26. Zelda
ZELDA
Iring Jeremiah’s mother on a Wednesday, before I can talk myself out of it.
She picks up on the second ring. “Zelda?”
“It’s me.”
“I told him I wouldn’t ring you.” She is breathing fast. “I’ve wanted to every day since January.”
“He told me he let his manager open the plant.”
“He did. I wasn’t sure he’d go through with it.”
I laugh, and my nose prickles. “Come on Sunday. I’ll make tea.”
She comes on Sunday with a lemon cake in a tin and her coat buttoned to the neck. She admires the lamp, then sees the bird book open beside my chair.
“I’ve missed such a lot,” she says.
She looks at me, at the size of me. Her chin goes.
“Oh, my dear girl. I wanted to be here for you.”
I had a speech ready about how well I am managing. It leaves me. She gets her arms round as much of me as she can reach, and I cry on her good coat. She is crying too, and patting my back in little thumps.
We sit. She cuts the cake herself because she won’t have me getting up.
“It’s lemon,” she says. “He’ll have told you chocolate is the only cake. The one he likes is far too sweet. I’ve said so every birthday he’s had.”
“I ordered him one for our anniversary. I left before we cut it.”
“Then eat this one.” She puts a slice on my plate.
I take a bite because she is watching. It is sharp with lemon. I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted someone to put something in front of me and wait while I ate it.
“He told me,” she says. “About the eight days. I kept asking him to say the dates again.”
I look down at my plate.
“I thought I’d raised him better.”
“You didn’t make him do it.”
“No.” She picks a crumb from the edge of the tin. “His father always needed to be right. I spent years making excuses because I loved him. Jeremiah became more of that than I liked. But he’s a grown man, Zelda. He chose.”
“I still miss him.”
“Of course you do.”
I wait for her to tell me what that means I ought to do.
“Some evenings I like it here,” I say. “Then I want him to come through the door and tell me something stupid.”
She puts her hand over mine.
“I’m not here to bring you home. Even if you never come back to him, that child still has a grandmother, and you still have me, if you’ll have me.”
I can’t answer. I nod. She pats my knee.
She takes a flat parcel out of her bag and puts it in my lap. Under the tissue is a knitted blanket, cream, gone soft and a little gray with washing. One corner has been chewed.
“He came home from the hospital in that,” she says. “He ate the corner himself. It’s for Otto, whatever you decide about his father.”
I hold it against my face. “Thank you,” I say into the wool.
She wipes her eyes. “Now tell me whether there’s room for another book on those shelves. I found one with a very bad picture of a rabbit.”
“How bad?”
“I thought it was a horse.”
I laugh into the blanket. She cuts herself a second slice.
It is twenty to seven when she gets up to go. She has one glove on when she turns back to me.
“Will you ring me again?”
“Yes,” I say. “You can ring me too.”
She has to blow her nose before she can get the second glove on. I keep the cake tin. She tells me she expects it back with something in it, and I promise her I can do that.