Little Lies for Life

“Easy for you to say, Em!” Franny said as she poured gravy on her mashed potatoes.

I always hated that. Everyone was allowed to vent about life being hard, except for me.

I mustered a smile and said nothing. Dad reached over and squeezed my hand. Franny saw that and also chose to let it go. After all, we were no longer eight and five. I can tolerate my little sister sticking out her tongue without kicking her in the shin.

Later, while I loaded the dishwasher and washed Mum’s favourite gold embossed tureen, I looked outside the window at my sister and her husband, James, play a game of football against their three children. I listened to their squeals of laughter as they played in the dark, freezing garden and wondered what my life would’ve been like had I also chosen to marry my high school sweetheart and have beautiful babies with him, allowing him to be the provider while I raised children and weaved baskets or did whatever it was that stay-at-home mothers did all day.

That thought only lasted a split second, though. I shook my head as if to push out my prejudices and continued to dry the delicate china. They were my mother’s proudest kitchen possessions. My mum was also a stay-at-home mother, who I remembered hardly having a moment to herself. She cooked and cleaned, combed and dressed, shopped and taxied, helped with homework and maths tests, planned birthdays and Christmases… she was just there for everyone all the time and rarely there for herself. A wave of guilt washed over me, toward both her and Franny.  

I was adamant about doing Christmas exactly the way Mum had done it, so when I finished cleaning up, I set up the board games on the dining table while the others went upstairs to wash up for a night of Monopoly and Scrabble.

Dad came down first. He kissed the crown of my head and said, “This looks great! Just like your mum used to make every get-together special for everyone.”

Then he looked at the biscuits and fruitcake and smiled.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t bake them myself,” I apologised, “next…”

“Not at all, love!” He interrupted, “You’re busy! These will be just as good. Those brutes won’t know the difference anyway!”

I laughed, but on the inside, I was a little mad at myself. Hadn’t I bought all the ingredients, the dried fruit, the brandy, the nuts and the expensive baking tin? Couldn’t I have left work on time just one time to prepare for our first Christmas without Mum? For the first time ever, my family were going to eat supermarket fruitcake at Christmas. Even last year, Mum had insisted on baking her famous fruitcake between bouts of chemo. 

“Over my dead body!” She’d laughed and winked at Dad when he suggested stopping at Marks and Spencer’s to get one. 

Franny came downstairs in a velvet, green jumpsuit that hugged her figure that was left undamaged even after having three children. James and the children followed, having the yearly argument about why the presents couldn’t be opened early. 

When the children settled down and agreed to put away their electronics to play Monopoly I distributed the money and reminded them of the instructions. James connected his phone to the speakers to set the mood. We Will Rock You was playing when I made the first purchase: Hollywood Street. 

“Cool!” Jessie, my eldest niece, shouted, “Aunt Emma will be rich, just like in real life!”

“Well, be smart like her, and you can be rich like her!” Dad said as he dusted off some powdered sugar from his Christmas jumper.

Everybody laughed. I plastered a smile on my face, “I’m hardly rich!”

“Well, that car parked outside would beg to differ!” said Franny with a loving smile.

I knew no harm was meant, and these were good-natured comments that mainly showed how proud everyone was of me, but I felt my face get hot and my ears tingle.

“Do you want to move away from the fire, Em?” James said, rubbing Fran’s sore back.

I shook my head and continued playing. James did not know how hard I was pushed to become successful and make that money, but Dad and Franny knew very well. Why did it bother me so much that my success was a matter of jest? Joana, my therapist, had said I needed to “look within” when something “triggered” me. It generally was not anything anyone did to me, but rather something I wasn’t at peace with within myself.

After a gruelling round of Monopoly where I tried very hard not to win, the game was finally over. 

“I’ll make more tea, and we can play Scrabble!” Franny said getting up to put the kettle on.

“I think I’ll just sit this one out!” I said. “I have to check some emails”.

“Emma, come on! Now’s not the time! DAD!” Protested Franny on her way to the kitchen.

“Emma, I know you have a lot of responsibilities, but please let me enjoy having you all here tonight,” Dad said in his soft voice, running his big, calloused hand over my hair like he used to do when I was little.

When Franny was out of earshot, he whispered, “Go take fifteen minutes and reply only to the urgent ones, please. This would not be the same without you!”

I nodded and went upstairs to my old bedroom. I had no intention of checking my emails, but I needed to be alone for a bit, so I lay on the single bed for a few minutes.

Why was I so irritable? Was it the fact that this was the first Christmas without Mum? Did I miss her so much that I could not bear being with the family without her constant buzzing? Or did my little sister’s happiness trigger me? 

OK, that last one was not true. It was just a cliche I had to examine. I did often stop in the middle of an unpleasant work dinner or a late night in a dark, sleepy office to wonder what on earth I was doing there long after the cleaners had left. Why I wasn’t curled up in bed with soft snores and little toes poking my side. But it had nothing to do with Franny. She was just the best image of the life that could have been.

As for Mum, yes, being anywhere, even in my own skin, without her hurt. She always knew what to do. A dress is too long? She could hem that. A relative at a family wedding is too pushy? She always knew when to step in. When I was thirteen, she studied a whole maths book with me even though she hated every second of it. Whenever I wanted to give up, she pushed me harder. It nearly broke us, both as individuals and as a unit. Sometimes I wondered if I was anything without her.

I got up, smoothed down the duvet, smoothed my skirt, plastered a smile on my face and went downstairs. The teapot was letting off a trail of steam and everyone was chattering around the coffee table. The kids were on their second tin of biscuits, but their voices were chirpy and their cheeks were rosy.

We started a round of Scrabble, and Matthew, who was twelve, was struggling with forming a word. Franny was clandestinely helping him form his word. Lucky Mum was not there. She would have called them both out right away. Nobody else seemed to notice.

“Yes!” Matthew startled me, “I’ve got it!”

“Cool!” Dad ruffled his hair, “What have you got there, Matty?”

“Entrepreneur!”

“That’s a very tricky one, right there!” James said proudly, “Not sure I could’ve spelt it correctly myself!”

“What does it mean?” Janey, my youngest niece piped in.

“It means someone who has started a successful business,” James said, moving the biscuits away from her.

“A genius Aunt Em,” Said Matthew.

I winced, “I’m not a genius!”

“Don’t be modest,” Franny put her arm around my shoulder, “I could never dream of your grades when we were in school!”

“Well, it probably wasn’t all me. If it wasn’t for Mum…the pills she… ” I trailed off, unsure this was the right audience.

“She only gave you those because you were so brilliant, Emma! I didn’t get those!” Franny’s face was slowly turning pink.

Dad looked down at his half-formed word and shifted in his seat.

“You didn’t need those!” I said.

“Because I was such a prodigy?”

“Let’s go to bed, guys,” James gathered the children, giving Franny an imploring look.

I was not sure what was happening. The story of my pills had plagued me for years, but was this something Franny was also upset about somehow?

“Let’s just put a movie on or something,” I had promised at the end of my therapy session just a day earlier not to talk about the pills because we had come to the decision that I was not a victim and my mother had not antagonised me. Not on purpose anyway.

“No, Emma, I’d say it’s time to talk about it!” Fran let her soggy biscuit fall into her tea. She calmly put the cup down and curled her hands into fists, something I hadn’t seen her do since we were teenagers.

“Girls, please!” Forever the peacekeeper, Dad looked from her to me.

The confrontational CEO in me wanted to dive right into what seemed like murky waters, but the recovered rebellious teenager in me refused to throw or participate in any tantrums.

“Look Emma, I don’t blame you at all for this, but have you ever considered the fact that Mum always focused on you? Bothered to teach you math? Demand meetings with every teacher that did not necessarily see your ‘brilliance’, take you to psychologists and get you tested?”

My ears were hearing, but my mind was not able to register. I couldn’t believe she was being serious.

“Mum?” I tried my hardest not to scream, “Mum pushed me relentlessly! My grades weren't even bad! But I was not allowed to watch any TV or stay out long! She always expected me to perform, perform, perform until I could NO MORE!”

“Don’t you SEE? She saw something in you! You were worth pushing!” Franny’s eyes were welling up now, “Not dumb little Franny who was allowed to do whatever she wanted, because who cares really!”

“Franny!” Dad gasped, “What are you talking about? Your mum thought just as highly of you! We both did!”

James rushed down the stairs and wrapped his arms around his wife protectively. I was still processing what I had just heard.

Fran, the golden girl with all her dance and song and personality… I had no idea she thought she was the victim.

“You were the artistic one!” I said after a few moments of silence.

 “The ARTISTIC ONE? That’s just a euphemism for quirky, dumb… you know that, come ON!”

I looked at Dad, hoping he would step in, but he was just as baffled. 

“And maybe if Mum had taken me to a Dr. Amani, I would’ve got some pills to make me smarter! But I suppose I wasn’t even worth that!”

“Darling, you don’t need pills!” James chimed in.

“Pills! Fran, those pills are horrible! Do you know how many side effects they have?” 

“Yep, beware of the pills or you might, God forbid, become top of your class, valedictorian, or even an entrepreneur!” her tone now calm and biting.

“Fran, love, we talked about that!” James said, pulling her to his chest.

My heart ached as I was slowly realising that my perfect sister thought there was something wrong with her.

“Fran, love, those pills mess with the chemistry of your BRAIN! Make you an insomniac. I can’t even remember the last time I slept through the night!”

Now Dad pivoted in his chair and looked at me incredulously, but I pressed on, “If I were ‘brilliant’, she would NOT have put me on brain-altering medication!” 

“Emma, please stop twisting facts! They didn’t put you on ‘brain-altering’ medication because you were dumb!” Her eyes were wide with anger, “She asked Dr Amani to give you something because your teachers said you were very bright but had trouble focusing! I was young, yes, but I remember VERY well!”

“Well, lack of focus is not enough reason to give your child poison!” I countered quietly. “You don’t seriously wish she had put you on medication, controlled every minute of every day of your childhood! I took those damned orange tablets for twelve years STRAIGHT!” Now I was crying. “Sometimes I wonder if this success was ever ME! Did I deserve any accolades? Did I even have the skills to study if I weren’t medicated? Trust me, if you had been the eldest, you would’ve been the lab rat.

Sure, let’s poison Emma, and if it works out, do the same with little Franny. However, if it gives you a highly strung, slightly OCD teenager, then spare sweet Franny and don’t ruin her natural talents!”

“What are you talking about?” Franny blew her nose into a Christmas napkin with a reindeer on it.

“Look, I know Mum loved me, but sometimes I do wonder if it was… conditional love. The love you get when you comply. When you achieve, when you…”

“ENOUGH!” Dad shouted. We all flinched. I had never, in my entire life, heard my father shout at us.

We looked at him in disbelief.

“Those weren’t poison!” He grimaced.

“But Dad…!”

“No, you’re not listening!” he said through gritted teeth, “Those were NOT medication at all! Those were just multi-vitamin pills!”

A minute or so passed while all four of us just stared at each other. James clutched his beard, which he did when he was puzzled or speechless. Fran stared at Dad with a slackened jaw and Dad just shrugged with his palms turned upwards as if to say now the cat’s out of the bag and I can’t do anything about it.

My jaws were moving and my tongue was trying to make noises, but I could not say anything intelligible because my whole life passed behind my eyes like a series of fast-moving scenes from a movie. The fights my mum and I had to make me put my head down and focus on studying, the tears from both parties, refusing to give her a hug when she wanted one because I was angry at her for making me sit at the kitchen table for hours. Then the infamous visit to Dr Amani’s office. Was that guy even a doctor or did she just hire someone from acting school? The gravity with which she handed me the tablet and a glass of water every morning. Was it all an act?

“But… but Dr. Amani, he…”

“OH Amani, shamani!” He scoffed, “You were there for an ear infection. He prescribed you ear drops! Then she asked you to step out so she could ask him about your lack of focus, he recommended taking you to a psychologist and YOUR mother refused!”

“So…”

He cut me off, “So when she picked up the ear drops at the pharmacy, she picked up the vitamins as well. I still remember the scramble to find a more serious-looking box to put them in.”

“The metal box with my initials?” I was sure he was defending my mum because she wasn’t there to do it herself. There was a box that had my initials on it. I used that box for many years since the age of eleven.

My father pushed his chair away from the table and stood up, looking at his slippers, clearly contemplating whether to let the words out.

“Well?” Franny prompted.

“Well… that was my father’s snuff box… E. S.”

“Edmund… Edmund Shepherd?” Franny burst out laughing, quietly at first and then hysterically.

James started chuckling too. My father looked up at them and a thin smile broke onto his face. Yes, everyone found it hilarious. Silly Emma had been duped all these years, led to think she was being medicated. Led to believe that her brain was broken and could only be fixed by nootropics that would change the makeup of her brain.

It was ludicrous, really, but I could not laugh. Maybe I can laugh about the absurdity of it all someday, but at Christmas, in my mother’s house, at her oak dining table, I just felt humiliated. Once again Mum’s pragmatism found a solution. A very simple solution; use the power of suggestion on a stubborn child who insists they can not work hard by the power of placebo. Genius, really. 

I still have not told my therapist. I know I should tell her, and she would help me understand, but I still cannot. How can I tell her that all the troubles I cried about in her office, which I blamed on the medication, on my MOTHER were invented by my brain, the very thing I thought was being moulded into submission?

How can I tell her that my own neurosis was why I could not sleep at night, stop working, take a vacation, keep a boyfriend… All these things were not caused by the drugs I thought my mother had forced me to take?

How can I tell her that I don’t know if I resent my mother more for lying to me or love her more for playing a psychological game on me that made me a business owner who drives the car of her dreams and owns a beautiful home in the heart of London?

Maybe I should stop going to therapy altogether because if the cause is removed, the issue never really existed.

Right? Right.