I imagine Mama in my empty bedroom, hand pressed against the sheets of my bed, walls still covered in posters, concert tickets collected in an old ice cream container on the dresser. Would she have sat down and held the pillow against her? Cried for me to come home? Back to England? I never guessed I would go home too late. I didn’t plan it that way. Of course I expected we would see each other again, when I was ready and she had apologized for the things she had said. I just wasn’t ready for so long. And then.
Dearest Mama,
They say the truth will set you free. Do you believe it? Perhaps it is time to see.
I know it won’t bring you back.
Your loving daughter,
Grace
* * *
So it should be told—how I found out about Mama.
Pete and I came back from our two-person wedding in Bali. We were tanned and happy, still kissing one another every chance we got. The ends of my hair were split from salt and sun, as red and dry as autumn leaves. I was so delighted to be married I kept turning my ring round and round on my finger. I could make a new family now, I thought. London felt oceans, worlds, universes away, and I liked it that way. My past was too complicated to deal with, Mama too heavy a burden to carry, and the future seemed so sweet and full of love. I was making breakfast and Pete was in the living room watching television, calling out “I love you” in the ad breaks, when the phone rang. I took my time answering it. There was a delay and a buzz, and then a woman’s voice came through.
“Grace Raven?”
I thought of my new married name, Miller, and cradled the phone under my ear while I reached for the toaster.
“Yes.”
“Oh, it is you! I thought I heard an English accent, but it’s so hard to tell. Lovey, you are a hard woman to track down.”
English accent. Northern. I put the hot toast on a plate and paused, still.
“Sorry, who is it that’s calling?”
“I had a real battle to find you, let me tell you!”
Manchester accent. She took off like a roller coaster making the downhill turn.
“I’m Fran. Fran Adamson. I’m a nurse at St. Bernard’s. You know she said she had a daughter but I wasn’t sure, and then it took so long to find you. Births, deaths, and marriages are hopeless. More hopeless than hospital admin. Which can be hopeless.”
A nurse from Manchester, calling from a London hospital.
“Did I go to school with you, Fran?”
“Oh no, I doubt it.” She laughed. “I’m quite a bit older than you. And I know, ’cause I have your birth certificate right here in the file.”
“Pardon?”
“When you were born I was halfway through my O levels, dear.”
“Sorry?”
“You are Lillian’s daughter, aren’t you?”
That caught me off-guard. I swallowed, then answered “Yes.”
“I knew your mother. I was one of her nurses.”
I didn’t notice the past tense at first. It was a delayed reaction, like you see in the movies.
“Mama is sick?” I asked.
“Well, we don’t like to say it quite like that, but she did have an illness. A mental illness. I thought you would know all this …”
“Know what? Sorry, but I should know what?”
She carried on, “I’m calling because you’re next of kin. I have to notify you of her … passing.”
I tried to hold on to the phone with both hands as I slid down to the kitchen floor.
“Are you still there?” Fran went on, unrattled, as if she said those words every day. Mama had been in St. Bernard’s for months. Maybe eight months, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure as she didn’t have the admission records in front of her. The hospital records were “a right old mess” and, besides, she hadn’t been working there when Mama was admitted; she only heard about it later. They said she’d come in soaking wet, wearing a nightgown and a pair of black opaque tights. It had been raining that day when the police picked her up, and they took her to St. Bernard’s straightaway. A good thing, because sometimes they wind up in jail or aren’t picked up at all, and that is no good. They. Who was she talking about?
I almost forgot where I was, listening to Fran’s voice reciting these facts of my mother’s life which I knew nothing about. “Bipolar disorder” they call it now, she says, flying through descriptions of medications with names like long tails. The floor seemed to dissolve. Fran said Mama talked about me during her good days. Said she had a daughter living in Australia but that we hadn’t talked for a while. After she died Fran wondered if there truly was a daughter, but when she looked into it she found a birth certificate. The dentist I was registered with, Crystal, was a girl from school, and she had asked someone else where I was. I hadn’t had a wide circle of friends at school, so it took a while to find someone who had my phone number.
There was a short pause in the stream of speech. I straightened up against the cupboards; Fran’s voice became crisp.
“So, I needed to call you and tell you about your mother. You know, in the official capacity. Not that she had much, but there are a few things here. I don’t know if you want them.”
I remembered again about her dying. It was like I forgot and remembered in waves, coming and going from a shore.
“It … It was good of you to call.” The words were wooden.
“Such a drama finding you,” she reminded me. “People never moved in my day, now here you are in Australia. My son is in Boston of all places. We’re all spread around these days, aren’t we?”
I shook my head. Courage needed to be summoned from somewhere.
“Can you tell me about her … dying, Fran? I don’t understand.”
Fran paused for a moment. Or maybe it was the delay. I couldn’t tell. She sighed, sounding a little wistful even. She told me Mama had died about three months earlier. They had been pleased with her progress; she was having a good spell. She wasn’t so “wild,” that’s how Fran said it. They’d let her wander out a bit farther, do some shopping, that kind of thing. Fran said she liked getting a sweet something from the bakery or walking down to the park.
“One day she was out and hadn’t come home on time. Supposed to have been back a couple of hours earlier. Anyway, we get a call from John, the ambulance bloke. Lovely fella, John. Says one of ours has been hit by a car.”
My heart leapt into my throat. One of theirs. My mama.
Fran went on. Mama didn’t suffer. The lady who’d been driving was pretty cut up about it. Such a tragedy. Didn’t see Mama at all. Dusk, the turning light, it’s tricky, she said. I imagined it. Conjured visions of the light becoming gray, a little rain on the road, the sound of a dog yapping in the distance and tires straining around a corner. The smell of dusk, dewy and green.
Fran kept talking, but my attention waned. She said there was a tape among Mama’s personal items, a letter, a book and a sweater, that kind of thing; photos she kept in a wallet of a baby, a little girl, a teenager. You, I suppose, Fran said. She asked if I wanted these things of Mama’s. Perhaps that’s when Pete came in. He took one look at me and removed the phone from my hands.
“Shhh, I’m here. I’m here, love,” he said, his voice sounding far away.
* * *
I get out of bed and go into the study. I have to crouch down under the desk to retrieve the box. Inside, one envelope sits on top of a pile of others with my handwriting. This one is so light. I open it up carefully. I have read the letter so many times the paper is thin, the folds almost worn through. I touch the looping letters with my fingertip.
My Gracie girl,
I’m afraid your mama has got herself into a bit of strife again. No surprise there, I guess. I seem to have a certain special skill for getting myself into trouble, don’t I, my darling? But you don’t have to worry this time. I’m in a good place. They’re taking care of me here, and I feel much better already. It’s probably something I should have done a long time ago, come here myself, but w
hat’s done is done. C’est la vie, non?
I’ve been thinking of you, Gracie. Wondering what it is like over there. Are there really kangaroos on the streets? Someone told me that once. I think they were pulling my leg. The thought kind of tickled me, though. I imagine you dodging kangaroos and wombats on your way to the supermarket. Carrying back bags full of mangoes, pineapples, and bananas, a huge white sunhat on your head. All Jackie O! Watch you don’t burn over there, love. We Raven girls have sensitive skin, you know. Don’t be like all those skinny little things sunbathing till they’re orange, will you, Gracie?
Have you met any boys over there? Oh, I know, mamas aren’t supposed to ask. I should have given you a sister to talk to, I guess. To whisper under the covers with, sharing secrets and stories. We used to talk like that. Do you remember, love? Before you were old enough to be interested in boys. You told me everything. We talked till you fell asleep midsentence. You made me laugh. Right in the middle of Lizzie’s riding ribbons or Bill Ringwood bringing his trumpet to school or asking for a kitten for the hundredth time. And then snap, you’d be out like a light. You could snore pretty loud, my darling girl. Do you still snore? I guess you’d need a boy in your bed to tell you that. Ha! There I go again.
I bet you do have a love though. You never did know how beautiful you are. Men do notice, darling.
Well, maybe I’ll come and visit you and see for myself. Come play with you and the kangaroos. I know I said some spiteful things before you left, Gracie girl, but you forgive your old mama, don’t you? You know how I get sometimes. A little excited. I’m seeing a doctor here and he says it can happen. He’s helping me understand it all. Makes me feel a bit better about being such a crazy thing. But I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. I’ll get myself better and I’ll come find you and we’ll make things right again, won’t we, Gracie? I didn’t mean what I said.
I can’t wait to see you. I feel lopsided without you here. I want to hear all about your travels. Everyone you’ve met and everything you’ve eaten. Did I ever teach you how to make pavlova? It’s an Australian meringue cake. You would like it. I know how you like your sweets. Just like your mama. I could show you how to make it just right. High and fluffy and full of sugar.
Talk soon, baby girl,
Your Mama
x x x (and many more)
* * *
I slip the letter back into its envelope. I have never stopped feeling guilty that I could not reply to Mama’s letter. Her last letter.
When I couldn’t get pregnant and I couldn’t stop dreaming of her, thinking of her, that’s when I started writing notes back. Wishing that she would read them somehow. Maybe call out from the heavens, whisper replies in my dreams. I wanted her with me so badly it made me sore. Perhaps these letters would make up for all the letters that went unwritten before, when she needed me and I didn’t know it. A kind of confession, a way for us both to redeem ourselves from the past. Our private, one-sided conversation, secret even from Pete. Like so many things I had kept from him for so long. Feelings, memories, guilt, fears. Years of things unsaid.
Underneath Mama’s letter are all those I have written her. I have tied them with a purple ribbon, which I run my fingers over slowly. The silk is cool against my warm skin. She loved the color purple. The envelope slides under the tie to rest with the other notes.
I think of her baking, cheeks flushed with the heat of the oven. Her smile. I think of her dancing in Kensington Gardens, not wearing enough clothes, getting a chill. Her long legs. I remember her dragging me out of bed to see the stars and telling me their stories. Each one a banished prince or ballerina, a wish flung up to the dark heavens, the spark of Father Sky’s cigarette. I think of her flaming, curling hair and eyes that glittered too brightly. I think of her in bookshops, laughing too loudly in movie theaters, hugging me too tightly at the school gate. I think of my hand in hers. I think of her in Paris, giving me a macaron in a box as if its sweetness would make every single thing that wasn’t right perfect. I let the tears fall from me; falling, falling, falling. I sit with my memories watching the lights of the casinos shimmer against night clouds.
When the sunlight creeps through the bedroom window and illuminates the dust floating in the warm morning air, I am sitting at the end of our bed with the box in my hands. It is a new year and the past should be buried. I want to start over. I want to love again. This growing apart has not been all Pete’s fault; it is a two-person equation. I feel like I finally understand how family love is. Tangled, wounded, and wonderful. Imperfect. A forever love. I feel strangely light. Like the little macaron shells when they rise in the oven.
Pete groans as he sits up. His body has aged since we came back from that honeymoon, but it is still familiar. His skin smells the same. His eyes are the same green-gold I looked into when I said “I do” in Bali. He rubs his face, his mind no doubt still thick with dreams. He blinks at me staring at him from the bottom of the bed. I push the box of letters toward him across the waves and dips of duvet. He curls his fingers over the edge of it. Then I slowly start to explain. Years of things unsaid.
* * *
Later that week, with the sun barely awake, I stand at the back of Lillian’s. I have called Gigi to help, although I am not really sure why. Perhaps because I know her mother is hard to love too. Or perhaps because I want to see Faith’s sweet face when it is all over. Pete looks on as Gigi and I stand together. He stood next to me like this, above the tiny, public-issued gravestone in England. It was a paltry marker, nothing like Mama herself.
I had been so numb back then, looking at her grave, holding myself back from Pete and anyone else who might have wanted to get too close. I hadn’t been ready to let go of her then.
“Is this the right thing to do?” Gigi looks concerned.
I am now digging in the tiny patch of dirt behind the kitchen, and the soil is full of glass and metal. There is a silvery shriek each time the spade cuts through the soil to something unexpected. Pete lines up pieces of Tsingtao bottles, twisted forks, and the warped spokes of a bicycle. His face is grim, as if he too is worried about me.
“I need to do this.” My voice rises above the fresh earth and debris. They nod and carry on clearing whatever muck comes up next. Finally we have a hole almost one meter deep and half a meter wide, the shape of a squashed oval. Our three heads hang over it; Pete brushes dirt from his hands.
“What next?”
“Next we bring out the tape player,” I instruct.
The tape player was not easy to find, as antiquated in these parts as a gramophone. Gigi hurries inside and in a minute is knocking on the frame of the kitchen window.
“The cord only reaches this far.” She holds up the cassette player to illustrate. It just sits on the sill, threatening to topple backward.
“It’s okay; that’ll do.”
Gigi comes out and hovers uncertainly by the door. I stare down at the empty gash in the earth.
Pete takes the spade from my hands and passes me the plastic bag. He props the spade up against the kitchen wall and puts his square hand against my lower back. Go on, it seems to say. The words take a moment to come, and then they leap forth, rushing over each other.
“Dearest Mama …” I cough to clear an invisible stranglehold on my throat. “This is my last letter.”
I feel the weight of the bag in my hand and remember that Pete put it there.
“But today, we move on, you and I.”
Finally the tape player crackles into life, and Edith Piaf’s voice fills the small courtyard, brave and haunting. I hear Gigi breathe in quickly and realize the song is moving even to people who have never heard it before. That would have made Mama smile.
“I want you to know how sorry I am that I abandoned you. I didn’t understand. How you were, what you were. I was young—I needed my freedom. I didn’t know …” I pause. “I left you.”
Pete grabs hold of my hand and squeezes it.
“But, Mama, I never forg
ot you. This place is for you. It is named for you and it is everything you would have wanted. Full of beautiful things. Macarons, tea, love, and wonderful people. I want you always to have a place here no matter where you are now. So I am leaving some of your things here. An anchor for you to come back to.”
The singing on the tape grows louder and louder, and when I glance over at Gigi, she is crying quietly, tears falling onto the soil. I start to cry too.
“I loved you, Mama. I am your daughter and you will always be in me, with me, wherever I go. I forgive you for everything, and I hope you forgive me too.”
As the music, full of whirs and clicks and imperfections, pours from the kitchen window, I translate the lyrics in my mind, closing my eyes for a moment, letting everything go dark and disappear behind my eyelids while I find my breath. Then I open my eyes and lift the plastic bag to let Mama’s last few things fall into the earth. A book falls first, probably the last she ever read, the cover white and red. Poem for the Day. The pages are folded and ripped, and there’s a tea stain like a bruise down the spine. Her sweater falls next, followed by a string of purple beads. I remember her singing jazz and dancing around the house, those beads jumping up and around her face as she sprang and skipped. There is a hairbrush and one sock. It is gray. Thick enough to keep a London winter from nipping at her toes. Finally an envelope sails down onto the top of the small heap. “Gracie” is written in loopy letters. I fish it out and slip it into my pocket. It is all that is left, and I will keep it. That and Edith, still singing. I regret nothing, she warbles.
Finally, Pete passes me the shoe box and I untie the ribbon. My own letters flutter down into the hole, white as doves’ wings. Rest in peace, Mama.
Pete holds me while I cry. I wonder who I will be without the guilt and the sadness that have been weighing me down all these years. I miss her.
From somewhere outside of myself I feel that lightness again; it’s as if I am being pulled from above by a string. The wind rakes its fingers through my hair and, when I look up, the clouds have parted. There is a vein of blue sky painted between the buildings above us. Pete lifts his head and sees it too. Gigi goes back inside. We can hear her rewind the tape and then hit Play again. Miss Piaf lets rip. I imagine the English as subtitles, scrolling across that Renaissance painting kind of sky. Speaking of no regrets, leaving the past behind. Then the tiny seed of something quite new. Piaf doesn’t say what it is, but I know. Hope.
The Colour of Tea Page 27
