The Stepmother (37 page)

“I came to a realization there that ultimately we're all responsible for one another. It was incredibly powerful, but peaceful too. I learned an important lesson. At eighty-four, that's not bad. If we take care of our world, our world will take care of our souls. That's happiness. That's what we're all searching for. Comes down to care.”

“And hope,” I said.

My father took my hand. He smiled, nodding. “I feel boundless,” he said.

“That's what it feels like to lie spread out like a starfish, naked in the grass, and stare at the sky.” My mother's face was pointing our way now, but her eyes were still closed.

“Hi, Mum,” I said.

“How long have you been listening?” asked Dad.

“Since the beginning of time,” said my mother in a faux-spiritual voice.

“I think she's taking the piss,” said Dad. He stood up and went over to her. He made her budge up, then sat down next to her, took her hands and rubbed them. “You warm enough?” he asked. She nodded.

They appeared to be gazing at each other intently, though Mum kept her eyes closed. If I watched carefully, I could see the perpetual movement under the lids, but it didn't worry me so much now.

“Bea has called a couple of times,” said my mother.

“Sober?”

“Darling,” said my mother, reprimanding me in one word, “the woman has been through a lot. Did you know she had five failed pregnancies between Amber and Lulu?”

“Yes. But that's not why she drinks.”

My parents waited for me to expand. But I couldn't.

“Don't be so sure. Nothing in life happens in isolation. The scales are always moving. Sometimes the good and the bad balance each other out. Sometimes you reach tipping point,” my mother said.

“It was very hard on us,” said my father.

“What was?” I asked, sitting up a little straighter.

“Hugh,” said my mother softly.

He patted her hand. “I've been thinking,” he said. “Perfection is a very hard thing to live up to. Your mother and I have had a great marriage, but it's not been without difficulties.”

“Well, obviously ups and downs—”

“No, Tessa, I'm talking bottom of the crevasse. Like everyone else.” I was going to interrupt, but Dad quieted me. “A few years after you were born we decided to have another child.”

“You told me you'd only ever wanted one.”

My mother placed her shades back over her eyes and sat up. “Hugh?”

“Liz darling, Tessa needs a little of the sheen to be rubbed off. As a wedding gift.”

My mother didn't say anything, but she didn't stop him again.

“If we'd told you the truth you would have felt you weren't enough,
and we didn't want you to feel like that, because you were and are. But we still tried and we kept failing.”

I watched my parents share a thousand painful memories in the space of a second. “It was hardest on you, Liz darling,” said Dad. “I didn't want to go on putting you through it.”

“You weren't putting me through it,” said my mother.

“That was how it felt to me.”

“It's hard for a man to understand what a woman goes through in successful pregnancies, let alone the ones that fail,” said Mum.

“But I only seemed to make things worse. It was easier to bugger off to the pub.”

“Like James,” I said quietly. “He pulled away from Bea.”

“It was my fault,” said Mum. “I locked you out. I was the one who felt a failure.”

“You were never that. You were always so brave.”

“I made you feel surplus to requirements.”

Dad nodded. “Maybe. That's no excuse, though.”

My mother reached up to stroke his thin hair. “What made you stay?”

“Stay?” I said, unable to stop myself interrupting.

Dad shifted.

“You were going to leave us?” I asked, stunned.

“I thought about it, yes.” I was reeling. Dad had been going to leave us? “How did you know?” he asked Mum.

“Well, you could have gone and had lots of children with anyone else. It didn't take a genius to figure that out.”

“Liz, you daft thing, it was never about that. I only thought about leaving because I'd lost
you
.”

My mother lowered her hand. “The hardest thing to do when you're angry is reach out. We both retreated. I'm sorry.”

“My darling, you've nothing to be sorry for.”

“Why didn't you leave?” I asked, still sitting forward. I noticed my mother sit a little straighter too.

“Nothing dramatic. Mum had gone to pick you up from school—you must have been seven. You and she were walking up the garden path. You were talking nonstop as usual and pulling your mother's arm out
of its socket.” I couldn't help smiling. I could almost taste the memory. “I realized this was where I belonged. Maybe not right at that moment, but time moves on, things change and settle and change again, and I knew that I would belong again.” He turned to me. “Not rocket science.”

It felt pretty profound to me.

“I thank the gods every day for that moment of clarity. When doubts resurfaced, I clung to that moment and it got me through.”

“You had more doubts?” I asked.

“It's a long journey, Tessa. Everyone has times when they wonder, ‘Is this it?'” said my mother, coming to my father's defense. “You need to know that. Dad's right. The perfect union doesn't exist. Sure there are relationships that check most of the boxes most of the time, but not all and not always.”

“So I'm learning. But isn't it good to aim high?”

“High, yes. But not unreachable,” said Dad.

“James is a wonderful man, Tessa,” said Mum. “But be under no illusion. Marrying him will be the toughest thing you ever do.”

Dad took my mother's hands again. “And the most rewarding.”

She smiled, and in that smile I saw the girl she'd been and the woman she'd become. It was all and nothing to do with me. My father leaned over and gave her a kiss.

“I've got to make a work call,” I said, standing up.

“Don't worry, we're not going to start getting jiggy with it,” said Dad.

“‘Jiggy with it'?” I asked, laughing. “Where did you pick up that lingo?”

“Fisherman-speak,” he replied.

He was right, I didn't have to call anyone but I wanted to leave them alone. Perfect unions may not exist but perfect moments do. This was one of those, and they were entitled to have it without me. I felt strangely elated, despite their dire warnings of difficulties ahead. If perfection didn't exist, then life was what you made it and with whom. I found that empowering, not daunting. Daunting was when your fate was in the hands of others. Was James the only person in the world for me? No. He'd just happened to turn up at a time when I was open to
the idea of finding a pod partner. Not very romantic, but realistic. It was up to us to find the romance in it, James and me. From the window seat in the sitting room I watched my parents talking and thanked them silently for finding their way back to each other. I realized now how easy it was to get lost.

 

M
Y FATHER DIED THE FOLLOWING
morning. The most shocking thing about it was that it came as no shock at all. I had gone into their room with their morning tea on a tray. They were just stirring. I put it on the dressing table and went to my mother's side of the bed to give her a cup. Daddy turned back his covers and, in his worn blue pajamas, stood up and stretched. We discussed how well we had slept, and I agreed that Mum's eyes were now roaming idly rather than searching frantically. She said she could see sunlight coming through the curtain.

Dad needed no more encouragement. He went to the window and threw open the curtains with gusto. “Good heavens,” he said. “What a perfectly beautiful day. Liz darling, the daffodils are coming up.” He turned and smiled at us, then looked back. “Just when the winter months start taking their toll, Mother Nature sends us bright yellow flowers to remind us to hold fast, summer's coming, all will be well.”

I was just standing up to join him when he took two quick steps backward. He didn't make a sound, simply sat on the bed, one hand steadying himself against the old mattress, the other held over his heart. I caught a flash of something in his eyes, and then he dropped backward. His eyelids fluttered and closed.

The doctor told me the “flash” I had seen was his pupils dilating rapidly, common in sudden massive heart attacks such as this had been, but I knew differently. His soul was returning to the universe, to the water boatman skating on the skin of a river, but on the way it had passed through me. I like to think a little of it remained there.

My mother was exceptionally calm. She said his name once. He didn't answer, so she didn't ask again. From the dent in the mattress she found his head, resting a few inches from her left thigh, and put her hand on his forehead. There it stayed, occasionally stroking, while I sat on the other side and held his hand. How or why we knew not to run screaming to the phone, pummel his chest, breathe frantically into
his mouth, I can't imagine, but we did none of those things. Later, the doctor told us that nothing would have brought him back after that attack. We knew that too. I had seen him go and my mother had felt it.

After a while I picked up Dad's legs and swiveled him around on the bed. Mum placed his head on his pillow. It was easy. He had died as he had lived, with his womenfolk's well-being in his heart. All I had to do was straighten the sheets and blankets. Only then did we speak.

“We need some breakfast,” said my mother. “It's going to be a long day.” She turned down my offer to help her dress, which I took as a silent request to leave them alone. I went downstairs and cooked a breakfast the English would be proud to call their own.

Outside, those early daffodils nodded gently at me.

I nodded back. Hold fast, Tessa. All will be well.

A
FTER BREAKFAST
, I
WENT INTO AN ORGANIZATIONAL OVERDRIVE
. I called the doctor, the vicar, the publican. It was the perfect pyramid scheme. Within half an hour, ladies with casseroles and bunches of wild-flowers began to ring the doorbell. I texted my few good friends who had particularly loved my father. Ben's flowers had arrived first, just as the tide of death-related bureaucracy had threatened to engulf me. Early-spring daffodils. Hold fast, and all will be well. Their color and sweet scent had got me through the rest of the morning. I held fast. There was a note attached:
I can be there in an hour if you want me to be.

I tried James several times, but his phone was switched off. He was fast asleep in L.A. What good would it do to wake him? I wished he was there, though.

I went back upstairs with a cup of tea for my mother. I knocked on the door to my parents' bedroom and went in. My mother sat in the armchair under the window, facing the bed. Dad was still lying there, unchanged, but I checked. My mother had drawn the curtains across
the south-facing windows. The breeze made them flutter. It felt cool in the darkened room. My more macabre side might have called it refrigerated, but I was doing my utmost to keep that voice quiet. There was an open photo album in Mum's lap. “Luckily, I know them by heart,” she said. “I was going over a few favorites.”

I put a mug of chamomile tea beside her to cool. “Not an easy question this, but the vicar wants to know whether Dad is to be buried or cremated.”

“Cremated,” said Mum immediately. “I'll keep him in a jam jar.”

Perhaps she wasn't dealing with this as well as I thought.

“Don't look at me like that, darling. We made the decision together. Obviously, he didn't specify the receptacle, but he loved my jam, so I think a jam jar's apt, don't you?” I hoped a reply wasn't necessary. It wasn't. Mum went on: “It's to be kept until I go. Then, and I am sorry to ask this of you, we'd quite like to be sprinkled somewhere together. Or planted with some new fruit trees.” No way. I was not going to make jam out of my parents. “I didn't think you'd like the thought of that, but we do love our fruit trees.”

I leaned closer to her. “Can you see me?”

“No.”

“Then you're weird,” I said.

She smiled. “My dear girl, I've always known what you were thinking. I used to be able to tell by the type of silence in the house whether you were being conscientious or up to no good.”

I heard a car pull up outside and wondered absently who had sent flowers now. Incredible how word got out.

“Are you all right, Tessa?” asked Mum.

“I don't think I really believe this is happening.” I knew my father's lifeless body lay a few feet from where I stood, but I had such a strong sense of him that the word “death” could not be put into the same sentence as his name. “I called Human Resources at work, to tell them I wouldn't be in, but I couldn't bring myself to tell them why.”

“It'll take a while to sink in,” said my mother.

“I don't want it to sink in.”

“I know.”

There was a loud knock on the front door. “Are you up for more visitors?” I asked. People had been turning up all morning. I'd not known my parents had so many friends in the area.

“Actually, I might rest now.”

“Good idea. The vicar will be over later to talk about the funeral.”

I ran down the stairs, expecting another lady from the village with a hot pot. It wasn't until I saw James standing on the flagstone next to the boot scraper that I knew for sure my father was dead. He dropped his bag on the ground, opened his arms, and I fell into his chest. “Daddy's dead,” I mumbled.

“I know,” whispered James into my hair. He kissed the top of my head. “I know.”

I rested there for a while, listening to his heart, feeling his strong arms around me. “I don't understand, I thought you were going to stay in L.A. till the end,” I said.

“The moment I put the phone down after speaking to you I changed my mind. I don't need to play golf to prove I'm good at my job. A very strong voice in my head was telling me to get on a plane. I have a pretty good idea whose it was now.”

“I'm so glad you did. I tried to call you but the phone was switched off. I thought you were asleep.”

“I was in the air,” he said. “I got the last flight out by a whisper.”

“You must be exhausted. Oh, James, I'm so glad you're here.”

“I'm sorry it took me this long to get back.”

“How did you know about Dad?”

“Bea told me.”

I waited for the monster to growl and noticed, as I took James's hand and led him inside, that it didn't. Bea had called to see how my mother was doing and I'd picked up the phone. She hadn't expected me to be there, so I told her why I was. “Amber rang me in tears,” I said. “At first I thought something had happened again with Bea, but she was beside herself at the thought that I no longer had a daddy. It's really freaked her out. James, you mean the world to her.”

James pulled me toward him. “We still have a lot to talk about but right now my main concern is you.”

I tried to speak, but he put his finger to my lips. “All I could think
about on the plane home was you. I want you to know that I'm here for you. I'll make tea, run you a bath, leave you be, hold you tight. I love you, Tessa. I don't want to lose you.”

I shivered.

“Come here, beautiful. You're freezing. It's probably shock.”

“He was eighty-four,” I said. It was not shock.

“I know, but he seemed so robust, so dependable,” said James.

“I'd started to notice things, small things. His hand trembled, he was tired, he'd shrunk a bit. I know this will sound cold, but in a small way I'm happy for him. Is that weird?”

He shook his head, but I wasn't sure.

“No incontinence, no senility, never having to watch Mum…”

He hugged me again. “Ssh,” he said. I didn't really want to ssh. I wanted to talk about all the thoughts that had flooded my head since Dad had collapsed onto the bed, but it was hard to when I was pressed against a suit jacket.

“Where's Liz?”

I pulled away. “Upstairs with Dad.”

James watched me closely.

I knew the expression. I had looked at my mother in the same way. “He's staying at home until tomorrow. Mum's orders. He looks very peaceful.”

“I'm so glad I'm here,” said James, hugging me again. “I'll never let you go.”

Standing on tiptoe in my socked feet, I found his lips, placed mine on them, and stayed there, breathing in his smell. I had lost one major ally but—and this was the bit I had yet to understand—I felt stronger than ever before.

 

M
UM
, J
AMES, AND
I
HAD
a very late ploughman's lunch at the kitchen table. Surely grief wasn't supposed to make you ravenous. We drank a soft red wine and sawed chunks of cheddar off the block they always bought from a nearby dairy. I toasted Dad, then popped a pickled onion into my mouth.

“I'd like to thank your father,” said Mum to James. “That fishing trip couldn't have come at a better time.”

“I…You are incredibly kind to say so, but—”

“But nothing. Honestly, that trip seemed to give him time to put his life's learnings in order. It was quite something.”

“I thought you'd had a relapse because he wasn't here with you. Tessa was worried from the start.”

“Tessa worries too much,” she said. “Our biggest challenge now is going to be managing Tessa's worry about me home alone.”

“Right,” said James. He looked relieved he wouldn't be shouldering the blame for his father taking Dad away from Mum days before his death, thereby robbing them of their last few moments together.

“Wrong,” I said, “because that isn't going to happen.”

“Really?” said my mother. You could hear the steel in her voice.

“The commute isn't that bad. It focuses the mind when you know you've got a train to catch.”

Mum chewed a bit of cucumber I had sliced for her.

“Surely they've given you time off,” said James.

“Not indefinitely,” I replied.

“I have very good friends in the village,” said Mum to James. Well, in James's direction. I knew who she was talking to. Me. And I knew what she meant. Back off, Tessa, I don't need a nursemaid. “Now I feel a little tired, so I'm going upstairs for a lie-down. Will you wake me when the vicar gets here?”

“Of course.”

“Should I take something up for Dad?” said my mother, then put her hand on James's shoulder and laughed. “Only kidding.”

I shook my head.

“Stop shaking your head, Tessa.”

“How do you know I am?”

“I told you, I know how you think.”

“Ditto. And you're not getting rid of me that easily. How are you going to do all the things Dad used to do for you?”

“God, you are stubborn,” said Mum, wagging a finger at me.

“Can't imagine where I get it from,” I replied.

“Have a nice nap,” said James merrily.

I waited until Mum had left, then, annoyed, turned to James. “You're going to have to back me up on this,” I said.

“Of course I'll back you up. On what?”

Spell it out,
said Dad. I pushed my plate to one side and stood up. “Fancy a walk?”

“That would be nice. I haven't walked anywhere, except inside an airport terminal, for days.”

I took his arm. “Come on. We'll clear up when we get back. There's a place I want to show you.”

 

A
T THE END OF THE
village, a bridle path rose up along a ridge. Another path sank low into a rocky ravine—largely ignored by the locals, since the route down was quite treacherous. I took James's hand and we navigated the tangled roots and brambles until we were on the stream-bed. It was like a grotto down there: the air felt different; sunshine pierced the canopy of interlocking branches overhead and danced on the wet pebbles. You could walk for hours in the water—or until your feet started to freeze.

“Perfect time of year for down here,” I said. “The nettles shut the place off in the summer and you can't get through. Best thing Mum and Dad ever did was get out of London. I'm sure Mum's long stay of execution has been down to this bucolic life. At first I thought they'd go stir-crazy, but it's amazing how busy the country keeps you.”

“Were you serious about commuting?” asked James.

“She can't live alone in her condition.”

He shrugged. “How long do you think her eyes will stay like that?”

“They say three weeks, but an event like this could delay any improvement. I don't care what the doctors say, stress is a major player.”

“She seems incredibly calm,” said James.

I stopped walking. “Worrying, isn't it?”

“I don't know. You said yourself it didn't come as a shock.”

“No, but I've had an old father for a long time. I haven't just lost my life partner. Mum has been with Dad since her early twenties. Her whole life was wrapped up in him. I think there's a difference.”

James came back to where I stood. The icy water pressed against my boots as it flowed around my ankles. “Of course there is. And of course you have to keep an eye—sorry, bad choice of words—look after her until her sight improves.”

He still wasn't reading me. I carried on walking. “But then what, James? She has MS permanently. It just hides itself. Stress is bad, so is doing too much. She may think she can go on by herself, but Dad carried a lot of the everyday burden of life. She did the sedentary things, he did everything else. Getting down on her knees to light a fire won't be easy. My worry is that she'll realize all this and then go rapidly downhill.”

“She said you'd worry too much.”

“Not too much.”
Spell it out.
“James, I'm telling you, I can't leave her on her own.”

I knew his brain was interpreting my words. It left two options. I move to Oxfordshire. She moves to London to live with…Hang on, we only have three bedrooms. I have three children who stay regularly, so we'll have to move to a bigger place, preferably one with a granny flat. Well, that sort of property doesn't come cheap, which means moving away from the area, the school, the girls…He looked at me. I waited.

“Liz should be allowed to decide what she wants to do,” said James.

“Every time there's a relapse, you don't bounce back quite so high. It's gradual, so the casual observer would probably miss it. It happened with her legs, so now she needs a stick all the time, and it will happen with her eyes. My point is, I'm not sure if she's allowed to decide.”

“She's a very independent woman.”

“I didn't say it was going to be easy.” I laid a hand on his cheek. What I had taken for a wonderfully positive nature was actually a refusal to see the ugly side of life. It was admirable, in the right circumstances, but sometimes life got ugly, and turning a blind eye wasn't just unimpressive, it was complicit. And that was exactly what he'd done when Bea had started to put on weight.

“You think I'm just saying this because your mother's illness is an inconvenience to me?”

“No.” Yes. Wasn't that
exactly
what you were thinking?

“Yes, you do.”

It was my turn to duck. “What worries me is that we're perfect in a bubble, James, absolutely perfect, but look what happens when it bursts. We fight. It's terrible. My mother is as important to me as your
children are to you. We need to find room for everyone. Me included. I'm not like Bea. I'm not going to disappear to the bottom of the list and be grateful when you remember my birthday.”