Writer and Tutor, Ann Burnett

Janis

The phone rings, breaking the silence like shattering glass. I rush through to the sitting room but I can't reach the phone until the fifth ring and I am panting as I pick it up.
'Hello?'
A male voice answers. 'Does a Joan Margaret McLeod live there?'
'Yes,' I say.
A pause.
'Can I speak to her?' The voice seems to gasp as much as me.
'No, she's having her rest.'
Another pause.
'I'll phone back later.'
I am left to hear the echoes of his phone clattering down on its rest.
I put my phone down and listen. No sound. No snort or querulous voice asking who it was. I tiptoe back to my computer in the spare room and settle myself down again. But I am disturbed. Who was he and what does he want with Mother? He can't have known she always sleeps after lunch for an hour or so. If she doesn't, she's tired and grumpy for the rest of the day, grumpier than usual, that is. She's never exactly sweet tempered. Though I don't suppose sweetness is part of the process of growing old. How could it be with pains of arthritis and stomachs complaining and minds struggling to keep above the waters of senility? Working twice as hard just to remain where she is and not get dragged down into the ever looming past which threatens to flood over her and drown the present.
I try to involve myself in a game of Solitaire but my mind is not on it and I miss a crucial move with an ace. I click on redeal and flick through the cards again. But they don't run well and again I fail to finish the game. Disgusted, I go to check my emails and wait while the blue line slowly fills. Do I want to buy a high school diploma or a Ph.D? I click delete and turn to the next. Good sex all the time. Try our lovely girls. Don't miss out. I press delete again and wish I could delete parts of my life just as easily.
Mother gives a loud snore. I can hear it through the wall. She always does that just before she comes to, so I go in to the kitchen to make her a cup of tea. If I have it ready for when she opens her eyes, I can subvert any comments from her. I decide not to mention the phone call just yet, as he might never phone back.
While I wait for the tea to mash, I think about the future when Mother has gone. Guilty thoughts. Secret, evil little thoughts. I try not to do it, but every so often, usually after a short taste of freedom, I find them rippling through my mind like a rogue wave flowing higher up the beach. Sometimes when she's asleep, I open the bureau in the sitting room where she keeps all her important documents and take them out to look at.
Perhaps a miracle cure comes along with the inheritance. But there's always a wee niggle tucked away deep inside me, a wee nasty voice which says, 'Who are you kidding, Janis? Why do you think you'll be any different to what you are now?'
That's when I stop those thoughts. Or at least, I do something to take my mind away from them. Like now. I take out her Doulton china cup and saucer, pour the tea into the cup, add a dash of milk and her two sugars, set it down on the tray with a digestive biscuit in the saucer and carry it through to her.
Her mouth is mumbling away as she wakes up. She snorts and yawns and opens her eyes. She sees me standing there, pushes back the covers and sits up.
'Here you are, Mother,' I say as brightly as I can muster. 'Time for tea.'
She doesn't answer but takes the tray from me, dunks the digestive biscuit in the cup and sucks the softening semi-circle through her gums. I try not to look. She would have smacked me if I'd ever done anything like that as a child but she always does it. I leave her to it and go through to the spare bedroom to shut down my computer and put it away behind the cabinet doors. It's one of those cheap home office units where you can shut it up when you're finished and it just looks like an ordinary piece of furniture. I bought it so I could have my computer in the sitting room and be able to use it while Mother's watching TV in the evenings but she wouldn't have it.
'It doesn't match the furniture,' she complained.
Of course, it doesn't. Computer units aren't made in walnut and mahogany. They don't come with inlaid marquetry or ebony beading. They don't match grandmother clocks that are over 100 years old and belonged to great-grandma's uncle, or display cabinets filled with silver cream and sugar sets and Doulton tea-sets. They don't match bureaux with rows of pigeon holes lined in rubbed red velvet and crammed with letters and wills and insurance.
I pleaded my case but nothing would shift her. The computer unit wasn't coming into the sitting room.
'Over my dead body,' she said.
I held back what I wanted to say but let the words whisper through my mind. So it sits in the spare bedroom and in the evenings I have to sit with her in the sitting room with the TV pushed in front of her chair so she can see it, and the volume turned up high while we watch the soaps and the news and programmes she deems suitable. And I sit and scheme and plot and fume along with Eastenders and Corrie and River City.
After she finishes her tea, I go in and help her to the toilet. Then, just as I am sitting her down in her usual chair in the sitting room, she says,
'Who phoned?'