most decisions, worrying, weighing up the possibilities; what could happen. Getting back behind the wheel of a car is one of the few things I don’t need to think about. Some day in the future, maybe. But for now I’m sticking to my guns, and it makes it easy somehow, having at least that one absolute.
before
after
later
I heard a story once, a long time ago. There are some stories that stick with you, they haunt you in one way or another, and this one has. It was about a horse race. One particular jockey wanted badly to win and pushed his horse extra hard. The horse responded, giving the jockey everything it had—its whole body straining forwards, blood pumping madly. And as the little horse propelled itself over the finish line—first place—its heart literally exploded in its chest. It gave everything to win that race and the glory that came with it. It gave up its life so its name would live forever.
My mother is a writer. She has been for as long as I remember. She used to write at all hours of the night. I’d wake up at midnight, two, three a.m. and listen to her pacing on worn floorboards in her bedroom above, the steady tapping of keys. I’d always wonder how she could stay awake all night. She often slept during the day, while we were at school, but it never seemed enough, when you looked at her. She was always tired.
Her current routine is to write during the day. Sometimes she’ll start before breakfast, which usually means she ends up forgetting breakfast altogether. Other days, she’ll come downstairs for a coffee and a cigarette on the back step first. That’s usually when she sees us, catches us heading to school in unironed uniforms, notices Morgan has dyed her hair again, reminds us that we’ve forgotten chores.
This week, though, she’s been sleeping in, and by the time I finish my breakfast she still hasn’t come downstairs. Lauren is still asleep, I suppose—her bedroom door is shut. I wonder if Mum even knows she’s back.
Morgan is in the kitchen, putting salad onto a chicken sandwich, arranging the pieces as if she’s creating an artwork. Her bedroom floor is piled ankle-deep in dirty clothes and old school books, but she takes time with food. She wants to be either a chef or an artist, and for the moment she’s both.
‘Two minutes,’ I warn her. We almost missed the bus yesterday.
‘Yeah, yeah.’
I head upstairs to see if Mum’s awake, feeling as if I should at least warn her that the prodigal is home. The curtains are drawn and the room is dark, but she’s awake and sitting in her desk chair in her old green dressing gown. Her room always smells like stale smoke. I don’t think she realises.
She looks up. ‘What?’ She doesn’t get as defensive as Lauren, but she does sound irritable sometimes, as if I’m intruding somehow, because God forbid we interrupt her misery. Torture by a thousand drafts, that’s what she says about writing.
‘Lauren’s back.’
‘I know. I saw her come in last night. This morning. Whatever you call it. Anything else?’
Morgan calls me from downstairs and I escape out into the light, breathing in the fresh air on the landing. I always feel cowardly after those interactions, like I’m supposed to stand up to her somehow—fix something, I don’t know what. I wonder if girls feel this way, or if they just accept things the way they are, and drift along in their own worlds.
Long ago, before my father left us, she was a more ordinary sort of mother. She took us to swimming lessons and went to parent–teacher interviews and served up dinner on time. But as our family life disintegrated, so did the punctuality and efficiency. She chose to spend more and more of her time in a fictional world. She often seemed to loathe it, but I suppose she could at least control it.
It starts to rain as we get to the bus stop. Morgan never brings an umbrella so we huddle under mine, knowing that wet weather means more traffic, means a longer wait