Bad at Endings.

Chapter 13

I don't really remember much from my trip home but eventually I do get back.
In my chest lives this frantic bird, beating its wings against my ribcage, making it hard for me to breathe and think and hear.

When I step inside and close the front door behind me my mother only needs one look at my face to know that something is wrong.
She wraps me up in her arms as soon as I am within her reach and that's when I completely break down.
I take these big uncoordinated lungfuls of air that still don't seem to be enough and I cry into her blouse and I don't even have the energy left to feel embarrassed about it.

My mother's long and elegant fingers just gently stroke the curls at the back of my neck just as she used to do when I was younger and needed calming down, when I'd fallen from a tree or got called a bad name at school or, much later, when I used to wake up from the same nightmare night after night after night....
She says what she used to say then too:
“Sssssh, it's alright.....it's alright. Just tell me what's wrong, puppet.”

Her voice is soft and low and it does manage to calm me down a bit. I create some space between us but my hands still cling to her clothing as if I was still 10 years younger and we are two different people still.

It takes another big gulp of air before I am able to get any words out:
“I think I just broke up with John”, I say.

The look she gives me is one full of pity and the bird inside of me smashes itself against the bars of my ribcage once more.
My chest hurts.....my heart hurts........I'm not sure if I want her pity right now.

“I'm so sorry”, she says as she strokes an errant curl back from my forehead, “I know you really liked him, puppet. What happened?”

And I decide to tell her everything.
My mother and I haven't really spoken in quite a while.
Well...not like this anyway.
Not about anything that really matters.
We've just sort of been coexisting these last few years. Both adrift with our own grief while gradually getting further and further away from each other.
But I really need her now. I grab onto the lifeline she offers me with both hands.
She sits me down on the sofa and makes me warm milk with honey (just like she used to do before.....before....) and she lets me talk.
And she listens.
To all of it.
I tell her about meeting John on holiday, about meeting him again at school, about the two people he can be and how I'm not quite sure anymore which one is the real him.
I tell her about my last conversation with him and how I left him there on a cold bus-stop bench.

She gently cards her fingers through my hair and I lean into the soft touch of her hand.

“I'm so sorry”, she says again, “but John might come around. Maybe he just needs a little more time. I know he cares for you too.”

“Caring is not an advantage”, I reply and my mother sits back as if I've physically hurt her.

“Who told you that?”

I avoid her eyes and shrug but I answer her anyway:
“Richard.”

Richard had told me that. Right before he left us alone. Right before he moved away leaving my mother and I behind in a house full of grief and ghosts that follow us around no matter how many times we move.

“Hughy”, my mother says, she hasn't called me that in quite a while. She used to call me that all the time when I was younger, before.....I look at her from underneath my fringe.
“That is not true”, my mother says but the sadness in the depths of her eyes makes me doubt her words.