Cuckoo

“Hi, Mrs Jackson!”

Such enthusiasm contained in a short and simple greeting. Pure unalloyed joy in the moment. Something that only a child can bring to the party, and at this age life really is a party. The hundred watt smile and the sheer presence of the child helped land the greeting and Jackie couldn’t help but be charmed and return the smile.

“Hi, Cheryl!” she said, barely noticing that she was attempting to match that same sing-song enthusiasm, “how you doin?”

“I’m good! Really good!” said Cheryl, then she picked up a piece of laundry and started folding it, “here, let me help!” 

Jackie couldn’t deny her, and right there was the rub. When it came to a task such as this, Jackie was a kind of loner. She wanted some time alone and the task itself was secondary. She zoned out and did the chores and it allowed her to reset. She needed this and yet here was Cheryl invading her space and her time and she was fine with it. More than fine with it, if she let herself think about it.

They finished the rest of the laundry together sharing a companionable silence. Jackie enjoying her special time with the young girl. Only when they were done did she break into that quiet between them, “where’s Jane?” she asked her daughter’s friend.

“Oh, she’s on her phone, so I thought I’d leave her to it and come see you,” Cheryl told her.

Jackie frowned. Jane wasn’t supposed to be on her phone like that, especially if her friend had come to see her. There would be words later. Words that sounded harsher than they were meant to be, but Jackie wouldn’t take them back and she wouldn’t soften her stance, not one bit.

*

That was how it started. 

Or rather, this laundry session of theirs was near the beginning, and the signs were there right from the very start. Perhaps they were not an obvious warning, but there was something that needed to be attended to here all the same, and it never was. A loose thread that was threatening to unravel further. A single droplet of water that might be nothing, but could well be the prelude to a leak that would bring the ceiling down. Better to attend to it there and then, but when it came to people and the way they related to each other they were content to sit back and rely on the belief that it would be OK. Everything would be OK. Wishing it was OK was supposed to maintain and fix that gap that exists between each and every person. Unfortunately, history and the weight of evidence that pointed to it not being OK, and that it would be far from OK, that seldom came into play in matters such as these.

*

“Morning, Mrs Jackson!”

The energy and enthusiasm never faltered or waned. Cheryl was genuinely pleased to see the woman and she always, always responded positively in return. Jane looked up from her laptop and frowned, but Jackie either didn’t see her daughter’s response, or she didn’t care for it.

“Please, call me Jackie,” she chuckled as she urged Cheryl to drop the formality.

Jane’s frown deepened, but this also went unnoticed and unremarked. Little by little and bit by bit was how these things worked.

Cheryl beamed at the woman, “thanks Jackie!” It was obvious from Cheryl’s reaction to this that she was pleased as punch and there was something else too. Jackie felt liked. Cheryl made her feel liked and valued, and this fulfilled a need within Jackie that she hadn’t realised she had. She warmed even further to her daughter’s friend.

“We should go,” Jane mumbled in the general direction of the two of them.

“No rush,” said Cheryl, “we’ve got at least twenty minutes before we need to go.”

They were meeting friends and Jackie knew that they could have left there and then, used the twenty minutes to catch up on the latest gossip, chat about whatever it was that interested them. She hoped it wasn’t boys. Not yet. They had plenty of time for that. Jackie worried about that and she worried about a lot, lot more, she knew what it was like to be a girl growing up, only it was worse these days. There had always been peer pressure, but now there was the pressure that came from the sprawling and exotic online world. Cheryl’s very presence reassured Jackie in ways she couldn’t explain, and now she was demonstrating that she would rather spend her spare time here with Jackie and Jane than head straight out. That meant a lot to Jackie, maybe too much, and maybe that was why she barely noticed that Jane kept her head in her laptop and waited the next twenty minutes out rather than join in the conversation.

*

“Hi Cheryl, Jane isn’t here I’m afraid.”

Cheryl smiled that smile of hers, the one that melted something in Jackie, “that’s fine,” she shrugged, “how are things with you, Jackie?”

That was when Jackie invited the girl in. Why not? She liked her company. Loved being with her if she was honest with herself. No, don’t even think it, Jackie thinks to herself, like the daughter I never had. I wish Jane could be more like Cheryl. 

They sat and chatted. It was Cheryl who went to the kettle and made them both a cuppa, like it was the most natural thing to do, and as Jackie watched her and smiled, it really did seem like the most natural of things to do and it was a rare treat for her.

Hours later, Cheryl left the house and Jackie watched her go. Not wanting her to leave. Feeling at a loss as she did. She closed the door and turned back to face the house she lived in, all of a sudden it was dark, dingy and just a little empty when only moments before it had been light, airy and full of life.

Jackie barely acknowledged her daughter when she bowled in a little later. By now, they are going through the motions and living separate lives. 

This is supposed to be a phase. 

Hopefully things will be OK after this phase.

*

And then it stops.

With no warning and no preamble, it all comes to an end.

Jackie finds she is sat watching the door, but Cheryl doesn’t bound through it with that infectious enthusiasm of hers. Without Cheryl’s energy, Jackie is anxious and on edge. On tenterhooks she listens attentively, any sound could herald Cheryl’s arrival, but it never does.

Eventually, she asks Jane about Cheryl. Jane gives her a dark look and then shrugs, “I don’t have anything to do with Cheryl,” she tells her mother, “haven’t for a while now.”

This is news to Jackie. When did this happen? She wants to ask Jane this question and more, but she has fallen out of the habit of talking to her own daughter and no longer knows how.

Jackie scrolls aimlessly through her phone and at some point, without knowing how she got there, she is reading about ghosting. This is a term she had never come across before, but now she knows what is happening to her and she is appalled to read on and discover the why of it. 

Not Cheryl? 

Surely not Cheryl.

She wouldn’t do this to Jackie. Couldn’t do it.

There is a hole in Jackie’s life. A hole in Jackie herself, and that hole is dark and terrible. Knowing of its existence is a burden and that burden is filled with pain. Jackie feels sorry for what it is that she has lost and she pities herself and her existence. Late at night, she sits in the dark in an empty house and doesn’t know what to do. She has forgotten how to be.

*

On a drab, oppressive October morning, with the ghost of rain haunting the air, a large group of black clad mourners are gathered at a graveside. 

Cancer found Jackie when she was at her most vulnerable and it made short work of her. In another world, at another time, the cancer would have passed Jackie’s home and moved on without a moment’s pause, but it were as though Jackie had daubed a welcome on her front door and called out to it. Once the cancer came a-calling Jackie embraced it and did not once struggle. There was no fight left in her and she had already given up on the gift of life.

At the end of the graveside service, the ever present threat of rain hanging back, unable to bring itself to cry for this woman or her tribe, Jane turns and she spots someone loitering on the periphery of the group. Ignoring those around her, she makes her way through the group, her eyes never leaving the figure.

Despite her position outside the group, Cheryl does not look away, she meets Jane’s gaze and she does not make to move off, instead she stands her ground. There is something righteous about her expression and there is a defiance here.

There is a moment as Jane nears Cheryl when her movement and momentum speaks of violence. The natural conclusion to her purposeful stride is a slap and even though that does not happen the threat and the simmering anger remains. The battle lines are drawn, only Cheryl seems untroubled by it, and there is something unhinged about the smile she greets Jane with.

“I know what you did,” Jane says in a harsh whisper.

“And what did I do?” Cheryl’s response is gentle and nonchalant.

Jane pauses and some of her anger abates. In her heart of hearts she knows what happened and she understands Cheryl’s part in it. But she had a part in it too, as did her mother. Jane didn’t just sit idly by and let Cheryl do her worst, she played her part, she played the part Cheryl wanted her to, as did her mother.

Jane knows all of it, but the words won’t come easily and she knows why. She does not want to bring this dark and terrible knowledge of hers out into the world. She is in denial even as she stands before the perpetrator of the awful deed. She refuses to believe that this has happened and that anyone could be capable of what Cheryl did.

I let her, Jane thinks to herself and the guilt overwhelms her. She sinks to her knees in the mud bound grass and she gives forth of a primal scream, throwing her head back and digging her fingers into the wet and forgiving earth, screaming until the tears come. That is when it rains. Jane brings forth the tears of the world with her own. She doesn’t notice Cheryl walking away and neither does she care.

*

Envy.

Hers was a deep and complex envy bourn on the shoulders of her hate, anger and fury.

Her mother was harsh, cruel and unrelenting. Cheryl was never good enough however hard she tried, and because she continually failed to live up to her mother’s standards, and because she was a constant disappointment she had gone in search of what it was that she truly wanted.

She had found Jane. 

Cheryl knew from the outset that Jane would be the gateway to what she sought, and she had been right. Of course she had been right. Cheryl had a natural instinct for these things, the same as she knew exactly how to play it. It was after all a game, and she was getting better and better at the game. These people were only a part of the game. Cheryl’s detachment allowed her to play the game like no other.

Jane had only been half right as she sifted through the wreckage in the aftermath of what Cheryl had done. Yes, there was jealousy and Cheryl had launched into a concerted campaign to get what she wanted, she’d even appeared to give her mother what she had wanted. If Jane was honest with herself, Cheryl had given her what she had wanted too. Her relationship with her mother had been close, but at times it was too close. She had been concerned with her freedom. She had wanted more space and Cheryl had provided that. Only, once the process began, even as Jane had felt uncomfortable, she had felt like there was no going back.

Cheryl had used her and it had been easy, and in the end, Cheryl had found a way to use Jane’s own jealousy to open up a divide between mother and daughter that would have taken both of them to bridge. Neither of them ever did, not even after Cheryl walked away from her mother and let it all implode. The damage had been done long before then and Jane and her mother had caused the damage, Cheryl was merely a catalyst for it.

Jane was wrong about Cheryl though. Yes, Cheryl had been envious of the way Jackie was with her child, but she had never, ever wanted Jackie. Jackie was not her objective and that was not the point. Cheryl wanted her own mother, always had and always would. For Cheryl, the only person who counted in this dark and cruel world was her mother. Cheryl and had watched Jane and Jackie and people like them and she had wanted that for herself. 

Cheryl wanted her mother to notice her and care for her. Cheryl wanted a look, a smile and for her mother to talk to her the way that these people did, better still, she wanted her mother to listen to her. So she had ingratiated herself in this home to learn more about how this worked. She had made herself central to Jackie and taken everything whilst giving nothing.

Cheryl was and always had been a cuckoo in Jackie and Jane’s home and neither of them had ever seen her for what she was. Instead Jackie had wished that her daughter could be more like Cheryl and Jane had ended up envying what it was that Jackie now had with Cheryl. Worse still, Jane continued to harbour that envy and now Jackie was dead, she would never let it go. There was a ball of pain inside her and she would visit this upon her own children.

This was how it started, and it never stopped. 

Generations of pain. 

Cheryl was change.

Cheryl caused dark ripples in the waters of life that were impossible to defy. 

*

“It is time.”

“Mother, do I have to?” 

Cheryl asked this each and every time. Just as her work ended and she walked away from the car crash she caused, she would return to her mother and her mother would tell her it was time. Time to begin again. To observe the little people living their little lives and single one of them out. Follow them back to their nest and dial into their pettiness and their craving for more when they already had more than they could possibly need. 

People were so simple, and quite simply, they were broken and conflicted. All Cheryl had to do was see what it was that they wanted. Observe their envious and jealous gaze and once she saw where that jaundiced eye was focused she had her in. 

It helped that she was driven by her own wants and needs, and as her body shrank and transformed to the little girl who would join a new school and make a new friend, she hoped that this time would be the last. 

She wanted what they had. 

She wanted her mother to love her.

Maybe her mother would love her if she made a better job of this one…