Enough now, Anna-piana.
The day may have proceeded the usual way, had Grandy’s voice not arisen in Anna’s mind with the suddenness of a fired gun. It would have been more of a shock after all these years had his tone not been as soft as she remembered. Like rabbit ears.
If not for the interruption, she might, as usual, have swallowed the urge to tell her mother to mind her own business during their regular Sunday phone call scheduled for that night, along with the raspberry cream cake she was about to remove from the shelf. She might, as usual, have been a good girl. Not a foot wrong, not a single word uttered with anything other than smooth, measured-out civility. The kind of well-behaved goodness that had caused people to say “She’s a credit to you,” when she was collected from birthday parties, which never failed to elicit a tight, smug smile from her mother, and a feeling inside Anna that she didn’t like but could not describe at the time. She could describe it now, of course. But she won’t.
Frozen in the bakery aisle with the plastic box still clutched in her hand , some other inner voice advised that the heat of her hand was probably not doing the cake any good. It glistened under the strip lighting, swollen with cream. But Grandy was still there. She could feel him. ‘Where did you come from?’ she murmured, a frown creasing between her eyes.
She shook her head and looked blankly at the confection in her hand and then to the chiller in front of her: donuts lay sugar-speckled and caramel-filled; cheesecakes oozed with shiny berries, choux pastries sat in pretty cases.
She was going to eat whatever she bought, in one sitting. She always did. What did it have to do with Grandy all of a sudden? He was dead.
And we know why, don’t we? Her mother’s acidic voice was ever present, despite being very much not dead.
Anna breathed out and put the cake in her trolley a little too hard. She turned, noting a guy in a yellow cap staring at her, slack-jawed with a pot of yoghurt in one hand. She was accustomed to that look and was immune to it. Onwards, to the crumpets, the teacakes, the almond-filled croissants. “I’ll have these too,” she muttered, and felt a tingle of anger that was not altogether unpleasant.
Yes, and afterwards you’ll feel terrible and swear off forever and then you’ll do it all again, probably tomorrow. This was her own voice. The steady voice that presented to the board; the low sensual voice that whispered in the ears of her lovers, of which there had been several. The voice that sang and laughed, loud and generous.
She continued on her way, adding things as she went, no need for a list when you live alone. She batch-cooked, humming to Fleetwood Mac while she peeled and pared, pausing to turn it up, to dance a little, Luigi winding his warm body round her ankles, the buzz of his purr running up her legs, waiting for her to throw him a little something. Smells of slow roasts and bakes of plum and vanilla persisted in her tiny flat which was crammed with paintings, silk cushions and her own big self, and yet which still somehow felt airy and broad. If her friends and colleagues didn’t visit her for wise counsel on matters from finance to boyfriends, they visited Anna for the food, and for the bright expansive comfort of her.
She arrived, frowning, at the household aisle, noting idly that Mr. Yellow-Cap had appeared at the other end of the aisle. Still with his yoghurt pot, still goggling. She ignored him, as she had been trained, concerning herself instead with Marigolds with which to clean her shell-pink Victorian bathroom. The bathroom had been a gift to herself after her promotion, complete with a claw-foot tub in which she could massage her sore calves after working all day. She had earned it. Like she had earned this cake.
But your legs, Anna! Her mother shrieked in her head. Her mother did a lot of shrieking. Despite having trained her daughter to conduct herself with impeccable decorum, Anna’s mother allowed herself rather more latitude. She boiled over on a regular basis, scalding whoever happened to be in the vicinity.
Reaching past the budget bathroom spray for something more luxurious, Anna’s hand knocked against a bottle of Sunshine. It rattled but didn’t fall. As she gazed at the yellow striped label, a memory of intense lavender presented itself and for a moment she was gone.
Nan was cleaning in the kitchen and Anna was on Grandy’s lap. He tolerated this despite the pain. She’d been a big girl from the start, like all the Baxby’s. She wound his beard around her fingers, clipped it up with Barbie slides, squeezed his cheeks. He was chuckling, huffing out tobacco, his thighs spreading into the crevices of his chair, his glucose kit by his side. Anna enjoyed clicking the needle, hearing his pretend howl of pain, squeezing out a solitary, glossy bead of blood. A tiny cherry on the end of his thumb. He’d let her touch it to the special paper until the machine beeped. Then he would say “Thank you nurse,” and give her a pear drop that made the inside of her cheek go bumpy. Slices of Battenberg, wine gums and peanut butter on toast that stuck to her teeth. Nan would bring them good strong tea after mopping the kitchen floor with Sunshine.
“Tea settles sweetness,” Grandy always said. He would read to her, his heart beating against her back while she drowsed in a haze of chocolate limes. Eventually he’d say “Jump down Anna-piana,” and set her gently down on the rug, his arms trembling from the effort. She would colour in while he snored.
He had died that way.
He slept in his chair by the end, too heavy, too frail to manage the stairs. He wouldn’t have the bed in the front room. His home would not be a hospital. Anna knew none of this until she moved back home after graduation and had spent an afternoon with Nan, who was near the end of her own life by then. He had seemed very old to Anna when she was six. Post-grad Anna knew that dead at fifty was dead too young; her mother was right about that at least. He had died more or less blind, her mother had announced while Anna put her clothes back in her old rabbit-stencilled drawers while intoning silently that this was only temporary, only temporary, only temporary.
The lecture had begun with Anna’s career plans but soon moved on to how much more exercise she really ought to be taking and how no man would respect a woman who did not respect herself. Inevitably Grandy came up. The sores, the nerve damage, the amputation he had needed but never had.
“Is that what you want? To be fat and chairbound and dead before your time? Devastating us all? Selfish, stupid man!” She spat it out, while tears stood in her eyes refusing to roll.
In the household aisle, Anna picked up the Sunshine. The man in the yellow cap ambled by, and chose that very moment to whisper “fat cow” as he passed.
Anna gripped the edge of her trolley in case she fell, not because of those words (heard a million times before), but because of the sensation of furious beating wings in her blood, geysers upon geysers of rage, because of the abrupt feeling of unshackling. She turned with her trolley, and followed him.
She couldn’t recall the subsequent chronology of events until her Sunday night call with her mother. She had become aware of a soft light pulsating in her mind, filling the space from which the remains of some giant mental reptile had apparently been excavated. Far from fossilised, it had been living there unnoticed and now it had torn through her and was gone.
She reclined on her brocade love seat, one leg curled underneath her, the other stretched out. A patch of sunlight warmed her shin. Luigi basked beside her.
“Anna, you’ll have to explain this to me again,” her mother said, as though she had not heard her sad, overweight daughter’s news perfectly well.
“I don’t know how else to put it, mother. I was arrested today.”
“For fighting?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, please Anna, omit no detail. Please do build me a picture of my supposedly professional daughter brawling in the street. I just cannot wait.”
“It wasn’t in the street. It was in the supermarket carpark. I admit I might have gone overboard. But he deserved it.”
“He des…?” The question hung unfinished in the space between them.
“Yes. He needed to be told.”
“Told what? Anna I just can’t, I just don’t…”
“Don’t understand it? Don’t understand me?” A pause. “Did you ever try?”
“Anna!”
“No. I’m tired of it. I love you but things need to change.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Her mother’s voice was travelling upwards in tone and volume. Ann could hear her considering the options. An ambulance, perhaps. This was a breakdown, surely.
“I was thinking about Grandy earlier, before the incident.” She sighed, the memory of him welling up in her again. “In the supermarket,” she said, “while I was shopping. I thought I heard him.”
“What has he got to do with it?”
“He had a name. You shouldn’t say he like that, it’s disrespectful. You loved him once, try to remember. If you’re angry with him, you should say so and get on with it. But have some manners.”
“Alright, darling. I’m calling a doctor unless you start making sense.”
“ I’m not sure I can, I’m still figuring it out. But I thought it best to let you know. I received a caution. I’ll have to declare it at work, and I could be dismissed. All sorts of things might happen, who knows.”
There was a strangled laugh. Anna knew her mother was crying, and trying her level best not to.
“There are things you need to shut up about,” she continued. “Like my weight, for one. Like my body is some shameful thing I drag around. My self-esteem is also not your business. Neither is my work, my finances, my sex-life or my taste in furniture. You need to focus on yourself. I will handle my health like the adult woman that I am, and will ask for help if I need it. The gentleman in the supermarket learned about the perils of giving unsolicited opinions the hard way. I sat on him, that’s all, and asked him to have a good think about his attitude. I’m tired of being so…placatory. I won’t just-ignore-them anymore, and that includes you.”
There was silence at the end of the line.
“Anyway he wasn’t hurt. Unless you count his ego.” She laughed. “And I was cautioned. I think it was worth it, don’t you?”
Silence.
Anna shrugged. “Well anyway, I don’t want you to worry. You have no reason to. Go and have a cup of tea, and I’ll come visit soon. Perhaps you can remember what a beautiful man Grandy was, and what a good job you did raising me. I love you. Say hi to Dad.”
Anna hung up and pulled Luigi into her, rubbing her face into the thick fur of his neck. He purred and pushed against her.
Anna carried him under one arm into the kitchen where the cake sweated on her counter. She looked at it for a moment before letting it slide from the bone china plate into the swing bin. “Sorry Luigi. No cream today,” she said, and kissed his head.
In the wide light space inside, Grandy held her tight.
Amanda Marples is a writer, mental health social worker and mentor. Her writing has appeared in The Femedic, Free Flash Fiction, 34th Parallel, Wilderness House Literary Review and Avalon Literary Review. She’s in a lifelong grappling match with ADHD and Tourette’s Syndrome which makes writing tricky but she’s doing okay. She offers workshops and mentoring to other neurodivergent writers at reconcilecreative.com; something she really wishes she’d had herself. She and the rest of her neurodivergent family live chaotically in the cold and damp of South Yorkshire, UK.
