The Confession

by Jessie Burton

  Connie leaned against the doorframe. ‘She’s underweight. Look at her.’

  ‘You don’t just take a child away.’

  ‘You’re not a mother,’ said Connie.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’

  ‘No one knows what they’re doing.’

  ‘She’d have a better life elsewhere, Elise. You know it.’

  ‘You came all this way, to tell me that?’

  Connie came towards her. ‘This isn’t your life, El,’ she said gently. ‘It isn’t. You’ve no money. You won’t take it when it’s offered. You’ve no support. You’re not in a couple—’

  ‘You’re so old-fashioned,’ said Elise. ‘I thought you might want to help me, not throw money at me. You just came here to be sure that the damage had been done.’

  ‘I came here because I want to help. Because I care about you, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off.’

  ‘Where do you see yourself in five, ten, fifteen years’ time?’ said Connie. ‘Sleeping in another woman’s bedroom, serving burgers in a diner? Your life’s a broken record.’

  Elise felt a white rage run up the core of her body. ‘You think your books and your money make you a better person than me. But they don’t. No one’s going to remember you, Connie. You’re not that good. And anyway, no one can bear to stick around long enough. You’re an uppity bitch who thinks everyone’s beneath her. Thank god you didn’t have kids.’

  Connie turned away, walking quickly down Yolanda’s corridor to the front door, yanking it open. The hallway smell of stale urine wafted in.

  Elise ran after her, still clutching Rose. ‘Connie—’

  Connie whirled round, a mask of fury. She pointed a finger into Rose’s tiny face, nearly grazing the tip of her nose. ‘I feel sorry for you,’ she said to the child.

  Elise pushed Connie’s hand away and it hit the side of the doorframe. ‘Fuck you, Connie.’

  ‘Your mother barely raised you, Elise. And now you’re doing the same.’

  ‘Don’t talk about my mother.’

  ‘I know you say it was a tumour. But was it that she went too funny in the head to cope?’

  ‘She was sick, Connie. I know you think you’re superhuman, but it happens to people.’

  Connie’s eyes were cold. ‘I’ve often wondered if it might have been you who made her sick.’

  Elise felt her knees give way, and slowly, inexorably, still holding Rose, she folded to the floor. ‘Shut up,’ she whispered into the top of the baby’s head. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

  Connie seemed to sense that she’d regained the upper hand. Elise looked up. Connie’s cheeks were flushed, but she composed herself, staring down at Elise. ‘With a daughter like you, she probably died of shame. Patricia,’ she added, lacing the name of Elise’s mother with scorn.

  ‘Please, Connie. No more.’

  ‘And this one?’ said Connie, looking down at the top of Rose’s little head. ‘With a mother like yours, it’s hopeless, Rose. You’re cursed. It’s in your blood.’

  Connie turned away, disappearing down the stairwell, her heels hard on the concrete. Elise stayed where she was even after she heard the door to the street slam shut. She sat in the semi-darkness, holding Rose, who began to cry and cry, until Elise could bear that particular sound no more.

  2018

  48

  I stared at Connie across the kitchen table. The light from the day had gone. We’d been sitting there – how long? Two hours, maybe three? My sitting bones were numb. No words came to me, but my mind felt more alive than it had in years. I was reeling, trying to understand everything I’d just been told. I’d hoped I might find my mother in Connie’s book; I’d never dreamed I might hear of her like this, in such detail, from Connie herself.

  ‘I didn’t mean what I said,’ said Connie, interpreting my silence as disapproval. Her voice was tired and hoarse from talking so long. ‘I am ashamed of myself. Of course I didn’t mean it.’

  I still couldn’t think of anything to say. I’d never envisaged a story so intricate and intense, coiled within her, waiting to come out. My father had been married once before. My mother – vengeful, mercurial, loving and strange – had combed the shores of the Yucatán peninsula for pretty coral amongst the medusas. My mother, loving a woman, loving a man, maybe even loving me. But I knew it wasn’t over yet; Connie hadn’t got to her ending.

  She looked drained, older than her seventy-three years. I felt that perhaps we should stop, but I’d waited too long for this. I tried to imagine my dad telling me all this himself, and I couldn’t. I saw, now, how it had been beyond him. He’d never been able to find the words for his own story, let alone those that might help me tell mine. Connie, unsurprisingly, was the only one who could do that.

  Seeing that I was unable, or unwilling, to reassure her, Connie carried on. ‘It was such a cruel thing to say about her mother,’ she said. ‘So cruel. I knew I’d hit my target. But I was angry. If I could take those words back, I would. I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought I could control the world back then, I suppose. And I did, most of the time. It was my time. I thought I had everything under control—’ She stopped, and looked at me in horror. ‘It sounds terrible when you tell this story out loud. Perhaps that’s why I never did.’

  Connie put her shaking hands up to her face, her fingers clutching at her forehead as if to pluck the memory of that dingy Brooklyn corridor from out of it. ‘Please, Rose,’ she said. ‘Please, say something. Will you ever be able to forgive me?’

  ‘Forgive you?’

  She dropped her hands. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened after you left Yolanda’s apartment?’

  Connie looked distressed. ‘I went back to London the next morning.’

  ‘You didn’t go back and apologize?’

  Connie took a deep breath. ‘No. I supposed that Elise wouldn’t want me anywhere near her. And I didn’t want to be near her, either. I didn’t know what was going to unfold. If I had known, I would have stayed. But about a week later, I had a call from your father. Apparently, Yolanda got back from work that afternoon, and Elise had gone. She’d packed a bag, bathed you and put you in a fresh nappy, and left you in the cot with a necklace and a note.’

  ‘Dad never mentioned a necklace or a note.’

  ‘I’d bought her an initial necklace for her birthday.’

  ‘What?’ I said, my hands reaching for the L still hanging round my neck.

  ‘Yes,’ said Connie, eyeing it. We stared at each other, unable in the moment to excavate this creepy symmetry. ‘Elise left it behind. If you didn’t have it growing up, then maybe your father let Yolanda keep it.’

  I wondered if this was true. Perhaps my dad had hidden it somewhere, slipped into an envelope, put in a safe place in order one day to hand it over to me. No, I told myself. No more fantasies.

  ‘What did the note say?’ I asked.

  ‘Just one word. Sorry.’

  We sat for a long time in silence. I thought of my dad – young, overwhelmed, getting that call from Yolanda, coming to her apartment to find her in tears, me in the cot with this useless note that revealed nothing, and possibly never would. A necklace from Connie he was probably glad to see the back of. I closed my eyes as if to erase the image, but Yolanda’s living room – a place I would never see in real life – only came into more focus.

  ‘When my dad called you,’ I said, ‘did you tell him about your fight with her? What you’d said to her about putting me up for adoption, and the things about her mother? The cheque you left on the coffee table?’

  Connie closed her eyes and shifted in her seat. ‘I didn’t want to take the blame,’ she said. Heaving a huge sigh, she bowed her head.

  ‘My dad needed help—’

  Her head snapped up. ‘Matt had left my best friend’s life in tatters. He’d run off with my girlfriend. I didn’t want anything to do with him.’

  ‘Yes,
but—’

  ‘And I didn’t think Elise was really missing at that point! I thought she was just angry, playing games. She’d run away from me once before. When I spoke to him, he had the cheek to suggest that maybe I’d done something to her—’

  ‘But you had,’ I countered. ‘You caused damage when you were supposed to make things better.’

  ‘Why was it my job? Everyone was responsible for the mess we were in.’

  ‘He called you and asked for your help, because he knew how much you meant to my mum. What you just told me this afternoon has made it clear: she loved you. I think you loved her. You were supposed to help her, and instead you pushed her away.’ I felt tears coming, and I tried to swallow them down, remaining calm. ‘You don’t understand, Connie. I’ve grown up begging my dad to tell me what happened. But he didn’t know – and he didn’t know, because you didn’t tell him the truth.’

  ‘As soon as I found out she was missing, I said I’d come straight back to New York. I wanted to help, Rose. But your father told me I was half the problem. Even so, I did fly back to New York the day after he called me. Deborah came too.’

  ‘And did he know you were there?’

  Connie looked away. ‘I didn’t tell him.’

  ‘Connie—’

  ‘I went everywhere looking for her, making enquiries. I called my bank. She’d cashed the cheque. She’d done it the day of my visit, a branch in Brooklyn, near to Yolanda’s apartment. In those days, that money would have been more than enough for a train, a flight to anywhere, and then money for accommodation. It could have lasted her months.’

  A flight to anywhere. I put my head in my hands. We were coming to the close of this story, and I sensed the endings were not going to be neat. I pictured my mother with her small suitcase, a wad of hundreds in her coat pocket, staring up at the departures board – where? – JFK, Penn Station, preparing to pick a location as if it were a lucky dip? If there was one thing I had always known about my mother, it was that she was well-practised in the art of escape. What was it inside her that couldn’t stay still, unable to remain in one place long enough to nurture even the smallest root?

  ‘I had a breakthrough when I went down to Wall Street,’ said Connie, bringing me out of my thoughts. ‘I found Yolanda, at the diner they worked in. She thought I was from immigration. It took me hours to persuade her otherwise. She was so distressed. It was obvious that Elise had meant a great deal to her. She blamed herself.’ Connie looked at me. ‘She wanted to know very badly how you were,’ she said. ‘She cared about you. I thought the kindest thing to do was lie, so I said you were very well. I’d not seen you, of course.’

  ‘What happened to Yolanda?’

  Connie sighed. ‘When I met her, she was talking about going back to Puerto Rico. I don’t know if she did. I tried to track her down about five years later, when I was in New York again – just to see if she’d heard from Elise. But she didn’t work at that diner any more. I went to the apartment, but the building she’d lived in had been bought and jazzed up. So she was gone, too. I don’t know where.’

  ‘And after Yolanda, the trail goes dead?’

  ‘Yes. We never found Elise. I stayed in New York for a month and your mother didn’t show up. I went to the morgues, the police. They couldn’t find records of any Elise Morceau buying a flight at either of the New York airports. She stumped us.

  We never found Elise. I took a deep breath. ‘Constance. Don’t lie to me like you lied to Yolanda. Do you think my mother killed herself?’

  Connie stared at me. Then she stood up, walking slowly and painfully to the kitchen window, where she looked out into the darkness. ‘I can’t deny it’s a possibility,’ she said. ‘But no. I don’t think she did.’

  ‘But you can’t be sure.’

  ‘No one can be. But for me, it was the bag she packed. She’d thought about it – underwear, socks, shoes. Even taken Yolanda’s toothpaste. Your father clung to those details when he called me, and I did too. One thing we did agree on was that a suicidal person might not care about fresh breath.’ Connie sighed, as if acknowledging the flimsiness of such a hope. ‘And there was the fact she cashed the cheque, of course. And the way she held you, Rose, when I visited. She was always looking to you – kneeling on the floor by you, holding you. Whatever she was going through, she did love you.’

  ‘Don’t be idealistic, Connie,’ I said, despite the fact this was my greatest hope. ‘Don’t bait me with a happy ending. It didn’t stop her enough to stay with me.’

  ‘But I just know—’

  ‘You told her to give me up!’

  ‘She wasn’t well. Perhaps neither was I.’

  ‘I think you’re probably right about that. And it wasn’t your place to make that choice for her. Why didn’t you just persuade her to let my dad have me for a while?’

  Connie came back to the table and sat down. ‘I’m sorry. But in my opinion he wasn’t able to look after you either. He called me, for Christ’s sake. His sworn enemy. No one knew what to do.’

  ‘She might have got better. In time.’

  ‘If she’d had more support and expertise, yes. But she didn’t,’ said Connie. ‘Nowadays, I expect they’d call it post-natal depression. When I went to Yolanda’s bathroom, there was a bottle of lithium tablets on the basin. Lithium, Rose. Just give the woman some pills, hope for the best. Yes, perhaps I should have kept away, but at least I was trying to solve the situation.’ Connie looked at me with a pleading expression. ‘But for what it’s worth, Rose – I’ve never thought your mother killed herself. She left the pills behind, and ran away. It’s what she always did.’

  ‘You told her that was what she was going to do, Connie. You showed her you had no faith in her. So maybe she was just doing what she was told.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Rose. I am. But I didn’t force her to leave. Maybe in the end, she thought leaving was for the best.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘Fucking hell. I need a cup of tea.’

  I went to put the kettle on. It felt as if we’d been in the kitchen for a day, a night, and a lifetime.

  ‘You say that,’ said Connie. ‘But imagine the instability of life with her—’

  ‘Connie. Don’t,’ I said, my voice breaking despite my best efforts. ‘You don’t know what my life’s been like.’

  Connie was silent and the kettle slowly started to hiss with boiling water. I put my hands round it to warm them up, to feel something. ‘I’m never going to find her, am I?’ I said.

  Connie turned round slowly in her chair. ‘I don’t think you will. I don’t know where you’d even start.’

  ‘She’s always going to be a ghost,’ I said.

  Connie appeared to hesitate. ‘Forgive me for asking this. But what were you really looking for, Rose?’

  I reached for two mugs and dropped in a pair of teabags. ‘What do you mean? It’s quite simple. This is getting rather repetitive. I was looking for my mother.’

  ‘This was thirty-four years ago, Rose,’ said Connie. ‘The woman she was then is not the woman she’d be now.’ I was still by the kettle, and Connie stood up and came towards me. Her expression was timid. ‘Since you’ve come into my life – and I’m deeply glad that you did, as difficult as this is right now – I’ve begun to understand why you might be here.’

  ‘I’ve told you why I was here—’

  ‘Rose. I don’t think you have been really looking for her.’

  I stepped away. ‘I have.’

  Connie shook her head. ‘I think you’ve been looking for an idea. I think – you’ve been looking for yourself.’

  I clenched my jaw, willing myself not to cry, reaching for the kettle and pouring out the boiling water, watching the teabags bloat to the surface. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ I said. ‘You’ve no idea, Connie. Sometimes it feels that I’m always looking for her.’

  ‘I know, but—’

  ‘You don’t know. If there’s a knock at the door, t
here’s always a moment when I think to myself, Is it now? Is she back?’ My voice started to shake, and the tears I’d tried to hold so desperately now fell down my face. I broke down, unable to stop. ‘It’s never now. She’s never back.’

  Tentatively, Connie reached out and took me in her arms. With my face on her shoulder, I sobbed like a child.

  *

  A little afterwards, Connie excused herself and went to the bathroom. Exhausted, drained, I stared blankly through the kitchen window, thinking again about my dad. He’d always been with me. Every school play I was in, no matter how tiny the part. Every craft project. Holidays with him and my grandparents before they died, never leaving England because we couldn’t afford air fares or fancy places. Before I became a teenager and started pulling away, he’d always been there.

  I thought about how obsessed I’d been with my mother my whole life, and felt traitorous. I’d been so focused on the parent who’d never been there, I hadn’t appreciated enough the one who was.

  I placed the mugs of tea on the table as Connie returned quietly to the kitchen. She looked almost fearful, as if I wouldn’t want her near.

  ‘What happened to the painting Shara made of my mum?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I’d told her I’d take it. She quite possibly painted over it.’

  ‘Apt.’

  Connie gave a small smile, sliding back into her chair and drawing a mug towards her. ‘She married someone else in the end. They adopted three children. She’s still in California. A grandmother now. She’s like a big golden goddess out there. For her, it’s like it never really happened. Your father. Elise.’

  I felt something familiar inside me: the desire to close down in the face of other people’s resilience. I resisted it. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘That’s good for her.’

  ‘It is good. Good to know it can all be started over. Just not in the way you think. She deserved some happiness.’

  ‘She did.’ I took a sip of my tea and winced. I’d over-brewed it. ‘And – did you see Barbara Lowden again?’