Chapter 27 #3
The word. The little word that did it. Just ‘they.’ Mum’s mouth. The living room with the football on and Terry from next door and the cans.
‘He went silent,’ Mum says. ‘You know.’
I know it. The Sean Carrick withdraw, not anger, not shouting. Worse, the nothing. The face that closes like a door you didn’t see had hinges.
‘Terry left. Your dad stayed. He said, he said it like you were standing there. “Both of you, Eileen.”’
Both of you.
I put the kettle down. The sound of Celyn breathing in the bedroom, the slow rhythm, and Mum’s voice in the phone and the kitchen between them, not this kitchen. The Lewisham kitchen, the crooked tiles.
‘I told him it’s not the same,’ Mum says. ‘I told him Celyn’s not, it’s different from Ewan and Laurence, it’s, but he wasn’t listening, Ron. He’d stopped listening. You know when he stops.’
‘Yeah.’
‘He went home. He didn’t slam anything. He just put his jacket on and went home. Didn’t finish the can.’
Didn’t finish the can, Dad. The man who finishes everything, the plate, the pint, the job. Who taught me that. Walking out with a half-full can on the side table and the football on.
‘Mum.’
‘I’m sorry, love. I should have been more careful. I should have asked.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘I know. I know it’s not. But I’m glad you said it.’
‘Mum. It’s not your fault.’
Silence, the kettle in Lewisham, I can hear it. The click, the steam. She put the kettle on. She always puts the kettle on.
‘He’ll call you,’ she says. ‘Or he won’t. But I think he will.’
‘Mum.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Thanks for not being careful. For saying it.’
Silence, a different kind.
‘You’re my son, Ron. Both of you are. I’m not going to whisper about that in my own living room.’
She hangs up, phone, screen, kitchen. My kitchen, the Manchester one, the kettle that clicked while Mum was talking. I pour the water, mug the blue one, tea, three sugars, no milk because I forgot again.
The flat’s silent, Celyn’s still asleep, the duvet, the foot.
The breathing I can hear from the kitchen, slow, even, the sleeping-breath.
Celyn doesn’t know yet. Doesn’t know that the word ‘they’ left Mum’s mouth and entered a room with football on the telly and cans on the table and a man who doesn’t know what to do with it.
I lean on the counter. The tea. The steam.
I think about Dad, anger would be easier. What Dad does is, absence. The volume turning down.
I drink the tea, stand in the kitchen, wait.
Except last night he didn’t finish the can. That’s. I don’t know what that is. A different sign, the routine broke. The kettle’s clicked off. Water cooling. The concrete’s already down. Setting or not. The choice is done.
Dad might call, or Dad might not. Both live in the same space.
Mum said the thing she couldn’t unsay. Opened a door I didn’t know was closed.
She probably held it for a year, waiting for me to be ready.
Nobody waits that long. Eventually the words come out at the kitchen table with the football on and the secret drops into the room like a brick.
Two years ago I did this with Ewan. Two years of Mum saying ‘he’ll come round’ and two years of him not coming round until he did. Different man, but the same waiting. The same kettle going cold.
The difference is. I’m not waiting for Ewan anymore. I’m waiting for my dad to understand that what he doesn’t understand isn’t his job to understand. That the world didn’t break. Just expanded. Just got a bit bigger and a bit quicker and a bit more open.
The tea sits in the mug. Three sugars, no milk. This is what out looks like, apparently. A son who doesn’t hide toothbrushes or drive three hours in a panic.
Real is harder. Real is standing in a kitchen waiting for a phone that might not ring.
The waiting is the worst part. The space before the conversation.
The space where the phone might ring or might not and both options are unbearable and the body can’t sit down so I’m at the counter with the tea going cold and my hands opening and closing, opening and closing, looking for something to measure.
Celyn walks in at half twelve. The hair, the face, sleep in the eyes.
‘Morning.’
‘Afternoon.’
‘Don’t.’ The yawn. Arms up, the t-shirt riding, the stomach, the hip. Celyn pads to the kettle. Bare feet on the cold floor. Fills it. Clicks it. The routine.
‘You’re doing the hands thing,’ Celyn says. Opening the tea tin.
‘What hands thing.’
‘The measuring thing. The thing you do when something’s wrong and you can’t fix it with a trowel.’
I look at my hands. Spread.
‘Mum called,’ I say.
Celyn turns, the face changes. The morning softness hardens into attention. The reading.
‘And?’
‘Dad knows.’
The kettle, the steam. Celyn puts the tea tin down. Comes to the counter, stands next to me, close. The warmth from sleep on the skin.
‘How?’
‘Mum said “they” in front of him. Didn’t mean to. Just. Said it.’
Celyn doesn’t speak for a moment. The hands bare, the nails chipped from yesterday’s shift, the ring catching the kitchen light.
‘Is she okay?’
Not: are YOU okay. Not: what did he say. Is she okay.
‘Yeah. She’s. She’s Mum. She’s fine.’
‘She’s not fine. She’s holding it.’ Quiet. ‘Mothers hold it. That’s what they do. And then one day the holding gets too heavy and nobody notices because they’ve been holding so long everyone thinks it’s the shape of them.’
‘He might call,’ I say.
‘Then we wait.’
We, we.