More surprise, at her, but also because ordinarily, thatwouldbe his plan.
I’m actually not, he says. Not anytime soon.
And whether it’s this new certainty he’s felt since the film, or whether it’s just apparent in his tone, his mother seems tobelieve him. Appraises him from her chair, her slippered feet propped on a pink, wooden-legged pouf.
I’m making cocoa, she says.
I don’t want –
I’mgoing to have some, she says, before she leaves the room. Bren checks his phone once more then stands and stretches, deciding to go up to bed while she potters in the kitchen. But something stops him. Catches his eye. He goes over to his mother’s table and picks up the painting he’d noticed, earlier. Nora had been experimenting with oils at the time, smudging it with her young fingers.Cy Twombly style, she’d told Josie, as his mother unwrapped her gift, let out a coo of faux interest. His real name was actually Edwin, Nora said, and he had a love affair with Robert Rauschenberg and moved toItalybecause he didn’t like New York,andhe refused to climb up ladders in case he fell. Which is why all his mark-making happened at the bottom of his huge paintings, like this.
Is that so, Josie had said, while twelve-year-old Nora caught her breath.
Although this is a really small painting, Nora had realised, embarrassed. Good things come in small packages, Josie had told her, squeezing her hand. Unless you’re entering a marrow-growing competition, Nora replied, and his dad, who was folding up wrapping paper, had laughed, said nowthat, Nora, is your mother talking.
The memory dims, like the standby light on the TV. Bren puts the painting down and looks over at the other armchair by the bookcase. There’s a stack of mountain guides on that side table; his dad loved Wainwrights and Corbetts and Munros, wanted to bag all of the latter, before he. Well. Bren lingers, but then goes over to those, too. Wants, partly, to leaf through one; finds it’s enough just to look without feelinglike he might cave in, and then he sees the black vase on the bookshelf and realises, for the first time, that it’s an urn.
Sick jolt of shock, then, and he’s up the stairs, trembling, like an animal that needs to shake out trauma, like a human that needs a cold shower, maybe, a midnight walk. But first he shoves open his window for the slap of night air and throws himself onto his bed; is scrolling through his emails when his mother knocks on the door, five minutes later.
One cup of cocoa, she declares.
I said I didn’t –
I thought we could share a cup together, Bren. Before bed.
It isn’t a request. Bren sees a flicker in her, then, the mother behind the medication and relapses and crying fits and drifting, distant niceties that make up the majority of their relationship. But beneath all that, there is her laugh, his jokes, her telling him how to bake this, that he can’t drink that, nor swim there, or climb this. He sits up, slowly, takes the cup.
I miss you, Josie tells him, and Bren coughs as he sips his drink. It’s tepid, too lumpy. Grit of powder on the back of his tongue.
I’m right here, he says, after he’s cleared his throat.
But I feel like I don’t know you, Josie says, and she says it gently, as though she doesn’t want to spook him. Even though you’re home now.
Bren, rash-hot after what he’d seen downstairs, feels a shiver through his conscience, that quiet, stifled part of himself he doesn’t like to listen to.
To be fair, he says – because he does try to be fair, when his conscience pipes up – you don’t really ask me much.
Or you don’t really tell me anything, Josie says, with a twist of her small mouth; playful, it could be, or deflective; he isn’t sure. It’s like you’re scared to be in a room with me, she says.
I’m not scared.
But you don’t want to be in a room with me?
Another mouthful of cocoa, after she’s spoken. Bren knows he needs to tread carefully, here. That they’re in an emotional danger zone, even though he’s been so intent on keeping things light since he got back. Eaten dinner with her, filled her bird feeders, shared TV time and morning coffee and –
I haven’t heard voices in a long time, Bren, she says, and his blood jolts the way it had when he’d seen the urn. I haven’t been confused, Josie goes on, or frightened, and I’m ticking along, pet, quite happily. Or as happily as I can, without my boys around.
Resignation in her features, then, and Bren feels his guilt morphing into curiosity, almost.
We’ve never talked about the past, have we, she says, blowing on her cocoa even though it’s lukewarm; for something to do, he suspects, as he looks up at her from the bed. How it was for you, she says, growing up, with me … the way I am. And your dad dying, like that. When he was our only constant. Your only … normal parent. I do understand that, Bren.
But Bren cannot respond. Cannot get his head round how articulate she’s being, how emotionally astute, and she seems to get that, too, comes to sit beside him on the bed.
I understand, she repeats. Why you had to leave, because you couldn’t be here, without him. But also because youknewI’d be fine. I know you wouldn’t have gone if you could’ve done … anything more, for me, my love.
He lets her take his hand, wondering if this is true. Whether she just prefers to forgive him, or genuinely believes it, blinkered by her medication, perhaps, or a mother’s love.
The girls seemed to think it was such a tragedy, you leaving, like you did, Josie says, nodding to the wall shared with next door. But I like to think it was a sign of faith from you,Bren. Faith in me. In knowing that I’d be okay, when so many people think I won’t be. And, she says, squeezing his hand, in knowing there was more for you, out there, too. Which makes me so proud.
