Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32

I turn the clothes over on the radiator, then go back to the bedroom and check my phone. No new messages, no updates, just a smashed screen, and it’s gone half nine. I am out of time. What am I going to do? What would the women I admire do? That was redundant; they wouldn’t have met him on the tube platform last night.

Think about it, Laa. Think about how he makes you feel.

Okay, break it down. What have I learned? I love him; I keep going back to him; I’m a mess. But am I a mess, or does he just tell me that I’m a mess? If I behaved in the same way and he called me adorable, would I be adorable? Is his voice just louder in my head than my own? Ruth is right: he is awful to me. But sometimes. Only sometimes. After every slap is a kiss in the sunlight. But is that just relativity? What if it was never real happiness? Just the absence of unhappiness? Like those seconds between period cramps when you’re elated about the respite.

I reach back for the indentation in my skull.

Ruth told me to stop thinking about him and start thinking about myself. And she’s right. He is two years out of thirty. That’s less than ten percent of me. He is not responsible for everything.

I feel angry now, but it’s a deeper anger, the way that arterial blood is darker red. I’m not what he tells me; I’m what she made me. It doesn’t take a therapist to understand why I am the way I am. Because he died and she left. Because she burned the photos. They say that if you want a different outcome, you have to make a different choice. So I’m going to do something that I’ve never done on a Thursday: I’m going to call my mother.

I don’t have to search for her; she is my first missed call from last night. A row of numbers that I never saved to my contacts but can recite from memory.

The fizzing sensation in my body is the same as before I told him that I loved him; before the words left my mouth, before the silence and the don’t be silly . But I don’t know what else to do. Amy told me that I needed to learn how to end a story, and Diana told me that a problem with the ending is often a problem with the beginning.

I wait for her to answer, but she won’t. She’s probably making a crumble or painting a picture of Milton the turtle or—

“Hello?”

Shit. I wasn’t expecting Paul.

“Bonjour?”

Shit shit shit.

“Paul, it’s… Is my… Is Sarah there? My mum. Is my mum there? It’s Enola.” There is silence, then whispering. He is holding his hand over the phone. I imagine her face changing when he tells her who is calling. She puts down her wine and tries to think of an excuse but—

“Enola? Is everything all right?”

She sounds worried. That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. I open my mouth, but the words catch.

“Enola, can you answer me, please? I tried to call you last night but you didn’t pick up. What’s wrong?”

Why is she worried? Mum is never worried. Inconvenienced, but never worried.

“Are you hurt?”

I regain my composure. “I’m fine, Mum.”

“Enola, what is it, what do you need?”

I can’t hear background movement or the television. Is she actually listening?

“For the love of god, Enola, what is it?”

“I want to talk about…”

“Yes?”

For a moment, I’m not sure what I want to talk about or even why I called. It felt as much an impulse as when I hit that girl at school with my hockey stick. But then the reason comes to me and I know that I can’t exist another minute without the answers.

“Dad.”

There is a pause while my words hang in the air, and I feel like I’ve said something that I shouldn’t have. Mum shuffles and then: “Gosh, Enola, you are catching me a little off guard.”

“Well, we never talk about him, so it’s always going to catch one of us off guard.”

“And I suppose that’s because of me, is it?”

“Well, you don’t bring him up, Mum. Twenty years went by last year without a mention. We never commemorate him. There’s no grave. I don’t even know the actual day that he died.”

She laughs a small titter, like birdsong. “Why on earth would you want to know something like that?”

“Because that’s what people do, Mum!”

“We moved on, Enola. That’s what people do.”

“I haven’t!”

“Don’t be silly. Of course you have. You’ve got your writing and your relationships in London.”

“My writing? Not that you care.”

“I care, Enola.”

“No, you think that I’m never going to make it as a writer, you keep telling me how hard it is to get published, that’s why you like Virinder. You want me to be with someone who can take care of me.”

Her tone turns sharp. “Oh, Enola, it is hard to get published. Paul found these statistics the other day about writers and, well, it’s statistically very unlikely. But I think you’re perfectly capable. And I prefer Virinder, as you put it, because quite frankly he seemed more stable than that other man you were seeing. Catherine told me that he was quite tricky.”

Bloody hell, Catherine.

“Okay, fine. I don’t even care about any of that. None of that matters. I’m just so sick of not talking about the elephant in the room.”

“And what’s the elephant in the room?”

“Dad, Mum. Dad is the elephant in the room.”

“I hardly think he’s an elephant in the room.”

“No, you’re right. He’s not an elephant, he’s a body. A dead body on the kitchen floor and I can’t breathe or move or think while he’s lying there.”

“Christ, Enola. Do you have to be so maudlin?” She stops, but I hold my ground and force her to continue. “Why you’re calling to talk about something that happened over twenty years ago is beyond me.”

“Dad wasn’t just something that happened .”

She inhales quickly and immediately exhales the same way. “I’m not going to go over this now.”

“When then? We never go over anything!”

“Well, I don’t like to upset you. You won’t remember it, but you would get very upset.”

I do remember.

“But I was a child, Mum. You can’t claim that you don’t talk about Dad because of how I was as a child.”

She makes a series of small noises. “Enola, let’s talk about this another time.”

“No! It can’t be another time. It has to be now! Please, Mum.”

“Goodness, you’re always so dramatic. That’s something that you got from him.”

“See? That’s what I’m talking about! Tell me why you hated him.”

I wonder if she’s hung up because she is silent, but then she speaks like she’s trying not to be heard: “Enola, I loved your father.”

I wasn’t expecting those words. Photographs were burned in a bin in the garden. I had watched from my bedroom window and she had told me off for crying.

“You hated him, you hated Kenya, and you hated being a mother.”

Mum makes a noise like a whimper, or a laugh. Then I wonder if it was the squeak of a glass. “That’s not true. I liked Kenya—”

“No, you didn’t, you—”

She interrupts me brusquely. “You’ve asked me a question. Let me finish.”

I wonder then, am I looking for answers or am I just a toddler throwing down in a supermarket, kicking my legs?

She continues: “I liked Kenya but the reality, as with most things, was different to the idea. Your dad was working all the time. And the truth was that I was very isolated there by myself with a baby.”

“With a baby? You mean me. Because you never really wanted me.”

“Not wanting a baby and not wanting you—my daughter—are different things. You’ll understand that when you’re older.”

“No, Mum. That line won’t work anymore. I’m thirty now. I am older!”

“Well, then, you’re old enough to understand that your father was a difficult man. I know that you have him somewhat on a pedestal but he was—”

“You just didn’t understand him. He needed you and you didn’t understand him.”

I walk up and down by the bed. I knew my dad. I knew him.

“I didn’t understand him? Oh, I see.” She hums like she is nodding. “ This is why I didn’t want you talking to Louise. You should never have seen her when you went to Kenya.”

I stop by the wardrobe and catch my reflection. “How did you know that I saw her?”

“Because she told me, Enola.”

“You’re in contact with Louise?”

“Occasionally. Louise is someone who needs careful handling. She always has.”

My skin heats up. What else don’t I know?

“Or maybe she’s just angry and hurt. Dad was all she had.”

“Jesus, you sound just like her.” Mum sighs loudly, covers the phone, and says something I can’t make out, then restarts with vigor: “We were always going to leave Kenya, Enola. Even before he died.”

“Yes, because you hated it—”

“ Because it wasn’t working out for him at work. I’m not sure of the ins and outs, but his days had been numbered for a while. And Louise? Jesus, no one forced her to come out and no one forced her to stay. She used our house like her own personal hotel and spent most of her recreation time berating me. I cannot and will not be responsible for that woman anymore. We left as quickly as we needed to. I didn’t want to start you any later in a new school year and the house belonged to the office. In terms of what happened—look, your dad left us with loose ends and I had to tie them.”

My brain races to process everything. Dad was going to be fired?

“Fine,” I continue, like a barrister conceding a point to make a larger one, “we had to leave and you’re not responsible for Louise. But what about me? Why did you leave me? What did I do wrong?” As soon as I articulate that, my lower lip trembles.

“Don’t be histrionic, Enola, I didn’t leave you.”

“ I’m not being histrionic! You got on a plane! I was fourteen. Dad died and you got on a plane! That’s how much you hated being with me.”

“Don’t be silly. There was nothing for us in Nairobi after your father died and after a few years in England, back at my parents’, and, quite frankly, scrambling to pick back up a career that I had thrown away four years prior, I realized that there wasn’t anything there for me either.”

“There was me.”

I pick at the books on my little bookshelf. Like in the living room, I’ve ordered them by color. I’ve arranged them as perfectly as I can, but close up the colors are all different shades.

“Enola, school in England was always the plan. Even if your dad stayed for work, we were always going to send you to England—god knows that the education system in Nairobi wasn’t up to much and it wasn’t home…” She takes a deep breath. “Maybe I should have waited until you were at university to go to France, but… well, Paul was an old friend from drama school and, after your father… Look, I needed a new start… I needed it… for me … and I don’t expect you to understand, but that’s just the way that it was. And I know that you’re thirty now, you’re a woman, but you’ve always been such a young soul. I suppose that’s a miracle really, all things considered.”

“Okay,” I say, “but then why didn’t you want me to come with you to France?”

“I did!”

“You did?”

“Of course I did. But everyone told me not to uproot you again and they were right. You had Granny and Grandpa and Ruth not too far away. You were starting your first big exam year. You were finally starting to thrive academically—you were very behind when you started. I wasn’t about to move you to another country where you didn’t know the language. You were just starting to be happy again. Staying in England was what you needed.”

“What I needed was my mother.”

“Well, I’m sorry for that, but I did my best and that’s really all I can say about that.”

“Your best? Your best was a cursory phone call every Wednesday? Like I was a task you didn’t want to do, like taking the bins out?”

“It was the advice that I was given at the time. Therapists, teachers, they all told me to give you some normality. God knows you had been through enough. Structure was important. The only things that seemed to be working for you at the time were timetables and boundaries.”

I remember that. Strict mealtimes. Time for my homework. Time to watch television or call Ruth.

“But if that was the case, then why do we still speak every Wednesday?”

“We don’t, actually,” Mum snaps. “We speak on some Wednesdays, whenever you happen to feel like it. You’re an adult now, Enola—as you’re keen to remind me—which means that you share responsibility. And to be quite honest, if we didn’t still have the timetable in place, I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t hear from you at all.”

Is that how she sees it? I’m the ungrateful, selfish daughter. Is that what Paul thinks? Do they all complain about me around the big table on holidays?

“Fine, Mum. I could be better at sticking to our routine, but this isn’t the point.”

“What’s the point then, Enola?” she says, exhausted.

“The point is why have we never spoken about any of this?”

“We have, actually. But like I said, you got very upset and, in the end, it was easier to move forward. I’m sorry that you have unanswered questions, but to be fair to me, I didn’t realize that you had them until this evening. At the time, you didn’t want to hear the details. You just wanted your dad and that was something I couldn’t give you.”

“I did try, though. I did!”

“And I gave you the answers I had.”

I close my eyes and picture his face, but it’s nebulous. I listen for his voice, but it’s static. I don’t remember Dad anymore.

Mum continues, softer: “I do know that I’m not always the best at these things, Enola, but they weren’t exactly handing out instructions for how to deal with what your father put us through.”

I can’t hear this. He isn’t here to defend himself. Mum is still the problem. She is still the problem. He is still dead.

“I hate the way that you talk about him.”

“Enola, if you want to talk about your father, then you have to actually talk about him.”

“He was amazing.”

“Yes, sometimes. But he also drank too much and didn’t think anything through. He was like Louise in that way. And it’s not his fault—heaven knows the stories about his own parents were ghastly. But there were some days when I was scared to leave you alone with him in case he took you for a drive without any water or a spare tire. And his temper? His temper was getting worse.”

“No,” I say, “that’s not how I remember it. Dad was always… He was the one who did everything. He was the one who played with me, who cooked, who—”

She interrupts me. “Your dad didn’t cook.”

“Not all the time but on Sundays! He cooked!”

“I cooked on Sundays, Enola. You were barely nine when your father died. I’m pleased that you have happy memories but you’re blaming me for things that were out of my control. They say that people always blame the parent who stays.”

How dare she… how dare she! The blood rushes to my head, and I start ripping the books from the bookshelf. All the greens and reds and blacks and yellows.

“But you didn’t stay, Mum, you left, just like he did!”

I call her a liar. I shout that she was selfish to move to France and that the price of prioritizing my education is that I am now broken and it’s all her fault. I shout that she treated Dad the way she treated Milton the turtle and that’s why both of them are dead.

“Are you quite finished, Enola?”

“Stop it! You’re acting like you’re the one who… Don’t put this on… If you had been there for him…”

Something drips onto my lip.

“That’s enough now, Enola. I’m not listening to this anymore. It’s time to grow up and remember things as they happened.”

Her tone is harsh, but there is a vibrato that betrays her, and I have a gust of a memory. She is handing me a glass of water and placing a cool hand on my forehead.

I wipe my nose on the back of my hand.

“I do remember things as they happened. Dad was the one who… He was the one who…”

But as soon as I say them, I realize my words are wrong. My body turns cold. Because I remember: the shades of truth that I buried. That the face behind my own in the mirror that day wasn’t my mum’s, it was my dad’s. It was the last time he tended to my bites. The last time he looked after me like that. The last time she let him? I remember the beer on his breath. I remember how she looked when she asked how I got the bruise.

My hand is smeared with blood.

“Yes. Fine. Enola, you’re right. Your dad loved you and I’m sorry that I wasn’t the mother you needed me to be. Now, Paul has just finished making dinner and so I’ll speak to you next Wednesday. Okay?”

Oh my god.

“Enola?”

“Yes.”

“Goodbye.”

She hangs up the phone.

What have I done?