The Perfect Mother

by Margaret Leroy

  These are the only people that I have ever drawn.

  I sit for a while and look at what I’ve done. I think of things. The closed door, the saucepans tied to the doorhandle that would rattle if you touched it. The smell of scorching dust on the flimsy electric fire. The woman in the flat next door who sat smoking on her sofa. I feel a trace of what I felt then: the pressure on my chest. But this is tolerable; I can bear it now. As though these thin, trapped children have begun to set me free.

  I tear the page out of the sketch pad and take it downstairs and stick it up in the kitchen. I want to see if I’ll like it in the morning.

  Richard comes home at ten. I need to talk about Dr McGuire, but I know this isn’t the time; his eyes are smudged with tiredness. He sits down heavily at the kitchen table. I get some ice from the freezer for his whisky, and he notices the picture. He looks at it for a moment, with a kind of concentration I find surprising.

  ‘I didn’t think you drew people.’

  ‘No, I don’t. Well, I never have before.’ The compulsion to be self-deprecating washes through me. ‘It’s just a little sketch I did—I wanted to try something new.’ And, when he says nothing, ‘What d’you think? Don’t you like it?’

  He nods, as though he’s giving some assent or recognition.

  ‘It’s good,’ he says. ‘In fact it’s very good. It’s very well drawn.’ He takes a long indulgent sip of whisky; the tension in him starts to ease away. ‘But to be honest, darling, it’s not my kind of thing. I liked the flowers better.’

  CHAPTER 14

  ‘How’s Daisy?’ says Nicky.

  She’s ordered a plate of mussels and chips to celebrate the end of her detox diet. The shells of the mussels are shiny and black like her clothes.

  ‘Much the same. We’re seeing Helmut on Friday.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be able to help,’ she says. ‘He’s wacky but it works.’

  A rangy waiter lights our candle, a tealight in a tumbler; you can feel the heat of it on your skin if you lean across the table.

  ‘Is Richard being nice?’ she says.

  ‘He just keeps saying it’ll all be OK. Sometimes I think if he worried more, then I wouldn’t have to.’

  Shadows move across the poster on the wall behind her; it shows a louche blonde woman who’s wrapping herself lasciviously around a bottle of Pernod. Little tealights glitter in Nicky’s eyes.

  ‘He adores you,’ she says irrelevantly.

  ‘We saw Dr McGuire,’ I tell her.

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘I didn’t like him.’

  Nicky considers this, tearing at a mussel with her teeth; her crimson mouth looks briefly predatory.

  ‘Some people I know went to see him,’ she says. ‘Their son was diabetic. They said he was good—very thorough. I guess he’s one of those guys that people either love or hate.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘From what Kim said, I guess he sees himself as a bit of a crusader.’

  ‘God knows. I thought he was foul. He wouldn’t listen to me.’

  Her face is intense with concern. She puts her hand on my arm.

  ‘You have to be really assertive, Cat. You’re just too nice, sometimes.’

  I ask about Simon. She leans towards me; her voice is hushed and secret. Things have progressed, she tells me: they made love on her desk after work, while the cleaner was in the corridor. I sense her excitement, shot through with a kind of fear: her pupils are dark and vast when she talks about him.

  ‘What if Neil finds out?’

  ‘He won’t,’ she says. ‘How could he?’

  I ought to tell her to stop—I know that’s the best friend’s role, to issue the warnings—but somehow I can’t do it. I wouldn’t want to take the shine from her.

  She takes a long swig of Cabernet Sauvignon.

  ‘It’s the old story, how it happens,’ she says. ‘I mean, once you’ve been there, you start to see it everywhere. You have these babies and slob around in tracksuits and you think you’re anaesthetised, you just don’t get why anyone bothers with sex. Then your youngest starts at nursery and you up your hours at work and buy yourself a lipstick. And you’re chatting to some guy about the October spreadsheets, and you’re very aware of the way he pushes up his shirt-sleeves, you can’t take your eyes off his skin.’ She’s leaning towards me across the table, her dark hair swinging above the flame of the candle. For a brief, wild moment, I fear she will catch fire. ‘And then the libido you thought had gone AWOL for ever sneaks up behind you and hits you over the head…It’s danger time for marriage, when your little one starts nursery. Good thing the guys don’t know.’

  I refill her glass for her. Her lips have left a crimson stain on the rim.

  The rangy waiter puts some music on—a singer I know but can’t name, a low voice, smoky with sadness. We listen for a while.

  ‘It’s different for you and Richard, of course,’ she says then, responding perhaps to some hesitancy in me. ‘You’re just so good together. You’re made for each other.’

  I shrug a little; I don’t know how to respond. Sometimes I wish she wouldn’t say these things, about how good my marriage is. It’s a superstitious fear, perhaps—as though even to put these thoughts into words might make something start to unravel. Nobody’s marriage is perfect.

  She puts her hand on my wrist.

  ‘Hell, I’ve been going on and on. I’m such a selfish pig. When you’ve got so much to cope with—you know, with Daisy and everything.’ She forages in her handbag. ‘I’ve brought you a book,’ she says.

  She hands it to me. It’s called You Can Heal Your Life and on the cover it has a rainbow heart.

  ‘The woman who wrote this is a healer,’ she says. ‘She believes that we create whatever happens to us. By the way we think. I know it sounds mad, but I’m sure she’s onto something.’

  I leaf through the book. It’s full of words like vibrant and abundant. When I look at it, I feel tired suddenly.

  She’s watching me. ‘I mean, perhaps it won’t mean anything to you. But I found it great when I kept on having those migraines, and I did some work on myself—you know, about my dependency issues and stuff—and I think it really helped.’

  ‘I thought it was Helmut who helped.’

  She grins. ‘Well, maybe a bit of both…’

  At the back there’s a list of symptoms and their causes. I look up Nausea. It says nausea is caused by ‘Fear. Rejecting an Idea or Experience.’ I wonder what Idea or Experience Daisy is rejecting.

  ‘It’s sweet of you,’ I tell her. I put it in my handbag.

  Outside on the pavement, car headlights sweep across us, and there’s a sudden smell of spring and a lemon moon that hangs low in the indigo sky. You can see the blotches on the moon, like features on some far-off face whose expression is unguessable.

  ‘Give Daisy a kiss from me,’ she says. And goes, all thrilled and shiny, leaving me alone.

  CHAPTER 15

  The next day Daisy goes to school, walks straight in without crying. Hope surges through me as I watch; just for a moment, I can believe that all our troubles are over.

  At half-three I wait anxiously for her. She is pale but smiling. She has a woven friendship bracelet that Megan has given her, and a parents’ invitation to a karaoke Sound of Music organised by the PSA, and a letter about a sponsored matchbox competition, in aid of a school in Africa, which she thrusts at me. They have to see how many things they can fit into a matchbox—no body parts, medicines or animals allowed—and there will be a prize for the child who has the biggest collection.

  ‘This’ll be fun. We’ll start tonight,’ I tell her.

  She shakes her head; she says her stomach hurts. When we get home, she goes to her room and lies in bed watching television.

  I take her some toast and a hot-water bottle to hold against her stomach. She’s watching a programme on organ donation.

  ‘This looks depressing,’ I tell her.

  ‘It’s
interesting, Mum.’ Her face is serious, composed. ‘There was a woman whose little girl died of cancer and she had the little girl’s cornea donated, and she worried that she might not be able to see when she gets up to Heaven. I worry about that too. But you probably would be able to, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Of course you would,’ I say brightly. But I hate this conversation.

  In the evening, her stomach ache gets worse.

  ‘There must be something you can do,’ she says.

  I tell her we’ll have to try the medicine again. She acquiesces. I choose a different one, the chalky one that sticks to your teeth. I have some idea that this is meant for stomach pain. She is meant to take two spoonfuls three times a day. I kneel beside her, pour a few drops in the spoon. There is juice and a chocolate flake for afterwards. She takes the tiniest sip and swallows and retches it up. She goes on retching all evening. I sit with her and stroke her back and read from her fairy-tale book. She finally gets to sleep at half past eleven.

  Richard is impatient to get to bed: he has a crucial meeting tomorrow.

  ‘Mother phoned,’ he says, as he’s putting on his pyjamas.

  ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ he says. ‘They’re both fine. We were talking about Daisy. She thinks Daisy needs to get back her confidence with food.’ There’s an air of finality to the way he says this, as though it is the answer.

  ‘I don’t know what that means,’ I say. ‘Food makes her feel sick. It isn’t to do with her attitude. This isn’t in her head, Richard.’

  He has a pained look. ‘I thought it was at least worth thinking about,’ he says.

  He buttons up his pyjama jacket. He always seems so much older when he takes off his formal clothes.

  ‘And she said she thinks we’ve got to get a grip,’ he says. ‘That staying off school can get to be a habit.’

  I’m too tired to be patient.

  ‘Why d’you listen?’ I say. ‘Why d’you always think she’s right about everything?’

  ‘Cat, she’s got all those years of experience.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she knows what’s wrong with Daisy.’

  ‘She’s very concerned,’ he says. His face darkens with irritation. ‘For Chrissake, she’s only trying to help. I’d have thought you’d be grateful.’

  On Friday we have the appointment with Helmut Wolf. He has a Quaker look, contemplative, white-haired. He has a cluttered consulting room with pictures of Japanese mountains, and shelves that are stacked with bottles of Chinese herbs. They have a thick green complicated smell, of ferns and disinfectant. He brings out a tray of tiny glass phials of various foods. Daisy has to touch them one at a time with one finger, while he presses on her other arm to test her muscle strength. He says she’s allergic to wheat, milk, sucrose, chocolate—and she must give them up, at least for several months. I am appalled. This seems to leave out the only things she’ll eat.

  But I do as he says; I go to the health-food shop and buy wheat-free flour and rice cakes from a wan and earnest assistant. I tell Richard that I’m trying Daisy on a diet, though I can’t bring myself to tell him how much she’ll have to give up.

  On the first day of the diet, I offer her prawns, carrot sticks, rice cakes, corn spaghetti, chicken and chips, crisps, and some cup-cakes I made with a recipe from the health shop. She eats some crisps and an apple. The second day, she eats a packet of crisps and two small lumps of chicken, and she’s so hungry, she lies on the floor and cries. I make her a thick jam sandwich: I know that we can’t carry on.

  We go to the hospital for the barium meal. We sit in the waiting room and a nurse with a wide white smile and lots of earrings comes to talk to us. There’s stuff to drink, she says, which shows up on the X-ray so they can tell if everything’s working properly. It’s not exactly a McDonald’s milkshake.

  In the X-ray room, I have to wear a lead apron and promise I am not pregnant. At first they can’t get Daisy to drink the barium. The radiologist is impatient, says maybe they’ll have to give up. Another nurse comes and talks Daisy through it again, this one too explaining that it’s not exactly a McDonald’s milkshake. They give her a straw and she sips and starts to retch. But they say she may have swallowed enough to show up on the X-ray. I watch her oesophagus on the screen. Aha, says the radiologist, she has reflux, as though it is all explained. I ask what does that mean and she says it means that stomach acid is coming up into her mouth; and I think how we knew that anyway. I ask what should we do about it, but she tells us to discuss it with the paediatrician.

  I read the book that Nicky gave me and try to do what it says. I make up some affirmations and repeat them inside my head. I write them out and keep the paper in the attic. I try to imagine them happening as I write them. In the mornings I speak them into the bathroom mirror, quietly so the girls can’t hear: Daisy is well again; Daisy is happy and smiling and energetic and well. I think how strange I look, doing this.

  There is a Sunday afternoon when we go to Kew Gardens. It’s a perfect day, liquid light pouring down over everything, and I decide the exercise will be just what Daisy needs. Sinead is persuaded to join us. She’s reaching the age when family outings can start to seem embarrassing, but she’s yearning for an excuse to wear her new ripped jeans. I tell myself that this is a new beginning. For the first time for weeks, I tie up my hair and put on lots of make-up. I will be vibrant and positive, just like Nicky’s book.

  At Kew, there are few trees yet in leaf, but whole vast lawns of crocuses, white and purple, dazzle in the sun as though they themselves are a source of light; and the orange buds of the crown imperials are fattening and opening out, their imposing shapes like the patterns of damask or Victorian anaglypta, and in the bare brown borders fritillaries hang their heads, their petals softest purple or green as leaves. Moorhens with gangly legs like twigs peck in the golden grass.

  Daisy is teasing Sinead about some soap star.

  ‘You do fancy him. You do. I can tell.’

  Sinead, riled, gives chase. Daisy runs off across the grass, scattering moorhens, the sunlight stitching yellow threads in her hair. I watch her running and tell myself: Maybe everything’s fine, like in my affirmations. I turn to Richard.

  ‘Look!’ I mouth.

  He nods and smiles; his face is smooth today, as though the sun has eased away some tension in him.

  Sinead gives up her attempt to catch Daisy and comes back to join us.

  ‘People think she’s so blonde and innocent,’ she says, through gasping breaths. ‘And really she’s Hitler.’

  By the lake, the big willow tree is colouring up for spring, its fabulous green-gold droop caught in the shining water. Planes roar above us, but the gardens are full of the whistle and shimmer of birdsong. We hunt for tiny things for Daisy’s sponsored matchbox; we find a seed-case, an acorn, a feather the size of your thumbnail and pale grey like a pearl.

  Richard puts his hand on my arm.

  ‘Darling, are you OK?’ he says.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I’ve been a bit preoccupied with work,’ he says. ‘Maybe I haven’t always given you quite the support you needed.’ He’s reaching out to me: this makes me happy. ‘You do such a wonderful job,’ he says. ‘You know I think that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  He puts his arm around me. I feel the thick wool of his jacket against the back of my neck. I am safe, protected.

  Daisy wants to go in the glasshouses, to see the plants that eat insects. We pass through the ante-room of desert plants and cacti, and push at a door and enter a different world, smelling of the tropics, wet and oppressive. The air is thick with moisture and Sinead’s hair instantly frizzes. The steps are slippery under our feet, and every surface is covered in weed and moss and mould. You feel if you stayed still for too long here, green tendrils might sprout from your skin. There are bromeliads, with leaves sharp-edged as knives, their centres full of water and redstained as if they’ve bled, and there are
blotchy orchids, ugly and intricate, like deformed faces, and everywhere green earthy smells and the sounds of waterfalls. The girls take off their coats and give them to me to carry, and move on ahead to look at the fat koi carp that ripple indolently through the murky pools.

  Now, I think, now is the moment: when he’s so warm, so open.

  ‘Richard, there’s something I need to tell you.’

  He hears the shake in my voice, stops walking, turns to me.

  ‘My mother’s been writing to me.’

  He stares at me. I think for a moment that he will be angry with me.

  ‘Your mother.’ His eyes are small and narrowed against the light.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit. Where is she?’

  ‘In Berlin.’

  His face relaxes. ‘Well, at least she won’t be turning up on our doorstep.’ He pats my arm, the way you might comfort a child. ‘Poor you. What a total pain. Can’t you just tell her to stop?’

  ‘I don’t want to write to her. I don’t want anything to do with her.’

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘You’re right, that’s probably best.’

  I feel a surge of relief. Now it is all out in the open I’m so much less afraid.

  We go to the room of carnivorous plants. There’s a glass case full of pitcher plants, bulbous and intricate, purple like meat, or pallid and speckled as though they are diseased. There’s a sign that says, ‘They have no set meal times’. We stand and stare. They have a sinister look.

  Behind us a woman says gleefully to her small children, ‘These are the ones the security man warned us about. These are the ones he said, “Careful they don’t eat you…’”