Chapters (14)
Mother was in a bad phase. She called it a ‘sprawl’. It was a big indulgent sprawl—she was taking up too much room with it and everyone but me was just letting her slob about and feel sorry for herself. I caught her looking in the mirror, grimacing at herself, investigating her teeth and the pores on the sides of her nose. She had a little scab in the corner of her mouth that she kept picking.
‘Bloody stop it!’ I wanted to say to her. In films, men slapped women around the chops to get them to come to when they were hysterical or comatose. That’s what I felt like I needed to do to Mother, just give her a bloody slap. Just snap her out of it with a manly slap across the face. But I didn’t have the guts. Who knew what she would do? She might hit me back or even punch me. Or she might cry. God help me, she might bloody cry.
‘What’s wrong with Mother?’ I asked Papa, two weeks into her sprawl. I tried to sound like I didn’t care.
‘She’s worried about her book. She’s worried what people might think of it.’
But Mother didn’t care what people thought. I knew that as a fact. An actual fact.
‘She’s really letting herself go,’ I said.
Papa looked at me strangely. ‘I’m not sure you should be staying with her at the moment,’ he said. ‘What do you want to do? Do you want to go to Ornella’s? You can ride your bike there if you like.’
I had a new bike. A red Malvern Star Papa had bought me. I could ride to school in less than ten minutes, and to Ornella’s in fifteen. And that’s exactly what I wanted to do—ride my bike to Ornella’s—but I didn’t say that because I thought Mother might cry if I went. Or try to cry, or pretend to cry, all of which were awful possibilities. She had become horrible in her grey-blue dressing gown, which used to be soft and smell good, but now had the quality of a decaying bathmat.
‘It’s not very fun,’ I said, ‘when she’s like this.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Papa. ‘She probably needs a bit of company right now though.’
‘Well, you stay home with her then!’ I said. ‘It’s not fun for me!’
And then I felt sorry for Mother again and went and shook the picnic blanket out in the back garden while Papa put his socks on for work. He didn’t know about her ‘lolly-water’, which was the colour of water, alright, but had no smell whatsoever and which she kept under the couch.