Jenny Valentine - 4 Book Award-winning Collection. Jenny Valentine
Читать онлайн книгу.
EIGHTEEN
I wasn’t in the mood for Mercy when I got in.
She stopped me in the hallway, all businesslike and aggressive, pulling rank.
She said she wanted to have a serious talk with me about Mum.
Mercy’s serious talks usually mean she’s finally woken up to something the rest of us have been aware of for months. They usually take place in her room, last about two minutes and are a load of crap.
I followed her upstairs in a hunched shoulder, stomping on the stairs kind of way and she shut her door behind me.
“We’ve got to do something about Mum,” she said.
“Like what?” I said, pretending not to be bothered.
“She’s depressed, Lucas, have you not noticed?”
I haven’t said much about Mercy before now. Nothing good, anyway. The truth is, that’s kind of how we are in real life. We hardly see each other, maybe at breakfast on school days (except she barely eats and always disappears upstairs to put make-up on) or on the stairs or at night if she’s come home and I’m still up. We don’t have time for more than four words each and most of them are sarcastic.
So anyway, my stranger of a sister was standing between me and the way out with her hands on her hips and obviously brewing for a fight.
She said it again, but with more outrage. “Haven’t you noticed Mum’s depressed?”
I wanted to say all kinds of things. I wanted to say that of course I’d bloody noticed, and it could be to do with her husband abandoning her with two teenagers and a baby and having no time off and no social life and always wishing she’d made different choices and never had any kids. I could have said I knew Mum’s problems intimately through stealing and reading her diary, but I didn’t say any of that.
I said, “No.”
I’m not sure why. Maybe I wanted a fight too.
Mercy threw her arms up in the air and yelled at me. “You are so selfish and out of your face! Is it up to me to look after everybody in this stupid family?”
I said I hadn’t noticed she was looking after anybody apart from herself, which was true, but badly timed. I thought she was going to punch me.
“When are you going to wake up, Lucas?”
“About eleven,” I said. I was enjoying myself. I was perverse.
“She’s got that awful boyfriend, she’s putting on weight, she’s drinking too much and she cries in the bathroom when she thinks we’re watching TV,” Mercy said. “I’m not letting you out of this room until we work something out.”
“Why don’t you offer to baby-sit for Jed or go and visit Pansy once in a while or take Norm and the dog for a walk or do the shopping?” I said to her in a way that pointed out these were all things I was actually doing.
“It’s more than that,” she said.
“Well, let’s see,” I said, and I was pretty angry about everything by then or I wouldn’t have said it. “We could go back in time and tell her not to shag Dad, who she didn’t even like, or not to get pregnant with you so he had to marry her, in fact not to bother having any of us, and what else?”
Mercy was trying to get a word in, but I was all keyed up and I wasn’t stopping.
“Oh! We could go and find Dad for her, wherever the hell he is, and then she could divorce him and marry that other prick, that art teacher, and pretend to get on with her life! That good enough?”
Then I pushed past Mercy and opened the door, and Mum was standing right there in the corridor, listening.
For a moment I thought she was going to do that thing of pretending nothing had happened, which would have been a relief, but she said, “I am getting on with my life, aren’t I? Who says I’m not?”
I said, “Mercy does” and Mercy said, “Lucas does” at the same time, which left us both looking stupid and to blame.
“Well, what do you suggest?” she said, walking in and sitting on Mercy’s bed. She was seething. It was like she wanted to embarrass us.
She said, “Come on! If you talk about people when they aren’t there, you have to have the guts to do it their faces.”
I looked over at Mercy who wasn’t looking at anyone and clearly wasn’t going to go first, and I said, “You should go out more,” which was feeble.
Mum smiled a really unfriendly smile.
Then I said, “You could go back to college and get a degree. You’re clever,” which sounded patronising but wasn’t meant to.
Mum nodded.
“You could go on holiday on your own.”
“Great,” said Mum, meaning the opposite.
“We could move,” Mercy said.
“You should get the marriage annulled and marry whatsisname,” I said.
“The prick?” Mum said.
“You could decorate,” Mercy said. “You could have a clear-out and take Dad’s stuff to the dump. You could rent the house out. Or sell it.”
Mum put out her hand to stop us. She was laughing at us in a way that made me really sad.
“Guys, do you think I haven’t thought of all those things, given that going back in time is still impossible?” She glared at me when she said that.
We shrugged, at the same time, like idiots.
“And do you know why I haven’t done them?”
I said no, but Mercy kept her mouth shut and they were both looking at me. Suddenly I could see what was coming.
“Lucas,” Mum said, dead calm. “Do you know why I haven’t moved house or remarried or gone on holiday? Why I haven’t thrown out so much as a pair of shoes or a postcard that belonged to your dad?”
I wanted to be somewhere else then. I didn’t know what to say to her. Had they talked about this before when I wasn’t around? Mercy was breathing easier, off the hook, and everything was down to me.
“Take a look at yourself,” Mum raged quietly. “Take the plank out of your own eye before you conspire in bedrooms about the speck in mine and lecture me about getting on with my bloody life. Do you think I’ve dared?”
She probably wanted me to answer, but I shrugged.
“You’re a fanatic, Lucas,” she said. “You’re a walking shrine to your father.”
I didn’t say anything. Mercy was staring at me. I wondered if this was working out the way she’d planned.
I took Bob’s old photo of Mum out of my pocket and put it in her hand. I’d wanted her to see it and remember how young and happy and gorgeous she was when she willingly made the choice to marry Dad and have us.
She looked at it, and then she kissed me on the cheek and said, “Tomorrow, you and me are having a clear out and taking his stuff to the dump. No arguments.”
I felt bad that she’d overheard us rowing about her like that. I was ashamed. I wanted to go back about five minutes and have her overhear me saying only good things, because people never get to hear that stuff said about them by accident. It’s always a slagging off people stumble upon, and being slagged off by your own kids has got to hurt.
And for a while it stung, what Mum had called me, the fanatic thing, the walking shrine. But the thing is, I couldn’t blame her for saying it. She was right.
And what if I’d said then that I was beginning to see Dad for what he