Looking after Mum: Part II: Chapter 22

Chapter 22
Everything happened really quickly after that.
Kirsty and I screamed, “Ruby!” simultaneously, and rushed over to the edge, peering over, trying to see her in the pitch black.
My heart was racing and my hands were clammy. I was praying that the pavement all that way down had no-one lying on it, that there was nothing on it but food wrappers, wheelie bins, and puddles from the recent downpour. I wished and wished and made oaths and promises, hoping that all of this would ensure Ruby’s safety. Gripped with nausea, it was as if my insides had amassed into one and my heart sank to join the thick knots in my stomach.
“Come down here!” shouted a policeman, already shinnying halfway down the wall, held up by a rope, the kind they use for abseiling. “She’s hung on...she’s here!”
He shone a torchlight down, illuminating her scared, tensed face. She was hanging off the greasy drainpipe with the one arm that wasn’t broken, her spindly legs dangling in the choking black air; a spider hung by a single unravelling thread. Her right foot was slipping out of its drab shoe, she saw this and shook her foot, trying to shift it back on.
The trainer slid off and fell down noiselessly. She flinched with the shock. Her fingers tightened their grasp on the pipe. None of us said it but we were all thinking, would this be Ruby’s fate?
The policemen clambered down, held and one of them stretched out a hand.
“Come on now, Ruby. Give me your hand.”
She shook her head, trying to appear fearless, but we could all see her terrified eyes, her trembling hand. “I’m not doing anything you say.”
“Ruby!” I yelled again. I shook off the grip of the policewoman and skidded down the roof. I would have fallen were it not for the policeman. I shook him off and went further down. He would have made me go back up but then he saw what I was doing, and simply held me round the waist so I didn’t fall.
I stretched out my hand, this time. It was nearly close enough to touch hers, but not quite.
“Ruby, take my hand.” I couldn’t believe it; I was pulling a Leo di Caprio with a straight face. How very Titanic. It would have sounded ludicrous were it said in any other situation but this. She’d have laughed till her face dropped off but now her green cat eyes were widened with fright, her mouth gasping for air.
“Take it, Ruby.” I tried extending my quivering hand, stretching the stout fingers to their full length so she would hold on. “Ruby. If you go...I’ll have nothing without you.”
She looked up, shook scarlet hair out of her eyes and blinked at me, looking as if she had just made a discovery or uncovered a secret or ... or pieced together a jigsaw puzzle. She shuddered as another puff of wind threatened to unbalance her, breathed in shakily, and gripped my hand.
The policeman helped to hoist her up, and then she stood there in front up me, shaking with either the fear or cold. We did not do the whole clichéd running into each others arms thing, but she walked up to me, firmly escorted by a policeman, and gave me a small smile. After that my head started whirling, I felt as if I were walking through tar and I saw the world through a filmy grey mist before I collapsed. PC Jones caught me before I hit the asphalt ground of the roof, and she put her hands under my armpits and with the assistance of a policeman picked me up. I was still conscious enough at that point to notice that Ruby was being dealt with in the same way. We were hoisted down the skylight, carried down the spiralling steps, into the warm back seat of the police car. Thick mohair blankets were wrapped around us as the engine revved up, and then, warm and rocked by the purring of the motor, I drifted off into sleep.

***

I woke up from my sleep to find myself in a policeman’s arms, being carried up the stairway leading to my apartment. Seeing that I had woken up, he gingerly lowered me down to my feet, and we climbed the flight together. He rung the doorbell and when Mum had answered he had a quick word with her and then tipped his hat and walked back downstairs. I entered the flat and stood facing Mum in silence, until something clicked and a dam burst. Our faces crumpled up simultaneously and I hurried into her arms, my head against her chest, crying and wondering why it had taken so long. Mum was doing exactly the same, and we just stayed in that position, weeping uncontrollably. I was knelt by her wheelchair and Mum’s arms were extended round me, keeping me together even though everything was falling apart. Then, finally, she managed to breathe a bit, and choke out, “Oh, Melia. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. How could I have treated you this way, all this time? Please forgive me, Melia. I’m sorry…”
I interrupted her, hiccupping through my tears.
“No, mum…It wasn’t your fault. No-one could blame you…oh, mum, I’m sorry. I should have been there for you, I should have faced up. I don’t know why I went off with Ruby, Mum. I didn’t mean to -”
“Don’t apologise to me, darling. Don’t apologise. You’re…you’re so grownup. You’ve had to grow up so quickly, all because of me. No, darling, it wasn’t up to you to be there for me. I know now I should have been there for you. I shouldn’t have been so self-absorbed. It was just so difficult for me. When your father left and…and I just felt inadequate, all over again, just like it was when he was here. You needed him more than you needed me, even in his absence, and…oh Melia, I just wanted to be needed. It was so important for me to be needed then, because…because of how helpless I was. It was my stupid pride, and I just took it out on you.” Mum gasped for breath.
And it took that to make me realise. However much I had loved Dad, and idolised him, and despite all his wonderful surprises and his charming ways, he hadn’t been there when I needed him most. He had walked out and abandoned me, at the time I needed him most, and nothing, nothing was going to change that. Mum…now I look back on it Mum had always been the thing holding a dysfunctional family together. She had been the one who put on a brave face whenever there was an argument between her and Dad; whereas Dad would generally storm out the house. Why did I blame her so much on such days, and take out my anger on her? Dad should have been the one at the recipient end of my frustration, not Mum. But that was done, and over, and could not be changed. What could be changed was our future. My future with Mum. the woman I had ignored and set aside when Dad was around, she hadn’t left me in the lurch. She had ignored me, for a while, but here she was now, pouring out her heart to me and facing up to every problem. Mum was the one I needed now, and she was the one I needed to get through this with.
“Mum,” I whispered, leaning my head on her shoulder. “Mum, I do need you. I need you terribly, right here, right now, and I always will.”
She turned, and something inside her, some bitter, resentful tightness that she had been carrying for ages seemed to break. She flinched quietly for a moment, and then breathed out heavily; looking completely released of some burden that I would never know of. “Amelia,” she said softly. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Mum,” I replied, and the words felt good in my mouth. “I love you too.”

***

I stopped off at the florist’s on my way to the funeral. Mum and Miss Alcock had asked to drive me, but I needed to walk there, for a reason that even I didn’t know.
It was a stiflingly hot day, so hot it wasn’t even pleasantly so. It was the kind of heat that makes your lungs wither up and make it really hard I was sweating heavily through the nylon of my thick, uncomfortable dress. I had decided to wear the 1960’s tartan atrocity that I’d worn to the birthday. Despite the fact that it wasn’t black, it wasn’t appropriate and it looked a sight, I needed to wear it. It seemed important to me somehow.
Droplets of sweat were running down the sides of my faces and neck, and every minute I had to swipe away at them with my hand. It was the wrong weather. Funerals should be on a thundery, rainy day, on a lonesome hill, with women dressed in black veils, wiping away tears with lace handkerchiefs.
I entered the church and edged into a pew, next to Mum. She smiled at me and squeezed my hand. I returned the smile and a few minutes after, the service started.
The edges of the service were all blurred, like a dream, and I couldn’t focus on anything but the mahogany casket up in the front. The priest was speaking in a monotone voice, droning on and on in his nasal tone and I could not be bothered waiting for him. It was all such a big pretence. It wasn’t real.
In a blurry daze, my head spinning, I rose from my seat, and made my way out of the pew. All of the heads in the church turned to frown disapprovingly at me and Mum looked at me, surprised. The priest brushed away sweat on his upper lip nervously, and said something sounding like a squeak.
Ignoring everyone, I staggered up the aisle, walking towards the casket. Everyone’s eyes were fixed upon me but I was oblivious to that. I just needed to see her face.
I bent over the glass casket and looked at Mrs Brown.
I took it all in – her beautiful long silver hair spread across her shoulders, her thin body dressed in her silk wedding gown, her green-grey eyes closed. I kissed my fingers and pressed it to the glass. But there was something wrong.
It was the flowers. The flowers on top of the casket were not right. It was awful.
There were freesias, violets, marigolds, pansies, tulips.
But no roses. It was all wrong, wrong, wrong.
I raised an arm and swiped viciously at the glass. Dozens of bouquets scattered across the floor and at this, the priest descended from the lectern and attempted to restrain me, but I was strengthened by fury. I lashed out at him and he recoiled, startled and confused.
I opened the plastic bag I had been carrying, containing the flowers I had bought from the florists.
Roses. Twenty large bouquets of roses. White, yellow, pink, red. But all roses.
I reached in the bag and freed each rose from its bouquet, laying each one individually on the casket until it was covered with hundreds of roses. Just as Mrs Brown had said she wanted it, all that time ago.
And then, standing there with all those people looking at me in horror, as I gazed at the rose-crusted casket, I finally began to cry.
Finally. Finally I could shed tears for her when I’d thought there were none left to cry. My emotions came spilling out and I stood there, helpless to stop them, relieved that they were not bottled up any more.
“Goodbye,” I whispered to Mrs Brown, looking at her for the very last time.
And then I turned around and walked back down the aisle.

“Hi, Melia,” grinned Douglas.
It was morning registration, as usual, the next day, and I was standing by Douglas Atkinson’s desk, smiling at him.
I took a deep breath. “Hey Doug,” I said.“Come on, sit down. You won’t believe how much I have to tell you.”
And I began on an extremely long, detailed account of everything that had happened.
Looking up once, for a deep breath before I continued, I saw Kirsty staring at us. I was bewildered when she left her Mini-K’s and walked up to me. “Hi,” she said uncertainly.
“Uh...yeah...I mean...hi.” was my mumbled response, as I gawked at her.
“Um...bye,” she said, and walked back off.
Not much. But a start.

***

At morning break, I avoided Douglas. I didn’t want to be with him because I wanted time on my own to think, so I walked into the quad and sat on a bench.
Fifteen minutes into break time, I heard someone crying, so I looked up to see who it was.
It was a little Year Seven, a pretty little black girl, on the nearest bench, with hundreds of plaits on her delicate little head. I noticed she had mud all over her uniform and a scratch on her nose.
“Are you okay?” I asked, walking over to the bench and looking down at her. As she didn’t reply, I squashed onto the bench beside her, and put an arm around her. Reluctantly, she pointed to a scrum of other Year Sevens, their backs to us, laughing. I thought I might know what their joke was about. I looked back at the girl. She was sobbing something over and over again.
“What is this place?” she wept.
I leant against her, half smiling, half crying, and remembered.