A lot and forever
The gist of the story takes shape in my head. Sentences form themselves, and words pour from my pen onto the paper. My right arm starts to ache, so I let it rest for a while, close my eyes and inhale. The sultry smells of a sun-warmed city drift through the open window. Newcastle, Australia. After six weeks, this place is still so impossibly exotic. The sound of cars driving by blends in with Mundy’s raw voice from the CD-player. Everything’s good. I’m in flow. When the phone rings, I let it go to the machine. It won’t be for me.
“Louise, are you there?”
And the spell is broken.
“Pick up, will you.” The euphoria fizzles away as my mother’s voice reaches me from the other side of the world, like magic, the dark kind. She never calls to make small talk.
I stumble over to the stereo, put Mundy on pause and grab the phone. “Hi,” I say, brazing myself for what’s to come. “What’s up?”
“Laura had an accident.”
Ghost fingers trail down my spine, defying the warm spring air. In my mind cars crash and glass shatters as Gran’s body flies through a windscreen. I swallow hard. “What?”
“I said Laura had an accident.” My mother always calls Gran by her first name. Never mom. Not even mother.
“But is she all right?”
“Yes, she’s fine…
“Thank God.” I drop down on the couch and feel myself fall back into place, as if I was the one flying.
“…ish. It was only a fall, but she’s in hospital...”
“But she’ll be ok?”
“If you’d just let me finish my sentences. She’s not dead or dying, but she’ll need proper care for some time.” My mother never was one for sentiments.
“And you’re there with her?” I say.
“I am. For now.”
For now? I let it go. Instead I ask: “What happened?”
“She fell on one of her stupid walks, and according to Mr. Petersen it’s not the first time.”
Mr. P is one of Gran’s closest neighbours. I think he’s one of the few people my mother ever respected – maybe even feared. He probably caught her scrumping his precious pears or some other produce. That was the impression I got when he caught me doing it a decade ago.
“She’s much too unstable to live up there by herself,” she continues. “I don’t understand how you could leave her like that.”
Well, that’s rich, coming from you. “But,” is all I get in.
“Yeah, yeah, the neighbours have been looking in on her, but that’s not enough. They’ve got lives of their own, you know, and none of them lives close enough to be actual neighbours if you ask me. Besides, she has dizzy spells, and you know she always was a wanderer. It’s a miracle she hasn’t hurt herself before, climbing around the grounds like that.”
I smile to myself, picturing Gran in her wild garden, the late autumn sun colouring everything light orange to go with the foliage of the birches.
“But her old body is flexible as a kitten’s, or so it seems,” my mother says. “She rolls herself into a ball and tumbles down the heather. This time, however, her bones weren’t that complying. She broke her hip, and she also hit her head on a rock or something. She was wearing Vuk’s old boots – don’t ask me why, they are much too big for her. No wonder she lost her balance.”
“She misses him,” I say, smile tightening. My nostrils burn and tears prick my eyes. Grandpa passed away a year ago. I miss him too. “She finds comfort in walking around in his shoes…boots…whatever.”
“Well, anyway, that’s what happened. The knock to her head has affected her memory. She doesn’t know who I am half the time.” My mother takes a short pause. I don’t fill the silence, so she goes on. “Laura was unable to look after herself in the first place, and now she can’t even walk for God knows how long. She’s staying in a rehabilitation centre for the time being, but she’ll probably be expected to go home in a few weeks. I don’t understand how they can send her home at all. But with you there it’ll be all right. And it’s not like you have anything better to do, is there.”
The last sentence is clearly not a question and its implications settle in my stomach as a dull ache. I don’t like where this is going. “But, I’m in Australia,” I say, stating the obvious. “And you’re there.”
“For now, I said.”
“But you live there. I assumed you were talking about being at the hospital.”
“Well, of course I’m not at the hospital now. Did you think I would call you in Australia on a pay phone? Anyway, she’ll need around the clock care, and I’m not in a position where I can put my life on hold for her.”
“But you think I should?” It slips out of my mouth before my brain has time to apply a filter. Of course she does. And if I wasn’t on the other side of the world, I would have without blinking. But I am.
“Come on, Louise,” she says. “Laura practically raised you.”
“I know,” I say, because it’s true. Gran did raise me. But what I want to do is yell back: Well, only because you didn’t want to. Or ask: And what about you, did you raise yourself? But I guess I know the answer to that. She probably thinks she did raise herself. Not that she ever grew up. At forty-five my mother still behaves like a petulant child.
From what I’ve heard she was a handful in her formative years. And I can believe that – easily. But I also suspect Gran had really small hands back then.
In any case, at the tender age of seventeen my mother spilled through Gran’s fingers and ran away with the travelling circus visiting our small town in the middle of Norway – or middle of nowhere as some would say. It was a melancholic clown that caught her eye, giving my mother the convenience of blaming any short-comings of mine on the fact I was fathered by a clown. Not that she often did. Whenever she was around, my mother preferred the role as the older sister or the naughty friend. I never met my father, at twenty-one my mother came sulking back home, carrying me in her belly.
She had an easy pregnancy. After having me she soon regained her ideal weight – my mother loves showing off the before and after pics. As her body discarded the physical ramification of pregnancy, any maternal instinct must have disappeared from her mind. She didn’t stick around for long. At twenty-two she met a musician and off she went, leaving me behind.
It’s not that I don’t love my grandmother. We drifted apart when I moved to Oslo at nineteen, but after Grandpa died, we reconnected, and at times I miss her like crazy.
But the thing is: I don’t want to go home. Like a child myself, I don’t want to leave this party. It is 1999, closing in on the new millennia, and it looks like the next century is going to treat me well. I have found my paradise. The climate is perfect, not too warm, nor too cold. The city is small enough to feel like home, but big enough to accommodate my every need. I’ve got an excellent beach only minutes away and, all though it’s still early days, I think I’ve met the one and only Mr. Right. I’m not a romantic so it’s not me, thinking along those lines, but Mathew Lester is everything I want in a man.
I moved in with him a couple of weeks ago, after a whole two weeks of dating, if you can call it dating. We spent almost every hour of those weeks together. I don’t usually move this fast, but it’s my gap year, a time in life where you’re allowed to make rash decisions. Since I was only staying at the near-by backpacker’s while looking for a flatmate anyway, Matt and I decided not to waste precious money on double rent.
I usually go with him on his morning surfs. It’s a wonderful way to start off the day, seeing the sun come up and the powerful waves hit the shore. Sometimes I’ll walk up to King Edwards Park and sit on the headland overlooking the Commandant’s bath. With the sun warming my face, I watch the ocean crash into the rocks and flow into the Bogey Hole, while Matt paddles out on his board to greet the other early birds floating about, waiting for their perfect wave.
But today I had decided was the day. Today I was going to start writing my book – my epic, my legacy. I have wanted to write for as long as I can remember, but I’ve always been shy about putting my thoughts down on paper, afraid too much of me would seep out and join them. Then I realised I’m allowed to lie, encouraged to lie, even. I can make up whatever I want. Nobody wants the truth anyway. The truth is too trivial or too cruel.
So I overcame my qualms. This morning I actually thought I could take on the world. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks re-reading my favourite novels, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack from Romeo + Juliet all morning, and I’ve invited my Damon to join me. I have huge ambitions. Inspired by the true Australian story of the Stolen Generation, and driven by a craving for big words and a bit of drama, I had set the scene.
But here I am, on the phone, sensing my perfect life is about to unravel, knowing I will let it.
I don’t argue, I do what I’ve always done when facing my mother, I cave.
A lot and forever
The gist of the story takes shape in my head. Sentences form themselves, and words pour from my pen onto the paper. My right arm starts to ache, so I let it rest for a while, close my eyes and inhale. The sultry smells of a sun-warmed city drift through the open window. Newcastle, Australia. After six weeks, this place is still so impossibly exotic. The sound of cars driving by blends in with Mundy’s raw voice from the CD-player. Everything’s good. I’m in flow. When the phone rings, I let it go to the machine. It won’t be for me.
“Louise, are you there?”
And the spell is broken.
“Pick up, will you.” The euphoria fizzles away as my mother’s voice reaches me from the other side of the world, like magic, the dark kind. She never calls to make small talk.
I stumble over to the stereo, put Mundy on pause and grab the phone. “Hi,” I say, brazing myself for what’s to come. “What’s up?”
“Laura had an accident.”
Ghost fingers trail down my spine, defying the warm spring air. In my mind cars crash and glass shatters as Gran’s body flies through a windscreen. I swallow hard. “What?”
“I said Laura had an accident.” My mother always calls Gran by her first name. Never mom. Not even mother.
“But is she all right?”
“Yes, she’s fine…
“Thank God.” I drop down on the couch and feel myself fall back into place, as if I was the one flying.
“…ish. It was only a fall, but she’s in hospital...”
“But she’ll be ok?”
“If you’d just let me finish my sentences. She’s not dead or dying, but she’ll need proper care for some time.” My mother never was one for sentiments.
“And you’re there with her?” I say.
“I am. For now.”
For now? I let it go. Instead I ask: “What happened?”
“She fell on one of her stupid walks, and according to Mr. Petersen it’s not the first time.”
Mr. P is one of Gran’s closest neighbours. I think he’s one of the few people my mother ever respected – maybe even feared. He probably caught her scrumping his precious pears or some other produce. That was the impression I got when he caught me doing it a decade ago.
“She’s much too unstable to live up there by herself,” she continues. “I don’t understand how you could leave her like that.”
Well, that’s rich, coming from you. “But,” is all I get in.
“Yeah, yeah, the neighbours have been looking in on her, but that’s not enough. They’ve got lives of their own, you know, and none of them lives close enough to be actual neighbours if you ask me. Besides, she has dizzy spells, and you know she always was a wanderer. It’s a miracle she hasn’t hurt herself before, climbing around the grounds like that.”
I smile to myself, picturing Gran in her wild garden, the late autumn sun colouring everything light orange to go with the foliage of the birches.
“But her old body is flexible as a kitten’s, or so it seems,” my mother says. “She rolls herself into a ball and tumbles down the heather. This time, however, her bones weren’t that complying. She broke her hip, and she also hit her head on a rock or something. She was wearing Vuk’s old boots – don’t ask me why, they are much too big for her. No wonder she lost her balance.”
“She misses him,” I say, smile tightening. My nostrils burn and tears prick my eyes. Grandpa passed away a year ago. I miss him too. “She finds comfort in walking around in his shoes…boots…whatever.”
“Well, anyway, that’s what happened. The knock to her head has affected her memory. She doesn’t know who I am half the time.” My mother takes a short pause. I don’t fill the silence, so she goes on. “Laura was unable to look after herself in the first place, and now she can’t even walk for God knows how long. She’s staying in a rehabilitation centre for the time being, but she’ll probably be expected to go home in a few weeks. I don’t understand how they can send her home at all. But with you there it’ll be all right. And it’s not like you have anything better to do, is there.”
The last sentence is clearly not a question and its implications settle in my stomach as a dull ache. I don’t like where this is going. “But, I’m in Australia,” I say, stating the obvious. “And you’re there.”
“For now, I said.”
“But you live there. I assumed you were talking about being at the hospital.”
“Well, of course I’m not at the hospital now. Did you think I would call you in Australia on a pay phone? Anyway, she’ll need around the clock care, and I’m not in a position where I can put my life on hold for her.”
“But you think I should?” It slips out of my mouth before my brain has time to apply a filter. Of course she does. And if I wasn’t on the other side of the world, I would have without blinking. But I am.
“Come on, Louise,” she says. “Laura practically raised you.”
“I know,” I say, because it’s true. Gran did raise me. But what I want to do is yell back: Well, only because you didn’t want to. Or ask: And what about you, did you raise yourself? But I guess I know the answer to that. She probably thinks she did raise herself. Not that she ever grew up. At forty-five my mother still behaves like a petulant child.
From what I’ve heard she was a handful in her formative years. And I can believe that – easily. But I also suspect Gran had really small hands back then.
In any case, at the tender age of seventeen my mother spilled through Gran’s fingers and ran away with the travelling circus visiting our small town in the middle of Norway – or middle of nowhere as some would say. It was a melancholic clown that caught her eye, giving my mother the convenience of blaming any short-comings of mine on the fact I was fathered by a clown. Not that she often did. Whenever she was around, my mother preferred the role as the older sister or the naughty friend. I never met my father, at twenty-one my mother came sulking back home, carrying me in her belly.
She had an easy pregnancy. After having me she soon regained her ideal weight – my mother loves showing off the before and after pics. As her body discarded the physical ramification of pregnancy, any maternal instinct must have disappeared from her mind. She didn’t stick around for long. At twenty-two she met a musician and off she went, leaving me behind.
It’s not that I don’t love my grandmother. We drifted apart when I moved to Oslo at nineteen, but after Grandpa died, we reconnected, and at times I miss her like crazy.
But the thing is: I don’t want to go home. Like a child myself, I don’t want to leave this party. It is 1999, closing in on the new millennia, and it looks like the next century is going to treat me well. I have found my paradise. The climate is perfect, not too warm, nor too cold. The city is small enough to feel like home, but big enough to accommodate my every need. I’ve got an excellent beach only minutes away and, all though it’s still early days, I think I’ve met the one and only Mr. Right. I’m not a romantic so it’s not me, thinking along those lines, but Mathew Lester is everything I want in a man.
I moved in with him a couple of weeks ago, after a whole two weeks of dating, if you can call it dating. We spent almost every hour of those weeks together. I don’t usually move this fast, but it’s my gap year, a time in life where you’re allowed to make rash decisions. Since I was only staying at the near-by backpacker’s while looking for a flatmate anyway, Matt and I decided not to waste precious money on double rent.
I usually go with him on his morning surfs. It’s a wonderful way to start off the day, seeing the sun come up and the powerful waves hit the shore. Sometimes I’ll walk up to King Edwards Park and sit on the headland overlooking the Commandant’s bath. With the sun warming my face, I watch the ocean crash into the rocks and flow into the Bogey Hole, while Matt paddles out on his board to greet the other early birds floating about, waiting for their perfect wave.
But today I had decided was the day. Today I was going to start writing my book – my epic, my legacy. I have wanted to write for as long as I can remember, but I’ve always been shy about putting my thoughts down on paper, afraid too much of me would seep out and join them. Then I realised I’m allowed to lie, encouraged to lie, even. I can make up whatever I want. Nobody wants the truth anyway. The truth is too trivial or too cruel.
So I overcame my qualms. This morning I actually thought I could take on the world. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks re-reading my favourite novels, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack from Romeo + Juliet all morning, and I’ve invited my Damon to join me. I have huge ambitions. Inspired by the true Australian story of the Stolen Generation, and driven by a craving for big words and a bit of drama, I had set the scene.
But here I am, on the phone, sensing my perfect life is about to unravel, knowing I will let it.
I don’t argue, I do what I’ve always done when facing my mother, I cave.