by C. L. Taylor
I stand on the doorstep openmouthed. And not just because Judy slammed the door in my face.
Sunday, October 14, 1990
James and I had our first argument this evening. He and the rest of the theater group popped by the bar, as they do every Sunday after rehearsals, and James took up his customary stool at the end. I said hello, got him a pint and a kiss, and got on with my job, just as I always do—having a bit of banter with Maggie and Jake, catching up on gossip with Kate, and taking the piss out of Steve—but I could sense that something wasn’t right. Whenever I looked across at James, instead of reading his script or his book, he was staring at me with a sour expression on his face. I shot him a smile then pulled a face. When that did nothing to crack his frown, I went over during a quiet spot to ask what was wrong.
“You know,” he said.
“Know what?”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you because you already know.”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be here asking!”
He shrugged like I was an idiot, and thoroughly pissed off, I went off to serve someone else.
The next time I turned around to look at James, he’d gone. I asked the others if he’d been in a bad mood during rehearsals. Far from it, they said. He’d been in fine form, practically bouncing across the stage.
“I think someone’s in love.” Maggie had winked.
I thought he was too; he’d been hugely affectionate this morning and had insisted on shagging me not once but twice before he’d let me get out of bed to have a shower. He’d even replied “soon” when I’d asked him when we were going to spend an evening in his place instead of mine.
So what had changed?
I couldn’t wait for kicking out time so I could put all the glasses in the dishwasher, wipe down the tables, and get home to ring James. He didn’t pick up for eight rings and then…
“Hello.” His voice was devoid of emotion.
“James, it’s Suzy.”
“Hello, Susan.”
That stung. He never called me by my full name.
“Why were you so off with me in the bar tonight?”
“You know.”
I fought to keep the hurt out of my voice. “Actually, no, I don’t. That’s why I’m ringing, because I’d like you to tell me.”
“If you don’t know, there’s no point discussing this.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Could you be more exasperating? James, please tell me why you were in such a bad mood or I’m going to put the phone down.”
“Go on then.”
“Fine.”
I slammed down the phone then stared at it, waiting for him to ring back. Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen. By twenty, I was fuming and snatched the receiver back up.
“Hello.” Same flat voice from the other end.
“What was it? Something I said? Something I did? Someone I talked to?” James sighed and I knew I’d hit the nail on the head. “Who? And if you say ‘you know’ one more time, I’ll never talk to you again.”
“Steve.”
“Steve Steve? Steve MacKensie?”
“Yes.”
“You were in a mood with me because I spoke to Steve MacKensie? That’s ridiculous. Why would you be jealous of him?”
“No one said I was jealous, Susan.”
“Then why—”
“You were flirting with him. I saw you, leaning across the bar so he could look down your top.”
“What?”
“Don’t try and deny it. Everyone saw, and I won’t allow the woman I love to make a laughingstock of me in front of my peers.”
“Allow? What is this, the nineteen thirties? And I wasn’t flirting with him; we were just bantering, like we always do.”
“Then why was his nose in your cleavage?”
“It—” I let out a deep sigh. “This is ridiculous, James. Absolutely ridiculous. We were in bed this morning, lying in each other’s arms after the most amazing sex ever, and I was telling you how much I love you and now you’re accusing me of…” I shook my head. “Forget it. If you think I’d jeopardize what we’ve got, what we had, to flirt with a second-rate Chevalier, then you’re more than a fool, you’re a…” My eyes filled with tears. “Forget it, James.”
I slammed down the phone.
Less than a second later, it rang. I let it ring nine times then picked it up. When I didn’t say anything, James sighed.
“I’m sorry, Suzy-Sue. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I’ve just had a lot on my plate recently. I’ve got a few…personal things…I’m working through at the moment, things I haven’t talked to you about.”
“Well, that’s no reason to take it out on me.”
“I know and I’m sorry. You don’t deserve that. You looked beautiful in the pub tonight. I couldn’t keep my eyes off you in that red top. Your cleavage looks amazing, but it made me angry—when I saw other people admiring you too—because they have no right to ogle you like you’re a cheap piece of meat and—”
“So you don’t want me to wear low-cut tops anymore? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes. No. No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m trying, clumsily, to say is that it was obvious to me that Steve was flirting with you because you looked gorgeous, your cleavage looked gorgeous, and that made me angry, that your physicality was all that he could see. I’m not just in love with the way you look. I’m in love with the woman inside.”
I said nothing. I was still trying to make sense of what he was trying to say. I think he was finding fault with Steve rather than me, so why did I feel bad, like I’d done something to encourage him by wearing the wrong thing or being overly friendly?
“Suzy?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Suzy?” James said again. “Please don’t be angry. Please don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you. I just don’t understand you sometimes.”
“Let me rectify that.”
“How?”
“Let me take you home. Let me show you where I live.”
Chapter
Eight
“They’re teenagers, Sue. What did you expect?”
“I know.” I dip a washcloth into the bowl of warm water next to the bed, then ring it out and dab it gently across Charlotte’s forehead. Three days have passed since I went to speak to Liam and Ella, and I’m still smarting from Judy’s parting remark.
“Show me a teenager who opens up to adults and I’ll introduce you to Santa,” Brian adds. “Honestly, Sue, would you have spilled your secrets to some middle-aged woman when you were in your teens? I know I wouldn’t.”
“No.” I meet Brian’s concerned gaze and shake my head. “I wouldn’t. I just thought they might open up to me because Charlotte…” I tail off. Neither of them showed the least interest in helping our daughter.
Brian shrugs. “I don’t know why you’re surprised, Sue. Kids fall in and out of love all the time and they switch their friends like they’re going out of fashion. Teenagers are fickle, darling. Surely you know that?”
“I do but…” I place the washcloth back in the bowl of water and pick up Charlotte’s hairbrush. “She’d been friends with Ella since primary school and they’ve had their spats but they always made up before.” I tease the brush through Charlotte’s long dark hair. “And as for Liam, she’d have done anything for him. She adored him. And I’m supposed to believe she dumped him because she’s a fickle teen? It doesn’t make sense.”
Brian turns another page of his newspaper then shuts it, folds it in two, and rests it on his lap.
“Sue…”
I continue brushing Charlotte’s hair, smoothing it down with my hands so the ends lie flat over her shoulders.
“Sue, look at me.”
“What?” I don’t look
up.
“You don’t think you’re getting a bit”—he pauses—“obsessed, do you?”
“Obsessed?”
“With Charlotte’s accident, acting like there’s some big conspiracy when the truth is…it was just an accident. A terrible, unpreventable accident. I understand how helpless and powerless you feel—I feel exactly the same way—but giving her friends the third degree isn’t going to make her magically wake up.”
“You don’t understand,” I start, then fall silent. I still haven’t told him what she wrote in her diary. I nearly told him about it a couple of days ago, but then he snuck out of bed at six o’clock in the morning. At first I thought he was in the toilet, but when he hadn’t reappeared after half an hour, I got up to look for him. He wasn’t anywhere in the house, and neither was Milly. It was the second time in as many years that he’d taken her out for a walk.
Something’s going on and there’s only one person I can talk to about it.
***
Mum’s sitting in her favorite place, by the window in the hard-backed armchair I covered with a lovely Laura Ashley print a few years ago. She doesn’t look up when I walk into the room.
“Hello, Mum.” I move a pile of towels and laundry onto the floor and perch on the edge of her single bed. There’s nowhere else to sit.
My mother doesn’t acknowledge me so I try a different tack. “Hello, Elsie. How are you today?”
This time she turns around. Her forehead creases with confusion. “Who are you?”
My heart sinks. She doesn’t recognize me. Mum has good days and bad days. Today, it seems, is not a good day.
“I’m Sue,” I say. “Your daughter. I bought you a present.”
I hand her a box of Turkish delight, her favorite. She takes the tin wordlessly but her eyes light up when she spots the familiar Eastern Princess illustration on the front.
“How are you?” I ask. I want to put a hand on her knee or make some kind of physical contact, but I don’t want to risk scaring her.
“A little bored,” she says, tracing a finger over the princess’s face. She looks up at me, a playful light shining in her pale blue eyes. “But at least I’m not dead.”
I love that the disease hasn’t totally stolen her sense of humor. Not yet anyway. There was a time when I thought it was gone for good—back when she was in a home in York and I lived so very far away in London and she went through the transition phase. Her grip on the present was slowly slipping away, but she was still aware enough to realize what was happening to her. I can still remember hearing the terror in her voice when we talked on the phone. The present was scary and unpredictable, the past a safe refuge, but she didn’t want to fully let go, to lose herself in the abyss of the disease. There would be no turning back then.
It’s easier for Mum now, in some ways. Both of her feet are firmly rooted in the past, and her trips to the present are so fleeting, she barely registers them. She rarely recognizes me, but when she does, it makes my day.
“Who did you say you were again?” Mum peers at me over her spectacles, the box of sweets clutched to her chest.
“I’m Sue.” I smile, desperate to reassure her, to assuage the fear in her eyes. “I’m your daughter.”
“No, you’re not.” A flash of anger crosses her face. “Why would you say that? Why would you be so cruel?”
“I’m sorry.” I need to talk quickly, to calm her down before she works herself up into a state. “I confused you with someone else. My mother looks very much like you.”
“Clever, is she?” Mum says. “This mum of yours? Pretty too, I don’t doubt.”
There it is again, the playful twinkle in her eye.
“The cleverest,” I say. “Not much gets past my mum. And as for pretty—well, she won Miss Butlins Bognor in 1952, so yes, she was stunning. A real beauty.”
Instead of being flattered, Mum looks cross. “I won Miss Butlins Bognor in 1952.”
“Of course you did.” I correct myself quickly. I forget that, while Mum often doesn’t know what day it is, she can recall events in the past with impressive accuracy. “My mother must have won in 1951.”
Mum says nothing. Instead she fumbles with the cellophane wrapping around the Turkish delight.
“Can I help?” I wait for a nod then pick away at the cellophane and open the box. Mum pops a dusty sweet into her mouth and closes her eyes in delight.
“I bought you a present,” I say, rummaging in my handbag and pulling out a CD. “It’s some music. I thought it might remind you of the tea dances you went to when you were younger.”
Mum shows no signs of either pleasure or displeasure; her eyes are still tightly closed. I cross the room and load the CD onto the small portable player I bought her last Christmas. I press play, wait for the sound of a double bass, overlaid with banjo and the crackling crooning of the male singer, to fill the air, then sit down again. A small smile plays on Mum’s lips and her slippered foot tap-tap-taps on the beige care-home carpet.
“I found a million-dollar baby,” she sings softly in her thin, warbling voice, “in a five-and-ten cent store.”
I sit silently beside her, holding my breath as her eyes flick open and she stares up into the corner of the room, her head nodding gently from side to side. It’s a magical moment, seeing her so quietly happy, wrapped in a precious memory. I wonder if she’s in Dad’s arms, her hand on his shoulder as he twirls her around the dance floor. He’s been dead for over thirty years now and I know she still misses him. For Mum, marriage and family were everything. She dedicated her life to Dad and me. She told me once that she’d been dreaming of having a family since she was a little girl.
I was the same and I was overjoyed when I fell pregnant with Charlotte. Brian and I had barely even started trying when I felt a strange pricking sensation just above my pubic bone and a pregnancy test confirmed what I already suspected. Brian was over the moon. He’d always wanted Oli to have a little brother or sister. My pregnancy only increased Brian’s protective side, and he wouldn’t let me lift a finger for nine months. I’d never felt so precious or so loved in my life. I was twenty-eight when Charlotte was born, and Brian and I loved being parents together so much we tried to conceive again, six months after she was born. But the luck we’d had the first time around deserted us, and as the months rolled into years, the doctors told us that there was no reason, other than our advancing age, why we shouldn’t conceive again. After countless late night chats and a lot of soul-searching, we decided that what would be would be. If we were only meant to be a family of four, then so be it. I ached to be pregnant again, to feel another child tumble-turning in my womb, but it wasn’t to be. Three miscarriages in two years saw to that.
Neither of us could bear the heartbreak of another failed pregnancy so, the day Charlotte turned five, we went to the home of a local golden retriever breeder, and out of a squirmy mass of soft, yellow fur, we chose Milly. Now our family really was complete.
“Hello, Susan.”
Mum says my name so softly I think I must have dreamed it, but no, there she is, sitting beside me, her pale blue eyes fixed on mine, the tin of Turkish delight on the table beside her, her hands loosely gathered in her lap.
I want to jump off the bed and wrap my arms around her. I want to talk a mile a minute, to fill her in on everything that’s going on in my life, to beg her for her advice, to listen intently, to feel small and safe and protected again. Instead I remain where I am and I take her hand. It’s not fair of me to inflict my fears and worries on her. Mum’s the one who needs to feel safe and protected now, not me.
“Hello, Mum.” I gently squeeze her hand. Her skin is paper thin and speckled with age spots. “How are you feeling today?”
“Old,” she says, shifting in her chair and changing position as though checking for aches, pains, clicks, and twinges. “How are Charlotte and that handsome hus
band of yours?”
Mum’s always had a soft spot for Brian. Her fondness for him was part of the reason I took him back after the affair.
“Brian’s fine,” I say brightly, reaching for a Turkish delight even though I’ve never really been a fan. “As busy as always. And Charlotte…”
I can’t tell her the truth. I don’t want to upset her and have her disappear on me again. What if she never comes back from the past? What if her last moment with me is a horrible one? I’d never be able to forgive myself.
“…Charlotte is studying hard for her exams.”
“Good girl.” Mum looks so proud. “She’s going to go far. What is it she wants to be now? Psychologist, was it?”
“Physiotherapist. She wants to work with premiership footballers. She says she admires their athleticism and dedication to the sport, but I think she just wants to touch their thighs.” I laugh. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted to be a flight attendant tomorrow and a marine biologist the day after that. Charlotte changes her mind about what she wants to be so often I can’t keep up.”
Mum chuckles. “You were exactly the same, Susan. I always thought you’d be a nurse, but Dad was convinced you were more cut out to be a seamstress.”
“You were both right,” I say. “In a way.”
I trained to be a teacher of English as a foreign language after university—it was the easiest way to fund my travels—but my heart was never really in it. I’d graduated in textiles and I really wanted to work in the theater as a costume designer, but jobs were worse than scarce. It was all about who you knew, and I knew no one. That’s how I ended up with the Abberley Theater Players.
“You were very good at both,” Mum says, startling me back into her small, magnolia-walled bedroom at Hays-Price Retirement Community Home. She pats her chair. “You should do this professionally, upholstering. People will pay good money for beautiful things.”
I smile. I abandoned my dreams of designing for the stage twenty years ago. I didn’t pick up a needle again until a tearful five-and-a-half-year-old Charlotte came home from school one day and asked why she was the only one in the nativity play who didn’t have a costume.
