Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
Max
Dear Leigh (or should I call you Ashley, now that I know your real name?)...
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Dear Max,
You can call me whatever you want—I’ve gotten used to both. Although it was a bit weird going by a different name professionally, but I chose something as close- sounding to my real name as I could. So call me whatever feels easier.
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Dear Ash?
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Dear Max,
That’s what my friends call me.
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Is it okay if I call you that then?
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Sure, I actually prefer it.
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Have we just become friends?
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Aaah. Cute!
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So cute.
I tapped my keypad nervously. I’d wrestled with whether to tell her who I was. But I figured it was something to tell her in person, not over email. It seemed wrong over email . . .
Bullshit. Who was I kidding? That was not the reason at all. The truth was that I was terrified that if she knew who I really was she wouldn’t come on this trip with me. After all, the last thing she’d ever said to me was: “I hate you.” Her last three words to me. I’d wanted to say my last three words back to her: “I love you.” But didn’t. I’d been such a coward. A stupid nineteen-year-old idiot who didn’t know that he was in the process of making the single worst mistake of his life by running away from a difficult situation. I lowered my fingers and typed back. Knowing who I was talking to felt exhilarating and terrifying, so terrifying .
Well, on that note,
Dear Ash,
Hope you had a great weekend?
Everything is booked and confirmed. I have attached the weather reports for the locations, so you know what to pack for yourself. Our flight to Matobo Hills takes off at 9: 30. The lodge is sending a driver to pick you up and take you to the airport where we’ll depart in their own plane. Please send me your address so I can forward it on to the driver.
Max
P.S. Hope you found a cat sitter?
P.P.S. you didn’t look as bad as you made out in your ID photo.
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Dear Max,
Seriously, my nose is red and at least two times bigger than it usually is. It was allergy season. But thanks.
I smiled to myself. I remember how badly she used to get allergies. If an insect bit her, she’d come up with a giant red splotch. She’d brushed past a certain plant once and her entire body itched for an hour. I’d had to help her scratch it until it stopped. She also made the most adorable sneezing sounds during pollen season.
Fucking stop it, Max , I mentally scolded myself.
My address is 3 Whalesong, Seaview Road, Camps Bay. My neighbors are going to look after Petal. She’s always at their place during the day anyway. They both work from home and she’s found a way to slink from my balcony to theirs.
I appreciate you organizing this, Max!
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Dear Ash,
It’s my job, but it was also my pleasure to do it .
Glad you have such good neighbors. Do they also lend you cups of sugar? Or cheese?
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Dear Max,
Haha! No cheese. But they have come to my rescue in some other kinds of “emergencies.”
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Dear Ash,
You have me intrigued once again with your use of inverted commas. May I ask what the nature of these “emergencies ” was?
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Dear Max,
I think if I told you it would probably be oversharing. We don’t know each other well enough to be discussing those kinds of “emergencies.” Especially not over email.
I pulled my phone towards me and started typing my message to her. I’d already changed her name in my contacts to Ash, and felt like a kid opening a Christmas present on Christmas morning as I’d deleted “Leigh” and typed in those three letters.
Max: Is Whatsapp better?
Ash: You really want to know?
Ash: It’ll probably just be a boring story for you.
Max: I doubt anything you could say or do would be boring.
I paused, wondering if that gave too many of my feelings away. I was struggling to hold them back, though.
Ash: Fine. I’ll tell you, but only if you tell me something personal too?
Max: Deal.
Ash: Okay then, let’s just say it was an “emergency” of the personal nature.
Max: You’re going to have to elaborate.
Ash: Put it this way, have you ever been on a date with someone and it was going so terribly that you had to send a secret message to your neighbors asking them to fabricate some kind of emergency to get said person out of your apartment?
My stomach dropped. Of course I knew she dated. But having her actually tell me made my forehead clammy and cold. I swallowed and tried to keep those feelings to myself.
Max: I’ve had a few dates over the years that I wished I could have put an end to, so I know the feeling.
Ash: Oh, I doubt you really know the feeling. Because trust me, I have a bit of a strange history of going on dates that usually end badly in some certain, special kind of way.
My forehead felt even clammier now. I wasn’t exactly sure what she was alluding to, but I knew I didn’t like it.
Max: Hopefully the cheese will save ours from that.
Ash: But this is not that kind of date, right? What did you call it, “professional semi-work-related”?
Butterflies—fucking pterodactyls—in my stomach.
Max: What if I was using the word “professional” in a very semi-loose manner?
Ash: Were you?
Max: There’s a strong possibility I was . . .
Max: So with that in mind, should I still bring the cheese?
There was another long pause on the phone and I waited in anticipation for her reply.
Ash: Depends on what cheese you’re talking about?
Max: Only the best kind.
Ash: Then there’s also a strong semi-possibility I won’t say no . . .
Max: Those are a lot of possibilities. And semis.
Ash: With a lot of possible outcomes.
Max: Indeed there are. I’m now very excited to see you.
I nearly typed “again”—thank God I didn’t. There was another long pause on the phone. I was smiling, my face awash with color, and even though I couldn’t see her, I could sense she probably looked exactly like I did now.
Ash: Me too.
Max: See you very soon, Ash.
Ash: See you soon, Max.
I put my phone down and stress-paced my room a few times. I was seeing her soon. I looked down at my watch, in twenty-three hours, soon. I had twenty-three hours to figure out exactly what I was going to say to her and how. I had a feeling, though, that no matter how it was said or explained, she would still be very pissed off.
A knock on the door made me turn.
“Mr. McAdamson,” the nurse called. They still called me by my old surname.
“Coming.” I walked over to my door and opened it. “What is it, Thuli?”
“I thought you’d want to know that your mom asked to go and see her animals.”
I nodded. “Thanks, I’ll be there soon.”
I quickly changed into a pair of sneakers I didn’t mind getting dirty. Taking my mom outside to see the animals was one of the few things we could still do together, and one of the only mother–son activities that actually made me happy. Because my main emotion when I was around her was sadness. When I’d moved back here, I’d chosen Noordhoek for its peaceful tranquility and country feeling. The properties and houses here were all huge, huge enough that I could have my mom stay with me, as well as around-the-clock nursing and care staff for her. I’d tailormade a wing of my house for her specifically. She had a sensory room, something that has yielded a lot of results in dementia patients. I’d also put together a small home gym for her to use with her physiotherapist to keep her muscles from deteriorating further. I’d tried to create a perfect little world for her here that she could enjoy for as long as she had left, and that included the animals.
When I’d brought her here for the first time, in one of her rare lucid moments, she’d looked at the huge garden and told me it reminded her of the family farm she’d grown up on. I’d made a joke about, “Well, it can’t be a farm without any animals,” to which she’d replied that she would love animals. When I’d asked what animals she’d wanted, I’d almost fallen over when she’d said llamas. She’d always wanted a llama, ever since she was a little girl and had seen their picture in a book. And so I’d fucking bought a llama! A llama! Of all the things she could have said.
She’d also asked for chickens and a parrot. The chickens had been easy. Everyone in this area had chickens and so I’d asked my neighbor if he had any he wouldn’t mind parting with. The parrot I’d gotten from Parrot Rescue; I thought it was the right thing to do. The woman there had warned me that since the parrot had not been particularly well cared for, it would probably not be able to talk, and probably not be as social as one that had been hand reared. Oh, how wrong she was . . .
I walked out of my room and down the main staircase to the bottom level. This area was luckily very big, and my mom’s section was at the furthest end of the house. I needed some space between my bedroom and her wing. Sometimes I would have guests over, and sometimes they’d get loud. I opened the door to her area and heard the very familiar, “Fuck you!”
“Shhhh!” My mom scolded the bird, who as it turned out was anything but quiet and unsocial.
“Who’s a naughty girl?” the bird squawked at my mother and then ran across the series of perches until he was right next to my mother, who he was very fond of.
“Sexy girl, sexy girl, sexy girl!” the bird said as my mom ran a hand over his head.
Out of all the parrots in the world, we’d landed up with a potty-mouthed pervert parrot.
“Mom!” I said brightly as I walked in. On some days she recognized me and knew who I was, and on other days she didn’t. But she was never afraid of me, like she was of other people. In fact, on the days she didn’t know me, she always told me what a nice and polite young man I was. Something that I both loved and hated to hear. But whatever her mental state was that day, she always looked the same, and it always took my breath away.
Only a year ago she’d been on her feet, lucid and full of life. Now she was so thin that her skin hung off her bones and her body no longer looked as if it could support life. A lot of the time she used a wheelchair, but on other days she was able to stand and wanted to walk around.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m a friend of yours,” I said. “And someone told me you want to go and see Lucy and the chickens.” She’d named her llama Lucy and always remembered her, even when she was far from lucid.
“I want to see Lucy,” she agreed. “And I need to feed the chickens, or they won’t give us eggs. Daddy says a happy chicken is a laying chicken.”
“Your dad sounds very wise,” I said, going along with whatever she said. She was clearly remembering her childhood today.
“Right then, let’s go.” I pushed her wheelchair towards the door. I’d had a wheelchair-friendly path built right across the garden, so she could still go outside whenever she wanted to. My mother had loved gardening, had loved being outside, and I wanted her to still be able to enjoy those things. I pushed her down the path. The weather was beautiful today mainly because there was a slight breeze cooling everything down. There was a clear view down to the sea and the mountains, and a flowery perfume hung in the air.
“Why are the gladioli not blooming? Has someone not been giving them water?” my mom asked.
“They’re not blooming because it’s summer. They only bloom in winter,” I explained.
“Oh. Why did we become friends?”
“I think we became friends because we like the same things,” I said.
“Like what?”
“We like watching the wildlife channel together, we like jelly and custard, and we like llamas,” I said, listing the things we still did, or ate together. She barely ate, but I could always get her to eat jelly and custard.
“That’s nice, dear,” she said sweetly. She was in a good mood today, which I was relieved about. Because sometimes she spent all day in terror and panic, not knowing what was going on around her.
“Here we go.” We reached the large enclosure that I’d built for Lucy and the chickens. Previously, I’d just let them wander around the garden, but I’d soon discovered that both Lucy, and the chickens, were very fond of sneaking inside the house. Lucy was particularly fond of eating whatever she found in the kitchen. On one specific occasion, she’d caused me to call an emergency vet over after she’d ingested my mom’s entire birthday cake, and then proceeded to vomit all over the lounge and dining room.
Lucy and the chickens ran up to the fence as soon as they saw us. I’d had no idea when getting a llama just how domestic and sociable they could be. They were like dogs sometimes. I pushed my mom up to the fence, passed her some chicken seed and celery sticks and then sat down in the chair I’d put there for myself and the nurses. My mom could simply sit and talk, or even sing to, Lucy and the chickens for hours. They really did bring her happiness, and I was more than happy to sit out here with her for as long as she wanted to be here. While my mom fed Lucy her favorite celery sticks and the chickens frantically pecked at the seed, I pulled my phone out and reread all the messages Ash and I’d exchanged so far. I’d done this a lot recently. She was still as funny as she used to be. No one had ever made me laugh like Ash.
“Where is that lovely fiancée of yours, son?” my mom suddenly asked me.
I smiled at her, so happy that she’d called me “son” that it dulled the pain of that now-familiar question just a little bit. “She’ll be here just now.”
“Good! Good!” she said, and then looked back at Lucy. Her memory was such that sometimes she seemed to remember the events of her life as they were, and sometimes she believed some alternate version of it. One of the ways that played out was with Ash. On some days, my mom knew Ash and I were not together, and on other days she imagined that I’d proposed to her that night with the ring I’d been saving up for, for a year.
I’d planned on asking Ash to marry me that night. We knew we wanted to be together, and had spoken about our future for hours and hours at a time, but in retrospect, at that age, maybe I’d taken it too far by buying a ring. It had definitely added to the overall stress of that disastrous evening. I was a nineteen-year-old kid with a ring burning a hole in my pocket, waiting for the perfect time to give it to the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, while trying to have sex for the first time too.
We’d waited so long to have sex because we’d both had this notion that waiting for the “perfect” moment would make it even more special. We’d seen most of our friends have sex, and none of them had spoken about it the way that we imagined we wanted it to be. It was almost throwaway for them, we wanted it to be different. Special. Perfect. But it had been the opposite of that, because once we’d done all the things we’d already done, and began heading into uncharted sexual waters, I just panicked.
And the fact that my mother seemed to dwell on this exact moment of my failed proposal—and unbeknownst to her, something else that was also failed—so often was unimaginably cruel. Not that she was trying to be cruel—it was just what her mind went to. But still, it was the most painful moment of my life and whenever she mentioned it I was forced to relive that pain. A pain I had tried to ignore for so many years. And when she brought it up, I had to play along. Her psychiatrist had told me to go along with these fantasies, and so I did. Even if it was painful to imagine this alternative reality in which things hadn’t gone so wrong with Ash. A reality where she had a ring on her finger, and we were happy. A house, a dog, kids even. Maybe a llama or two. I tried not to think about it. But it was very hard right now because after thirteen years of trying to push her away, she was fucking back in my life. The thoughts of what might have been with her were coming crashing back. And I was asking myself—was I ready for how it was going to feel to be in her presence again after all this time?