‘You don’t remember? How she could be?’
She tilted her head in that hard to resist way. He’d never felt less like indulging her. He didn’t discuss his mother. Period.
So why was he?
‘I always assumed it was because she lost your father,’ she said. ‘That it kind of. ruined her.’
He stared. ‘That’s actually a fairly apt description.’
Beth frowned, stopped sloshing. Her teeth chattered spasmodically between sentences. ‘I remember how hard she was on you. And on me. I remember how hard you worked at school and at the café to do well for her. But she barely noticed.’
His heart beat hard enough to feel through his wetsuit. He crossed his arms to help disguise it. ‘What do you remember about her personally? Physically?’
Beth’s frown intensified. ‘Um …’ She was tall, slim. Too slim, actually. Kind of …’ Her eyes widened and her words dried up momentarily. When she started again she had a tremor in her voice that seemed like a whole lot more than temperature-related. ‘Kind of hollow. I always felt she was a bit empty.’
Marc stared. She’d just nailed Janice. And those were still the early years.
‘I’m sorry, ‘ she whispered, as if finally realising she was stomping through his most fragile feelings.
‘Don’t be. That’s pretty astute. After we. went our separate ways, she got worse. Harder. Angrier. The more I tried to please her, the less pleased she seemed. She’d swing between explosions of emotion and this empty nothing. A vacant stare.’
Beth swallowed hard enough to see from clear across the whale. She’d completely stopped sloshing. Her pale skin was tinged with green.
‘She’d always been present-absent. Since my dad died. But it got worse. To the point she’d forget to eat, to lock the house up, to feed the cat. He moved in with the over-the-road neighbours.’
A tight shame curled itself into his throat.
‘It took me another two years before I discovered she was hooked on her depression medication,’ he said, swiping his towel in the ocean ferociously. ‘And that she had been since my dad died.’
The earth shifted violently under Beth’s feet and it had nothing to do with the lurching roll of the whale. A high-pitched whooshing sound started up in her ears.
‘Your mum was addicted to painkillers?’
‘Is. Present tense.’
Oh, God. The unveiled disgust on his face might as well have been for her. The description of Janice ten years ago might as well be her two years before. Beth’s voice shook and she forced herself to resume sloshing to cover it up. ‘And that’s why you don’t see her?’
‘I have no interest in seeing her.’ He dropped his stiff posture and almost sagged against the whale as he bent to soak his towel again. ‘Working on the trawlers was more than a financial godsend; it gave me space to breathe. Perspective. And an education. I watched some of those blokes popping all manner of pills to stay awake. Improve the haul. I saw what it did to them over a season. When I got back and saw through educated eyes how she was, I was horrified.’ Those eyes grew haunted. ‘She was my mum, you know?’
Beth nodded, her fear-frozen tongue incapable of speech.
‘All Dad’s insurance money, all the money I’d been sending home from up north. She blew most of it on pills. She was no further ahead financially than when I left.’
Beth wanted to empathise. She wanted to comfort. But it was so hard when he might as well have been describing her. Suddenly Janice’s desperate taloned grip on Beth’s forearm all those years ago made a sickening sense. ‘What did you do?’
His sad eyes shadowed further. ‘I tried for three years. I gave her money, she swallowed it. I signed her up to support groups and she left them. I hid her Xexal and she’d tear the house up looking for it. Or magically find some more. I threatened to leave … ‘ he shook his head ‘… and she threw my belongings into the street. One day I just didn’t take them back inside.’
‘You moved out.’
‘It was all I had left to fight back with. She was hellbent on self-destruction and I wasn’t going to watch that.’ He shuddered. ‘I thought losing me might have been enough.’
But it wasn’t.
‘Do you see her at all?’ Beth whispered.
‘Not for four years. The one useful thing I did do was buy out her mortgage. She can’t sell the house without me so I know she has somewhere to sleep, at least. And I get meals delivered to her now instead of sending her cash, so I know she has food. For the rest.’ His shrug was pure agony.
Compassion and misery filled Beth at once. For Marc, who loved his mother no matter how difficult she’d been. For Janice, who lost the love of her life when Bruce Duncannon had a cardiac arrest and who had never truly coped as a single parent. And for herself, whose path wouldn’t have been so very different if not for the blazing memory one Sunday morning of a young boy who’d always believed in her.
A powerful love.
‘Would you ever try again?’ She felt compelled to ask. Knowing if she was in Janice’s shoes she’d want someone not to give up on her. Deep down inside. No matter how much she protested. The way her parents had hung in there for her. Despite everything.
Marc lifted his gaze. His brows folded. His eyes darkened. ‘Too much would have to change. I’ve accepted that the only time I’ll see my mother again is if she’s in hospital, in a psych ward or in the ground.’
The gaping void in his heart suddenly made shattering sense. She remembered what it was like living with Damien in the early days, before she’d succumbed to the bottle. She could only imagine what it must have been like for a child living with that. Then the man, watching someone he loved self-destruct.
But she herself was that hollow. An addict. Never truly recovered, always working at it. As if Marc didn’t already have enough reasons to hate her, this would be too much.
‘Go ahead and say it, Beth. I can see your mind working.’
Startled, her eyes shot up. She couldn’t say what she truly wanted to say. But she found something. ‘What about yourself—did you ever seek help for yourself?’
The frown came back. ‘I don’t need help.’
‘You’re her son. There’s—’ She caught herself just before she gave away too much. ‘I’m sure there’s assistance out there for you, too.’ She knew there was. Her parents had accessed it.
The frown grew muddled. ‘To help me do what?’
Beth lifted her shoulders and let them slump. ‘Understand her.’
His expression grew thunderous. ‘You think I lack understanding? Having lived with this situation since I was nine years old?’
Beth wanted to beg him to reconsider. To be there for his mother, since no one else was. But she burned for the little boy he must have been too. ‘If not understanding, then … objectivity? You had it briefly when you returned from up north and look how clearly it helped you to see.’
‘Objectivity did nothing more than make me realise what a junkie my mother had become.’
Beth winced at the derogatory term. She’d had similar words ascribed to her over the years. Five years ago, they struck her shielded centre and were absorbed into a soggy mass of indifference. These days they cut.
Disappointment stained his eyes. ‘I really thought you’d have understood, Beth. I wasn’t oblivious back in school. I know you stopped coming around because of