Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,159

became bored with teasing her, it tugged the little flag of fabric far upward and swept it away into the black branches of one of the dead elm trees that stood on the other side of the road. There it caught, a beautiful pink pennant, flapping far beyond my mother’s reach.

I SPENT THAT afternoon in bed. All about me I could hear the clatter of my mother’s frantic preparations, and the wind as it shuddered against my window. Sometime in the early afternoon, I heard the familiar growl of the Tuggles delivery van as it entered the driveway and then Mabel’s and Frank’s voices in the hall. Later still, I heard Ted thump about in the bathroom and stomp down the stairs. Then the boom and bellow of male voices until I heard the front door bang, Frank’s and Ted’s laughter as they made their way down the path, the cough of the van’s engine as it started and then chugged off. A little later, I heard my father’s car arrive and then more voices—my mother’s shrill, Mabel’s loud and steady, my father’s a burdened distant drone.

Throughout this, I lay, eyes closed, unmoving. It was nice to be there, I found, weighted down by blankets, swaddled in my body’s warmth. With no one to taunt me, no faces grinning with hungry accusation, I felt safe, half buried, hidden from the dangers of the world. It was comforting, too, to hear the voices, the sounds of life going on without me, knowing that, while I lay there, the world continued on. I wondered now if this was how my mother had felt during all her hibernations in the daytime dusk of her curtained bedroom. If, held in place by the bedclothes, she’d felt protected, soothed by the slow rhythm of her own breathing and the dark walls that kept the passing time at bay. As I listened to her rampaging about the house below me, I realized that her frenzied projects were just another means of giving herself shelter, another barrier to stave off what she feared. I also understood what drove her to it—it was the harshness and unpredictability of everything. While landscaping a garden or planning a wedding were infinitely manageable, life itself was a chaos we could not control.

I had thought it required only willpower. But, in the same way that I knew my father could not will my mother to normality, I knew now that I could not will the same for myself. I had wanted, more than anything, to fit in with Tracey and the Debbies, to shed and leave behind my difference in the same way that a hermit crab might crawl into another shell. But my difference was a thing I held inside me, and I could not simply discard it. I was flawed and terrible and, again, everyone knew it. This time, though, I could not blame my mother. The only person I could blame was me.

“JESSE!” IT WAS EARLY evening and my bedroom door flew open. “Jesse! For God’s sake, what the hell are you doing in bed?” I peered over the top of my blankets to see my mother standing, hands on hips, in the doorway. She was wearing a pair of her paint-spattered overalls, with a headscarf over her hair.

“Leave me alone, I don’t feel very well,” I said, heaving the bedclothes over my head and flopping onto my side.

“Rubbish!” I heard her walk across the room. “Don’t think I’m falling for that, young lady. What, you think you can get out of being a bridesmaid by pretending to be poorly? I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

“I don’t feel very well,” I repeated, my words dull and hot and muffled against the blankets.

“Don’t be so bloody daft. Me and Mabel and your father are working ourselves to the bone for this wedding. It’s bad enough that Ted and Frank have cleared off, never mind you lolling around in bed. We could use your help, young lady. Now come on, get yourself up.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Hah! We’ll see about that,” she said, yanking the bedclothes off me. “Leave me alone,” I said, cradling my head and drawing my knees to my chest.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, grabbing my arm.

“Leave me alone.” My voice was distant, defeated, as I tried to pull away from her grasp.

My mother tightened her grip so that her nails pressed into my flesh. “Look!” she yelled. “If you don’t get yourself out of bed bloody