Dad, who she didn’t even like, or not to get pregnant with you so he had to marry her, in fact not to bother having any of us, and what else?”
Mercy was trying to get a word in, but I was all keyed up and I wasn’t stopping.
“Oh! We could go and find Dad for her, wherever the hell he is, and then she could divorce him and marry that other prick, that art teacher, and pretend to get on with her life! That good enough?”
Then I pushed past Mercy and opened the door, and Mum was standing right there in the corridor, listening.
For a moment I thought she was going to do that thing of pretending nothing had happened, which would have been a relief, but she said, “I am getting on with my life, aren’t I? Who says I’m not?”
I said, “Mercy does” and Mercy said, “Lucas does” at the same time, which left us both looking stupid and to blame.
“Well, what do you suggest?” she said, walking in and sitting on Mercy’s bed. She was seething. It was like she wanted to embarrass us.
She said, “Come on! If you talk about people when they aren’t there, you have to have the guts to do it their faces.”
I looked over at Mercy who wasn’t looking at anyone and clearly wasn’t going to go first, and I said, “You should go out more,” which was feeble.
Mum smiled a really unfriendly smile.
Then I said, “You could go back to college and get a degree. You’re clever,” which sounded patronising but wasn’t meant to.
Mum nodded.
“You could go on holiday on your own.”
“Great,” said Mum, meaning the opposite.
“We could move,” Mercy said.
“You should get the marriage annulled and marry whatsisname,” I said.
“The prick?” Mum said.
“You could decorate,” Mercy said. “You could have a clear-out and take Dad’s stuff to the dump. You could rent the house out. Or sell it.”
Mum put out her hand to stop us. She was laughing at us in a way that made me really sad.
“Guys, do you think I haven’t thought of all those things, given that going back in time is still impossible?” She glared at me when she said that.
We shrugged, at the same time, like idiots.
“And do you know why I haven’t done them?”
I said no, but Mercy kept her mouth shut and they were both looking at me. Suddenly I could see what was coming.
“Lucas,” Mum said, dead calm. “Do you know why I haven’t moved house or remarried or gone on holiday? Why I haven’t thrown out so much as a pair of shoes or a postcard that belonged to your dad?”
I wanted to be somewhere else then. I didn’t know what to say to her. Had they talked about this before when I wasn’t around? Mercy was breathing easier, off the hook, and everything was down to me.
“Take a look at yourself,” Mum raged quietly. “Take the plank out of your own eye before you conspire in bedrooms about the speck in mine and lecture me about getting on with my bloody life. Do you think I’ve dared?”
She probably wanted me to answer, but I shrugged.
“You’re a fanatic, Lucas,” she said. “You’re a walking shrine to your father.”
I didn’t say anything. Mercy was staring at me. I wondered if this was working out the way she’d planned.
I took Bob’s old photo of Mum out of my pocket and put it in her hand. I’d wanted her to see it and remember how young and happy and gorgeous she was when she willingly made the choice to marry Dad and have us.
She looked at it, and then she kissed me on the cheek and said, “Tomorrow, you and me are having a clear out and taking his stuff to the dump. No arguments.”
I felt bad that she’d overheard us rowing about her like that. I was ashamed. I wanted to go back about five minutes and have her overhear me saying only good things, because people never get to hear that stuff said about them by accident. It’s always a slagging off people stumble upon, and being slagged off by your own kids has got to hurt.
And for a while it stung, what Mum had called me, the fanatic thing, the walking shrine. But the thing is, I couldn’t blame her for saying it. She was right.
And what if I’d said then that I was beginning to see Dad for what he was? It wouldn’t have made her happy. I reckon it would have broken her heart.
I was the last one looking out for him, that’s the thing. Without me he’d have none of us left.
Somebody had to do it.
When a family falls apart it puts itself back together around the thing that’s missing. When Dad went, the thing that bound us was the lack of Dad, the missing him and thinking about him and looking for his face in crowds.
In a weird way, the hole he left was the glue.
It was what made us close, what made us different and in it together, I suppose.
People had to get over it in shifts. We couldn’t all do it together because if we did things might have come unstuck.
Somebody had to be the last person to give up.
It could have been any of us.
But it was me.
If I hadn’t had the row with Mercy and my mum,
If Mum hadn’t decided to confront me about it being mainly my fault nobody was getting on with their life since Dad left, apparently,
If I hadn’t been roped, harshly, into helping get rid of all trace of him in the house,
If I hadn’t been hunched in the attic, inhaling grey dust and getting splinters and being forced to hand box after precious box of my dad’s books and files and papers down the ladder to my steely-mouthed, hard-hearted mother, I would never have found the box marked VIOLET PARK.
I am not kidding.
I tried to stand up, really fast, without thinking, and hit my head on a beam.
I nearly put my foot through the ceiling.
Mum was going, “What? What?” but there was no way I was telling her.
I yelled down the stairs something about getting a splinter and I must have sworn because she went, “Lucas! Jed’s ears are burning” so I said, “Sorry for being a wankster” and Jed tee-heed and Mum laughed with a snort.
