Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
GAVIN
I can’t remember the last time my body trembled this much with anxiety. Even when I was about to kiss Callie, I wasn’t nervous, I was calm. Settled. It felt right, and I knew it was right the moment our lips met.
But this? It’s pure internal chaos, sure enough.
Callie was right when she said my life sounded that way.
It was tumultuous to not know when my parents would be home or when I would need to feed myself, when they would take off for a weekend that would turn into a week, when they would forget to pack my lunch or do the wash.
I was fortunate growing up. I never questioned whether I was loved.
But I did question whether I was remembered.
Dad nudges the door open with his toe, and Mum is sitting on the bed watching the telly. She glances up and her brow furrows. “What’s this, then?”
“Gavin wants to chat.”
“Now? We’re going to sleep.”
The lights are all on, the television is on, and she was just handed a cup of tea. I think she can handle five minutes. I close the door, then take a seat in the armchair tucked into the corner.
“Can you mute this?” I ask. “Or turn it off?”
My parents exchange a glance.
“What is it, Gav?” Mum asks, reaching for the remote. The room goes silent when she powers down the telly, the faint rumble of distant chatter emphasizing the quiet in here.
How do I even begin? There were no lessons on this. Nothing to help me know how exactly to jump into the deep sea that will be this turbulent conversation. I inhale, filling my lungs entirely. Surely there is a way to bring up the campervan without entirely throwing Grandad under the bus.
“What happened to your campervan?”
“We sold it,” Dad says. “Found a chap willing to pay in cash. Can you believe it? Got a good penny from it, too.”
“That’s great. Are you planning to stay for a while, then?”
Mum scoffs. “We couldn’t stay in one place ever again. Not now that we’ve tasted travel.”
“So you must be using that money to buy a new one.”
“Well, now that you mention it, we ought to talk about it. We’d hoped to wait until everyone left.
” Dad puts his tea on the little bedside table and sits on the edge of the mattress.
“We were growing too cramped in the other one. It was time for an update. More space, a nicer oven, perhaps. Newer toilet wouldn’t go amiss. ”
“I see.”
“And we figured you wouldn’t want your parents driving around in an old clunker.”
“I didn’t think it was a clunker,” I tell them. The campervan they had was basic, but it was fully functioning. They hadn’t called me to cover any repair costs, at least.
“But if you helped us buy a nicer one, we could use it for the rest of our lives,” Mum says, sitting up now. “Think of it as a better investment.”
They’re in their fifties. I’m not buying the idea that they can use one vehicle for the next thirty or forty years. Or that they’ll want to. At some point, they could change their minds and want a regular house again.
“Dad, you can work again.”
“I am working, Gav. Remember? I’ll be writing that book.”
Good grief. The book. “Right, but I mean something with a steady wage while you work on that.”
He shakes his head. “It’ll take all my free time, I wager.”
I don’t know how to get through to them.
Weariness settles over my bones, and I imagine us having this conversation every three years for the rest of my life.
The money from Leo and Johnnie’s BBC show will dry up eventually.
Even with the way I’m investing, there are no promises.
I’m not the CEO of Greggs, guaranteed never to go out of business.
Another show will come along and boot me out of the way eventually. Bluey still reigns supreme in the children’s entertainment world, though we are a close second here in the UK.
“I can’t do this forever.” The words tear from me, scared out of my mouth by the vision of having to manage my parents for the rest of my life.
I picture boundaries being drawn around myself, safely keeping me protected, and draw strength from that.
“It is not my responsibility to pay for everything. I’ll give you…
I can help pay part of the way toward a new campervan because you need one, but I can’t buy it outright for you. I won’t sign on the lease.”
My parents stare, eyes wide, mouths pinched closed.
I continue. “It’s hard to be the only child of a mum and dad who don’t communicate unless they want something from me.
It’s hard not knowing when you’ll be here or when you’ll leave.
I have no sense of continuity, and I’m very often alone.
It would mean a lot to me if we could open the lines of communication better, if you could tell me when to expect you. ”
The shock on their faces would be almost comical if I didn’t feel like I was going to vomit.
“We raised you in this house,” Mum says, her voice eerily quiet. “Yet we can’t come and go as we please?”
“That isn’t what I’m trying to—”
“If we’ve been so awful to you, why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“Mum, I’m not trying to point fingers. I’m trying to be open about how I’ve been hurt so we can find a new way forward together. If you’ve been hurt, you should say so as well.”
She glares at the door. “I can’t even stay in my own house.”
“But it isn’t your house anymore. I bought it.” To help them, or so I believed at the time. Now I realize they never intended to remain here. I would offer to sell it back to them, but I know they can’t afford it.
Dad puts his hand on Mum’s. “We know we’ve asked a lot from you. If you can help us with the campervan, we’ll be out of the way as soon as possible.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “That’s not what I’m saying, either. I don’t need you to leave. I just want to be told things. It’s hard to wake up, expecting to see my parents, and find out you’re gone.”
“You don’t think it was hard for us to lose everything?” Mum says. “To crawl to our son and beg him to help us keep our house, only for him to take it for himself?”
A cold bucket of water splashes me in the face. Or that’s how it feels. My mouth hangs ajar as I replay those words over in my head, trying to make sense of them. “What?”
“You know. We had to humble ourselves, asked for help, and you spat on us, taking it for yourself. We know you’re successful, Gav, but you didn’t need to throw the reminder in our face.
Every time we come home, it’s a struggle merely to see this house and all we lost, but to know our son took it away? That hurts.”
My mind takes a moment to catch up to everything being lobbied at me. “You asked me to buy the house for you?”
“Aye, we did that. But we didn’t expect you to move back home.” Dad shrugs lightly, but I can see the pain in his eyes. “It was a fair amount, though. I know.”
A fair amount? It was a bloody house on a large bit of property. It was an investment for my future. I’m so shocked, I have no ready reply.
Mum frowns at the quilt on the bed. Dad looks at me.
I shake my head. If I’d understood what they were really asking for at the time, what would I have done?
At that time, I was vulnerable. Coming out of the massive depressive episode and having my books take off and the show getting picked up was a lot to handle.
I was coming into a good deal of money, and I might have just bought the house and gifted it to them.
But now? Knowing how much they intend to lean on me, I’m glad I’m in a position to set boundaries.
To help how I can without giving everything to them.
“I didn’t know. It wasn’t made clear to me. I assumed we were all going to live here together.”
Mum looks up at that, her brows furrowing.
“But I think we’re past that. If you’d like, I can write you a cheque for the campervan. I’m willing to give you ten thousand pounds to help cover an upgraded vehicle, but I can’t do more than that.”
The room is silent while my words sit over us.
“I’d love having you here,” I tell them. Maybe things are difficult with my parents, but they’re still my parents. “I hope you know you can stay here anytime you’re in town.”
“Thank you, Gavin,” Dad says. “If you write a cheque, that would be grand.”
Something in my chest unlocks at this. Maybe I’ll never be close to my parents.
Maybe they’re incapable of it. It’s not lost on me that while I tried to have an open conversation, Mum just wanted to point the finger back at me.
That makes me feel like she’s not ready for an open discussion about our feelings, and she might not ever be.
But after almost thirty years of being her son, I think this is a step in the right direction.
I have begun to implement a boundary that we can build on together over time.
My body feels tired. I’m raw from opening myself up and holding my chest bare for them to see into my soul, but there was something cleansing about it too.
Dad stands as if he’s going to walk me out. “Should we take care of it now? Better to do it privately than in front of your cousin.”
“Might as well.”
Mum says nothing as I leave the room with Dad and head to my office. I sit at the desk and pull out my chequebook. I’ve only ever written a handful of them in my life, but Dad’s old school, so he prefers this to PayPal.
I write out the amount and look at it, surprised my life has come to this. But I can part with ten thousand pounds. I’m unwilling to part with eighty thousand.
“Where do you plan to go next?” I ask, taking my time writing.
“We’ve thought about France. If we take the Channel Tunnel, we can spend quite a bit of time over there. Germany, Spain, Switzerland. You know your mother loves Italy.”
“That would be…” Long. Expensive. I swallow those words. “Incredible.”
“We’ll probably need to find a way to fund it,” he says, rubbing his chin. “I’ve thought of selling something from the van. Could get on with one of those makeup companies or the like.”
“Multi-level marketing schemes are probably not your answer. But I hope you find something lucrative.” I finish my signature and tear the cheque away. “Tell me, Dad, why were you in here the other night when you have a laptop with you?”
His cheeks turn pink. “Just a little curiosity, really. Nothing to worry about now.”
He was snooping. “If you want to see the new books I’m working on—”
“Nothing like that.”
Ah. Probably my finances, then. Something deep in my gut tells me that once I hand over this money, my parents will have what they came for, and I won’t see them for a long while.
But the other part of me wants to believe that a little of what I said got through to them, and that they’ll stick around for Christmas.
Or is that just hope? Me wanting them to want to stick around.
I take a deep breath and stand, handing it over. “Nollaig Chridheil, Dad.”
He takes the cheque. “Merry Christmas.”