Looking after Mum: Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Fidgeting nervously, I stood uncomfortably outside the room, not knowing whether to knock or to just enter. When I’d walked into a science lesson, my teacher had handed me a note, saying she’d been told I was to be excused from this lesson for some reason. The note said, “Could Amelia Harper please come to the Staff Room during Lesson 3.”
The door opened just when I’d been wondering how to come in, and a crazy-looking woman came out and stood in front of me. I remember wondering what she was doing in a school. She was short, slightly plump, and she had frizzy, orange hair in mad ringlets sticking around her head. Her brown eyes were framed with bright green plastic glasses with slightly slanted edges. She was wearing an olive green top with long, dramatic flowing sleeves, over a bright blue nylon skirt down to below her calves. She seemed to want to over-emphasize the look even more with a pair of tan cowboy style boots with tassels down the sides.
When she saw me gaping at her, she burst out laughing. “Always gets that reaction,” she giggled. “You must be Amelia. Pleased to meet you. I’m Susannah Reed and I’m going to be having a few little chats with you for a while, just to get to know you better.”
That completely baffled me. I didn’t know what to think. I do remember my mind momentarily touching on the fact that she’d managed to introduce the both of us in one sentence.
“Hi,” I said unsurely, working myself up into a blush and hoping she hadn’t noticed how nervous I was getting about the whole situation.
She smiled at me, looking as if she was reading my thoughts. “Shall we find a room then?” she asked. “I’m new to this school but we should be able to find somewhere that’s free.”
“Um...okay,” I said, and followed her as she strode from the staff room. I watched her as she walked through, so confident and sure of herself. She was either unaware of the incredulous stares she was getting from teachers, or she didn’t give a damn.
She went to reception, and asked Miss Drury, the washed-out looking receptionist, “Hiya there. Is there a free room about that me and Amelia here can use?”
Miss Drury clearly looked liked she needed a good lie-down after her confrontation with Susannah. She went and checked the school timetable, and said in a croaky voice that Room 2, in the music block, was free.
Once we were in the empty classroom, Susannah pulled out a chair for me, and we sat on opposite sides of the teacher’s desk. She flashed me a toothy grin and cleared her throat.
“So, Amelia. I might not have explained that well up there in the staff room. Basically, I come into schools to catch up with pupils that have a few more problems in the norm. It’s a chance for you to have a little chat about things going on...if there’s anything happening sometimes I can make suggestions, and, well, it’s just a way for you to let anything out that’s on your mind. I suppose you’d call it mentoring or counselling or something.”
I nodded slowly, understanding it more fully now. Mentoring, that was just a fancy word to disguise what this really was. This was basically therapy for screw ups. They might as well have put me in a mental home with a big sign on my forehead saying LOSER.
“I know people think sessions like this are for losers, or whatever you call them nowadays. But I’m not here to hypnotize you or anything like that. Neither am I here for all that “so how do you feel about that” crap. I’m just here to support you.”
Bloody mind reader.
“Okay...yeah...that’s fine,” I managed to come out with.
“So, Amelia,” she started again in her light, happy voice. Did she start every sentence like that or what? “Why do you think you’ve been recommended for sessions with me?”
“Um...I guess I have a few problems?” I said, doing my usual cover-up thing. If you minimized the issues in front of teachers and made them seem like nothing, then they would leave you alone, would stop trying to help. Help was pointless. How could thy possibly help?
Adults never caught onto the fact that I was lying; if I brushed my problems away, dismissing them, then they’d believe me. Easy.
“Ah. Yes. To be sure, you have a few problems.” She leaned into me conspiratorially and raised her eyebrows. “Is that the best you can do?”
Ruffled, I fidgeted with the edge of my seat and tried to repress the strange urge I had to either burst out laughing or start crying.
“Um...what?” I mumbled.
“You know what I mean, Amelia. That’s rubbish. I’ve been reading your files and it’s obvious you have a lot more than a few problems.” She bent down and fumbled in her large patent shoulder bag, retrieving a folder with a fluffy pink cover that looked like it belonged in Disney Land. Lolling back, she opened the folder, and flipped through it, nodding at every page.
“Yeah...” my voice trailed off. I didn’t know what to reply to her. I hoped she would continue speaking so I wouldn’t have to explain everything.
“You’ve been having a really hard time at school, right?” she asked, looking at me from under her green specs.
“I guess...um...not really...kind of.”
“Yeah,” she said, shutting the folder abruptly and giving me her full attention. “You have, haven’t you? And...your mum was admitted into hospital a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t she?
“Yeah,” I said, still wriggling my fingers. Tense, loosen. Tense, loosen. A couple of weeks ago? It seemed more like an eternity, as Dad and I stayed at home, killing time, on tenterhooks.
“You don’t want to talk about this,” she said, looking at me perceptively through those probing eyes, “Do you?”
I sighed. “No.”
“Alright then, Amelia,” she said. “Alright.”

I wasn’t exactly overjoyed when I walked in to see the waste paper bin emptied over the floor of the lounge. Dad was not sprawled over the sofa but sat carefully to one side, as if still waiting for someone to sit next to him. This gave the whole atmosphere a very lonely, redundant feel to it, and this depressed me even more. Dad was watching Deal or No Deal on the television, a remote look on his face. He didn’t really look as if he was very interested. His eyes were barely blinking at the flickering screen and it seemed like he was looking right through it, to something beyond. He was obviously worlds away and he didn’t even register the fact that there was another human in the room. I got a strong feeling of déjà vu. “Jeez,” I said, sitting down on the other end of the sofa and stretching my legs. “I’d hate it if you tried to smile.” Dad turned to face me, raising his eyebrows slightly, and I caught a faint glimmer in him of the old Dad, the mischievous Dad. This died out however, as instantly as it had come, and he went back to his distant, sorry-looking state. “Who’s going to clear this up?” I asked, irritated because of his failure to react, combined with the hard day I’d had. “I’ll do it later.” Rolling my eyes, I mentally dismissed his claim: he hadn’t lifted a finger to tidy the house the whole two weeks Mum had been away. He’d just sat in this catatonic position, creating mess and being unconstructive. Dad was normally very tidy; he was the sort of person that hated it when the furniture was out of place or when toothbrushes were in the wrong glass. If Dad was in the state of mind to pay any sort of attention to his surroundings, the scattered paper would be eating him up from the inside until he’d tidied it up. “What’s the matter with you?” I asked sharply, then, feeling guilty, softened my tone. “I hate seeing you like this.” Dad stayed as still and unresponsive as a cold marble pillar. I shifted myself till I was curled up next to him on the sofa, and gave him a kiss on the cheek, the first gesture of affection we’d given each other since the day of the accident. I winced as my lips made contact with his skin; he had clearly not shaven as the bristles pricked me. Dad was always clean shaven, as he hated the thought of getting old and thought that smooth cheeks rejuvenated him. My face creased in an unhappy frown. “It doesn’t have to be like this,” I whispered, ungluing myself from his side. Dad didn’t respond. I stared ahead, my fists clenched in my lap.

Later that evening, feeling dejected and self-piteous, I went to call on Mrs Brown, carrying my latest story. I hadn’t seen her since the day she had accosted me on the bus, and she was the only person I could think of that I could visit in order to escape the choking environment.
I wiped my feet a few times on her neat, rope-weave beige doormat, took a deep breath, and rang the doorbell.
There was no answer; but I could hear the sound of canned laughter playing from a chat show on TV.
After several minutes I finally heard movement and the sound of slippered feet waddling down the hallway.
I heard a click as the door handle turned slowly, and then the door opened a fraction and Mrs Brown poked her head around it, glaring at me.
“Um, hi, Mrs Brown,” I started nervously.
“Eh? What are you doing here?” she snapped tersely, an irritated frown creasing the entirety of her wrinkled face.
I tried to give her a wide smile and said in the brightest possible voice, “I’ve just come to visit you, and thank you for your help that day. I thought you might like the company.”
“Thought I might like the company, eh?” said Mrs Brown severely, still scowling at me.
“Um...yeah!” I said, my smile cracking into a grin which made my entire face ache.
“Humph!” said Mrs Brown, but she opened the door and let me in. “Take off your shoes.”
I don’t know why I expected it to smell of mothballs and stale bread. I had the old clichéd Mrs Havisham idea in my head of a little old lady stuck in an ancient, dusty place that was crumbling away. But all the furniture was immaculately polished, there was not a spec of dust to be seen, and it only smelt of rose talcum, cinnamon tea, and loneliness.
I followed her slowly through the long, narrow hallway, which I noticed was full of polished black and white pictures propped up neatly on display cabinets along either side. Frosted glass vases of roses were carefully propped on every cabinet top and the smell was so intense it was enchanting.

The first picture that caught my eye was with a very young infant and an elderly woman, a bit older than Mrs Brown. There were also a few in colour of an unhappy-looking teenage girl, about sixteen, her gaze averted from the camera lens. There were none vaguely resembling family shots, though in the middle was a black and white wedding picture of a young, gangly, nervous-faced man with a petite blonde holding his arm. The woman was wearing a long white lace dress and a white silk veil, and holding a large bouquet of white roses, and tiny white satin shoes peeped out from underneath the dress. It was a grey, cloudy day and they were standing outside a dank, equally grey-looking chapel, with sour face relatives standing at the sides. However, the couple seemed oblivious to the imperfect surroundings and were standing looking into each other’s eyes with rapturous faces.

Catching me peering at her glass cabinets, Mrs Brown took my arm and firmly led me into the kitchen, where she faced me with a stern look on her face.
"Did you come here to nose around into other people's affairs?" asked Mrs Brown harshly. "Because if you did you can leave, young lady. Don't want people prying into my business."
“Oh, oh no,” I said, flustered and reddening. “I would never...no, I wasn’t even looking at them properly.”
“Very well,” she said gruffly, and sat down on a chair, beckoning me to its twin.
We sat in a stiff, terse silence and I didn’t think I’d ever been as uncomfortable as I was then. My bare feet danced a little nervously along the soft, light peach carpet and I twisted my hands in my lap. My eyes flickered back around the room, and I noticed there were more vases with roses, on lace doilies, standing on bookshelves and coffee tables and windowsills. There was something very individual and overpowering about their sweet thick scent and I realised it was because there was no other flower in the house. Only roses.

Mrs Brown saw me looking and glanced sideways at me, her eyes perceptive. “Roses,” she said quietly. “The flowers I held at my wedding.”
The silence tensed for a moment and then evaporated crisply as Mrs Brown cleared her throat and said, “I suppose you’ll be wanting tea, then.”
Not exactly knowing how to reply, I said, “I don’t mind.”

She sighed heavily and rose from her chair, barely making it creak as she walked to the kitchen and brought out a teapot, teacups and saucers. Under her instructions, I made the tea and poured out sweet, steaming liquid into the little cups. We seated ourselves again and I raised the cup to my lips, sipping the tea. It had an unusual fragrance and a slightly zesty taste.

“Herbal?” I asked before taking another sip.
“Cinnamon,” Mrs Brown answered. “Richard’s favourite. He introduced it to me at our honeymoon. I never drank any other since.”
I nodded, grinning mischievously, a sudden thought occurring to me. “I bet you’re the type to carry your teabags around on trains and the like.”
Mrs Brown raised her eyebrows and gave me a formidable look, although the wrinkled corners of her mouth twitched. “The cheek of the girl! Well, I suppose this is the thanks I get for inviting a stranger into my house and offering her my whole larder.” She spoke sternly but her eyes were twinkling.

I smiled. “My grandmother was really fussy about her tea as well, that’s why I said it. She couldn’t live without Tetley camomile. She’d bring a bag of teabags everywhere with her, and she’d make such an uproar if anyone dared to offer her something different.”

“Humph!” said Mrs Brown, trying to look uninterested but her mouth betraying the fact that she was obviously amused. She swallowed, licked her lips and set her teacup down on the saucer with a slight clink. I liked the noise. It was like the wind chimes hung at the entrance to Dad’s parking space. I flinched at the thought, remembering how it had been a long time since there had been any whistling of the wind chime’s tune.

I grasped the tiny handle of the dainty little teacup tighter. The smooth surface was glazed with miniature paintings of pink roses. I smiled to myself. Mrs Brown seemed to sleep, live, eat and drink roses.
When I had finished my tea, she announced that she had to visit her husband at the hospital, and so I returned home.