Chapter 7 #2
God, Nora, he says. You sound like my mother.
Well, I don’t know how to ask these things! Did you … date?
Not really.
Take any lovers?
Nora, stop, he says, but despite himself, he starts laughing, because that’s what she’s doing. They’re still laughing as the road opens out onto the green, the swing set skeletal on the black grass; lights on in his mother’s living room window, even though her bedtime was over an hour ago.
Shit, he says, but Nora says I was just joking. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.
He’s picked up his pace again for home, but at this, he slows down; her prior question weighing between them. A few, is all he says. What do you care, anyway?
I don’t, Nora says, as he crosses the green. I was just curious, that’s all. You’ve never talked about it.
You’ve never asked.
Just as well, she says, because there’s no room for any plus ones at this wedding of mine.
This spontaneous sometime wedding, Bren says.
This long-time-coming, maybe-spring, maybe-summer wedding, Nora says.
Wait. If you don’t get a cancellation by the summer, do I have to. I mean, would you want me to –
The venue guy thinks we’d likely be married by June, Nora says. July, latest. And if not, we regroup. There are fewer weddings come the autumn, see. Fewer cancellations.
Got it, Bren says, after a pause. So if you’re not married by July, you’ll relieve me of my best man duties?
He is coming up the driveway now, boots crunching on the gravel.
Yes, is all that she says.
The surrealism continues. He is fine with this; she’s fine, too. They are both fine or both figuring out how to be, and isn’t that, he thinks, essentially the same thing.
What duties does a best man actually have, he asks her, as he reaches the door.
I don’t know, Nora says. Hand out cake, maybe? Tackle Freya if she objects, halfway through the ceremony?
There’s another, longer, pause.
Two things I can do, Bren says, and Nora says thanks, well, I better go. Attempt to get at least some sleep before this big week.
And when he asks her why, what’s this week, he expects her to say just work, my commute, but instead she says she’s made a wedding dress appointment for next weekend. Seeing as they’re moving fast, now, on this thing.
This thing.
Bren stands on the doorstep, not wanting to go inside. It is cold, and his dad died in this driveway, and he hasn’t thought about that properly until this very moment and yet all he wants to do is stay on the phone, talking to Nora; filling himself up with other feelings.
Sure, Bren says, eventually. Are you.
He clears his throat.
Going alone?
Nora laughs again, but it takes on a wooden quality, this time, like her voice earlier that evening. Shay has to watch the café, she says, and it’s not really Freya’s scene, and beneath the wood there is a sadness which means before he can think he’s asking – is it a best man thing?
Quiet, then. Clear of her own throat.
If we’re going to do this, Nora, Bren says, let’s do it right.
His words hang like the night around him.
He wonders if she remembers that this is what she used to say about the ice cream in his mum’s freezer, raspberry ripple, always, three scoops not two, and while she doesn’t acknowledge the memory, she does say …
okay. And he doesn’t quite know why he said it.
Doesn’t quite know why it poured out of him, boiling, like kettle water, maybe just because – like he’d thought – they can handle the heat.
Nothing’s changed. Best friends first, right, even as two grown adults with a history; because of it, even, a history that feels far away and yet too close, taking up all of his air.
A goodnight, then, in the dark sea of the driveway.
She tells him she’ll text him, when she’s confirmed her appointment.
And after the call ends he stands there for another minute outside his mother’s door, thinking.
His hands, so numb with the cold by the time he tries, that he can’t get his key in the lock.
_
He does not wake with the light, because for that he would have had to have slept.
Josie was dozing in her chair when he got in; he’d covered her with a blanket, turned off her reading lamp that, as far as he knew, she never used for books.
Word searches, she’d always liked. The ones in true-life magazines like Take a Break.
They’re so fascinating, she told him once, when he’d caught a ludicrous headline about falling in love with a Ferris wheel.
Stranger than fiction, Bren, you wouldn’t believe.
He gets up and showers off his lack of sleep.
Towels himself down and untangles the St Christopher Nora gave him for his sixteenth birthday.
To protect you when we’re travelling, she’d told him, which only brings up more thoughts, the smell of her bedroom, Freya bringing them lemonade while they flipped through travel guides, and he is taking the stairs afterwards, fully dressed, hair damp and mind elsewhere when he stops halfway down, because it is entirely silent.
There is no noise from his mother.
No footsteps or radio, no porridge turning in the microwave. Two more steps and he can see that her bedroom door is still closed.
Rush of heat, then, through his body.
All is fine, he’s sure. It had been a late night for her, after all; later than usual.
A few more stairs and he makes himself open her door, just so, only to find the bed is made.
Maybe she’s still asleep in the chair, and hadn’t heard him showering; unlikely, when she wakes at the mere suggestion of a sound, but no, she’s not downstairs, either.
He calls her name, then. Nothing. Checks the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, runs back up to her bedroom, heart like a train in his chest. Maybe she does go to the shop, sometimes.
Maybe she’s filling the bird feeders in the front garden; back down, front door open, empty but for a blackbird which scarpers over the hedge.
Volvo still in the driveway because she doesn’t drive; can, of course, but won’t; not since he was five.
He closes the door and the recollections sear through him, hot and sudden, like nausea.
How things had changed, so slowly. Her willingness to do normal things fading like the colour of her hair.
No more driving. No more attending parents’ evening.
No more part-time job at the florist. Her gradual slip into solitude, but still smiling, still I’m well, thanks to the neighbours, when she wasn’t; Nora and Freya, the only ones who knew.
Who saw and heard things through the wall.
His father, handling everything. Counting out her tablets while Bren ate his Cheerios, falling still if he found there were pills missing.
Phoning the doctor, then. First-name basis with the receptionist. Prescriptions collected alongside the shopping, kitchen roll, semi-skimmed milk, six milligrams of anti-psychotics, good day, Bren, how was school.
And now two decades later, Bren stands in the hall without him, his train-heart off its tracks as he says okay, out loud: okay.
Next thought, that he could knock for Freya.
Ask if he should call the police, like they did once; she would know.
Wouldn’t she? Or is he the only –
And then the back door opens and there is a second where his insides harden then melt with relief, and his mother is walking into the kitchen with a dozen tomatoes cradled in the fold of her apron.
Morning! she says, and she looks tired, but normal enough. Eyes alert. Shoulders straight. Slips off her garden shoes onto the doormat, careful not to spill the red fruit.
Where were you, Bren says, but Josie doesn’t catch his tone, which is just as well, he thinks, as it was rich, coming from him.
With Freya, Josie says, brightly. We have tea and toast on Saturdays, and she gave me these beauties. I thought you might want a full English, after your late night.
She moves further into the kitchen and Bren watches her, double-checking for signs. No tear tracks down her face, no slight twitch of her mouth, so he moves forward, relieved, helps her unload the tomatoes onto the side.
You’re all right, though, he asks, and she says of course. But what about him? She was so worried, when he wasn’t home by midnight. So worried, Bren thinks, that she fell asleep in the chair.
I missed the last train, he tells her. Ended up walking home.
Walking? Bren! You should have texted! I could have …
But she tails off, because she couldn’t have, and they both know it. That car is as good as dead in the driveway, a hunk of metal and rubber and bad memories.
It’s fine, he says. And thanks for the thought, he says, nodding at the tomatoes, rolling like billiard balls across the counter, but I’m heading out.
Again, pet?
Yeah, he says. Fancy a walk.
Even after your long walk home, last night? How was it, at Nora’s?
Good. Fine. She’s actually asked me to be her … best man.
Weird words, in his mouth. Still surreal, but he expects a flutter of delight from Josie, at the news. A beat of misunderstanding at such an oddity, followed by her usual glazed expression, a passing lovely. Instead she looks up in alarm, as if he’d just told her he was off to get another tattoo.
You’re Robin’s best man?
Not Robin’s, he says, Nora’s. They’re defying convention, or whatever.
He can see his mother working hard to process this concept. But she seems to accept it, thanks to years of friendship with Freya, probably, then moves on to her next concern.
Is that a good idea? she asks him, following him out of the kitchen, as he pulls on his boots in the hall. When he asks her why it wouldn’t be, she says is it wise for you to make promises like that, Bren? When you’d need to be …
She twirls her hand in the air.
More acquainted with a state of permanence, she says.