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FOUR
I find one of my mother’s old Post-it notes down the back of the couch, the paper soft and curled with age. Her writing– blue felt tip, perfect cursive– is faded. A ghost. A whisper down the years.
What would I say if whispers worked the other way? If I could leave a note now, for the me then? A warning from the future. A tip-off.
It’s a fantasy I often indulge in, although it inevitably leads to guilt and recriminations. Of me, of my mother. And there are so many of those already.
I still do it though, can’t stop myself. A scab you’re not supposed to pick but which itches like hell if you don’t.
I turn the old note over in my hand, play the game. What would I say?
Beware wolves dressed as sheep?
Trust no one?
Run?
But what if it was all a terrible mistake? What if it’s true he’s innocent? Would I really want to have missed out on what was truthfully the happiest time in my life?
Yes, I think. No.
God! No wonder I’m such a mess.
I trace my mother’s handwriting with the tip of my forefinger. There’s a tightness in my throat I recognise as a sign my black dog is on the prowl. The spectre that’s always lurking, waiting for its chance to pounce and pin me down. Stealing weeks. Locking me inside myself. Sapping my energy so all I can do is sit and stare.
The tight throat is there but the other symptoms are missing; the feeling you get behind your eyes just before you start to cry. The lead in my muscles. The inertia.
This isn’t the onset of another depression then. It’s not about shutting myself away. It’s the thought of doing something that frightens the life out of me.
My mother’s note: No time like the present.
A portent maybe, although I don’t make the call immediately. Deciding on a course of action is one thing, following it through is another. Forgiveness works the same way.
I wait till Buster and I have had our lunch, he eats most of mine as well as his. My appetite is shot. A silver lining, perhaps. Ever since I hit thirty, weight has been harder to shift.
I reach for the phone, the letter with the prison phone number printed at the top. I hesitate, replace the handset, cover my eyes.
I can’t do it. The tightness in my throat chokes me.
Tomorrow, I think, standing up, wondering if it’s too early for a glass of wine. Just a small one to take the edge off.
And then in my peripheral vision—
No time like the present.
I grit my teeth, inhale deeply, dial.
I sound out of breath when the receptionist picks up, as if I’ve been running up and down the stairs, rather than sitting at the kitchen table racked with indecision for the last two hours.
I hate myself for letting Matty get to me. I’m an adult now, so many years under the bridge. And yet still the slightest thing recalls him to me.
Bows. Footprints. A discarded earring. The past isn’t a foreign country. It’s a prison sentence with no hope of parole.
I hear the women whispering to me at night, though mostly it’s the girl. Angry, accusing.
‘Why didn’t you do it sooner?’ she asks. ‘I’d be alive if you had. I had a mother too. How do you think she feels?’
Other times she’s crueller.
