Chapter 12 #3
He thinks about the perceived mistakes he’s made, as monochrome photographs appear on the TV screen.
How people judge him for his actions. Which he’d admitted as much to Robin, not as a threat but in self-deprecation, almost: he doesn’t do the right thing, historically, not when it comes to life’s milestones.
Gap years. Weddings. Funerals. Which hadn’t gone down so well, judging by the look on Robin’s face, the way he put his drink down, hard.
But it wasn’t Bren’s job to reassure him, especially when he doesn’t really care what Robin thinks of him; when the only one he cares about here is Nora, and there’s that itch, inside him, again.
A certainty he’s not felt, before. The credits end, the screen fades to black, and he amends his search on the flight app to two tickets – two seats – instead of one.
Well, Josie says. I really enjoyed that.
Yeah, Bren says, unmoved. She really enjoys everything she watches. He’s never heard her express anything else, negative or impassioned or otherwise.
D’you want a hot cocoa, pet, before bed?
She asks him this every night, and every night he says no thanks, because he isn’t eleven, not that he says this last part.
He doesn’t head to bed just yet, though; bookmarks the cheapest double flight, first. Singles, not returns.
Then puts his phone down, only to see his mother looking straight at him from her armchair.
Mug of tea on her side table. The painting that Nora had given her for her birthday, one year, propped beside her reading lamp.
What’s up? he asks her.
I was going to ask you the same thing.
How come?
You seem particularly distracted, this week, Josie says. Watching that film is the first time you’ve sat still for more than two minutes.
I rarely sit still for more than two minutes, he reasons.
Well, Josie says, I suppose that’s true. You’re still staying for Easter, aren’t you?
Classic, he thinks. Concern for him, eclipsed by the more pressing preoccupation with this vague get-together of hers. He says yes, though, and she says good. And for Nora’s wedding, too?
Something must show on his face at this, because his mother actually points at him and says there, Bren.
There’s that distracted look I keep seeing – and this surprises him, not only because she’s noticed, but because he’s not able to hide it, after years of managing his emotions.
He tries to rearrange his face. Tries to look unruffled, nonchalant. But then –
You’re leaving, Josie says to him. Aren’t you?
More surprise, at her, but also because ordinarily, that would be his plan.
I’m actually not, he says. Not anytime soon.
And whether it’s this new certainty he’s felt since the film, or whether it’s just apparent in his tone, his mother seems to believe him. Appraises him from her chair, her slippered feet propped on a pink, wooden-legged pouf.
I’m making cocoa, she says.
I don’t want –
I’m going to have some, she says, before she leaves the room.
Bren checks his phone once more then stands and stretches, deciding to go up to bed while she potters in the kitchen.
But something stops him. Catches his eye.
He goes over to his mother’s table and picks up the painting he’d noticed, earlier.
Nora had been experimenting with oils at the time, smudging it with her young fingers.
Cy Twombly style, she’d told Josie, as his mother unwrapped her gift, let out a coo of faux interest. His real name was actually Edwin, Nora said, and he had a love affair with Robert Rauschenberg and moved to Italy because he didn’t like New York, and he refused to climb up ladders in case he fell.
Which is why all his mark-making happened at the bottom of his huge paintings, like this.
Is that so, Josie had said, while twelve-year-old Nora caught her breath.
Although this is a really small painting, Nora had realised, embarrassed.
Good things come in small packages, Josie had told her, squeezing her hand.
Unless you’re entering a marrow-growing competition, Nora replied, and his dad, who was folding up wrapping paper, had laughed, said now that, Nora, is your mother talking.
The memory dims, like the standby light on the TV.
Bren puts the painting down and looks over at the other armchair by the bookcase.
There’s a stack of mountain guides on that side table; his dad loved Wainwrights and Corbetts and Munros, wanted to bag all of the latter, before he.
Well. Bren lingers, but then goes over to those, too.
Wants, partly, to leaf through one; finds it’s enough just to look without feeling like he might cave in, and then he sees the black vase on the bookshelf and realises, for the first time, that it’s an urn.
Sick jolt of shock, then, and he’s up the stairs, trembling, like an animal that needs to shake out trauma, like a human that needs a cold shower, maybe, a midnight walk.
But first he shoves open his window for the slap of night air and throws himself onto his bed; is scrolling through his emails when his mother knocks on the door, five minutes later.
One cup of cocoa, she declares.
I said I didn’t –
I thought we could share a cup together, Bren. Before bed.
It isn’t a request. Bren sees a flicker in her, then, the mother behind the medication and relapses and crying fits and drifting, distant niceties that make up the majority of their relationship.
But beneath all that, there is her laugh, his jokes, her telling him how to bake this, that he can’t drink that, nor swim there, or climb this. He sits up, slowly, takes the cup.
I miss you, Josie tells him, and Bren coughs as he sips his drink. It’s tepid, too lumpy. Grit of powder on the back of his tongue.
I’m right here, he says, after he’s cleared his throat.
But I feel like I don’t know you, Josie says, and she says it gently, as though she doesn’t want to spook him. Even though you’re home now.
Bren, rash-hot after what he’d seen downstairs, feels a shiver through his conscience, that quiet, stifled part of himself he doesn’t like to listen to.
To be fair, he says – because he does try to be fair, when his conscience pipes up – you don’t really ask me much.
Or you don’t really tell me anything, Josie says, with a twist of her small mouth; playful, it could be, or deflective; he isn’t sure. It’s like you’re scared to be in a room with me, she says.
I’m not scared.
But you don’t want to be in a room with me?
Another mouthful of cocoa, after she’s spoken. Bren knows he needs to tread carefully, here. That they’re in an emotional danger zone, even though he’s been so intent on keeping things light since he got back. Eaten dinner with her, filled her bird feeders, shared TV time and morning coffee and –
I haven’t heard voices in a long time, Bren, she says, and his blood jolts the way it had when he’d seen the urn. I haven’t been confused, Josie goes on, or frightened, and I’m ticking along, pet, quite happily. Or as happily as I can, without my boys around.
Resignation in her features, then, and Bren feels his guilt morphing into curiosity, almost.
We’ve never talked about the past, have we, she says, blowing on her cocoa even though it’s lukewarm; for something to do, he suspects, as he looks up at her from the bed.
How it was for you, she says, growing up, with me …
the way I am. And your dad dying, like that.
When he was our only constant. Your only …
normal parent. I do understand that, Bren.
But Bren cannot respond. Cannot get his head round how articulate she’s being, how emotionally astute, and she seems to get that, too, comes to sit beside him on the bed.
I understand, she repeats. Why you had to leave, because you couldn’t be here, without him. But also because you knew I’d be fine. I know you wouldn’t have gone if you could’ve done … anything more, for me, my love.
He lets her take his hand, wondering if this is true. Whether she just prefers to forgive him, or genuinely believes it, blinkered by her medication, perhaps, or a mother’s love.
The girls seemed to think it was such a tragedy, you leaving, like you did, Josie says, nodding to the wall shared with next door.
But I like to think it was a sign of faith from you, Bren.
Faith in me. In knowing that I’d be okay, when so many people think I won’t be.
And, she says, squeezing his hand, in knowing there was more for you, out there, too. Which makes me so proud.
The room is too warm, too close. Even with the window wide open.
I see him in you, you know, Josie says. The way you forge ahead, no matter what life throws at you. And life threw a lot at us, your dad and me.
But Bren does not want to do this. Does not want to go there.
For so long he’d wished she would talk to him, properly – about anything that wasn’t the garden, or the weather – but they are past that now, it is too much and also too little too late, so he frees his hand and puts his mug down on the floor and manages to say one small word in reply. Thanks.
And does that help, she asks. Does that put him at ease?
Or is there something else … that’s bothering him?
And for years he has wanted her to notice, to care, for years he had hoped she would look at him and really see his hurting heart or scraped knees or gather him to her and comfort him, instead of ironing the bed sheets or watching koalas on the television or staring at the wall while his dad advised him to go outside, and she’s sitting here in his bedroom doing just that, looking and seeing, and he does not want this from her, and yet he blurts out that it’s harder than he thought. Being home.
Josie does not recoil when he says this. Simply nods and drinks more cocoa, says this is bad, isn’t it, I can’t’ve stirred it properly.
Light breeze through the window. Another light sip.
And he thinks that’s it; thinks she’s already lost interest, but then she says, hard, being home?
Because of? and gestures towards the driveway, to downstairs, with all its ghosts, and he could give in and say more but there’s that wall he’s spent thirty years building so instead he says because he found out, recently, that Freya didn’t pass his message on to Nora, when he left.
And it’s been kind of rough. Being here for her wedding, when things could have been … different.
Oh, Josie says.
Yeah.
Freya did mention that. I’m sure it was an accident, Bren. Slipped her mind, maybe.
Well, whatever, he says. It happened.
The night air is mild; a fox calls from afar. They sit there, mother and son, Josie drinking, Bren not drinking, wishing she would leave, or stay; an ache, in his chest, at the strain of not knowing how he feels or what he wants and how it can so often be both.
You know they’re not speaking? he says, and Josie says yes, it’s awful.
It’s breaking Freya’s heart, not that she’d admit it.
She’s working long shifts at the hospice, pretending she’s not bothered by it.
But they’re not like us, Bren. They talk every day, usually, and I’m worried about them. Especially with the wedding so close.
Sting inside of him, at this last part.
Even after everything he’s just said.
I’m hoping, if I get them together at Eas –
You don’t need to be worried about them, he says, because it’s been two minutes, two minutes of his mother seeming to see him and hear him and already she’s flittered on, concerned with other people, not absorbing a word of what he’s shared when she said she felt like she didn’t know him, and he tried, goddamn it, he was trying.
You should be worried, he says, about the wedding itself.
And he thinks this assertiveness will finally be too much for her, thinks she’ll take their cups, say goodnight, but instead she asks what he means.
I mean I think Nora’s just wandered into this life, Bren says. One she wouldn’t have chosen, if she’d had the right information. And I want to be her friend, I do, but I also want to be … what she needs.
Josie raises one translucent, barely-there eyebrow.
And what’s that? she asks him.
An alternative, Bren says. Someone to show her there are options, here.
Are you saying you’re an option, for her?
I’m saying I think she wants more than this, Bren says. More than a life in a one-bed flat with a mortgage to pay and Friday-night films.
Josie sniffs. And he thinks this is the moment where he might have truly upset her – unable to stop himself sounding superior – but there’s more to it than superiority, it’s the doubt he sees.
Nora’s hesitation, whenever the wedding comes up; the free spirit who’s tied herself down, the artist who sells the art of other people, the world open and waiting for her, still, if only she would jump.
But then Josie says: I do wonder, Bren, if it might be the other way around.
Silence, in the room. He frowns.
What if it’s not about Nora not going, his mother says. But the fact that you didn’t stay?
Her voice is not angry, or sad, or affectionate. It is neutral, as if she’s merely asking whether he wants another cup of cocoa.
It’s not that, he says, and Josie sighs.
Stands up, holds her hand out for his mug.
And she’s at the door when he feels the need to prove his point, says something’s just not right with Nora.
I can feel it. The wedding’s less than a month away, and they’ve not even sent out invites. Or visited the venue.
But they’re going, tomorrow.
What?
Nora texted me to say they’re heading to the venue this weekend. For a planning day, or something, and his mother is still talking but Bren is not listening and he shakes his head because it’s all wrong, he knows it’s all wrong.
Sweetheart, his mother says, but he says no, it’s fine, she’ll see.
Because he’s seen something in Nora, ever since he’s been home.
Felt how she’d held herself when he’d kissed her head at the bus stop, heard her laughter at their in-jokes and her fury at his bad habits and how she couldn’t say no, couldn’t tell him he was crazy, five days before, when he said she could come away with him.
Because he is not crazy. He is not. He does not stay indoors and nurse old scars, he gets out there, he forges forward, he tastes real life and reaches for more and does not think before he jumps and he knows, in this stifled, hopeful heart he’s carried, for all these years, that it’s time for Nora to do the same.