Lost Light

I cannot make her smile come back
That sunshine of her face
That used to make this old earth seem
At times so great a place
The same sweet eyes look out at me
The features are the same
But, oh, the smile is out of them
And I'm the one to blame.
My mother doesn't like me anymore. I wiped the smile right off her face, she says, like she used to wipe her school slate clean with a bit of spit and an unwinding jersey sleeve. I can't help that, I tell her. I'm not responsible for what you think only for what you know. 'I know you're a nasty piece of work,' my mother says. 'When you want to be.' 'I'm not. I'm good as gold,' I tell her back.

'Prove it,' my mother says. 'Prove it wasn't you who made him go away.' 'Made who go away?' I ask, all innocent and calm.

'See, there you go,' says my mother. 'Like you don't know a thing about it. See there you go.'

She's talking about my father. And when she's tired of that, she'll talk about my best friend Dolly Smith. She thinks I jacked them up together. There might have been something going on for years.

'I came home and caught them kissing.' I've told her this before. 'They were standing in the kitchen, and Dad had her up against the Formica bench, and she didn't even mind, I could tell.'

'But she was your age,' says mum, 'Your friend.' Same old argument. My fault. 'Exactly,' I say, only she doesn't get it. She was the same age, Dolly. Sixteen. Born in the same month, the same week, the same place, just not on the same day. My mother knew her mother, Corrine Smith. We might have lain in cribs, side by side, in the maternity hospital, only my mother can't remember.

'More than half Dad's age,' I say. 'He should have known better, not me.' That's what I tell mum most times. Dolly wasn't the first. She was the second. Or the third. Or the sixty-third, most likely, if you go back far enough and look under the right rocks. 'He was a womanizer, that's what Auntie Belle says. That's what she told me. A skirt worshipper.'

'She always did fancy your Dad,' says my mother as she fiddles with the buttons on her yellow nightie. She's been in bed all day. 'She was jealous of me from the day she was born.'

'Oh right. Like she had a green streak in her hair instead of ribbons.'

'You watch yourself,' Mum says. 'I don't know about you sometimes.'

'And I don't know anything,' I tell her. 'You don't have a monopoly on that, you know.'

Monopoly. That word belongs to dad. He should have taken it with him when he packed his bloody bags. When I caught him in the kitchen with Dolly Smith, with the big breasts that stood right out and caught her cake crumbs at afternoon tea he'd said, 'You don't have the monopoly on being…young.' I don't think that was the word he wanted, just the one he found. 'And you and your mother don't hold a mortgage on my life.'

'Who said we did? Who wants it anyway?' I didn't say it though. I wasn't into trying to tell my dad stuff, because he'd never been into listening.

'Don't.' Me.

'Why not?' Him.

'But you must have known,' my mother says. 'You must have known Dolly Smith was trouble from the start. That she'd get her hooks into him.'

That makes Dolly sound long and spiky, instead of soft and fat.

Did I know Dolly would be trouble? Maybe I did, but I'm not going to tell Mum that, not while she's all stretched out like a patient. I was sixteen. But not as green as Aunty Belle's hair.

'Don't hurry back, Maureen,' Dad said, when I left him there with Dolly, when Mum wasn't home.

'You go and meet your mum, now there's a good girl. Give us yell when you come up the path.'

'Look, Mum,' I say as I yank the curtains open and haul her blankets off her while she tries to keep them on. She has bony knees, and a flat breadboard chest. I pull her nightie down and rearrange her. 'Don't worry about it. We're okay, aren't we? Heck, I don't miss him at all,' I say.

It's been weeks. I miss him like a bellyache that's finally been and gone.

'Mum, if only you'd stop blaming me and get up, we could get on with things…'

'But you brought her home,' says my mother. 'If you hadn't brought her home…'

'He would have dragged one off the street,' I tell her. 'Another victim. That's what Aunty Belle says.'

My mother snarls, 'Bugger your Aunty belle.'

'Dad would have you know, if she'd given him half a chance.'

My mother doesn't laugh. She cries.

'Oh quit, Mum, will you? Just quit.'

'Well, I miss him,' she snivels. 'We were married nearly twenty years.'

'Well, give yourself a break.'

'It's all your fault for bringing that Dolly home.'

Here we go again. I wipe the tears from Ma's face like I wiped off the smile, because I bought home Dolly Smith, there's no denying that. Dolly who was once my best friend. I hear she and Dad are living over the Wipua now and Dolly's having a baby.

Dad always could pull the girls, just like Aunty Belle said. She always said they'd get him into trouble one day. Dad doesn't like kids. Well, not until they're older. I remember when I was twelve and so was Jenny MacIntyre. And when I was thirteen, there was Sandy…Sandy… I forget her other name. She was new at school. And when I was fourteen there was Do Clifton. I know Daddy liked Do. And of course, during all those years, from twelve to sixteen, there was also me.

Mum misses my father, she tells me. Misses the stain his head made on the pillow slip, misses his leather work boots by the door. But there's nothing I miss about him, unless it's just his smell. I couldn't stand his smell. Tobacco and soap and sin.

'Go to sleep, Ma,' I tell her, and pull the curtains back again and shut out the day.

She tells me again. 'All your fault that he's gone.'

Yeah, it sure is, I whisper to the ornaments on the shelf in hallway – there's that Fairy Godmother I was given when I was ten, you can't rely on them - as I go to put the kettle on, make her a cup of tea. I think back to when Dolly Smith stole Willy Van Endoven away. My first real boyfriend. I thought he was my savior. Afterwards I said to Dolly, 'Come home and meet my family.' I said, 'You'll really like my Dad.'

I knew Dad would really like Dolly. Dolly's ledge of tits. I hear Dolly's clothes don't fit her anymore, that she has to wear his shirts.

I cannot make her smile come back
That sunshine of her face
That used to make this old earth seem
At times so great a place
The same sweet eyes look out at me
The features are the same
But, oh, the smile is out of them
And I'm the one to blame.

I'm sorry about my mother, I really am. But they deserve each other, Dolly and my Dad.

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