14th April, meant to write a ‘Mother’ 2000 words and send it in. I have a sneaking suspicion she’s reading. Hello mother, if so.
Ben says, ‘if you carry on reading you’re boring.’ I’m sitting at Judith’s kitchen table and around me she is making a birthday cake. In the living room her father is playing chess against a computer and singing ‘that’s not my NAME. that’s not my NAME. THAT’S NOT MY NAME’ over and over, only possibly with different words and even the tune is not quite right. I’m reading bits of ‘The Prince’ and ‘Henry IV Part One’, one eye on each. ‘You. Are. So. Boring.’ I’ve come round to deliver a lemon drizzle cake, which is Judith’s favourite, and to say goodbye to daytime Judith; I’m seeing her later but she will be nighttime Judith, who is a completely different person.
‘Ben,’ Judith says, with not very much force. The dog is going crazy, running from cake to cake mix. I make a few scribbly boxes on Judith’s Shakespeare handouts, so that if anyone flicks through her file they will think she’s read through them, maybe even some of the plays.
‘BORING BORING BORING.’ I remember Ben being three and very cute, kissing me on the cheek. And now that I think of it, attacking me from behind, when I wasn’t looking. (‘THAT’S NOT MY NAME!! THAT’S NOT MY NAME!!!) Then I remember him in France last summer, screaming and attacking people from behind and choking on spaghetti, not because someone pushed him into the pool, but because we laughed. Now he is eleven or twelve, and not so cute any more. He also sings, badly ‘you’ll have me suicidal. suicidal. suicidal. when you say it’s over’, with rapper fingers spointing at the carpet, only I don’t think he knows the word he’s singing is suicidal, he says it wrong, the three suicidals as one long non-word.
The dog gives up and looks with liquid brown eyes up at me, sadly. She has very long lashes, her eyes remind me of those of my cousin. ‘When I grow up,’ says Ben, dancing around the table, ‘I want to go somewhere FUN to university.’
‘She worked very hard,’ Judith reprimands, ‘ to get where she is. If you work hard, maybe you will get in somewhere good like she did.’ She glosses over the implied assumption that good is not fun. Ben shrugs, he doesn’t really care, because eleven or twelve is a million miles off from being old enough to have to start deciding between good and fun. (‘They call me HUH! They call me … AHA! They call me HAL! THAT’S NOT MY NAME! THAT’S NOT MY NAME!)
Ben tugs at my arm. They dog stares into the depths of my eyes, soul-searchingly. Judith and I lick out the bowl together. This time last year I was living in this house, practically. My mother had to come by after work, to someone else’s house, to visit me. I still feel a little bit bad about that; she sat on the corner of a chair and Judith’s father said ‘What is SHE doing here,’ but flirting with his eyes and beard as he said so, and we all had a pork pie and a cup of tea, She gave me good luck exam presents, and then she went home. Judith and I worked very hard, eating ice cream from the tub and learning election results for 1906 – 1945.
‘BOOOOOOORRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNG!!!!’
So I play Mario Kart on the Wii, fall into lava a lot and lose each round, and he is placated.
Goddamn Right 