I am in a tree-lined street in Paris, passing a small, narrow art studio. A shadowy window, almost dirty. I move closer to the picture and as I do so I see that the woman is my mother. I know it's her, by the hair, which roams in small ridges over her head, down onto her shoulders. She is carrying a sprig of flowering lilac. Then I see she is young, a youngness I never knew.
I peer at the man. He is wearing a soldier's uniform and is smoking. I watch them, they don't move at first and then the smoke from his cigarette starts to curl through a corner of the picture and the soldier turns to me and says, 'There's more to this than you would ever know."
I do not speak.
"There are layers to everything," he says. Then I hear my mother laugh, a love laugh, full of moonbeams and memories.
I blink against the smoke. The sun shifts and they are as before. The picture is as it was.
A small circle of scum whirls around my feet and an early autumn wind breathes down my neck. I pull myself up with a start. "You're just tired," I tell myself. "Just tired." And as I make my slow way up the narrow hill I listen to the soft wind in the trees that line the street and somehow it is the same wind that used to blow in the lilac tree that grew outside my bedroom, in a place a long way from here, and a long time ago.
My mother is tired all the time. She is like the lilac flowers when they are fading.
I am making the tea for us. Eggs and toast. I take a tray to my mother. She is tucked under the covers, except for her wavy brown hair, which is spread about the pillow like small ripples. I put the tray down on the table beside the bed and touch her. She moves. I go back to the kitchen, sit down at the wide wooden table and bang away at my egg, pretend it is a magic egg.
Above me hangs the pulley full of damp woollen clothes, It makes everything smell mouldy
I wish, I wish I had a father. As I peel the shell from the egg, the white steam burns at my fingers. I wish. I shut my eyes tight and see him in my head. He is tall, with black smooth hair and deep brown eyes. He smiles at me. I smile back.
When I open my eyes, Robert, my step-brother, is staring at me.
"Don't," I say. "Don't look." I am scared he can see inside my head, can see the man who isn't really my father.
I cut the top of my egg and, slip my spoon through the white, into the yellow part.
"You were wishing for something," he says.
"Was not," I shout. The egg sticks in my throat. I take another mouthful, it is full of shell.
I hate eggs. I hear my mother give a gentle cough.
"Frances," she calls.
I stick my tongue out at Robert, then go to her bedside.
The eiderdoun is crumpled and warm like a used summer's day."Be a good girl and don't
argue.
"But I hate eggs," I say.
"Life is never easy," she says, turning away from me, staring out of the window,"never."
Her thin white arm stick's out of the cover. It has no colour at all.
I take the tray with the untouched egg and toast back to kitchen and put them on the bench.
The kitchen is green and always cold. It has a long brown and white stone bench. It is slimy to touch and there is a big window in front of the bench and a little window way up against the ceiling on the big sidewall. I wonder why there is a window there? I can see some of the neat bricks belonging to the house next door. I don't know about that window at all.
I take all the dishes from the table, pile them in to the white chipped sink and put in the black plug. I squirt the soap liquid onto the top layer of dishes, then foam the water with my hands as it pours out of the tap. Bits of shell float about. I make a bride's veil with my hands. the soap between my hands. Until it is such a veil. Long and trailing down to my wrist,. Did my mother have a veil?
The water is cold by the time I have finished washing the dishes, and rain is raining against the window. Drops are hitting and running down the glass. I trace patterns with my finger, but the drops run too fast.
"Frances, haven't you finished the dishes yet?"
I pick up the tea towel and hurry to start the drying.
"Nearly," I reply.
When I have finished, I tiptoe past my mother's bedroom, go down the hall to my own room. She gives a small grunt as I close the door.
I lie on, my bed and look at the lilac tree in the rain and pretend that I am the lilac tree ponds and am wearing a veil of silver raindrops. I am. I am. I am not me.
My stay in Paris has only been a short one. This meeting with my daughter is my last one before flying back home to New Zealand. I had not seen her for seven years and now, as she comes running to meet me at the foot of the hotel, I think of how much she looks like my mother. Her hair long and wavy.
Anna and I walk arm in arm down the small hill that I climbed the day before.
"Come and look a moment," I say to her.
"You look tired Mother, are you all right.?" she asks.
"Yes, yes," I say. "But look at this picture."
"It's nice," she says, peering into the window, shading the reflection with her hand.
"But doesn't it remind you of someone?" I ask.
"Not really." She hesitates and looks at me. "Who did you think it was like?"
"I ... no never mind. Come on, lets eat."
We walk in silence, watch the coming dusk lights swaying and floating in the water of the Seine.
"Grandma," she says suddenly.
"Grandma what?"
"The woman in the picture, it looked like Grandma."
"Yes," I say. "Yes it did, didn't it."
"But the man didn't look like Grandad."
"No," I say. "Not your step-Grandad, but your real Grandad. Perhaps."
I am standing on a footstool on my tiptoes, looking in the long white cupboard, which is hidden behind the sitting room door. My mother is in the kitchen. I pull out a bundle of letters and a photograph drops to the floor. I jump down, and pick it up. And then I feel my mother behind me.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
I bite the inside of my lip.
"You have no right to go through my private things." She looks at me hard. "Do you understand?"
The room feels very cold.
"Do you understand?"
I nod and Put the bundle of things back on the shelf.
"Now go and have your bath."
I do not hear my mother come out of the sitting room until long after I have gone to bed.
But in the dark I see the man from the photograph. He has black hair and a moustache and dark eyes and he is wearing a soldier's uniform. And I think I know he is my father.
It is raining lightly when my daughter and I return to the hotel.
"Come in for a drink," I say.
"God ... Mother! At this hour, I've got to work tomorrow. Remember?"
"I know that, But this is Paris. And I'm away tomorrow."
Anna twitches. "All right, one night-cap."
I order a brandy for the both of us. Its warmth passes through me.
"You all right without Dad?" she asks.
"Soon I'll cope better," I reply.
She reaches over and touches my hand and I see a small pain in her eyes.
"It's funny not having a father," she says,
"Yes," I reply.
"Did my real Grandad die in the war?" she asks.
"I think so."
She turns to me,"Don't you know?"
"No," I say. "I don't."
She leans forward, cups her hands around her empty glass. "Did Grandma never tell you about him?"
I shake my head. "Never," I say."But once I saw a photograph of a soldier amongst her
private Papers. I think he was my father." I stand up and go over to the hotel's lounge
window. I look out and see speckles of Paris spread over the purple night. My daughter
comes and stands beside me.
"It's quite beautiful, isn't it," she says.
"Yes, it is."
I'm looking in the long white cupboard again. My mother is in the garden, but the photograph isn't there. I go outside.
"The lilac tree's getting too big," says my mother as I brush past its warm fuzzy smell.
"No, it isn't," I say,
"It's blocking out the light,"she insists.
"It's not."
"We'll see."
I look at the lilac tree and see its shedding purple light; I see my mother's fingers creased and lined and the sun stealing through kneeling branches and her hair and her face, I see it all, but I never see that photograph again.
"lt's been lovely seeing you, Mother." Anna hugs me, then steps away from the warmth of
the room.
"Its a long way from home," I say,
"You mean I'm a long way from home?"
Suddenly I'm very tired. "Yes, I suppose that's it."
She hugs me again,"Its all part of the grieving, Mother."
"Is it?"
I stand on the steps and watch her getting smaller and smaller into the night. She waves as she turns the corner.
The street is silent and the darkness is warm. I slip on my cotton jacket and go down the hill to the art studio and the picture.
I stand and look at it for a very long time. "Why?" I ask of her. "Why did you do it?"
I am standing looking at the lilac tree lying on its side on the ground under my bedroom window. Already its flowers are withering.
"It was too big," says my mother without moving.
I turn away and go inside.
Later, I make the tea. Saturday eggs and toast again. My mother is lying down on the top of her bed. She has fallen asleep. Her hair covers her face. My stepfather has gone to the hotel. Like he does every weekend. I put the tray on the table beside the bed, and go back to the kitchen, table.
Robert looks at me. "I suppose you're going to start wishing again," he says." And
pretending."
I give the egg a good. crack on the top, push my spoon deep into its hidden layers. 'No,"
I say, spitting out the shell. "I'm never going to pretend again." Then I swallow the hard
lump of boiled egg.