Hard Word (3 page)

Miriam

I never know how much Mother really understands, and how much is pure malice. Some of it's malice, I'm sure. This absurd charade she goes on with about Philip being Greek, about his wanting to send her away, lock her up in a home. Unless she really does think Philip is Stavros. But how could she? They couldn't be more different. Stavros is huge, muscled, a body builder – or he was then – tanned, dark, slow, and Philip is small – my size – slim, fair, bookish, verbally quick. They're
nothing
like one another.

No, it's malice, that part of it. It has to be. She wants to see just how far she can push me.

She wants, Dr Lazenby says, constant reassurance. She wants to hear that you love her. No matter what. So, why can't I tell her that – that I love her? Why can't I say something as simple as that? Katie and Laura can say it, even Philip. Well, almost. Philip says, ‘But, Mother, we love having you here,' when she accuses him of wanting to send her away. To put her in a home. But it's me she's waiting to hear it from. God knows, I used to be able to say it. Once.

Can I go shopping with you?

Do you love Mother?

Yes.

Say it.

I love you, Mother.

There, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Can we see Santa? Can we talk to Santa?

Do you love Mother? …

I can't take her shopping anymore, I can't risk it. Or not shopping where I can't be watching her every moment. It's not just that she wanders. It's not just the eggs for pegs, the buttons for bacon, the peanuts for pasta that go flying willy-nilly into the trolley and mean that every aisle in the supermarket has to be visited twice. It's not even her habit, when her mind clears – as it does, unpredictably – of showing how hard she is trying, and how triumphant she feels when the clouds part and she can get a grip on something she recognizes, some simple, domestic reality. I know she's desperate with panic at such moments, but so am I. Like when she stands in front of the freezer shelves in the supermarket and shouts:

‘Milk!'

I can hardly pretend I'm not with her.

‘Milk, Miriam.'

‘Yes, Mother,' I say. Projecting my voice, calmly, across three aisles.

‘Mi-lk.'

‘Yes, Mother, it's milk. We don't need any more milk at the moment, Mother.'

‘Milk!'

‘Can you move on now, please, Mother? You're blocking the way.'

‘Milkkk.'

‘People are trying to get to the –'

‘Milk.'

None of this bothers me, really. None of these small public humiliations. People understand. They smile at me, shrug, skirt around us. It's more the effect on Katie that's the problem. Not that Katie's innocent. If anything, she encourages Mother …

‘Is that all?' the boy on the checkout says. He's bored, he's watching a girl on the fruit-stall as he
bip
passes
bip
the last of the items in front of the coding machine.

‘Hmmm?' I say back, trying to think cash or card. It's Friday, the end of the week, and it's been a long afternoon of classes. I can hear Katie and Mother giggling together somewhere behind me. ‘I'll pay by card,' I say to the boy.

‘Is that all?' he says again in a different voice, and I look quickly at the empty conveyor belt and the trolley packed and waiting in front of me.

‘Yes, that's all,' I say, and wonder whether the boy is ill. He has a cold sore on his bottom lip and where before his eyes were glazed and dull, they're now bright and round and actually rolling in his head. At me.

‘Is something wrong?' I say.

His eyes continue to roll. His head is jerking now to indicate something behind me.

‘For goodness sake,' I say. And turn to hush Katie who's giggling so loudly now she can barely speak.

‘She's got –' Katie manages. And I look.

‘Oh, Mother,' I say, and I see two other shoppers with full trolleys behind her assessing the situation and moving away to other checkouts.

‘Mother, what have you got under your coat?' I concentrate on the coat because I do not wish at this moment to look at what she has on her head.

‘It's a cricket bat,' giggles Katie.

‘Katie, please be quiet,' I say. ‘I can see it's a cricket bat.'

‘And stumps.'

Anyone could see it was a cricket bat, the long red rubber of the handle protruding from the top of Mother's coat and lying, like an obscene periscope, along her neck.

‘She's got –'

‘Katie, that's enough.'

‘Well, she has.'

‘Will you excuse me a moment,' I say to the boy. Whose eyes have stopped rolling though they continue to round. ‘I'm sorry to hold you up like this.'

‘No, it's okay,' he says. ‘It's …' he starts to say, but is too young to think of a word to describe what it is that he's seeing.

‘We'll just be a minute,' I tell him. ‘We'll just put the bat back. And … anything else,' I say, raising my eyes to her head.

‘And the bananas, don't forget the bananas,' Katie shouts. ‘Grandma's got all these bananas under her –' she says.

Before I slap her.

Philip

Love me, love my mother. Miriam's never actually said it, but that's the rule around here. And the reason she's so fierce about it, of course, so absolutely relentless, is that she can't love her herself. No matter how hard she tries. It took me a while to work this out. When we were first married, we had to go over there, to Mother's place, for Sunday lunch, week in, week out. I was happy enough to fit in, the lunch was always fine, but it was Miriam who came away with gritted teeth and a tearing headache:

‘Oh, that woman –'

‘Then why do we go?' I once asked.

She looked rather than spoke in response, and I didn't ask again. Just waited until her teeth unlocked with the motion of the car, the sun on the glass, the prospect of home. By the time we crossed the water, her hand lay on my knee, and she released the first smile of the day. Miriam again, ghost-like, but released.

‘Welcome back,' I said.

She reached up, both arms behind her head, and with one motion pulled the pins from her hair. With her hair up, her face was stretched, stark, her eyes full of an animal alertness. As though an attack might come at any moment. But as her hair fell about her shoulders, her skin softened, and all the tension went out of her face. The headache apparently with it.

‘Let's just leave it,' she said.

‘For another week?'

I knew then she went there to prove something. To her mother, to herself. Something to do with the whole Stavros thing. Which I was happy to stay out of.

‘She's alone here now,' she said. ‘And,' she added, ‘I don't know what it is, but there's something wrong with her.'

‘How do you mean,
wrong
?'

‘She's so … dogmatic.'

‘She's always been dogmatic,' I said, ‘as far as I've known her.' I didn't say,
just like you.

‘Yes, I know. But as people age, they normally mellow, don't they, become less fixed, less certain? She's got worse. She insists on things even though I'm sure she knows they're wrong. Stupid things. Like that stuff about the weather yesterday.'

‘It
could
have stormed on this side of the bay. With big bodies of water like this you often get –'

‘Philip, it didn't. I checked especially before we came. It was a perfectly sunny day. Balmy, the Bureau said, an Indian summer. I mean, look around. If there
had
been a storm …'

‘Then why?'

‘She remembers a storm, I'm sure of that. But
when
?'

‘Maybe she's just being cantankerous.'

‘You mean just because I said the weather had been so lovely?' ‘It's possible, isn't it? You and she have always been –'

‘Yes.'

The storm, of course, as we've now learned, was in her own head, where it's raged ever since. And what a tempest it's been. And so quick. Twelve months ago, she was still able to cope, look after herself. She forgot things, wandered a bit, spoke like a sybil on occasions, but most of the marbles were still in the bag. Now, Jesus, you could shake the bag till Kingdom Come and you'd be lucky to hear two cat's-eyes clicking together. It's weird, really. With some things, you'd swear she was normal. Katie puts a book in her hand and away she goes, reading like the clappers. She'd never stop if you didn't tell her to. And yet, if you ask her what she's just read, it's obvious she hasn't understood a bean. She'll gaze at you as if you've just stepped out of a space rocket and say, ‘How do you mean,
read?
And if you point to the book on her lap, she's just as likely to say ‘Oh,' and start off again wherever her eye lands and not stop until you tell her to. And you realize then the whole process is on automatic pilot, that it's voiceactivated without reference to the brain whatsoever. Not that it seems to matter. Kids Katie's age never seem to tire of hearing the same story over and over. If I'm reading to her, I always want to find something new. But Katie gets stuck on favourite things. At the moment it's
Alice,
and we've had the Queen of Hearts every night for a month. It's as though Katie's hearing it for the first time, which is fine for Mother, I guess, since she is.

‘Which one do you like best, Grandma? The Queen or the Knave?'

‘Knave?'

Do
you?'

‘That's a good idea.'

‘Oh, Grandma. Don't tell me you've forgotten al-reddy. Here, you naughty girl, you'll just have to read it all over again.'

Katie understands things that none of the rest of us seems to. Even Miriam. Little things. We were watching television one night –
Lassie III
or some other kennel tragedy – and after an hour or so there was a news break.

‘Where's he gone?' Mother started crying and patting her hands against her cheeks. ‘Where's he gone?'

‘Who, Mother?' Miriam said. ‘Where's who gone?'

Mother was twisting and turning in her chair, her eyes roving around the room. ‘Where's he gone?' she kept saying.

‘He's here,' Miriam said. ‘Philip's here with us. See, he's over there, he's reading.'

‘No, no –' Mother threw her head from side to side. ‘Where
is
he?'

‘Is it Dad?' Miriam guessed. ‘Are you missing Dad?'

‘He's gone.'

‘Yes,' said Miriam, ‘he's gone.'

‘Is he coming back?'

Miriam was suddenly upset herself. She couldn't answer. She looked at me.

‘Mother, please …' she said finally.

‘Grandma means Lassie, Mum,' Katie said. ‘She means, is Lassie coming back. That's all.'

The news break ended, the movie started again.

‘He's back,' Mother said, settling comfortably to watch.

‘Lassie's not a he, anyway,' Katie said. ‘He's a she.'

Laura, of course, takes no part in this tomfoolery. She's up in her room getting radiation sickness from the latest heavy metal exposure. If she were down here she'd be telling us what a fake the whole show is, how the dog is actually starved and tortured to within an inch of its life to get it to do all these dumb tricks, just so hypocrites like us can sit around all night and go
oh
and
ah
at how clever it is. When in fact it's all cruelty and sadism that ought to be reported to the RSPCA. I can remember the days when she wept buckets over Lassie, just as Katie does now.

It's not just Laura's tastes that have changed. What is she, fourteen? But
some
fourteen. She's the very opposite of Miriam – this must be the Greek coming out in her. She's black – eyes, hair, wide dusky forehead – pouty, thick-lipped. And moody, Jesus. One thing I learnt early on was not to come between Laura and Miriam, because if the force of the tension didn't get you then the force of their attraction would. Either way, you'd get crushed. So mostly I leave Laura to Miriam and focus on Katie who's as uncomplicated and innocent as a sparrow.
Innocent
's not the word I'd use about Laura. Laura, in a towel, out of the shower, black and plastered, the whitest of white shoulders, is a worry in the house. Normally she ignores me. I understand that. She's divided, she's not Katie, she's not my daughter. But then, for no reason, one morning or another, it's suddenly ‘Philip, that's a nice shirt' or ‘nice tie', a kiss, arms on my shoulders, the towel's rising with her arms, and Jesus –

‘Laura, you'll be late.' From Miriam. Normally ends it. ‘Go and get some clothes on.'

‘I'm off first period,' says Laura. Without thinking.

‘Then that gives you time to clean your room.'

Which, for Laura, always resurrects a sudden interest in school, in education, in clubs, societies, charities, friendship groups – in anything but the dungheap of her own room.

Laura's a worry in the house, all right. Though not the only one. Mrs Johnson's on strike again. She says she won't come back without an apology this time. Mrs Johnson's the granny-sitter – the
geriatric care-giver
, I ought to say – who comes in and sits with Mother while Miriam goes to the college to teach. And, of course, she takes most of what Miriam earns. Not that Miriam minds. Teaching, she says, is the only thing that keeps her sane, and what she pays Mrs Johnson is a fair exchange. Mrs Johnson was the best we could get, but even so it's a seller's market, and – as she says herself – she doesn't come here just to be insulted.

‘That fat woman was here again,' Mother said this last time. Mrs Johnson, when she says this, is still hanging about in the next room waiting to be paid.

‘She's stealing from the fridge again,' Mother says.

‘Mother, please,' Miriam says, raising her voice as loud as Mother's. ‘Mrs Johnson is a guest here. She's more than welcome to help herself to any small thing from the fridge that she pleases.'

‘She's eating you out of house and home.'

What I don't understand is how Mother does this. Most of the time she's about as alert as a garden gnome, but when she really wants something – like getting rid of Mrs Johnson – she's like a mongoose with a snake.

‘You'd better make sure you take your purse with you when you go out.'

The doctors have told us she'd come and go like this. Normally there's a lot more going than coming, but in anything to do with Mrs Johnson, every day is Advent.

‘We get along famously,' Mrs Johnson once said to Miriam. ‘Me and your Mum.'

‘Yes,' Mother said. ‘Like Hitler and the Jews.'

I mean, how does she do it? How does this on-off electrical current work? Most days she can't remember who's standing next to her, or even
whether
anyone's standing next to her – unless it's me, of course, in which case she's just as likely to turn and say:

‘Oh, you're back, are you? How
was
Athens?'

I don't actually believe for a moment she thinks I'm Stavros, or even that I'm Greek. I think it's just rat cunning in overdrive.

‘It's Philip, isn't it?' she said to me one morning last week. At this point she hadn't spoken a word to me for ten days.

‘Yes, Mother,' I say back, astonished. ‘It's Philip.'

‘Of Macedon?'

Fucck,
I don't say.
Crazy, vindictive old bitch,
I don't say. There's a lot I don't say, even when I hear her chuckling and I know it's not confusion, it's not depression or amnesia that's put her up to this but pure, joyful, unquenchable malice. I don't say this, either. I can't afford to. Things are tense enough as it is. No one has any idea what all this is doing to our lives. Our sex lives, for starters. Last Monday I was twenty minutes late for the week's strategy meeting at work. I'd been fetching something from the pharmacy for Mother. It was nine-thirty by the time I made it – a bit flustered – to the conference room.

‘Afternoon, Phil,' Tony Ryle said, pointedly, but without ill-will, as I dropped into a seat beside him. ‘Naughty weekend?'

Naughty weekend?
Christ, that pulled me up. I mean, I actually had to stop and think, when
was
the last time –? Miriam used to be crazy for it. Not just at nights. Saturday afternoons, if the girls were out at a film or off with friends, we'd retire to the bedroom for the duration and bonk each other senseless. Regularly. I wouldn't have the lunch dishes half-stacked before she had her hand in my pants. Now, I reckon Mother's getting more out of the White Rabbit than we're getting out of each other. That's another thing we don't talk about, that we just look past at the moment. But if Mother's going to be here for another – what? six months? twelve? eighteen? two years? Christ – we might as well rent out the garage and the spare room to the Carmelites.

To say nothing of the son Miriam was desperate to try for before all this descended.

And what happens – this is another thing we haven't faced – what happens when the selective amnesia goes, and she starts doing really crazy stuff? The police have had to bring her home twice already, they're pretty soon going to get sick of that. The second time they picked her up out on the highway in her slippers and Laura's bicycle helmet. She claimed she was looking for the police station because a woman had broken into the house and was stealing food from the fridge. But what happens when she starts stealing herself, or carrying off babies in the street?

I've already had to install one of those magic eye laser beams in the doorway between her flat and the house. This is to stop her wandering at night, and burning us to death in our beds.

‘God, what's that?' Laura said when the electrician came to put it in.

‘It's an alarm, darling,' Miriam said. ‘It's for Grandma Vera.'

‘What – like in a video store?'

‘Yes.'

‘So it goes off every time someone takes her out?'

‘The important thing is, it goes off when
she
goes out. Or when she comes into the house.'

‘You're making it like a prison for her. You've already got deadlocks on the front and back doors so she can't get out.' ‘Darling, I don't like it any more than you do – being locked up like this in our own house. But we can't just let her wander, especially at night. There's too much electrical equipment in here for a start –'

‘She was only hungry.'

‘I know she was hungry,' Miriam said. ‘And I know what she thought she was doing. But, darling, please be fair and think about it. She could have set fire to the house …'

Mother had woken in the early hours of the morning and slipped a couple of oven pads, instead of bread, into the toaster in her flat. The pads had burnt, the toaster fused, the smoke detector went off, and Miriam, Laura and I had rushed, haggard with sleep, down to Mother's flat to find her kitchenette full of smoke and Mother calmly buttering the blackened pads.