From the Kitchen of Half Truth (21 page)

I open my eyes and look up at the ceiling, somehow surprised to find myself still lying on my bed. A faint smile comes to my lips, and for the first time in days I feel calm.

***

Ewan has picked the last of the fruit due for harvesting and left it in three Tesco bags outside the kitchen door. I can't see him, but every so often I catch a glimpse of Digger crossing the far end of the garden, so I know he must be down there somewhere. I put the kettle on and make two mugs of strong black coffee before shrugging on the baggy green sweater that my mother keeps by the back door for gardening purposes and then heading outside.

The sky is gray and overcast, promising rain again. Ewan is sitting on an upturned wooden crate with his back to me, eating a handful of blackberries.

“I could charge you for those, you know,” I say as I approach.

He turns with a start and then smiles. I walk toward him across a patch of soil that previously bore rows of lettuce but that today lies bare, the soil freshly dug over. I look around me and see that several patches are in the same state. Naked, stripped of their summer plants, they wait in limbo between one season and the next. I hold out one of the mugs to Ewan, and he looks slightly surprised but takes it.

“How's your mother?” he asks, looking up at me, his face full of concern.

“She's okay. Tired. She's been in bed most of the day. She doesn't remember anything about yesterday. About Gwennie arriving, I mean, and fainting.”

Ewan nods. I wonder if he's going to ask me about Gwennie, about who she was, why my mother was so shocked to see her, what happened after he left, but he doesn't.

Instead he just says, “I hope everything's okay.”

I smile, grateful for this simple, nonintrusive gesture of support. “Thanks.”

Digger trots over to see me and I fondle his ear.

“We saw Mark leaving earlier,” says Ewan. “Unfortunately, I couldn't stop Digger from rushing over to say hello to his old friend. I think Mark will be spending the evening washing muddy paw prints out of his clothes.”

“Well, don't worry,” I say. “You won't be seeing Mark around here again.”

Ewan raises his eyebrows, surprised. “I'm sorry.”

I give him a knowing look. “No, you're not.”

“No, honestly, I am. I mean, if you're upset, then I'm sorry.”

I shake my head. “Actually, it's strange. I'm not nearly as upset as I thought I would be.”

“In that case, I couldn't care less.”

I turn to him, shocked by his bluntness. He flashes me a cheeky half smile, and I almost laugh.

We sip our coffee in silence until Ewan catches me looking around for somewhere to sit and quickly shifts sideways along the wooden crate. I can feel him watching me curiously as I settle myself next to him. He is not used to my being in his presence voluntarily, let alone deliberately sitting down with him. I feel slightly awkward and wonder if he does too, but my mother is in bed asleep, and I don't want to be on my own right now. The crate is small for the two of us, and I try to hold my body at an angle so that there is a little gap between us. We sit looking around us, gazing at the sky, at the orchard, at the barren vegetable patches. I count the holes in the ground that Digger has made. Only five. He's definitely getting better.

“I'm going to fill them in later,” says Ewan, reading my mind.

“I should hope so,” I tell him.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch his hands, covered in grime, clasped around his coffee cup, and his sinewy forearms, tanned and covered with golden-brown hairs. I look at the rip in his grubby jeans, just over the knee, where the skin of his leg just shows through, and at his tatty boots, covered in mud, with laces that don't match.

“Will you tell me a story?” I ask him.

He strokes the top of Digger's head, long, hard strokes that pull the dog's skin back, revealing the white at the top of his eyes. It is some time before he speaks, and in that silence I realize how confused Ewan must be. After the way I have mocked his legends and ridiculed his myths, accused him of having his head in the clouds and scolded him for being a fantasist. And now I have the gall to ask this of him.

“What sort of a story?” he asks finally.

I shake my head. “I don't mind. Anything.”
Anything
, I think,
to
take
me
away
from
here
for
a
while.

Digger lies down by Ewan's feet and settles his head on one of his master's boots as if waiting for him to begin. Ewan gazes thoughtfully at the garden.

“After Zeus had punished Prometheus for giving fire to man,” he begins, “he decided that all humans should be punished for their lack of respect. So he came up with a very cunning plan. He created a woman from clay. The goddess Athena breathed life into the clay, Aphrodite made her very beautiful, and Hermes taught her how to be charming and deceitful. Zeus called her Pandora, and he sent her as a gift to Prometheus's brother, Epimetheus.

“‘Don't trust any gift from Zeus,' Prometheus warned his brother. ‘He is cruel. Think about what he did to me.'

“But Epimetheus had already fallen head over heels in love with Pandora, and so he decided to marry her.

“Zeus was pleased. His trap was working. He gave Pandora a wedding gift of a beautiful box.

“‘But I give you this gift on one condition,' he told her. ‘You must never, ever open the box.'

“Well, every day Pandora wondered what was in that box. She couldn't for the life of her understand why Zeus would keep it a secret. It seemed to make no sense. It drove her crazy, to the point where she couldn't think of anything else except finding out what was inside.

“Finally, Pandora could no longer bear the agony of not knowing. One day, she took the key off the shelf, crept up to the box, carefully fit the key into the lock, and turned it. Slowly, she lifted the lid of the box, holding her breath. ‘What will I find?' she wondered. ‘Perhaps some fine silks, some gold bracelets, or even a large sum of money?'

“But there was no golden treasure. There were no shining bracelets and no fine silks. Pandora's excitement quickly turned to disappointment, and then to horror. Inside were all the evils she could think of. Out of the box poured terrible misery, sadness, anger, and pain, all shaped like tiny buzzing moths. The creatures stung Pandora over and over again, and she slammed the lid shut. Epimetheus ran into the room to find her crying in pain.

“‘Pandora,' he said to her, tending to her stings. ‘Zeus tried to warn you. Why did you have to find out what lay inside that box? Well, now you know. You should never have opened it.'”

Ewan stops and sips his coffee.

I don't know what to say. I feel like I've been slapped in the face. The message of the story is clear: pursue the truth and you might not like what you find. Either way, on your head be it.

Ewan knows what has happened without my saying a word. And this is his message to me? That I have to suffer the consequences of my actions? That I made my bed and now I must lie in it? This isn't the story I wanted. This isn't what I wanted to hear. I feel a lump rise in my throat and prepare to leave.

“But that wasn't the end,” Ewan suddenly begins again, “because Pandora could still hear a voice calling to her from the box, pleading with her to be let out. Epimetheus agreed that nothing inside the box could be worse than the horrors that had already been released, so together they opened the lid once more. And inside they found that something had been left behind.”

Ewan pauses. I turn, watching his profile expectantly. The clouds overhead have parted slightly, bathing us in comforting rays of warm afternoon sunshine. I study the way the golden light illuminates Ewan's eyelashes, the stubble on his chin, his eyebrows, highlighting the contours of his face.

“What was inside?” I ask quietly.

He turns to face me, flecks of amber twinkling in his warm brown eyes. One side of his mouth raises slightly into a smile.

“Hope,” he says.

 

A day comes, all too soon, when my mother can't get out of bed.

“I'll get up in a minute and make us both some breakfast,” she murmurs, pulling the covers closer around her. “What would you like? Perhaps some cinnamon toast? Or some stewed apples?”

“Mother,” I say, about to tell her that it is already two o'clock in the afternoon and that she has missed both breakfast and lunch, but she is already asleep again.

Later, when she still hasn't risen, I offer her soup, toast, fruit, ice cream, tea, juice, but she doesn't want anything.

“I might get up and make myself something in a while,” she says, but she never does.

***

That night she doesn't sleep at all, complaining of an ache in her bones that she puts down to too much exertion recently.

“Perhaps I've overdone it this summer,” she wonders out loud, wincing as she shifts under the covers, trying to get comfortable. Her breathing is labored and wheezy, and she complains that it feels like an elephant is sitting on her chest.

“Do you remember the time that elephant broke through the railings,” she asks, looking up at me with heavy eyes as I adjust her pillow, “in a bid to get to our delicious iced buns?”

“Shhh,” I whisper, gently placing my hand on hers. “Don't.”

***

Dr. Bloomberg comes. He gives her pink pills to stop the pain and blue pills to stop the nausea caused by the pink pills.

“Would you like to stay for dinner, Doctor?” my mother asks, smiling up at him from her bed. Her face is white and her skin has taken on a certain transparency. “There's some lovely stroganoff in the freezer.”

She struggles to push herself up from the pillow, ready to start playing hostess.

“I'm afraid I've just eaten, Valerie,” the doctor says, laying a large hand on her shoulder so that she sinks back down. “Otherwise I wouldn't miss your stroganoff for the world.”

***

“You need to start preparing yourself, Meg,” Dr. Bloomberg tells me gently as we stand in the hallway.

I know what he is saying, but it feels unreal, as if this is a play and we are all actors. Any minute now, I expect the curtain to fall, and when it rises again my mother will run down the stairs and we will all link hands and take a bow amid a flourish of applause.

“As things progress,” says Dr. Bloomberg, lowering his head and peering at me over the top of his spectacles, “there are various options. The hospice is one, although at this stage a hospital might be—”

“She's staying here,” I blurt out immediately.

My mother has always hated hospitals, and it had never even occurred to me that she would die anywhere else but at home, or that anyone else should take care of her other than me.

“It may be hard,” says Dr. Bloomberg, “as she gets worse—”

“She's staying here,” I repeat forcibly.

Dr. Bloomberg frowns, his bushy white eyebrows meeting in the middle. “Meg,” he says slowly and clearly, “if things get bad…”

I hold my hand up to stop him. Okay, okay, I understand. Just don't say it. Don't say that she will be in pain. Don't say that it will be too much to bear.

“I will call as soon as I need someone,” I say quickly to cut him off. “I promise.”

***

“What's the weather like?”

Every time my mother wakes, she asks me this same question.

“It's raining,” I tell her.

“I can't hear the rain,” she says, twisting and straining to try to get a glimpse out of the window.

“It's raining very quietly,” I say.

In fact, it hasn't rained all day, but my mother is such a lover of the great outdoors that I am convinced it would only pain her to know that the sun is shining while she is confined to her bed.

“I've always rather liked the rain,” muses my mother, somewhat undermining my plan. “It's so refreshing on your skin.”

“I can sprinkle you with the watering can if you like,” I suggest.

She laughs, a wheezy, painful laugh, and I laugh too at the very idea of it.

But then she starts to cough, taking in great gulps of air, and within seconds I am holding her as she gasps for breath, her chest rattling like a pinball machine, her body shaking as she hunches over and I rub her back.

“It's okay,” I whisper. “It's okay.”

***

Ewan comes and brings her a tangled, unruly spray of wildflowers with odd names such as toadflax and sneezewort, which my mother finds very amusing.

“They're absolutely beautiful.” She smiles, her eyes lighting up for the first time in ages. “I miss being outdoors in my garden. Have you brought in the last of the tomatoes?”

“Yes, and I've hung them by the kitchen window to ripen,” says Ewan.

“And the basil will need bringing in, won't it?”

“It's good for a few weeks yet.”

“And the onion sets will need planting.”

“Give me a chance, boss!” he laughs. “Anyway, who's the gardener here, you or me?”

“You are, but I'm still in charge. I'll be out there tomorrow checking to see if you've done it all properly,” my mother teases.

Ewan smiles tactfully, knowing just from looking at her that she won't be going anywhere. Simply getting to the bathroom across the hall now requires all the strength and stamina she can muster.

“What's the weather like this evening?” my mother asks him.

“Not bad. Fairly warm,” says Ewan.

She nods, looking sad. I feel my heart aching for her, cooped up here inside.

“This is no good at all,” Ewan says, standing up purposefully and slapping his thigh. “Meg, help me shift that dressing table.”

Ten minutes later, after a lot of pushing and pulling and Ewan repeatedly demanding that I put some muscle into it, the furniture has all been moved and my mother's bed turned a hundred and eighty degrees so that she can now see out of the window, which Ewan has flung wide open despite my protestations about my mother's breathing. Nothing is accessible. The wardrobe doors cannot be opened, the dresser has been abandoned in the middle of the floor, and the chest of drawers now sits out on the landing, but my mother is delighted. She lies with her head propped up on two pillows, her eyes glistening with wonder as she stares out at the sky.

“Now, that's what I call a sunset,” she says with a sigh.

I sit next to her on the bed while Ewan stands nearby with Digger quietly at his side, all four of us gazing in awe at the pink and orange glow that seems to have lit up the world.

“Never forget how beautiful life can be, darling,” says my mother, taking my hand in hers. I give her bony fingers a gentle squeeze and show her my bravest smile.

“I won't, I promise.”

***

The evening we watch the sunset, Digger refuses to leave with Ewan. Instead the scruffy dog sits by the side of my mother's bed, cocking his head to one side and looking baffled as Ewan whispers to him from the doorway, “Come on, boy. Come along.”

My mother has fallen asleep, her hand hanging out from underneath the covers. Digger sniffs her fingers and gives them a gentle lick, letting out a small whine before settling himself down on the carpet. He has made himself perfectly clear: he is here for the long haul.

For the next week he stays, only reluctantly leaving my mother's side when I insist on dragging him out for a walk tied to piece of string. The rest of the time he lies quietly on her bed, allowing her to brush him gently with an old hairbrush. After three days, he looks like a completely different dog. His matted, straggly fur is now smooth and shiny, and with all the dust having been brushed out, it looks at least a couple of shades lighter. My mother claims that next year she will enter him into a dog show under the name Horatio, which she thinks is far more fitting for such a handsome dog.

***

On Fridays and Wednesdays Ewan comes as usual, letting himself in the back gate and getting straight down to a couple hours' work in the garden. When he is done, he comes to the house and knocks quietly on the back door in case my mother is asleep. He hands me tins of dog food from his van and removes his muddy boots before padding up the stairs in threadbare socks to see Digger, who wags his tail furiously against the mattress but never leaves my mother's side.

From downstairs I can hear Ewan's voice, slow and deep, and I know that he is telling my mother tales of gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, as he sits by her side. He moves the TV from the kitchen into her bedroom, spending nearly an hour fiddling with electric cables and antennas, so she can watch all her favorite cooking programs. He makes her herbal teas that fill the house with the scent of sage, peppermint, dandelion, and chamomile and that ease her pain better than the pink and blue pills combined. He hands me a flier for half-price pizza, on the back of which he has scrawled the preparation instructions for various concoctions. He also hands me a large bag of leaves, which I spend ages identifying with the aid of a gardening book rather than calling him to admit that I don't know my milk thistle from my rosehip.

***

As usual, whenever Ewan is working in the garden, I take him his mug of coffee. There are no homemade delicacies to accompany it now, no apple strudel or fudge cake, just a plate of cookies if he's lucky and I've remembered to pick some up from Tesco. The day I approach him empty-handed and announce that the kettle has just boiled, he looks quizzically at my empty hands.

“Well, I don't see why I should keep trudging down here to serve you,” I say. “You've got legs; you can come to the house and have it.”

Ewan stares at me as if I am someone he doesn't quite recognize while I turn and walk back up the path, my face strangely hot, my stomach knotted, wondering if he will follow me. When I hear the clatter of his spade being dropped on the ground and then the sound of his boots on the grass, I smile to myself, feeling relieved.

***

“You look dreadful,” says Ewan as I sit opposite him at the kitchen table.

“Thanks. You're such a flatterer.”

“Sorry.” He smiles. “That came out wrong. I just meant you look really tired.”

I rub my eyes, feeling like I could fall asleep right here and now. “I'm fine,” I tell him.

Ewan stuffs a whole cookie in his mouth and shakes his head.

“Liar,” he mumbles, crumbs stuck to his lips.

He's right, of course, I'm not fine at all. I'm not eating. I'm not sleeping. I am desperately trying not to think about the past, telling myself that now is not the time, that I have to concentrate on caring for my mother, but every time I look at her gaunt face, Gwennie's words come flooding back, filling me with all kinds of conflicting thoughts and questions and feelings. One moment I want to track down the people who wronged my mother and tear them limb from limb, and the next I just want to curl into a ball and pretend none of it is real. One minute I want to tell my mother that it's okay, that I know the truth, that she doesn't have to pretend anymore, and the next I want to shake her and tell her that this isn't fair, that she can't just leave me, not now, not on my own. I want to scream, but I need to be composed; I want to weep, but I need to be strong. I am so tired and so confused, and there is only one thing I am sure of: I need to keep it together, because I am all she has.

“I just don't know what to do to make things better,” I tell Ewan. “I feel so useless.”

Even as the words tumble out of my mouth, I want to grab them and stuff them back in, to say that I'm actually fine, I know what I'm doing, everything's under control. But I am just so tired that I don't have the energy to pretend.

“You're doing great,” Ewan says encouragingly.

“But sometimes I just don't know what to say to her,” I admit sadly. “When I see her sick and in pain…what can I say to help make that better?”

Ewan shrugs and stares into his coffee. “Maybe you just have to be with her. Perhaps there's nothing you can say.”

I don't tell him that every time I open my mouth to speak I am terrified of what might come spilling out, how a million questions are now constantly on the tip of my tongue, how I hush my mother each time she starts to tell a story of the past, acutely aware of the painful truth that lurks behind the lies. I don't tell him about how everything has changed, about how it now takes all my effort to see my mother as the same vibrant, positive, and slightly eccentric woman I have always known instead of someone who is bruised and broken. I don't tell him that now, when I finally know her better than I ever have before, she sometimes feels like a stranger. I don't tell him, because it is too hard to admit these things even to myself, let alone to somebody else.

“If you can't think of anything to say, perhaps try telling her a story. I know she loves that. I think it takes her away from it all.”

“I couldn't,” I say adamantly. “I wouldn't know where to begin.”

“It doesn't matter where you begin. It's where you go that's important.”

I shake my head, although he's probably right. I know how much my mother loves it when Ewan tells her tales of dragons and gods and whatever else he babbles on about, and in the middle of the night when she can't sleep, I sometimes long for something to soothe her. But telling stories, that's just not me.

“I can't. I'm no good at things like that. I couldn't do all that imaginary make-believe stuff. Fairies and magic kingdoms and romance. I just can't.”

“Sure you can. Look, I'll give you an opening line and you just say whatever comes into your head. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”

Ewan pauses and looks at me expectantly. I feel like an awkward teenager who has just been shoved in front of a room full of relatives and ordered to dance for everyone's amusement. I just know I'm going to mess it up and make a fool of myself, but if it might help my mother, I am willing to give it a go. I open my mouth to speak, but my mind is completely blank.