‘Mum said it’s okay if Audrey comes, because you’re here,’ she says to Josh, as if the whole family is fully abreast of the circumstances of my excommunication.
‘Why wouldn’t it be okay?’ he asks, brows knitted. Perhaps Maggie did keep her promise.
‘Long story,’ I answer.This is excruciating.‘I don’t think we need to get into it now, Parker. Where shall we eat?’
The one thing about having lunch with a thirteen-year-old is that you don’t have to talk. We’re at a sushi place near the university,and it’s enormously overstimulating—the array of food choices, the loud music, the lunchtime rush, Parker’s excited prattle, the constantly moving conveyer belt.Josh.
He’s the anchor here. The only thingnotmoving. The thing I would focus on to get my bearings, like when you’re in a car and they say to pick a point on the horizon, except traditionally when I focus on this man, my life falls apart.
He seems to have no such problem in reverse. I can feel his steady attention while I wrangle sushi and mineral water and Parker’s peppered anecdotes and questions, with which I can barely keep up.
‘… And then I came out to Mum and shefreaked. Hey, Audrey, when do you think Taylor will drop her next album? There was a rogue letterMin one of her Instagram posts. Like, right amongst all the emojis and stuff. Do you think that was a typo, or is it code for March?’
Josh and I exchange a glance. Did she just say shecame out?
Emotion I can barely label floods my body. My face prickles with heat, and with a tremendous sense of having been absent during something so crucial. With Fraser absent, too. And Maggiefreaked? Maggie, who is not only a loving mother but a trained and experienced psychiatrist.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say.
‘About the emojis?’
‘No, I get the Swiftie fan theories. It could mean May, couldn’t it?’
The idea of my not being available to back her up with this justkillsme. I am furious. At myself, and at what I did that caused her mum to enact this forced rift between us.
‘I also told her I asked my friends to call me Bee, not Parker. Shelostit! We had a huge fight—’
Words from the past echo in my head.Fraser, why can’t Audrey call our child by her proper name?
‘Then I stormed out and blocked her and stayed at a friend’s place that night.’
What’s with her insistence on ‘Bee’? We named her Parker.
‘So basically I hate her.’
I wasn’t meant to hear that conversation, years ago. I’d come downstairs as they were saying goodbye in the hall.Maggie, they adore each other, Fraser said softly.It’s just a name she made up because Parker is always buzzing around. Parker loves it. Let them have this one thing …
One thing?Maggie said.They’ve got music. And for Parker, that’s everything!
I look at Parker now and realise there could be a major gap in background information here. I’m sure Maggie could have handled this better, but I very much doubt her response was driven by what Parker assumes.
‘Could your mum’s response be more about your choice of name?’ I ask.More about me, in other words.
‘But that’s been your nickname for me for years! You even called me that at Uncle Josh’s concert, when I met you!’ She looks at me, then puts her sushi down, understanding beginning to dawn.
‘Sometimes we get things wrong, as adults,’ I explain, from bitter experience. I don’t want to get into this in front of Josh, but who knows when I’ll be allowed to see her again. ‘You know how much I messed up. I was responsible for you and I botched it. Badly.’
I try to forget he’s here. I willnotlook at him.
‘Mum had a choice in how to act. You didn’t. Addiction is a mental health condition,’ she says, all progressive teen enlightenment and understanding. ‘It’s a disease.’
Right, so it’s all on the table now.
‘And you know who helped me through that?’ I ask her.
Silence.
‘No, you don’t, because she never made a big deal of it. Your mum took me to the doctor. She arranged my first prescription, because I was too self-conscious to enter the pharmacy and ask. She helped me clean up the house. She checked in. She brought meals. She kept my privacy.’
