Necessary Madness by Jenn Crowell

Author:Jenn Crowell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: womens fiction, grief, london, book club, single mom, widowhood, mothers and children
Publisher: Jenn Crowell

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Two months after Bill died, my mother called and told me she wanted to come to England.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

***

For years she’d tried to reach across the Atlantic Ocean to me through the contents of a box, an envelope: flowery, elegant cards on my birthday each July, expensive sweaters at Christmastime, cheery letters, presents for Curran. She’d flown to London but once since my permanent move there, and then only for the weekend of my wedding. All splashy florals and affectation, new boyfriend on her arm, she waltzed from guest to guest in Bill’s parents’ Lamberhurst garden while silently I stood beside Bill, her careless kiss numb on my cheek, and swore I’d never let her set foot in the sanctuary of our flat on Theberton Street.

When Curran was born the following March, I begged Bill to be the one to call her from the hospital. “I’m exhausted,” I said, running a hand through my tangled hair as I leaned down to smudge my lips across my newborn son’s fragile forehead. “I can’t deal with her right now.”

“You weren’t too knackered to talk to my mother,” Bill said.

“I know, but please, just do this for me, all right? She likes you. She won’t interrogate you.”

“Okay, love,” he said, shaking his head as he went out into the hall.

He came back ten minutes later. “How was it?” I asked.

“You make it sound like talking to her is torture.”

“Sometimes it is.”

“Well, it was fine. More than fine. She’s so bloody excited I had to tell her goodbye about five times before she’d hang up. She wants to come visit. When you’ve had time to rest, she said.”

I yawned. “All right, I’ll have to take about fifteen years, then.”

“Crikey Moses, Gloria,” Bill said, sitting beside me on the bed and taking Curran from me so I could comb out my hair in earnest, “why won’t you meet her halfway?”

“I refuse to rearrange my life for someone who’s so gushingly in denial.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, “but I still think you’re being terribly ridiculous.”

I flipped my hair upside down and worked out a particularly bad snarl, then lifted my head, leaned over, and drew him to me, two fingers beneath his chin. “You go through eight hours of labor and see if you aren’t,” I said, and kissed him, a hard I’m-back-from-hell kiss, deep and long.

Just then, Curran twitched in sleep. I laughed and gathered him back into my arms, pressed my cheek to his warm scalp, and thought: mine.

When I carried him into our flat for the first time two days later, there were four messages on the answering machine. I listened to the first one—“Gloria, I’m so happy for you, and I’d love to …”—and then hit the ERASE button.

“You can be really cold sometimes,” Bill said from the doorway.

“So can she,” I said.

But my mother kept trying. Once a week, at first, then every two weeks. I left the machine on, or had Bill field her calls for me.

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