Page 53 of The Mother-in-Law

I’d written to Mother after arriving at Meredith’s to tell her the decision I had made, and where I was living. For days after sending it I’d been on guard, half-expecting her to turn up on Meredith’s doorstep and physically drag me back to Orchard House, but she’d never even written back, let alone showed up. I knew what the silence meant. I remember seeing the letters from Meredith in the garbage at home, unopened. ‘There’s no point keeping up correspondence with someone who isn’t in our lives any more,’ she’d say crisply if anyone referred to the unopened envelopes.

Now I, clearly, was no longer in her life.

Two weeks after arriving at Meredith’s, I woke to the feeling of something popping deep inside. It was a cold night, and moonlight streamed in the crack of the shed door, illuminating my single bed. Between my legs the mattress was wet. I gripped the cold wall to help me push myself upright. More water came when I stood; and when I walked, more still. I stuffed my feet into slippers and pulled my robe around me and made my way to the toilet that abutted the house. There was no pain yet, and I didn’t see the point in waking Meredith if it was a false alarm.

I dropped my knickers and sat down. There was blood, a little of it, and a lot of clear odourless liquid. As I stared at it, my abdomen pulled tight and firm. This was it.

To my extraordinary surprise, I wasn’t scared.

When I returned to Meredith’s house ten days later, there was a second-hand bassinette set up in the shed. Next to it, neatly folded on my single bed, was a pile of cloth nappies, two knitted jackets, knitted pants and a woollen hat. It wasn’t the scene I’d always pictured when I imagined bringing my first baby home, and yet it brought a tear to my eye. When you had nothing, I’d begun to realise, you appreciated everything.

‘It’s the bare minimum,’ Meredith said, ‘which will have to do.’

Meredith didn’t engage much with Ollie in the first few weeks, which surprised me as she was obviously taken with him. I often caught her peeking into his bassinette and smiling (and it was rare that Meredith smiled).

‘You can hold him,’ I said to her once, but she immediately shook her head.

‘It’s not my job to hold him.’

Meredith was quite particular about my jobs. Looking after Ollie was one of them, obviously, but there were others too. When the tyre on her car went flat, it was me using the jack. When the light bulbs needed changing, or errands needed running, I did it. I cleaned the house, took care of the laundry. I did the grocery shopping, carrying Ollie down to the shopping centre in my arms because we didn’t have money for a pram.

Meredith never thanked me for anything I did, not once, but there was something about the way she asked me to do things. I started to look forward to the requests. (‘You can fix that leaky sink, you’re good at figuring things out.’ ‘Come on up to the roof and see if you can’t do anything about the broken tile.’ ‘Find the cheapest place you can to repair these shoes, I know you won’t let anyone rip us off.’) I came to realise she was right—I was good at figuring things out, I could repair most things, and I didn’t let people rip us off. A couple of months into our living arrangements, I found she hardly had to tell me what to do at all.

One morning when Ollie was about two months old, I fell asleep in the armchair when I should have been going to the shopping centre. The store closed at noon on a Saturday and I’d told Meredith I’d make roast chicken for dinner. But Ollie had been awake for hours during the night and I decided I could catch a few minutes sleep while he napped on my chest.

When I woke, it was with a start, just before noon.

I’d leaped out of my seat, transferring Ollie to my other shoulder, searching around for my purse. That’s when I’d noticed Meredith sitting at the kitchen table. She gestured to the raw chicken in front of her.

‘You looked like you could use the sleep,’ she said.

Sometimes, in the evenings, Meredith and I chatted a little. I asked her what it was like to lose her husband and her affluent lifestyle.

‘It was the worst time of my life,’ she said. ‘My friends wouldn’t speak to me, my parents disowned me. Bill married Cindy within the year and moved her into our home while I was working in a factory six days a week.’

‘It’s not fair,’ I told her.

‘You haven’t even got me started on the fact that I am only paid two-thirds of a man’s wage for the very same job. And do you know why? Because they assume a wife has a husband at home to take care of her!’ She laughed—a rare, wonderful treat. ‘But there are silver linings. I had so much to lose back then. Now everything I have belongs to me. That’s worth more than you’d think.’

I was beginning to understand what she meant.

When Ollie was three months old, Meredith told me to get a job.

‘But what job could I do with a baby?’ I asked.

‘If there’s anyone who can figure it out, it’s you, Diana.’

‘Maybe I could work at night,’ I said, after tossing and turning for three nights, trying to come up with something. I had become attached Meredith’s comments about my ingenuity and I was determined not to let her down. ‘Or the weekends?’

‘But . . . what will you do with Ollie?’ she asked, looking perplexed.

‘Oh,’ I started, feeling foolish, ‘I thought . . .youwould help me.’

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘helping is the worst thing I could do for you.’

After I finish telling Ghezala my story, nothing is off the table. I tell her how I wrote to Mother to tell her she had a grandson and still she didn’t reply. I tell her how I sent her pictures of Ollie every year. How one day I caught the train to my childhood home and saw my father’s old car parked in the driveway, and Mother in the garden pulling weeds. I tell her how Mother looked right at me then lowered her straw hat so it covered her face and went back to weeding. I tell her how that was the last time I saw Mother before she died, four years later. That, after her funeral, I never saw my father again.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ghezala says.