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‘I have to go.’
A statement this time, not a question.
‘Yes, you do.’
If we’d been together in her consulting room– beige walls, cream furniture, white curtains; a study in blandness– she’d have reached over, put a hand on mine. I usually hate being touched, but I don’t mind when Janice does it. I like the feeling it produces, the sense of connectedness. Of being mothered.
I hang up. In my chest a sudden yawning ache for my real mother. My mother before Matty, before everything started to go wrong. The yearning has been coming more frequently recently. It’s why I’ve been talking to her so much, I think.
Buster watches me from his basket, gets up heavily, pads over. I stroke his flank as he rests his head in my lap, the warm wetness of his jowls snug against my thigh.
‘Good boy,’ I tell him.
I may have rescued him from the pound, but the truth is he rescued me too. I can’t lie in bed all day feeling sorry for myself any more. I have to go to the park whether it’s sunny or not. Have to feed him, attend to his needs. And in taking care of him, I end up taking of myself too.
I look at the date circled on the wall calendar. Red biro, like a sick joke. Today everything is putting me in mind of blood and death. Matty’s little gift.
‘Tuesday. Four thirty,’ I whisper again.
I put my head in my hands.
‘Christ.’
There’s a hangover pummelling my eye sockets, my limbs are lead. I went at the bottle pretty hard last night, not that it helped. It never does, but I do it anyway. The definition of madness they say; repeating the same mistakes over and over and expecting a different outcome.
Buster noses my thigh, lets out an indignant woof.
Get a move on, he’s saying, pointing with his nose at the leash hanging on the hook by the sink. Walkies time.
I tell him to keep his fur on, heave myself up.
I stroke his big head; careful to avoid his bad ear. Part of it was ripped off in a fight with another dog before I got him. A pit bull who wasn’t treated any better than he was.
The bastards who owned Buster didn’t get it treated, probably reckoned it made him look fiercer with part of his ear missing. That more people would put money on him that way.
We both have our scars, I think, which straightaway conjures another thought. The images of the body they pulled out of the river. The photos I’ve tormented myself with online. Bruises. Bloating. Blank blue eyes.
‘What made us different?’ I asked my mother once. ‘Why didn’t Matty kill us too?’
She looked at me so sadly, the whole world on her back.
‘He did kill us,’ she said.
I didn’t understand her then.
But I do now.
