From the Kitchen of Half Truth (4 page)

“Let me do that.” I stand up and approach the stove.

“Absolutely not!”

She turns and glares at me as if I've attempted to assault her. By suggesting she may not be capable of cooking, I have threatened her very way of life. She forces a little smile and takes a deep breath.

“Do you want syrup or sugar with your pancakes?” she asks sweetly.

***

Despite my protestations, my mother insists on getting out into the garden after breakfast and beginning her tidying up. For the first twenty minutes I am surprised and encouraged to find that she appears to have more energy than I do. She is a whirlwind of pruning, snipping, and trimming. As I work alongside her, stumbling through the tangle of roots and leaves, gathering the cuttings into a black plastic sack, I am foolish enough to allow a tiny ember of hope to catch alight inside me. Maybe her earlier weakness was just a momentary lapse. Surely she can't be that sick when she seems so full of beans, can she? She chatters away while she works and hums tunes from the Beach Boys, David Bowie, and Abba.

She picks various herbs and shoves them under my nose for me to sniff.

“Isn't that just delicious!” she says, beaming.

The morning is warm and bright, and the rich, earthy smell of the soil mingles with the scent of rosemary, mint, and lemon balm. The birds twitter in the trees, and for a while it's easy to forget that things aren't perfect, that this isn't just another summer like all the others we've had before. That this may, in fact, be one of our last. But despite her zealous start, it's not long before my mother starts to wane. She drags her feet and rubs her back, gazing forlornly at the overgrown garden as if overwhelmed by the prospect of having to contend with so much work. The light fades from her eyes, gradually replaced by fatigue.

“Mother,” I say tentatively, pulling weeds out from between a row of lettuce plants and deliberately avoiding her eye. “I was wondering, do you think perhaps it might be a good idea to get someone in to help you with the garden? Just for a couple of hours a week?” I hold my breath, waiting for her to snap at me like she did this morning.

“Why would I want to do that?” she asks, tying an unruly bunch of runner beans onto a pole with a piece of frayed green string.

Immediately I go from being worried about upsetting her to wanting to slap her face. Her denial is starting to grate. I try to breathe deeply, but I feel like I am nearing the end of my tether.

“Because,” I say as calmly as possible, “it's an awful lot for one person to manage.”

“But I'm perfectly capable—”

“I know you're perfectly capable,” I say, clenching my teeth, “but this garden is really a lot to cope with on your own.”

“Meg May,” she says, placing her hands on her bony hips and looking at me sternly. “I have been coping on my own since the day you were born. I have cooked, cleaned, scrubbed, tidied, washed, and ironed. I have sewn your dresses, done the shopping, and paid all the bills. I have fixed ovens, plastered ceilings, laid flooring, and put up shelves. Do not tell me that I cannot cope on my own. I've managed to grow vegetables in the past with not a minute left in the day and you clinging to the hem of my skirt, so if I could manage then, I can certainly manage now when I've got all the time in the world and no one else to worry about.”

I know not to push this matter any further. I am defeated. There is no making her see sense. Getting her to face reality is, and always has been, like swimming against the tide. No matter how hard you struggle to reach dry land, a huge wave always comes and washes you back to where you started.

This is what Mark doesn't understand. It's all very well asking me why I put up with my mother's ridiculous delusions, but he doesn't know how exhausting it is trying to reach the distant shores of reality. Somehow it is just easier to float alongside her in a sea of make-believe.

“Fine,” I say, raising my hands in surrender, “it was just an idea. I'm going inside to make us some coffee.”

Chastened, I throw my gardening gloves on the ground and follow the little brick path between the sprawling vegetable patches back toward the house. But before I reach the back door I stop, racking my brain to try to throw some light on my mother's words.

“When did you grow vegetables before?” I ask, turning around.

My mother shields her eyes against the sunlight and squints at me, a trowel dangling from her hand.

“What?”

“You said you managed to grow vegetables with me clinging to the hem of your skirt. When? We moved from here when I was six months old and went to live in our flat in Tottenham. We didn't even have a garden.”

My mother stares at me like she can't understand what I'm saying, as if she's trying to process the words into some sort of logical order.

“We had a window box,” she says quickly.

“You grew vegetables in a window box?”

“Of course. Just small ones, obviously. Little carrots, a few radishes…”

“I don't remember.”

“Well, of course you don't remember,” she says tersely, “but that doesn't mean it never happened.”

Rosy red patches have formed on her cheeks, and she is anxiously picking little pieces of dried mud off her trowel.

I shake my head, too hot and tired to think about whether there could be any truth in this, and turn to go inside, feeling that I have overstepped an invisible boundary once again.

***

As the coffee brews, I open the front door and pick up the single pint of milk that has been left on the step. There is something comforting about villages where milk bottles still appear during the night as if by magic. It's so much nicer than having to fight your way through the chaos of a twenty-four-hour Tesco, and I'm glad my mother is being spared that one stressful chore.

The little lane where she lives is quiet and peaceful. The cottages are small and modest, spaced just far enough apart to afford privacy without isolation. This is perfect for my mother, who, despite her talkative energy and eccentricity, is very much a loner. She is happy with her pots, pans, and vegetable garden, chattering away to the plants and animals or even to herself. She goes out only when it is essential, scurrying to and from the shops with her head down. I don't think she's ever spoken to any of the neighbors, insisting that all the people who lived in the lane when she was growing up have long died or moved away and that she can see no point in getting to know anybody new.

“Why would I want to talk to people?” she always says. “I already have everything I need.”

Back in Tottenham, she used to connect loosely with people through food, leaving casserole dishes or baskets of muffins on our neighbors' doorsteps, but what they took for an invitation to friendship was no such thing; it was merely a desire to see others eat well. Comforting, nutritious soups were left for Mr. Ginsberg, who had lost his wife and also his teeth. Reheatable curries were left for the medical student from India who pored over his books late into the night. Healthy vegetable stews were left for Mrs. Wallace, who needed to lose weight so she could undergo a hip replacement but who had no idea about calorie control. Cakes and cookies were left for the painfully thin girl in the flat below, who my mother assumed had an eating disorder but who was in fact a heroin addict.

Yet when any of these people tried to engage my mother in conversation, she always had an excuse at the ready, some reason why she had to dash away and couldn't possibly stop. I think it made them feel awkward at first, not to mention confused. They weren't sure what my mother wanted if it wasn't their friendship, and their efforts at paying her back in some way were always rebuked. But after a while my mother's ways were simply accepted. Freshly washed dishes would appear on our doorstep every other day, sometimes with a thank-you note and sometimes without. If ever anybody ventured to knock on our door, my mother would open it with a warm smile on her face, chatter and laugh energetically for a few minutes, and then shut herself away again without inviting them in. I heard her being described as “lovely,” “wonderful,” “peculiar,” and even “mad,” but generally people learned to accept her dishes without a fuss and offer nothing in return. She wouldn't have it any other way.

As I take the milk into the house, I absentmindedly give the bottle a quick shake and examine the contents, just to make sure there are no fairies trapped inside, before I realize what I am doing and curse myself for being so stupid. When I was small, my mother and I often used to try to catch fairies in the park, tiptoeing softly around the bushes in the early morning, empty milk bottles at the ready. But logic soon taught me that this, too, was nothing but make-believe, and the next time my mother asked me to go hunting for fairies I snapped, “Stop being silly! I'm not a baby!” I thought she was doing it for my entertainment, but in fact she still went without me. And it's not just fairies she believes in; it's all things otherworldly. She's fascinated by spirits and crystals and leprechauns and aliens…anything that sparks her wild and unruly imagination.

Growing up, I always connected her bright, crumpled, flowing dress sense with the mystical nonsense she believed in, and in reaction I decided to only ever wear plain clothes in neutral colors so no one could ever accuse me of being anything less than perfectly sensible. Unlike my mother's flowing cotton skirts and brightly colored, shapeless tunics, I choose neat blouses, plain T-shirts, flat shoes, and neutral V-neck sweaters. I keep my mousy brown hair at shoulder length, wear only stud earrings, and use a hint of makeup only in emergencies. I buy my mother sensible clothes, too, clothes that I think are more suitable for her, and over the last couple of years she has actually started to wear them. Her wardrobe these days is a strange mixture of new-age hippy meets Marks and Spencer.

***

That evening, we eat fresh salad with Gorgonzola cheese, crispy bacon, and slices of avocado.

“One of Jamie's recipes,” my mother explains. She's on first-name terms with all the celebrity chefs, so much so that for a while I thought Jamie, Delia, and Nigela must all be friends of hers she'd met since moving to Cambridge.

“Ainsley is such a card,” she chuckles, soaking up some garlic-infused olive oil with her morsel of ciabatta. “He had me in stitches the other day; you'll never guess what he said…”

She loves all this modern food. “Balsamic reduction” is now one of her favorite phrases.

After eating, we lounge on the sofa, eat homemade toffee ice cream, and play a game of Scrabble, where my mother attempts to cheat by forming the word “bongle” (“It's a word! We found ourselves in a right old bongle. You can say that!”), and I pretend to be significantly less intelligent than I am (“I just don't think I can make a word from the letters C, T, and A.”).

“Are you letting me win?” she asks when she's twenty-three points ahead.

“No.”

“You are.”

“I'm not.”

“You are! I can tell by the look on your face, you cheeky monkey!” She dips her finger in the ice cream and puts a blob on the end of my nose.

“Hey!”

I wipe the ice cream off my nose and smear it on her cheek as she squeals and tries to push me away with the little strength she can muster after our hard day's work. She looks tired and has all evening, but she's trying, for my sake, to be lively.

“Meg May!” she says, laughing and wiping her face. “That's no way for a university student to behave! You're meant to be the sensible one. You won't be able to behave like that once you're a famous physicist.”

“Mother!” I groan, covering my face with my hands. “I'm not going to be a physicist!”

She bites her lower lip sheepishly, knowing she's got it wrong again. According to my mother, over the past two years I have studied everything from physics to pharmacy, and just about every other subject ending in
–ology
.

“I do try, darling,” she says, apologetically. “It's just that I don't understand about all these science-y things. I was never good at all that. I don't know where you get it from.”

Neither
do
I,
I nearly say, but I hold my tongue. The question of how a French pastry chef and an amateur cook produced a daughter who can barely make a piece of toast yet who can comprehend the complexities of bioscience has always been sidestepped.

“I study genetics, Mother,” I tell her for the one-hundredth time. “It's not that hard to remember. DNA. The human genome. It's actually rather important.”

She sighs, looking pale and worn out. “I know. I suppose I just can't get my head around it all.”

“But if you'd give it a chance, you'd realize how fascinating it is. It's what makes us, us. It's all about knowing who we are.”

She smiles proudly and pats me on the knee, then stands up and gathers the empty ice cream bowls.

“But you know who you are, darling,” she says as she leaves the room.

I bury my head in one of the sofa cushions in despair.

“But I don't,” I groan quietly. “Thanks to you, I don't have a clue who I am.”

 

Being born prematurely wasn't the problem. The problem was that I refused to grow. My grandfather insisted that plenty of sunshine would do the trick, so I spent the first few weeks of my life lying on a blanket on the garden patio, the same patio that is now crowded with ceramic pots sprouting mixed salad leaves, strawberries, and little green peppers.

“This baby's still not growing, Brenda,” my grandfather told my grandmother one day, measuring me against the length of a garden cane. “She must have come from bad seed, I reckon.”

“Would she do better in a greenhouse?” suggested my grandmother. “They work wonders for tomatoes.”

My grandfather shook his head. “I'm not building a bloody greenhouse just to grow one baby. I think maybe she'd do better in partial shade.”

So I was relocated to the end of the garden next to the hedgerow, where I got full sun in the morning and plenty of shade in the afternoon. But after another week, when I still hadn't grown, my mother was becoming anxious.

“Is she getting enough water, Dad?” she asked my grandfather. “It's been very dry this summer. Even the apple trees look parched.”

So I was moved closer to the garden sprinkler, but extra water didn't seem to help me grow either. My mother feared I might just shrivel up altogether, so Dr. Bloomberg was called to the house as a matter of urgency. He turned me over in his large hands, pinched my arms and legs, and agreed that I was still very firm for a four-week-old baby.

“She should be plump and fleshy by now,” he declared authoritatively.

He looked at my mother, still only sixteen years old, and shook his head as if this unfortunate situation had been inevitable.

“It takes the mighty oak tree no less than twenty years to produce an acorn,” he said.

My mother blushed and looked at her feet. She knew what he meant. It was no wonder her baby was so small when she wasn't even fully grown herself.

But my grandfather was damned if he was going to stand by and let his daughter be insulted. “It takes the cherry tree almost no time at all to produce its first fruit,” he told the doctor, putting his arm protectively around my mother's shoulders.

The doctor ignored him.

“Feed her one teaspoon of this a day,” he said, handing my mother a little bottle. “It's bicarbonate of soda, a good raising agent. Then leave her in the warm water heater closet overnight.”

My mother thanked the doctor profusely, in awe of his superior knowledge. “Thank goodness for Dr. Bloomberg,” she said, rushing to get a teaspoon.

But another week later I still hadn't grown.

“I don't know what to do,” sobbed my mother, clutching my little body to her breast. “She hasn't risen one bit, and she's still under-ripe. In fact, I think she's turning a little bit green.”

“Have you tried talking to her?” suggested my grandmother as a last resort.

My grandfather looked at her as if she were mad.

“Talking to her? What are you on about, woman?”

“Well, talking to plants is meant to make them grow, so I just thought…”

Her voice tapered off as my grandfather tutted and rolled his eyes.

My mother shook her head, confused. “But what would I say?”

“I don't think it matters, dear,” said my grandmother.

Despite his skepticism, my pushy grandfather decided that if anyone was going to try it, he wanted to be the first. Barging my grandmother out of the way, he stuck his face inside my blanket, nose to nose with me.

“Hello,” he said gravely. “Hello?”

“You're not talking into a telephone receiver, Bob,” my grandmother huffed. “She's not going to answer you.”

“Then there's no bloody point in talking to her, is there?” he retorted. “Don't listen to your mother, Valerie,” he told my mother, shuffling out of the room. “She should be institutionalized. We never spoke to you when you were a baby, and you grew just fine.”

“It was just an idea,” shrugged my grandmother, following him out the door.

Once we were alone, my mother decided that anything was worth a try.

“I'm not sure what to say to you,” she said, gazing awkwardly at me. “I don't suppose we have any of the same interests. I enjoy baking and reading. I'm not sure what you enjoy other than chewing on your blanket and gurgling. I like dancing, but I don't go out much, not now that you're here. To be honest, I'm not sure what I'm meant to do with you. But I suppose that's not your problem, is it?”

I looked up at her inquisitively and wriggled on her lap. She leaned down a little closer to my face, staring into my big brown eyes.

“Please grow,” she whispered. “I might not be the best mother in the world, but I love you.”

I sucked on my tiny fingers and then wiped drool all over her sweater. She let out a heavy sigh full of exhaustion and worry.

“Well, I suppose I could tell you a story,” she said. “That would at least give me something to say to you.”

She cleared her throat theatrically.

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

For the first time ever I gave my mother a gummy smile, and by the end of the story she swears I had grown an entire inch.

***

Today Dr. Bloomberg looks at me in the same way he must have looked at my mother all those years ago: with eyes full of pity and condescension, as if I am little more than a child who has failed to understand the rules of the game.

Meeting him is like finally meeting Santa Claus. He has been a fairy-tale presence in my life for as long as I can recall, and yet I was never wholly convinced that he existed. As we sit in his office, the large mahogany desk between us is the only thing that stops me from reaching out and stroking his soft white hair or tweaking his bulbous nose just to test that he is real. I try to imagine him twenty-one years younger, those large, safe hands squeezing and prodding me like I am an under-ripe melon, but I can't imagine him being any different from how he is right now. He seems like someone who has always been old, someone who has been on this earth since time began. It is strangely comforting to think that he was witness to a time I can't remember. His very existence seems to validate mine.

“I'm sorry if this has come as a shock to you,” he says gently, monitoring my face with concern.

I shake my head defiantly, but when I open my mouth to speak no words come out.

“N-no,” I manage to stutter. “It's not a shock. I knew she had very little time left. Of course I knew that.”

Through a pain that feels like I have been hit in the stomach with a sledgehammer, I remain adamant that Dr. Bloomberg, this fellow worshipper of science and reason, shall not think that I have in any way deluded myself. I will not humiliate myself in front of someone of such intellect, and I will not make myself vulnerable to being patronized. Dr. Bloomberg is clearly a sensible man of great knowledge, and the very notion that he might see how misinformed I have been, how foolish I have been for hoping my mother might live for more than a year, is too much to bear. He may have once regarded my mother as a naïve young girl, but I will be damned before allowing him to tar me with the same brush.

“Some people find counseling very useful,” he suggests cautiously, sliding a leaflet across the desk toward me. There is a photo of a pair of glasses on the front and a slogan that reads, “Helping you find a new perspective.”

“I don't need counseling,” I say bluntly, rummaging in my bag for a notepad and pen. “If you could just let me know what to expect.”

I take down notes as if I'm at a lecture, interrupting several times and demanding specific details. Eventually Dr. Bloomberg gives up trying to wrap his words in cotton wool and tells it to me straight. There is no doubt that he is taken aback by my frankness, but I like order, rules, knowledge, and facts, no matter how clinical and unpleasant. I'm not an escapist like my mother; I don't live in a world of make-believe.

“My mother doesn't seem to understand how sick she is. It's like she's in complete denial,” I tell Dr. Bloomberg, ready for his mutual indignation. Instead he nods sagely, as if what I have described is completely acceptable.

“Denial's a great defense mechanism,” he says, “a coping strategy. People find all kinds of ways to deal with the things life throws at them.”

He glances at my notebook, in which I have drawn a chart dividing my mother's illness into categories: symptoms, medication, hospital dates.

“So what do we do about it?” I ask.

He peers at me over the top of his spectacles, raising his bushy white eyebrows as if they risk hindering his vision.

“My dear girl, we mustn't
do
anything about it. It's probably the only thing keeping her sane.”

I stare incredulously at him, watching the halo of light I have projected around him fade away. He can't be serious, can he? How can someone of such intelligence and reason possibly think it's okay for my mother to go on deluding herself? He's wrong. He has to be wrong. But I don't intend to sit here and waste my time arguing with him.

“Thank you for your time, Doctor,” I say brusquely, standing up. My head feels light and my knees are trembling, but I put it down to a lack of air in the room. I hold out my hand to Dr. Bloomberg in a businesslike fashion.

He stands slowly and reaches across his desk, taking my hand gently between both of his. His eyes are full of sympathy, and I want to scream at him, “Stop it! Stop feeling sorry for me!” I feel naked and exposed before him, as if he can see what a fool I have been, as if he can tell, in spite of all my protestations, that I have been thinking of my mother's remaining time in terms of years. His hands are warm and heavy around mine, and as I gaze at the white hair on the back of his knuckles I remember that those same hands once held me, turned me over, examined me, and then passed me back into the safety of my mother's arms. Hot tears spring to my eyes and my throat starts to burn.

“Good-bye,” I say curtly, fumbling to shake his hand as best I can.

“Good-bye, Meg.”

I gather my bag and walk hastily from his office. But before I close the door, I glance back at him. He is already sitting down at his desk, flicking through the notes on his next patient.

“It didn't help me grow, you know,” I tell him, “putting me in the water heater closet.”

Dr. Bloomberg frowns at me.

“I'm sorry?”

I freeze, wondering what came over me. What on earth prompted me to say such a thing? Did I seriously hope he would remember, as if his remembering would confirm something for me, make the past real? I open my mouth to speak but find myself caught between an explanation and an apology, between wanting to jog his memory and wanting to take back my ridiculous comment. I shake my head, suddenly feeling very confused.

“Nothing,” I say, closing the door behind me and hurrying out onto the street.

***

Walking home from Dr. Bloomberg's office, I still feel sick and shaky and can only think I must be coming down with something.

“Maybe you should find her another doctor,” Mark is telling me on the phone as I stride along the hot pavement. “A psychiatrist, maybe, someone who can get her to face up to things. After all, there's all the practical stuff to deal with, Meg. Has she even written a will? What about the house, her finances—”

“Actually, Mark,” I interrupt, “do you mind if we talk about something else?”

My first instinct upon leaving Dr. Bloomberg's office had been to call Mark, knowing he would share fully in my indignation at being told that my mother's state of denial must be preserved. In fact, he is even more outraged than me, immediately pointing out the practical consequences of allowing this situation to continue. I love that he understands where I am coming from, and his frustration on my behalf is touching, but suddenly I wish I had never brought this up. I want him to support me in this battle against madness and delusion, but I also want him to understand what a difficult battle it is to fight, and that's something he can't seem to comprehend. In his eyes it's simple: separate fiction from reality. But in my world things have never been that easy.

“I'm not going to be coming back for the start of term, Mark,” I say. “In fact, I don't think I'll be coming back this year.”

I haven't told him that my mother doesn't have as long as I thought. I don't want him knowing that I have been laboring under a misapprehension all this time. He would have checked out the facts earlier, done his research, dug beneath the surface of pretense, and armed himself with the truth. Right now he would be calling psychiatrists, funeral directors, clergymen, financial advisers, lawyers, all the things he has just told me I need to do. But I just don't have the heart to do any of these things, and suddenly I feel useless and overwhelmed. I have never displayed incompetence in front of Mark, though, and I don't intend to start now.

“I think you're right to stay there,” says Mark. “It sounds like your mother needs help facing up to this. I'll bring all your belongings down tomorrow.”

“Would you? Oh, that would be great.” I breathe a sigh of relief that at least one thing has been taken out of my hands. My heart swells with gratitude and affection. Mark is a rock, always there for me when I need him, always capable and strong, thinking ahead, planning, making sure everything is in order. With him I feel safe and protected, and although I am perfectly capable of looking after myself, occasionally—and it pains me to say this—it feels nice to have someone to rely on.

“Have you spoken to Dr. Coldman?” asks Mark.

Over the summer I am meant to be working as Dr. Larry Coldman's research assistant, but I've barely had a chance to start. I feel terrible at the thought of letting him down, but what else can I do?