Read Online The Mother by Yvvette Edwards - Free Book Online Page B

I saw long before we went to court, had not been redacted on a report from social services, and it always surprised me, the close proximity of their home to mine, like the scene from The Godfather where a man wakes to find a horse’s head in his bed, way too close for comfort.
    The Manleys have an iron gate fitted over the front door, grilles on the windows downstairs. I look around and notice that almost all of the houses on the estate have these, and at once it makes the environment more sinister, more like the kind of place where special provisions need to be made to keep your family safe. The front gardens are tiny fenced areas, more of a container than an outdoor space, just about big enough for a wheelie bin and a recycling box. The recycling box outside the Manleys’ is a black crate on the ground to the right of the door. It is almost full. I can see beer and empty cans inside it, newspapers neatly folded, an empty brandy bottle, carrier bags, the plastic packaging of frozen vegetables and oven chips, and I am stunned.
    I continue to the end of the estate, turn around and walk back, check again, notice an empty toilet roll tube and some used tinfoil I didn’t spot on my first pass. I walk back to and through the park and try to understand it, the notion that Ms. Manley would be concerned about recycling, that she would be actively trying to improve her carbon footprint, reduce energy, that she would wash out and set aside her empty glass bottles to reduce unnecessary waste going to landfill sites, that the mother of at least one son who kills people would go to the trouble of collecting and neatly folding the daily papers, conscientiously disposing of them, doing her part to save trees, protect habitats and endangered species. The logic of it defies me.
    When I get home I find Lloydie has left and those visitors are gone. Though it is still fairly early, I make myself a vodka, drink it, pour another, sip the second one more slowly. I do not want people around me, yet my life is so full of space I hardly know how to fill it. I want something to do, to discover Ryan’s mess somewhere. I want to find the milk for his cereal boiled over onto the plate inside the microwave, solid lumps of toothpaste cemented to the bathroom sink. I want my son, not just those moments that were so glorious but all of it, the upsets and frustrations and angst, everything that came as part and parcel of being his mother, his being alive. It is an impossible wish, and so I go to his room.
    Sheba is already in there, curled up on the center of the bed. She looks up at me when I enter, is unimpressed, puts her head back down again, and drifts off. It is bright enough outside to see but still I draw my son’s curtains, inhaling deeply while I do it because Ryan’s room is losing his scent. At some point it will be completely gone and thisroom will smell exactly like what it is; unoccupied. For the time being, however, I can still raise faint traces of the old smell through a couple of means, one of which is drawing the curtains, shifting them so they trap a pocket of air and billow. It is really hard to describe how I feel as I inhale and catch that scent. It is purely emotional and concentrated in the heart. There is a sweet sharp joy, piercing, exquisite. In equal measure there is an excruciating sadness that is physical, like the pain behind the eyes when you stare directly into the sun. The moment lasts a few seconds only, two or three at the most, then is gone.
    I turn on Ryan’s bedside lamp. It casts a feeble circle of light a meter in diameter against the darkness. I lie on his bed carefully, arranging myself around Sheba as he did, so she is not disturbed. I lie on my side facing her, put my hand onto her soft warm back, and stroke. She unfurls beneath my fingers lazily, tries to rub the side of her face against my hand, purring like a diesel engine. She was always Ryan’s cat, slept in here with him every