Waiting Tables

Where are you??

The message sits on my phone, unread. The screen is bright, too bright in this dark room. I don’t want to be that girl, but he’s two hours late. I’m right to be concerned, aren’t I?

This isn’t the first time he’s been late. Or the second, or the third. But it’s ten PM, and he finishes work at six. He’s never been particularly punctual, but if he’s going to be this late he would call, surely?

Should I call, or am I just being impatient? Maybe he’s had to work overtime, maybe he’s had a stressful day and went to the gym, or the pub? Nothing wrong with that but again, usually he would call. He’s not thoughtless.

Headlights crest the hill and shine through the window at my back, my shadow dances on the wall and my throat catches, but the car drives on by. It isn’t him.

I hate waiting.

You’re at the mercy of whatever comes.

When I was 17, my mum became sick. She tried to hide this from Caleb and myself, but we could tell. Kids can always tell. It was just little things at first; she spent more time in bed, there were mystery appointments and, when we did see her, she was always exhausted. Her face was pale and drawn and the light in her laugh was just that little but dimmed.

When her hair started to fall out, she couldn’t hide from us any longer. She sat us both down at the small kitchen table. This is where we’d had all the Big Conversations – conversations about Dad leaving, about Caleb’s grades, about me coming home drunk from a party one time – but now, suddenly, we took up too much space. Our knees bumped beneath the table, our elbows jabbed, and it felt as if there simply wasn’t enough air in the room for all three of us.

The conversation is mostly a blur now, but keywords stick out in my mind: leukaemia, bone marrow transfers, low T-cell count, chemo. She spoke for a long time, as if she’d been holding it all back and to speak about it was not as simple as turning a tap, but akin to tearing down a dam wall. It’s not a thing done by half measures. She had sat quietly when she finished, looking at us both. She sat a little straighter now, and I could see a weight was lifted –if only temporarily- from her shoulders. Caleb and I had been silent throughout, each attempting to process in our own way, but eventually it was Caleb that broke the silence.

‘Will you be okay?’ My little brother’s voice cracked as he spoke, and I was reminded that, despite being half a head taller than me, he was still just 14.

‘Oh, sweetie. Of course.’ She reached her hands across the table to squeeze both our hands. Suddenly I saw her for what she was: small and fragile. She looked almost like a child playing dress-ups, her arms drowning in their oversized sleeves. The table that had before seemed so small, so cramped, suddenly seemed huge around us, expanding greedily into the space that Mum could no longer fill. Averting my gaze, I looked down at her hand in mine. Dark bruises swarmed beneath pale skin.

I thought initially that waiting for Mum to talk to us would be the worst part, that after that, the ‘known’ would make things so much easier than its counterpart. I was wrong. Illness brings with it so much more waiting; waiting for test results, waiting for treatment, waiting for more tests, more prognoses. Waiting for family and friends to visit. Waiting, against all hope for her to get better, for her to be herself again. Waiting for her to dance around the house to old jazz records, or crack bad jokes. Six months we waited and hoped.

I am sitting now at the little table I inherited from Mum. The Little Table for Big Conversations, I remind myself. Not the Little Table for waiting. Before I can change my mind I hit the green button and call Sean, but the phone doesn’t even ring. Straight to message bank. I sit there mute in thought. The message tone draws me back to reality – do I want to leave a message? No, no I don’t think I do.

I feel disconnected - disembodied, almost- as if my limbs are not entirely my own. I watch as if from a great distance as my phone slips from fingers that are abruptly as dexterous as elbows and hits the floor with a loud thud.

His phone could be off for any number of reasons, a little voice in my head reasons. He could have left it at work, or simply not noticed it was off; it might have died on the way home or been stolen.

Or perhaps he was running late and, knowing I would worry, drove a little too fast on the wet roads. Perhaps he crashed his car and is lying, broken and bleeding, in a ditch somewhere. Maybe just around the corner from home, on that dangerous bend that really ought to have been cambered the other way. Maybe a rescue crew is there right now, stepping over his phone lying smashed on the road and prying pieces of him from a smouldering wreckage. Perhaps there will be a knock on the door any moment, two policeman, hats in hands “I’m so sorry Miss…”

Perhaps, perhaps.

Before I can weave any darker thoughts, I hear a key in the door and feel a catch in my throat. The door opens, the light switch is flicked and a moment later, bright light fills the dark room, blinding me.

‘Hey, hey babe, sorry I’m so late.’

He’s burst into the house, all vitality and energy, so at odds with how I’d been imagining him, it takes me a little by surprise.

He’s talking now, about a phone being out of charge and some accident that had an entire road closed. I’m not really listening though, and he seems to notice.

‘You didn’t wait up because you were worried, did you?’

He crosses the room in two easy strides and pulls me into a soft embrace. I lean into his chest, smelling his familiar scent.

‘No, no. Of course not.’