The Memory Book (8 page)

‘I don’t know,’ I say. I have always hated it when my mother has decided it’s time to force the issue, to box me into a corner and make me act. But now, instead of feeling like I’ve got my back against the wall, it’s as though I am lost in a maze, and I’m not sure of the way out. ‘There’s a lot she isn’t saying, and I don’t know if I can, if I should, force the issue. Not now, not after all this time.’

‘Whatever else, she does deserve the truth, doesn’t she? That girl, she’s so angry a lot of the time. So unsure of herself, so … closed in. Haven’t you ever wondered whether half of it’s because she feels like she was abandoned by her father before she was ever born?’

I say nothing. This doesn’t feel fair to me, the new crusade that Mum is on, determined to get me to set my house in order. I don’t want to set my house in order; I want to glue things into my book. I raise the tiny hedgehog up to eye level, and begin to make a loop for it out of a length of cotton.

‘Ignoring me won’t make it go away,’ Mum says, but a little less sternly this time. ‘You know how I feel about it.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ I say. ‘I know what you feel about it because you’ve been telling me more or less non-stop since the day Caitlin was born. But it wasn’t your choice to make, was it?’

‘Was it yours?’ she says, which is what she always says, and I realise there are some things I am quite looking forward to forgetting.

‘Nothing would be any different from the way it is now,’ I tell her, going back to my book.

‘You can’t possibly know that,’ she says. ‘You made assumptions, and Caitlin’s life is based on them. She’s a child that has always felt abandoned, and lost. Even if she never says it, you only have to look at her to know she doesn’t feel like she fits in.’

‘This from the woman who used to always wear a full-length kaftan and flowers in her hair?’ I say. ‘You’ve heard of personal expression, right? Why does it have to mean more when it’s Caitlin?’

‘Because it
does
mean more because it is Caitlin.’ Mum struggles to find the words, turning over a peeler in her hand as she thinks. ‘When she was little, she never stopped singing, always grinning like a loon. Shouting, making herself the centre of attention, just like you. I just … I just feel like she’s not … reaching out enough. I mean, where are the jazz hands and the high kicks? What happened to that little girl? And don’t say she grew out of them. You never did.’

‘Mum, what do I have to do for you to give me a break? I mean, if a degenerative brain disease won’t do it, what will? Would you let me off if I had breast cancer, maybe?’ The words come in quick angry bursts, low and strained – because I know Caitlin is upstairs, curled in upon herself, furled around all the words she feels she cannot say; and because I know that Mum is right, and Mum being right is the hardest thing to stand. Picking at this same old wound with
my mother won’t help Caitlin, so I force myself to back down, finding the imprint of the tiny hedgehog driven into the palm of my hand as I unclench my fist. ‘Caitlin might not have had a traditional upbringing, but she has always had me, and you, and now she has Greg and Esther. Why isn’t that enough?’

Mum turns her back on me to boil orange vegetables, probably to mushy oblivion, and I watch her: her shoulders are tense, the tilt of her head set in repressed disapproval, perhaps grief. She is very angry with me – it feels like she always has been, although I know for a fact that is not true. Now more than ever, the times when she was not angry shine like polished silver in a sunny sitting room, and those memories positively dazzle. Sometimes I try to pinpoint the exact moment things changed between us, but it always shifts. Was it the day Dad died, or the day he became ill? The day I didn’t choose the same dreams that she had always had for me? Perhaps, though, perhaps it began with this one choice, made a long time ago – this choice that somehow became a lie, and the worst kind of lie. A lie I didn’t exactly tell Caitlin, but one I let her believe.

Caitlin was six when she first actively noticed that she was the odd one out at school. Even the kids whose parents were no longer together had dads somewhere on the horizon, and even if they rarely saw them, they knew of their existence. They knew, at least approximately, where they were in the world. There was a vague connection to them, a tenuous sense of identity. Caitlin, though, had none of that, which
is perhaps the reason that, one day, on our usual walk home from school, as she plucked the tulips and the daffodils that strayed between garden fences so she could make me a stolen bouquet, she asked me if she was a test-tube baby. The question, the phrase, so awkward and unnatural, so obviously implanted in her mouth by another, shocked me. I told her that she wasn’t a test-tube baby, and that she’d been made in the same way most other babies were. Hurrying on before she could ask me exactly how that was, I told her that the moment I’d known about her, I’d wanted her, and I’d known that together we could be a brilliant little family and as happy as could be, which we were. I hoped that would be enough, and that she’d run ahead like she usually did, and hop and jump in an effort to pull sprigs of blossom off the cherry trees that lined the road. But instead she remained thoughtful and quiet. And so I told her that if she wanted me to, I’d tell her all about the man who’d helped make her, and help her to meet him. She thought about it for a long time.

‘But why don’t I know him already?’ she asked, her hand slipping into mine, leaving a trail of fallen petals behind. ‘John Watson, he knows his dad, even though he lives on an oil rig and he only sees him twice a year. He always brings him loads and loads of presents.’ Her tone was wistful, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the visits or the presents.

‘Well …’ No words came. I was ill-prepared for this moment, although I should have seen it coming; I should
have practised and rehearsed and been ready. And so I told the truth that somehow became a lie. ‘When I found out that you were in my tummy, I was very young. And so was your father. He just wasn’t ready to be a dad.’

‘But you were ready to be my mummy?’ Caitlin had looked puzzled. ‘It’s not very hard, is it?’

‘No,’ I said, squeezing her warm sticky fingers gently. ‘No, being your mummy is the easiest thing in the world.’

‘I don’t want to know about him, then,’ Caitlin had said, quite determinedly. ‘I’m going to tell everyone at school that I
am
a test-tube baby.’

Then, with a unexpected bound, she did run ahead, leaping up at a low-hanging branch laden with blossom, creating a fall of pink confetti all around us as I walked under the tree. We laughed, tipping our faces up as the petals floated down, all thoughts of dads forgotten. I had thought that the time would come again when she’d want to talk more, and next time she’d be older and I’d be better prepared, but it never did.

That was the only conversation in which he was ever mentioned to her, and it was all she ever asked. And yet I had the uneasy feeling that Mum had always been right about this, and that the quietness, the uncertainty in Caitlin, the shyness she hides so well behind the black eyeliner and hair, and the always-black clothes that she wears like a shield … it might all have come from that one ill-thought-out conversation. It might all be my fault. And that idea, the thought that the
one thing I always thought I could be proud of – being her mother – might be untrue, fills me with horror. I’m going soon; I’m going and I need to make things right.

So this afternoon I pulled out a dust-filmed shoebox and found this letter, which I pasted into the book. It was folded around a photo of him holding my hand. Taken on a sunny day, we were both laughing, sitting on swings in the park, our fingers outstretched to claim the other’s, leaning towards each other in a concerted effort to remain connected, no matter how gravity and kinetic energy might try to pull us apart. I must have been just pregnant with Caitlin by then, not that I’d known it. Strange how quickly that determination to touch dissolved so absolutely, so quickly, into nothing. I tucked the letter and photo into the back of the book and I waited for Caitlin to come down to dinner. That would be the right time, I decided. With everyone here who cares about her: Esther to make her smile, and Greg to offer her support. That would be the best time to set things right.

‘Well, she can’t just turn up on his doorstep and find out that way, if that’s what you are thinking. Imagine it!’ Mum raises a brow as she sets out a trio of objects around my memory book. I slide it off the table and hold it to my chest, feeling the chill of the fifty-cent coin against my skin.

‘Of course I don’t think that,’ I say softly, suddenly exhausted.

Mum stirs something, a sauce she’s made to go with the meat that’s in the oven. ‘I mean, think about her,’ Mum says.
‘Think about what she is facing now. A dad might come in handy.’

This time, I don’t answer. Instead, I find myself resting my head against the book, laying my cheek on its uneven surface. I’ve run out of effort.

The front door opens, and I am grateful to see Esther running in, clutching a bright-pink teddy bear, which must be a present from her other granny. Greg has been to his mother’s. She rarely comes here. She did not approve of her son’s aged wife even before I officially became a burden, and now she is distraught at his predicament. The sight of me does actually move her to tears. Greg did offer to take me along as well, and for a while it was a close thing: an afternoon with my mother, or his … But in the end I chose my own. Better the devil you know.

‘Look!’ Esther shows me her bear, proudly. ‘I’m going to call him Pink Bear From Granny Pat.’

‘How lovely,’ I say, smiling over her head at Greg, and for a second we share a familiar joke. Esther’s literal soft toy animal names are legendary. Lined up on her bed right now are, among others, Ginger Coloured Dog with One Eye, and Blue Rabbit That Smells a Bit Funny.

‘I don’t know why it has to be a pink bear,’ Mum says, regarding the creature scathingly as if it were Granny Pat herself. ‘Why is it that just because she is a little girl, she must have pink foisted upon her?’

‘Pink is my favourite colour!’ Esther tells my mum, eyeing
the food that she is putting into serving dishes. ‘It’s much nicer than blue or green, or yellow or purple, or something. Actually, I do like purple, and that really bright green, like grass. I like Granny Pat, but I don’t like broccoli or meat.’

‘You are just like your mother.’ Mum doesn’t mean it as a compliment, but Esther takes it as one, and beams.

‘How was school?’ Greg asks me, sitting down. He reaches out to touch me, and then, seeing how uncomfortable I am, withdraws his hand. I just can’t hide it, even though I try to because I know that he’s my husband, Esther’s dad, and that I have loved him very much. I’ve seen the wedding photos, the video. I remember the way I felt about him – I feel the memories still, like an echo, but they are in the past now. In the present, I am numb. I see him, and I know him, but he feels like a stranger. It hurts him – the awkward small talk, the polite chit-chat we make. Like two people stuck in a waiting room forced to discuss the weather.

‘Sad,’ I say, like I am apologising. ‘I still don’t know why I can’t teach. I mean, I can’t drive, fine, but why can’t I teach? It’s so …’ I lose the words. They fall away from me, cruelly answering my own question. ‘And then I tried to talk to Caitlin about her father, but I don’t think it went very well, so I thought I’d try again when we were all together.’

‘Daddy is Daddy,’ Esther says helpfully, as Mum puts a dish of orange on the table. ‘I don’t like carrots.’

‘Oh.’ Greg is taken aback. ‘What, now?’ Greg never asked me about Caitlin’s father, and it was one of the things I do
remember I loved about him. Caitlin was just my daughter, the person who came with me, no negotiation, and he accepted that right away. It took him a long time to make friends with Caitlin: years of inch-by-inch dedication that slowly allowed her to relent and accept him in her life, long after she’d accepted Esther, who was instantly just one of us, an Armstrong girl, from the moment she was born. ‘Will she be OK with that?’

‘She doesn’t know,’ Caitlin says, arriving in the living room. ‘She doesn’t like the sound of it, though, whatever it is.’

‘It’s carrots and them other vegibles,’ Esther commiserates.

‘You look refreshed,’ I say, and smile. Her black eyes, along with the cascades of dark hair and her strong chin, stopped being reminders of her father when she was only a few months old: she owned them from the very beginning. Now, though, with Paul’s photo tucked in the back of the memory book, I see him in Caitlin’s eyes, which are watching me, warily.

‘But you’ve got my eyebrows,’ I say out loud.

‘If only that were a good thing,’ Caitlin jokes.

‘Darling, I want to talk to you a bit more about your father …’

‘I know.’ She seems calm, thoughtful. Whatever it was that made her lock herself in her room for the afternoon seems to have subsided a little. ‘I know you do, Mum, and I know why you want to do it. I get it. But you don’t need to, you see? You don’t need to tell me, because it won’t make any difference, except to maybe make things even more complicated than they already are, and none of us needs
that, trust me …’ She hesitates, watching me closely, and her face, which I used to be able to read like an open book, is a mystery. ‘I thought about it, because it’s what you want. I thought about seeing him, but I don’t want to. Why would I give a stranger a chance to reject me again? Because I’m pretty sure he doesn’t care at all that he’s had a child in the world all this time. If he were bothered, if he cared, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we? I’d have his number on speed dial.’

Mum puts the gravy jug down on the table with a thud.

‘Guess what my bear’s name is?’ Esther asks Caitlin, sensing the tension spilling over like the gravy.

‘Tarquin,’ Caitlin says. Esther finds that hilarious. ‘Marmaduke? Othello?’

Esther giggles.

‘The thing is …’ I start again. ‘What you need to remember is …’

‘Just tell her,’ Mum says, thumping the meat down on the table as though she is intent on murdering it twice.