“What do you mean by more complicated?”
“And here we go again with the third degree! Really, Elby. You should have been a detective instead of a journalist,” he grumbled, at last yanking the plug out of the wall and wrapping it around the kettle. “Of course. How fitting. My trusty old kettle decides to give up the ghost. No car this morning, and now it’s no tea. I must be cursed.” Dad grabbed a saucepan, filled it with water, and set it down on the hob. “Either of you have any idea how long it takes to boil cold water?” My sister and I both shrugged and shook our heads. “Neither do I, but it looks like we’re about to find out,” he said, peeking at the wall clock.
“What do you mean by more complicated?” I repeated.
My father sighed. “The first few weeks after we got back together were a bit tricky. It took time for her to adjust to her new life out in the sticks. Believe it or not, back then this wasn’t the most joyful place to settle down.”
Maggie scoffed. “Back then?”
“Hey, my hometown was nothing to write home about, either. Look, back then I had to work long hours at the office and she had yet to find work herself, so your mother was feeling quite alone, sort of just walking in circles around the flat. But she was a fighter, all right. She signed up for some courses, found some short-term work, and hey presto, she was a teaching assistant and later a teacher. Add a pregnancy on to that—the sheer joy of becoming a parent notwithstanding—and, well, it all takes a toll. You have no idea what that’s like, but hopefully one day you will! Anyway, without the means to buy a proper wedding dress or a ring, or any of that razzle-dazzle that everyone expects, we waited a bit before taking our vows. There’s the honest truth. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”
“So, Mum got pregnant how long after you got back together? How far into the second chapter of your romance?”
“Nice choice of words. I suppose you could say your mother hated the mere mention of that first chapter. Ten whole years had passed, ten years of life, ten years of becoming a new person. So, your mother really loathed the young woman she once was, to the point where she would actually get jealous that I had been in love with the ‘past her.’ She couldn’t understand how one man could have loved two drastically different people. Of course, it never occurred to her that I could have become a drastically different person myself! Of course not. Well, truth be told, I really didn’t change all that much, so maybe she was right. Your mother lived in the present. She rarely looked ahead to the future, and she considered the past to be dead and gone. The two chapters of our story were night and day for her, Old and New Testament, if you will. Two tellings, which never agreed on the coming of the Messiah.”
“So, does that make you the Messiah in her story, Dad?” Maggie guffawed.
“One minute, twelve seconds,” he said, eyes fixed on the boiling water and flatly ignoring the wisecrack. He turned off the gas and served the tea.
“That sure is quick. One minute, twelve seconds to get Mum pregnant? That must be a world record,” I persisted.
After adding a splash of milk to his tea, Dad studied us each in turn. “I love you both, no doubt about that. I love you two more than anything on earth, aside from your brother of course. But, good lord, you can be a pain sometimes! Mum got pregnant very quickly, just a few months after we got back together. Do you want to know how much you and your brother weighed at birth, Elby? Well, believe it or not, you were the heavier one. So there!”
This made Maggie laugh out loud, puffing out her cheeks and imitating fat baby Eleanor-Rigby until Dad brought her down to size.
“Not so fast, Maggie. You weighed more than both of them combined! All right, now that all your prying has ruined my mood, I think I’ll have a little stroll through the cemetery. Care to come with?”
Maggie hadn’t been back to the grave once since the funeral. Seeing Mum’s name on the gravestone was more than she could handle.
“You know what? Scratch that,” my father said, reading her face. A father, after all, picks up on such things. “Don’t take it the wrong way, but I should go alone, clear my head.” With that, Dad downed the rest of his tea, put the mug in the sink, and planted a kiss on each of our foreheads, taking his leave. Then he paused in the doorway and called back to us, “Don’t forget to lock the door on your way out, Maggie,” before walking out of the flat with a smile on his face.
10
ELEANOR-RIGBY
October 2016, Croydon