Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,116

bedroom ease open and my mother’s soft patter along the hall. The bathroom light clicked on and then I heard the clink of bottles, glass clattering against the hard enamel of the sink. I sat there listening as the noise went on for a while, wondering, in my sleepy haze, if she had decided to rearrange the bathroom cabinet in the middle of the night. But then, recalling the catastrophe of our Christmas dinner, I had another thought, and, suddenly alert, I jumped off my bed, ran down the hall, and into the bathroom.

My mother was still wearing the ridiculous dress she’d donned for Christmas dinner, but she had taken off her stockings and, her bare feet planted on the floorboards, she was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, a bottle of aspirin in one hand, a bottle of something the doctors at Delapole had prescribed for her in the other. They were both empty. She had tipped their contents into the valley that her dress formed between her legs and was frowning down at them, a bright pile of tiny yellow and white disks, as if trying to determine how many pills she held. I guessed there were at least a hundred.

“Where did you get those tablets, Mum?” I asked, moving to perch on the side of the bathtub close to her. I shivered as I felt the hard cold of the enamel against my palms.

She ignored me and continued to stare down at her cache of pills.

“Mum,” I said, more insistently, “where did you get them?” I had no idea where my father had been hiding my mother’s medicines. All I knew was that he’d stashed them away and had been dispensing them to her. My mother must have scoured the house to find them. I imagined how she must have waited for my father and me to depart before she leaped out of bed to search for them. The thought made me furious.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. “What are you doing, sitting here like this in the middle of the night?”

“Your father’s gone,” she said, defeated.

My anger evaporated. I felt my father’s absence like a cavern inside me. “He’ll be back, Mum,” I said. “Really, he’ll be back. I think he just needed to get a break.” I didn’t believe it myself, but I felt the urgency of making her believe it.

“You think so?” She looked up. Under the harsh, unshaded bulb of the bathroom, her face looked colorless, almost gray. There were big dark circles under her eyes and, for the first time, I noticed the fine pattern of lines fanning out from beneath her eyes, like tiny channels carved by water across rock. She looked older, as if age had washed over her in the night. It made me aware of my mother’s utter vulnerability. She could never, no matter how hard I wanted it or willed it, rise above the capricious tides of her moods. I was the one who had to hold her up.

I looked down at the pills, which were bright and shiny; small children would want to put them into their mouths. And, for a moment, I could see their attraction. All those innocent little tablets could take my mother into oblivion. She wouldn’t have to flail and fight. And I could let her go, a lost swimmer falling through my arms, going under. I wouldn’t have to try to save her anymore.

“I didn’t mean to spoil your Christmas, you know, love,” she said, her bleary eyes beseeching me.

“I know, Mum. I know.” I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with air the way someone might before diving underwater, holding it in me, before I let it out in a steady sigh. Then I reached over and took the two empty pill bottles from her hands, brushing her fingers; they were icy cold. I placed the bottles on the floor.

I stood up and began looking around the bathroom. Behind the sink, I spotted one of the buckets that we had used to catch the leaks. I pulled it out and took it over to my mother. “Stand up,” I commanded, tugging her up from the toilet so that the pills spilled into the bucket as I held it next to her. They fell like the sound of a downpour. A few missed the bucket and bounced over the floor, dancing brightly until they rolled into the cracks between the floorboards or settled silently against the bath and