by Jemma Wayne
Her eyes locked with his. Green and grey, and the brown of her own. Still she was calm. He pushed once more, then with a final spasm collapsed on top of her, his face nestled between the curves of her bare chest, her arms around him. He exhaled. Her breath matched his. There was peace.
Fleetingly.
A moment later, Luke had released her and immediately they’d moved in simultaneous haste to opposite sides of the kitchen where they scrambled to collect the various layers they’d shed without premeditation, and stole glances at each other, in need of confirmation of their equal nakedness and equal compliance and equal sin. Emily didn’t feel sorry. She didn’t know what she felt, only that she felt, she was indifferent no longer. She pulled on her jeans and watched him, a new sensation brushing delicately across her face, one that she didn’t recognise but made her smile. And lifted her up. By the hairs on her arms. By the spine in her back. By the joints of her legs and the soles of her feet until she would have sworn that only air was beneath them. Outside her body, the room glowed.
Now Emily considered the sin they had committed together. It was certainly a sin. At least it was something that her brothers and the priests and her mother would have disapproved of. She had slept with a man she hardly knew, who was engaged to an unsuspecting girl she’d never met but knew about and Lynn said he loved, a man who was clearly in mourning because his mother was sick upstairs and dying. Emily considered it all. Still, she felt no guilt. She was, she supposed, still more sinned against than sinning. Shakespeare. Her father had read it to her once. It was a story about a king. About madness. Or freedom maybe. Suddenly she felt freedom bestowed upon her, without qualification and without her asking. She felt renewed. And all at once, bruised and half-dressed, she realised that she had survived.
And Emily laughed.
With her head thrown back.
Like the girls from the café by her flat who sat outside on their cigarette breaks.
Luke tucked his shirt back into his trousers and dabbed at his lip with a piece of kitchen tissue. He stared at Emily as she giggled against the cupboards, as though viewing her for the first time, and he shook his head, mumbling to himself over and over, “Like Bathsheba.”
“What?”
Luke looked away. He seemed not to want Emily to speak, for her to remain only a body. She didn’t press him. Lowering herself back down to the floor, she noticed that one of his shirt buttons had rolled underneath the fridge and she picked it up, offering it to him.
Luke took it quickly. The noise of a door opening above them had wafted down the stairs, then John’s footsteps creaked on the landing.
“I don’t know why - I’ve never - I’m engaged,” Luke rushed suddenly, his angular jaw offset and awkward. “I love her. She’ll never forgive me.” He was crying now, urgently swiping the revealing tears.
“I forgive you,” Emily said calmly, repeating the words that seemed to have started everything, and as the syllables slipped smoothly out of her mouth, the room glowed a little brighter, more like the colour of a rising Rwandan sun.
Emily slept at the foot of Lynn’s bed. There no longer seemed to be a need to hide her feelings from the boys, or from herself. They were simple: she did not want Lynn to die. Her whole body was brimming with the revelation that it was after all possible for her to care and love and feel again, and she would cling to Lynn for as long as she was able. Luke couldn’t look at her, but did not ask her to leave, and John seemed grateful for her presence in the room, as though her being there somehow tempered the reality, made different the memories that must have been flooding them. John was wearing the velvet waistcoat, Emily noticed. The older woman sighed through shallow breaths.
*************
Lynn felt peaceful. She didn’t open her eyes but sensed Emily at her feet, her sons at her side. Somehow, without looking, she could see them all. The yellow tulips on the windowsill stood proud, her favourite colour, their petals pushing further open with every hour that passed, opening, blossoming, dying. Unfulfilled stems. Unless of course, being there for her had always been their destiny.
****************
Okay, Okay, Okay.
Who was Lynn talking to? Did she know that Emily was there? Was she trying to reassure her? Or was she talking to God? Letting Him know that she was ready now, that she understood? Or maybe to her husband, whose picture, Emily noticed, Lynn had removed from the frame where it had always stood and was now lying upside down on the mattress where it had fallen from her weak hand.
Okay, Okay.
The words came less frequently and in raspier tones. Lynn’s eyes didn’t open. The skin around them looked bruised and tired. Her hands that had once been poised enough to paint sweeping, delicate strokes, were lifeless now, contorted strangely towards her chest. Emily reached for them and felt the iciness that had invaded Lynn’s bones. Gently, she rubbed the thin skin and squeezed the fragile palms between her own. Hot now. From the far corner of the room, John wept. Luke sat stoically on the other side of the bed. She noticed the buttons missing on his shirt. His hands twitched again and again and he moved forward and back, forward and back, in and out of the sphere of his mother, though still not touching her. Perhaps it was enough for him to feel her breath, to sense the rising and falling of her chest, to imagine her arms around him.
***********
It was almost Christmas morning. The boys would be up wanting their stockings soon. Philip would be exhausted from spending too long wrapping presents until late, but he would sit up in bed when the boys came running in with their load, and read the letter that Santa had left them written on paper he’d bought especially from an Indian shop so that it looked as though it could have come from the North Pole. A lie they told them, to make things prettier. Full of possibilities. She should get the turkey in the oven. It needed to go in before they left for church and she should peel the potatoes before she put on her good clothes. Perhaps though, she would sleep for just a few minutes more. Something was rustling at the bottom of her bed and the gentle fluttering lulled her into a state of unusual lethargy. The boys would be in soon anyway, bounding onto the bed, and they would wake her. There would still be time for the turkey, there would be time. She would sleep for just a few minutes more, another few minutes. Philip was next to her, his body was warm, it felt good to snuggle up against him. She lay her face onto his bare shoulder and wrapped her arms around his waist, breathing in his familiar scent.
************
Night fell. John and Luke took turns sleeping on the couch in the living room while the other maintained a vigil at their mother’s side. Neither one would go to their childhood beds. Emily rested her forehead gently on the duvet and held on.
At 5.30am, the doorbell woke her. Both boys were camped out again in their mother’s room, but didn’t stir. The tulips had turned slightly away from the window that was now swathed in darkness. Lynn was no longer breathing.
Emily stopped breathing. For a full minute, through the dark, she watched, and waited, then finally she opened her hands and let Lynn’s cold fingers slip from between them.
Downstairs, the doorbell rang again. Dreamlike, rising slowly and stretching her neck from where it had been hunched too long, Emily made her way down the staircase and acknowledged the swelling pain in her throat. Somehow, the sensation of it comforted her. She reached the hard, wood floor and padded across it quietly. On the edge of the doormat at the front of the house, Emily noticed another one of Luke’s shirt buttons. She stooped to pick it up before opening the door. Later, she would give it to Luke to repair. Such little things would go on, they always did. The world that morning was unbearably sad, but at least it finally felt like a reality, the pain was at least fresh, and the universe was rational again.
Then, there on the step in front of her, was a young, blonde-haired woman she realised immediately that she had seen before. Emily struggled to place her. Her blue eyes were still, but nervous, her skin was pale but for a spattering of fre
ckles. Her wispy hair flew about behind her. And then she knew. Emily had seen this woman not in the flesh, but on a canvas. The effect had been luminous. And the luminous woman said her name was Vera.
Chapter
Thirty-Two
Lynn lays lifeless, tiny amidst the vast swathes of linen on the bed, her terrifying, smothering presence suddenly as thin as the air. Vera feels her throat tightening.
Luke and John sleep on. Slumbering, Luke looks smaller than he seemed in Venice. The memory of leaving him there induces a pang of guilt and Vera thinks of the unheeded sobs from his side of the bathroom door. She doesn’t want to hear that sound again. She doesn’t want to be the one to wake him. She doesn’t want to steal those last remnants of a world in which he and John still have a mother. Hovering, Vera wishes the carer would return upstairs and be the one to disturb the frozen scene, but she’s already heard the front door close and footsteps on the pathway, and she supposes that the girl has done enough. It is after all she, Luke’s ‘fiancée’, who should be there.
Standing close to Luke’s chair, she waits for him to feel her presence beside him, and when eventually he stirs, he doesn’t catch sight of his stony-still mother but looks straight up, gratefully reaching for her hands. Vera’s heart wrenches. “You came,” Luke whispers as his eyes focus blearily on hers. “I’m sorry. For Venice, and for judging you, and for - I’ve betrayed you.”
“Luke,” she hushes.
What follows seems to wash upon them without direction. They do not go to church and not even Luke suggests it. For most of the morning they sit in the lounge in their usual places, only Lynn’s seat empty. Without agreeing, nobody switches on the television, or the radio, or the Christmas tree lights that John dragged out of the attic at Lynn’s request weeks earlier. Vera makes them cups of tea, wondering every now and then if she should try to baste the turkey, or peel some potatoes, or abandon all such tasks that might remind the boys of their mother. On the fridge, magnets swirl in familiar floral patterns. Vera cannot quite place why, but more than anything that day, the sight of them is toppling.
Luke doesn’t cry. A bible rests on his lap and occasionally he caresses the spine or edges a finger between the pages as if to open it, but then resists, in concession Vera figures to his brother whose own tears flow freely and without ancient texts. John mops his eyes with the back of his sleeve and shakes his head over and over. It is not for her to direct, but Vera wishes that one of them would move across the room and hug the other. When they don’t, she brings them more cups of tea, and after a while they begin to look up for her exits and entrances, everything seeming to rest upon this, the sweet liquid a drug to soothe their pain and lull them into normality.
Although this seems to Vera to continue for eternity, at some point one of them must finally have spoken because by midday the coroner has been called and arrives. Lynn’s body – wrapped in a white sheet that does little to disguise her tiny frame – is carried downstairs by her two silent sons and into the waiting vehicle. Afterwards, they stand uncomfortably next to each other in the entrance hall. John’s head is lowered, the back of his neck flushed raw red. Neither one moves. Luke breathes deeply and lets out two sharp bursts of air. Still they do not touch, but finally Luke draws breath again and this time manages to speak, his words reaching John as a carefully wrapped gift.
“You made her happy,” he says, slowly. John lifts his head. “She always said that. Especially after Dad died. And even after you moved out. I was so jealous of you being able to make her laugh so effortlessly.”
For a second, John pauses, carrying the words carefully to his heart and fingering the edge of his velvet waistcoat. Then looking earnestly at Luke, he reciprocates.
“She told me you would never let any of us down.”
This time both men’s shoulders heave, and they raise their sleeves to wet faces.
Vera begins tidying. She carries dirty teacups and uneaten meals downstairs and washes them up in the sink, fastidious with the beautiful china. She clears the makeshift beds from the lounge and straightens the cushions. She surveys Lynn’s room and wonders whether or not it is too soon to strip the bed, open the windows to let out the lingering smell, and either wash or throw away the dirty laundry that Lynn will not use again. Such truths will of course need revealing, but perhaps it is too soon. Vera finds herself staring blankly towards the window, the sun outside mocking the sobriety of the day, and she feels winded, insufficient. Minutes pass, she imagines. It might be seconds, or hours. She doesn’t know what to say to Luke. It feels a sham to be strong for him, to be his support, his shoulder, when if he knew the truth of what she has done he would most likely cast her away. She is going to tell him. The truth is already in the wind. But when? Of course not now, so when? When? Before or after they marry? Before or after Charlie gets custody and moves to New York? Before or after she is arrested and jailed and finally accounts for her guilt? Before or after she decides whether to fight for Luke, or to fight for Charles. She knows she can only pick one. Vera catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror of Lynn’s dresser, hunched over, paused. Paused. Paused. She is so terrified of pausing again, of letting events colour her commitment to candour. And of losing faith. She straightens herself. The low winter light has crept into the room and now it bounces off Vera’s ring, filling the space with colour. She is reminded of the rainbow bestowed as a symbol of promise to Noah after the flood. And she stands straighter. Then, resolutely, without allowing another moment to pass, she moves with the laundry to the chest of drawers. She will hide the stained layers, but only for now.
The drawer she opens is overflowing. Scarves, tops, tights, underwear, all of Lynn’s garments together. Sadly, Vera begins to sort it, but as she makes room her fingers brush against something firm. She pulls it out. In her hands lays a heavy stack of papers tied with a single piece of string. ‘The last will and testament of Lynn Rebecca Hunter’, she reads on the first sheet of the pile. And then in smaller lettering beneath it: ‘To be executed by my son, Luke Hunter.’
Luke sits close to John with Vera opposite. He flicks through the papers and they can see at once the back pages filled with list upon list of the belongings for whom Lynn has designated an owner: the gramophone to John, the linen to her cousin Patricia who (she had noted in the margin) many years earlier helped her select the fabric, a small silver ornament shaped like an elephant to Emily.
“Let’s come back to that later,” Luke says, looking to John for a nod of consent. “There’s a letter from her on the front, to you and me John.”
Already tears are streaming down John’s cheeks again. He doesn’t bother to sniff, or wipe them away. Luke begins, softly.
Darlings, don’t mourn for me.
He looks up and Vera smiles encouragement.
Believe me when I tell you that I am a stubborn old mule and will only have gone when I was good and ready. I wanted only a say in the matter, and this is it: I want to be sure how you will remember me. As your mother I hope. As a woman who loved you both absolutely, who packed up your lunches, tended your scrapes, and picked lice out of your hair. As the woman who, for a time, knew you better than any other and knew the world through your eyes better than she did her own. Darlings, you are the life I chose, the life I would choose over and over, and this I want you to remember. My death however, is a different matter. Once, many years before either of you were born, I was going to be a historian. Did you know that? Did I ever tell you? I was going to be a writer of historical fiction, a creator of plot. Here is a plot:
There lived for many years over two very different centuries, a woman with three gifts: her Youth, her Love, and her Wealth. The first and second gifts were made in haste and bestowed greedily upon the same recipient, but there was never a better decision than this one that took moments and the heart alone to make. Because she gave them so freely, the man who locked them away gave her a gift of his own: Life. The woman was not aware that the man had sewn this gift within the cr
eases of her dress and for many decades she was oblivious to the joys and passions and tiny wonders that unfolded softly from it. In fact, she was oblivious to its existence at all, and when at last she noticed, the stitching around it old and frayed, the Life inside was all but gone. But still she had her Wealth. The woman looked around and wondered, since her time left was short, to whom she should offer this final gift. The man who had given her Life had also bequeathed her two sons and so her first thought was to leave it tidily with them. But then she realised that these sons were in fact what her Life comprised, and so they retained the joys and passions and tiny wonders she had not noticed, and had plenty of gifts of their own. There was however another. A girl. She was poor and from a far-off land, and possessed little. The only gift she had ever known was difficult to carry, and the name of it was long and burdensome: survival. This girl did not ask for help, or for a different gift, or even for the one she had, but the woman could see where her Wealth would be a true blessing, and she decided to leave it to her.
Luke glances up. They all remain silent. He turns the page and carries on.
There are lists that follow this my sons, and I hope I have been thorough, but here in essence is what it comes down to: Luke, I leave you your father’s watch so that you will always remember that time and order are only illusions, the heart is what is real. John, I leave you the house and hope it will give you the space to be who you truly are. The key to my art room is attached. The wrapped canvas inside it, should go to Vera. My money – my stocks, shares, the bank accounts – I leave them in equal parts to you, and to Emily. Please don’t argue about this, it is my death after all, and I shall do as I please.
