Another Life Altogether (17 page)

I laughed, too, but it was cautious, soft-edged, and went no further than my throat. “Let me see,” I said, leaning over Tracey’s shoulder, wanting to read the words for myself.

“No.” She pushed me away and continued reading. “‘Last week, when I told her how I felt, she responded by kissing me.’” She burst into a fit of uncontrollable giggles.

I watched, irritated by her laughter, uneasy but not quite sure why. “Go on,” I said, nudging her. “Finish the letter.”

Tracey sputtered out another laugh before taking a deep breath and continuing with difficulty. “‘I just don’t know what to do. My husband
and I don’t have a bad marriage, and we have two delightful young children. But I just can’t stop thinking about my friend. Do you think I’m a lesbian?’” At this, Tracey began to laugh so loudly that even my father looked at us for a moment, frowning, shrugging, and then turning away.

I wasn’t laughing nearly as hard as Tracey, and after a few moments I stopped to mull over the letter. I’d heard the word “lesbian” before, yelled at girls in the school corridors, girls who were unpopular, girls like me that none of the boys liked. And sometimes, when two girls walked arm in arm across the playground or played with each other’s hair in the classroom, boys would goad them with “lesby-friends, lesby-friends,” as if touching each other somehow tainted them, as if that was the worst thing they could be. I knew lesbians were girls who didn’t like boys, that they liked girls instead, but up until that moment I’d never really thought that they actually existed.

“What does the answer say?” I asked, trying to tug the magazine from Tracey. I wanted to read the response. Would the woman be told to put a stop to her thoughts, to stop seeing her friend? Would she be told that her impulses were unnatural, that she needed to confess them to a doctor or a priest?

“No,” Tracey said, tugging back. “I’ll read it.”

“You can’t, you’re laughing too much.” She was doubled up, tears streaming down her face. I could feel my irritation turning to anger. It really wasn’t that funny.

“No, I can, just give me a minute.” She took a deep breath and wiped away her tears in an effort to compose herself. “‘Dear Confused,’” she began. Then, looking solemn, she dropped the magazine to her lap. “Yeah, she is confused, all right. Confused and bloody queer. Can you imagine that, kissing a woman?” She slapped the page and contorted her face into an expression of disgust. “Yuck. She needs to be put away. It’s repulsive.”

I nodded, a quick, soft bob of my head.

“Revolting,” Tracey added. “Sick, sick, sick.”

I felt my chest tighten and my stomach knot up, as if my torso were
a rag being twisted and squeezed. “Let’s read what the answer says,” I said, making a grab for the magazine.

“What are you two up to?” My mother entered the living room carrying a tray loaded with teacups, saucers, and a plate of fairy cakes.

Tracey and I scrambled to close the pile of magazines we had strewn across the settee and tossed them onto the coffee table. “Nothing. You want a hand with that tray, Mum?” I leaped up and took the tray from her while Tracey straightened up the pile of magazines.

“Thank you, darling,” my mother said as I began placing cups in their saucers. Then, looking at my father, she commented acidly, “Nice to see someone around here can manage to lift a finger to help.”

My father didn’t pay her any attention. He was sitting on the edge of his seat, watching as one of the wrestlers sat astride the chest of his opponent and the referee pointed down at them and counted steadily to ten. “One-a, two-a, three-a, four-a …”

“Well, you can stop watching this bloody rubbish for a start,” my mother declared, marching over to the television and turning it off. The wrestlers flickered, then disappeared to a white dot in the middle of the screen.

“Aw, bloody hell, Evelyn,” my father protested. “I was watching that.” He thrust himself backward into his chair, expelling air from his mouth like a punctured tire.

“Well, you’re not now, are you?” my mother replied, standing defiantly in front of the television, hands on her hips. “Show some respect, can’t you? We’re visitors.”

“God,” he huffed. “Anybody would think we’d dropped in on the lord mayor or something. It’s only your Mabel.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? My family not good enough for you?” She folded her arms across her chest now. “It’s all right when your father treats me like rubbish, isn’t it?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Evelyn.”

“Don’t you ‘for God’s sake’ me,” she said, waving her index finger toward him. “I know you think you’re better than me. But you’re not,
you know. Despite what that sodding father of yours has to say, you’re not.” Her voice began to break, and I was afraid that she was going to burst into tears in front of Tracey. “And I don’t care if he’s on his bloody deathbed next time we’re supposed to go round. I’m never going to visit that nasty old bugger again.”

“Mum,” I said, desperate not to let things deteriorate any further. “Why don’t I pour you a nice cup of tea? You don’t want to get upset in front of Auntie Mabel, do you? It’d be a shame to spoil your time here. I mean, you haven’t seen her in ages.”

Much to my relief, she gasped a couple of deep breaths and took a seat on the settee next to Tracey and me. “Thanks, darling,” she said as I handed her a cup of tea. Then, turning to Tracey, she said, “I only hope you’re as nice to your mother, Tracey, as Jesse is to me. She’s a saint sometimes, she really is.”

A few minutes later, Mabel made her entrance. Reeking of hair spray and perfume, she wore a fluorescent orange sundress, her makeup now carefully applied, her hair a big shiny brown helmet on her head. On her feet she wore a pair of red wedge-heeled slippers decorated with fluffy pompons. “Here I am, back to the land of the living,” she beamed. “Ooh, pour us a cuppa, would you, Jesse, love?”

“Here you are, Auntie Mabel,” I said, handing her a cup of tea just the way she liked it—the cup almost half filled with milk, three heaping spoonfuls of sugar stirred into it.

“You’ve made me a very happy woman, darling, you really have,” she said, after taking her first sip and sinking back into the armchair. “Now all I need is a fag and I’ll be able to die in peace.” She jostled a cigarette out of the packet of Benson & Hedges she had been carrying and popped it into her mouth.

“Yes, well, you might not die so peaceful if you end up with lung cancer,” my mother muttered grimly.

“Anybody ever tell you you’re a right bloody killjoy, Evelyn?” Mabel asked, lighting the cigarette, throwing her head back, and blowing a column of blue smoke toward the ceiling.

“My uncle Desmond died of a heart attack,” chirped Tracey, leaning forward to take a fairy cake. “My dad said it was because he smoked. I was only little when it happened. He was thirty-four,” she said, biting into the sponge so that her words came out thick and crumbs sputtered from her mouth.

“Oh, that’s terrible. And so young,” my mother said, shaking her head sympathetically, then turning to Mabel. “See, I told you, if you don’t watch it you’ll be popping your clogs before you see the other side of forty. And let’s face it, Mabel, that’s not that long off for you, now, is it?”

“If I’d known you were going to come round and cheer me up like this, I wouldn’t have bothered opening the door.”

“Pardon me, I was only trying to help you improve your health,” my mother said haughtily.

“Well, don’t bloody bother.” Mabel took a long drag of her cigarette and exhaled, loudly. “I mean, everybody’s got to have some pleasures in life. Even you, Evelyn.”

My mother huffed and wrapped her arms tightly around her chest, taking a sudden interest in the slightly askew print of a buxom parlor maid above the mantel, the puppy calendar behind the television, the velvet painting of Blackpool Tower above Mabel’s head.

“Did you make these fairy cakes?” Tracey asked, stuffing another one into her mouth, chewing as she spoke. “They’re very nice, Mrs….” Her voice trailed off as she realized that no one had briefed her on how to correctly address Auntie Mabel.

Mabel opened her mouth to respond, but my mother interjected. “Mabel doesn’t bake,” she said derisively, as if she spent hours each week in the kitchen virtuously turning out delicious homemade delicacies. “Doesn’t cook, either. And she’s not a Mrs. She’s a Miss. A spinster, really, right, Mabel?”

Mabel responded by shaking her head slowly and taking another drag on her cigarette. I sank lower into the settee while Tracey, still apparently unperturbed by any of the tensions around her, munched on
another fairy cake. I was relieved that she seemed so unaffected. If our friendship could survive this particular family outing, there really was a chance that she’d stay friends with me for a lot longer.

“For a skinny lass, you can’t half put those things away,” Mabel commented. “Or maybe you store it all in them shoes of yours, eh?” She laughed, gesturing toward the towering platform heels on Tracey’s sandals. “What do you think, Ev, maybe I should get myself a pair? Now, that’d be a lark, staggering around in them!”

“You’d look like mutton dressed as lamb,” my mother said flatly.

Mabel said nothing. We sat in silence for a few moments, the only sound Tracey’s chewing. Finally, my father, who had been making a concentrated study of his feet for the past few minutes, shifted in his armchair. “Mind if I put the wrestling on, Mabel?” he asked.

“No, no, you go ahead, Mike,” she answered. “To tell you the truth, I don’t mind watching the wrestling myself. Don’t mind doing it every now and again, either,” she added, waggling her eyebrows. Tracey and I laughed along with her, but my mother, who was now busy glaring daggers over at my father, ignored her comments. “Oh, come on, Ev,” Mabel said. “Cheer up, for God’s sake. You look as miserable as sin. What have you been doing to her out there in the country, Mike?”

“What?” My father had already turned on the television and slumped back into his chair. He was staring intently at the screen, where a man wearing a black mask and built like a small tank was body slamming his opponent, a rather more slender gentleman dressed in Union Jack shorts. The crowd around the ring was booing and hissing frantically.

“Oh, never mind,” Mabel said, waving him away. Then to my mother, “Men, they’re all the same. Put them in front of a telly and they go into a trance. They’re like kids really, aren’t they? But at least it keeps them quiet for a while. Leaves us girls to have a conversation by ourselves, eh?” She beamed hopefully at my mother. “So, how are you keeping out there, then, Ev?” she asked, crushing her cigarette in one of the half-dozen ashtrays that ornamented the room. “Like it, do you?”

My mother shrugged. “Could be worse, I suppose.”

“Dad’s decorating the house and Mum’s doing the garden, aren’t you, Mum?” I said. “You should come out and visit us, Auntie Mabel. We could have you over for tea.”

“Ooh, I don’t know, darling. I’m not used to traveling that far. It was bad enough when they moved me out of my old house and onto this bloody estate. Felt like they’d sent me to the end of the world, it did. I’d be even more out of my element visiting you in the country. I’d probably go into shock seeing all them trees and fields.”

“It’s really not that far,” I said.

“We’ll see, love,” she answered. “We’ll see.” She paused for a moment, then her face lit up. “Oh, Ev, I almost forgot. I’ve got a right bit of news for you, I have. Actually, I suppose it’s more than a bit of news. This’ll knock your socks off, will this.”

“What?” my mother asked, frowning.

“Well, I only found out yesterday myself. And I was going to ring you, but I was on my way out when I got the news and then, well, as you probably guessed, I had a bit of a night on the town last night. So, what with one thing and another, it’s probably just as well you dropped round, because given the state of my head today I might’ve forgotten to ring you.”

“What?” my mother said impatiently. “What’s the news?”

“It’s Mam. She phoned me from Australia. She’s getting married! To that fella Bill she’s been hanging about with. Used to own a factory or something like that. According to Mam, he’s loaded with money. Hey, Evelyn, do you think he’ll pay our tickets over to Australia for the wedding?”

“Married? She’s getting married?”

“That’s what she said. They haven’t set a date yet. But they’re going to do it next year, in the summer, probably—which is their winter for some reason, though I have to say I’ve never been able to work that one out.”

“Why did she ring you?” my mother asked. “I mean, if she’s getting married, then the least she could do is tell both her daughters.”

“I don’t know, Ev. Maybe she didn’t have your new number.”

“I sent it to her. Wrote it plain as day for her in one of my letters.”

“It’s expensive to make those overseas calls, you know, Ev. And she did tell me to pass the good news on to you as soon as I could. It’s my fault I didn’t ring you yesterday. But, like I said, I was on my way out and I—”

“That’s not the point,” my mother interrupted.
“She
should have told me.
She
should have told me that she’s hitching herself to a bloke over there. That she’s planning on stopping in Australia, that she’s never coming back. To England. To her home. To her family!” And, with that, my mother leaped up from the settee and made a hurried exit from the room.

We heard her as she scurried up the stairs, apparently making her way to the bathroom. Then we heard a loud scream and her thundering steps as she turned tail and ran downstairs again, this time moving so fast that it sounded as if she stumbled several times before finally making it to the ground floor.

“Ooh, heck,” Mabel said, rapidly firing up another cigarette before my mother burst into the room.

“Mabel!” My mother was white as a sheet, her eyes as wide as saucers.

“What, Ev?” Mabel asked, attempting to look coy. “Something wrong?”

“I found a naked man in your bathroom.”

Tracey and I turned to each other, hiding gleeful expressions behind our hands. A smile tugged at Mabel’s lips, but she managed to suppress it. “You did?” she asked with exaggerated innocence.