Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,142
did include him in the invitation.” She winced in apparent anticipation of my mother’s reaction.
“You invited him?”
“I had to invite him, Evelyn,” Mabel said, lifting and then dropping her shoulders in such a dramatic shrug that the billowy satin dress rustled as if it, like Mabel, were letting out an exasperated sigh. “You never know, maybe you’ll like him once you meet him.”
“Right,” my mother said, crouching toward the floor as she began to search for the pins she’d spat out. “I’d say that’s about as likely as Frank getting our Ted a job.”
AS APRIL TURNED to May and the wedding came closer, the pace of activity in our house rose to a previously unknown level of frenzy, which, given my mother’s history of frenetic focus, was really quite breathtaking. During the final fortnight before the ceremony, I got the impression that she never really slept. She was working on the wedding when I went to bed and she was working on it every morning when I got up, and it became increasingly common for her to wake me with some noise or disturbance during the night.
Even my father, who was usually pleased when my mother was engaged in some new all-consuming project, was concerned at the ceaseless pace with which she continued to work. “Don’t you think you should take a day off, Evelyn?” he asked her one Sunday afternoon as she sat at her sewing machine in the kitchen, her foot pushed down on the pedal as if she were a racing-car driver in the final stretch. I was standing at the counter, making myself some toast and jam for an afternoon snack. I cringed as my father shouted from the doorway over at my mother. But he had to yell; otherwise she would never have heard him above the roar of the sewing machine’s motor.
“Take a day off?” my mother yelled back, pausing to straighten out the rose-patterned material she’d been pushing under the flash of the sewing-machine needle. “I haven’t got time to take a day off. I’ve got to get these tablecloths finished. And then I’ve got the place mats and serviettes to make. Then there’s the decorations to buy, and the booze to order. I haven’t even got around to finishing the menu. And, of course, I’m going to have to fit in some time to make the wedding cake.”
“But do you have to do it all, Evelyn?” my father said, recoiling as my mother pressed her foot down and the sewing machine roared again. “I mean, can’t we just order the food and the cake? Can’t we get some help from somebody else?” He was shouting at the top of his voice, trying to make himself heard above the sewing machine’s harrowing bawl.
“Somebody else?” My mother lifted her foot from the pedal again and the machine stopped. “Somebody else?” Her voice was high, far more ear-piercing than the sewing machine. “What do you mean, get somebody else?”
As she yelled, I noticed how disheveled she appeared. Her clothes were unwashed, food-splattered and rumpled, her hair stood out in matted greasy lumps. But it was her expression that disturbed me most. Her face was pale and drawn and, except for the dark shadows beneath her eyes, almost without color, while her eyes seemed immensely big and bright. They were filled with such a ferocious energy that, as I regarded her, she made me think of a trapped animal, desperate and possessed by fear.
“I was only trying to help, Ev,” my father said, putting his hands out in front of him as if he were trying to stave my mother off.
“Help? Help?” she shrieked. “Do I look like I need bloody help? Are you saying I can’t manage this on my own?”
“No, but …” My father had started to back away toward the door. I was planning on following him just as soon as I’d finished spreading the jam on my toast.
“Well, then, leave me to get on with this!” she screamed, slamming a fist down on the kitchen table then springing to her feet. “Unless you want me to end up in bloody Delapole again.”
At this, my father flinched and staggered backward, dazed, like a man who had just taken a blow to the chest.
I looked at him, at the overwhelming weariness in his face. Then I looked at my mother, at the way her eyes blazed like tiny infernos, as if there was a fire raging in her head.