TSG Part 9 (with link to previous parts)
TSG Part 9 (with link to previous parts)
Mother
Stephanie stared out of the bay window of her mother’s front room. The morning mist was still vanishing, slumping away in ghostlike entities as commuters ploughed through it. Stephanie thought of nebulas and starships again, lost herself in futile daydreams.
In the background, her mother was talking animatedly on the phone to someone. Apparently, someone had overpriced an item at the local car boot sale, and the person who had bought it was already struggling for money. Stephanie glanced back into the beige room, catching a glimpse of the shopping channel on the huge grey television. Her mother exchanged niceties with the person on the phone, hung up, and changed her tone.
“She doesn’t know when to shut up,” she said.
“Doesn’t she?” Stephanie quipped. It flew over her mother’s head.
“You should come back to church,” she continued.
“No thanks,” Stephanie readjusted her position on the beige chair, almost sinking into it.
“There are nice boys there.”
“That’s not a selling point.”
“They dress properly.”
Here we go, thought Stephanie.
“Do they?”
“Yes. Not like your friend. What is it, James?”
“Jay, Mum.”
“Jay. I really don’t see what you see in him.”
“Oh you’re not wasting any time today, are you?” Stephanie straightened herself up on the chair now, turning fully to face her mother, who had yet to sit down.
“Life is finite, Stephanie,” her mother preached. She was stood in the middle of the room, surrounded on all sides by knick-knacks, crucifixes, candles. Her impressive, blow-dried hair almost made contact with the heavy glass pendant lamp suspended from the ceiling. Stephanie amused herself by imagining the thing giving her an electric shock, even though this was likely impossible.
“And because of that, you need to choose wisely who you give your time to.”
“You know what? You’re right. I do,” Stephanie replied. She glanced around at the room again, thinking the decor alone might have been reason enough for her father to leave. She imagined her own exodus from this place, her own last moments in this childhood home. Her mother hadn’t decorated in over ten years. In some places, though Stephanie would never point it out, she could still see the marks her eight-year-old self had imprinted on the flock wallpaper. Behind pipes and the edges of radiators, in places too low for adults to notice, a much younger Stephanie had etched fossils of her childhood into these off-white walls.
“This Jay boy means trouble,” her mother insisted.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t. What do you mean?”
“I mean he is trouble. I don’t like your new clothes. All this black.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t talk back to me Stephanie. It is beneath you.”
“I just don’t understand what you don’t like about black clothes.”
“It is not the clothes themselves,” her mother explained. “It is what they represent.”
“Freedom.” Stephanie smiled and adjusted the lapel of her leather jacket.
“If you mean the freedom from going to heaven, yes.”
“Mum, it’s just clothes.”
“With skulls and dark lyrics. Spikes.”
“It’s a style. I know you had one in the eighties.”
“Don’t be like this.”
“Sorry.” Stephanie’s heart sank. She never quite knew when a conversation would become an interrogation in this house, but it was guaranteed to happen eventually. She looked to the window again. The mist had finished fading now. The world was clear, too clear, as if it was a studio background to a bad movie.
“I want you to come back to church.”
“Mum, I said no.”
“You could help with the bake sale. It would be nice to give you some purpose in life.”
“I have a purpose.”
“Writing lyrics for these dead metal bands is not a noble purpose though, is it?”
Stephanie stifled her laughter. “Mum, it’s death metal, not dead metal.”
“Tomato, toma-to.”
“And that’s not even the music we are working on. It’s dark wave, goth at the most.”
“And that’s what Mavis is scared of Stephanie.”
“Oh Christ. You’ve spoke to her about this. No wonder.”
“Mavis is an upstanding member of the church.”
“She’s very rarely upstanding,” Stepanie muttered to herself.
“What?”
“I said I don’t know how she is upstanding. Didn’t she just overcharge someone at the car boot?”
“Oh, he had it coming.”
“You seemed very angry about it on the phone.”
Stephanie’s mother raised a narcissistic eyebrow. Two distinct realities had clashed now, two different versions of Meredith Shaw. Stephanie smirked, on some subconscious level understanding the puzzle she had just unpicked.
“Well... I am angry about it. But that does not mean Mavis’ advice is not worth listening to. Her nephew got into that dark wave music and he’s a pagan now.”
“What’s wrong with being pagan?”
“Well...”
“Mum, it doesn’t matter. I am not going to church. Dad doesn’t drag me to his dungeons and dragons games, you shouldn’t drag me to this.”
“He still plays that satanistic game?”
“Not a word.”
“What?”
“Satanistic is not a word, mum.”
“It is.”
“It is not.”
“Well. It should be.”
“Okay.”
The TV channel shifted to a segment about a papercraft set. Stephanie’s mother turned away from Stephanie, her focus now solely on this advert.
“You seem stressed,” she said after a while.
“I’m not.”
“Tense.”
“Nope.”
“I could get you to the doctor.”
“I can book it myself.”
“Let mum help you.”
“I don’t need to go. I’m fine.”
“You’re always so on edge, Stephanie.”
“I just don’t like being told what to do, I can make my own choices now.”
“And what are those choices?”
“What?”
“Does he offer you things?”
“Things?”
“Drugs. Alcohol.”
“No mum, I can find those perfectly fine on my own.”
“What?!”