Read by Eileen Pollock
Tony was here on Monday. I know because I mark off his visits on the calendar. I don’t know if I’ve had the earrings on since Monday. I can’t remember.
I’m having another look around the bedroom when I can smell something burning. I walk out onto the landing. The smell is stronger there. I check the spare room and the bathroom, just in case, before heading down the stairs. I hold onto the banister, taking one step at a time, right foot first before moving the left foot onto the same step. There are twelve steps from upstairs to downstairs.
I open the back door to the garden, right next to the cooker, and leave it open. It’s raining outside and there’s such a chill it goes straight to my bones, but the smoke goes out that way and the air starts to clear.
I was looking for something. My pearl earrings. I’ll look again, starting at the top of the house and working my way down. I’ve lost things before and I don’t want to talk to Tony until I’m sure. It’s not something I want to be right about, but then it’s not something I want to be wrong about either, if I’m going to speak to him. If his father were still here things would be different. Graham was always the calm one.
Back up the stairs again. I swear it’s like climbing the north face of the Eiger getting upstairs these days. I should have checked the calendar when I was in the kitchen, just to make sure that it was Monday that Tony came. I think it was. I remember him standing by the bureau in the living room, giving me one of his shifty smiles. He was always a mischief.
When he was less than eight weeks he caught the meningitis, and we had him in one of those glass incubators. Graham, God bless him, was beside himself. Tony was so small, and none of the other stuff had happened yet, he was just a tiny red thing and he was in such misery, crying and crying. You don’t know yourself properly until something like that happens. It’s old fashioned nowadays, but we prayed, me and his father. We were down on our knees praying together and we said that, no matter what, if the Good Lord let us keep him we’d never let Tony down. We’d bring him up in a Christian way, and he would never want for anything.
I don’t know if we failed, or if it was just that Him-up-there decided to test us.
My memory isn’t what it was so I write on the bedside pad all of the places the earrings could be. I tick them off as I go around the house, so I know that I’ve looked there. My memory started to slide a while back, and it’s a worry. You don’t feel it, it just happens, and when you try to recall things it’s like the trace of them has been washed out. There’s just a white patch. That’s why I make lists.
I start with the bedside tables, the jewellery box, every drawer in the bedroom. I get down to look under the bed, which is like fireworks going off in my knees, but I can’t see anything down there. It takes a while to get back up so I have a little sit down on the edge of the bed, check the list, and have a look around to see if there’s somewhere I missed. I hope so.
I don’t know if Tony caused his father’s stroke. Graham said not, and Graham should know. I don’t know why these things happen to people. I looked after my husband as best I could, and I was a different proposition back then. He called me his Florence Nightingale, though we had a real nurse who came in twice a week. Different nurses they were. On rotation, but you got to know some of them. I can’t remember what the lazy one was called, but we liked Rosemary. I wish she came now. I could use some nursing, or just a chat, someone to shine a light on things.
I check the spare bedroom and bathroom again and do the list. There’s nothing. I’m starting to feel sick in my belly. If I can’t find them downstairs then I’ll have to ask Tony. I don’t want to ask Tony. Have you seen them? I’ll ask him, and he’ll know what I mean. I could stay quiet. Some would say I should stay quiet, but that’s not me, not yet.
Tony’s the only visitor I’ve had in three weeks, on Monday. I know because I mark off visits on the calendar.
Graham used to joke that if Tony was a horse he’d be a long shot. Graham was big for the horses, but he only bet little amounts. Never more than you can afford to lose, he used to say. I don’t need a man to be perfect, but he knew where he wasn’t and that was good enough for me. Tony wasn’t really in the race, so you weren’t betting on him to win so much as see if he’d make it to the finish line.
But he came to visit on Monday. He was standing right there by the bureau. He went to the shops for me, and picked up my pension, and then came and chatted for a bit. That was Monday, and he was standing there by the bureau.
I climb back down the stairs. With the crawling and the ups and downs my legs are hurting, so I sit on the first step and slide my way down, using the banister railings to stop my bum bumping too hard. The list comes with me, and the pen, step by step until they’re low enough to grab from the hall. When I’m down I reach through the railings to get them, then head into the living room. After the living room it’s the kitchen. Half an hour later and I know it’s no good, I’m going to need to call Tony.
“Hello, Mum,” he says. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted to see how you were,” I tell him. My heart is beating hard, and I can taste metal in my mouth.
“Yeh, I’m good,” he says. He sounds sober. It’s eleven in the morning. I can hear street noises around him. “You?”
“Yes, I’m well,” I say. “Just wondering if I’m going to see you again this week?”
“See me again?” He sounds surprised. “I don’t know, Mm, maybe. I’m a bit busy at the moment. I’ll try.”
“You’re working?” I ask him. He’s busy, he says. It’s worth asking.
“Still looking,” he says. “But I’ve got a couple of interviews and stuff.”
“What for?” I ask. “The interviews?”
“So I’ll try and come round,” he says. “But probably after the weekend now. I’ll come and do the shopping for you again. Pick up your pension.”
There’s a pause, and I steel myself. He’s about to finish the call, so I say it.
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen my earrings, have you?” I ask. “I’ve been looking for them, and I wondered …”
“No,” he says, warily. “I haven’t seen them.”
“The pearl ones,” I say. “The ones your father bought me when we went to Italy.”
He should know where they came from.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mum,” he says. “Are you really asking this? Are you really asking your son if he’s stolen from you? Your son?”
“I just wondered …”
“I just wondered,” he repeats, scornfully. “I just wondered. I just wondered. I’m your son, Mum. What sort of a mother asks her son if he’s stolen from her?”
This is it, I realise. This is familiar. He can’t even stand on his own name, he needs to use the fact that he’s my son to hide behind. He is my son, my only son. But this is how it always is. The anger, the counterattacks and evasions that are even worse than lies. The pain of it, the shame of it. What kind of mother? The accusation stings, but only because I hear it from somewhere else, from Him-up-there, asking me why I didn’t keep my promise to raise my son right.
But then I’m so lonely, so weak now. I need Tony. I don’t have anyone else. The drugs, the lies, the stealing. The time he hit his father. You reap what you sow, I think to myself.
“Got nothing to say?” he says to me.
“I just wondered …” I say again. “I’ll have another look.”
“You do that,” he says. “I’ve not got your earrings.” There’s a pause. “Look, I’m off,” he says, satisfied with himself. “I’ve got to see someone.”
“Okay,” I say, my voice trembling. “I’m sorry, I just thought, maybe …”
“A proper mother doesn’t think that about her son,” he tells me and hangs up.
But I do. He went to prison for stealing. He stole from us time and time again, until his father confronted him and there was the fight.
I sit there for a while, I’m not sure how long, feeling numb. Then I cry for a bit, just until it feels a bit better and I’m numb again. Tired and numb and empty.
I go back into the kitchen to check the calendar. Tony was here on Monday.
I wonder if the grill is cold enough. The smoke and most of the smell have gone out through the open door now, so I shut it. I pull out the grill tray and look at the black, charred squares of bread sitting on it. I should have used the toaster, but it never gets things right. Anyway, in the bin with you two. I take them over to the pedal bin and lift the lid with a slippered foot. I’m about to drop in the slices when I see, there at the bottom of the fresh bin bag, two pearl earrings.
I lean forward slowly and lift them out, then I drop the ruined toast in the bin.
I feel elated, confused, and ashamed. I was wrong. It’s good to be wrong, now, to have been wrong about Tony. He might make it over the finish line after all. I’ll call him later, maybe tomorrow, and tell him I’ve found them. I do silly things sometimes, when I’m not paying attention. The burnt toast, the earrings in the rubbish bin, these things happen. I’m getting old. He has to understand that. He can let off some steam, but in the end he has to understand that, when I’ve apologised enough.
But now, though, I need to go out and buy some more bread. I’ve got my pension now. Tony collected it for me on Monday, it’s on the calendar. Graham would be laughing at me. Not nasty, just at my silliness. I make my way to the bureau in the living room and look on the money shelf.
The envelope isn’t there, the envelope with the pension money in it. I take a breath. It’s still not there. I take another breath, and then start to write out a list of all the places it could be.
(c) Joshua Osto
Joshua Osto was born in Birmingham, England. His work has been published in Prole, The Canary Press, Birkensnake and Glassfire magazines. He is also the editor of The Red Line (www.overtheredline.com) short story ezine. He loves Paella and Bettina. He dislikes injustice and slippers.
Eileen Pollock: 'in the business' since 1972, her stage career has spanned everything from Brecht to panto, many major Irish companies and two ongoing one-woman shows. Hollywood has also called, if infrequently, and she was a BBC sitcom stalwart in Bread for many years. Currently involved in an exciting international theatre initiative, Truth in Translation, and can also be seen being mean in the recent film short Are You Albert?
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