Page 11 of The Perfect Son
“No, you’re not, but I still didn’t call you.” My words are clipped and ring with an annoyance I don’t mean to convey. All of a sudden I think of Jamie and how I snapped at him about his lost school shoes this morning.
My legs are weak and I long to sit down, but I don’t want to lead this woman into the kitchen or the living room. I don’t want to endure the hand-patting it’ll-be-all-right speech, the time-will-heal-you bullshit. The same white noise I’ve heard so many times already. From my brother and his boyfriend at the funeral; from the many phone calls with my mum; from a woman who collared me on the way back from the school drop-off. Even the postman knocked on the door to impart some wisdom on the matter.
They’re all wrong.
Shelley nods, businesslike, confident. “OK, let me call the office and see what’s happened.
“May I?” she says, pointing her phone at the living room before striding inside.
I wait in my spot by the front door for a moment, listening to one side of a conversation about me. My head is spinning. Slow, looping spins—the final rotations of the roundabout in the playground—until I can’t stand it any longer and trudge to the kitchen to sit down.
I’d like to say I had an inkling then, a shiver down my spine, a foreboding of what was to come, but I didn’t. Not even the faintest whisper.
It’s not your fault, Tessie.
Easy for you to say, Mark.
CHAPTER 6
I just love your house,” Shelley says a few moments later, running a hand over a dark oak beam as she moves along the hall and into the kitchen. “It’s so oldie... like a smaller version of something from one of those historical dramas. I’ve always wondered what type of people live in old houses like this now.”
My mind is slow, my thoughts clunky. Shelley’s compliment may as well have been a question on quantum physics, and I’m incapable of reaching for a response.
“So it seems... um... your mother called us. I’ve just spoken to my colleague who took the call. They had a long chat. Your mum was worried about you, although she did say you’d agreed for us to visit, which clearly isn’t the case. So I’m very sorry for the intrusion.”
A memory of my mother’s tearful good-bye flashes in my thoughts. Me standing in the doorway of the nook, shivering and numb while my mother’s clawed fingers struggled to unravel a handkerchief and dab away the tears resting on her cheeks.
After two weeks of her hovering and the thump thud thump of her walking stick on the wood floors, I was desperate for her to leave, to just get in the taxi waiting too patiently on the driveway. Jamie was at the kitchen table, listening to who knows what on your old iPod. Hewas closed up, not speaking, and I didn’t want him to feel shy anymore. I wanted Mum gone.
She was talking at me as I closed the door. Could she have mentioned the appointment then and I didn’t listen?
Shelley pulls out a chair and sits across from me. At least I’ve cleared the breakfast bowls. The box of Rice Krispies is still out. The blue of the box is suddenly too bright against all the brown wood.
“Tess,” Shelley says, her voice soft and coaxing. “We don’t have to speak now if you don’t want to, but it might help.”
I shrug. “Now’s fine.” Better to get it over with.
“OK, that’s good. How are you feeling?” she asks, leaning a little closer.
“Fine.”
Shelley raises her eyebrows and fixes me with a look like a concerned mother talking to a child. A wave of sadness throngs through my body. I wish I had the energy to lie, to paste a smile on and nod, but I can feel tears welling in my eyes. Besides, something tells me this woman in my kitchen would see straight through me.
“It’s my birthday today.” I sigh.
“Oh, Tess. Happy birthday.”
“I’m not sure there’s much happy in it.”
“How are you doing?” Shelley asks again.
“Not fine,” I whisper. “Nowhere close.”
“Your mum mentioned on the phone that you’d booked to see the doctor.” Shelley’s voice is soft and tentative. She’s trying to tiptoe around my privacy, I can see that, but it’s not working and I feel myself bristle. How much does she know about me? How much did my mum tell her? Everything, no doubt. “How did it go?”
“OK, I guess.” My mind is no longer blank but flashing with memories of the past five weeks. The times I’ve snapped at Jamie forno reason. The weekend before last when my period started and I cried in the bathroom all day, forgetting to take Jamie to Liam’s football birthday party that had been on the calendar for months. The hours and hours we’ve spent on the sofa together, eating oven pizzas and watching old episodes ofScooby-Doobecause that’s all I was capable of doing.
“Did the doctor give you any medication? Or suggest anything else?”
