The Elephant in the Room

I awoke the next morning at around six a.m to the sound of the birds calling to one another. Their constant whistling and chatter made me feel as though the house had been air‑lifted in the middle of the night and transported to bird world. Their selfish noisy banter reminded me of the builders we’d had working on our swimming pool, who went about their business loudly and cockily, as though we weren’t still living in the house. There was one guy, Steve, who kept trying to get a look at me in my bedroom while I was getting dressed. So one morning I really gave him something to look at. Don’t get the wrong impression; I took three hairpieces and pinned them to my bikini‑you can guess where‑and I took off my bathrobe and paraded around my room like Chewbacca, pretending I didn’t know he was looking. He never looked again after that, but a few of the others used to stare at me whenever I passed by, so I can only assume he told them, dirty little bugger. Well there would be no such games here, unless I wanted to send a red squirrel flying off his branch in shock.

The blue and white checked curtains did little to keep out the sunlight. The room was fully lit like a bar at closing time; all blemishes, drunkards and cheaters revealed. I lay in bed, wide awake, and stared at the room that was now my room. It didn’t seem very my ; I wondered if it would ever feel my . It was a simple room, surprisingly warm. Not just from the morning sun streaming into the room, but it was cosy warm, in an authentic Laura Ashley way and though I usually hated all that twee stuff, it worked here. Where it didn’t work was in my friend Zoey’s bedroom, which her mum decorated to suit a ten‑year‑old, in an obvious attempt to convince herself her daughter was sweet and innocent. That room was the equivalent of her sticking her daughter into a pickle jar. It was never going to work. It wasn’t so much that the lid came off when her mother wasn’t looking, but more that Zoey liked pickles a little too much.

The bedrooms were in the eaves of the house, the ceilings sloping towards the windows. There was a cracked white‑painted wooden chair in one corner with an old blue and white checked pillow on it. The walls were a pale blue, but didn’t feel cold. There was a white‑painted free‑standing wardrobe that was just big enough to hold my underwear. My bed had a metal frame, white linen and a blue floral duvet cover with a duck‑egg‑blue cashmere throw at the end. Above the door to my room hung a simple St Bridget’s cross. On the windowsill was a vase of fresh wildflowers‑lavender, bluebells, other things I couldn’t recognise. Rosaleen had gone to a lot of trouble.

There was a noise coming from downstairs. Plates were clanging, water running, a kettle whistled, there was the sizzle of food on a pan and eventually the smell of a fry drifted upstairs and into my room. I realised that I hadn’t eaten since yesterday lunchtime in Barbara’s, when Lulu had made us divine sashimi. I also hadn’t been to the toilet yet and so my bladder and stomach conspired to get me out of bed. Just as I thought of it, through the paper‑thin walls, I heard the door next to my room close and lock. I heard the toilet lid lift and then the trickle of urine as it splashed against the bottom of the bowl. It was falling from a height, so unless Rosaleen pissed while on stilts, it was Arthur.

Judging by the sounds coming from both the kitchen and the bathroom, I guessed my mother wasn’t in either room. Now would be my chance to see her. I stepped into my pink Uggs, wrapped the duck‑egg‑blue blanket around my shoulders and sneaked down the hall to Mum’s room.

Despite my lightness of foot, the floorboards creaked with every step. Hearing the toilet flush in the bathroom, I ran down the hall and entered Mum’s room without knocking. I don’t know what I expected but I suppose something closer to the sight that had greeted me each morning over the previous two weeks. That sight was a dark cave‑like room, and buried somewhere beneath the duvet would be Mum. But I was pleasantly surprised that morning. Her room was even brighter than mine‑a kind of buttery yellow that was fresh and clean. Her vase on the windowsill was filled with buttercups and dandelions, long green grasses all tied together in yellow ribbon. Her room must have been directly above the living room as there was an open fireplace along the wall with a photograph of the Pope above it, which made me shudder. Not the Pope‑I’d rather Zac Efron were on my wall‑it was the fire that made me uncomfortable. I’ve just never liked them. The fireplace had white moulding with black inside, and it looked as though it had had plenty of use, which I thought was weird for a spare bedroom. They must have had a lot of guests, though they didn’t strike me as the sociable entertaining type. Then I noticed the en suite and realised Rosaleen and Arthur must have given Mum their bedroom.

Mum was sitting in a white rocking chair, not rocking, and she was facing the window, which looked out over the back garden. Her hair was pinned back neatly, she was dressed in an apricot‑coloured floaty silk robe and she was wearing the same pink lipstick she’d had on since the day of Dad’s funeral. She wore a small smile, so tiny, but it was there, and she looked like she was intently studying yesterday. When I came near her, she looked up and her smile grew.

‘Good morning, Mum.’ I gave her a kiss on her forehead and sat down beside her on the edge of her already made bed. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ she said happily, and my heart lifted.

‘I did too,’ I realised as I spoke. ‘It’s so quiet here, isn’t it?’ I decided not to mention anything about Rosaleen being in my bedroom last night, in case I’d dreamed it. It would be so embarrassing to accuse somebody of that, at least until I had further evidence.

‘Yes, it is,’ Mum said again.

We sat together looking out into the back garden. In the middle of the one‑acre garden stood an oak tree, its branches veering out in all directions, just begging to be climbed. A beautiful tree, it rose up to the sky grandly, filled with green. It was sturdy and solid and I understood why Mum kept looking at it. It was safe and secure, and if it had stood there for a few hundred years, you could trust it was going to stay there for a bit longer. Stability in our rocky lives right now. A robin hopped from one branch to the other, seeming excited to have the entire tree to itself, like a child who was playing musical chairs alone. That was something I’d never have looked at before either: a tree with a bird. And even if I’d seen it, I’d never have compared it to a child who was playing musical chairs alone. Zoey and Laura would seriously have a problem with me. I was beginning to have problems with me. Thinking of them gave me pangs for home.

‘I don’t like it here, Mum,’ I finally said, and realised my voice shook and I was close to tears. ‘Can’t we stay in Dublin? With friends?’

Mum looked at me and smiled warmly. ‘Oh, we’ll be okay here. It will all be okay.’

I was so relieved to hear her say that, to hear the strength, the confidence, the leadership I needed.

‘But how long are we going to stay here? What’s our plan? Where am I going to school in September? Can I still go to St Mary’s?’

Mum looked away from me then, keeping her smile but gazing out of the window. ‘We’ll be okay here. It will all be okay.’

‘I know, Mum,’ I said, getting frustrated but trying to keep my tone soft. ‘You just said that, but for how long?’

She was quiet.

‘Mum?’ My tone hardened.

‘We’ll be okay here,’ she repeated. ‘It will all be okay.’

I’m a good person, but only when I want to be, and so I leaned up close to her ear and just as I was about to say something so truly horrible that I can’t even write it, there was a light knock on the door and it was quickly opened by Rosaleen.

‘There you both are,’ she said, as though she’d been searching high and low for us.

I quickly moved my mouth away from Mum’s ear and sat back down on the bed. Rosaleen stared at me as though she could read my mind. Then her face softened and she entered the room with a silver breakfast tray in her hand, wearing a new tea dress that exposed her flesh‑coloured slip down by her knees.

‘Now, Jennifer, I hope you had a lovely rest last night.’

‘Yes, lovely.’ Mum looked at her and smiled, and I felt so angry at her for fooling everybody else when she wasn’t fooling me.

‘That’s great so. I’ve made you some breakfast, just a few little bites to keep you going…’ Rosaleen continued nattering like that as she moved around the room, pulling furniture, dragging chairs, plumping pillows, while I watched her.

A few bites, she’d said. A few bites for a few hundred people. The tray was loaded with food. Slices of fruit, cereal, a plate piled with toast, two boiled eggs, a little bowl of what looked like honey, another bowl of strawberry jam and another of marmalade. Also on the tray was a teapot, a jug of milk, a bowl of sugar, all sorts of cutlery and napkins. For somebody who normally just had a breakfast bar and an espresso in the morning, and only because she felt she had to, Mum had a task on her hands.

‘Lovely,’ Mum said, addressing the tray before her on a little wooden table and not looking at Rosaleen at all. ‘Thank you.’

I wondered then if Mum knew that what had been placed in front of her was to be eaten by her, and wasn’t just a work of art.

‘You’re very welcome. Now is there anything else you want at all?’

‘Her house back, the love of her life back…’ I said, sarcastically. I didn’t aim the joke at Rosaleen, her being the butt of that particular comment wasn’t the intention at all. I was just letting off steam, generally. But I think Rosaleen took it personally. She looked shaken and‑oh I don’t know‑if she was hurt, embarrassed or angry. She looked at Mum to make sure she wouldn’t be broken by my words.

‘Don’t worry, she can’t hear me,’ I said, bored and examining the split ends of my dark brown hair. I pretended I wasn’t bothered but really my comments were causing my heart to beat wildly in my chest.

‘Of course she can hear you, child,’ Rosaleen half‑scolded me while continuing to move about the room fixing things, wiping things, adjusting things.

‘You think?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you think, Mum? Will we be okay here?’

Mum looked up at me and smiled. ‘Of course we’ll be okay.’

I joined in on her second sentence, imitating Mum’s hauntingly chirpy voice, so that we spoke in perfect unison, which I think chilled Rosaleen. It definitely chilled me as we said, ‘It will all be okay.’

Rosaleen stopped dusting to watch me.

‘That’s right, Mum. It will all be okay.’ My voice trembled. I decided to go a step further. ‘And look at the elephant in the bedroom, isn’t that nice?’

Mum stared at the tree in the garden, the same small smile on her pink lips, ‘Yes. That’s nice.’

‘I thought you’d think so.’ I swallowed hard, trying not to cry as I looked to Rosaleen. I was supposed to feel satisfaction, but I didn’t, I just felt more lost. Up to that point it was all in my head that Mum wasn’t right. Now I’d proven it and I didn’t like it.

Perhaps now Mum would be sent to a therapist or a counsellor and get herself fixed so that we could start moving on with our chemical trail.

‘Your breakfast is on the table,’ Rosaleen simply said, turned her back on me, and left the room.

And that is how the Goodwin problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don’t go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realised I’d grown up with an elephant in every room. It was practically our family pet.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 855