Haze of Recollection

I hadn’t replaced the bathroom bulb. My girlfriend would be annoyed when she returned. Off-on, on-off, the light flickered. It almost distracted me. Off-on. I found the bottle of pills hidden behind a pack of sanitary towels and a makeup bag. The bottle looked innocuous, innocent. Off-on. I hoped my girlfriend wouldn’t be the one to find me. She didn’t deserve that. Off-on. I hadn’t closed the lid of my nail polish remover. Off-on. My eyes were dry. Off-on. Hopefully our neighbours would smell me before my girlfriend returned. Off-on. I shook the bottle. Full. Off-on. Acetone seared at my nose. Off-on. There was no other option for me. Off-on. Not anymore.

           I turned from the medicine cabinet and found myself in my childhood bathroom. The pill-bottle in my hands rattled as my hands shook. I averted my eyes from myself in the mirror. Eyes dead and skin grey, I didn’t look like myself. Faintly, a light flashed. As I looked around the bathroom, different periods of times coexisted. The barbies I used to dunk into the soapy water were piled up next to my makeup bag, razor sticking out haphazardly. Dad’s stack of Evening Standards was intersected with poorly printed zines and garish picture books. The smell of my brother’s disgusting aftershave lingered in the air.

           The landing was less overwhelming. I stood there in the dark for a moment, grip tight on the pills. A phantom flicker. Off-on. Mum had always preferred the impersonal in her décor. Down the stairs, instead of sentimental family photos, were badly drawn framed pictures of fruit. They had been there for as long as I remembered and had remained there when I had returned for the slew of funerals and wakes and endless people trudging through the house to see whether they could bear to live there. I had always hated the pictures. Off-on. Under the smell of dust and old cooking, acetone persisted.

           At the bottom of the stairs, I paused and looked closer at the front door, at the old brass key hanging in the deadlock. Someone was standing there, face blurred from the frosted glass. One hand was pressed against the window. Off-on. In one moment, I was indoors and in another I was outside, glass cool against my palm, looking in at the distorted figure standing frozen in the hallway. I was both figures at once, and neither simultaneously.

           It was dizzying. I stumbled into the living room where thankfully the curtains were drawn. But though I couldn’t see her, I knew she was standing out there, waiting.

           “April.”

           My brother was sitting on the sofa, arms crossed. He didn’t look too pleased with me, but he rarely did. Multiple editions of the living room overlapped, like the double exposure of a camera. It did little to make me less unsteady.

           “You need to tell them,” my brother said. The room solidified into the version where the floor was covered in bags. I’d had to play Tetris to get everything to fit in the car and even then, I’d had to leave things behind. Mum had promised to bring them up when she came to visit me.

           “About what?”

           “Her.”

           There it was: the disgust. This was one of the last times I had really spoken with my brother. In my memories he always seemed smaller, more fragile, a small bear cub left alone. Yet here he was taller than I had remembered. I drank in the sight of him; a Year 11 with a future ahead of him.

           “I do love you,” I said and almost meant it.

           His expression didn’t change. It was the same one he had made as a child when I had gotten something he wanted and he had sulked until my parents had taken it from me and deposited it into his hands. You can share with you brother, right?

           “If you don’t tell them by Christmas, I’ll tell them.”

           A lie. He had told them as soon as I had gotten onto the M25. In the end I had never recovered what I had left behind. I went to grab his arm, but my hand passed right through him. It was cold, suddenly, and the lamp wasn’t bright enough to push back the dark; shadows were pressing in, oppressive.

           I closed the living room door softly. I didn’t look towards the front door. She would be there. Behind the kitchen door, people were whispering. No one was in there, but the lights were on, and a cocotte was set on the stove. Curry powder and freshly cut coriander lingered in the air like the cook had just stepped away for an instant. There was a muffled echo of The Archers from the old radio and then Dad was standing in front of the stove, unmoving. I was shorter, the height of a young teenager, staring up at the back of his neck, the set of his shoulders.

           “Dad?” the word scratched at my throat and refused to leave. Heavy with implication.

           When we made eye contact, I realised it wasn’t Dad really. He had none of the kindness in his eyes nor were the wrinkles of his face creasing into an affection-filled smile. This was the father right before I had left for good, the house cold and echoing of slamming doors and shouting voices.

           Dad struggled with his words for a little while, opening and closing his mouths a few times.

           “Tell April I love her,” he managed to wheeze out finally, without enough breath in his lungs, “tell April I love her.”

           His last words. From a hospital bed, and me in a different country on the phone, bad wifi pixelating the image. I had been away from the blood and the machinery and the death. Distanced from his blood-lined lips and bloodless face. Mum’s thumb had partially obscured the camera. His death had been when I had first realised that a familial reconciliation could never happen.

           Dad turned back to the stove.

           “Love,” he muttered, “love, love…”

           “I love you, Dad,” I said what I hadn’t when I’d watched him die. I tried to set a hand on his shoulder only for my hand to pass through him, like with my brother. “and—I’m sorry.”

           It was a lie. It just felt like the thing I had to say. Off-on, a flash in my vision.

           Dad said nothing more. He turned to the kitchen table and Mum and my brother were sat around it. Dad was the least concrete, the earliest death. There was a roast turkey on the table, with smatterings of side dishes around it. It smelled like Christmas always did, the scent of the spruce tree mixing with goose-fat roast potatoes and festive-scented candles. And with the smell of home, indescribable and mostly recognised by those other than family. It was only when I saw her at the kitchen window that I noticed I was crying. She was blurry through my tears and I was a smudge in the bright light of the room, arms wrapped around myself.

           Mum looked directly at me. “April! Sit down!”

           She spoke in that tone of voice I followed unthinkingly. The same tone of voice that she had used to get me to undo the dishwasher or tidy up toys or never contact her again. I sat beside her, back straight. She smelled of lilies and sandalwood. Her favourite perfume when I had been a child. There was the vague undertone of acetone. Mum appeared to be more aware than Dad had been. Her eyes were less empty, face less like a mask. She reminded me a little less of the later years. But her outstretched hands still filled me with panic. She reached for my face to cup it, to hold me still as she kissed my forehead. Her hands went through me though, and I was cold. Mum looked down at her own hands with a deep sorrow.

           We sat around the dinner table in the laboured silence that always fell. I placed the bottle of pills in front of me. This was the Christmas dinner after my first semester at uni. Mum had demanded there be no arguments, but since we couldn’t talk without yelling, we were silent. I had left early that day, chased out by the drawn, tense faces of my family. I had never returned.

           The faint comfort of the smell of Christmas dinner evaporated, and instead it became stifling and invasive. Maybe if I stayed, if I tried, I could do the impossible: change their minds. I tried to speak but I was standing outside, at the window, looking in at my hunched over posture. At my helplessness in the face of a great betrayal. She looked up at me, with the same tears in her eyes and pain-contorted face.

           “Mum,” I managed to say, but Mum looked away from me, uninterested. The apology died in my throat.

           The shadows darkened. At the edges of the windows, they beckoned little fingers to me. Unable to stay any longer, in the decaying silence, I stood and my chair screeched against the floor. They didn’t look at me as I fled the room.

           Instinctually, I went to the bathroom, the only locking door of the house. She was already there, crouched over in the bathtub, hands holding the bottle of pills up as a kind of Holy Grail. My head swam from the smell of acetone. She gazed at me and she was endlessly younger than I. Her face was open and hopeful despite the tears running down her cheeks. She gave me a smile and I saw myself through her eyes; my face was grey and worn and sorrowful. I reached to take the bottle from her and she held my wrists to pull me into a tight hug. We were one and the same, then. She saw me and all the wrongs I had committed in my life and she forgave me. She saw me as I saw her. Clearly and without pretence.

           “I forgive you,” I whispered into her neck and felt my own neck tickle. And I meant it. And I was sorry.

           She pulled me even closer to her; her embrace was one of apology and forgiveness. The hug loosened and I looked into my eyes, at the small crow’s feet starting to form. She said nothing but I knew what she was telling me. I nodded once to her and she kissed my cheek.

           I was back in my own bathroom, the one with the flickering light and sharp smell of acetone.

My phone was ringing. In a minute I would get up from the floor, screw the lid of the nail polish remover back on and tuck the bottle of pills back behind the pack of sanitary towels. I would go to my phone and see it was my girlfriend. And I would answer and we would talk.

For now, I stayed crouched on the floor, cradling myself and daring to hope I would be okay, in the end.