Read Online Passing Time by Ash Penn - Free Book Online Page B

he said he’d borrowed from his father. This was how things were between them now. Jake still kept his bed warm at night, but a space had opened up down the center of the mattress neither of them dared breach.
     
    “I’m sorry,” Jake said after an awkward silence. “I do want to be here. I want to support you.” He smiled a tight, unnatural smile. They’d barely spoken about what had happened between them the night his mother had died. Louis wasn’t ready to crush the remnants of their relationship. He was pretty sure Jake wasn’t either, despite the sourness of his recent mood, confirmed a moment later when a hand brushed against his. The gesture alone eased the atmosphere between them, and their silence grew marginally more bearable.
     
    A few minutes later a taxi rolled up at the crematorium doors, and an elderly woman clambered out of the front seat, aided substantially by a harassed cabbie and a three-legged metal stick.
     
    “You needn’t think you’re getting a tip,” she called after the driver, who ducked quickly back behind the wheel. “Would’ve got here quicker in the bloody hearse.”
     
    The man lowered the window, stuck his head out, and yelled something vaguely eastern European before taking off at a speed more suited to a Grand Prix circuit.
     
    The old woman probed the ground with her stick as if checking the tarmac was safe before stopping just shy of Louis’s feet. “You. You’re Vivian’s son,” she said, her eyes like marbles behind thick bifocals.
     
    “Uh, yes.” He experienced the nagging suspicion he knew her from somewhere. “I’m Louis. This is Jake.”
     
    “Martha Banks. I babysat you as a nipper.”
     
    Mrs. Banks? The crazy cat lady from next door?
     
    “You got your father’s eyes,” she said.
     
    “Thanks.”
     
    “Wasn’t a compliment. Saw the notice in the paper.” Her gazed settled over his shoulder, and he turned as the doors fanned open. Mourners from the previous service poured out. “Didn’t you think of coming to me directly? Would’ve liked to be told.”
     
    Louis hadn’t set foot in Albert Terrace since the day he’d left and had no real desire to see the street again. How was he to know Mrs. Banks still lived in the same house? How was he to know she was still alive? A notice in the obits was the best way of inform people about his mother. Was this ancient woman the only person who cared enough to turn up?
     
    “Vi said you’d turned into one of them what’s-a-names. Fairies.”
     
    “My mother told you I was gay?” His raised voice caused a few of the mourners to glance in his direction.
     
    “Yep. Can’t say as you look like one.” She gave a mucus-rattling sniff and turned her squint on Jake. “He does.”
     
    Jake’s mouth dropped open. Louis quickly took his arm. “Uh, we’re just friends,” he said.
     
    Jake gave Louis a harsh glare and pulled his arm back. “Thanks, Louis. Thanks a bunch.” He pushed through the doors, leaving Louis to smile politely at his mother’s curious neighbor.
     
    The service itself was a grim affair made worse by the fact that only the three mourners were present, and one of those under sufferance. Not much of a turnout for a sixty-year-old woman who’d once coveted the title of life and soul of every drinking establishment in town. No hymns or readings or flowers. Louis had made a sizable credit-card donation to the stroke unit at the hospital.
     
    Once the coffin had passed through the curtains, Louis couldn’t wait to get out. He felt nothing for the woman who used to be his mother. He’d felt nothing all week, except cheated out of forgiving her and having her forgive him.
     
    “I’ll tag along with you girls.” Mrs. Banks took Louis’s arm as he and Jake stood to leave.
     
    “We’re not girls,” Jake muttered.
     
    “That hair of yours says girl to me, laddo.” She forged forward with her stick. “Now what about this wake?”
     
    “I decided against