make-up game of big bad wolf and babies.
‘I’m going to catch you!’ She roared as she ran after them, her heart racing as they all snorted with laughter.
‘Mama, you’re too slow! You can’t catch me!’ Luca said, then squealed with delight when Rea snared him between her arms.
‘Catch me, catch me too!’ Elise shouted. ‘My turn now!’
Elise always wanted all that Luca had. Whatever he did, she would copy, that’s just the way it was in their house. It was like that for most younger kids, she reckoned.
Every part of Rea craved for the chance to see her children again. She knew that if the devil himself came down this minute and asked for her soul in exchange for the chance to go back to that time, she’d happily agree. She’d live a lifetime in the depths of hell to be back again, with her family complete. Even just for five minutes. Because that would do her. They were the happiest moments of her life, when the children were young. George and her, united, in love, making a home in number 72.
She glanced in her dressing-room mirror and for a moment she was shocked by what she saw. She was no longer the young woman of her dreams. Every line on her face a roadmap to the life she once lived. Her once vibrant auburn hair frizzy with coarse grey hairs.
Unshed tears glistened in her tired eyes, which were windows to both the joy and sorrow she had witnessed in her sixty years. She walked downstairs slowly, the late-night drama making her bones weary. She was getting old, feeling every day of her age. She also knew that the extra weight she was carrying wasn’t helping her joints. She sat down gratefully on a stool by the kitchen window. When she glanced out at her unruly back garden, now a shadow of its former glorious self, she was despondent. Her father would be so cross with her, allowing it to get like that. So would George, who had carried on her father’s dedicated care of it for decades. Shame pricked her conscience, because its demise was another thing that was on her shoulders alone.
She thought of her new pal, the robin, and wondered if he would come by today. A few days ago she’d noticed him for the first time. The window opened, she’d heard a cheep cheep and looked out to see him flapping around. She could have sworn he looked right out at her, but then he swooped away. Now, he seemed to dip in and out of her garden every few hours. She left out titbits for him on the windowsill or on the garden table. The robin liked cheddar cheese in particular. I wonder, Rea thought, looking at some crusts left over from last night’s midnight feast. She ripped it up into small robin-sized chunks. Then she opened the back door, throwing them onto the garden table a few feet away. Her aim was good. All those years of playing catch with the kids not wasted.
The smell of flowers hit her. She could see her hydrangeas, hardy and strong, fighting their way through the weeds. The rose bush wasn’t faring so well. Her grandmother had planted that. She needed to find someone to come and sort out the garden. Louis? No. Maybe. All she knew was she couldn’t neglect it any longer.
There was a time she loved being out in the garden. It was her favourite place to sit, to read, to just have some quiet time to herself. She missed the sun on her face. The smell of freshly cut grass, the scent of the roses. Now, she had to make do with standing at her back door, using her eyes to take it all in. The ridiculousness of the situation she found herself in angered her. What on earth was there to fear in her own safe back garden? She had no answer to that, but somehow or other the thought of putting one foot in front of the other, to find out, caused her to slam the door hard in front of her. If you would have told her twenty years ago that this is what her life would end up reduced to, she would have been incredulous.
She stood at her window, waiting to see if the robin returned. When a black crow swooped down and confiscated the crust, she thought, well there you go, the big bad guy wins once more.
She looked around her old kitchen. Oak cupboards with brass handles, with a tiny rose-bud flower engraved on the front, lined the walls. There were glass panels in the upper cabinets, filled with tea sets that were collected by generations of her family. The double Belfast sink that washed dishes, soaked stained clothes and had bathed her babies and herself too, once upon another time.
The kitchen was the heart of her family home. Her childhood home. She knew that she was lucky. Not many got to live somewhere that held so much personal history. She closed her eyes for a moment as she pulled from her memory bank the voices of her past: her parents, her sisters, laughing, teasing, living.
She didn’t have to try hard to see her Mama kneading bread as her Papa shared his wisdom with his children around the large round kitchen table, recounting tales of the olden days. Oh how she loved her parents so. She had no fear back then.
She opened her eyes, sighing, and ran her arthritic hands along the weathered surface of her kitchen table. Arthritis, another recent gift from age, that old bugger. Her fingers traced a long groove in the wood that Luca had made one day with a knife. He was in a temper because she wouldn’t let him go out to play. She had good reasons too, but when you’re twelve it’s hard to understand a parent’s point of view. It was late and rumours had been rife that a white van was out and about with a faceless predator ready to snatch children.
Luca was fiery and, as far as he was concerned, he was untouchable. But the thing with Luca was, his temper always disappeared as quickly as it flared. He was a good boy really, always had been.
‘I’m so sorry, Luca,’ she whispered. ‘I should never had said all those things to you. I don’t blame you for anything. You did nothing wrong. Forgive your mother. She’s a silly old fool.’
She’d write to him. Tell him that. Back then, when she was full of grief, consumed by it, she couldn’t see straight. He was the first to leave, to start a new life and because of him, they all left too. She was angry, but of course it wasn’t him she was angry with at all.
‘We have to let him live his life,’ George said when Luca announced he was emigrating.
‘I can’t bear to lose him.’
‘If we don’t let him go, we’ll lose him anyhow,’ George replied. He was right, of course. So they wept tears privately, but smiled brightly when they waved Luca goodbye through the departures lounge. She couldn’t be selfish, she couldn’t keep him by her side forever. And he thrived over in Perth, Western Australia. Soon his weekly letters reduced to monthly ones and the phone calls became more sporadic.
‘It’s a good sign,’ George declared when she fretted. ‘He’s having fun.’
Too much fun, because as was always the way with Elise, within twelve months she declared that she was going out to visit Luca.
‘She won’t come back,’ Rea ranted to George.
‘Elise is our little home bird. She’ll come home to her mama,’ George said, but his face looked doubtful.
‘See you in a few weeks. Don’t miss me too much!’ Elise said, hugging them both tight.
Rea clung to those words. It was only for a few weeks; she’d be back.
She did come back, but it was only to say goodbye. She loved it downunder and was going to stay with Luca. Rea took no joy in being right. But this time, when they went to the airport, neither of them could hold back their tears as she walked out of their lives.
Both her children went to the other side of the world to live new lives. They had dreams, new loves and passions that didn’t include her any more, or their father. Not that they didn’t care. Of course they did; they were good
