My Favourite Part

48: facing the music

It's 3:13am, and we're finally home. The warmth of familiarity buds in me like a shy spring seedling, but for the first time ever, I don't know what waits behind my front door. 

I imagine Mum's face – her rich, red hair; her thin brows – but it's blank. Her peach lips are straight and unmoving; her eyes are... empty. I haven't a clue how she'll react.

"You're gonna have to open it at some point, kid," Jerome says, eyeing me as I study the doorknob.

"Right, yeah, of course," I say, forcing myself to take hold of it. Walt's put the key in. Rather symbolically, he's left it for me to open.

The light from the front room floods onto the welcome mat, and I can't help my smile when the first face I see is August's. It might just be my mind, but she's grown since a week ago – her face is slimmer, freckles bolder.

She's sat on the stairs in her pyjamas, and when our eyes meet, hers light up. Her mouth opens instinctively as she jerks, like she'd run and throw her arms around me if she could. But she sits back on the step timidly. Her gaze darts left into the living room, then falls to her lap.

That must be where Mum is.

Everyone's stopped, waiting for me to make the move, and the dead silence of 3am makes for a heavy knell. I'll have to face her eventually. 

I slyly trace an infinity sign on the back of my hand – it's the secret 'everything's okay' signal Aug and I made up when we were kids for when we were in trouble with Mum or Dad – and one corner of her mouth lifts into a soft smile as she signals back. I don't really know if everything is okay – signalling it doesn't make my heart beat any slower – but Aug's smile gives me the courage I need. Walt and Jerome stay in the foyer, and with a deep breath and a dry mouth, I walk in.

"Mum? ... Mum?"

If she can hear me, she isn't showing it. Sat on the arm of the recliner, she's hunched, and facing away from us. I haven't seen her face yet – not a bleary eye, or nostril flared in rage. But I can hear her. She's crying.

"...Mum?"

"Y'know," she sniffles as she begins, her back still turned to me, "I've been sat here for the better part of 5 hours. Walking up and down, staring at the bloody clock – even had a cig." Her narrow shoulders jolt with the humourless laugh. She hasn't had a cigarette since she quit smoking last year.

"I've had all this time... and I still haven't figured it out." She finally turns towards me, and she looks utterly out of sorts.

Her hair's haphazardly bundled in a bun atop her head, as though she tied it up in a rush, and her emerald eyes - the eyes I'd thought of the whole journey home, the eyes I thought I could read - are as blank as my worst nightmare imagined them to be. Her gaze is intensely vacant and wordless as she stares in front of her, at nothing in particular. But the smooth, damp, mascara-stained trail of her tears is deafeningly loud.

"Perhaps you could help me, Evangeline," she says, wiping her rouged nose on the sleeve of her sweater, "maybe you can help me figure it out."

"F-figure out what, Mum?"

"Where I went wrong!" Mum blurts, and her whole body turns suddenly towards me as she clutches her chest. "What I did to cause this!"

I do my best not to roll my eyes outright. I'm on the backfoot here, I know that, but she's using words like 'wrong' and 'cause', like Eric and I are some product of little Angie's mommy issues, and tonight more than ever, I am sick to death of being treated like a child.

"You didn't cause anything, Mum," I say, slowly and purposefully, in the hope that things won't get too ugly, "this isn't some big calamity or mistake that you could have caused."