Suddenly out of the stillness, wind. A dust-devil whirled up dirt and grit from the road and scurried it through the open door and into the coach. The young man in the crisp white shirt and tie covered his nose and face with a large handkerchief. The driver slammed the door against the dust-devil and the bus abruptly snarled and thumped its way over the planks of the crossing.
Medical student. That’s what he reminds me of with that hanky over his face like a mask. He looks exactly like one of those interns and residents from my days at the hospital, back when I was hustling bed pans and wiping old bums there as a practical. I’d bet dollars to doughnuts he’s a medical student. It would explain a dapper young man like him riding a bus. They get paid nothing.
I was sorry to leave the hospital. At least I felt I was doing something good, something worthwhile there. But how could I carry on after the old woman downstairs up and moved out on me to go live with her daughter? Had nobody that would babysit shifts. And you can’t leave a kid by himself for eight hours a stretch. Nine, counting trolley time there and back from the hospital. Chambermaiding at the hotel worked out better. I could be home at quarter after six so he was alone only a couple of hours after he finished school. Of course, it wasn’t much of a life for him, being made to go straight home and lock himself in the apartment. He hated me phoning on my coffee breaks every afternoon around four to check up on him. But he also knew that he’d better be there to answer when I called. Every time he let it ring more than twice I was in a sweat. Saw him dead under the wheels of a truck, or riding off in a sex fiend’s car.
Maybe I was too hard on him, not allowing him to have other kids in for company. Could be I was wrong to be so strict on that count. But you never know what the little buggers’ll get into when somebody isn’t watching them. And two or more are always more naturally inclined to mischief than one. They encourage each other. Playing with matches, poking wire coat-hangers into electrical sockets. Imagine coming home to face the outcome of that.
I did what I had to. No excuses. It wasn’t easy for him but easy is for those who have choices. I don’t see as I did. Latchkey kids is what they call them. All the women’s magazines deplore it.
You never know what’s going on in a kid’s head. The whole winter of his first year in school he spent drawing maps when he was alone by himself after school. Back at six-fifteen every night and having to bang the bejesus out of the door to get him to come unfasten the chain and let me in. Every evening the same. Like he was in a trance.
“Hi, Mom” was all I got. Needed to be reminded to give me my kiss. He was more interested in getting back to the kitchen table and his maps than saying hello to me. At first I thought it was homework. But it wasn’t. These weren’t maps of actual places like we did when I was in school. No tracing the U.K. from an atlas, marking places and products on it. Sheffield and steel, York and wool. No, these islands came directly out of his head. They were invented islands.
I give him credit for a beautiful, artistic job. You’d half-wish they were real so you could pay them a visit. Always snaky rivers twisting down from mountains to the seas, maybe a volcano puffing smoke, golden beaches. A vacation paradise.
Every bay, cove, river, stream, mountain, inlet, peninsula he gave a name to. Fish River, Parrot Point, Treasure Cove. The seas were always wild and stormy. He bore down so hard with that blue crayon of his he left ridges of wax on the paper, like real waves crashing towards the beaches.
It’s time to eat and he hasn’t cleared away his junk, just sits hunched over his map, colouring. Hasn’t set the table like you’ve asked him to a dozen times. Flipping the light switch on and off to get his attention, even though pretty soon the light seems to be blinking in time with that little vein pulsing in your temple. “Mother attempting to make contact with space voyager. Mother to Master Daniel. Come in, Master Daniel.”
Stares at me like I’m out of my mind. They have no sense of humour, kids. Not mine anyway.
If you didn’t laugh, you’d weep. Thank God I’ve got a sense of humour. Of course, I was blessed with the kind that mostly gets you into trouble. Every so often getting dressed down by the store manager for giving lip to a customer. “Vera, if you don’t learn to curb your tongue I don’t care how fast you can punch those buttons, you’ll have to go,” is what he used to say.
Pooch offering advice. “Do what I do, Vera, just think what you’d like to tell them. That’s what I do.” Which was okay for Pooch because she couldn’t work up a suitable smart reply in under an hour and by then they were home and had the groceries unpacked and in the cupboard. But, speaking for myself, remarks slipped out before I realized it. Part of my trouble all my life, a vinegar tongue.
People misunderstand. Take the first time I saw Daniel. The nurse showing him to me and saying, “Oh, isn’t he the most darling, beautiful boy!”
Hardly. They’re never beautiful right after they’re born. Ugly as sin. I mean, what if Royal Doulton was to make a china figurine of them, all red and gruesome like that? They couldn’t sell it. Not if it was true to nature. I never put it like that to the nurse though. What I said was the baby resembled Mr. Gandhi.
She was shocked and offended, that young woman. Shocked and offended for all of motherhood, I believe. Probably thought I was unnatural, unloving. But, as I said, it’s either laugh or weep. At the moment the sight of that tiny struggling thing with its bruised-looking skull and smear of hair had turned loose a rush of love all hot and thick at the back of my throat, so hot and thick it was threatening to melt me into tears if I didn’t do something to stop it quick. Which is how I arrived at Mr. Gandhi.
Nobody could accuse me of loving him too little, more likely the opposite. Had to be careful after Stanley died that I didn’t make too much of Daniel. How many nights spent hovering over his crib while he slept? Just standing there in the dark in my nightgown, feet two blocks of ice on the floor. A terrible ache in my shoulders from gripping the bars of his crib so tightly, gripping them because if I left my hands free I wouldn’t be able to trust them not to go fussing with him, picking him up, touching him.
Past one o’clock, past two o’clock, past three o’clock. Waiting for him to cry. Or just whimper so I could snatch him up and hold him. All hunger for the smell of him, for the burrowing warmth of him, for the kick and jerk and jump of life in his limbs.
Love. It’s not fair that Daniel has been cheated out of his father’s love. He never even knew him. I want him to love his father. But how could he love what isn’t even a memory? All he’s got is my stories to build love on.
“Daniel, when you were very small and your Dad and I went out he was always worried you’d catch cold. So I’d have to bundle you in every blanket we owned just to keep him quiet. Blanket after blanket after blanket. When I was done, nobody could have guessed there was a baby at the centre. I asked him, ‘Satisfied?’ Up went his hand to stop me and he disappeared. In a minute he was back with an old overcoat of his. ‘There’s a nasty wind,’ he said. ‘Maybe if you put him in this?’ And you know what? You almost fit. Wrapped in all those blankets, at four months old you were almost a size forty. My size-forty baby, I called you.”
I tell him in what respects he’s like his father. I encourage him to set his sights high. “Your father may have run a men’s wear store but he had read more books than most university professors. You’ve got his brains and his brains were not third-class brains, not even second-class brains. They were the top-drawer variety. So see what you can do with them.”