Zara pulls the door open dressed as a pirate. She punches the air before us with a plastic hook on the end of her hand and yells ‘Arrrrrrrgh, mateys!’
I feel Heather flex beside me. Heather is fond of Zara, though a little unsure. Zara, at three, can be temperamental. Her loud protests, or sudden explosive tears, or even extreme hyperness can make Heather very unsettled.
‘Well, arrrrrgh yourself.’ I go down on my knees to hug her, battling her pirate protestations and walk-the-plank threats, and I end up lying on the floor with her straddling me, the tip of her hook held to my neck. Heather swiftly sidesteps us and softly makes her way down the hall and into the living area.
Zara presses the plastic hook against my skin, and pushes her face near mine. ‘If you see that Peter Pan, you tell him I’m lookin’ for him – him and that little fairy he’s with.’ She glares at me meanly then jumps up and runs down the hall.
I’m left lying on the ground alone, laughing.
On this occasion I’ve brought a bracelet-making set for Heather and she settles down at the table to focus on sliding the beads on to the string. Zara is keen to play with it too and though we tell her calmly that it is not a toy, that it is Heather’s, that Zara must play with her own toys – and the new vet set that I brought her – she has a meltdown, which makes Heather extremely tense. I can see her shoulders bunch up as she focuses threading the beads, her cheeks getting hotter as Zara’s wails get louder. Leilah’s voice is calm and firm and she removes Zara from the room. I stay beside Heather, my elbow on the table to keep my head propped up, and I watch her intently.
‘What are you doing, Jasmine?’ she asks.
‘Watching you.’
She smiles. ‘Why are you watching me, Jasmine?’
‘Because you’re beautiful,’ I say, and she smiles shyly and shakes her head.
‘Jasmine!’
I laugh and continue watching her. She giggles, but then eventually disappears into bracelet-making concentration zone. Zara returns into the room quietly, her eyepatch discarded to reveal two sad red eyes. Lollipop in hand, she settles in her corner of the room and plays with the new vet game I bought for her, talking to herself in badly constructed sentences with random words thrown in that she has overheard from us. Heather gives her a quick look and concentrates on her beading. It is easy company for twenty minutes while the two girls concentrate, while Leilah prepares the lunch. I’m not being lazy, we both know it’s best that I stay in the room with Zara and Heather in case any further conflict arises.
The smell of garlic drifts from the kitchen as Leilah massages butter and garlic into the lamb. She snips rosemary from the herb garden on the balcony and, after rinsing it off, makes quick little nips into the flesh and inserts the rosemary. My dad isn’t home; he’s playing golf and will be back in time for lunch, so I put on Tangled, the only movie that Zara will concede to watching, and I settle down on the couch for a lazy hour. I wake to feel little butterfly kisses on my face. Heather is smiling down at me, and just seeing her is the most beautiful way to wake up.
‘Dad is here, Jasmine,’ she says.
I’m groggy, with my shoes off, and my dress up around my waist, and who follows Dad into the living room but Ted Clifford. Ted is over six feet tall and very broad. He fills the doorframe and I feel Heather freeze beside me, her body tensing. In fact everybody tenses, including Leilah, whose look of composure drops for a moment to show that she had no idea Ted was coming to visit.
‘Ted,’ she says, not hiding her surprise. ‘Welcome.’
‘Hello, Leilah,’ he says, giving her a wet kiss and an overly familiar hug. ‘I hope you don’t mind me invading your lunch, but Peter lost the golf which meant he had to invite me!’ He guffaws loudly.
Leilah smiles, but I can see the true meaning beneath, the tightness around the mouth, the warning signals in her eyes. It ruffles Dad’s feathers a bit.
‘This must be little Zara,’ Ted says, looking down at Zara. From her position on the floor she is looking up at him as if he is the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk. She looks at Leilah uncertainly, a wobbly smile-cry expression on her face, but Ted ignores the signs and scoops her up in his arms to plant a big smacker on her face. Leilah diplomatically lifts Zara from his arms and Zara wraps her legs tightly around Leilah’s waist and buries her head into her neck to hide from the giant. All the while Dad is beaming, all the while I am seething because this is no coincidence: me and Ted in the same room barely two weeks after Dad raised the issue of asking him to find a job for me. Leilah works two half-days a week so that she can spend afternoons with Zara, Dad is retired, I am unemployed, Heather has a day off: it makes sense for all of us to be eating lunch on a Thursday, but it makes no sense that Ted would be here. He should be working. Instead he is here to talk to me. I feel the anger rising within me and can barely look Dad in the eye.
‘You know my daughter, Jasmine,’ he says, holding out his hand to display me.
Ted gives me the once-over and comments on how I’ve grown since we met last. Ted is sixty-five years old, no excuse to treat a woman half his age as though she has just reached puberty and it was all for his benefit. It is clear that he is not surprised that I am here. I’m either paranoid or right about this. We shake hands, and I intend to keep it at that, but he pulls me in for a wet kiss that I find myself wiping off my cheek immediately. Leilah looks at me, empathetic.
‘And this is Heather,’ Dad says.
As an aside. Not, this is my daughter Heather, no display of the arm, no grand gesture. I am sensitive when it comes to Heather – very; I think that is clear from my treatment of you – so I don’t always know if what I feel about other people’s treatment of her is real or heightened or simply a case of me projecting my fears. Everyone will probably always make mistakes when it comes to her, in my eyes. I do, however, feel that in thirty-four years Dad has done very little to overcome the awkwardness he feels when introducing Heather to strangers, particularly those that he looks up to, people like Ted that he has always had an embarrassing schoolboy crush on, constantly trying to please him, sell his company to and then ultimately undersell it because it’s Ted and he wouldn’t want Ted to think that he’s uncool. It is not necessarily that he is ashamed of Heather, because he is not so cold-hearted, but he is conscious of the fact that some feel uncomfortable around Heather. He deals with this by paying as little attention to her as possible, making as little a deal of her as possible, playing everything down, as if that will make everyone feel more comfortable. Of course his apparent lack of affection for his daughter has the opposite effect. I have on many occasions raised this with him, but he thinks I’m overly emotional and irrational about the whole thing.
‘Ah,’ Ted says, looking at Heather in a way that I don’t like. ‘Hallo!’ he says in an unusual voice. ‘Well, I can’t leave you out, can I?’ he says and reaches out to shake her hand.
This is a risky move.
As a student of Heather I have learned that all individuals, regardless of disability, are sexual beings. Ensuring that Heather, whose physical development outstrips her emotional development, understands the physical and more particularly the psychological aspects of sexuality has always been of concern to me. It is a continuing lesson, more than ever now, when she yearns for a boyfriend. The last thing I want is for her to be rejected or ridiculed, never mind abused.
To deal with this, from a young age we learned the Circles concept, a system that helps categorise the various levels of personal relationship and physical intimacy. The reason why someone like Ted concerns me is because he has a misguided take on intimacy, seeing as he has kissed and picked up a three-year-old, squeezed a wife, checked me out, and now doesn’t want Heather to feel left out. I think this is one time that Heather would be more than happy to be left out.
The Purple Private Circle represents the individual; in this case Heather. The Blue Hug Circle comes next. This represents people who are closest to the person in the purple circle,
both physically and emotionally, and it’s where close-body hugs are the norm; this circle includes me, Dad, Zara and Leilah. Next comes the Green Faraway Hug Circle. Close friends and extended family members are assigned to this circle. Sometimes friends may want to be closer than this, but Heather must tell them exactly where they stand. Then comes the Yellow Handshake Circle, for friends and acquaintances whose names are known, followed by the Orange Wave Circle for other, more distant acquaintances, such as children who may want to hug and kiss Heather but she knows she must not, that she must wave at them instead. No physical or emotional contact is involved at this level of intimacy. Finally there is the Red Stranger Circle. No physical contact or conversation is exchanged with people in this category, unless the person is identified by a recognisable badge or uniform. If somebody tries to touch Heather when she doesn’t want to be touched, Heather should say ‘Stop.’ Some people remain strangers forever.
Heather and I are firm in keeping to this, no matter how uncomfortable it makes people feel. While Dad knows the circles code exists, it was Mum who taught it to us. Dad never involved himself in these kinds of things.
I watch Heather looking at his outstretched hand in confusion. I know that she knows what to do, but she looks at me for support.
‘Orange, Heather.’ Though personally I’d rather keep him in the red zone.
Heather nods then turns to him and waves.
‘Only a wave for me?’ he asks, like he’s speaking to a child and not a thirty-four-year-old woman.
He moves closer and I am about to step in front of him and tell him to stop when Heather holds out her hand. ‘Stop. You are not in my Blue Hug Circle.’
But Ted doesn’t take her seriously. He chuckles at what she has said, not giving it any consideration, and wraps his arms around her in a bear hug. Heather immediately starts screaming and I pull at his arms to get him away from her.
‘Jasmine!’ Dad says, as he watches me trying to wrench Ted’s arms off her. Leilah gives out to Dad. Zara starts crying and Heather is screaming, manically.
Ted backs off, hands in the air as if he’s the victim of a hold-up, saying, ‘All right, all right, I’m only being friendly,’ over all the noise.
Dad is apologising to Ted, trying to get him to sit down at the table, barking at Leilah to get him a drink and make him comfortable, but Leilah isn’t listening.
‘Are you okay, Heather?’ Leilah is by my side.
Heather is still screaming, huddled in my arms, and I know that the best thing is for us to leave. She will not want to settle at the table for dinner with him here, after he broke a rather serious rule of hers.
‘There’s no need to overreact,’ Dad says, following us out into the hall. Heather is hiding her head in my chest, cuddling into me, and I wish Dad would shut up. He is talking to me, but she might think it’s her he’s saying it to.
‘Dad, she told him no.’
‘It was only a hug, for feck’s sake.’
I bite my tongue. I don’t even know where to start with telling him off, but before I can get a word out, he erupts.
‘That is the last time this happens. We’re not doing this any more. I’ve had enough,’ he says, anger rising in him in a way I haven’t seen in years. ‘No more of this!’ He points at me and Heather and then the dinner table, as if this entire episode has happened before and it is our fault.
‘Any excuse,’ I snap back at him, and I leave the apartment.
I offer to bring Heather home with me, to stay overnight at my place, but she declines, giving my face a maternal pat before she gets out of the car, as if she’s sorry that this has all been too much for me. She is happier when she is in her own home, surrounded by her things.
I, on the other hand, return home alone.
10
I am disappointed Heather doesn’t stay overnight with me for a number of reasons: one, because I like her company; two, because I want to make sure she is okay after the incident at Dad’s; and three, because it would have been a great way for me to cancel the dreaded meeting with my cousin Kevin, which is to take place tomorrow. Or maybe even bring her to see Kevin with me, but Heather is too busy with her Friday job in the solicitor’s office.
Our meeting is planned for noon in Starbucks on Dame Street beside the Wax Museum. Lots of tourists, nothing intimate. I will be able to leave when I want to.
Deep down I know that it will be fine. He will apologise for his twenty-two-year-old self, tell me how he always felt lost and alone, an outcast who used force and fear as a way of maintaining control over a life that he felt was out of control. He will tell me that he has done some soul-searching on his travels – kept a journal, started a novel, or maybe he’ll have gone all ‘hairy feet and sandals’ and become a poet. Then again, maybe he ended up working in a bank. He probably met a woman – or maybe a man, who knows – and now that he is content with who he is, he is able to face who he was and apologise for the incident all those years ago. I know that the ice will quickly melt and we can forge on, laughing about how we tied his brother Michael to a tree, danced around him dressed as Indians and accidentally fired an arrow into his leg; or how we stole Fiona’s clothes while she was skinny-dipping and put them on the rocks so that she was forced to climb up to get them, barefoot and butt-naked. I might mention the whole ‘You are going to die, Jasmine’ talk that changed the course of my thinking for ever, and maybe I will go as far as mentioning Santa Claus.
When I see him, I am surprised by his appearance. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it’s not what I see. He is thirty-eight and so I should have prepared myself for that. Seeing him makes me feel old; we’re grown up now. Suddenly everything disappears and I just feel a fondness towards him. My cousin. So many memories come flooding at me, so many with my mother in them, and I am dumbfounded by how overcome I feel. It has been a long time since I’ve felt that longing for my mum; it leaves me feeling winded and lost and childlike again, as if I’m reaching for something that is beyond my grasp. For a while her smell lingered at home and I would wrap myself up in her bed in an effort to be close to her; other times I would get a whiff of her perfume from somebody else and I would stop midstride, almost hypnotised as I was transported and locked in the vivid memory of her. But it happened less and less as the years passed by. Everything that used to remind me of her, everything that I saw and heard – restaurants, shops, roads we’d driven down, buses we’d sat on, parks, songs on the radio, phrases overheard in passing conversations – absolutely everything linked back to her in some way. But of course it did, she died when I was young, when she was still the centre of my world, before I’d had a chance to start making a life for myself. As I’d stayed in the same city that all of those memories were made in, I thought that I would never lose them. Whenever I needed her – my mum fix – I’d go back to those places, hoping to bring her back, summon her energy. Instead, the act of going back made new memories, and every time I went I would add another layer on top of her memory, until eventually I’d buried them completely and all of those places stopped being about my past with her and became my present. It is rare, twelve years on, that I am struck like this, and I know it is because of him, because I haven’t seen him since she passed away, so everything I can tie him to is connected with her. He looks up and sees me, and he beams. I feel okay. This is going to be nice, nostalgic. I immediately feel guilty for the Starbucks venue and wonder if I should move our meeting to a restaurant nearby.
He has found a small table, with two chairs where we will have to sit diagonally to avoid our knees meeting. I was hoping to get there first to grab two sinking armchairs well away from each other. He gives me a big hug, a long warm embrace. His hair is thinning, he has wrinkles around his eyes, I think he is the only person I have gone so long without seeing. It’s a big leap for the brain and it’s oddly disconcerting.
‘Wow,’ I say when I sit down and stare at a familiar face peeking out at me from behind an unusual mask of time. I don’t kn
ow where to start.
‘You haven’t changed,’ he beams. ‘Still have the red hair.’
‘I do,’ I laugh.
‘And those eyes.’ He looks at me intently, then shakes his head and laughs.
‘Eh. Yes. Decided to keep the eyes.’ I laugh. Nervously. ‘So …’ Long silence while we stare at one another. He is beaming and keeps shaking his head as if he can’t believe it. I get it, but enough now, let’s move on. I’m once again happy we didn’t choose an actual lunch date.
‘Coffee?’ I say, and he jumps up.
I take a look at him as he orders at the counter. Brown cords, V-neck jumper, shirt, quite conservative, not exactly the latest trend but respectable, responsible, a far cry from the ripped-jeans, long-haired troublemaker.
When he sits down, the routine questions begin. Jobs, life, how long are you here, are you still in touch with Sandy, do you still see Liam, do you remember Elizabeth? Who married who, who’s having babies with who, who left who. How Aunt Jennifer is so happy he’s returned. I knew I shouldn’t have said it as soon as I did. It was a simple enough thing to say, but I should have kept it lighter, more vague, devoid of anything issue-related. Mentioning his ‘adoptive’ mother who he hadn’t travelled home to see in over ten years – though she had visited him – was not safe territory. I kick myself. His posture changes.
‘She’s happy to have me back here, of course, but she’s finding the circumstances difficult. I’m back to find my birth parents,’ he says, his hands cupped around the enormous mug of coffee. He is looking down, all I can see are long black eyelashes, and when he looks up I recognise those lost, confused, tortured puppy eyes. He is still searching, though he seems less angry, the spiteful look is gone. We talk about seeking his biological mother some more, about his long-lost sense of identity, his inability to settle down and have his own children without understanding his own lineage, about not being able to settle in relationships, about feeling tied to someone else, elsewhere all this time. I hope I am reassuring him. And then we get to the awkward moment.