She said that, yes, it was serious, her mother had died.
They looked at her with faces of sudden concern and expressed their sympathy. They asked her when her mother passed away.
She took a private moment to dislike their choice of euphemism and then, as planned, said that her mother’s death had been yesterday rather than almost four weeks ago. This so that they could not stop her from leaving immediately, now, this very lunchtime.
They did not know whether to comfort her or become even more professional.
She could tell they were alarmed at her calmness. She wanted to say, Don’t worry, so was I; it passes.
They shook their heads and meant their platitudes.
She was sorry for them for having to deal with this. Death gave them focusing issues to address in the short term and mortality issues going forward.
They asked her if there was anything at all they could do to help.
She told them no, thanks, and that seeing as she would be dropping by in six months, and given the circumstances, she wouldn’t be working her notice and she had to go pretty much straightaway. They said, oh, and then, of course.
She didn’t gather her small collection of things at her desk. And she did not stop to consider whether it was she or they who had the perception problem on her way out.
Her father, though, was the hardest task she had faced in her life. The hardest task since the last e-mail. Her twenty-second draft read:
Dad,
I am coming to London. Please don’t feel that you have to write back. I really don’t wish to interfere in your life in any way. I suppose I just wanted to let you know that I will be dropping in to Highgate to see Francis—I assume he is still there; neither Gabs nor I have heard anything to the contrary. I need to store some stuff if he is okay with that…
I have to admit, it feels strange to be writing to you like this. I’m not even sure you read e-mail. (Forgive me btw: Julian, at the consulate in SP, gave me this contact. I suspect that you still prefer letters but I’m afraid that I don’t have your postal address.) I know we haven’t been in touch for years… and yet, now that Mum is dead, it all seems a bit sad. Of course Gabriel and I talk all the time. But you knew Mum before we were born, you knew Mum when she was a young woman, you knew Mum better than anyone else. And I think this whole thing is affecting me more than I thought it would. Time will pass, and I’ll get used to it. But I suppose I would like to know more about Mum—and, yes, you too, Dad.
At the funeral, out there in Petersburg, I became more conscious than ever of who I am: half you, half Mum. And how little I know about either of you really… Dad, I have been thinking back a great deal—it’s natural, I suppose, at times like this—and if there is anything you would like to say to me now, about your life, about who you are, then I want you to know that I am ready to listen. Just that.
But having gone through the e-mail again, for the twenty-third time, she found it a cringing agony still. No matter what she did, she could not rid her words of their phony tone, their dishonest designs, their awkwardness. The plain truth was that she could not plainly ask her own father anything that she wished to ask him. She squeezed her eyes shut. What was it with some people—that the very idea of them prohibits certain questions from ever being asked? How does their power, their charisma—if that’s what it is—cast such shadows in other minds, even if they are halfway around the world?
Shitting hell.
She was back in the same Internet café. And this time, as well as the rotting carpet, she could smell the milk turning sour where someone had spilled it beside the help-yourself coffee stand.
Hey, Dad, are you gay? I’ve suspected it for years deep down. Francis is an old boyfriend, isn’t he? Well, good. Great, in fact! It’s fine. It really is. Nobody cares anymore. That’s one victory we have won. You can tell me. You can trust me. If trust is what you need. Anyway, it explains a good deal, and thank you for your honesty.
Oh yeah, and were you in Petersburg before Mum died? Your friend Mr. Avery nearly gave you away, you know. Did you go to see her die? That would suit you, wouldn’t it? The ultimate combination of pain followed by histrionic displays of affection, you sadistic bastard. See, she suffers almost to death! And see, I love her after all! All you who doubted my capacity for compassion. You were wrong. I held it back behind these castle walls of cold gray stone for dire moments such as this. So now… now see the iron man’s bleeding heart! See how I demonstrate my love. Hitler fondles his dogs. Stalin pats the children’s heads.
Well, understand this, you vainglorious little shit: I’m not fooled. Because I do see, I see it all clearly: because still, still, still, it’s all about you, isn’t it? Even your own wife’s, my mother’s, cancer is nothing more than a stage on which you can strut and preen your narcissism. Admire me, admire the drama of the strongman’s unexpected kindness. Admire his great reservoir of love released. Count yourselves lucky to see such a glimpse. Because you never ever forget how it plays, even if only to the rapturous audience in your head, do you, Dad?
Oh Christ. Christ. Christ. She felt the grief kraken rising from the deep, sending ripples through the underground lake of her tears.
Shitting hell.
She looked around. The Internet café was almost empty this afternoon. She bit her lip. This was going to be a long, painful process. She must ask her questions singly. She must win her father s trust. She must persuade the portcullis guard one ratchet at a time. Only then… With a tremendous effort, she gathered herself. And then, falsely calm, she deleted everything except the first paragraph (as she had always known she would) and let the phrase “I don’t want to interfere in your life” stand as the most oblique invitation to a father’s frankness that had ever been written.
Next, Sasha.
Though maybe she didn’t plan to end it forever. After all, she liked the guy. He was sweet. He was intelligent. He was on the same side. Lazy, immature—yes; but good-hearted beneath all the pretentious film-industry jargon he talked; and all he needed was some confidence, someone to take him seriously out there so that he could take himself seriously too.
When she had met him, he had just sold a scene from one of his screenplays—something to do with a dog being set on fire by accident—and he was riding high. He made her laugh—properly, wholeheartedly, like the young Woody Allen made her laugh. He had a nice line in existential incredulity. Since then, he had seemed to grow younger or more puerile. And either she’d begun to see the banality of the form for what it was or he had started to write more banal things. In any case, his work had foundered. And his mother, she knew, was now giving him money. Which wasn’t good for him. He was turning in on himself. She suspected he was spending hours online in chat rooms. He needed someone to draw him out again, to love him without secret reserve, to whisper reassurance to him in the night.
Their recent antagonism, which had started a good few months before her mother had died, was officially about space. Sasha worked at home, and he needed some undisturbed zone of his own: namely, the main table. This she duly ceded, accepting the piles of papers, the ostentatious laptop, the stacked books, the newspaper clippings, the printer on the floor with its wretchedly too-short cable stretched lethally taut from desk to socket at shin height. In return, the sofa was hers. She lived around his mess. She did not complain.
Beneath this, though, she had known that there was a second and more truthful level of the argument. Sasha thought that she did not believe in his efforts. Did not really believe in his talent. Did not believe in the persona he wanted her to believe in. Did not, in fact, believe in him. And the more he thought that she did not believe, the more the paper and the mess expanded, as he tried to seek her affirmation by subconsciously forcing his work again and again back under her retreating nose. Because in some furtive way, Sasha also knew that this was the real argument, and so he wanted to prize her out into the open to challenge her. And yet he was also a coward. So, having goaded her out with his mess from time to time, he would then devote all his energy to pretending that the argument was only about space after all and what the hell was she getting so crazy about when, sure, if it was a problem, he’d tidy up every night and she could use the goddamn table.