At this moment, you.

  It was so wonderful to talk to someone clever and funny and curious, especially when most of that curiosity is about me. He asked me where I was born and what books I loved; he admitted that his favourite novel is Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, even though it’s a female coming-of-age book.

  Undeterred83: I sometimes tell my mates it’s Catcher in the Rye. I do like it but I think Holden just needs some therapy and a talking to.

  I felt that delicious wave of pleasure you experience when someone just gets you. When someone seems to reach in and access a private part of who you are. I am not alone in having overdeveloped feelings about fictional characters; I might never be alone again.

  ‘It helps with tiredness too,’ says Tashi. ‘It helps with everything.’ Bob walks past and gives an artificial cough so we all return to our calls.

  After work I stop by Leanne’s and give her a bouquet of lilies to apologize for being an even hotter mess than my usual level of hot messiness. ‘You shouldn’t have,’ she says as she accepts them on the doorstep, but we both know I needed to. ‘Come in,’ she says. ‘We should talk properly.’