Chapter Thirty-One
Jem
A tense morning with Ruby isn’t the best start to a day that’s going to be a test of the new life I’m trying to hang onto. Another night unable to sleep hasn’t helped either. Ruby’s interfering, asking me what’s wrong. Since when did we go back to the ‘talking about how we feel’ crap? Everything has been discussed and dealt with, why rehash? Ruby’s not coming into my safe place. This has pissed her off because breakfast again involved slamming around of cups and bowls, and silence. I left without saying goodbye and hope she’s in a better mood tonight.
The hospice is in Reading, a short drive from London; but I intend to make it there and back in one day. If I do, I can pretend to myself it never happened.
Sure, Jem.
Since Marie contacted me a couple of weeks ago, the walls between my childhood memories and reality have crumbled. She left when I was twelve, and I haven’t seen my mum since. I vowed to myself I would never see her again or allow myself to be hurt on that level by anyone else.
Is there any bigger hurt in the world than not being good enough for your own mother? A part of me yells Ruby would understand, her mum left too; but I can’t talk to her about this. I just can’t.
Each rehab stay, a counsellor has attempted to get me to open up and acknowledge the power this has over me still. I’m not f-ucking stupid, I know I’m screwed up by my childhood; but ripping open that wound isn’t helpful when my stability is shaky in recovery. So, I refuse. The past should be buried. Forgotten. Over.
So why the f-uck has the past become my present?
As I sit in the car, outside the single-storey building, I stare at the gardens full of yellow and white rose bushes that I bizarrely notice match the ones in my garden. I’m dragged back to memories of helplessness, and confusion, of wounds piercing so deeply the damage severed my nerves and left me unable to feel again. Recently this has changed because Ruby crosses my mind; the irritation over this morning’s argument includes a small part of wishing I was with her instead. I shake the thought away. See? I’m allowing in emotion and here’s a reminder of why I shouldn’t.
I don’t have any pictures of my mother, only the suppressed memories of her long, curly brown hair and a vague recollection of her face. Besides that, nothing. She wasn’t a hugging mum, but at least she didn’t hit me around like the guy she walked away with.
The middle-aged nurse in the hospice recognises me straightaway, of course, but doesn’t make a deal out of it and leads me along a carpeted hallway. The yellow furnishings and watercolour pictures dominating the building don’t hide the institutional smell of the place. Not as bad as a hospital, but uncomfortably reminiscent of rehab centres.
The nurse knocks on the door of a room at the end of a bright hallway and informs the woman inside that I’m here, before smiling encouragingly and leaving.
Fourteen years.
I step inside. This woman doesn’t have curly brown hair; hers is short. Cancer patient short. Her sallow skin and frail frame shock me. The woman from my memories doesn’t match the person sitting in the high backed armchair by the bed. She could be anybody. This isn’t my mum.
But she is. Her eyes are my mum’s; they must be because they look like mine, eyes brimming with tears she doesn’t deserve to shed. For a couple of minutes we stare at each other saying nothing. I stand in the open doorway, debating whether to turn and leave. Why the f-uck didn’t I talk to someone about this rather than doing this alone? Bryn, Dylan… even Ruby.
I close the door behind and rest against it. “Hello.”
“Thank you for coming to see me,” she says and her voice tears at me. There’s a weakness that drags me back to the bad times; the days she was weakened by the men; the days, they injured her.
I close my eyes and inhale. When I open them, she’s still there. My mum, broken as she always was but this time by something killing her, rather than by someone.
“How have you been?” she asks.
“Don’t you read the papers?” I reply a little too harshly.
“I don’t believe everything I read, Jeremy.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not Jeremy.”
Mum looks at her hands. They age her, the skin drawn across pronounced veins like an old woman’s would be. Mum’s mid-forties and the illness has pushed her looks into old age. “I know. Sorry.”
To her, yes. I’m her Jeremy who had to become Jem to forget him. I pull up the plastic and metal chair near the drawers containing a vase of white and pink flowers, and sit. Shit, I should’ve bought flowers.
“I’d ask how you are, but it would be a stupid question,” I say.
“I’ve been better.”
“You’ve looked better.”
She rubs her head, pale fingers touching her short hair. “I have.”
We have nothing to talk about. Reminiscing about the past is out, and I’ve no interest in knowing what she’s been doing with her life.
Life. Mum told me she had weeks left, the cancer breaking her body more readily than anybody broke her in the past. As I look at her, Jeremy hurts for his mum the way he used to; but Jem has to stay strong against the threatening tide. Since she contacted me out of the blue and ripped me back in time, the bottle, drugs, and void have called more loudly than in a long time. If Ruby wasn’t in my life and house, I reckon I’d have slipped by now.
“I haven’t heard from you for years,” I say pointedly.
“You made it clear you didn’t want to see me about six years ago. I wasn’t going to be one of those relatives of famous people demanding money.”
“You needed money?”
“Everybody needs more money, Jem. After Paul left, things got harder.”
“Didn’t you find someone else? You always did.”
“No. I left him for a shelter; he hurt me badly. They helped me, and then I helped them. Others.”
The woman who refused to help herself? “Oh.”
“I knew it was too late for us.”
“Was it? You didn’t try that hard to fix things.”
Mum rests back in her seat, her breathing laboured. “Would you have let me? Look how long it took you to arrange to see me. It’s almost a month since I asked you to visit.”
“Probably not,” I say quietly.
Mum reaches out to her bedside table and takes the plastic tumbler, hands shaking. She sips; swallowing as if it hurts her and my resolve wavers.
“But you’re here now.” She gives a weak smile. “I’m glad you came to see me before… well, before.”
Before she dies. Before time runs out and she can’t assuage her guilt. So she can f-uck me up one last time.
But as I look at her, I know that’s not her motive. I believe she thinks she’s doing this for me. For both of us.
“How long?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Weeks.”
My throat thickens, why am I feeling? Where’s the wall gone? “Oh. Right. I’m not sure I can come again.”
“I understand. But you’ll stay and talk to me this afternoon?”
“Yeah.”
Mum tells me about the work she’s done, with domestic violence victims like herself. Helping families stay together. Did this help her? She abandoned her own family; how many others did she need to save before she felt she’d atoned her behaviour? I tell her things about Blue Phoenix, about the boys, but she never knew them. My mother was locked in her own world and her own pain; pain I had no comprehension of as a kid.
The conversation tires her, Mum’s breathing becomes shallower and speech slower. As usual, she doesn’t have the energy for me.
“I’m proud of you,” she tells me.
“Proud of me?” I ask hoarsely.
“Look at what you’ve achieved. Things could’ve ended so badly for you.”
I slump back in my seat. “And look at my fucked up life. This man you’re proud of, that you’ve watched over the last few years, is he happy?”
“You’ve come through that though. You’re sober now.”
“I’m still fucked up.” Because of you.
“I’m so sorry. I wish I could change what happened, but I can’t. Don’t let the past stop you being happy now. I’ve seen you with a new girl…did you say her name was Ruby?”
“Do you follow my life?” I interrupt. “You seem to know a lot.”
“Of course I do, and you looked happier recently. Are you happier?”
“I don’t want to talk about my life.”
“You’re right. It’s not my business.” She inhales a shaky breath, and I see her energy fading in front of me. “I wish you’d brought your guitar though.”
“What?”
“I listen to some of your music, not all of it; but you wrote some beautiful songs. My talented son.”
This is too much. “Your son? By blood, yeah but not by love.”
“Don’t, please.”
“I didn’t come here to tell you I forgive everything because I don’t. I live with the scars.”
“I’m not expecting you to. I wanted to see you; that’s all. I missed you.”
f-uck. I stand. Am I shaking too? “Don’t. You don’t have the right. You made your choices.”
“And now you make yours, Jem. Make the right ones.”
The sun shines through the open curtains. A bright autumn day fills the room with a humid warmth that isn’t helping my dizzying pain. “I think I need to go now.”
Mum sits forward and grips the chair arm with pale hands. She wants to stand and can’t. “Okay.”
The unrelenting ache grips and the words spill. “Mum, you left me. Not just once but again and again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
I hesitate. She’ll leave me one final time, and I’ll never see her again. Every other time Mum left, I couldn’t understand why she didn’t say goodbye. Often it was when I was at school, and I’d come home to find a note and some money.
When people leave, they should hug you with the promise they’ll see you again.
This is what she wants to do now, but there’s no promise of a next time.
“Bye, Mum.”
The decision is made in the moment, without thought, without rationalisation. How can I leave and not hug her goodbye? I pull the chair over, sit, and hesitantly place my arms around my mum. She’s all bones and I’m frightened of hurting her. Mum hugs me back, hard; but not as hard as I think she’d like. Her back shakes, face buried into my t-shirt; and I fight, fight, fight against the tsunami of pain engulfing.
People say they love you. Then they leave you. Or they die. Sometimes both.
When I walk back to the car through the afternoon sun, away from the smell of the hospice cloying my senses, I clutch the emotions and drag them back inside. I’d forgotten how severe the suffering other people cause can be, how the need to obliterate this is what pushed me into a life of addiction.
This can’t happen again. I won’t fall into loving another person who’ll leave.
I can’t get any further into whatever is happening with Ruby because when she leaves, the fallout will send me back to my old life and this time it will kill me.