From the Kitchen of Half Truth (9 page)

“Are you all right?” asks the gardener, stepping forward.

My mother takes her enormous glasses off and rubs her forehead. I notice her hands are shaking.

“I'm feeling a little light-headed. Too much sun, probably. Maybe I'll go inside for a bit.”

She takes a couple of unsteady steps, veering into the blackberry bush.

The gardener is at her side before I am, steadying her by the elbow.

“Do you need to sit down?” he asks.

“Goodness, no!” she laughs, rather too shrilly. “I'm fine. Just the heat getting to me. It's such a hot day, isn't it? What's this?”

She looks at the flier in her hand again as if she has never seen it before.

“Is this yours, darling? Does it need signing?”

“I'll take that,” I say gently, taking the paper from her, suddenly very worried.

“Are you sure you're all right?” asks the gardener.

“Yes, yes,” she says, wandering off down the garden path. “Don't you worry about me. It's just the heat. It gets to me sometimes. I'll be back out to help you soon!”

“That's really not necessary—”

“Nonsense! Two pairs of hands are better than one!”

If I had my wits about me I would follow her, but I am so baffled that instead I just stand there, gazing after her. I turn the flier over in my hands. Did this little piece of paper cause that reaction? Surely not. My mother does sometimes suffer in the sun, after all. And she has been out here all day, trying to keep out of my way. But then again, she also tends to go a bit funny when there is any mention of the past, so maybe…

“She's some woman, your mother,” says the gardener, breaking the silence. “She's been telling me the most incredible stories.”

Baffled, I fold up the flier and put it back in my pocket. “I bet she has,” I say distractedly.

He nods up at my mother's bedroom window. “She was telling me how you were born up there. Caught in a saucepan, I hear.”

“It was a frying pan.”

He laughs. “And the first thing you did was cluck like a chicken. Too many eggs, she said. And then the gasman—”

“Please, don't encourage her,” I interrupt.

He stops laughing. “Encourage her?”

“Yes. I heard you telling her all that rubbish about how frogs are easier to catch than toads, and how toads are really smart.”

“I was just telling her the truth.”

I fold my arms and roll my eyes. “Oh, please.”

“A recent study from the American Institute of Zoology showed that in general, frogs have a slower reaction time than toads when faced with the threat of predators.”

“Oh,” I say, slightly taken aback, “I see. Well, anyway, I'd rather you didn't pretend you're interested in my mother's ridiculous stories. If you do, she'll just keep telling them.”

“But I am interested. They're cool stories.”

“They're lies,” I say, correcting him.

He shrugs. “Does that matter?”

“Of course it matters. People can't just go around lying.”

“There's a very fine line between the truth and a lie, isn't there?”

“No, there isn't. One is real, the other is not. It's extremely simple if you think about it.”

I am aware that my words sound patronizing, but it's turning out to be a bad day and I am already upset and annoyed without some gardener talking nonsense at me.

He smiles, his eyes half closed against the late afternoon sun. I notice that one of his teeth is slightly chipped, and for some reason it annoys me that he hasn't had it fixed. There's no need for imperfections when cosmetic dentistry is so widely available.

“I don't think that's the way life is,” he says thoughtfully. “I think life is a mass of lines that are always being crossed. A patchwork of shapes that are constantly shifting. There are so many different ways of seeing the world. How can we say where fiction ends and reality begins, who's right and who's wrong?”

“Well, the person with the correct information is right,” I tell him tersely, “and the person with the incorrect information is wrong. Look, I understand that to someone who enjoys talking to trees my mother's stories must seem quite amusing, but I really would appreciate it if you'd try not to indulge her. She can get a little…well…out of control.”

“And what's wrong with that?” His hazelnut eyes flit over my face, flecks of gold glistening playfully in the light. “Don't you ever want to get out of control?”

For the first time I notice the tiny dimples that appear at the corner of his mouth when he smiles. Suddenly I am starting to feel rather warm.

“No,” I tell him, forcing myself to look away. “I don't.”

He chuckles. “Now, why doesn't that surprise me?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I just think you're a very self-controlled person, that's all. I suppose I have difficulty imagining you really letting go.”

“I can let go!” I snap.

“I'm sure you can,” he says. “I can just imagine you running wild with a pie chart, going crazy with an encyclopedia, blowing off steam with a test tube—”

“At least I don't waste my time talking to lumps of wood!” I exclaim, pointing toward the apple trees.

“You could have fooled me,” he mumbles.

“Sorry? Are you referring to Mark?”

He tries to suppress a guilty smile and holds his grass-stained hands up in apology.

“Sorry, that was—”

“I'll have you know that Mark is a very intelligent, articulate, and educated man, who is held in very high esteem.”

“So I see.”

“Not just by me! Everybody in the faculty knows how bright he is.”

“Brightness can be blinding.”

“And insolence can be annoying.”

“I'm starting to get the impression that everything about me annoys you. Am I right?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“In which case, I have nothing to lose.”

“Except your job, obviously.”

“To be fair, you don't employ me; your mother does.”

“I'm sure I can make her change her mind.”

“You seem to want to change a lot of things about her.”

I gawk at him. “How dare you judge me! You don't know anything about me.”

“Don't I?” He points to the upstairs window. “I know you were born upstairs in that room and caught in a frying pan.”

“I wasn't! I mean, I was…I might have been. I—”

“You don't know?”

“Of course I know! It's just…it's complicated.”

“How can it be complicated? You either were or you weren't. It's extremely simple if you think about it.”

I stare at him, outraged. How dare he use my own words to mock me? How dare he try to show me up? I open my mouth, ready to spit a sarcastic comment back at him, but I can't think of anything. Infuriated, I do the only thing I can think of.

“I'm sure you must be finished by now,” I tell him, taking a twenty-pound note out of my pocket and chucking it on the grass by his feet. “Keep the change.”

I turn my back on him and stride back toward the house, fuming.

***

“Mother!”

I burst into the kitchen, all guns blazing, but she isn't there. Fueled by the gardener's insolence, I am determined to say my piece. How can I not even be sure where I was born? I don't even know if I was caught in a frying pan or not! I will not be a walking target for other people's ridicule. I will not be made to look stupid. Not again. Forget the flier. Forget the address. I shouldn't need to be scrabbling around after clues like Sherlock Holmes. I deserve to simply be told the truth! It's my right!

“Mother!”

She can't do this to me! Mark's right, it's not fair. I have a right to know the truth about who I am. And the gardener's wrong; life is not a patchwork of shifting shapes. There are truths and there are lies, and I need to know which is which.

I burst into the lounge.

“Oh my God!”

I fall on my knees next to where she lies unconscious by the fireplace, her right arm twisted beneath her. My shaking hands fumble to push her long hair away from her face. Her skin is white, as if all the blood has drained from her body, and her face feels cold.

“Mother? Can you hear me?”

In a blind panic I run to the kitchen door and scream at the top of my lungs:

“Help!”

He is standing exactly as I left him no more than two minutes ago, turning the twenty-pound note over in his hand.

“It's my mother! Please come quickly!”

He starts to run toward the house. I rush back through to the lounge, and seconds later he is there, crouching by my side, listening to my mother's heart.

“Has this ever happened before?” he asks me.

“I don't know what happened. I came in and she was just lying here. What do we do?” I shout, my voice shrill. “I don't know what to do!”

“Does she have any medical conditions?”

“Oh my God! What's wrong with her?”

“Meg, does she have any medical conditions?”

I look at him blankly, unable to understand anything he is saying to me, such is my state of panic. All I can think is that his boots are getting mud all over the rug. “I…what shall I do? Mother?”

“Where's the phone?”

“Is she going to be okay?”

He calmly puts his hands on my shoulders. “Where—is—the—phone?”

“What? I don't know! Why are you asking me? What shall we do?”

I cover my face with my hands, my head spinning. When I look up, the gardener has the phone in his hand.

“Ambulance, please.”

I watch him as he gives our address calmly and coherently. He explains how she was found unconscious only moments ago. No, he doesn't know if she has any medical conditions. No, he doesn't know if she's taken anything.

I am frozen, unable to do or say anything of use. I can only watch as events unfold around me in slow motion, and someone else—the last person I would have expected—steps up to the mark and takes control where I cannot.

“Has she been ill at all?” the gardener asks me.

He holds the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he clasps my mother's wrist, monitoring her pulse.

I swallow hard and nod. “She's dying.”

He stares at me, speechless. I can hear the voice of the telephone operator coming from the earpiece.

“Please, come quickly,” he tells them.

 

I try to imagine a world without you in it. A world where I have no one to call when I can't remember the recipe for chicken soup; where no one bakes my favorite chocolate cake on my birthday; where no one rings me on a cold winter's morning just to check if I have warm socks on; where I have no one to tell me my hair needs cutting, or to stand up straight, or that I'm working too late into the night. A world where no one worries if I don't eat my greens, or if I read in a dim light, or if I don't take a raincoat. A world where no one says, “Do you remember when…?” or “When you were little…”

I try, but I can't imagine it at all.

I can't imagine coming home to a house that doesn't smell of stews and buns and pies, where you're not there to greet me with your cheery sing-song voice and breathless tales of what you've baked and what you've burnt. I can't imagine not curling up with you on the sofa in front of the fire, opening Christmas presents and feigning surprise as we both unwrap the gifts we asked for. I can't imagine not finding that a hot water bottle has been secretly placed beneath my duvet, or that you have recorded my favorite programs, or that you have sewed up a hole in my sweater without my even mentioning it was there. I can't imagine not seeing your face, sharing the life we made, having you here with me.

And the times when I can, the pain is almost too much to bear.

***

“It's all a lot of fuss about nothing,” I hear her tell Dr. Bloomberg. “I just had a little too much sun, that's all. I'll be right as rain in half an hour.”

“Even so,” he replies, “I'd rather you just stayed in bed for the rest of the day.”

I hover on the landing outside her room, listening to their conversation. The stress of my mother's collapse has given me a headache, and my hands still feel shaky. I stuff them into the pockets of my jeans and chastise myself for having failed to take control.

“You really must take it easy, my dear,” I hear the doctor say.

“I don't need to take it easy, Doctor, I'm perfectly all right. Meg's the one I'm worried about. She looks rather drained, don't you think? And she's delayed going back to university until next week, which isn't like her at all. I think she works too hard, you know. She's forever studying, and to be honest”—she lowers her voice to a loud whisper—“I wonder if it might be her way of avoiding something.”

I roll my eyes heavenward. My poor mother, thinking
I
am the one who is avoiding something! I wait to hear the doctor tell her she's wrong, that I'm perfectly fine, and that
she's
the one who needs to face the truth.

“You could be right,” he says.

My mouth falls open.

“It's not necessarily unhealthy, though,” he continues. “It's just her way of coping. I wouldn't worry about it, although I suppose you might try talking to her.”

I shake my head in disbelief. The things he will agree with to keep my mother happy!

“It's rather difficult to talk to her about certain things,” my mother tells him. “She is of a very particular mind-set.”

“Yes, she's a determined girl, all right. Stubborn baby as well, I seem to remember. Just would not grow, if I recall correctly.”

Oh, Mother,
I think,
please
don't remind the doctor about how he advised putting me in the water heater closet. He will probably whisk you away and have you locked up in an asylum!

“Doctor, would you like another cup of tea?” I ask, swiftly entering the room.

They both turn toward me, guilty to have been caught red-handed discussing me behind my back. My mother's face is pale and tired, gazing up at me from her pillow, and the doctor peers sheepishly over his glasses at me from a chair by the bed.

“Thank you,” he mumbles, heaving his heavy old body off the chair and gathering up his battered leather bag, “but I'm just off.” He pats my mother's hand. “I'll come and see you in a few days,” he says, smiling gently.

“Oh, don't bother yourself. I'll be all right, Doctor,” says my mother.

***

“Will she be all right?” I ask as I reach the bottom of the stairs. Dr. Bloomberg is descending slowly behind me, clinging to the banister and treating each step as if it is a dangerous obstacle. By the time he joins me at the bottom, he is breathing heavily, and for a second it occurs to me that at least my mother will never have to grow old.

“She'll be fine for now,” he says, “but you did the right thing calling the ambulance immediately. Good job. You're so levelheaded.”

I bite my lip, ashamed. Do I tell him what a failure I was? How I couldn't even compose myself enough to remember the location of the telephone? Surely he would find me ridiculous. After all, this is a man whose job consists of dealing with emergencies, saving lives, making life-or-death decisions. Perhaps I blurt out the truth because I am having a moment of weakness, or perhaps I am looking for reassurance. Either way, my confession is out before I know it.

“Actually, I wasn't very levelheaded at all. I panicked. I couldn't think straight. I'm usually very much in control. I don't know what happened. It wasn't me who called the ambulance.” I stare at my feet and shuffle awkwardly. “It was the gardener.” As soon as it's out, I wish I hadn't said it. He probably thinks I'm completely incompetent.

Dr. Bloomberg smiles sympathetically at me. “Sometimes we all need a little help, Meg,” he says gently, “whatever form that help might come in.”

I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and nod, feeling foolish.

“Give my regards to the gardener, then,” he says, turning the doorknob, ready to leave.

“Ewan,” I say quickly.

“I'm sorry?”

The name sounds strange on my tongue, and I realize this may be the first time I have ever said it.

“Ewan,” I repeat. “His name is Ewan.”

***

Ewan may have been the one who saved the day, but I can't help feeling annoyed by his sudden disappearance shortly after the ambulance arrived. Admittedly, it hadn't taken long for my mother to regain consciousness, but the moment she did Ewan was gone, leaving me to contend with two paramedics, a disoriented mother, and a phone call to Dr. Bloomberg. Obviously his helpfulness only stretches so far.

I am therefore rather surprised when I walk into the kitchen to find him at the stove, boiling something in a steaming saucepan. It smells familiar, slightly herby, like something from my university apartment.

“Are you cooking yourself Super Noodles?” I snap, annoyed by his audacity and still hurt by his abandonment.

He frowns at me over his shoulder. “Super what? No, I'm making herbal tea.”

“You're making herbal tea? Now? I don't know if you realize, but there's just been a rather distressing incident, so if you want a cup of tea—”

“It's for your mother,” he interrupts. “I've been out gathering herbs from the garden. Everything's so overgrown, though, that it took forever to find what I wanted.”

I peer suspiciously at the boiling yellow liquid in the saucepan. “What on earth is that?” I ask, thinking there is no way I am letting my mother drink some gypsy concoction full of leaves and twigs.

“Mint to ease her headache, marjoram and thyme to give her strength, and lemon balm to help her relax.”

I sniff it doubtfully.

“And before you say anything,” he adds, “no, this recipe has not been scientifically proven, and no, I don't have a PhD in the medicinal properties of plants.”

“I wasn't about to ask you either of those things,” I say defensively, wondering how he read my mind.

He pours the steaming liquid from the saucepan into a cup.

“You do know what you're doing, though, don't you?” I ask cautiously. “It won't hurt her, will it?”

He turns to me, his face serious with no trace of his usual cheeky smile. “Why don't you just stick to your science and leave me to mine?”

And before I even have a chance to argue with him, he has picked up the cup and walked out of the kitchen.

***

When I was little and I'd done something wrong, I'd go to the garden and pick my mother a bunch of flowers. I'd leave them on her bedside table in a jam jar, and not another word would be said about it. The awkward silence would be broken, the crime and punishment forgotten. The flowers I take her this evening, though, are not only to say sorry for snapping at her; they are for so many other things that I can't find the words to say.

Ewan is sitting on the chair by her bed in grubby frayed jeans and an old red T-shirt that bears the slogan “Max Out.” I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. Outside, the light is fading, casting a serene yellow glow into the bedroom. He has opened the window a little bit, just the way my mother likes it, and a cool breeze is blowing a ripple through the net curtain. I hover by the doorway, unseen by them both, and listen. Ewan is telling her a story, his voice deep and soothing.

“In the beginning there was only blackness, and because nobody could see anything, everybody kept bumping into each other. So they said, ‘What this world needs is some light.' Fox said that he knew some people on the other side of the world who had plenty of light, but they were too greedy to share it with anyone else.

“‘I'll go and steal it and hide it under my bushy tail,' said Possum.

“So Possum trekked to the other side of the world, and there he found the sun hanging in a tree. He picked out a tiny piece of light and hid it in his tail, but the light was hot and burned all the fur off, revealing him as a thief.

“‘Let me try,' said Buzzard. ‘I'll carry the light home on my head.'

“So Buzzard flew to the other side of the world, grabbed the sun with his claws, and put it on his head. But it was so hot that it burned all the feathers off the top of his head and he dropped it.

“Grandmother Spider, thinking both Possum and Buzzard were useless, said, ‘Get out of my way and let me try.'

“She made a pot out of clay and spun a web reaching right across to the other side of the world. She was so tiny that nobody noticed her coming, and quick as a flash she snatched up the sun, put it in her pot, and scurried back home. Now her side of the world finally had light, and there was a huge party to celebrate. The Cherokee Indians say that this little spider brought them not only the sun, but also the art of making pottery.”

I hear my mother laughing quietly.

“What a wonderful story!” she says, her voice sounding weak but full of enthusiasm. “I will never look at a little spider in the same way again!”

I enter cautiously.

“Oh, hello, darling.”

My mother's auburn hair is splayed out across her pillow, and her cheeks are tinged with pink. Her eyes look brighter than they have for a while.

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

“I feel rather good, actually,” she says with a smile. “My headache's completely gone.”

I spy the empty cup on the bedside table. The little bunch of flowers I am clutching in my hand suddenly seems rather pointless in comparison to Ewan's healing tea. I stand awkwardly, feeling useless.

“Ewan's been telling me some wonderful stories,” says my mother, quickly filling the silence.

I smile meekly at Ewan, a peace offering, but he looks down at his feet, wriggling his toes in his threadbare green socks. My mother looks from me to Ewan and back again, trying to gauge the situation.

“I should go,” he says. He stands and hoists up the waistband of his jeans.

My mother smiles up at him. “Thank you for the tea.”

He nods. “No problem. I'll leave the garden this week, give you some peace and quiet. I'll come back next Wednesday if you like.”

“Wonderful. Thank you.”

He passes close to me at the foot of the bed but doesn't look me in the eye.

“I think this belongs to you,” he says quietly as he passes, holding out his clenched fist. He pushes something against my palm: the twenty-pound note I threw at him earlier.

“Keep it,” he says, walking out of the room. “I don't want it.”

I feel tears of shame welling in my eyes. How could I have been so rude as to throw money at him? Who am I to treat him as if he is beneath me? What on earth is the matter with me?

I swallow hard, listening to his steps disappearing down the staircase.

“These are for you,” I say quickly, pushing the small bouquet of flowers into my mother's hand, trying to prevent the tears from coming. For one horrible second I have an image of her handing them back to me. “Keep them,” I imagine her saying, “I don't want them.” I'm sure it would be no more than I deserve.

Instead, she touches my hand and smiles. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

***

“Are you in love with Mark?” my mother asks me.

It's late now and I have drawn the curtains, switching on the little lamp that sheds a reddish glow over the room. I am sitting in a ball on the end of my mother's bed, my feet entwined with hers underneath the covers. We have been chatting for almost an hour, discussing barometers and cheese and cats and glassblowing. We can talk for hours like this, my mother and I.

“I think I am certainly learning to love Mark,” I say earnestly. “I respect him. He's kind to me. We get on well. We never argue. He's very interesting and intelligent and handsome.”

My mother looks at me curiously, as if she asked me the capital of Spain and I told her it was Bermuda. I know this isn't the answer she wants, but life is no fairy tale.

“I don't believe in falling in love,” I tell her. “Not in the fireworks and stars-in-your-eyes kind of way, in any case. It's just not realistic.”

She plays with a piece of her auburn hair, twisting it lazily around her finger, and gazes up at the ceiling from her pillow.