by Lisa Swallow
I don’t have any pictures of my mother, only the suppressed memories of her long, curly brown hair and a vague recollection of her face. Besides that, nothing. She wasn’t a hugging mum, but at least she didn’t hit me around like the guy she walked away with.
The middle-aged nurse in the hospice recognises me straightaway, of course, but doesn’t make a deal out of it and leads me along a carpeted hallway. The yellow furnishings and watercolour pictures dominating the building don’t hide the institutional smell of the place. Not as bad as a hospital, but uncomfortably reminiscent of rehab centres.
The nurse knocks on the door of a room at the end of a bright hallway and informs the woman inside that I’m here, before smiling encouragingly and leaving.
Fourteen years.
I step inside. This woman doesn’t have curly brown hair; hers is short. Cancer patient short. Her sallow skin and frail frame shock me. The woman from my memories doesn’t match the person sitting in the high backed armchair by the bed. She could be anybody. This isn’t my mum.
But she is. Her eyes are my mum’s; they must be because they look like mine, eyes brimming with tears she doesn’t deserve to shed. For a couple of minutes we stare at each other saying nothing. I stand in the open doorway, debating whether to turn and leave. Why the fuck didn’t I talk to someone about this rather than doing this alone? Bryn, Dylan… even Ruby.
I close the door behind and rest against it. “Hello.”
“Thank you for coming to see me,” she says and her voice tears at me. There’s a weakness that drags me back to the bad times; the days she was weakened by the men; the days, they injured her.
I close my eyes and inhale. When I open them, she’s still there. My mum, broken as she always was but this time by something killing her, rather than by someone.
“How have you been?” she asks.
“Don’t you read the papers?” I reply a little too harshly.
“I don’t believe everything I read, Jeremy.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not Jeremy.”
Mum looks at her hands. They age her, the skin drawn across pronounced veins like an old woman’s would be. Mum’s mid-forties and the illness has pushed her looks into old age. “I know. Sorry.”
To her, yes. I’m her Jeremy who had to become Jem to forget him. I pull up the plastic and metal chair near the drawers containing a vase of white and pink flowers, and sit. Shit, I should’ve bought flowers.
“I’d ask how you are, but it would be a stupid question,” I say.
“I’ve been better.”
“You’ve looked better.”
She rubs her head, pale fingers touching her short hair. “I have.”
We have nothing to talk about. Reminiscing about the past is out, and I’ve no interest in knowing what she’s been doing with her life.
Life. Mum told me she had weeks left, the cancer breaking her body more readily than anybody broke her in the past. As I look at her, Jeremy hurts for his mum the way he used to; but Jem has to stay strong against the threatening tide. Since she contacted me out of the blue and ripped me back in time, the bottle, drugs, and void have called more loudly than in a long time. If Ruby wasn’t in my life and house, I reckon I’d have slipped by now.
“I haven’t heard from you for years,” I say pointedly.
“You made it clear you didn’t want to see me about six years ago. I wasn’t going to be one of those relatives of famous people demanding money.”
“You needed money?”
“Everybody needs more money, Jem. After Paul left, things got harder.”
“Didn’t you find someone else? You always did.”
“No. I left him for a shelter; he hurt me badly. They helped me, and then I helped them. Others.”
The woman who refused to help herself? “Oh.”
“I knew it was too late for us.”
“Was it? You didn’t try that hard to fix things.”
Mum rests back in her seat, her breathing laboured. “Would you have let me? Look how long it took you to arrange to see me. It’s almost a month since I asked you to visit.”
“Probably not,” I say quietly.
Mum reaches out to her bedside table and takes the plastic tumbler, hands shaking. She sips; swallowing as if it hurts her and my resolve wavers.
“But you’re here now.” She gives a weak smile. “I’m glad you came to see me before… well, before.”
Before she dies. Before time runs out and she can’t assuage her guilt. So she can fuck me up one last time.
But as I look at her, I know that’s not her motive. I believe she thinks she’s doing this for me. For both of us.
“How long?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Weeks.”
My throat thickens, why am I feeling? Where’s the wall gone? “Oh. Right. I’m not sure I can come again.”
“I understand. But you’ll stay and talk to me this afternoon?”
“Yeah.”
Mum tells me about the work she’s done, with domestic violence victims like herself. Helping families stay together. Did this help her? She abandoned her own family; how many others did she need to save before she felt she’d atoned her behaviour? I tell her things about Blue Phoenix, about the boys, but she never knew them. My mother was locked in her own world and her own pain; pain I had no comprehension of as a kid.
The conversation tires her, Mum’s breathing becomes shallower and speech slower. As usual, she doesn’t have the energy for me.
“I’m proud of you,” she tells me.
“Proud of me?” I ask hoarsely.
“Look at what you’ve achieved. Things could’ve ended so badly for you.”
I slump back in my seat. “And look at my fucked up life. This man you’re proud of, that you’ve watched over the last few years, is he happy?”
“You’ve come through that though. You’re sober now.”
“I’m still fucked up.” Because of you.
“I’m so sorry. I wish I could change what happened, but I can’t. Don’t let the past stop you being happy now. I’ve seen you with a new girl…did you say her name was Ruby?”
“Do you follow my life?” I interrupt. “You seem to know a lot.”
“Of course I do, and you looked happier recently. Are you happier?”
“I don’t want to talk about my life.”
“You’re right. It’s not my business.” She inhales a shaky breath, and I see her energy fading in front of me. “I wish you’d brought your guitar though.”
“What?”
“I listen to some of your music, not all of it; but you wrote some beautiful songs. My talented son.”
This is too much. “Your son? By blood, yeah but not by love.”
“Don’t, please.”
“I didn’t come here to tell you I forgive everything because I don’t. I live with the scars.”
“I’m not expecting you to. I wanted to see you; that’s all. I missed you.”
Fuck. I stand. Am I shaking too? “Don’t. You don’t have the right. You made your choices.”
“And now you make yours, Jem. Make the right ones.”
The sun shines through the open curtains. A bright autumn day fills the room with a humid warmth that isn’t helping my dizzying pain. “I think I need to go now.”
Mum sits forward and grips the chair arm with pale hands. She wants to stand and can’t. “Okay.”
The unrelenting ache grips and the words spill. “Mum, you left me. Not just once but again and again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
I hesitate. She’ll leave me one final time, and I’ll never see her again. Every other time Mum left, I couldn’t understand why she didn’t say goodbye. Often it was when I was at school, and I’d come home to find a note and some money.
When people leave, they should hug you with the promise they’ll see you again.
This is what she wants to do now, but there’s no promise
of a next time.
“Bye, Mum.”
The decision is made in the moment, without thought, without rationalisation. How can I leave and not hug her goodbye? I pull the chair over, sit, and hesitantly place my arms around my mum. She’s all bones and I’m frightened of hurting her. Mum hugs me back, hard; but not as hard as I think she’d like. Her back shakes, face buried into my t-shirt; and I fight, fight, fight against the tsunami of pain engulfing.
People say they love you. Then they leave you. Or they die. Sometimes both.
When I walk back to the car through the afternoon sun, away from the smell of the hospice cloying my senses, I clutch the emotions and drag them back inside. I’d forgotten how severe the suffering other people cause can be, how the need to obliterate this is what pushed me into a life of addiction.
This can’t happen again. I won’t fall into loving another person who’ll leave.
I can’t get any further into whatever is happening with Ruby because when she leaves, the fallout will send me back to my old life and this time it will kill me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ruby
I sit in the lounge of Jem’s quiet house watching TV in a failed attempt to distract myself from the growing unease that something’s going wrong between us.
Germany was three days ago and the tension between me and Jem intensifies daily. The last three months evaporate, content replaced by tension. I haven’t questioned Jem about the texts and today he’s home late; I’m scared about what’s coming.
Something is wrong; this Jem is the guy I first met. The one who doesn’t sleep; who once let me sleep in his arms, now pulls away and turns his back as soon as he thinks I’m asleep. He’s withdrawing and I’m being edged out.
Jem arrives a little after eight p.m., the dark rings around his eyes from lack of sleep more pronounced. He gives me a gruff greeting and disappears; returning five minutes later, then hovers in the corner of the room, near the TV.
“Can I talk to you?” he says.
“Sure.” I pick up the remote and click off the TV. “Are you okay? Has something happened?”
The nail chewing is odd for Jem and he stops, pushes his curls from his face, and looks at me. “I’m just going to come straight out with this.”
“Okay.”
“You need to move out.”
He may as well have slapped me in the face, the shock and watering eyes come so readily. “Oh. Okay. Sure.”
“And I don’t think we should continue this…” He pauses. “This.”
Another slap. “Right.”
“Okay.” He tucks his hands beneath his arms. “Sorry.”
I’m not one of those girls, the ones who collapse in tears and beg to stay. Definitely not the sort to ask the guy to change his mind. They all realise eventually: I’m not worth it. “It’s a bit late to go now. Can I stay until tomorrow?”
Jem rubs his cheek. He looks confused. I guess he expected a stronger reaction. Right, like I’m about to show him how I really feel.
“I’m not going to kick you onto the street!”
“No, but you are going to kick me in the heart.”
Emotion shows through at last, the hidden distress in his eyes I want to ask about. What’s happening here?
“I thought I could do this, Ruby, but I can’t. I can’t give myself to you the way you want. This isn’t working.”
“Have you been rehearsing these lines? How about ‘it’s not you, it’s me’? I’ve heard that’s a fucking good one.”
Here she comes, if he’s rejected one Ruby, he’ll get the other. I knew something threatened our relationship; but for Jem to take what we have and smash it to pieces without any discussion is beyond what I imagined was coming.
“What’s happened, Jem? Talk to me.”
“I tried, but I can’t do this,” he continues.
“Define ‘this’. Monogamy?”
“What?”
“You’re fucking someone else.”
“For fuck’s sake, Ruby, is this about Kristie again?”
“No. Marie,” I blurt.
Jem’s stance changes, shoulders stiffening. “What?”
“Marie. I saw the messages.”
“Fuck!” He walks out of the room to the kitchen, slamming the door. My rapid-fire heart thumps in my ears as I scramble to catch up. I thought things were going wrong, but why this?
Jem returns, his face dark. “You read my phone messages?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did. I shouldn’t have.”
“Correct. If I let you into my life, it’s on my terms and they don’t include spying on me.”
“Wow, so you did me a fucking favour giving me some of your precious time?”
Jem’s tone softens, but the cold remains. What happened today that tripped the switch and reerected his force field? “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“No, you wouldn’t, because you have to feel something to fight. How long have you lied to me about how you feel?”
“I feel pissed off that you invaded my privacy, Ruby.”
“I feel like an idiot.” I grab my coat and phone. “I’ll leave you alone.”
“It’s late. You can’t go,” says Jem in alarm.
“What the fuck, Jem?”
“Wait until tomorrow. I don’t want to worry about you.”
“You fucking hypocrite! You don’t have to. If this is over, leave me the fuck alone!”
Jem shook up our world again and scattered the pieces. Do I grab at them and try to push everything back together? As I stand, trembling, Jem closes his eyes, blocking me out.
“I don’t understand, Jem,” I say hoarsely.
“No, neither do I.”
“Talk to me.”
Jem turns away. “I’m sorry.”
I wait. I don’t know what for, but he doesn’t speak again. I could touch Jem, try to get through to the truth, but I’m scared. No explanation from Jem is better than one from him containing words I can use against myself to rip apart my new self-belief. I know Jem lashes out when we fight, can say hurtful things, and I’ll use the words as weapons against myself if this happens. With calm from years of practice, from hiding the distress and keeping control, I walk away to pack a bag.
I play over and over in my mind what I might’ve done wrong. I backed off on being needy, or I thought I did. He has to be screwing someone else; otherwise, why would he drop what we had so easily?
Jem has gone when I leave the bedroom with my bag and I stand in the lounge of the place I began to call home, overwhelmed by the grief twisting around my insides, strangling the life from me. How can he do this?
I climb into the car as anger joins the hurt, at being treated by him in such a dismissive way. Jem knows my self-worth is practically non-existent in personal relationships so I challenge myself to accept this is nothing to do with me. This is Jem, the fucked up guy who can’t admit he feels.
Perhaps I should be thankful that, although he shattered my fragile heart into a multitude of pieces I won’t find again in a hurry, he gave me the strength to leave Dan and push Ruby Riot’s need for success. I can be who I want and achieve the dreams I never thought possible. In the future, I can take what I’ve learnt from this.
One day I’ll have a relationship with a normal man.
****
Jem
I’m doing the right thing.
Exhausted, I go to bed, wrap myself up in the sheets, and fight away memories of seeing Mum today. I wake in the night and put a hand out for Ruby, but she’s not there. Of course, because I fucked up. I pull across the pillow she slept on and bury my head into the cotton, inhaling the scent of her shampoo.
I’m doing the right thing.
Sleep eludes me and I pull myself out of bed, the process automatic. Get up. Get dressed. Treadmill. My guitar is propped against the drawers; the guitar Ruby likes to use on the days I persuade her to play to me. I should give her it, when she comes back to pick up the
rest of her gear.
A spike of regret shocks me; an ache filling the void, reminding me it’s not only my bed that’s empty. I blank any thoughts of Ruby, retreat to the numb world where I’m on my own and I’m safe.
I’m doing the right thing.
Keep telling yourself that, Jem.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ruby
A couple of days later, I’m settling into my new place, the boys’ sofa. I gave up my share house when I gave in to my feelings about Jem and moved in with him. Again, living and breathing Ruby Riot isn’t as fun as it should be and I set about looking for somewhere else to live. November isn’t the best time of year for doing this; most are already taken by students. Moving in with Jem and giving up my share house five minutes into a relationship with him wasn’t the smartest move.
Jax hasn’t said anything yet, but I knew what his first thought was when I arrived on his doorstep and told him about me and Jem. We’re booked to tour with Blue Phoenix in late January onwards; Steve gave us the green light. Will that still happen if Jem Jones’s ex-fuck is part of the package? Two months until we leave, I can be over him and we can behave like adults about this surely?
A few days after Jem ended us, Bryn calls out of the blue.
“Did something happen?” he asks abruptly. “I asked you to call me if you thought Jem needed help.”
I’m put out I should be expected to care about the man who fucked with my heart. “He finished our relationship and asked me to leave. I didn’t think I needed to tell you everything.”
“Why did he end things?”
“I don’t know. Ask him. I think he’s screwing around and is too scared of a real relationship.”
Bryn goes quiet. “Oh. Okay. Maybe that’s why I can’t get in touch with him.”
