Thirteen
On Thursday morning,Mum shocks both of us by rising early. The time between six and eight a.m. is usually my favorite. I like the quiet stillness of these hours: hearing the neighbors get up, alarms blaring faintly through the walls. Listening to the sound of their everyday mundanity: water gushing through shared pipes, the creak of their floorboards as they get ready for work; the quotidian rhythm of family life. After Marcie died, I would sometimes wish these faceless families would whisk me away with them. Anything was better than the blanket of grief that had fallen like an iron curtain over our house.
This sacred time has become more precious to me since I moved back here. When she’s awake, Mum hovers around like a disquieted ghost, glaring at my hair when she thinks I can’t see her. I’ve stopped eating breakfast to minimize the risk of contracting some unsavory disease, but I still like to sit in the kitchen in the mornings, for some variety. I disinfect everything beforehand, obviously, and give my laptop a thorough wipe afterward. Mostly, she doesn’t rise until noon, which gives me a good half day of peace. Today is not one of those days.
I have just opened my laptop to Jack’s profile when she walks into the kitchen. I’ve had to limit how much time I allow myself to spend on his respective profiles. It’s not good to become too caught up in the fantasy and lose sight of the real-life man in front of me. I allow myself fifteen minutes each morning to click through my favorite of his photographs. My imagination can sometimes run a little wild. When Mum shuffles in, I slam the laptop closed. It’s a sign of my exceptional self-control that I don’t shout at her for interrupting.
We don’t speak as she moves around the kitchen, though I’m hyperaware of her presence. I like to know where she is at all times, lest she spring some unpleasant trick on me, so I listen for the click of the toaster, the scrape of the knife, the clink of metal against ceramic. I’d rather not be in here, but to leave would show weakness, so I force myself to stay where I am. I open WhatsApp instead.
It is not plain sailing, once you’ve got that first little nibble of interest. Marcie was right in that regard. You must make yourself available, but nottooavailable. Funny, but not funnier than them. Light, but with just enough genuine feeling to show that you are a functioning human being withreal depth. I feel I’ve got it bang on the nose with each message I shoot off, but something’s not working. Because Jack’s responses arrive with such a lack of urgency that we might as well be using the traditional postal system. I can’t understand it. It’s almost as though he’s forgotten those two precious moments we shared. I, for one, can think of little else.
He was last seen at one o’clock this morning. That was exactly two hours after my last message. I don’t want to think the worst, but sometimes the doubts—the memories—make it difficult. I don’t want to be one of those women who never trust again after a betrayal, but sometimes I can’t help the doubts that creep in. The questions. If Jack is not messaging me, whom is he messaging?
I scroll back through our conversation. My last message was fun, alittle flirty. Some comment on my day at the café: I told him about the children who came in that day, with just the right level of exasperation at their adorable antics. I asked him if he was ready for the weekend and what his plans were. Leaving myself just open enough for him to suggest a drink, if he was free.
He came online almost instantly, but the ticks remained gray. I swallowed my frustration and waited. So it has been for the last two days. Hours pass between messages. When his responses do come, they’re effusive and fun. There’s just not enough of them. It’s hard to maintain momentum when it feels as though I am communicating with a brick wall. And the doubts—the paranoia—really do start to stack up, if you allow them.
I’ve managed to discern much of his routine, through watching both the house and his “last seen” on WhatsApp. What’s it for, after all, if not to understand the rhythm of someone’s life? He wakes between six and six thirty. He goes offline, presumably for his commute, then comes back on at around eight. He’s on and off throughout the day—appearing more at lunchtime, then disappearing again for his commute home. I was waiting for him, despite the bitter cold outside, last night. I’d wrapped up warm, and I stood on the other side of the road, a large scarf tucked round my face, my hood pulled up, as he trudged home in the dark. My heart rate sped up when I saw him. After he’d let himself in, I reinstated myself on the wall. It was boring, to say the least. He entered the sitting room an hour later and pulled out his phone but didn’t message me back. It became too cold to wait. As I was on my way home, my phone pinged with a message. I managed to wait a whole hour before I replied. And now…this.
“You were out late last night.” I have been so engrossed in my phone, I barely noted Mum taking the seat in front of me. She takes a bite of toast. Crumbs cascade down her chin, littering the table. Disgusting. She looks—different somehow. Cleaner than normal, despite herporcine eating habits. She might even have washed her hair; it looks softer, less greasy. Almost disconcerting, if I wasn’t so focused on Jack.
“I was visiting a friend,” I say.
She raises an eyebrow. She knows I have few of those. That makes two of us.
“I don’t want you treating this like a guesthouse, Iris.”
“Not very welcoming for a guesthouse, is it?” I snap. I’m not sure where it comes from, this slip. Usually, I can maintain my composure better than this. Jack must be getting to me.
“Any news?”
I don’t roll my eyes. Yet another example of my self-control. “On what?”
She clears her throat lightly. “Your father.”
Dad is so far from my mind, so unimportant compared with my current predicament, that irritation seeps into my tone again. “I’m not keeping tabs on him twenty-four-seven, Mum. I’ll let you know when I hear from him, OK?”
A very risky game, and one I’m not at all prepared for. Unfortunately she still has the power to turf me out, and, even with more shifts at the café, I am in no position to move out yet.
Mum sighs, a deep, mournful sound. Then, terrifyingly—horrifyingly—she leans forward and slumps onto the table. A sob erupts from somewhere between her arms. I’m not sure what to do—if I should get up and leave or offer some empty words of comfort—so I do neither. I can only sit there, staring. I wish she wouldn’t—I haven’t seen her lose control like this for years, and I never quite got the hang of handling it then, either.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” she says. “You being here. It’s bringing it all back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Her.Marcie.” Another sob.
Oh. And here I was, thinking she was about to produce another one of her cutting remarks. Her specialty, when aimed at me. I don’t like thinking about those days. The days following Marcie’s death. When Mum caved in on herself. When Dad left.
Everywhere we turned, there was another reminder. When her voice didn’t drift from the shower in the mornings, when her shoes—two land mines—remained for weeks in the middle of the kitchen floor, where she’d last kicked them off.
When Mum retreated to her room and didn’t emerge for days on end. I missed her.
So one day, I mustered the courage to enter. It was dark, the heavy curtains drawn across the windows. I couldn’t make her out immediately. When my eyes adjusted, I saw she was hunched over, sitting on the corner of the bed. She looked up.
“Is it really you?” Her voice was hoarse.
“Yes,” I whispered.
