Another Life Altogether (54 page)

“Welcome home,” said Bill. While my mother sat on one side of Grandma, he sat on the other. As he spoke, my mother’s beaming smile fell into a narrow-eyed frown. Ever since she’d arrived home a couple of hours earlier, she’d been staring daggers at the poor man. If looks could kill, he’d already have been transformed into nothing more than a pile of bones, a few strands of hair, and an oversized pair of glasses on the ground.

Across from me, Granddad Bennett mumbled something under his breath. He’d been complaining for the past half hour, ever since Mabel dragged him away from the living room, where he’d been sitting with her new fella, Charlie, watching the Saturday afternoon sports with the curtains closed. Mabel shoved her elbow into Granddad’s arm. “Welcome home, Evelyn,” he said, grimacing in my mother’s direction. Then he popped another mini-sausage roll into his mouth and started to chew loud and open-mouthed.

“She looks grand,” Charlie declared, nodding up the table at my mother. “Mind you, Mabel, you look a bloody knockout yourself.” He reached his arm around Mabel and pressed a set of stubby fingers into her side.

“Give over, Charlie,” she said, laughing and knocking his hand away. “Don’t go creasing up my dress.”

“That’s not what you said in the car on the way over.” He waggled a set of thick black eyebrows.

I turned to Malcolm and Dizzy and rolled my eyes as Charlie leaned into Mabel and she sputtered out a laugh.

“Where’s your mum been, Jesse?” Malcolm asked, speaking softly so the adults around us wouldn’t hear. Next to him, Dizzy looked at me. Beneath her glasses, her eyes looked enormous, expectant.

It was Grandma who’d suggested that I invite Malcolm and Dizzy, and for a long time I’d resisted. But just a couple of days ago I’d relented. Somehow, despite all my turbulent fear of what they would make of my family and of this gathering, I’d decided I wanted to have them there.

“I knew she was gone,” Malcolm continued, “but I was never sure where.”

My mother was sitting next to Grandma, and now, no longer scowling at Grandma’s fiancé, she had a smile, slim and bright as the crescent of a brand-new moon, etched across her face. It had been four months since I’d last seen her, and when I heard my father’s car pulling into the driveway after picking her up, I was afraid I’d forgotten what she looked like. But the second she stepped out of the car, I realized that she was as familiar to me as the sound of my own voice, or the smell of my own skin. She looked different, though, as she made her way along the path to the front door—her face plumped up, her cheeks pinked with color, her movements measured rather than jagged and wild or painfully lethargic. Now her smile so wide that it made little fans of the creases around her eyes, I wondered if it was really possible that this most recent stay in Delapole might actually have done her good.

“She’s been in the hospital,” I said, keeping my voice low. And then, surprising myself, I added, “In Delapole.”

I saw a look flicker between the two of them, a little flame of knowledge that leaped within their eyes. I gripped the edges of my chair.

“Is she better?” Malcolm asked. “I don’t know.”

“She looks well, Jesse,” he said. “I bet she’s probably all right.”

“Yeah, she looks great,” Dizzy agreed.

They were both smiling at me, hopeful, buoyant. I felt them holding me up the way I’d always thought that friends might.

For a while, everyone focused on eating. There was the clatter of knives and forks on china, the chomping of jaws, the gulping down of tea. Then, after working his way through an enormous slab of pork pie, Granddad turned to Malcolm. “Play football, do you, lad?” he asked, leaning across the table and jabbing a fork in Malcolm’s direction.

“Only at school, but I’m not really interested in sports.”

“Not interested in sports?” Granddad said, as if Malcolm had just confessed to a murder. “Lad of your age? Not interested in sports?” Granddad looked around the table, apparently seeking affirmation of his outrage from the other guests. Next to Granddad, my father sighed and lifted his eyes skyward.

“Malcolm’s a very good swimmer,” I chirped.

Granddad huffed. “Swimming? That doesn’t count. I’m talking about real sports. The sort that develops the body and the character, that makes a boy into a man. See, my lad Brian, he was a terrific footie player. Mike here”—he stabbed his fork in my father’s direction—“he was like you, no interest, no skill in sports. Tell you the truth, don’t think he’s much of a swimmer, either, are you, Mike?”

My father didn’t bother to answer Granddad. Instead, he looked down at the table and his shoulders slumped forward, into his chest.

“But Brian, well, he was an athlete, he was. Best footie player you’re ever likely to see. Could do magic with that ball, he could. Aye,” Granddad said, nodding to himself. “You’ve never seen a footballer like our Brian.”

My father looked up and caught my eye. Then he turned to Malcolm, and looked back at me. As he did so, I noticed a muscle in his
cheek twitch, a flicker of something in his eyes. Then, as if he’d come to a decision, he put his hands on the table and pushed himself up in his chair. “Dad,” he said, sitting straight, looking at Granddad across the table.

“If you got a chance to see Brian play,” Granddad continued, jabbing his fork in the air, apparently not hearing, “well, you’d understand what I was saying. See, he ran around that field like—”

“Dad,” my father bellowed. He lifted his hands and then slapped them down hard on the table, making the cups rattle in their saucers, the glasses jolt, and the cutlery bounce. Everyone was stunned into silence.

“What?” Granddad asked, his tone irritated.

“Brian’s been dead almost twenty years,” my father said.

“So?”

“So I’m just plain tired of hearing about how bloody wonderful he was. And I swear, if you extol the virtues of my dead brother once more in my presence, today or any other day, I will never, ever speak to you again. So either drop the subject now or I’ll drag you from that chair, drive you home, and you can spend the rest of your days staring at pictures of Saint bloody Brian.”

Granddad, at a loss for words for the first time I’d ever witnessed, let his mouth flap wide to gape at my father. After a couple of seconds, the hand holding his fork dropped loosely to the table. “Well, if that’s the way you feel …” he finally muttered. Then he shrugged and glanced around the table, his eyes finally settling on Dizzy. “So, lass,” he said, picking up his fork again and gesturing toward her, “what rubbish are they teaching you at school these days?”

While Dizzy tried to convince Granddad of the importance of learning a foreign language (Granddad’s theory on the matter being that, since English was clearly the best language on the planet, there was no reason for us to learn anything else), I looked over at my father. He was smiling to himself as he stuck his fork into a slice of tomato, and he continued smiling as he shoved it into his mouth. Next to him, my
mother studied him, perplexed. Then, as her eyes moved over to Granddad, she pulled a small but nevertheless jubilant grin.

IT WASN’T AN
elaborate meal, but Grandma had made sure it included all my mother’s favorites—the pork pies, the mini-sausage rolls, the coleslaw she had made with raisins and Heinz Salad Cream, the little hot-dog sausages, the pickled onions, the cubes of Cheddar cheese. But when she brought out an enormous plate filled with a selection of Mr. Kipling cakes—chocolate éclairs, vanilla slices, bakewell slices, custard tarts—she had clearly outdone herself. For the first time since she’d sat down at the table, I heard my mother speak.

“Oh, look at that!” she said. “I haven’t had a Mr. Kipling’s in weeks.” Then she reached over and took two vanilla slices and a chocolate éclair and put them on her plate. Within a couple of minutes, she had eaten them and, after wiping her mouth with one of the pink serviettes Grandma had set out on the table, she reached over to take a custard tart and another vanilla slice.

“So, listen everybody,” Grandma said, rising from her seat after the Mr. Kipling cakes had been polished off and more tea had been poured. “Bill and me, we’ve got an announcement to make.” Beside her, Bill rose to his feet and Grandma took hold of his arm. “As you all know, we’re planning to get married…. Well, we’ve decided to have our wedding here in England, in that nice little church in Reatton-on-Sea. That lovely Reverend Mullins has agreed to do the ceremony. In a few months, when our Ted’s not … indisposed.”

I looked at my mother. She was glowering at Bill. My father was watching her warily, his mouth pressed in an anxious lipless line.

Across the table, Granddad mumbled, “I’d have thought this family would’ve had enough of weddings. Tempting fate, you ask me, planning another one so soon.”

After silencing him with a look, Mabel turned to my mother. “Ooh, won’t that be lovely, Ev?” Her booming tone and beaming smile making
me think of the presenters on
Play School
, trying to pump enthusiasm into an audience of five-year-olds beyond the television screen. “We’ll all get to be at our mother’s wedding. You ask me, that’ll be just great.”

My mother said nothing while she studied Bill stonily. Beside Grandma, Bill looked extremely wary. I got the distinct impression that if Grandma hadn’t been holding on to him the poor man might have tried to make a run for it.

“Yes, but that’s not the only thing we wanted to tell you,” Grandma said, giving Bill a reassuring pat on the arm. “See, the two of us have talked about it a lot, and we agreed that we’re not going back to Australia. We’re going to settle down here, in England. Get us a house somewhere between Midham and Hull. Bill suggested it, and I agree. Right now, my family needs me here.”

My mother was on her feet, throwing her arms around Grandma’s shoulders. “Oh, Mam, that’s smashing, that’s brilliant,” she said, pressing her face into Grandma’s neck. Then, after a few seconds, she pulled back and looked at Bill. “Welcome to the family,” she said, and leaned over to place a loud smacking kiss on the astounded man’s cheek.

AFTER EVERYBODY HAD LEFT,
I joined Grandma in the bustle of clearing away dishes, washing up, drying, putting things away. It was nine o’clock by the time we were done. I was tired, but it wasn’t dark yet and I felt drawn to go outside. As I made my way down the hallway, behind the living-room door I heard the drone of the newsreader on the television, and then a voice shouting, “Bunch of bloody codswallop!” in an Australian accent. “You tell him, Bill!” my father yelled.

I went out the door and into the garden. It wasn’t until I had wandered halfway across the lawn that I realized my mother was there as well. She was sitting in one of the chairs at the table. I walked over and took the seat beside her.

“It was a nice party, wasn’t it, Mum?” I said, looking at the flower
beds and the faces of the pansies. In the grainy light, it was easy to imagine them as animals, a long row of fierce little sentries standing guard.

“It was lovely,” my mother said. “I’m a bit full now. I think I ate too much, to be honest. But I did have a terrific time. It’s nice to be home. Nice to be back.” There was a new steadiness in her voice. It melded, like the day’s fading colors, into the falling dusk.

“I missed everybody so much,” she said. “When you’re away like that, it’s hard to remember that you have a home.”

As she spoke, I felt a hard stab of guilt for not visiting her. Grandma and my father had both asked me many times to go with them, but I’d always refused. Though it had been impossible to soothe myself by imagining her on a world cruise or some other exciting adventure, I hadn’t been able to face her in the hospital.

“I’m glad you’re back, Mum.” I said it although I wasn’t quite sure I meant it.

“Yes,” my mother said. “So am I.” Then she turned in her chair so that she was looking right at me, her eyes glassy bright in the blurred contours of her face. “You know what helped me more than anything when I was in there? More than the doctors and the pills and all that silly arts and crafts they make you do?”

I shook my head.

“It was those letters you sent me, love. They were just wonderful. They kept my spirits up something marvelous. I looked forward to getting them ever so much.”

“You did?”

“Oh, yes. I was reading them again just now, until it got too dark.” She lifted a little stack of papers she’d been holding in her lap. “And in the hospital, when I got them—well, reading about all those countries and places you wrote about … You made everything seem so real.”

“I looked it all up, in the main library at Bleakwick. I thought you might find it interesting. I thought it might help cheer you up.”

“Oh, it did, love. Made me feel like there was something to look forward to, once I got better, once I got out.” Then she reached over and placed her hand, loose and cool, over mine.

“I liked writing to you,” I said.

My mother nodded. “Yes, love, I could tell.”

Then we sat there, not speaking. And, for the first time in my mother’s presence, I took in the delicious stillness of a warm summer evening—the slowly shifting shadows, the steady rhythm of my own breath. I let myself simply be there, wrapped in nothing but the evening’s drawn-out perfection, and the reassurance that beyond the leafy barrier of our garden the world was waiting, beautiful and immense.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M
Y THANKS GO FIRST TO CINDY SPIEGEL AND MIKE MEZZO AT
Spiegel & Grau for their invaluable insights and skillful editing, and to my agent, Eric Simonoff. I am deeply grateful to Poets & Writers and the California Writers Exchange Program and, in particular, Cheryl Klein and Jamie Fitzgerald. For their excellent feedback and sage advice, I’d like to thank Teresa Burns Gunther, Margo Perin, and Rebecca Chekouras. And for their enthusiastic support of my writing, I’m very grateful to Jennifer Fechner, Rosemary Christoph, Terry Glavin, and Bev Parrish. I am also enormously grateful to my wonderful friends and all the ways in which their presence has helped me do what I love. Above all, I am deeply thankful to my partner, Suse Herting—a solid, steadfast presence and a beautiful soul.

I’d also like to thank my father, who gifted me with his love of books; I wish you could read this one, Dad.