Chapter 6
At the end of the month, Mum came home from the convalescent ward she’d been transferred to after a week at the hospital. We took her very slowly into the flat, hoping the furniture and familiar setting would trigger something in her memory, but it didn’t. We sat on the blue leather couch together in a miserable row. Dad and I tried to spark up a conversation once or twice, but all our efforts were in vain. Mum was so cold, so unresponsive, so distant. It seemed like she was tuned out to us and that the whole time there was a different channel playing in her mind. Her eyes barely flickered at the sounds of our voices and she remained completely still and rigid when we hugged her.
“Would you like to have a rest, Mum?” I asked her when all hope of talking had fizzled out.
At least she wasn’t deaf. She turned her head towards me slowly and mechanically, as if it pained her, and nodded.
“Alright,” I said gently, looking up at Dad for support. Quick as ever to understand what I was thinking, he stood up and helped me wheel Mum into her bedroom. The nurses had recommended that Mum and Dad didn’t share a room because Mum was recovering and needed a lot of space. We’d converted the study into a bedroom for Dad, and let Mum have their old bedroom.
As we entered the bedroom, the slightest spark of recognition flickered in her eyes, and then blacked out. A shadow passed over her face, which once again became vacant, and it was obvious her thoughts were elsewhere. Inertly, she gazed round the room, barely registering her surroundings.
Then she spoke for the first time since we’d driven her home.
“Thank you, Amelia and Daniel,” she said, in a robotic voice, as if she was being programmed to say the words. “I’m very tired now. I need to be left alone.”
Dad looked utterly bewildered. He opened his mouth as if to say something but remained speechless.
I came to his rescue, saying. “That’s okay, right, Dad?”
I looked up at Dad, raising my eyebrows. Slowly, he nodded his head, and I led him out, gently closing the door.
Dad walked to the converted study like a zombie, still trying to get his head around the situation. Deciding to leave him be, I stayed outside the bedroom. One minute later, I heard soft, soft, weeping from inside.
“What am I doing here, God?” she was crying. “Who are these people?”
***
The next day, the flat was incredibly quiet. It was so quiet that I could hear every time Dad coughed, every click of Mum’s wheelchair, every passing sigh and whisper.
Early in the morning, I heard noises coming from the living room. I tiptoed along the hallway and eavesdropped, pressed against the wall.
My parents were sitting with each other on the L-shaped sofa. Dad’s arm was awkwardly crooked around Mum’s shoulders and they both seemed stiff and rigid. They stared at each other in a bewildered way but he was stroking her hair, running his fingers through it like he always used to.
“Are you okay, Kelly?” I heard him murmur in a pained voice. “Who are you anymore, Kelly? Who are you anymore?”
***
I went to Mum’s bedroom at about eleven that day. She had retreated to her room after spending the early morning with Dad, and had not come out.
“Mum?” I hollered.
“Come in,” moaned a weak voice from the other side.
Entering the room, I saw her lying horizontally across the bed, shifting around slightly every second. She had obviously been trying to get off it by herself.
“Oh, here,” I said, rushing towards her. “Let me help you.”
I held out a hand which she took reluctantly, and I managed to get her sitting upright on the bed.
“Good morning!” I said, baring my teeth in what I hoped was a friendly smile. “Did you sleep well?”
Mum shrugged, looking at me blearily. “Okay.”
She caught sight of her reflection in the long mirror hanging on the great oak wardrobe.
“Oh God,” she muttered, reaching for a brush on the dressing table. “Look at me.”
She held up the brush and attempted brushing through the tangles with her left hand, the side that hadn’t been affected, but she was still very weak. Her wrists buckled and the brush fell onto the pillows. Mum’s eyes filled with frustrated tears.
“Don’t worry, Mum,” I said soothingly, picking up the brush and gently pulling it through her locks. “Don’t worry.”
After I had finished getting her ready, I rushed to the bathroom, locked the door, and choked out tears. I was near the point of hysteria and rocked myself backwards and forwards on the edge of the bath.
Am I crazy?
“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay,” I whispered to myself between breathless, frightened sobs. “You’re not crazy. You’re not crazy. Your mother can’t remember who you are and she can’t brush her hair and your father’s become an alien and you're talking to yourself and your school life is a misery but you’re normal, you’re not crazy and you’re okay.”
***
I didn’t want the day to start, but it began without my consent when my alarm went off and light poured in.
“Morning, Dad.” I walked sluggishly into the kitchen, raking my fingers through my hair, static from sleep. I sat down with a heavy sigh at the table and spooned out the cornflakes automatically.
Dad was sitting in a lethargic slump on his chair, looking up at me drowsily as I entered the room. “Morning,” he mumbled incoherently.
I stared at him, observing the dark bags under his eyes, and his bedraggled hair. Dad was always painstakingly neat as a rule, but now his shirt was rumpled, as were his trousers. Mum had only been home three weeks and he’d disregarded himself completely. My father was a nervous wreck.
“Dad, you look awful,” I remarked.
“Thanks a bunch,” he said sarcastically, slumping deeper on his seat.
“Don’t be like that, Dad,” I said, putting down my cereal and snuggling into him for our morning cuddle. The minute I put my arms around him though, the smell hit me. It was vile – he smelt intensely of cheap cigarette smoke and flat beer. I recoiled from him, trying to refrain from gagging.
“God,” I said, grimacing. “You smell awful too. Don’t tell me you’ve been drinking. And smoking as well!”
Dad had always been firmly against tobacco. He hated the sight of a teenager with a fag hanging out their mouth and had rammed the dangers of it into me since I was very little. I eyed his yellow tipped fingers with disgust; he’d obviously been having several a day.
As for alcohol, Dad only ever had wine occasionally at meal-times and parties, and probably drank a lot less than the average British man. Frustrated, I stomped off to open the refrigerator door. It was teeming with beer can packs. So that’s why every time I’d gone to get a chilled drink, Dad had leapt up and insisted on getting it for me.
Slamming the fridge door shut, I faced Dad, hands on hips. He looked up at me, embarrassed, the look of a hangdog about him.
“Oh,” he moaned, “Lay off me, Melie.”
That was the last straw for me – the martyred expression on his face, trying to justify his actions and the hypocritical way he was behaving. “What do you mean, lay off me?” I yelled at him, suddenly ballistic. “What are you doing to yourself, Dad? What are you doing? And all this secrecy...what’s the point?”
Dad sighed heavily.
“I’m sorry. It’s...it’s just so hard. It’s just so hard.” He looked as if he was going to break down into tears any minute. “I...I’m sorry, Melia. I’m trying to keep this together. It’s just so hard. Knowing that she could be this way...forever. There’s no hope of a let-up, of change....” he broke off and put his head in his hands, pushing away his bowl vehemently.
The bowl rolled straight off the table and onto the wooden floor, breaking right down the middle, cereal and milk rolling into the cracks between the floorboards. Dad didn’t even look up at the sound.
“It’s too hard. I...I don’t love her....Kelly...anymore. I...I don’t know her. Oh...”
I stood there, shaking my head in disbelief, unable to speak a word.
I turned and ran into my room, banging the door so hard that the papers on my desk gave a leap. I sat down on my bed, my teeth gritted so hard my gums were bleeding, fighting back the tears, and wondering what became of a person when there were no more left to cry.
haha