6. Stoke-on-Trent, April #2
“How the hell did they find out where I live?” she railed. Then she turned on herself. “I shouldn’t have yelled at them like that,” she said, pulling at her cheeks in horror. “Those photos, I’ll look ancient .”
I persuaded her to sit down while I made drinks and fed us all: a Bonio for Quill, a couple of ginger biscuits for us, for the shock. It felt good to bustle around the kitchen, making things, even better to be granted the intimacy of her rant.
“You don’t look old,” I soothed, eventually settling down next to her on a kitchen stool. It was true; she was still in her nightie, a sleeveless cotton thing which made her look like a child.
Anna sighed gratefully and stared into her mug of tea. On the island between us lay her iPad and a pouch of rolling tobacco. It was midmorning now, and the radio murmured quietly on the dresser shelf. Above, the Murano glass chandelier reflected a soft, milky light.
“Distract me, Gussie,” she said eventually, rising from her thoughts. “Tell me about you. What is it you do? As in, what else do you do?”
“You’re asking me if there’s other dogs?” I asked jokingly. It made her laugh, which again made me feel good. “Don’t worry, Quill and I are exclusive.” I held out my hands and showed how dry they were, the clay beneath my fingernails. “The rest of my time, I’m in the studio.”
“Oh yes, you’re an artist!” Anna bloomed. “Same as my daughter. I remember actually, Clover sent me the link. Your stuff is amazing. ”
My spirits soared at the compliment, but I found myself underplaying things.
I told her about the monastic way I lived in my frosty studio: the mattress on pallets atop the chipboard mezzanine, the electric shower that zapped you when you stood on its metal drain.
Anna gushed over it. She told me how romantic that work sounded, compared to her own.
“Should we swap lives?” I joked.
Anna flinched. “I’m not sure you’d want that. And besides”—she pursed her lips and looked under the table—“you look better in those dungarees than I ever did.”
“Really?”
“It’s strange. I used to have that exact pair.” Anna’s eyes glinted. “I’m sure no girl, no woman , could resist you in those.”
There was a pause. Anna looked at me knowingly.
Her blunt reference to who I was raised first a defensiveness, then a surge of affection; a thawing of my emotions that I couldn’t control.
We laughed awkwardly, coy laughter, which was also an admission.
I reached over and made a point of drinking a large mouthful of tea. Eye contact was impossible.
So, it was a relief when Quill interrupted us, skidding into the kitchen and running in nutty circles. I got up to clear our mugs and fussed over him.
“Here’s our little guard dog!”
“You’re taking such good care of him,” Anna commented, watching me fill his water bowl.
“I enjoy it.” I set down the bowl, then stood to face her on the other side of the counter. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been pretty animal starved.”
“You live alone?” Anna’s gaze flitted to my wedding finger.
“Not even a cat.”
“Your parents?”
“We’re not close.”
“Oh,” said Anna, sensing animosity in my tone. She studied me with new interest. “Do you speak?”
“Not regularly.”
“How often? Monthly?” I shuddered as if that was impossible. “Quarterly?”
“Christmas-ly.”
Anna acted like it was fate. “But this is uncanny,” she said, knocking her knuckles against the counter, half-triumphant. “Another estrangement. It’s an epidemic!”
“I wouldn’t like to put a label on it.” I shrugged. “We’re different animals. They find me strange, I find them strange. Does that count as estrangement?”
“Gussie, you really must call them,” she said, in a maternal tone.
“Why?” I said, feeling myself bristle. Another part of me was touched by her interest.
“Because they’re your parents. You can’t carry resentment, Gussie.
For one, it wrecks the skin. But also, what people don’t understand is, no one gives you a manual for motherhood.
No one tells you how on earth to do any of it.
Then, just at the moment you work it out, bam .
Your children are grown up. They’ve got this scorecard on you, but it’s too late. They’re gone.”
I couldn’t look Anna in the eye for the sadness in what she had admitted.
“I mean, it’s not really a conscious decision. We just don’t have that much to say to each other.”
Anna’s voice wavered. “Well, I suppose you’re in your right mind.
And my daughter very much is not. She’s struggled off and on for years.
How else can she face standing up and giving evidence against me in the highest court of the land?
Me , her own mother. Isn’t that the most unnatural thing you ever heard? ”
There was a heavy pause.
“It’s probably not my place to say,” I ventured gently, “but I’m really sorry about what’s been happening. Especially with everything before—the photographers.”
“Nonsense. It’s hardly your fault, is it?”
“I know I’ve only worked here a few weeks, but you seem like a really good person.”
Anna blinked at me for several moments. The cold outside had made her eyes stream, melting dark blotches of yesterday’s mascara into her lower eyelids.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “That actually means a lot.” She smiled gratefully, then her phone sounded a message.
Anna read it over and began moving brusquely around the kitchen, apparently in search of something.
Her manner had hardened, and I wondered if the intimacy of our exchange had unsettled her.
We’d gone too deep, perhaps. Or she’d revealed more of herself to me than she wanted to.
“Didn’t the post come yesterday?” She frowned and walked over to the dresser.
“I don’t think so,” I said, feeling my chest kick at the lie. There was silence as she riffled on. I began to search for Quill’s lead.
“My lawyers sent some documents,” she said, and sighed. “You didn’t sign for anything?”
“I wasn’t really here for long,” I said brightly, clipping the leash to Quill and announcing his walk. “It was always pretty early.”
Anna made a low sound of frustration. “They’ve sent it to the office instead,” she muttered, slamming a drawer closed and marching out of the room. “Bunch of total fucking amateurs.”
When I was out of the house, I checked my phone. Hardly two hours had passed, and yet those photographs of Anna were already online. As I scrolled them, I couldn’t help smiling. Anna was right to have panicked; without her makeup on, she looked deranged and raw.
Yet, as I walked home, I kept revisiting the intimacy of our conversation with queasy pleasure.
The connection I had built with Anna felt strangely effortless, and her company had nourished me in unexpected ways.
She was far more accepting than I had imagined, and my mind kept rounding back on the familiar warmth of her expressions, the comfortingly ripe musk of sleep on her skin.
Maybe Anna didn’t need a dog walker at all, but a surrogate. An understudy for the girl she had lost. It was unnerving, how ready I was to play that part. But perhaps that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. A long time had passed since I’d had anyone to lean on.