Hourston’s have some lovely new things in.
Lila gulped. If they were not getting the car then there was, after all, the Premium Bond to spend. Her daydreams varied in the details but they all featured her mother growing kind, her father in the background but vaguely included in the new warmth, and ended with her getting new clothes. And the daydreams failed her every time, returning her to her life unchanged unless a little more tainted and empty. Would she never learn? She tried to concentrate on something unselfish.
We’ll make Dad his favourite supper, your poor dad always comes home tired on a Friday.
Lila would look up and see her mother smiling. She would be as striking as ever with her carved mouth and large eyes, the shapely waist and ankles. But her beauty would be safer to look at. The edges would be softer; she would look warmed up, less easily broken.
She finished drying the spoons and started on the collection of dirty ashtrays next to the sink. Still no music. She peeped into the hall. The door stood ajar as her mother had left it. She stood with the sink cloth in her hand and waited for a sound; it was impossible to move upstairs without making the floor creak. The quiet was absolute. A new thought ticked through her head. How quickly and quietly could a person commit suicide? In an opera you could see it coming and even then it took forever and could be heard five streets away but what if, in real life, it could be accomplished as unobtrusively as popping upstairs for a minute, in no more time than it took to brush your hair? Could pills or razor blades or a noose work that fast? She held her breath and listened again for a cough or footstep, afraid that she might not hear such little sounds over the thudding of her heart. It could not, surely, be happening just over her head. She returned to the kitchen and took up another ashtray. It could not be happening. There would be crying and pain and mess, she reasoned, and there was only silence. At the same time her mind was working guiltily, trying to devise a scale on which to calculate just how desperate her mother was.
She rubbed at the ashtray over and over, raising its sharp, dirty smell. Suppose it could be even more modestly done, without drawing blood or stopping airways or poisoning the heart? It might be possible simply to slip away in the manner of her mother’s tragic sopranos—like Mimi, Violetta—who could expire without having to do very much apart from singing about it. Suppose the creeping illness whose symptoms never seemed all that distressing, or the betrayed heart, or the selfless renunciation (or the Last Bloody Straw) were enough to see you off, if that was what you wanted, without the need for anything as crude as a suicide method? Lila threw down the cloth and made for the stairs.
Her mother was not in her own bedroom, nor Raymond’s, nor Lila’s, nor the bathroom nor the small spare bedroom. Lila paused on the landing and gazed up the attic stairs. Nobody ever went up there. The two attic rooms were full of junk that nobody wanted, and suddenly she knew. Her mother had taken herself off to die in the attic, among the old and useless and broken things. She took the stairs slowly, noticing the smell grow thicker as she went. At the top, she halted. The two doors in front of her were closed. Silence was embedded here like silt, laid down in the dust. Motes swam in the beam of light that shone from the skylight in the roof. She checked both rooms. Empty.
She clumped back down to her own room, her heart tilting uncomfortably. She needed to hide; she needed the secrecy of a confessional that would absorb her disappointment at not having come across her mother dead. To think that she might want her mother to die just so that life would be different made her feel warped and ashamed; she had to rearrange her mind so that the idea never crossed it again. Life was going to continue in the same way. There was going to be more of it:
Lila gulped. If they were not getting the car then there was, after all, the Premium Bond to spend. Her daydreams varied in the details but they all featured her mother growing kind, her father in the background but vaguely included in the new warmth, and ended with her getting new clothes. And the daydreams failed her every time, returning her to her life unchanged unless a little more tainted and empty. Would she never learn? She tried to concentrate on something unselfish.
We’ll make Dad his favourite supper, your poor dad always comes home tired on a Friday.
Lila would look up and see her mother smiling. She would be as striking as ever with her carved mouth and large eyes, the shapely waist and ankles. But her beauty would be safer to look at. The edges would be softer; she would look warmed up, less easily broken.
She finished drying the spoons and started on the collection of dirty ashtrays next to the sink. Still no music. She peeped into the hall. The door stood ajar as her mother had left it. She stood with the sink cloth in her hand and waited for a sound; it was impossible to move upstairs without making the floor creak. The quiet was absolute. A new thought ticked through her head. How quickly and quietly could a person commit suicide? In an opera you could see it coming and even then it took forever and could be heard five streets away but what if, in real life, it could be accomplished as unobtrusively as popping upstairs for a minute, in no more time than it took to brush your hair? Could pills or razor blades or a noose work that fast? She held her breath and listened again for a cough or footstep, afraid that she might not hear such little sounds over the thudding of her heart. It could not, surely, be happening just over her head. She returned to the kitchen and took up another ashtray. It could not be happening. There would be crying and pain and mess, she reasoned, and there was only silence. At the same time her mind was working guiltily, trying to devise a scale on which to calculate just how desperate her mother was.
She rubbed at the ashtray over and over, raising its sharp, dirty smell. Suppose it could be even more modestly done, without drawing blood or stopping airways or poisoning the heart? It might be possible simply to slip away in the manner of her mother’s tragic sopranos—like Mimi, Violetta—who could expire without having to do very much apart from singing about it. Suppose the creeping illness whose symptoms never seemed all that distressing, or the betrayed heart, or the selfless renunciation (or the Last Bloody Straw) were enough to see you off, if that was what you wanted, without the need for anything as crude as a suicide method? Lila threw down the cloth and made for the stairs.
Her mother was not in her own bedroom, nor Raymond’s, nor Lila’s, nor the bathroom nor the small spare bedroom. Lila paused on the landing and gazed up the attic stairs. Nobody ever went up there. The two attic rooms were full of junk that nobody wanted, and suddenly she knew. Her mother had taken herself off to die in the attic, among the old and useless and broken things. She took the stairs slowly, noticing the smell grow thicker as she went. At the top, she halted. The two doors in front of her were closed. Silence was embedded here like silt, laid down in the dust. Motes swam in the beam of light that shone from the skylight in the roof. She checked both rooms. Empty.
She clumped back down to her own room, her heart tilting uncomfortably. She needed to hide; she needed the secrecy of a confessional that would absorb her disappointment at not having come across her mother dead. To think that she might want her mother to die just so that life would be different made her feel warped and ashamed; she had to rearrange her mind so that the idea never crossed it again. Life was going to continue in the same way. There was going to be more of it:
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