Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,157
“Mind you, it wouldn’t surprise me if your mother rented out a couple of performing elephants, a gang of clowns, and a troupe of trapeze artists. Heck, maybe we’ll even have a ten-bloody-cannon salute when the bride and groom make their vows. To be honest, I’m just glad it’s Frank and not me that’s having to pay for all of it. I know she’s always a bit over the top when she does things, but this”—he took a slow, sweeping look around the room—“it takes the bloody biscuit, does this. Honestly, I don’t know why I bothered doing up this kitchen—you can’t see any of it for all the bloody crap she’s put everywhere.” He sighed. “But at least the hall and the living room still look nice, eh? Your mam might have got done all the bedrooms, but I did a nice job of the downstairs.” He smiled, but it quickly faded and he let out a long-suffering sigh, his shoulders sinking so that he seemed to melt into his chair. “I know your mam has poured her heart and soul into this wedding. And, frankly, I’m a bit nervous about the whole bloody thing. For both our sakes, Jesse,” he said, looking at me, anguish gripping his features, “I just hope everything goes all right. Otherwise …” His eyes drifted to the window, through which we could see my mother, her face a brighter and streakier orange after apparently applying another treatment of Tanfastic, staggering under a stack of metal folding chairs as she carried them across the lawn. “Well, let’s just say I’ll be glad when tomorrow is over and things can get back to normal again.”
“Dad,” I said, ignoring the temptation to grab my father by the shoulders, shake him, and demand when, exactly, he thought things had ever been normal in our house. “I really need a lift to school. I’ve missed my bus. Please, will you take me?”
He shook out his paper, swept the pages together, then folded it in half and slapped it down on the table. “I suppose so. But you’d better get back upstairs and get yourself dressed. I haven’t got all day, you know.”
I DID NOT WANT to go to school. It was, in fact, the last place I wanted to be that morning. Were it not for my desperation to retrieve my satchel and my letters, I would happily have hidden under my blankets. Like my mother in one of her bad patches, I could easily have spent my day in bed. But I was driven now by a desperate urgency, and as I dressed, then launched myself downstairs to follow my father out the door, I felt that I was on a mission to save myself.
Though the fact that I was late for school made me more anxious, I was relieved that I didn’t have to face Tracey at the bus stop and could sweep instead along the winding road to Liston Comprehensive in the safety of my father’s car. It was a cool morning, and, though it was sunny, a brisk breeze had painted high clouds in delicate brushstrokes against an otherwise startling blue sky. I leaned my head against the car window and looked at the vivid landscape while I let the tart tones of the BBC radio announcers wash over me, along with my father’s occasional snorts and mumbled responses. There were reports of war and protests, bombs and riots, strikes and strife. Listening, I was struck by the realization that these were not just stories of distant places; they were the actual facts of people’s lives. For a moment, my anguish for myself melded with all the anguish found elsewhere, so that it seemed that I held that roiling world inside me, all those struggles to survive. It made me think of my mother—of her flailing desperation, the way she so often seemed on the verge of going under, and then how she’d somehow tap that fiery well of energy she held within her to soar upward, like a bird discovering its wings. In those glorious times, when she was pouring herself into some project or hobby, she did not care what anyone else might think of her; the only world she lived in was her own. As the car sped along the road and my dread churned at the prospect of my feelings for Amanda being discovered, for the first time that I could remember I found myself envying my mother. Consumed with