‘This comes as a… surprise?’
Too right it did. All of it. That I’d met the man from the chemist in Hamman and remembered nothing about it. And that he’d been allowed out from behind the counter. What had he been wearing? I couldn’t imagine him in anything except his white coat. And was he with a gang of other chemists, all in their white coats?
‘I was scuttered,’ I whispered.
‘It was Saturday night,’ he said, but then he went just a little bit stern and said, ‘Didn’t your doctor tell you that you shouldn’t drink while you’re taking anti-depressants?’
Now was the time. ‘No, he didn’t,’ I said, ‘because you see, the thing is, the prescriptions that I’ve been picking up from you, they’re not for me, they’re for my mother. I’m sorry I haven’t told you before now, the time just never seemed right.’
He stepped back, did a long stare and tiny head-nods while he absorbed the info, and eventually spoke. ‘Was any of the stuff for you?’
I thought back over the long list of medication I had got for Mam; not just the anti-depressants, the tranks, the sleeping tablets but the antihistamine stuff for her rash, the antacids for her stomach, the painkillers for her sinuses…
‘The nail varnish was mine.’
‘You know what?’ he mused. ‘I feel like a right fool.’
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘It was my fault, I should have told you straight away and I enjoyed someone being nice to me even though there was nothing wrong with me.’
‘OK.’ He still looked uncomfortable.
‘Just out of curiosity,’ I asked, ‘what’s Hamman like?’
‘Ah, it’s alright. The crowd was a bit too young.’
Straight away I wondered how old he was – up till now I’d never thought of him having an age. In fact I’d never really thought of him as human, just a benign presence who dispensed tablets that kept my mammy from going totally doolally.
‘It’s the white coat,’ he said, reading my mind. ‘Very dehumanizing. I’m probably not that much older than you, Maureen, and I’ve just realized that that’s probably not your name.’
‘No, it’s Gemma.’
‘I’ve a name too,’ he said. ‘It’s Johnny.’
TO:
[email protected] FROM: Gemma
[email protected] SUBJECT: Wonders never cease
Guess what? The youth rang me. The youth I met the night of Cody’s birthday. Owen or whatever he’s called. He wants us to go out. ‘For what,’ I asked. ‘A drink,’ he sez. ‘It took you nearly two weeks to call,’ I said. ‘I was playing hard to get,’ he replied.
Anyway I told him I couldn’t and he said, ‘I understand. You want to spend more time with your coal scuttle.’
Obviously it’s not that, it’s because there’s no way I’ll get a pass from Mam at the moment. She only lets me out to go to work and collect her prescriptions from the chemist and I don’t have the energy to resist, especially after I disgraced myself so badly on the night of Cody’s birthday…
Anyway, let me know how you are. Any fellas yet?
Love
Gemma
Speaking of prescriptions, Mam was out of sleeping tablets – she was eating them like Smarties – so I hopped into the car and as always the nice man in the white coat was standing behind the counter.
‘Hi, Gemma,’ he said. ‘Not Maureen. Gemma. It’ll seem natural after a bit of practice. Look at how they changed Jif to Cif – for a while everyone felt like a bit of a thick saying it, but now it’s second nature.’
‘And Oil of Ulay to Oil of Olay,’ I agreed. ‘Are you ever not here?’
He thought about it for a moment. ‘No.’
‘But why? Can’t you get another pharmacist to help you?’
‘I have someone – my brother. But he was in a motorbike accident.’
Pause where I made a sympathetic noise even though I didn’t know the brother. ‘When was that?’
‘October.’
‘God, ages ago.’
‘And it’ll be ages still before he’s better. He wrecked his leg.’
More sympathetic noises.
‘And it’s impossible to get a locum.’
‘But do you have to do such long hours? Couldn’t you just shut up shop early?’
‘Everyone knows we stay open till ten. Remember that first night when you came here? What if we’d been closed?’
I shut my eyes at the thought. One mad mammy on my hands and no way of defusing her. He had a point.
‘I don’t get out much either.’ I didn’t want him to feel he was the only one. ‘Coming here counts as a social event.’
‘How so?’ He was very curious and who’d blame him, I’d have been bored out of my skull too, sitting in that shop, reading the back of Anadin boxes. So I told him the whole story – like the whole story – the phone call, Colette’s highlights, Dad’s sideburns, Mam’s ‘heart attack’ and the amount of television I now watched.
Then someone came in looking for eye-drops and I left him to it.
10
Because I’m an only child it was inevitable that I’d end up taking care of an aged parent. But I wasn’t ready, not yet. I’d thought it was a long fuzzy way off in the future and the hazy picture always included a man to share the burden with me. Furthermore, I thought the absent parent would have the decency to be dead, not shacked up with their secretary. Well, the best laid plans and all that.
In a shockingly short time my old life was flat-lining. Although I admired it from afar – my flat, my friends, my independence –it was easier to just give in to Mam. And, to be honest, without Dad I felt the need to cling to the one parent I had.
Totally without my meaning to, me and Mam got into a routine, which mostly consisted of us being stuck in the house, like two oddballs. I was allowed out to go to work – or the chemist for her prescriptions – then I came home, sat on the couch with her and every night we watched the same sequence of programmes: a double bill of The Simpsons, an hour of Buffy, then the nine o’clock news.
If I had to work late she watched the programmes on her own, then related the events to me when I returned. At weekends we watched Midsomer Murders or Morse, the kind of things she used to watch with Dad and the weird thing was that even though I was never alone, I was terribly lonely.
Mam and I had little to say to each other. Sometimes she would say, ‘Why do you think he went?’
‘Probably because of Uncle Leo and Auntie Margot dying so close together.’
‘My heart is broken over Leo and Margot too,’ she said. ‘And you don’t see me having an affair.’
‘Well, maybe it’s because he’s going to be sixty in August. People often go mad when it’s a birthday with a nought on the end of it.’
‘I was sixty two years ago and who did I have an affair with?’
We were holding out for Dad to return and life had become a vigil, although we never acknowledged it as such. Mum no longer cooked, so we subsisted on crackers, pâté and Baileys. If I got up off the couch to make my wees she looked alarmed and I felt guilty.
No one could believe it when I couldn’t get Dad to come home. ‘But you can fix anything,’ Cody said.
‘Apart from my own love life.’ I wasn’t being self-deprecatory, merely saving him from saying it.
Things weren’t going great at work either. While I hadn’t actually lost any accounts (Aaargh! What a thought, a definite Room With No Windows offence.) I hadn’t brought in any new business either and Frances and Francis weren’t best pleased because, as they reminded me almost daily, I had to grow my turnover every year by fifteen per cent. (It was only ten per cent until last year but they’ve their eye on a holiday home in Spain.)
‘New business isn’t going to come to you,’ Frances growled. ‘You’ve got to hunt it down, Gemma. Hunt it down like a dog.’
The thing was I’d lost my spark. My whole business depends on me being up and ‘on’. When I take human resources people of b
ig companies to lunch they have to be dazzled by my energy and be certain that their next conference would be a special, glittering, fun affair that couldn’t help but reflect well on them.
People worried about me, Cody in particular. ‘You never come out any more. It’s not like you to just give up.’
‘I haven’t. It’s only till Dad comes home. In my head I’ve given him two months to cop on, and it’s only been six weeks.’
‘What if he doesn’t come back?’
‘He will.’ I was hanging my hopes on several things, especially that there had been no more solicitor’s letters about the ‘permanent financial settlement’.
‘If your mother won’t go out, you’ll have to leave her on her own.’
‘I can’t. She starts crying and hyperventilating. It’s easier to just stay in. She won’t even go to Mass. She says that religion is all nonsense.’
Cody was appalled. ‘I mean, she’s right of course, but I didn’t know things were that bad. I’m coming over.’
He called around, sat with Mam and said, ‘Now listen, Maureen, sitting here isn’t going to bring him back.’
‘Neither is going to ballroom dancing, or playing bridge.’
‘Maureen, life goes on.’
‘It doesn’t for me.’
He gave up after a while and out in the hall he said with a certain degree of admiration, ‘She can really dig her heels in, can’t she?’
‘I told you. Stubborn as a bloody mule.’
‘I see now where you get it from. Any new chocolate? Whoops.’ Theatrically he clapped a hand over his mouth. ‘No, I suppose there isn’t. And by the looks of your mammy she’s eaten the slush pile.’
‘Oi –’ I started to object but he interrupted firmly and placed his palm on his chest.
‘Cody Cooper, keeping it real. Telling it like it is because someone has to. She was an attractive woman, your mother, in a kind of fifties, Debbie Reynolds way. And what’s happened to her hair?’
‘Roots, that’s all it is, roots. She won’t go to the hairdresser.’ I’d been measuring Dad’s absence by their length. They were far too long.
‘She’s gone to hell.’ Cody paused for impact. ‘And you might too. Think on.’
Then, like the caped crusader, he was gone, and I didn’t want to think about what he’d said about me so I thought about my mother instead.
You don’t look at your parents the way you look at other people, but I supposed Mam had been kind of cute, in a roundy sort of way. Curvy calves, smooth upper arms, a neat little waist and small soft hands and feet. (I take after her, which is a shame because that sort of body is currently very unfashionable.) For a long time she’d looked younger than Dad and I couldn’t really pinpoint when the changeover happened but she didn’t any more. Until the current crisis, she’d got her hair done regularly – obviously not in a feather shag or the like, the only way I knew she’d been was that it was more shiny and rigid than usual, but the point is she tried. And she loved clothes – I need hardly point out it was stuff I wouldn’t wear if my life depended on it: appliquéd cardigans or blouses with sparkly buttons. But she loved them and got an especial kick out of bagging a bargain. At Sales time, she’d set off into town on her own on the bus and always came home triumphant. ‘It was like the end of the world in there – old hags pushing and digging their elbows into me – but I gave them a run for their money.’
Gleefully she’d display the spoils of her trip; she’d spread stuff out on her bed and invite me to guess how much it cost.
‘God, I dunno.’
‘Go on, guess!’
‘Before or after the sale?’
‘Before.’
‘Seventy-five.’
‘Seventy-five? It’s wool!’
‘A hundred.’
‘More.’
‘One-fifty.’
‘Less.’
‘One-thirty.’
‘Yes! And now guess how much I got it for.’
‘Forty?’
‘Ah come on now, Gemma, that’s not playing the game.’
‘A hundred.’
‘Less, less!’
‘Ninety?’
‘Less.’
‘Seventy?’
‘You’re getting warm.’
‘Sixty?’
‘More.’
‘Sixty-five?’
‘Yes! Half price. And it’s wool!’
This had to be done with each item she’d bought and Dad always shared in her delight. ‘That’s very nice, love.’ And he often said to me, in all sincerity, ‘Gemma, your mother is an elegant woman.’
Is it any wonder I was so surprised when he left her?
Mind you, she’d make him go through the whole price-guessing thing too, so maybe it wasn’t that much of a surprise.
TO:
[email protected] FROM: Gemma
[email protected] SUBJECT: Disloyal cow
Do you know what? Andrea comes running up to me at work and goes, all shiny-eyed, ‘I read that book Lily Wright wrote!’ Like she should get a medal or something for reading it. She said she loved it, that it put her in great form. Then she must have seen my face because she shut up. God, people are thick.
Neither Mam nor I have clapped eyes on Dad since the day I threw the tiramisu bar at him. He hasn’t rung either of us – not once. Can you credit it? The only times I get to talk to him is when I ring his work and Colette isn’t there to lie and say he’s at the dentist. He never comes to the house to get his clothes, his post, nothing. He asked me to forward his letters and I refused because I wanted to use it as leverage to get him round here and see us. But he still wouldn’t come. He said, ‘Ah, sure, it’s only bills and stuff, not that important.’
I paused before writing the next bit. The bit where I told Susan how, every morning for the past fortnight, I’ve been waking at 5 a.m. Wondering what was going to happen – while the panic nearly choked me. I was thirty-two and my life looked finished. When would things get back to normal? I had no relationship – no escape route. And with the life I was living, I was never likely to. Either Dad came back, or… or what?
Something had to change.
But nothing worked with Dad. Not apologies or promises, not anger or appealing to his sense of responsibility. ‘Dad,’ I’d said, ‘please help me, I can’t cope. It’s Mam, she’s just not equipped for… life without you.’
‘It’s bound to be tough, but she’ll get used to it.’ His tone was still gentle but alarmingly uninvolved. He didn’t care.
The innocence was all gone, it had turned dirty and corrupted. When I was young I thought my dad could fix anything. Auntie Eilish used to tell a joke – at the time, daringly blasphemous: ‘What’s the difference between God and Noel Hogan? Gemma doesn’t think God is Noel Hogan.’
But it was a different world now. No magic solutions. I couldn’t bear it. Especially because I used to be a right daddy’s girl. Every day until I was about four, he’d come home from work and hand-in-hand we’d walk to the shops with my pram and Tiny Tears to get his cigarettes.
Now all that closeness was gone for ever and I’d never be his little girl again. He’d found someone else and though I knew it was stupid and irrational, I felt rejected. What was so wrong with me that he had to take up with someone only four years older?
Mam was right – it was like he was dead, only worse.
My greatest fear of all was that Colette would get pregnant. That would really copperfasten this whole sorry mess and we’d never be able to go back to the way things used to be.
The sad thing is that all my life I’d wanted a sibling. Be careful what you wish for.
Each time I spoke to Dad I felt like gawking with fear in case he said, ‘You’re going to have a little sister or brother.’ Was it on the cards? I was afraid to ask because it might put ideas in his head but I was never much good at endurance so I rang and said, ‘Dad, there’s something I want you to do for me.’
‘Is it your gras
s?’ he replied. ‘Because it won’t need to be cut until April, and the mower is in the shed.’
‘If Colette gets pregnant…’ I deliberately left a pause for him to jump in and bluster that nothing of the sort would happen. But he didn’t. I forced myself through the dread. ‘If she gets up the pole, I want you to ring me. You hear me? Do you think you could possibly manage that?’
‘Ah, Gemma, don’t be like that.’
I sighed, regretting my spite. ‘Sorry. But you’ll tell me?’
‘I will.’
So even though it hurt that he never rang me, it was also kind of a relief.
Back to Susan.
I have also become fixated with the idea of owning a Hello Kitty toaster. It’s so cute, and – get this – it puts the Hello Kitty face on the slices of toast.
I’ve managed to get Internet access software onto Dad’s crappy old PC. Multi-talented and all as my ball and chain (communicator brick) is, it can’t give me colour pictures of Hello Kitty toasters.
Wish me luck.
Love
Gemma
PS it is now six weeks since Dad left and Mam is doing great. She’s lost three stone, got blonde highlights, a discreet face-lift and a thirty-five-year-old boyfriend. They are going on holiday together to Cap Ferrat. She’s still refusing to learn to drive but it doesn’t matter because her new man (Helmut, he’s Swiss) always sends a car for her or else picks her up in his red Aston Martin with gull-wing doors.
I pressed ‘send’ then turned on Dad’s old computer. I would track down a Hello Kitty toaster on the Internet, or die in the attempt.
‘What are you doing?’ Mam came into the room and stood looking over my shoulder as I clicked and typed.
‘Looking for a Hello Kitty toaster.’
‘Why?’
‘Just…’ I was scrolling down the merchandise with fierce concentration, ‘I read that Reese Witherspoon has one.’
Mam paused, then said, ‘If Reese Witherspoon jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?’
TO:
[email protected] FROM: Gemma
[email protected] SUBJECT: A black day