Page 60 of Where Do We Go From Here?
‘OK,’ Wendy says with a resigned shrug. ‘But if you feel you need to talk about your brother, that’s OK too.’
‘No, I don’t want this,’ Manon says. She chews her bottom lip for a moment, visibly weighing something up. ‘Perhaps I tell you about my mother.’
‘Sure,’ Wendy says, jumping up for a bowl of peanuts she’s forgotten on the kitchen counter and giving her glass a quick top-up in the process. ‘Anything you want to talk about is fine,’ she says, returning to the armchair and settling back in.
‘So my mother,’ Manon says. ‘It’s a hard story.’
‘I can imagine,’ Wendy says. ‘And only tell me if you want to.’
‘I do,’ Manon says. ‘I do want to tell you, but I think maybe you will not like this story so much.’
‘It’s OK,’ Wendy says again. ‘If you want to tell me, please…’
‘She starts drinking, my mother, when she is fifteen. Fourteen, maybe.’ Here Manon nods towards Wendy’s glass to make clear that she isn’t talking about Coca-Cola.
‘OK,’ Wendy says. ‘That’s early.’
Manon shrugs. ‘Earlier, probably. As a kid they sometimes have wine with water. Many French families do this in the old times with dinner… But she begins to drink really when she is fifteen. She has friends who are like this, too.’
‘Party animals.’
‘Yes. Party animals. So, at first she drinks like everyone, like her friends. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. This is OK.’
‘Becauseeveryoneparties at that age,’ Wendy says, nodding, starting to reach for her glass and then arresting the movement before it gets started and pushing her hair behind her ear instead.
‘She meets my father in – how you say – a discotheque?’
‘A nightclub, probably. Discotheque sounds quite old-fashioned.’
‘And they are both drunk. This is the start of their romance. Drunk in discotheque.’
‘I think quite a few relationships start like that,’ Wendy says with a forced laugh.
‘They go out together. They have big fun. For years, it is like this. Big fun. Good fun. And then she gets… how you say? With baby. My brother. So, she must stop drinking. But she does not.’
‘It can be hard to suddenly stop when you’re used to drinking. I know.’
‘So she drink, and my brother when he comes, is not normal. Not really bad, like some, but he is a small baby. A bit slow to walk, to speak… They say this is because of the alcohol.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, that’s awful.’
‘And now she is pregnant again with me. So, she must stop. And she knows she must stop. The doctors tell her. Papa tells her.’
‘Yes. After what happened with your brother…’
‘They argue. With Papa. Because she don’t stop. They argue a lot. And at the end she stops the last three month. This is probably why I am OK.’
‘Thank God,’ Wendy says.
‘But when I am born, she starts again.’
‘Well, motherhood is hard. Sometimes you need a drink.’
‘My mother doesnotneed a drink. Believe me. They argue. And my father leave her. Because my mother is drinking – always drinking.’
‘But was she drinking reasonably? Or?—’
‘No. She is not. She is drinking like you, one, two bottle every day. She starts at midday dinner, and then eleven, and then ten. And then she is drinking with breakfast, before breakfast, three bottle every day, sometimes four. Then whisky, vodka, anything.’
