Extract from Adamo[1], a novel in progress

Me And My Dead Mother.

We’re not very nice people really. Me and my dead mother.

Emotionally unhygienic.

I want to say that not every bitch is an angry bitch but the reality is that some of us are.

Then I Met Miriam.

I have wandered through her house, followed her from room to room. Door knobs. Light switches. The keys hanging in the hallway. There are many various handles: on drawers, the dishwasher, her washing machine, the toilet. These most ordinary things are our closeness. I touch them just after she does and there, quickly fading, is her heat, I am sure; and for a time, a trace of her sweat, her smell, her atomic being commingles with mine, on my palm, in the soft pad of my thumb, my fingertips. I have laid my hand on, touched places that she touches every day. It is intimate. And there, surely, is her welcome in the twist of opening and letting me in. The exactitude and grace of the movements she makes I am not able to make, but I watch and imagine and try. 

I watch her amongst the warmth of the place, the coffee, the scented candle and the metallic waft of town from an open window; I watch all the unimportant movements she makes – pulling the cord on the lamp in the corner, pressing the red light on at the bottom of the kettle and before, that, making the click as she lifts it by the round crook handle, and all the time her voice as she carries the kettle to the sink, the fizzle of cold water releasing when she turns the tap and the cosy bubble complete as she lets it fill, all the time talking and laughing. She ties up the rubbish bags for putting out in the morning, moves clothes from the dryer and because she and her environment are one, the sounds matter, where she touches matters, she extends into the world. I feel her everywhere.

Coffee? she says.

Please, I say, wanting to catalogue the way she is in space.

I remember that my mother had this dance about the kitchen in the very same way except that she hummed but the humming was for her, to block out the other, us. She was nowhere and everywhere. But Miriam is here. 

Her house is small. 

That first morning.

The rooms are as if they were made with her in mind. Of course this is just because she has filled them with her family and her and that everything is considered. It must be so. All of the house speaks of choice. And in a strange way it is as if it needs her. It welcomes her and she greets it. Is this what is meant by feeling at home. I laugh to myself. 

It’s lovely, I say.

She interrupts herself, what?

All the stuff I say, the way, you know, the way you have it laid out.

Oh the house she says. Yeah, Yeah. That’s Andrew. 

I am shocked and annoyed because I know that this is not true. 

Andrew is her husband.

It is so her, this house, so wordlessly her.

The house needs her. As if the rooms want her help. Her presence makes their purpose but there is something about the way the rooms are that make you feel as if they know this. Peculiar. How can the spaces know her. Or maybe they don’t. That the place needs her help to be, to remember its function as kitchen, as hallway, as threshold, as a necessity between rooms, just is. She moves about their egresses and entrances as their familiar. I am excited because I can know this house, this home and, by extension, her. I see the rooms in their intention, as the architect or the builder or the engineer did but they didn’t see her. Suddenly, I don’t want to go back to my mother’s house. For all it is trying to say to me, and all that I am not able to hear. 

Miriam Talks

Love.

The word is a cage.

Yes, I miss my mother, Miriam says, I miss her at the oddest times. She just comes flying into my head and I kind of go, Oh, Hello, nice to hear from you, and you know, it could be when I’m cracking eggs or having a shit. Random.

You are all messy flesh, I think.

Miriam peels potatoes, badly, with a small red-handled knife whose blade is curved from use, leaves each potato carelessly on the draining board, awkward scars, scabs of skin and dirt drying on the facets. I want to tell her to take care, to pour a saucepan of water and put them in so the dirt will be easier to rinse off, but she seems to be happy and does the whole thing with a confidence that makes me bite my tongue.

I haven’t always wanted to live here, she says, but now I’m glad I do. Are you happy to be back do you think?

It has been three months since I moved back to my mother’s house. In my head it is still my mother’s house although she hadn’t been in it for many, many years. My father lived in it until he died (three months ago) but still, mother’s house, as it had become the marital house after her parents died. 

I’m still not sure, I say. It does take time. I suppose I miss work.

Like a hole in the head you do, she says, if you did you’d get off your arse and get a job. If you don’t need to, why would you?

There is a truth in what she says but I am not sure about happy to be back. The best I can do is I am here. Not elsewhere.

The potatoes are beginning to roll off the draining board. Miriam picks each one up and re-positions it among the bank of dirty ones without a sigh of exasperation or impatient gesture. This too is part of the ritual, part of the pattern of being that she inhabits so well. 

There now, she says. All done.

How many are you cooking for? I say. That’s a lot.

You, Andrew, the young fella me and the freezer, she says.

Me? 

Yes. You’ll stay for dinner won’t you? She says without looking at me.

Yes. Yes I will.

Yes

I know that we will come crumbling to a halt. I just don’t know how it will happen yet.

I love Miriam. I loved Miriam. Miriam is a verb. Miriam makes of love a verb. I love(d) her because she was not me. I love(d) her because she showed me and shows me who I am. I loved her because she tried, really tried, to show me how to love. She is present.

Once upon (a mixture of an adverb and a preposition) a time. Once upon a time. 

Once upon. A time. Once. Upon. A time. Once. 

Up. 

On. 

A Time. 

Once upon a. Time. Oh God.

Miriam. 

Her toe ring. It always comes down to that, bits of her that I loved, fragments she left me to put back together. But first, her toe ring, then her fat. And all I ever saw was the break, the opening, that little gap in the circle that allowed her to stretch the ring to fit whatever toe; the gap with its rounded edges and its invitation; the gap, a bridge; silver engraved and solid and warm. I am sure it was warm, circling the flaws. I don’t know why I saw it that way, her flesh being flawed. I’m not even sure now that flaw is a truthful word. Flaw. But I like the way it stretches my mouth, my lips, my cheeks. Flawed like a kiss. 

I anticipated the ring every time I saw her take off her shoes, sock, tights, every time she wiggled her toes that way, slipped her foot unimaginatively into ragged slippers, or when she rolled off the socks or tights after she flopped onto the couch, or when she opened the front door and unshod herself beside that weaved basket of indoor slip-ons, I waited for it, the ring, and her feet to wink at me; I loved that the gap that could allow her to take the little ring on and off her toe was rotated up from underneath and although I never saw her remove the ring, I liked to imagine her massage her toe, rub her fingers along the white indent inscribed in her skin by the innocuous piece of jewellery. She told me that she had that toe ring for so long that it was like a bone on the outside, a part of her, and that she was afraid it would erode away to nothing from the closeness; the inscribed flowers were already fading. She told me how once, when she had to have an x-ray, they made her remove it and that had made her feel naked. 

It is cruel how wonderful her feet are; exquisitely proportioned. Her left foot is so evenly sallow, an impartial remembering of sun, enough vein to believe in her heart. The perfection and invitation of each picture-perfect nail, the dark daily dirt and fluff gathered at the edges of those where the curves on the big toe arrive, waiting to be teased out. The crinkly instep, the rarely visible sole, and then her ankle rises into her calf and into her opening fatness, into herself. Sometimes each toenail is painted. I never liked this. And now and again she wore a wispy anklet with a perfect blue gemstone that cheapened the whole look. It’s cruel how lovely her feet are. She’s like a twisted centaur, something you can’t stop looking at but feel you will never understand; half angel; and half heavy human and it’s the human that interests me. Two things about it, how it feels to be so human and how it feels to be that human. To know one I have to know her body, to know the other I have to know her mind. 

But for now, I disable the past. Miriam also has a no-longer mother, but hers is different. I am leaving mine for now.

I met Miriam’s Husband

In the first fortnight of my return to the small town I grew up in, I spent a lot of time walking and reacquainting. Slowly going around the new estates, the edge of town shopping centres and factories, the parks and other places that were added in the years since I left, looking and cataloguing, superimposing this present onto the past, attempting to find a match, a blueprint, an evolution. And I needed to pee. I stepped onto a grassy verge at the corner of one of the walls surrounding the mushroom houses, pulled down my tights and knickers and squatted for a piss. I became aware of a man, he leaning up against a telephone pole and I knew before he moved that he’d be moving slowly, knowingly, that he was interested in me. Rather than stop mid-wee and jump up, run away, I watched him watching. He seemed to lean more under my gaze, trusting in the world to hold him up. He leaned, comfortable in his own skin. His hair was sun-peppered but with tarry streaks and he had a beard that was once red. I wondered could he hear the silvery hiss of my pissing. He was close enough. I could smell him; he smelled like a forest.

Hello, I said

Hello, he said.

No tissue, I said, and stood, pulled up my knickers.

Women’s problems, he said and unzipped his jacket, blue shirt glinting underneath.

I smiled.

Well, I said.

Well, he said and he smiled.

Andrew.

Andrew. Nice name, I said. Andy?

Yeah. 

Well.

Going toward town?

Yes, I said.

Well? He said.

Yeah. Or.

What?

Well I don’t know, you’re not shy, I said.

I’m not. You’re human, he said. A woman.

Really?

He nodded at the ground; that’s a lot of blood, he said.

Blood?

Yes, he said. A lot. I can’t imagine what it feels like.

I looked at the ground.

Dark clots of blood.

I hadn't felt them leave my body.

I Told Miriam I Was Falling In love

But he’s dead, she says.

Yes, I say. 

Ok, she says, a dead man in a book.

Well, not in a book, I say, I research him.

Ok, she says.

I like this about Miriam. 

My Ex

I told Miriam about the odd way my ex had insisted on folding his shirts- onto the shelf with a smooth curve facing out he then graded them in washing machine accident from yellow-white to the grey-pink. 

Really?

I love that shade of blue, I say, as she prepares the clothes to iron, shakes each of Andrew's shirts out by the shoulders and drapes it on the back of the chair, manless.

Hmmmm, she goes, reminds me of hymns.

What do you mean? I say.

Singing in church, Virgin Mary blue, me disappearing into the sky, she says. Hymns.

Oh, I say.

She starts on the first breast, straightens out the little pocket with two fingers.

I used to think that I'd like to have a stranger watch me while I have sex with Andrew, she says, how does that happen, she says.

There are websites, I say. Used to or want to?

Oh used to, she says. For a while I liked to think about it, but really, thinking was enough. You get happy being simple.

She folds the arms across the shirt front into a gesture of embarrassment.

It took me a long time to get used to her ease with talking about the most intimate things, with her idea of boundaries. 

How does it happen how? I say.

You mean being watched? she says.

Yes, I say.

What do you want, she says, what would you like?

I sigh.

Privacy when I’m having sex, I say.

Privacy when I’m thinking, I think, privacy while I piss.

She is as neat with her folding as my ex was but there is nothing condescending about the way she does it. When she performs laundry, she is not demonstrating; I don’t feel like my own ability is being judged. 

Oh please, I say.

Oh please you. Maybe, just maybe, there is someone actually Ok with life is and maybe just maybe you can’t handle that? she says.

She picks up the pile of folded clothes and moves it to the other end of the table, pulls out the ironing board, plugs in the iron, fills a little water into the opening under the flap, all of the equipment working with her. 

Go on, tell me she says, tell me what's bothering you.

On Not Manifesting Grief at Home

The beds are made up properly, the way I was taught to do them in hospitals I worked in as an aide when I was younger. The sheets, tucked underneath, are folded with excruciating exactness. The floors have been swept in hard swipes that make sure nothing escapes, then mopped. Mostly. Yet. Pulling together of dust and scum. It’s never finished. Long hair collects underneath the fridge. Disgusts me, like old friends. Something I deserve. Still, it bothers me. All I don't like about this house is unbelievably visible, taunting me. Slugs come in the back door, leave their disappearance announced. There are woodlice. I can hear the neighbour's Hoover. If the front door bangs it wakens the blue statue of the BVM on the shelf. Like me, she is trapped. Trapped here. Trapped. A house of trapped things. My mother kept a spider in the bathroom. I think she thought of it a pet. There is one there now. Its house is a grey mass of material I do not want to get close to. I have never seen him (although it is probably a her) but I see the remains of what he leaves. I have begun to take dried woodlice and trapped midges from the webs in the corners of the house and drop them into the bath for him. I can’t be sure but I think he understands expectation, and too, I think I know why my mother kept a spider. There is something sensual in the way they move. Her default was to see, or to want to see,  the erotic in everything, in everyone, not the goodness or ignorance or the arrogance, but the sexiness. I’m going to think about her as truthfully as possible. Her eyes would light up when she met a living thing that moved her. I need to remember but all I have are a series of random thoughts. This bothers me. I have a painting of a small woods on the edge of unused fields that I wish I could walk into. I’d rather that someone walked out of it. I was delivered at home, upstairs in this house. When I was in my early teens, my mother made tiny miniatures of vital emotional instances in her life out of junk she stole from skips, from neighbour’s bins. These angry scenes involved vacant eyes and rooms with doors opening out. This bothers me. Years ago there was a guy in town who operated a taxi service. When he pulled up outside, he’d phone and say 'taxi outside for ma'am'. You'd go out and the little bag of grass would be left on the space underneath the handbrake. He discouraged conversation of any kind. There were a lot of things I liked about that taxi. For instance, the way the rosary hung off the mirror, it was antagonistic and I’m a sucker for a crocheted cushion cover and a man with uneven stubble. You could feel the fine mother in the background.. His shiny shoes and spicy aftershave told some of the story he wanted to sell. He was the kind who gathered cigarette butts and kept them in a plastic bag for a re-roll when he ran out. You never know when you need an emergency come-down, I'd imagine him say. His eyes flashed with that on/off rhythm of a Christmas tree or ripening fruit. That fine mother. Mother taught me to read. A is for Apple. Ohhhhh. I write the words over and over. I write warily. I picture the sounds in my mouth. Apple. The way it moves my lips. I know now that it is the beginning of a kiss. That please and pleasure when you are still with yourself. That forever wait. Because it is before the kiss that pleasure dies. It is in the half-open mouth, the anticipation. I see red. Green. A gnarly branch that could be the beginning of a tree. And seed. A scary entity. Is it possible that if you swallow a seed that you could grow a tree inside. Apple. Half way to please. Apple. All the way to sin. Apple. Beginning. And all the things that I didn’t know. If apple is this, draw orange. A is for Apple. I see apple written down and the sorry of me and my encounter with apple is real in my mouth. It is underneath the new word waiting to be scratched out, etched in. The way apple cut my tongue, my gums. The way that blood in the flesh of an apple is like a drop of holly berry red in a snowman’s smile. The way apple caught my first tooth, brought it out and the huge hole that was left behind. The way I found the tissue to staunch the blood myself. The losing of me. Apple. Apple.

Sources

I Told Miriam I was Falling In Love, Pocket Moleskine® Cahier Journal #1, Home Town, (Sept. 2018) A notebook designed for writing or so it says. An airport buy. Flexible, heavy-duty & buff. My friend. It won't throw coffee in my face or beat or kick. It won't whisper treacherous things. It reads. I read it. I walk. Gorse stipples the foot of the hill. I am already on the side of the mountain, notebook in my pocket. Looking for him, the man I fall in love with, the traces. You know when after all the yoga, colour therapy, the soap operas, the marches, the meetings and just fucking eating, you still hate yourself, and the only thing that will make yourself feel better is to hate someone else, is it not reasonable to take a litmus paper to your past, you know dip it into say 1991, and there it is, more pink than blue. Or because if you are in your late forties, time is warped whether or not you have a child. This bothers me.

Me and My Dead Mother, Moleskine Carnet quadrillé Notebook#7, Home Town, (Aug. 2018)  In the sea-side café I wrote a portrait of dust (but it turned into sea). Doubt and fear are the two legs of childhood, what you never want strangers to see. Shhhhhhhh. Be so unmoving, soundless as if that calm could reveal the detail that darkness clutches, that pull into its ruined lungs, that screed of sound before the sound sea wants to make, the words you never utter. For weeks the weather was nothing but that of childhood. Sun, white flower scented breezes, willing clouds and deliberateness. Even the weeds on the footpaths had an inexperience about them suggesting innocence. Each time I walked up town, I stopped for longer watching into shop windows. There were kids becoming on the street corners like I remembered from years ago; bicycles temporarily abandoned in odd places, between the silent bins on the town's defunct market square. Under a bench in the churchyard. At the swing behind the swimming pool. Daisies, fairy flax. Weeds also bothered footpaths in a humorous way. There was a religious stillness and voices of the crows were less unhappy. Softly swearing nettles; bittersweet.

My Ex, The Bedroom. A page torn from a spiral wire bound notebook that was used by father to jot down instances of birds at the feeder. (Spring, 2009) I am naked. I am in front of the mirror. I imagine the bits I cannot see, like the womb that tells me in other ways that it is there. I see. Hair hair hair. Curls. Mahogany. Or the colour of turf. Curly. Curlllleeee. The way the raithneach, the ferns are when they begin to unfurl. Tight. Thighs. Unsure. Unsure. Hmmmm. Sure-ish. Spoily. Valleyish. Damp. Agreeable whiff. Desirey. Hood. Fleshy bit like earlobe on the left side as I examine. Droopy. Same on other. Not as long. A certain species of warm and happy. Secret scary cowly, but. A hidden monk. The unpainted face of him. Slidey bit. Is it weird that I think of it as male? So sleek and slimy, yes, slimy. Eve? There. Perfect. Then. In. Muscly. Able. Warm. Voicey. Piss place. Too altogether sandwichy. What did he see?  And back and forth I see. I see.

On Not Manifesting Grief At Home, New York, near Broadway. Notes scribbled with a blue Bic biro sometime in the late 90s in the margins of Pinsky, R., (2002) Democracy, Culture, and the Voice of Poetry (Late 1990s) Away from here. Shout. Shout. Shout. Shout. The voice. New York. I watch. A stage. A light. Unseen dark audience. Misheard. Hearing world smile. And I would have returned home. Unseen. Unheard. But to go to a vegetarian place. Wanting things to be different. Alone, grilled portobello mushroom here, then Madrid, Paris, a little place outside Skegness, at Granny's; these innocuous happenings all the same. The oily cheesed and crowded gills, the amputated stipe, symbiotic with debris of rocket on the plate, they need each other. This bothers me. I need the voice of past. I shout. Inside. I shouted. In mind. I shouting. I.

 [1] ad-amo, avi, atum, 1, v. a. ad, intens., I. to love truly, earnestly, deeply (Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, 1879)