Page 116 of If We Were Young

“What are you working on?” She peered at the drawings in front of me. “Is that the rebrand?”

“Ma, can I ask a question?”

“Can I have my morning coffee first?”

“No. Well, you can be making it but I’m going to ask. When Matthew Carling turned up, you recognised him, didn’t you?”

“That tall man with the dark hair?” She inspected a mug looking for dirt that didn’t exist.

I raised an eyebrow. “Did you have many men here that evening?”

“Erm, no.”

“Ma! Please!”

She sighed and spent a million years stirring her coffee; the bash of the teaspoon against the china ringing and grating on my nerves. Finally, she blew her coffee, spreading steam in front of her face. Then she turned with her face set. “Yes. You’d gone out on a date with Paul. He knocked at the door. Of course, I recognised him from when he used to walk you home and you used to loiter at the end of the road thinking I didn’t know you were there.” She shook her head. “Stand out there like riff-raff for hours you used to. Anyway.” She smoothed herself down. “I told him where you were, and he left.”

“Why were you watching me walking down the road on the way home from class?” I met her gaze and made it clear with a glare I wouldn’t be letting her escape my questioning.

“I just liked to know where you were. It was easier for me to keep the house organised and run smoothly if I knew where you were. Your dad liked things just so.”

I cocked my head, my attention falling onto the paper in front of me. “Did he though? Or is that just you? Do you just need everything the way you like it?”

I made a stroke on the paper as I worded my next question in my head before blasting it at her, “Why did you want me to move back in here after Dad died?”

“It made sense, didn’t it? For us to just have one house to run between us.”

“But I don’t run the house do I, Ma? It’s still just your house. It’s always been your house.”

“I’ve helped you though, haven’t I? You wouldn’t have been able to run this silly business of yours if you and Hannah hadn’t been here. You needed me. Like your dad always needed me.”

“Need and want are very different things though, aren’t they?”

The clock on the wall of the kitchen ticked louder than I’d ever heard it before.

Want.

Need.

Things that sound the same but are anything but. You want someone to live with to give you company, to love; you need someone to live with you to fill your life with purpose.

You want someone you don’t think you can ever have, but you need someone to be brave enough to need you back.

Want and need. Two forms of desire a universe apart.

Just like that everything made crystal clear sense. “Ma, why don’t we see any of Dad’s relatives, those that are left? There must be nieces, nephews?”

Ma’s mouth worked silently until she pulled herself together. “Well, it’s just complicated isn’t it, keeping in touch with people.” She waved her fingers. “You know, then you have to meet up, make small talk.”

The same reasons I never made it to a reunion.

“Ma.”

Her face closed and I stopped my words. She and I, we were the same. Hannah too. Ma found it easy to tell me the ‘right’ way to do things, but that didn’t mean she could do them herself. She was the queen of her castle, her home, much like I was the queen bee of my work. A safe zone I’d created.

I tried to think of something to say. But I couldn't. The irony wasn’t lost on me, not at all.

So instead of questioning her, pushing us into that uncomfortable zone of truth and recriminations—let’s be honest I’d had enough of those in the last twenty-four hours—I said, “Thanks, Ma, for helping me when I needed it.”