Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,16
chatter of the radio coming from one of the upstairs bedrooms, the cheery announcer, and then the smooth gurgling of a Perry Como song. “Moon River, wider than a mile, I’m crossing you in style some day….” I trudged cautiously up the stairs, stumbling on the uneven carpet, feeling my way along the banister with my fingers. When I reached my parents’ bedroom, the door was closed. I pushed it open and stepped inside. The curtains were pulled shut. I could barely see anything. For a few moments I stood still, the satiny voice of Perry Como filling the emptiness. Then, as my eyes got used to the dark, I was able to make out the outline of my mother’s body in the bed, the blankets pulled up to her chin and her head resting on a single, flat pillow.
“Mum,” I said, venturing toward her. “Mum, are you all right? Are you feeling poorly?” She said nothing, nor did she move. Her face was a perfect mask of stillness. “Mum?” I said again, my voice shaky. I wondered if she was sleeping, but I couldn’t imagine her being able to do so with the radio right there on the bedside table so close to her head. My anxiety blossomed into panic, and I had an overwhelming fear that she had somehow died since I had left her that morning. “Mum,” I said, leaning over to shake her shoulder beneath the blankets. “Mum. Wake up.” Her body felt loose, without will or substance under my grip. “Mum.” Tears were running down my cheeks now, burning against skin that was still raw from when I had cried earlier on the way home. Still, she didn’t respond. And then I remembered the film I had watched the other night, the one my mother had sobbed and sniffled at when the heroine collapsed and the doctor put his head against her chest, listened for her heartbeat, then pulled away shaking his head. I wiped my eyes on the scratchy woolen sleeve of my duffle coat and clambered onto the bed. Then I leaned over her, pressing my ear against the blankets that covered her chest. I couldn’t hear anything, so I pressed my head harder against her.
“For God’s sake, get off me, can’t you?” Suddenly she sat up, shoving me away and pushing me to the floor. I landed, dazed, my legs splayed out in front of me. I sat there for a moment before scrambling to lift my head and peer over the bed.
“I thought you were dead,” I said. “I was listening for your heartbeat.”
“Dead, eh? Yes, well, I might as well be.” She flopped back onto the bed again and pulled the blankets all the way over her head.
After that, it became a regular occurrence to arrive home and find the house dark, the syrupy thick melodies of those Radio 2 songs emanating from upstairs, my mother, lying weighted under heavy blankets, still as a corpse in her frigid room. I got the impression she spent most of her days like that, and it wasn’t long before she stopped bothering to get up in the mornings to see my father off to work and me off to school. She sometimes got out of bed, trudging down the stairs in her yellow flannelette nightgown, dark circles under her eyes, her hair sculpted in strange and angular shapes. She never said much during these visits while my father made nervous jokes about his terrible cooking. I’d sit in a corner of the kitchen, noticing how my mother seemed each day more removed, her gestures more loose and weary. My father could barely get her to respond to his questions, never mind laugh at his jokes. She regarded us both with distant, apathetic looks, as if our voices were nothing more than the background music that came constantly from the radio in her bedroom.
It was Mabel who was finally able to coax my mother out of this utter listlessness. She arrived one evening while my father was hunched over the cooker, stirring obsessively at a pan of Heinz baked beans with pork sausages. He’d burned our previous two meals beyond any redemption, and as a result we’d dined on toast and marmalade; tonight he seemed desperate to make dinner without mishap. Mabel swept into the kitchen in a choking vapor of perfume and cigarette smoke, dropped her massive handbag onto the kitchen table, and took in the chaos.