Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,117

the sink. I bent down and began picking them up, tossing them into the bucket until I could find no more. Then I took my mother by the sleeve. “Come on, Mum,” I said. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

After I had accompanied my mother to her bedroom, I went back to the bathroom, took the bucket of pills into my bedroom, tipped them into a pillowcase, and stuffed the pillowcase into the bottom of my dirty-laundry basket, the same place I’d hidden the whiskey I’d brought back from the disco a few days earlier. Then I undressed, put on my pajamas, and went back into my mother’s room. I climbed into bed with her, pushing myself against her and wrapping my arm across her shoulder. Her whole body was cold, and her feet—curled up beneath her so she lay next to me pressed into the shape of a shrunken S—were like little slabs of ice. But after a while we both began to warm, and eventually my mother fell into soft, steady breaths and then rhythmic snores, before I, too, drifted into sleep.

I woke to such familiar smells—my parents’ musky blankets, the scent of their room (a blend of my mother’s makeup and hair lacquer, my father’s aftershave, and the polish on their chest of drawers)—that I had the sensation of having fallen back into my early childhood, when I was three or four years old and I’d climb into my parents’ bed in the morning, squirm between them, and listen to their snuffles and groans as they folded themselves around me until I fell into a warm and delicious sleep. But then I opened my eyes and the recollections of the previous day’s events came to me, and I wished that I could have stayed in that moment of memory. My mother, I was relieved to see, was still sleeping, but when I got up and peeked through the curtains there was no sign of my father’s car.

For the rest of the day I watched television, feeling increasingly stupefied as I sat in front of the gas fire, snacking on the remnants of our Christmas dinner and staring at the Boxing Day programming, indifferent to everything I watched. When the telephone rang, I picked it up hoping that it was my father calling to tell us that he was coming back, but it was only Mabel, asking me how my mother was. I didn’t tell her about the pills; I didn’t want to ruin Mabel’s Boxing Day as well as her Christmas, and though I would have liked, more than anything, for her to come over and take care of me, I knew that if she did she would bring Frank with her. The cut on my hand still hurt, reminding me of his brittle anger. I knew I’d be thrilled when he went the way of all Mabel’s other boyfriends and she moved on to someone else.

Early in the afternoon, I coaxed my mother out of bed and got her to take a bath. She obeyed me like an automaton, moving about wordlessly. Once she was dressed, I had her come downstairs, where I made her a plate of leftovers and told her to eat it. She picked up a knife and fork and began pushing mouthfuls of food into her mouth, chewing so lethargically and swallowing with such effort that it was as if I were forcing her to eat poison—though, given her interest in taking all those tablets, perhaps she would have eaten poison more eagerly.

I wondered what I was going to do if my father didn’t return. Should I call my mother’s doctor and tell him what had happened? And if I did, would they take my mother off to Delapole again? And if they did that, what would happen to me? Would my father come back and take care of me, or had he simply had enough of everything and gone off to find a place that would give him solitude and peace? If it weren’t for Frank, I’d want to go and live with Auntie Mabel, but with him around I’d need to go somewhere else. Maybe I’d be sent to live with Granddad, which, in some ways, wouldn’t be so bad. After all, as long as I delivered his tea and regular plates of sandwiches he probably wouldn’t bother me very much. Or perhaps I could ask to be sent to Australia, where I could live with Grandma and her fiancé