Bright Burning Things(58)
I want to place his hand between my legs. I want to rest my head on his shoulder.
36
Three weeks pass, punctuated by my visits with Tommy and my conflicted toying with David, that familiar push-me-pull-you routine, which doesn’t seem to faze him, and which makes me think I may finally have found my match. He doesn’t give much of himself away, except in bed. I ask about his childhood, his work, his ex, but he deflects all my questions all the time. Funny how I’m constantly revising my opinion of him: Mr Sober, Mr Solid, Mr Safe, Mr Slippery, Mr Sexy. He is the perfect candidate for my naming game. Mr S. He is very serious (Mr Serious!) about my recovery, monitoring my attendance at meetings.
As there’s no way I’m going to jeopardise getting Tommy back, I turn up at the meetings, zoning in and out. ‘Take what you like and leave the rest’ – I hear Jimmy’s voice in my head. Sometimes something touches me, pierces my self-absorption, makes me feel part of the human race. Sometimes somebody says something, and I feel that rarest of things: kinship. Usually this relates to the voices in the head, the hypnotic instructions, the addiction to danger, the fuck-you-world attitude. Although no one directly says they see their embodied sidekick, their demented imp, I know they do. I also know this is something there is no shared language for.
As for solutions? The whole ‘I can’t, God can: let him’ thing still feels like a cop-out. Some part of me still believes in willpower, the need for it, to exercise it. And yet I know it’s bigger than weakness, this addiction, it’s bigger than any human force of will. Prayer? I quite like the whole ‘transformational current’ thing Sister Anne floated to me, but I can’t feel the charge, no matter how hard I try. What was the other thing she said? – something about prayer being a link or a bridge between longing and belonging? That’s good too. One to try to grapple with. And God likes good manners. My prayer is that I will never get pissed around my child again. Please and thank you. That is not flippant: I am wrestling with what it means to be a good mother. David says parenting self has to come first. Sister Anne said finding a sense of a loving parent is the only way to be one. God the loving father, the kind mother.
No date has been given for Tommy to come home. How can this be in his best interests? He is becoming increasingly withdrawn and has shown no emotion since his first outburst. He wears his silence like a shield.
It’s my fourth ‘supervised’ visit today. The sky is heavy and low, the light has that milky quality that makes me nauseous. I steady myself outside the building a moment. Fluttering in my chest, my throat.
Inside, the reception is empty and I sit, stand, pace, sit, cross my legs, uncross, cross again, let my hair loose, pull it into a ponytail, open my handbag, slick some gloss on, and then I notice Maureen standing there – how much of that spectacle did she witness? ‘Hello, Sonya. Come with me.’ We walk, out of sync, dead air between us, through the heavily disinfected hallway, painted a brilliant white, smeared with traces of small fingerprints.
‘How are you, Sonya?’ Maureen doesn’t wait for an answer before she plunges on through the list of obligatory questions, then the humiliation of the breathalyser, although she barely looks at the results before saying, ‘We think you’re ready.’
Really… amazing… but what? No… really? The creatures have stirred and are beating their tiny wings against my windpipe. Frantic little fuckers. I place my hand at the base of my throat. How can Maureen know I won’t suffocate Tommy with my need, set the house on fire, white out, black out, blank out, starve him? How can they say I’m ready when I’ve never felt less ready? Exactly the same feeling I’d get just before I’d go on stage, I remind myself, and then I’d be up there, being brilliant. I don’t have to be ‘up’ anywhere, being brilliant, though – just present, just sober, just normal.
‘I see… When?’ My voice is a wheeze.
‘Next week. We need to prepare him, and you, of course.’
Maureen is distracted, already moving on to the next case.
‘Clare has spoken to me about some concerns she has for him, particularly his building obsession with fire. We’ll need to monitor that.’
Obsession. Bit of a histrionic word – even for me. He’s only an almost-five-year-old. What to get him for his birthday? A fire hose? Feel the wrong sort of laughter building. Not now, Sonya, not now.
‘Sonya? Did you hear me?’
‘Of course, Maureen. Thank you for alerting me.’
This ability to manage myself is growing. Like last night with David when I told him we needed to slow things down. All very adult and civilised, and he seemed fine with it. So unlike my usual going cold and withdrawing. Am I learning how to communicate, to connect in a real way with someone who might actually be good for me?
‘Sonya…? We’re letting Tommy go back to you earlier than normal on account of your father. He says he can vouch for you, and that he will keep an eye.’
A pretty waltzing number wafts from the speakers, and I can’t for the life of me fathom what it is. Father would know. My father, who has been in communication with this stranger, but not once in the last three weeks has picked up the phone to me. Has he really promised to ‘look out’ for us? I can see how easy it would be to believe him. I experience a familiar rage, and yet, even if he never shows up in our lives again, he has orchestrated this early homecoming. Perhaps he does, on some level, care, perhaps he carries some buried guilt after all.