Waiting for Loretta

The house seems so quiet, thinks Lillian. She has never minded quiet; never been one of those people who feels uneasy and on edge if they don’t constantly have a radio on. She switches the radio on, fiddles with the channels. But whether music or talk, everything only seems to make the house noisier, and not less quiet. 

     Lillian isn’t given to dwelling on the past. Oh, as she tells people (or more often herself) she isn’t one of those people who has drawn a curtain over it completely and turned it into a forbidden land. Even if you do think that would be best, your mind has a way of disagreeing. But it doesn’t do to dwell on it.

     She smiles – a rather wan, joyless smile. She remembers her own mother – a kind woman, in her way, but one with firm ideas, and one of them was that it was not good to dwell on things. 

     Well, I’m sorry, Mum, she thinks, but I’m dwelling. And it almost certainly isn’t doing any good, but that doesn’t mean I can help it.

     In the quiet that can’t be broken by noise she hears the voices of the professionally well-meaning. Hears them say that giving up a child for adoption is never easy, but can be a brave decision, and should be respected, though after counselling of course. The smile turns wry. Lillian isn’t one of those people who dismisses counselling on principle, and some of the counsellors she has known have been lovely people. But that doesn’t mean they necessarily do any good. For some people, perhaps. But not for her. 

     Lillian is an honest woman. Loretta wasn’t one of those adorable toddlers whom people queue up to adopt. It wasn’t her fault, of course. She was never ill-treated, not in the sense folk generally understand the term, and had enough to eat, and was warm and clad, though her clothes were sometimes either too big or too small for her. But from the minute she could be aware of things, and Lillian suspects that comes earlier than people realise, she had witnessed angry voices, and no voices, or hardly ever, voices that spoke to her, that offered love and attention and the silly, sweet things that help the world to make sense. So she had grown both self-sufficient and clingy, given to tantrums one minute and self-absorbed silences the next. She wasn’t even an especially pretty child, and of course that shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. Yet in truth, her features were even enough, and if they didn’t have a look in them that was perpetually angry or sulky or bemused or frightened, she had rather nice hazel eyes. 

     The social workers described her as a child with potential. They didn’t say for what.

     But in the end, though she would always be volatile in her moods, and inclined to be guarded, the comment about her potential proved true.

     As Lillian knows, she has done well at school and is now at university. As photos of her testify, she has never become conventionally pretty, but is a good-looking girl, with a mixture of vulnerability and strength.

     Lillian looks at her watch, and then, as they would display a different time, at the clock on the mantelpiece and at the digital display on her phone. Perhaps I could put the kettle on now, she thinks.  Maybe make proper coffee for once in the cafetiere that Miriam gave me for Christmas, and get out those little ginger and almond biscuits I decided to treat myself to. No, to treat Loretta to. To treat us to. 

     Another of her mother’s favourite sayings, when things went wrong; little, inconsequential things, was everything shifts alike. Everything is shifting alike. She manages to make a mess of opening the biscuit packet, cursing those little strings you’re supposed to pull that either don’t work or are too far down and make the biscuits go all over the place. When she’s filling the cafetiere, she splashes boiling water onto her hand. She can’t help letting out a little whimper, but when she’s run it under the cold tap for a couple of minutes, there isn’t so much as a red mark. Lillian isn’t usually clumsy. 

     This meeting with Loretta had seemed months ahead when it was only weeks ahead, but then it rushed up, time fled. Now it has stalled. How will she react, wonders Lillian. I know everyone says that it’s a good thing that adopted children can trace their parents now, but does that necessarily mean that everyone thinks it? Aren’t there still times when it’s best to let things stay in the past? Maybe Mum was right about dwelling.

     She’s late, thinks Lillian, fretfully, then reminds herself that they had only said “about” eleven in the morning, not exactly. People can be late for any number of reasons, and there’s no need, she tells herself, no need at all, to jump to conclusions. Loretta will be here soon. Loretta will be here any minute. Her mother, whilst devoted to Loretta herself (and perhaps one of the few people who knew how to handle her) had always said she thought it was a silly name. It was from a book, was the explanation. Her Mum had said that there were plenty of more sensible names in books, but she supposed she should be grateful she hadn’t called the child Peaseblossom or Scarlett. Lillian actually rather liked the name Scarlett, but kept her own counsel. 

     A tall, slim girl, with long ash-blonde hair blowing loose in the wind that has suddenly got up, wearing jeans and the kind of sweater you see in Scandinavian crime dramas is striding up the drive, with a meaningful stride that manages to avoid being a strut. She doesn’t seem nervous or troubled, thinks Lillian. She’s a girl any mother would be proud of.

     Loretta is in the kitchen now, and says that the biscuits are delicious and the coffee is a life-saver. Lillian smiles – she is smiling quite a lot today, but smiling is not a simple matter – but wishes, or doesn’t know if she wishes, that Loretta would say something that isn’t about biscuits or coffee, nor even about how it was a surprise, that wind getting up, and she wishes she’d tied her hair back. 

     But then she puts her biscuit down, even though she is clearly enjoying it, and she stretches out her strong young hands across the table. She takes Lillian’s hands in hers and finally she says something that isn’t about biscuits or coffee or the weather.

     “I’m glad I did decide to meet Anna. I know you had misgivings, and I don’t blame you, not in the slightest. I can see why she did what she did, and perhaps we’ll be friends, though such things have to be taken slowly. It’s not too hard to think of her as my biological mother, and I don’t mean that as an insult or a slur. But she’s not my Mum. You’re my Mum, and that’s that. You didn’t need to lay on the fancy biscuits, you know! Mind you – I’m not complaining!”

     And all at once, both women are laughing and crying at the same time!