The Artificial Anatomy of Parks Page 10

  I try to rinse the mop out. My boss stands over me, watching. “I mean it, young lady. Don’t think there isn’t a queue of girls waiting to take your place. Fuck up again and you’re out.”

  I think about the nurses pottering around my father the other day, wonder whether they enjoy their work. Maybe I’m being naïve, and no one does what they really want to do; maybe the nurses are all frustrated pop stars. I take the dirty dishes from table three into the kitchen and start loading the dishwasher.

  Sunday night after the party I lay awake for longer than usual, long enough to hear my parents come to bed, halfway through a conversation I didn’t understand.

  “So he actually accepted it?” my mother asked.

  “Yes,” my father said. “Why?”

  “I just thought… ”

  “Thought what, Evelyn?”

  “I thought it was going to get better.”

  “This is better. Surely you understood what a strain it was, the whole situation?”

  “Of course, Edward. I was under the same strain.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sometimes I got the impression that you welcomed… Never mind.”

  “What were you going to say?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I didn’t know he was going to turn up.”

  “Hmm.”

  “How could I? He stopped speaking to me ten years ago.”

  “That’s exactly my point.”

  “Edward.”

  “Yes?”

  “Aren’t you tired of all this?”

  I heard the bedsprings creak, like someone had sat down, and then my father’s voice, “Of course.”

  I didn’t understand what ‘all this’ was, but it sounded serious. I thought about Uncle Jack standing in my grandmother’s garden, watching us leave, and shook my head immediately, trying to make the picture go away.

  “If Vivienne’s giving you a hard time… ” my father said.

  “No more than usual.”

  He sounded impatient. “Why do you insist on dwelling on it then?”

  “Don’t be like that, Edward. What do you want me to do? Where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  On Monday my mother didn’t get out of bed. My father had gone to work early so I made porridge for myself. It was a little burnt, but I scraped the top off and fed it to Mr Tickles. I took some to my mother on a tray. I picked some orange flowers from the garden and took them up too. I couldn’t find a vase, so I washed out a milk bottle and put them in that. My mother hadn’t opened the curtains. I left the tray just inside the room, next to the door.

  My father came home late that night, so I ran my bath and made myself and my mother a ham sandwich for dinner. He was working early the next morning too. I had an apple for breakfast.

  I didn’t run myself a bath that night. I watched TV until I heard my father’s key in the lock. There was something exciting about running upstairs before he could see me and pretending to be asleep when he stopped at my door, although I was fully dressed beneath the sheets, trying to make my breathing come slow.

  On Wednesday my father came home early. I was sitting in the kitchen when he walked in. I hadn’t washed for two days and Mr Tickles was licking peanut butter off my fingers.

  Aunt Gillian moved in on Thursday morning.

  My father called at lunchtime; I knew he’d want to talk to Gillian, but I beat her to the phone.

  “Where are you?” I asked him.

  “I’m busy at the hospital,” he said. “Can you put your aunt on the phone?”

  “Why can’t you take time off? Why does Aunt Gillian have to… ” I didn’t want to sound too rude. “Who’s looking after Georgia?”

  “Tallulah, I’m due in surgery in five minutes. Gillian’s going to take good care of you, don’t worry, now let me speak to her.”

  I passed Aunt Gillian the phone and stomped upstairs.

  Before Aunt Gillian arrived, I’d been cleaning up after myself, opening my parents’ curtains and arranging things in their room, trying to make it seem as if my mother was getting up from time to time. With Aunt Gillian there I couldn’t. Instead, I kept watch at the bottom of the stairs in case the bedroom door opened.

  Aunt Gillian appeared next to me once, with lemonade and buttery biscuits.

  “Tallie, does your mother – does she look after herself at the moment?” she asked, hovering over me.

  I turned to face her. She lowered the plate and I took a biscuit.

  “I mean, is she eating, and washing?”

  “She’s just tired,” I said, biting into the biscuit. “She eats and washes.” I didn’t know whether she was washing, but she’d left most of the porridge and sandwiches I’d taken her.

  “Oh, good,” Aunt Gillian said. She looked relieved. “Your father didn’t really leave any instructions about that. Oh, you know he’s had to go to a conference?” She lowered the biscuit plate again, and handed me the lemonade.

  I nodded, though I hadn’t known.

  “And how are you?”

  I shrugged.

  “It must be difficult, your mother being – tired.”

  I shrugged again. Aunt Gillian hovered for a moment then left. “Just give me a shout if there’s anything you need,” she said.

  The next day, when Aunt Gillian was on the phone, I carried a sponge and a cake of soap upstairs to my mother’s room. I could hear Aunt Gillian tutting below us. “George, you can’t imagine what it’s like here,” she said. Then: “Yes. I mean, I can see how it got too much for him. You know how busy he always is.”

  There was a long pause. I tried to peer through the banisters and down the hallway to the kitchen, where Aunt Gillian was, the phone cord stretched tight as she moved around the room.

  “She hasn’t left their room since I arrived. Edward wouldn’t say much about it, but I gather she hasn’t been speaking to anyone. Poor Tallie, she’s the one Edward was worried about. It makes me mad when mothers just abdicate all responsibility like this, it really does. It’s just not normal, is it?”

  I could hear a buzzing sound from the other end of the telephone.

  “It’s Jack, of course it is. I really wish he’d just stayed away, we were all doing fine. Is that Michael in the background? What’s he doing? Put him on then.”

  Michael was evidently handed the phone, because her tone changed, and she started threatening not to let him go on a school skiing trip. I waited until her voice got even louder before I slipped into my mother’s room.

  My mother turned her head when I closed the door softly behind me. I crossed the room to the bed. She was lying on her side, curled up. The duvet was twisted around her legs and there were dark stains underneath her eyes.

  “We have to wash you now,” I said. “I told Aunt Gillian you were washing.”

  My mother didn’t move, she watched me as I rubbed the soap hard with the sponge. It didn’t foam up, but there was a white paste covering it after a few minutes. I put the soap down and looked at my mother. She was wearing a sleeveless cotton nightdress; I decided to start with her arms. The paste smeared onto her skin easily, but then it wouldn’t come off.

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  I tiptoed out of the room and into the bathroom. I ran the tap and soaked the sponge. I came back to the bedroom and started wiping my mother off, but a lot of water was coming out of the sponge now, and the sheets got wet. My mother started shivering. I got the hairdryer and plugged that in next to the bed and turned it on to maximum heat. My mother dried with white streaks running down her arms; the sheets wouldn’t dry. If Aunt Gillian saw this, we’d both be in trouble. I bit my lip.

  “Please get up,” I whispered. “Please, please please.”

  She reached her hand out to me and I took it. She looked at me silently for a moment, then pulled me onto the bed with her and wrapped her arms around me. I was so relieved I started crying.

&nb
sp; “Sshhh,” my mother said. “It’s alright, Tallie. Sweetheart. It’s alright.”

  “Are you going to get up now?” I asked her.

  She kissed my hair. “Yes, I’ll get up,” she said. We lay there in the wet bed for a while longer then my mother got up and rinsed her arms and put on a jumper and some makeup under her eyes. I sat on the toilet while she rubbed and painted her face and twisted her hair up in a knot. Aunt Gillian didn’t say anything when my mother came downstairs; she offered to make tea for everyone and we sat in the kitchen with the garden doors open. Mr Tickles lay outside on the patio, washing his face.

  “Lovely weather, isn’t it,” Aunt Gillian said. “I can’t believe it’s early September.”

  We agreed with her. I spooned some sugar into my tea; my mother watched me over the rim of her cup, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I suppose Tallie will be going to secondary school next year,” Aunt Gillian said.

  “Yes,” my mother said. “Edward wanted her to go to boarding school, but I like to have her here with me.” She smiled at me and I felt my body relax for the first time in weeks.

  “Oh, but boarding school is so good for camaraderie,” Aunt Gillian said. She was dipping a biscuit in her tea. “Vivienne and I went to boarding school and loved it, and Edward, and… ”

  My mother reached across the table and took a biscuit. “Your children aren’t at boarding school are they?” she asked.

  “No,” Aunt Gillian said. “But then there are three of them, and Tallie’s by herself. It’s so nice to be surrounded by people of the same age, don’t you think? And she could even go a year early, they have a middle school that starts from ten. It might give you and Edward some time… ”

  My mother sipped her tea. “Well, Tallie’s staying here,” she said. “There’s a very good school around the corner, and Kathy, a friend from primary, will be going there. We did ask her whether she wanted to go away.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said quickly.

  “You don’t have to, sweetheart,” my mother said.

  We finished the tea. Aunt Gillian fussed around us with the washing up. “You’ve had a rough few weeks,” she said. “Just let me do this, then I’ll get on with the hoovering and then I can start dinner.”

  Now that I had my mother back I wanted Aunt Gillian gone. I tugged at my mother’s sleeve when Gillian’s back was turned. My mother took my hand in hers. “Gillian,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough. But surely your own family must be missing you. Why don’t you go back to them now? Let me do the cleaning and dinner.”

  “Well,” Aunt Gillian paused. “I promised Edward I’d stay.”

  “We’ll be fine, won’t we, Tallie?” my mother said.

  I nodded, not too hard, in case Aunt Gillian was offended.

  “Michael is acting up a little for poor George,” Aunt Gillian said, untying her apron. “I think he might need a hand.”

  She called Uncle George, who came to pick her up. We walked her to the door, and I put her suitcase in the boot. Uncle George didn’t get out of the car.

  “I’ll give you a ring tonight,” Aunt Gillian said, kissing my mother on the cheek. “Edward will be back in a few days.”

  “Of course,” my mother said.

  Aunt Gillian hugged me and walked quickly to the car. She carried on waving from the passenger seat until it turned the corner. My mother smiled at me. “Alone at last,” she said. “What would you like for dinner? Your choice.”

  “Sausages and mash,” I said. “And mushy peas.”

  She put her arm around my shoulder. It smelt of soap still. “Sausages and mash and mushy peas it is,” she said.

  My father came home two days later. If he was surprised to see my mother up and Aunt Gillian gone, he didn’t show it.

  I stuck close to my mother over the next few days. We made brownies together, my mother’s mother’s recipe. She plaited my hair while I watched cartoons. We started Alice Through the Looking-Glass. We made orange ice-lollies, homemade popcorn, Mr Potato Heads, new cushion covers for the sofa, sock puppets, a soapbox car for my teddies and labels for the autumn jam. My mother spent hours on the phone to Aunt Gillian, who was still calling every day. I tried to teach Mr Tickles to shake paws, without any luck. If I caught my mother staring off into the distance at any point I’d creep away and come back loudly, stomping and yelling her name until she put her hands over her ears and laughed. “I’m right here,” she said.

  “Now can we play cards?”

  “You know I love you, don’t you, Tallulah?”

  We sat down to play cards, but my heart continued to beat double-time all throughout the game.

  This time it’s Aunt Vivienne who calls me. I’m sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bedroom after work, scraping an old coat of hot-pink nail varnish off with the end of a paperclip.

  “Hello?”

  “Darling,” Aunt Vivienne says. “You mustn’t be so melodramatic.”

  I almost laugh. I seem to remember some story about Aunt Vivienne threatening to kill herself after Uncle Jack disappeared. I have an image of her smashing a wine glass against the sink and holding it to her throat, my father calmly telling her to put it down, Aunt Gillian squawking and flapping about in a panic. In my mind I see Aunt Vivienne laughing, her eyes shiny with alcohol, sliding down the kitchen counter and passing out on the floor, the jagged glass rolling out of her hand. I don’t know where this picture came from; it’s possible I was there.

  “I’m not being melodramatic.”

  “I suppose running off seems perfectly rational then?”

  “It’s kind of normal in our family, wouldn’t you say?”

  She sighs down the line. “You children, always back-talking. Are you going to come see your father again or not? I have to report back to Gillian, you know.”

  “I’m not,” I say. “I need to work – I need the money.”

  “How mercenary of you.”

  “We don’t all have unlimited funds.”

  “Yes,” she says drily. “I suppose you think you’ve earned the rights to them too?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” I say, “but we haven’t exactly been best buddies over the years. I don’t know why you think I won’t just hang up.”

  “You’ll hurt my feelings.”

  “That’s a good one.”

  “I’m not your enemy, Tallulah.”

  “No. You only bother to hate the people you know won’t stand up to you.”

  She tuts at me.

  “I need to go now,” I say. I pick up the paperclip with my toes, raising my leg so I can admire the way they grip it still, after all these years without practising. “Tell Gillian you did your best.”

  “I’ve got a trick up my sleeve, my darling,” she says, and rings off.

  I wonder what she means by that – Starr can’t be back from holiday already. I miss her, but even she wouldn’t be able to persuade me to go to the hospital again and sit by that bedside, listening to my aunts squabble while I wait for my father to open his eyes and say what exactly – my name? That he wants to rebuild our relationship?

  “No fucking way,” I say out loud to myself. ‘You can’t choose your family,’ my grandmother used to say. She probably meant you had to accept them, but it works the other way too. You choose your friends, your lover, you choose whom to spend your time with. When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time looking for an alternate father figure. I’m sure he would have chosen someone else as his daughter, too.

  I leave the flat again late in the afternoon to try to get some fresh air. My skin feels sticky, like it always does after I’ve been in the café kitchen. I stop off at the newsagents on my way home; I buy cigarettes, a new lighter, some milk and tinned soup. The man behind the counter leers at my tits the whole time I’m counting change into his palm. I hold on to the last pound.

  “Hey, you’re short.”

  “This is for the show,” I tell him. “You don’t get to
perv for free.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I just did.”

  I push my way out of the shop and feel my phone begin to vibrate in my pocket. “What do you want?”

  Starr’s voice comes down the line, muffled, like she’s speaking through cotton wool. “Have you been yet? How is he?”

  “What? I can’t hear you properly.”

  “Wait, you’re on speakerphone… ”

  I can hear thumps and a crash, as if she’s dropped it. Then a man’s voice – Ricardo’s I imagine – and a slap. “Get the fuck off me, I’m talking to my cousin.”

  “Come on baby, let me kiss your ass. You’ve got such a beautiful ass.”

  “I said I’m talking to my cousin.” She comes back on the line, a little breathless. “We’re flying home in five days’ time, a night flight.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Tal – you there?”

  “Okay.” Hearing the two of them reminds me of Toby again, and I’m blushing like an idiot down the telephone.

  “So I’ll see you next Wednesday, right? Meet you at the Pizza Express on the corner of Baker Street at ten.”

  “Did your mum ask you to call?”

  “I haven’t spoken to her. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  “She’s there too? Jesus – bet she’s winding all the nurses up.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But he’s okay, right? Has there been any change?”

  “Not that I know of,” I say into the phone.

  “What? Ric, get off… Tal, I have to go. See you soon. And don’t let Mum throw her weight around.”

  If not Starr, what’s Vivienne’s trick? Is she here, watching me? I scuttle back to my flat, sleep for a few hours and wake up at seven-thirty. It’s still bright and hot outside and I still feel grubby and washed-out. I sit at the kitchen table, smoking, with the window wide open and my feet on the sill. Maybe I’ll have a cold shower. I don’t want to think about anything particularly, I just want to feel normal again.

  At five minutes past eight the buzzer goes. Our lock is stiff, and sometimes I have to let the downstairs neighbour in; I push the button without asking who it is. I can hear heavy footsteps all the way along the hall and up the staircase, but they don’t stop at the floor below. Someone knocks on my door. I’m wearing the old, men’s t-shirt and running shorts that I use as pyjamas. I open the door a crack and keep my body behind it.