‘I see. Did you chat?’
‘A little. Just about this and that.’ His voice sounds strange in his own head, booming and slurred and self- conscious. Drunk. Can his father tell, he wonders? ‘We’ll talk more when she wakes up.’ He opens the fridge door again, and pretends to see the wine for the first time. ‘Mind if I?’ He takes it, empties the dregs into a glass then heads out past his father. ‘I’m just going to be in my room for a bit.’
‘What for?’ scowls his father.
‘I’m looking for something. Old books.’
‘Don’t you want lunch? Little food with your wine perhaps?’
Dexter glances at the shopping bag at his father’s feet, splitting from the weight of all the tins. ‘Maybe later,’ he says, already out of the room.
On the landing, he notices the door of his parents’ room has swung open, and silently he steps inside once again. The curtains move in the afternoon breeze, and the sunlight comes and goes on her sleeping form beneath an old blanket, the dirty soles of her feet visible, toes curled up tight. The smell that he remembers from his childhood, of expensive lotions and mysterious powders, has been replaced with a vegetable odour that he would rather not think about. A hospital smell has invaded his childhood home. He closes her door, and pads to the bathroom.
As he pees, he checks in the medicine cabinet: his father’s copious sleeping pills tell of night fears, and there’s an old bottle of his mother’s valium dated March 1989, long superseded by more potent medication. He shakes out two of each and slips them into his wallet, then a third valium, which he swallows with water from the hand basin’s tap, just to take the edge off.
His old bedroom is used for storage now, and he has to squeeze past an old chesterfield, tea chest and cardboard boxes. On the walls, a few dog-eared family snapshots, and his own black and white prints of shells and leaves that he took as a teenager, imperfectly fixed and fading now. Like a child sent to his room he lies on the old double bed, hands behind his head. He had always imagined that some sort of emotional mental equipment was meant to arrive, when he was forty-five, say, or fifty, a kind of kit that would enable him to deal with the impending loss of a parent. If he were only in possession of this equipment, he would be just fine. He would be noble and selfless, wise and philosophical. Perhaps he might even have kids of his own, and would presumably possess the maturity that comes with fatherhood, the understanding of life as a process.
But he isn’t forty-five, he is twenty-eight years old. His mother is forty-nine. There has been some terrible mistake, the timing is out, and how can he possibly be expected to deal with this, the sight of his extraordinary mother diminishing like this? It isn’t fair on him, not with so many other distractions. He is a busy young man on the edge of a successful career. Expressed in its frankest terms, he has better things to do. He feels another sudden urge to cry, but he hasn’t cried for fifteen years, so he puts this down to the chemicals and decides to sleep a little. He balances the glass of wine on a packing case by the side of the bed, and rolls onto his side. Being a decent human being will require effort and energy. A little rest, then he will apologise and show how much he loves her.
He wakes with a start and looks at his watch, then looks again. 6.26 p.m. He has slept for six hours, clearly impossible, but when he pulls open the curtains the sun is starting to dip in the sky. His head still hurts, his eyes are somehow gummed shut, there’s a metallic taste in his mouth, and he is parched and hungrier than he has ever been before. The glass of wine, when he reaches for it, is warm in his hand. He drinks half of it, then recoils — a fat bluebottle has found its way into the glass and buzzes against his lip. Dexter drops the glass, spilling the wine down his shirt and onto the bed. He stumbles to his feet.
In the bathroom, he splashes his face. The perspiration on the shirt has gone sour, taking on an unmistakeable alcoholic stench. A little queasily he paints himself with his father’s old roll-on deodorant. Downstairs he can hear pots and pans, the babble of the radio, family sounds. Bright; be bright and happy and polite, then go.
But as he passes his mother’s room he sees her sitting on the edge of the bed in profile, looking out across the fields as if she too has been waiting for him. Slowly she turns her head, but he hovers on the threshold like a child.
‘You’ve missed the whole day,’ she says quietly.
‘I overslept.’
‘So I see. Feeling better?’
‘No.’
‘Oh well. Your father is a little angry with you, I’m afraid.’
‘No change there then.’ She smiles indulgently and, encouraged, he adds, ‘Everyone seems pissed-off with me at the moment.’
‘Poor little Dexter,’ she says and he wonders if she is being sarcastic. ‘Come and sit here.’ She smiles, places one hand on the bed next to her. ‘Next to me.’ Obediently he enters the room, and sits, so that their hips are touching. She knocks her head against his shoulder. ‘We’re not ourselves, are we? I’m certainly not myself, not anymore. And you’re not either. You don’t seem yourself. Not as I remember you.’
‘In what way?’
‘I mean. . can I speak frankly?’
‘Do you have to?’
‘I think I do. It is my prerogative.’
‘Go on then.’
‘I think. .’ She lifts her head from his shoulder. ‘I think that you have it in you to be a fine young man. Exceptional even. I have always thought that. Mothers are supposed to, aren’t they? But I don’t think you’re there yet. Not yet. I think you’ve got some way to go. That’s all.’
‘I see.’
‘You mustn’t take this badly, but sometimes. .’ She takes his hand in hers, rubbing the palm of it with her thumb. ‘Sometimes I worry that you’re not very nice anymore.’
They sit there for a while until eventually he says, ‘There’s nothing I can say to that.’
‘There’s nothing that you have to say.’
‘Are you angry with me?’
‘A little. But then I’m angry with pretty much everyone these days. Everyone who isn’t sick.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum. I am so, so sorry.’
She presses her thumb into the palm of his hand. ‘I know you are.’
‘I’ll stay. Tonight.’
‘No, not tonight. You’re busy. Come back and start again.’
He stands, holds her shoulders lightly, and presses his cheek against hers — he can hear her breathing in his ear, the warm, sweet breath — then he walks to the door.
‘Thank Emma for me,’ she says. ‘For the books.’
‘I will.’
‘Send her my love. When you see her tonight.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Yes. You’re seeing her tonight.’
He remembers his lie. ‘Yes, yes I will. And I’m sorry if I haven’t been very. . very good today.’
‘Well. I suppose there’s always the next time,’ she says, and smiles.
Dexter takes the stairs at a run, counting on the momentum to hold him together, but his father is in the hallway reading the local newspaper, or pretending to. Once again, it’s as if he has been waiting for him, a sentry on duty, the arresting officer.
‘I overslept,’ says Dexter, to his father’s back.
He turns a page of the newspaper. ‘Yes, I know.’
‘Why didn’t you wake me, Dad?’
‘There didn’t seem much point. Also I tend to think that I shouldn’t have to.’ He turns another page. ‘You’re not fourteen years old, Dexter.’
‘But it means I’ve got to go now!’
‘Well, if you’ve got to go. .’ The sentence peters out. He can see Cassie in the living room, also pretending to read, her face flush with condemnation and self-righteousness.
