Page 68 of People In Love
The room is too warm, too close. Even with the window wide open.
I see him in you, you know, Josie says. The way you forge ahead, no matter what life throws at you. And life threw a lot at us, your dad and me.
But Bren does not want to do this. Does not want to go there. For so long he’d wished she would talk to him, properly – about anything that wasn’t the garden, or the weather – but they are past that now, it is too much and also too little too late, so he frees his hand and puts his mug down on the floor and manages to say one small word in reply. Thanks.
And does that help, she asks. Does that put him at ease? Or is there something else … that’s bothering him? And for years he has wanted her to notice, to care, for years he had hoped she would look at him and really see his hurting heart or scraped knees or gather him to her and comfort him, instead of ironing the bed sheets or watching koalas on the television or staring at the wall while his dad advised him to go outside, and she’s sitting here in his bedroom doing just that, looking and seeing, and he does not want this from her, and yet he blurts out that it’s harder than he thought. Being home.
Josie does not recoil when he says this. Simply nods and drinks more cocoa, says this is bad, isn’t it, I can’t’ve stirred it properly.
Light breeze through the window. Another light sip. And he thinks that’s it; thinks she’s already lost interest, but then she says, hard, being home? Because of? and gesturestowards the driveway, to downstairs, with all its ghosts, and he could give in and say more but there’s that wall he’s spent thirty years building so instead he says because he found out, recently, that Freya didn’t pass his message on to Nora, when he left. And it’s been kind of rough. Being here for her wedding, when things could have been … different.
Oh, Josie says.
Yeah.
Freya did mention that. I’m sure it was an accident, Bren. Slipped her mind, maybe.
Well, whatever, he says. It happened.
The night air is mild; a fox calls from afar. They sit there, mother and son, Josie drinking, Bren not drinking, wishing she would leave, or stay; an ache, in his chest, at the strain of not knowing how he feels or what he wants and how it can so often be both.
You know they’re not speaking? he says, and Josie says yes, it’sawful. It’s breaking Freya’s heart, not that she’d admit it. She’s working long shifts at the hospice, pretending she’s not bothered by it. But they’re not like us, Bren. They talk every day, usually, and I’m worried about them. Especially with the wedding so close.
Sting inside of him, at this last part.
Even after everything he’s just said.
I’m hoping, if I get them together at Eas –
You don’t need to be worried aboutthem, he says, because it’s been two minutes, two minutes of his mother seeming to see him and hear him and already she’s flittered on, concerned with other people, not absorbing a word of what he’s shared whenshesaid she felt like she didn’t know him, and hetried, goddamn it, he was trying. You should be worried, he says, about the weddingitself.
And he thinks this assertiveness will finally be too much forher, thinks she’ll take their cups, say goodnight, but instead she asks what he means.
I mean I think Nora’s just wandered into this life, Bren says. One she wouldn’t have chosen, if she’d had the right information. And I want to be her friend, I do, but I also want to be … what she needs.
Josie raises one translucent, barely-there eyebrow.
And what’s that? she asks him.
An alternative, Bren says. Someone to show her there are options, here.
Are you saying you’re an option, for her?
I’m saying I think she wants more than this, Bren says. More than a life in a one-bed flat with a mortgage to pay and Friday-night films.
Josie sniffs. And he thinks this is the moment where he might have truly upset her – unable to stop himself sounding superior – but there’s more to it than superiority, it’s the doubt he sees. Nora’s hesitation, whenever the wedding comes up; the free spirit who’s tied herself down, the artist who sells the art of otherpeople, the world open and waiting for her, still, if only she would jump.
But then Josie says: I do wonder, Bren, if it might be the other way around.
Silence, in the room. He frowns.
What if it’s not about Nora not going, his mother says. But the fact that you didn’t stay?
Her voice is not angry, or sad, or affectionate. It is neutral, as if she’s merely asking whether he wants another cup of cocoa.
It’s not that, he says, and Josie sighs. Stands up, holds her hand out for his mug. And she’s at the door when he feels the need to prove his point, says something’s just not right with Nora. I can feel it. The wedding’s less than a month away, and they’ve not even sent out invites. Or visited the venue.
But they’re going, tomorrow.
