Page 3 of If I Could Say Goodbye
‘The kids,’ he replies, swallowing hard as I take his bogey-free hand and pull it towards my hundred-wash-grey Marks & Spencer bra.
‘The kids are asleep,’ I reply, unzipping his flies and straddling him.
The next morning, I stare at the calendar, at the empty boxes that March has to offer – most days a blank space with a number hovering in its corner. I’m not really thinking about the calendar though, I’m thinking about Kerry. About the way that, three months ago, the electrical synapses in her brain misfired. I’m imagining a tumble of veins intricately woven in between the grooves of my sister’s brain, I’m picturing the little arc of blue electricity as they ignited with each thought, how perfectly they were working while my sister listened to me talking about the location of a new jeweller’s. How they were sending messages to her body to make her walk, just in front of me, across the zebra crossing as the rain poured and I stopped to look at the location on my phone. How one of those little blue sparks flashed red, a smoky bronzed spark that reacted to the oncoming car, that rusty spark that made her push me out of the way of the car instead of saving herself.
I can still taste the mint from the chewing gum I had in my mouth, hear the conversation we had, feel the drizzle that was soaking into my clothes as I walked across the road. The image of Kerry flying through the air hits me: her body flying backwards, feet and arms in front of her as though she was just trying to touch her toes, blue eyes staring straight ahead: red coat, red boots and the screech of brakes. I let that image go as I exhale; the next breath in comes with the image of her hands. I can’t remember making the decision to stop walking, I was too busy looking at Google maps, but I remember the feel of her hands and the pressure – like a punch – against my ribcage. I remember seeing them splayed against my chest. Her nails were painted silver and she was wearing a thumb ring – the one with the large fake emerald that wasn’t on her hand when she arrived at the hospital; I spent hours the night of her death trying to find it amongst the debris lying beside the road: I never did.
I breathe out again.
In the past three months, I have managed to carry on, a zombie walking through life but not living it. Some people are consumed by anger, when they lose a loved one; that’s where Ed focused his grief, anger towards the elderly driver of the car with the broken windscreen wiper, but I don’t think I had room for anger; grief stripped me of feeling anything at all. A numbing pain had settled inside my body when I watched Kerry’s coffin shining from inside a hearse. Looking back, I suppose I should have been grateful for grief’s anaesthetic during those first few months because once the anaesthetic began to wear off the pain of Kerry’s death suddenly exploded like pins and needles. Her loss consumed me for weeks. At first the pain was visceral, and I cried as it clawed at me, as it scratched and kicked: grief had its grip around my throat and had begun to squeeze. Some days when I woke, its grip was so tight that I didn’t think I could breathe, felt that it would suffocate me, that my death certificate would read ‘Cause of death: suffocated by grief’.
As time passed, grief’s grip became a little looser, and the next day looser still; slowly but surely leaving me alive, leaving me with this gift: life. This gift is like a glass vase; its purpose is to be filled with beautiful things; it holds the sun’s rays and splits it into a million different colours, a rainbow of possibility and directions. But if you don’t hold it carefully enough, if it slides from your grasp, it will be shattered and lost: you will never be able to repair it.
This is where you find me, a woman who is somehow still alive, whose sister left her with the gift of life; I can’t waste it.
I chew the inside of my bottom lip as I stare blankly at the calendar. There are a few appointments dotted about: there’s a hair colour on the tenth.
Hmmm. I had better bring that forward. My roots have needed a bit of TLC for a few months, I’ve got to stop putting things off . . . also, I suppose my life could end before that and I don’t want to have my roots showing in the chapel of rest. I pull out the notebook from my stationery drawer and begin a ‘To Do’ list.
When Kerry died, nothing was ready. She had no life insurance, no will, we had no idea how she wanted her funeral, why would we? She was only twenty-five. She and Nessa were just starting their life together.
Nessa stayed until the afternoon of the funeral and that was it. She didn’t even say goodbye; took her daughter out of school, and just up and left. I never got to ask her about an engagement ring that was shining on Kerry’s finger as the curtains drew around the coffin: a ring she must have chosen alone and slipped onto Kerry’s finger in the chapel of rest . . . I think of that moment of vulnerability that Kerry had shown, the worry that Nessa might say no. Clearly, she wouldn’t have.
I click the button of my pen.
To Do:
Check life insurance
Write epitaph
Make hairdressing appointment
Write epitaph?
‘Get a grip, Jen,’Kerry says. She is sitting on the kitchen counter, taking a bite out of an apple. I’m not crazy; I know she isn’t really here. I keep replaying old memories, like this one: this is a conversation we had when I had been Googling brain cancer after I’d found a tiny bald patch left over after a spot on my scalp. ‘Get a grip, Jen,’ she’d said; she was sitting on my kitchen counter and eating an apple. My subconscious also tends to embellish these memories, replacing parts of the conversation that I can no longer recall exactly by giving Kerry lines from films that I know she hasn’t even seen.
‘When you die, you will be an old woman in a warm bed.’My subconscious is not very imaginative and keeps giving Kerry misquotes from films I have watched a million times. That little beauty is fromTitanic.
Oscar appears at the kitchen door. The blue of his eyes is bluer than I have ever imagined before. You will have to bear with me for a moment as I try to find the right words. Once you realise how precious life is, the world changes. As though for your entire life, you have never really understood just how magnificent the world really is. But the magnificent world pales in comparison to the beauty of the ones you love.
So, you see, this is why I’m having a hard time conveying to you the blue of my son’s eyes. I’m not talking about the hue or tone of the colour itself, rather the innocence held within them. A crystal blue that’s pure; a pure blue that the toxins of the world have yet to tamper with. The whites of Oscar’s eyes have only a hint of the red veins that will map their way across them as life as an adult takes hold: late nights, too much caffeine or wine or take-away food. I find myself kneeling before him, my hand stroking his cheek as I try to count the tiny veins that have already begun to break the surface: a worry about a new teacher perhaps? The day Liam Butters pinched him during assembly? Small worries that will be forgotten by adulthood, but enough to break the perfect surface. How have I missed this? He rubs them, the blues disappearing behind skin so pale and perfect – tiny veins fluttering behind blemish-free hands, hands that still hold on to Santa Claus’s promises and cup his ears as he listens out for the thump, thump of the Easter Bunny’s paws.
‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’ I didn’t realise I was; the heels of my hand wipe away the stray tears. ‘Do you have a ear egg?’ he asks, three determinedly separate words.
‘Yes, sweetie.’ I stand, wipe my hands on the legs of my jeans and take a deep breath. ‘Mummy has an earache.’
‘You need some medicine from Dr Fow, Fow—’
‘Dr Faulkner, dummy,’ Hailey corrects as she walks into the room, yawning. She pulls up a chair towards the kitchen table, pushing the frame of her purple glasses up towards the bridge of her nose as she reaches for a box of cereal.
I have always thought my children are beautiful, but I now appreciate that ‘beautiful’ isn’t spectacular enough; it doesn’t sing when you say it. Hailey pushes her purple framed glasses and tucks her blonde hair behind her ears, ears that she has been teased about at school because they stick out a little further than The Norm, ears that I now see protrude just the right amount. If they were tucked closer in, you might not be able to see the small birthmark in the shape of an ‘h’ behind her left ear, the ‘h’ that made us choose the name Hailey rather than the Emily we had already decided on.
Oscar clambers onto the seat next to his sister as I fill his bowl with Cheerios, adding milk and sugar before turning and beginning to make sandwiches for their lunchboxes.
‘Can we play Tumbling Monkeys?’ he asks through a mouthful of milk.
‘Mummy is busy,’ Hailey sighs. The butter knife clatters against the counter.
