The Last Dress from Paris(83)
But I’m in the mood for more honesty than that.
“No. I missed you.” Saying the words aloud sends a giant flood of sadness through me that I didn’t realize was coming, and I tighten my stomach muscles to stop it from spilling into the space between us. “Every single day, I missed you. I felt alone.”
She won’t know how to handle my tears, so I try to stick to the facts, despite the awful flashbacks that are starting to appear behind my eyelids. The crying into my pillow night after night, being the only one whose mum never attended school events, the pitying looks from my teachers.
She isn’t in the mood to be conciliatory—is she ever? “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Lucille, can we not just have a nice lunch together? This was all a very long time ago. I always tried to get the best childcare I could. I thought you loved Amy.”
Poor Amy, my long-suffering nanny, who was always glued to the phone, apologizing to someone for being late because her boss still wasn’t home yet. How it made me feel like a massive inconvenience who had to be passed from person to person, no one really wanting to be responsible for me.
“Of course I didn’t love Amy. Is that what you told yourself? It was okay to come home late every night because I had Amy? A girl who couldn’t wait for you to arrive so she could get out of the house and on with whatever she really wanted to be doing.” I can feel the emotion trying to hammer its way out of me now, and my mouth is contorting as I struggle to keep it in.
“I put you to bed some nights.” The outrage in my mum’s voice is only making me more determined to finish this conversation and make her understand that a few hours tossed my way occasionally did not constitute parenting.
“Yes, I remember those nights. How you used to skip pages from my bedtime storybooks to speed it up.”
“I had work to do, Lucille, don’t you understand that? I was under so much pressure at the office.”
“I was six, Mum! I knew what you were doing.”
Something shifts in her then. Her eyes empty of anger, and I see a profound sadness shining there. “But what you don’t know, because you were always sleeping by then, is the apology I whispered into your ear most nights, when I finally closed the laptop and could head to bed myself.” The first tentative signs of emotion creep into her voice. “There were never enough hours in the day or night. However hard I worked, I never had time to just be with you. I had to be tough. I was scared of what might happen if I wasn’t.” She looks like someone has let the air out of her. Her shoulders sag; her eyelids soften.
I take a moment to calm myself, to spoon some of the food I know I won’t eat onto my plate, and look around, noting some of the newer pieces that have appeared since my last visit months ago. The selection of these pieces will have taken considerably more of her time than it took to deposit the ￡150 into my bank account for this year’s belated birthday present. An enormous crystal vase that sits empty, an exhibit all on its own. A new sprawling light fixture that’s suspended above us, casting a clinically bright light into all corners of the dining space. Mum has furnished her apartment with items you will never see anywhere else. They have been collected during her travels for work. While most working mums might be dashing around the airport shops looking for thoughtful presents for the children they left behind at the beginning of the working week, Mum would be negotiating the safe return of a new armchair or an oversize rug through customs. As a child I envied her those trips. They held an almost magical allure. I’d lie in bed thinking of her flying through the sky above me, her evening lit by the same bright moon as mine. But she would wake in a foreign land so enticing it took her away from me time and time again. What was there that she wanted so much more than me?
The air between us cools a degree, enough for me to ask her the question I have wanted to for years. I’m not sure what’s giving me the courage now when it was so lacking before. Maybe it’s because she might not make time for another lunch anytime soon. Maybe because I feel the safety net of not expecting an honest answer, or perhaps I’ve just heard enough about family secrets for one week. It feels like at least some of them should be set free.
“Why was I so unlovable, Mum?” I let her feel the shock of those taboo words weighted in the air around us. I feel her absorb them; then, when there is nowhere else for them to go, swallow them. I register the flicker of panic in her hard blue eyes. She has to say something, and it has to be enough to satisfy all those years of hurt and loneliness.
I watch her slowly, deliberately place her cutlery back onto her plate. The expensive culinary experience ruined. Slowly she lifts her head, pushes her plate to one side, and laces her fingers together in front of her on the table. The management consultant braced to outmaneuver a belligerent client. Or is she about to face up to something she’s avoided for as long as I have? She looks directly at me and speaks.
“I didn’t know how to love you.”
Her voice is heavy with emotion now. The words are whispered, not dictated. She drops her head a little as if ever so slightly ashamed of her confession.
“Go on.” I’m in no hurry. I came here with one purpose today, and I’m not leaving until I’ve got answers to the questions that have troubled me for years.
“Granny Sylvie was very distant when I was growing up. I know you’ll find that hard to believe.” She raises a hand and cuts me off when she can see I am about to protest the likelihood of it. “But it’s true, she was. She must have hugged me, but I don’t remember it happening very often. She was around, she never worked after she married Granddad and had me, but I don’t ever remember feeling loved. She was an incredibly sad person.”