Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,20
mouth. “First things first, after all.”
I only hoped my father was up to it. He’d never been particularly good with heights and wouldn’t even take me on the big wheel at Hull Fair because he said it made him dizzy. I had a difficult time imagining him scrambling over the steep slate roof, but I didn’t want to be too negative, so I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging smile.
“And you’ll have to do your part, our Jesse.”
“Me?” I was thrilled, visualizing myself scrabbling over the tiles beside him, looking out over the fields like I was on top of the world.
“Yes—I need you to keep an eye on your mother for me while I’m busy. We wouldn’t want her to … well, we’ve seen enough problems already without another little episode, if you know what I mean.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked. “I can’t stop her from doing anything.” I felt the panic rising.
My father reached over and patted me on the head. “Just look out for her, that’s all. I mean, it’ll not be for long, love. You’ll see, she’ll soon be right as rain.”
“She will?” More than anything, I wanted to believe him.
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR A WEEK OR SO, I SAT AROUND THE HOUSE TRYING TO FOLLOW MY father’s instructions and watch over my mother. I wanted to help him, but just the idea of it made me feel overwhelmed. What was I supposed to do? Keep her away from the kitchen knives? Guard the door so she couldn’t run out and throw herself under the wheels of one of the stray vehicles that passed by our house? There seemed to be so many ways that she could try to kill herself if she wanted. I looked at an electrical cord and wondered if she could use it to hang herself from the banister, took a bottle of Domestos from under the kitchen sink and imagined her swigging it back, the thick, bleachy liquid making the same glug-glug-glug sound when it went down her throat as it did when I poured it into the sink. I looked at my father’s hammer and wondered if it was possible to beat yourself to death, picked up one of my mother’s scarves and wondered if you could strangle yourself. Almost everything around me became a potential instrument of death.
Thankfully, she remained relatively unperturbed, and I wondered if the little yellow pills my father now rationed out to her each day were responsible for this unfamiliar calm. My mother complained that it was treating her like a child to give her medicine to her in small, daily doses. But my father just responded to these protests with “Doctor’s orders, Evelyn, doctor’s orders.” I got the impression that he’d been given strict instructions not to let my mother near any large amount of medication. It was probably for this same reason, I’d deduced, that just before my mother’s return an ancient bottle of aspirin and a dusty bottle of cough syrup had been removed from the medicine cabinet and my father had stopped leaving his razor blades in the bathroom.
One Thursday, a little over a week after the move, I spent the morning watching television, creeping upstairs periodically to sneak into my parents’ bedroom, standing over my sleeping mother and holding my own breath until I could detect the slow and steady rise of hers. The fourth time I found myself there, I heard the loud and repeated toot of a horn. It was coming from just outside the house. Afraid that it would wake my mother and she’d find me there, I tiptoed quickly down the stairs. As the horn sounded again, I opened the front door and saw that a large blue van had pulled into our driveway and a woman was leaning out the window on the driver’s side. “I’m not stopping here all day, you know!” she yelled. “If you want to join up, you’d better get yourself over here sharp.”
I was about to ask her what it was that I was supposed to be joining when I saw the words COUNTY LIBRARY painted on the side of the van. I was relieved to realize that though Midham might not have much going for it, it did have a mobile library.
I bolted out the door. When I reached the back door of the van, the woman opened it up, popped out a set of metal stairs, and I walked inside.