My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(102)

“Are you new here, by any chance?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” the nurse thunders. “No visitors today!” she snaps with absolute certainty before spinning around and marching back into Mum’s room.

Dad and Elsa stay where they are, patiently waiting and nodding, because they suspect this will sort itself out. For Mum may be Mum, but she is also Granny’s daughter. Remember the man in the silver car, just before Elsa was born? No one should mess with Mum when she’s giving birth.

It takes maybe thirty seconds before the corridor reverberates until the pictures on the wall are practically rattling.

“BRING MY DAUGHTER IN HERE BEFORE I THROTTLE YOU WITH THE STETHOSCOPE AND LEVEL THE HOSPITAL TO THE GROUND, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

Thirty seconds was considerably longer than Elsa and Dad thought it would take. But in probably no more than another three or four seconds, Mum adds another roar:

“I COULDN’T GIVE A SHIT! I’LL FIND A STETHOSCOPE SOMEWHERE IN THIS HOSPITAL AND THEN I’LL THROTTLE YOU WITH IT!”

The nurse steps out into the corridor again. She doesn’t look quite as self-assured anymore. The doctor that Elsa thought she recognized turns up behind her and says in a friendly voice that they can “probably make an exception this time.” He smiles at Elsa. Elsa inhales determinedly and steps over the threshold.

Mum has tubes everywhere, all over her body. They hug as hard as Elsa dares without accidentally pulling one of them out. She imagines that one of them may be an electrical power cable, and that Mum will go out like a light if that happens. Mum repeatedly runs her hand through Elsa’s hair.

“I am so very, very sorry about your friend the wurse,” she says gently.

Elsa sits in silence for so long on the edge of her bed that her cheeks dry and she has time to think about an entirely new way of measuring time. This whole thing with eternities and the eternities of fairy tales is becoming a bit unmanageable. There must be something less complicated—blinking, for example, or the beating of a hummingbird’s wings. Someone must have thought about this. She’s going to Wikipedia it when she gets home.

She looks at Mum, who looks happy. Elsa pats her hand. Mum grabs on to it.

“I know I’m not a perfect mum, darling.”

Elsa puts her forehead against Mum’s forehead.

“Not everything has to be perfect, Mum.”

They sit so close that Mum’s tears run down the tip of Elsa’s nose.

“I work so much, darling. I used to be so angry at your grandmother for never being home, and now I’m just the same myself. . . .”

Elsa wipes both their noses with her Gryffindor scarf.

“No superheroes are perfect, Mum. It’s cool.”

Mum smiles. Elsa as well.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course you can,” says Mum.

“How am I like your father?”

Mum looks hesitant. As mums get when they are accustomed to being able to predict their daughters’ questions, and then suddenly find they were wrong about that. Elsa shrugs.

“From Granny I have the thing about being different. And I’m a know-it-all like Dad, and I always end up rowing with everyone, which I have from Granny. So what do I have from your dad? Granny never told me any stories about him.”

Mum can’t quite bring herself to answer. Elsa breathes tensely through her nose. Mum lays her hands on Elsa’s cheeks and Elsa dries Mum’s cheeks with the Gryffindor scarf.

“I think she talked about your grandfather without your noticing,” whispers Mum.

“How am I like him, then?”

“You have his laugh.”

Elsa retracts her hands into her sweater. And slowly swings the empty sleeves in front of her.

“Did he laugh a lot?”

“Always. Always, always, always. That was why he loved your grandmother. Because she got him to laugh with every bit of his body. Every bit of his soul.”

Elsa climbs up next to Mum in the hospital bed and lies there for probably a billion wingbeats of a hummingbird. “Granny wasn’t a complete shit. She just wasn’t not a complete shit either,” she says.

“Elsa! Language!” And then Mum laughs out loud. Elsa as well. Grandfather’s laugh.

And then they lie there talking about superheroes for quite a while. Mum says now that Elsa has become someone’s big sister, she has to bear in mind that big sisters are always idols to their younger siblings. And it’s a great power to have. A great force.

“And with great power comes great responsibility,” whispers Mum.

Elsa sits bolt upright in the bed.

“Have you been reading Spider-Man?!”

“I Googled him,” Mum says with a proud grin.

And then all the guilty feelings rush over her face. As they do with mothers who have realized that the time has come to reveal a great secret.

“Elsa . . . my darling . . . the first letter from Grandmother. It wasn’t you who got it. There was another letter before yours. Grandmother gave it to me. The day before she died. . . .”

Mum looks as if she’s standing on the edge of a high diving board with everyone watching and has just decided she can’t go through with it.

But Elsa just nods calmly, shrugs, and pats Mum on the cheek, as you do with a small child who has done wrong because it doesn’t know any better.