Page 29 of People In Love
Don’t you speak to her, pretty often?
But I mean how are you finding it? Being home, with her.
Which is vague, he thinks, and yet all-encompassing. He puts his beer down on the table, takes a crisp from the bowl. It’s fine, he says. Nora is by the kitchen island, uncapping a beer for herself, or for Robin, maybe.
She’s the same, Bren answers.
I think she’s doing really well, Nora says, for what it’s worth. She hasn’t had any episodes, or anything. For a long time.
Do we have to talk about this?
Nora looks across the island at him, the beer bottle poised in her hand.
No, she says. Not if you don’t want to.
Well I don’t want to, if that’s cool.
All right. I just thought it was really nice, how happy she was, when you got back.
Was she?
Ofcourseshe was. She called me, the morning after you got home.
Saying what?
Nora opens her mouth, closes it again. Turns to the sink, fills a jug with water from the tap. She thanked me, she says, over her shoulder, but the tap water drowns it out so that Bren has to check when she approaches, sets the jug down.
Thanked you?
I know, she says. It was sweet, but senseless. I said it wasn’t me that brought you home.
Except it kind of was, Bren says.
Well she was beside herself, Nora says, as if breezing past what he’d just said. He is confused by this, by how she wants to talk about real things, but if he tries, it seems she doesn’t want to hear it.
Mm, Bren says. Well. We went to bed ten minutes after I arrived, so she didn’t seemthathappy. And day to day, things are pretty muted, I’d say.
That’s the medication, Nora says. It … mellows things, for her.
I know that, Bren says. I did grow up in that house.
Silence, then. Stretched, for several seconds.
And I knowthat, Nora says. But I’ve also been here for the last twelve years, Bren. And I’m trying to tell you there’s nothing to be scared of, any more.
I’m notscared, Bren says, and Nora says you know what I mean, but he does not. Who is she to claim, after a brief weekly phone call, or shared neighbourly dinners with Freya there too, that she hasanyidea what it’s like, to grow up like that? To hear your mother wailing through your closed bedroom door, to pray for the soothing sound of your father’s voice, to dread the silence more than anything, that deep, still-bodied silence, because that meant shutdown, the person inside lost somewhere, for hours at a time. Days, even. Weeks.
I just, Nora says, and Bren says well don’t.
His heart is beating like the grandfather clock back home. A heavy, slow clunking, too loud for the room.
Nora turns away from him, towards the hob, and Bren drinks more beer. Remembers what she said, at the coffee roasters after their swim:why is this so hard.
So you missed me, then, he says, forcing his voice into gentle mockery; easier than sitting in the awkwardness of whatever the hell they’re tiptoeing around. That’s what you’re saying, right? That I should come home more often?
She glances round at him, a paring knife in her hand.
Josie would like that, she says. Yeah.
