by Matthew Crow
“Still the Weeping Wives Club, is it?” she said, putting the tray down on the coffee table and collecting the used tissues and candy wrappers that carpeted the floor beside where I lay curled on the sofa.
“We’re having a dark day,” Chris said, and threw a heart-shaped candy across the room so that it bounced off my head.
“Leave him alone,” said Mum, biting into a sandwich. “Are you two staying for tea, because I’m getting takeout?” she asked.
Fiona answered yes for both of them just as my phone began vibrating on the coffee table.
“Beaten!” Chris said, darting across and grabbing it before I had the chance.
I yelled at him, trying to grab the phone, but he kept jerking his arm and holding it behind his back.
“Are you going to cheer up now?” he asked, switching the phone from hand to hand, passing it behind my back and holding it above my head.
“YES!” I cried, trying frantically to steal it back.
“And concede that I am the single best brother in the history of the world ever?”
“YES!” I said, becoming more frantic as Chris shook the phone in my face, then held it behind his back.
“Now, describe my hair using at least six adjectives,” he said.
“Somehow I always knew it would come to this,” Fiona said, but I was too angry to respond.
I punched him in the arm and tried to tease the phone from his grasp but he wasn’t giving in.
“Mum . . . he’s inhibiting my recovery!” I whined.
“Give him his phone, for God’s sake, Chris. I can’t take another verse of ‘My Heart Will Go On.’”
Eventually he relented, handing my phone back to me.
“This isn’t over,” I muttered as my fingers stumbled over the keys, trying to open the text like it was a Christmas present I knew I was getting but urgently needed proof of.
When I finally managed to access my inbox I could feel the smile spread across my whole face.
“What does it say?” Fiona asked.
I didn’t answer. Just held up the phone to Mum, allowing her to read the three most beautiful words in the English language.
I’M BACK, BITCHES!
The next day I was feeling mercifully better and after a morning of intensive negotiations with Mum, and at least three unnecessary phone calls, she finally agreed to let me spend the afternoon at Amber’s house.
“I just want to make it crystal clear that I am not happy about this one bit,” Mum said in the car as we pulled onto Amber’s estate.
“You mentioned that,” I said dreamily, focusing my attention on each inch of the road, trying to absorb it faster and faster so that we’d arrive as soon as possible.
“Are you wrapped up?” Mum asked as we got out of the car.
“Yes. I’m fine. Just be nice.”
“Don’t push your luck,” she said as we knocked on the door.
Colette had made a tray of biscuits and the whole house was filled with balloons and streamers for Amber’s return.
“We had a little party last night. Nothing too extravagant,” she said when she answered the door and pulled Mum into another stealth hug.
“Hello, Francis,” she said, kissing my cheek. “Aren’t you looking well?”
The house was scorching. Mum had to take off almost everything she was wearing while she stayed for the good-behavior cup of tea that she had promised me she would. Amber later told me it was because Colette had taken to Bikram Yoga in an attempt to strengthen both body and mind. If you looked closely you could sometimes see small scars and scalds on her ankles when her skirt rode up above her socks. She told people they were from the time she had walked across hot coals at a women’s empowerment retreat. Really they were because she kept relaxing a little bit too much when she did “Corpse” and catching her feet on the three-bar fire.
“Are you sure you don’t mind having him?” Mum asked as I sheep-dogged her out of the front room toward the door.
“The more the merrier. There’s always room at the inn,” Colette said, and patted me on the shoulder.
“I don’t like leaving him, you know, not just yet.”
“I’m fine,” I said as Amber stretched her leg across the couch and dug her foot into my stomach, making stupid faces as she pressed harder and watched me wince.
“Just make sure you are. This is my landline, and my cell number in case the line’s busy,” Mum said, handing Colette a sheet of paper. “And he’s got his medicine and knows when to take it, but just make sure he does.”
“Of course. We’ll be all hands on deck, eh, troops?”
“It’s good to see you well, love,” Mum said to Amber, taking a small, wrapped present from her handbag and leaving it on the mantelpiece. “Just a little something in case you ever need it.”
“Well, isn’t that just adorable?” Colette said, swooning over the present, which looked average at best to me.
“Thanks, Julie. And thanks for letting Francis come—I know it’s a big deal,” Amber said as Mum came back into the room to kiss me good-bye once more.
“I’ll be back at five,” she said before finally making her way toward the open front door.
“Well,” Colette said, coming back into the front room after waving her off, “isn’t this cozy?”
“Haven’t you got some puttering to do, Mum?” Amber said eventually, and Colette took the bait.
“Of course. Don’t want old Mum cramping your style, do you? I’ll be in the kitchen. You just call if you need anything,” she said, tucking two pillows behind Amber’s back. “And, Francis, our home is your home. You just make yourself comfortable.”
Once Colette was in the kitchen and the radio had been turned on, Amber sat up and leaned close to me, pulling my face toward her and kissing me hard.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, slumping back down.
“Thanks for having me,” I said back.
“No bother, mate,” she said, turning on the television. “Do you want a drink? Tea? Coffee?”
“Whatever’s easiest.”
“To be honest they’re both a hassle so you might as well have what you like.”
“Tea then, I suppose.”
“Tea it is,” she said, before yelling our orders through to Colette.
We watched The Apartment again and it was just as good as it had been the first time.
“Have you watched the other films I was telling you about?” Amber asked as we sprawled together on the couch.
“No. Chris made me watch Titanic yesterday.”
“What is wrong with that man?”
“I know. He’s the worst. Why do you only watch old films anyway? I mean, I like them, now you’ve told me to, but who made you like them?”
“Nobody made me like them. I just do. Dad used to put them on for us to watch after Sunday lunch.”
“Is that why you like them?” I asked, and Amber shrugged.
“I’d liked to have met your dad,” I said.
There was a long pause while she looked at me blankly. I was worried I had upset her. It was like seeing a child fall over and that pained second when you can’t work out if it’s going to cry or not.
“He’d have hated you,” she said eventually, and then smiled.
“Why?”
“He’d have bashed you with his Union newsletter and made a speech about the evils of private education. And he’d have told you to get a haircut.”
“I’m bald,” I said.
“I’m working on the Dad not being dead and us not having cancer tangent. Feel free to join me at any point.”
“I’m fine where I am.”
“Coward,” she said, kissing my cheek. “He’d have loved your mum, though. She might have won him around in the end.”
“She has he
r uses,” I said, going to get Amber the present from the mantelpiece. “Here, open it.”
Amber didn’t need telling twice. She unraveled the gift in one swift movement, like the opposite of origami, and it fell onto her lap.
“Why would you want that?” I asked, pointing at the manicure set. “She’s already given you the nail polish. I don’t think she’s taken enough time to get to know you,” I said apologetically. But Amber wasn’t listening. She went quiet and smiled, holding on to the small set like it was treasure.
“I love it,” she said, placing it carefully on the coffee table. “We should get everyone A-star Christmas presents this year,” she said after some thought. “You know, to say thanks and sorry and everything.”
“We should. But what?”
“Mum’s got a pottery wheel if you want to make people vases and stuff.”
I tried to explain that this wouldn’t cut the mustard with Mum. I once made her a birthday fruit bowl in Art and she used it as an ashtray. When I corrected her as to its purpose she said that tobacco was a plant, but I knew she was lying because she looked dead guilty and the next day she’d washed it out and draped a bunch of grapes across the top.
“Are you a man of means then, Frankie?”
I told her no, keeping my secret savings account to myself. Something told me Amber was not the Rainy Day kind of girl, and would be as easily inclined to frivolous spending as a lottery winner or similar.
“Then it looks like the A-Team is going to have to come up with a plan,” she said.
The day was freezing but sunny, which was my favorite kind of weather. We’d gone outside to get some air when the tropical fug of the house had gotten too much.
Even though Amber’s street was a bit scary and her whole house looked like it had been filled with the contents of a charity shop, Colette’s garden was the sort that would win prizes. It was in bloom even in wintertime. Flanking the lawn, right down to the greenhouse, were beds of flowers and shrubs, and Amber knew the name of each and every one, sometimes in Latin. She told me about the snowdrops that would blossom even through ice, about the witch hazel that stayed green no matter what the season. She showed me the hellebores—beautiful but poisonous—and led me into the greenhouse where rhubarb grew, kept in the dark so that it was forced to grow more quickly, stretching up in search of the light. She told me that if you listened carefully enough you could hear it grow.
I took the hint and held my ear against the black plastic sheet while I nodded, smiling, neither confirming nor denying the phenomenon, the way you do when a pregnant woman pushes your hand toward her stomach and tells you to feel the kick inside. Amber talked about the plants the way she never did about people. The way she never did about anything else, really. It was as if she truly cared but for once wasn’t scared to admit it, and didn’t have to ice every sentence with a snide comment so that you had no idea what she really meant.
“It’s lovely,” I told her as we walked back inside.
“It’s my favorite place in the world,” she said, taking her boots off at the kitchen door. “Do you want to see my bedroom?”
It felt strange being in Amber’s house. Being in her world. Hearing her talk about things she had done with her dad. About things her mum had taught her when she was a little girl, tottering around the garden with a watering can. It was sometimes hard to remember that she hadn’t burst fully formed, like her own little universe, out of some cosmic explosion. That she had ever been taught anything, ever been looked after and raised into what she had become. That she had ever had a beginning.
She was different, too, in her own surroundings. Sometimes softer. Sometimes quieter. Sometimes it reminded me of the first and only time I had seen her cry. When I was at her house I loved Amber more than I had ever loved her before.
I suppose being in her house reminded me that she was human.
Up in her room Amber put on the first song of an album we had discussed at length on the unit, and started toying with the jewelry and ornaments that covered the top of her chest of drawers. On the windowsill a stack of papers and mementos, along with the card I had given her, were tied up with brown string after she’d been made to take them off the wall above her bed on the unit.
“Did it take long?” I asked.
“No. Don’t know why they bothered making me anyway. I’ll be back in before the weekend.”
“Don’t say that.”
Amber shrugged and turned the music up.
“Did you like the garden?”
I told her I loved it, and that I loved hearing her talk about it even more.
When I said this she gave me a look she had never given me before. It was sort of the way Mum looks when she sees babies, flavored slightly with the way Chris looks when he stares at certain boys in the record shops he always drags me to on a Saturday morning.
“Are you cold?” Amber asked. I said no. Slowly she moved toward me and took off her top. She kissed me, then began to unbutton my duffle coat.
“What time’s your mum coming?”
“Five,” I said, as quickly as I could. If there was one thing I could have done without at that moment it was the thought of Mum’s whereabouts.
“I’m pleased you’re here,” Amber said, kissing me again, bending down as I sat back on the bed.
“I’m pleased you’re back,” I told her, trying my hardest not to tremble.
“I do love you, Francis,” she said, as she pressed herself closer to me. “I’m just not very good at saying it.”
We must have both nodded off, because when I woke up Amber looked as bleary-eyed as I felt.
She let out a small laugh and moved up to kiss me on the lips. I held my arm around her, pleased that everything seemed to have stayed the same.
“Do you feel different?” I asked. “You know, like anything’s changed, since . . . before?”
She laughed slightly and sat up in bed, reaching down to the floor to grab her sweater, which had crumpled itself into a heap inside the crotch of my jeans.
“I feel thirstier than I did before. Do you want a drink?”
I said yes just as the last song reached its final bars.
“Okay then, but get ready. Your mum’s going to be here soon.”
Just as she was about to stand up the door handle turned and then opened.
“CHRIST!” Amber said, grabbing her sweater across her chest and standing up, perhaps quicker than any human has ever moved before.
I spun around in the bed and pressed my face into the pillows, assuming that if the worst came to the worst I could smother myself to death before the inevitable backlash and court case.
Fortunately it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
“Oh,” Olivia said, quizzically.
“Jesus, I thought you were Mum,” I heard Amber say, though didn’t dare move from my pillowed den of shame.
“She’s in the kitchen practicing her singing.”
“Good. Don’t say anything, Olivia. I mean it.”
“I won’t,” she said. “Were you . . . experimenting?”
I groaned into the pillow, praying for the sweet release of death.
“Olivia, seriously, just leave it. I’ll talk to you later.”
“There are things you should bear in mind,” Olivia said. “I saw a documentary. You have to be careful. . . .”
“OL!” Amber yelled.
“I know, but are you aware of a film called Juno?” her sister asked.
At this Amber pulled a pillow from beneath my face, despite my best attempts to hold on for dear life, and threw it against the door.
“GET OUT!” she hissed.
“All right. But we can have that discussion later.”
“Yes,” Amber said, more calmly than before. “Yes, we can. But please, Ol, give us a minute.”
I heard the door click shut, and Amber breathed out a long sigh of relief.
“You can come out, stud,” she said eventually, stroking her hand up my back.
“I think I’ll probably just stay here for the next few years,” I said through the suffocating down of the pillows.
“If you think that’s bad, your mum’s just pulled onto the front drive,” she said, leaning over me to look out the window.
I was up and dressed before Mum had even had a chance to lock the car door.
“How was meeting the Fockers?” Chris asked when we got back to the house.
“It was the best day of my life,” I said eventually, picking at some leftover stew straight from the pan.
“Well, something’s put a smile on your face.”
I said nothing. I would tell him, eventually. I had no one else to confide in, and even if I did I’d want to tell my brother anyway. But at that stage I still wanted it to be a secret, something that only Amber and I knew, something that was special and ours.
Mum asked if I wanted something proper heated up but I declined. Really I just wanted to be alone. I took myself to bed and sent a text to Amber. For some reason I had been worried that she might no longer be sure about us.
Fortunately it wasn’t the case as within minutes Amber had texted me back, saying that she was having a similar early night, in what I assumed would be an attempt to have extra-long dreams about her beloved (me).
I put on the same CD we had listened to in her bedroom and closed my eyes.
That night sleep must have happened like a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, as when I opened my eyes after what felt like nothing but a brief nap it was morning. It was already ten by the time I woke and when I went downstairs Mum was already in the kitchen, her files and notes spread out on the table as she hammered away on her laptop like a piano virtuoso trying to bash the keys into her intended tune.
We ate breakfast in silence and I made sure to send Amber a text to let her know I was awake. She did not respond. For hours I cradled my phone like an injured pet, hoping that it would suddenly spark back to life with the familiar pip of a ring tone, or the oddly lifelike purr of its three brief vibrations each time a message came through.
