Chapter 13 #2
Back at Flora’s House, Taylor was taking a shower and Drew was starting to pack and downstairs, JB was noticing all the little details in the cottage he hadn’t thought to observe until now.
He browsed the paperbacks, the maps and the guidebooks and leaflets, and he ran his hands over the stones of the wall.
A rock as old as the moon – he’d forgotten what it was called, but Drew would know.
There were a couple of small watercolours of Harris and a dazzling piece of glasswork, a seascape.
He held it against the window where the afternoon light made the colours jewel-like.
He wondered what the island was like midwinter, thinking that this cottage would be so cosy – as long as someone remembered to keep that peat fire going.
In his back pocket, his phone was vibrating.
He looked to see who was calling him. It was his father.
‘JB! I tried you yesterday. You did not answer. How did it go?’
‘Hey Dad.’
‘How did it go? What time did you make? I researched the elevations – but your weather was mostly good, right?’
‘I did not run.’
‘You did not run?’
‘Nope.’
‘What do you mean nope?’
‘I mean I did not run. Drew and Taylor did. But I did not.’
‘What? Why? JB?’
‘I did not want to run, Sir.’
‘Wait. You did not run because you did not want to – but Drew and Taylor ran?’
‘Yes.’
‘They ran without you?’
‘No – I chose not to run with them.’
‘What times did they do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? Do they know?’
‘I guess? I could ask?’
‘John – is it your ankle? That’s why you didn’t run? I’ll have someone book an MRI or find an orthopaedic guy for you in Scotland. JB? JB? You still there?’
JB could envisage his father holding his phone aloft, moving about the room, wondering if it was his signal or JB’s.
‘My ankle is absolutely fine,’ JB said. ‘You know what? I just did not feel like running. Hello? Hello?’
But he knew the signal was fine. The line was still live.
He had stunned his father into silence and JB wasn’t sure quite what to say next.
He’d just lied to his father, twice in quick succession.
Because with every fibre of his being he had wanted to run yesterday, run every step of that gruelling marathon right here on this hilly, wind-torn isle.
He regarded his ankle and knew it was anything but fine.
The swelling was going down but it was a murderous colour now.
It was hot and sore to touch and, within it, the pain ran deep.
He thought of his father, calling him from his study with the oversized furniture; he felt simultaneously triumphant and a little scared too.
They made dinner from everything that was left in the cupboards, in the fridge, leaving themselves just salt, milk and porridge for breakfast in the morning. JB told them about his phone call home with his father and Taylor spoke of calling his dad from the beach.
‘But I really don’t want to phone my mom,’ Taylor said. ‘It’s like I don’t really know her anymore.’
JB didn’t understand this. Mothers were just mothers, really.
Always there but not doing all that much.
He liked his mom very much; he liked the way she never worried about the world.
It was soothing. He knew how sometimes he drove her nuts but he could always solve that with a bear hug and then she’d giggle like a girl.
‘I mean,’ Taylor continued. ‘She left my dad – some total horseshit about needing to reconnect with herself as a woman not a wife or a mother. Some crap about finding where she fits, about claiming back time.’ He faltered and his voice changed.
‘Well I think my dad’s done a pretty good job being a husband and chrissakes, I’m her son. ’
He pushed his plate away from him and scraped back his chair.
‘And what’s with the stupid lies about those old pieces of tweed being woven by my grandfather?
What’s the point of that? I feel bad for my dad – but her?
I actually don’t know what I think of her but I have a headache now so I’m going out for some air. ’
But Taylor didn’t go far, he didn’t need to walk away. He just stood in the garden. A few moments later, JB and Drew joined him.
‘You know,’ said Drew, ‘when I was home over Christmas, I don’t know why but I started looking at my mom’s phone – just to see what apps she has, what music, check out her photo stream.
Anyways, so there’s this photo there – and it’s just, like, from the waist up.
Thank fuck. But she’s in some bra and she’s got stuff on her eyes and these red lips.
She does not wear lipstick, my mom. And her lips are doing that pout thing.
You can see our fridge in the background and there’s stuff, like messy, on our kitchen counter.
I mean it was tame but it was so weird. Because it was my mom and it wasn’t my mom.
’ He sighed. He wasn’t sure if this was helping.
‘Anyhow, next I go through her messages – I don’t know why.
And she’s sending these messages to some guy.
He’s called Gerard. And I read a few – they weren’t, you know, bad.
But they were – well, they were not written by my mom.
’ He touched Taylor’s arm. ‘But they were written by Donna who also happens to be my mom. And I realised they were not for me to read or judge. I had no right not to allow her to be—her.’
Drew gave a little shiver, the breeze had a thin, slicing chill to it.
Spring nights on an island off the west coast of Scotland were very different to spring days.
‘So Taylor, I guess what I’m saying is we have to let our folks be people at some point – not just parents.
We just do. Imagine what my mom would think if she saw half of what I get up to.
Imagine what your mom would think if she knew about some of the things you’ve done! ’
Taylor swallowed hard. Cleared his throat. Didn’t want to try words. But JB surged in; lightening the load in his inimitable way.
‘Taylormeister! The T-Dawg – what was that magic number? Four fair maidens in your first week at college?! T-boner by name, T-boner by nature!’
‘I was eighteen,’ Taylor said. ‘I wasn’t who I am now.’
‘Exactly,’ JB said quietly. Then he put Taylor into a stranglehold and he kissed him on the top of the head.
And then they walked back into Flora’s House.
‘It’s all okay,’ Drew said quietly to all of them. ‘It’s just going to be different.’
The next morning, while the other two still slept and with his bed stripped and his backpack already in the car, Taylor brewed up his dreadful coffee one last time and took a mug of it outside.
It was cloudy today, it had rained overnight but the flowers in the pots by the door were bright and cheerful.
His toes were still sore but they felt okay in socks and Converse today so he took his coffee and walked out and over to the crest of the dunes.
His feet were soon soaking. He remembered that first morning, how the same thing had happened.
He thought how the island’s lessons were still to be learned.
And then he phoned his mom.
She was a night owl. He liked the fact that with the time difference she’d still be in yesterday while he was in today. It felt important to be one step ahead of her.
‘Taylor? Is that you?’
‘No it’s someone who’s stolen my phone.’
‘Huh?’
‘Of course it’s me. I just thought I’d phone.’ He paused. ‘Tell you how I’m doing.’ He paused again. ‘See how you are.’
She asked so many questions about Paris and about London and about what they had planned for Edinburgh.
She wanted all the facts and figures of the two marathons and she wanted to hear news of JB and Drew.
But she didn’t mention Harris by name. She just said, how is it out there?
And when Taylor answered with various superlatives she just said uh-huh, uh-huh.
‘So Mom,’ he said before he realised he was going to say it. ‘I have to ask why you wove some bullshit about those pieces of tweed?’ He listened hard at the silence reverberating between midnight in California where she was now, and morning on the west coast of the island where she’d been raised.
‘I don’t understand?’ she said.
‘All these years – my whole life – you’ve said my grandfather wove them.’
‘I did not, Taylor.’
‘You did so, Mom! I know so little about your side of the family – just what you’ve chosen to tell me – but you’ve always gone on and on about coming from this family of weavers.’
‘That is true.’
‘Well I took those tweeds – because you were throwing them out. And I brought them here and guess what Ma – they are not real.’ Though Taylor felt smug about this, it was not a nice feeling.
‘Yes they are.’
‘I call bullshit,’ Taylor said. ‘I took them to this old guy – Duncan MacDonald – and he knew my grandfather and he was adamant my grandfather did not weave them.’
This silence of his mother’s was really pissing him off.
‘Mom? Why would you say my grandfather wove them when he did not?’
‘He did not weave them.’
‘I know! They’re just random scraps of old tweed.’
‘My father did not weave them.’
‘I know – chrissakes – I know – but you told me he did.’
‘I never did, Taylor. I told you I am from a long line of weavers. I told you that my father was a weaver, my grandparents too – and their parents before them. But I never said that he wove those tweeds.’
Taylor started to furl back through conversations and memories. There was a squeeze across his forehead and his eyeballs ached a little.
‘I wouldn’t lie to you, my honey,’ she was saying.
‘Why have you kept them, then? Why were they with the crotal spoon and the pieces of Gneiss and the shells and the photos and the old book? Why keep them in your special box all this time if they’re just random? What’s the point?’
‘Because they are mine. I wove them. They were woven by me.’
Far below, over the sea, a huge eagle glided.
‘Taylor?’