The Forrests

19. The Forrests





They took Donald by surprise, the cards and emails, the number of people his mother kept in touch with. The traffic of words had slowed lately, but there was still the occasional former student writing of a success, an ex-hospice colleague having a party, a young woman visiting with her child who wondered whether she could come and stay. Donald asked Matt what he thought. ‘Sure, write back, she can stay with us. Be good practice, having a baby in the house.’

‘The girl is like ten. I think her mother was from the house of fallen women.’

‘Ours will be ten one day. Bring it on.’

‘Don’t.’

There was one more box to take to the home. Residents weren’t meant to have much, or to need things any more, but, ‘There’s got to be room for a few photo albums and a ceramic-frog collection,’ Donald said to the manager. He could always sic Ruth onto them; his aunt was world class at demanding bang for her buck.

If every mother was secretive, walked around outrageously in her own mind, never really known, he wondered whether it was a female condition or true of all parents, and what this would mean for his own child. Dorothy shuffled into the living room. ‘Hello, darling,’ she said.

‘How are the legs?’

‘Restless. So strange, like I want to do a jog. Go for a jog. I’ve never jogged.’

‘Here’s the rest of the stuff we’re taking. This is the last of it.’

She didn’t look into the box. ‘We have to phone Grace for her birthday.’

‘You already spoke to her. Amsi made her a cake and then the cat ate it. Remember?’

‘Why have they got a cat?’

‘Why not?’

‘Pets are quite dirty.’

‘The kids love it.’

‘Cake eaters.’ Dorothy leaned forward and picked something up off the ground that wasn’t there. ‘Oh damn,’ she said. ‘I’m doing it, aren’t I?’ She shook her head at Donald. ‘Do we want to know, or not want to know,’ she said to the room at large. ‘On the whole, not. But we do know. We do know, and that’s why you, Donald, are so incredibly beautiful. Your energy, your kind heart. That’s why those lilies smell so f*cking spectacular. The prayer flags moving in the wind like that, the invisible force of the wind. Those grapefruit in the green bowl. That’s a very nice touch. Thank you for that.’

She stopped looking around the room and nodded. ‘Eve didn’t know,’ she said. ‘Eve didn’t know. I’m the lucky one.’ Dorothy smiled at him, her hand to her mouth as always, until something changed. The hand moved away and of course she – his mother – was still there.