Marshmallows for Breakfast

by Dorothy Koomson

  Summer and Jaxon both stared at me, my three-word answer clearly not good or illuminating enough.

  “During all the arguments, we all knew that our parents loved us. Even if they didn't like each other all the time, they loved us all the time.” As an adult I could stand back and see that. Back then, I knew no such thing. All I knew— all my brothers and sister knew—was that my parents hated each other. That they wanted to do as much as possible to make each other miserable and they didn't seem to notice how it affected us. All we knew was that we could never predict what day would be the start of another marathon argument. Years later, having been through many experiences, I knew that even if you were consumed by arguing with the person you once upon a time supposedly loved, you still had room in your heart for your children. You still loved your children, even if you forgot to show it. I wished my parents had told us that, had shown us that, but they hadn't, so I was trying to do that for Summer and Jaxon now.

  Summer put her head to one side, regarded me with her languid inquisitiveness. “You mean Mumma and Dad love us even if they always tell each other off all the time?” she asked.

  I'd wanted to sound profound, to have the message I was conveying to settle gently into their psyches like the soft falling of snow, to slowly melt into their minds so they knew without knowing that no matter what happened they'd always come first in their parents’ minds. Instead, Summer had cut the bull and stated outright what I had been trying to diffuse. I really should stop watching those trite shows where everything was neatly wrapped up in fifty minutes. The way they resolved everything by saying “you love each other” really didn't work in the real world, not even on a six-year-old. I nodded at Summer. “Pretty much.”

  “When Mumma used to get sick Dad would tell her off,” Summer said.

  I had been about to place a packet of kidney beans into the wire belly of my trolley, but the statement stopped me, and I turned my attention to them. “Your mum used to get sick?”

  In unison Summer and Jaxon nodded. “All the time. If she didn't take her medicine she'd be even more sicker.” Summer explained. “It used to make Dad even more cross.”

  “When Mumma was sick he'd shout and then go upstairs to his room for a time-out and do his work,” Jaxon said quietly, his eyes not focused on the present of a busy Saturday afternoon in a supermarket, but back in the past. Obviously it still played on his mind. His father shouting at his mother, his father's angry footsteps on the stairs.

  “Sometimes, when Mumma was really, really sick he'd take us in his car for ages and ages,” Summer added.

  “And Mumma would cry. She said we didn't love her because we left her. We didn't want to leave her.”

  “Dad said we had to,” Summer concluded.

  My eyes went from one to the other, a disturbed feeling growing inside me. When my parents rowed we'd hide in our rooms, waiting for their tempers to subside or for dinner, whichever came first. But, in all of it, my parents never did this. My dad wouldn't bundle us out of the house to punish my mum; my mum wouldn't sob and wail and claim we didn't love her. They'd create a hell we had to reside in, but I didn't remember them using us as weapons—they found far too many things wrong with each other to bother.

  “Your mum's sick, you say?” I asked.

  They nodded in unison.

  “What's wrong with her?”

  Their eyes darted to each other in unison, communicating in their secret way, the way identical twins were mythically supposed to, the way Summer and Jaxon did even though they were fraternal twins. They turned back to me, shrugged in unison and mumbled, “Don't know.”

  “Don't know,” they said, but it felt more like, “We're not allowed to tell.” Cutting off further questioning, Summer wandered a few feet down the aisle, picked up a liter packet of liquid stock. “Do you want this?” she called out, hefting it up with both hands. I'd bought it last week and she'd obviously remembered.

  “Yes, please,” I called back. Rather than bringing it over, Summer stood and read the ingredients list. Her head bowed and slightly to one side, her forehead furrowed in concentration, her lips pursed. That is me, I realized with a start. In just a few weeks she'd gotten an impression of me food shopping down to an art. Jaxon, meanwhile, stood on tiptoes on the metal wheel bar of the trolley, my shopping list in one hand as he leaned into the trolley, rifling through the fruit and veg I'd put in there, looking at the list and then looking at the goods, like I usually did before we went to the checkout. They had cut me off by unintentionally pretending to be me.

  Being so expertly cut off by them was isolating and bewildering. Whatever it was that caused them to do that must be a huge secret. Something so huge and scary it'd made them shut down and shut off.

  Since I'd become a bigger part of their lives I'd learned a fair bit about Mrs. Gadsborough from the kids.

  I'd learned that she called every other day to speak to her children and after each phone call the pair of them would be quiet and sullen, would often go to their rooms for a while to deal with their loss in their own way.

  I'd found out that she couldn't speak to her husband without rowing with him.

  I'd discovered she was beautifully photogenic. Long waves of caramel hair tumbled around her face, cascading down onto her shoulders; her eyes were the same deep, mesmerizing navy-green as her children's but an altogether different shape; her mouth was shaped like her children's, her small nose was not. The pictures of her with the twins were always vibrant, alive with her energy. Her head was always raised, her eyes overbrimming with joy, her cheeks glowing, her arms wrapped around Jaxon and Summer, cradling them as though they were the most precious things in her life. With Kyle beside her in pictures she was more subdued but no less passionate. In the photos that were still on display in the children's rooms, she'd often be looking at him a mix of awe and tenderness smoothing out her features, molding the grin on her face and teasing out the sparkle in her eyes. Kyle would usually be looking at the camera, his head dipped sideways towards his adoring spouse, the bashful grin of a man in love on his face.

  All the pictures of the pair of them had been taken down from the living room, from the hallway, from the kitchen. Faint outlines of where the large glass frames had been were still evident on the walls and he'd left the twenty-by- sixteens of her and the kids up for them, but the others, the reminders of their times together, he had rehoused in the cupboard under the stairs. Summer had taken them out and shown me once, almost as though trying to show me the life they used to have. While we'd been flicking through the pictures, Jaxon had stood near us, eyes wide with anxiety, moving from foot to foot and wringing his hands like an old woman sending her only child off to war, so terrified was he that his father would walk in and catch us.

  I was told that she was a graphic designer and freelanced on various advertising projects. I was also told she and Summer would dance in the living room, she and Jaxon would dig up the garden. The three of them would sometimes ride their bikes in the park when the weather was fine. She'd read them stories in bed, make up games to play in the bath.

  Another thing I discovered was that she didn't take very much with her. One time, when Kyle was on site and I picked the kids up from school, they'd taken me upstairs to show me the rest of the house. We'd been up to the attic, to Kyle's neat, orderly office—which took up the whole of the top floor of the house. Each of his surfaces—of which there were many—displayed his models and drawings and brightly colored computer- generated printouts of virtual buildings, but the leather chair in the corner beside his radio was surrounded by chaos. Newspapers and architecture magazines were stacked haphazardly by the chair, pictures of the kids were tacked onto the walls. The room smelled of him, felt of him. One part quiet, reserved man, one part barely restrained bedlam.

  We'd also been into the kids’ bedrooms, then the master bedroom. I'd been uncomfortable crossing that threshold— hadn't wanted to look at these elements of Kyle and his wife's life together—and had
hesitated. But Summer had no such problem and dragged me in and over to the walk-in closet. Almost one side of the closest had been emptied, the hangers still clung onto the rail like the bare branches of a tree in winter, but the floor was stacked with boxes. The labels, in Kyle's writing, said the boxes were full of clothes, shoes, bags, makeup, books, magazines, photos. Summer regularly went through the boxes. It was where she found the eye mask she wore like a tiara—it reminded her of her mother, she'd told me. She'd also given Jaxon their mother's sunglasses, which he kept on the shelf by his bed. I didn't understand why Kyle would go to the trouble of carefully boxing then labeling her belongings, nor why she had left so much behind. Maybe because she'd left in the night and couldn't take much with her had been one explanation, but it felt much more as if she had been determined to leave as much as possible of this life behind. To shed this life and never look back.

  Now the illness. Another piece in the jigsaw puzzle that was her disappearance from their lives.

  What's wrong with Mrs. Gadsborough? I wondered as we started down the aisle again. And how do I find out without it seeming as if I'm prying?

  CHAPTER 12

  Kendie wouldn't let us get a burger,” Summer informed her father as she marched into the kitchen.

  She trawled across the wood floor, dropping her bag, her sweater, PE bag and homework pouch on the way behind her, heading for the biscuit jar on the counter. I followed in her wake, picking up the discarded elements of her school day. She got onto tiptoes, grabbed the terra- cotta jar, cradled it in one arm and took off the lid with a faint pop. Her little hand reached in and scooped out two biscuits.

  Kyle looked from his shiny silver laptop at me, then at his daughter.

  “We wanted a Smiley Smiler meal with a toy. It's a pink watch. Jaxon wanted the racing car. Kendie said we weren't allowed to get one.”

  “Why not?” he asked her.

  “She's idiotically opposed to them,” Summer said and shoved one of the digestives in her mouth, biting down. Golden crumbs rained down the front of her blue school shirt.

  Kyle curled his lips into his mouth so he could laugh quietly.

  “Ideologically opposed,” I corrected, feeling rather stupid.

  Her head cranked around towards me, a sour look on her face—it'd been there for most of the journey home, along with folded arms. Had she been able to raise a condescending eyebrow at me, she would have done. “That's what I said,” she replied in a voice that told us: I know what I said and it's what I meant.

  “I'm going to give Jaxon his biscuit,” she said on the crest of a huff.

  “Lid,” Kyle reminded before she'd gotten too far across the room.

  She heaved a sigh to let the world know how unjust her life was, turned and replaced the lid, then swept out of the room.

  “Are you really opposed to fast food?” Kyle asked.

  I placed Summer's belongings on her chair at the head of the table. “Not fast food per se, although I probably should be. No, I love junk food, I simply won't go into certain establishments,” I explained.

  “Why?” he asked, taking off his computer glasses, putting them to one side. “Life's hard enough without adding to it with things like that.”

  “Thing is, Kyle, I have this problem—I believe in too many things. I have all these things that I won't do on principle and it's hard for me to let them go even for an easy life. Even before I got to university I went on protest marches and stood on picket lines. It's part of who I am. Give me a good cause, I'll back it. And, hey, don't tell me about any company that's doing people wrong because that's it, I'll stop buying their stuff and will hate myself for having bought it in the past.”

  From deep in the house, the television went on, blaring out a cartoon. And then it went quiet before the squeaks, bells and noises of a computer game exploded into the atmosphere.

  “I think it started with being brainwashed about veal when I was in middle school. My teacher told us at length how veal was produced and, well, that was it. I just couldn't. Me and my sister both. I haven't even tasted it. And I think my beliefs grew from there.” I was aware that I was explaining far too much about myself to Kyle. Usually when I dropped the kids off it was literally to check that they were safely ensconced in the house and then I'd be on my way back to work.

  Kyle put his head to one side, looking me up and down as though seeing me for the first time as someone other than the interfering, pain-in-his-arse lodger. The person he played tag with over the children. The person he had to eat dinner with once or twice a week and who gave his children breakfast on Saturday mornings while he slept in. “I used to believe in all sorts of things before I had kids,” he said. “That's when I learned how hard life can be and how much easier things are if you stop fighting all the time.”

  “Ah nah, you see,” I said, stroking my hand over the back of Summer's chair, “one of the things I'd want is for my kids to have strong beliefs. Even if they're not the same as my own, I want them to be aware of something other than their immediate worlds. That they don't have to sit back and accept stuff because it's easy, that they have the ability and right to effect change.

  “If I had a girl, I'd want her to know that she can be anything she wants and that she doesn't have to rely on her looks or clothes or hair or makeup to define who she is or to get respect from other people. I'd want her to know she has a right to be respected or noticed because she was born. I'm not talking about all that girl- power nonsense, I'm talking about my girl growing up knowing she has the right to be treated decently simply because she was born.” I was on a roll now.

  “And if I had a boy, I'd bring him up to know that being a man is all about feeling good about who you are. Not all that macho bullshit, but feeling so comfortable you don't have to disrespect other people, or put them down to feel good. You don't have to follow the crowd to be a man. He can believe in whatever he wants, think whatever he wants, be whatever he wants without worrying about his masculinity.

  “And I'd make sure that whether my child's a boy or a girl they'd know that they don't ever have to put up with being treated badly. Not ever. Nor have to do something because their friends are all doing it.

  “If we're going to change the world for the better, kids need to know that they can by feeling good about who they are and helping others.”

  An indulgent, vaguely patronizing smile crept onto Kyle's face. “You're not a parent, you don't know” that smile was telling me. He just about made it through the day bringing up his kids without trying to fill them up with oodles of self- esteem and save the world on top of it.

  He cocked his eyebrow at me and asked, “So, because you want to change the world, you're seriously not going to feed your children fast food from certain outlets?”

  The question was like a punch to the softest, most tender part of my stomach and it forced all the air out of my body. I glanced down at the chair I was standing behind, rubbed my forefinger over the smooth knots and waves in the oak. “Absolutely not,” I said with firm, quiet certainty.

  “OK,” he scoffed. He was clearly thinking I'd change my mind the second I was on a road trip somewhere with two screaming kids in the back and no other food outlet for miles.

  I looked up at him again. “I'm not going to have children,” I said. “I'd love to, but I can't. Physically, I mean. I can't physically have children.” I'd never said that before; those words hadn't left my mouth and stained the air. Saying it made it a little more solid. Permanent. Real. I'd never wanted it to be real so I'd never said it out loud.

  Shock boomeranged from one end of Kyle's face to the other, erasing all smugness in its path. Suddenly he looked uncomfortable. Now he knew how it felt to be on the receiving end of too much personal information from a virtual stranger. “Oh,” he said. The pale olive skin on his forehead crinkled as he frowned and I could see his eyes trying not to stray down to my “baby- growing” area. “Why can't you have kids?” he eventually plucked up the courage to ask.<
br />
  “Because I was really stupid this one time. Trusted someone I shouldn't have. Ended up with pelvic inflammatory disease, then was told that because it wasn't treated in time … Well, basically, I can't have kids.”

  “Scarring,” “irreversible damage,” “nothing we can do at this present time.” The words began to swim through my mind. They were the only words I remember from talking to the surgeon after the keyhole surgery that confirmed my fate. I remember his eyes, dark and heavy under his green paper surgeon's hat, and those words. Nothing else.

  Pity was ingrained on Kyle's face, smudged into his crow's feet, into the creases around his mouth, into the black pupils of his mahogany eyes. Urgh. I did not need to see his pity nor to experience it.

  “So there, you're renting a flat to a freak of nature,” I said, trying to make light of it. “Don't worry. I'm not contagious or anything.” As I spoke I was moving towards the door. Trying to distance myself from Kyle's pity and this conversation. “It's all sorted,” I continued as I reached the door. “I'd better get back to work,” I added then fled. “Bye, kids, I'll see you soon,” I called as I dashed down the corridor, snatched open the front door and escaped down the path.

  Kyle caught up with me as I swung open the car door. “Kendra,” he said, holding onto the top of the door, stopping me from getting in and, essentially, impeding my escape. “Do you want to come over for dinner later on tonight?”

  I stared down at his hands, which were gripped onto the door of the car. He had big hands with long fingers; they reminded me of the kids’ hands but instead of being stained with paint and pen, his had badly bitten nails and split cuticles.

  “I'll give the kids their dinner and wait until you get back so we can have ours after they have gone to bed. Afterwards we can watch television, talk or listen to music. Do you like Sarah McLachlan?”