Rising (Blue Phoenix, #4)(76)

What sort of a person doesn’t visit his dying mother?





Chapter Thirty-One



Jem



A tense morning with Ruby isn’t the best start to a day that’s going to be a test of the new life I’m trying to hang onto. Another night unable to sleep hasn’t helped either. Ruby’s interfering, asking me what’s wrong. Since when did we go back to the ‘talking about how we feel’ crap? Everything has been discussed and dealt with, why rehash? Ruby’s not coming into my safe place. This has pissed her off because breakfast again involved slamming around of cups and bowls, and silence. I left without saying goodbye and hope she’s in a better mood tonight.

The hospice is in Reading, a short drive from London; but I intend to make it there and back in one day. If I do, I can pretend to myself it never happened.

Sure, Jem.

Since Marie contacted me a couple of weeks ago, the walls between my childhood memories and reality have crumbled. She left when I was twelve, and I haven’t seen my mum since. I vowed to myself I would never see her again or allow myself to be hurt on that level by anyone else.

Is there any bigger hurt in the world than not being good enough for your own mother? A part of me yells Ruby would understand, her mum left too; but I can’t talk to her about this. I just can’t.

Each rehab stay, a counsellor has attempted to get me to open up and acknowledge the power this has over me still. I’m not f-ucking stupid, I know I’m screwed up by my childhood; but ripping open that wound isn’t helpful when my stability is shaky in recovery. So, I refuse. The past should be buried. Forgotten. Over.

So why the f-uck has the past become my present?

As I sit in the car, outside the single-storey building, I stare at the gardens full of yellow and white rose bushes that I bizarrely notice match the ones in my garden. I’m dragged back to memories of helplessness, and confusion, of wounds piercing so deeply the damage severed my nerves and left me unable to feel again. Recently this has changed because Ruby crosses my mind; the irritation over this morning’s argument includes a small part of wishing I was with her instead. I shake the thought away. See? I’m allowing in emotion and here’s a reminder of why I shouldn’t.

I don’t have any pictures of my mother, only the suppressed memories of her long, curly brown hair and a vague recollection of her face. Besides that, nothing. She wasn’t a hugging mum, but at least she didn’t hit me around like the guy she walked away with.

The middle-aged nurse in the hospice recognises me straightaway, of course, but doesn’t make a deal out of it and leads me along a carpeted hallway. The yellow furnishings and watercolour pictures dominating the building don’t hide the institutional smell of the place. Not as bad as a hospital, but uncomfortably reminiscent of rehab centres.

The nurse knocks on the door of a room at the end of a bright hallway and informs the woman inside that I’m here, before smiling encouragingly and leaving.

Fourteen years.

I step inside. This woman doesn’t have curly brown hair; hers is short. Cancer patient short. Her sallow skin and frail frame shock me. The woman from my memories doesn’t match the person sitting in the high backed armchair by the bed. She could be anybody. This isn’t my mum.

But she is. Her eyes are my mum’s; they must be because they look like mine, eyes brimming with tears she doesn’t deserve to shed. For a couple of minutes we stare at each other saying nothing. I stand in the open doorway, debating whether to turn and leave. Why the f-uck didn’t I talk to someone about this rather than doing this alone? Bryn, Dylan… even Ruby.

I close the door behind and rest against it. “Hello.”

“Thank you for coming to see me,” she says and her voice tears at me. There’s a weakness that drags me back to the bad times; the days she was weakened by the men; the days, they injured her.

I close my eyes and inhale. When I open them, she’s still there. My mum, broken as she always was but this time by something killing her, rather than by someone.

“How have you been?” she asks.

“Don’t you read the papers?” I reply a little too harshly.

“I don’t believe everything I read, Jeremy.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not Jeremy.”

Mum looks at her hands. They age her, the skin drawn across pronounced veins like an old woman’s would be. Mum’s mid-forties and the illness has pushed her looks into old age. “I know. Sorry.”

To her, yes. I’m her Jeremy who had to become Jem to forget him. I pull up the plastic and metal chair near the drawers containing a vase of white and pink flowers, and sit. Shit, I should’ve bought flowers.

“I’d ask how you are, but it would be a stupid question,” I say.

“I’ve been better.”

“You’ve looked better.”

She rubs her head, pale fingers touching her short hair. “I have.”

We have nothing to talk about. Reminiscing about the past is out, and I’ve no interest in knowing what she’s been doing with her life.

Life. Mum told me she had weeks left, the cancer breaking her body more readily than anybody broke her in the past. As I look at her, Jeremy hurts for his mum the way he used to; but Jem has to stay strong against the threatening tide. Since she contacted me out of the blue and ripped me back in time, the bottle, drugs, and void have called more loudly than in a long time. If Ruby wasn’t in my life and house, I reckon I’d have slipped by now.