From the Kitchen of Half Truth (3 page)

***

“Why don't you ever bring your friends home for tea?” my mother would ask me. “I'd love to meet them. I could make some lovely muffins. Or some little cupcakes.”

“I don't have any friends,” I would tell her grumpily, which wasn't entirely true. I had Gary, Peter, and Sarah from the lunchtime science club, but they were all united in their love of
Star
Trek
and insisted in communicating in some made-up language they called Cling-On, which not only made me feel excluded, but also resulted in a lot of misunderstandings, making our lunchtime science experiments extremely hazardous. When they did speak English, we often argued about the dangers of science fiction, but three against one made it a very uneven debate. I couldn't understand how such sensible, intelligent, and rational people could allow themselves to be corrupted by a fantasy world full of flying saucers and alien beings. The very fact that they insisted on speaking in a made-up language and appeared to worship someone called Dr. Spot was evidence of their corruption. Their fictional world was destroying them day by day, like a maggot eating away at their brains.

But the truth is that even if I had wanted to invite them home, I never would have dared. I had already made the mistake of inviting Lucy Higgins home a few weeks into the new school year, and my mother had completely confused her.

“Those wretched hot dogs have been barking in the cupboard all afternoon,” she told Lucy, placing our tea down on the table in front of us. “I expect they wanted to go out for a walk, but I've tried walking a hot dog before and it's very difficult to get a collar that fits. Usually they slip off the lead and jump into a muddy puddle to cool themselves down. I'm sure your mother must have the same problem.”

When Lucy asked me if my mother was “mental,” I decided it was probably better not to invite people home again.

***

Embarrassment, anger, and guilt are the main feelings I recall from adolescence, but perhaps that isn't so unusual. Parents' evenings, particularly, were anticipated with dread. I still remember the time my mother told Mr. Lees—the trainee biology teacher and object of my affection—that eating chili con carne during her pregnancy was certainly the cause of my occasional temper tantrums.

“I didn't realize I was pregnant at that point, obviously,” my mother said quickly, as if she thought Mr. Lees would be outraged that she had acted so irresponsibly. Mr. Lees, though, clearly did not understand the implication of eating Mexican food while carrying a baby and just looked rather baffled.

“Chilies lead to a fiery temperament,” my mother clarified in quite a patronizing tone, as if a biology teacher really should know this. “Once I realized I was pregnant, I tried to balance out the heat of the chilies by eating several bowls of guacamole, but obviously it was too late. The damage had already been done.”

She looked at me sitting slumped on the chair next to her and shook her head sadly, as if I had some sort of defect. Poor Mr. Lees looked at me for guidance, but I just blushed a deep shade of crimson and stared at my feet. I felt acutely embarrassed, but not surprised. This was bound to happen. At least it helped explain why, whenever I had a fit of teenage angst, my mother would tell me to eat a tub of yogurt. She obviously thought the chili I was subjected to in the womb was repeating on me.

***

I learned to live with the embarrassment. I even learned to live with the anger. But what I have always struggled to live with is the guilt.

“I am just so proud of you, Meggy!” my mother exclaimed as we walked home from that very same parents' evening. “You're doing so well. You're going to do so many exciting things with your life. I just want the best for you, sweetheart. You know that, don't you? And I'll be here for you all the way. I've always believed in you.”

I had already tuned out by the time she said the word “proud,” overcome by feelings of guilt and self-reprobation. Why did I have to get so angry with her? Why did I have to care what other people thought? She loved me so much. Listening to her babbling excitedly about all my achievements, so enthusiastic about everything I did, I thought about Louise Warbuck's mother, who never even washed her PE clothes, and Gary's mother, who was always half drunk. I felt angry and ashamed at myself for being so ungrateful. The truth was I couldn't have asked for a more loving and supportive mother. I just wished she could be a little more…well…normal.

***

My idea of heaven was a place where nobody knew me. Where nobody knew about all the silly things I had said and done, the stories I had accidentally rattled off, the ways I had humiliated myself. Heaven was being surrounded by people who saw the world in black and white, who spoke the truth, who stated the facts. People who didn't confuse me, or leave me struggling with conflicting thoughts and feelings. It was a place where things were simple and straightforward.

Heaven was the Department of Science at Leeds University.

I fit in perfectly from the day I arrived. Finally I was surrounded by people whose aims were the same as mine: to understand, to make sense of, to categorize, to fact-find, and to get to the bottom of things. I sought out the companionship of the most serious and dedicated students so that even socially our conversation rarely deviated from our shared scientific interests. It meant that I rarely had the chance to slip up by talking about how I had once blown up like a beach ball after drinking too much fizzy lemonade, or how my mother once bought a bag of onions that were so strong they even made themselves cry and ended up flooding our kitchen floor. My interest in scientific study was a bonus rather than just another thing that made me an easy target. It was making me friends and earning me respect. And in my final year at Leeds, life got even better.

***

“Meg May, it's a pleasure to meet you. My name's—”

“Mark Daly. I know.”

Our eyes met over a Bunsen burner. Perhaps, had it been on, I would have seen fire in Mark's eyes, just like my mother saw fire in my father's eyes the first time they met. Unfortunately, the gas supply had been cut off while they prepared to close the lab due to a bat infestation. Still, the very fact that Mark Daly knew my name was enough to set me trembling. He was a doctoral student and lecturer, extremely well regarded in the faculty, especially by the female students. And he was flawlessly handsome.

“I was wondering whether I could ask you…”

He paused dramatically and leaned confidently on the workbench, looking me straight in the eye.

“Yes?” I prompted, my heart fluttering with anticipation.

“I was wondering if I could ask you, could I borrow those safety goggles?”

Could
I
borrow
those
safety
goggles?
Now that was a phrase to start a relationship on. Safety goggles. Goggles for practical usage in keeping one safe while unlocking the truths of the universe. Had I believed in romance, that surely would have been the closest thing to it.

***

The evening of the awards ceremony should have been one of the best of my life, but five months later I still want to weep with guilt each time I remember it.

“So, Miss May, where do your future interests lie?”

“Yes, you must tell us so that we can battle it out to be your supervisor! I assume you will be pursuing a PhD?”

Professor Philip Winter and Dr. Larry Coldman both clutched their glasses of wine and waited for me to answer.

“Um, I hadn't really thought—”

“Of course she will,” said Mark, sweeping in at just the right moment with his incredible capacity for certainty and decisiveness. He looked dashing in his suit and tie, expertly balancing a paper plate of finger food on one hand. Thank goodness for Mark. I didn't want Professor Winter, the head of the department, to think I wasn't a serious scientist. I told myself to get a grip and stop feeling so stupidly nervous. I had every right to be here. I was a prizewinner, after all, and this evening was for a handful of students like me, students who had gone the extra mile, put in the overtime, achieved the highest grades. But as I looked around at all the doctors and professors mingling so confidently in their smart suits and dresses, I couldn't help but wonder how many of them had grown up in a tiny council flat in North London or how many weren't sure who their fathers were or how many had been caught in a frying pan.

Dr. Coldman was speaking to Mark about a new state-of-the-art scanner he had ordered for one of the laboratories, but I wasn't really listening. Instead, I was looking over his shoulder to where my mother was hovering awkwardly by one of the tables of food, looking nervous and out of her depth. It touched me deeply that she was suffering so much on my behalf. She would have nothing to talk about with any of these people. She hadn't even passed her O-levels. But she had insisted on coming to see me awarded my “gift token,” as she called it (which was actually a check for five hundred pounds), and was clearly determined to stick it out until the end. I was about to excuse myself to go and rescue her when Dr. Alison McFee honed in on the buffet and struck up a conversation with my mother while piling her plate with mushroom vol-au-vents.

At first I thought everything might be fine. I could hear giggling, and they seemed to have struck up quite a conversation. But I knew something wasn't right when my mother pointed to one of the sausage rolls on Dr. McFee's plate and started doing a pig impression. What on earth was she doing? What on earth was she saying? I tried to rack my brain for stories my mother liked to tell about sausage rolls. Was it something to do with pigs rolling in muddy puddles? No, no, that was hot dogs. Was it something to do with a sausage roll oinking at her once? No, that didn't sound right either. But whatever she was saying, Dr. McFee wasn't giggling anymore. Instead, she was touching her hair nervously and looking around for an escape while my mother babbled on and on, clearly enjoying herself for the first time all evening, waving her arms around as she told some long-winded story about Dr. McFee's choice of savory snack, complete with piglike sound effects.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Mark, too, kept glancing over at my mother, and he appeared to be getting edgy on my behalf. He had only met my mother once, but it was obviously enough for him to foresee a potentially embarrassing incident occurring. He had suggested not telling her about the prize-giving at all, or telling her that parents weren't invited, or even that I just didn't want her there.

“You need to be careful, Meg,” he had told me. “You don't want to give the wrong impression. Not now. These people could hold the key to your future. They're the ones who will support research applications, help get papers published, open doors for you. I can understand why you might not want your mother there—”

“But of course I want her there,” I had told him, feeling slightly insulted. “I would never consider not inviting her.”

And I did want her there. Desperately. Because for as far back as I could remember, everything she had ever done she had done for me, and I knew that without her support I would never have even made it to university. She had worked tirelessly all her life so I wouldn't go without. She had praised me for every achievement and supported me in every choice. Even though she couldn't understand what I was studying, she thought it was wonderful that I was so interested in it. So there was no way I wouldn't allow her to be here to share my special moment.

But as I watched her excitedly enacting some fantastical story, completely oblivious to the fact that Dr. McFee was slowly backing away, a sense of panic rose in my chest. I recalled the sense of exclusion I had always felt at school, the whispers I overheard, the rumors that followed me around. I had worked so hard to fit in here. I was respected. I was liked. I was finally being taken seriously.

“So, has any of your family come tonight, Meg?” asked Professor Winter, looking around.

I felt panic surging in my chest. I didn't want to lose what I had built for myself. I didn't want to be a laughingstock. Not again.

I felt Mark's hand squeezing my shoulder, willing me to make the right choice.

“No,” I said quietly, swallowing down my guilt.

I felt sick with shame.

Mark's grip loosened, and he stroked my shoulder gently. I had done the right thing.

“None of my family could make it.”

 

I can't hide my shock when my mother meets me at the train station. She's so thin and pale, a shadow of her former flame-haired, curvaceous self. She is wearing a sweater, even though it's the height of summer, and when we hug I can feel the sharp angles of her elbows and shoulder blades through the material. It makes me want to cry. Did she look anywhere near this bad last time I saw her? Could she have changed so much so quickly?

“Meggy!” she squeals, ignoring the look of horror on my face. She doesn't want me to say anything about her appearance, doesn't even want me to acknowledge that she's wasting away. But I'm not like my mother. I'm not a fantasist.

“My God, you look dreadful!”

She forces a little laugh and brushes some flour off her sleeve.

“Oh, I know! I was baking a treacle tart, and I suddenly realized what the time was.”

“Mother, you should have stayed at home!” I snap, annoyed with her. “I could have taken the bus.”

“Don't be silly, darling. Why would you do that?”

“Because you look like you should be in bed!”

“I've made lasagna for dinner. Is that all right?” she says, walking off toward the parking lot.

I stay rooted to the spot, waiting for her to stop and turn around, waiting for her to acknowledge the unsaid, but when she doesn't, I pick up my bag and follow her.

***

The little redbrick cottage where my mother was raised has a white front door and pink roses climbing around the windows. It is also where I spent the first six months of my life, growing up in the warm bosom of my extended family, being cared for by my teenage mother, my grandmother, and my grandfather. They were happy times, apparently, with everybody doting on me. Of course I have no recollection of any of this, but the place felt oddly familiar when I helped my mother move in here three years ago.

“Of course it feels familiar,” said my mother as we unpacked the van. “You were born here.”

“Yes, but I don't remember that, do I?”

“It doesn't matter whether you remember it or not. It's still part of who you are. As far as your psyche is concerned, this is where you belong. You're like a salmon that's instinctively found its way home.”

“In that case I should be due to drop dead any minute now.”

“I don't think
you'll
be the one doing that, dear,” she muttered, struggling to unload a large potted plant.

It was the one time I heard her make reference to her illness. I wanted to stop her, grab her by the shoulders, tell her it was okay to talk about it, that I wanted to talk about it. But I was so taken aback that I just stood there hugging a deep-fat fryer while she staggered up the path, swamped under the leaves of an enormous yucca plant.

***

Inside, the cottage is tight and low ceilinged but extremely cozy. There's an open fireplace in the lounge, original wooden beams, and an Aga oven in the kitchen, which my mother adores. The long garden is overflowing with leafy green vegetables, fruit trees, and beanpoles. The patio is crammed with pots spilling over with berries and herbs. And past all this chaos, near the end of the garden, I can see the little orchard of apple trees with their fruit-laden boughs drooping to the ground. It's like a jungle out there.

“It's looking a little overgrown,” my mother admits as we stand on the patio in the early evening sunshine, in between a ceramic pot growing arugula leaves and an old tin bucket that's spouting green peppers. “I don't know why, but I just don't seem to be able to keep up with it lately. I'll get back out there tomorrow and give it a damn good tidy up.”

I'm glad my mother is home where she belongs. It's where she deserves to be. The bland North London flat we used to live in never reflected anything about her. It seemed to strain against my mother's zest for life, as if struggling to contain within its walls the energy that she radiated. It was plain and characterless, with small, square rooms and no discernible features.

Here in this cottage there are secret hiding places, there is history, there are quirks and peculiarities. Every room has a story attached to it, a personality of its own. There is fresh air, light, nature, and room to breathe. And, above all, there are roots to my mother's past, roots I hope will ground her, steadying her in reality as she faces the hard times ahead. I know almost nothing of her life before she had me, so skilled is she at avoiding any mention of it, but I know it was here where she grew up with her parents and a cat named fluffy, here where she listened to records and danced in her bedroom, and here where my father came to call for her when they were dating. All of these things I know happened here, and my hope is that maybe as she nears the end of her life, these memories—these
real
memories—will come back to her, shoving aside the fantasy world that she has created. I want my mother to be able to look back on her life with clarity so she may remember her time on this earth—good parts and bad parts—exactly as it was. No lies, no confusion, just pure lucidity and perfect understanding. What could bring her a greater sense of peace than that?

***

The cottage is filled with a sweet, sugary scent. My mother has been making cupcakes, and twelve of them are lined up on the kitchen work surface, each decorated with pink icing and colored sprinkles.

“This one's for you,” she says, pointing at a cake that's twice as big as the others, “and I'm going to top it with all of your favorite decorations.”

I look at the bowl of rainbow-colored jelly sweets sitting near the cakes and secretly tally up the number of calories that will be contained in this well-meant gift, not to mention the amount of additives and colorings. I never eat sweets these days, not after researching what's in them.

“Fantastic,” I say with a smile. “And the other eleven are for…?”

“I'm taking those to the local cancer hospice.” She shakes her head mournfully. “Those poor people,” she sighs, as if she's not one of them.

***

I always find it strange walking into “my” room. It's like revisiting my childhood in a feverish dream where everything is distorted and the wrong way around. All my childhood things are here—my pink flowery duvet, my framed photo of two little bunnies eating dandelions, my music box, my little plastic handheld mirror—but this was never actually my bedroom. It wasn't here in this cottage where I bounced on the bed or played with my toys or read my books; and yet here is the bed I bounced on, the toys I played with, and the books I read. My mother keeps it like a shrine to me, albeit a shrine that has been relocated from Tottenham to Cambridge. My school certificates and prizes are lined up on one shelf; my first science set sits on another. She has even kept all my old exercise books in a box at the bottom of the wardrobe. Feeling nostalgic, I delve in and pull one out—English Literature, Year 9, Mr. Hamble—and flick through the pages, recalling the pains I took to write in such small, neat letters. Everything is beautifully presented, with the dates in the margin and the headings underlined, but the pages are half blank.

I read the assignment title at the top of one page: “Write your own myth of 500 words explaining how penguins lost the ability to fly.”

In immaculate handwriting I have written: “I object to this assignment on the basis that it is fundamentally flawed. The Natural History Museum has told me there is no evolutionary evidence that penguins could ever fly.”

Mr. Hamble has written “See Me” in big red letters at the bottom of the page.

After my disgrace in Red Class, I hated English, all those silly stories and poems that were full of fictional characters and unrealistic scenarios. I greatly objected to being forced to read fiction and told Mr. Hamble it would certainly rot my mind.

“It's completely unrealistic,” I told him, “that Romeo would think Juliet was dead and then kill himself, and then that she would wake up, see Romeo was dead, and kill herself. What are the chances of that actually happening? I don't think that has ever happened to anyone. Ever.”

At parents' evening Mr. Hamble told my mother that I was “a strange girl with an extremely underdeveloped imagination” and that I might benefit from some extra exposure to stories of a fictional nature. Huh! If only he knew!

On the shelf next to my science kit, my old reading books are lined up neatly and hemmed in by two wooden bookends made to resemble caterpillars. I scan through the titles:
Who
Am
I?—A Journey Around the Human Body
;
101 Interesting Facts You Probably Didn't Know; A Beginner's Guide to Keeping Hamsters
;
Let's Explore the Solar System
;
A
Frog
with
Your
Tea?—Strange Customs from Around the World
;
The
Tale
of
the
Jiggly-Wop
. I pull this last one out and study the aged cover, wondering what a work of fiction is doing in there with all my educational books. This had been my mother's favorite book when she was a little girl, and I recall her reading it to me when I was about six years old. It was my favorite, too, back then, but I could have sworn I had thrown it out along with every other storybook I owned. It was the silliest of fairy tales, full of talking animals and other ludicrous products of the imagination that could only serve to pollute my mind and lead me astray. I thought I had dumped it in the bin along with
Alice
in
Wonderland
,
The
Hobbit
, and every other piece of nonsense my mother had subjected me to in a bid to rot my common sense, but obviously it managed to escape my mission of destruction. I had listened to this story so many times that I can still remember the words.

“In a land far away, there lived a creature that didn't know quite what it was…”

I run my fingers over the front cover, tracing the outlines of the strange Jiggly-Wop beast: his elephant ears, his feathery cheeks, his flowing mane, his zebra-striped body, his webbed feet. For a moment, a smile plays at the edges of my mouth before I pull myself together and chuck the book into the wastepaper basket.

“No wonder children are so stupid,” I mutter.

***

Over a dinner of lasagna with fresh salad straight from the garden, my mother twitters on about her vegetable patch and Rick Stein and sea bass and turnips, anything to prevent me from questioning her about her illness.

“Mother,” I finally interrupt, “how are you feeling?”

“Wonderful,” she says cheerfully, quickly standing up and clearing the table.

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“You've lost a bit of weight, haven't you?” I suggest in what must be the understatement of the year.

“You know, I do seem to have lost a few pounds,” she says, tugging at the gaping waistband of her long, purple skirt. “I've had to tighten the elastic on this a couple of times now.” She bunches the waistband together in her fist, shakes her head, and looks genuinely baffled. “I did need to lose a few pounds, though,” she says, more cheerfully. “Too many puddings. You know what I'm like.”

“Have you seen Dr. Bloomberg lately?”

“Yes, just last week,” she says, plonking the dishes into a sink full of lemon-scented suds.

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what did he say?”

“Oh, nothing much. You know how he waffles on. Now, I made treacle tart and chocolate mousse for dessert. Which would you like?”

I shake my head slowly, incredulously, but she refuses to look at me. “Whatever,” I mumble.

***

The next morning I awake to the smell of sausages and bacon. For one dreamy moment, tucked up under my old pink sheets in the narrow bed with the sinking mattress, I imagine I'm a little girl again in our North London flat. I can feel the warmth of the morning sunshine stealing through the gap in the curtains, and I imagine I am running across Hampstead Heath, my mother holding her arms wide open, ready to catch me.

But suddenly I feel the hand at my throat, fingers rough and calloused against my soft skin, squeezing, constricting, pressing against my windpipe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe! And someone is shouting at me, words I can't decipher.

I sit up with a start, gasping for air, clutching at my throat ready to pry away the hands that are choking me. It's always the same, this horrible dream. I can't see anyone. There's no face, just this voice—deep and angry—and this feeling of suffocation. And the smell. The sweet, stomach-churning smell of raw meat. I almost told Mark about it the other day, such was my desire to share it with someone, but no doubt he would have thought me strange and perhaps even a little unstable. I flop back against my pillow, sweat cooling against my back and my heart pounding in my chest.

***

“Morning! I'm making pancakes. There's fresh coffee on the table, and the sausages and bacon are nearly ready. Now, how about eggs? Fried? Scrambled? Do you want some toast? It's fresh bread; I made it this morning.”

“Mother, I can't eat all this,” I say, slumping down at the kitchen table in my pajamas.

“I want to feed you up while you're here,” she says, pouring batter mixture into a sizzling frying pan. “You're looking rather thin.”

I watch her straining to lift the frying pan with both hands. How much must she weigh right now? A hundred pounds? Not even?

As she tips the frying pan from side to side, spreading the batter around the pan, I see her body sway slightly. She places the pan back on the stove with a heavy clatter and stands motionless, gripping the handle as if for support.

“Mother? Are you all right?”

No reply.

“Mother?”

“I'm fine,” she says breathlessly.