Ellipsis

7 Aunty Val

7 Aunty Val

After the wake is over, Thom agrees to stay the night. Emma leaves because she has to go back to work the next day. He says goodbye to her at the door and, as her car pulls away, he has to grasp onto the door handle to stop himself from waving to her.

Inside the house, the lock sounds like a bullet. This is followed by soft crying from upstairs and the clatter of plates that can be heard from the kitchen. He decides Aunty Val is the priority of the two.

He tiptoes upstairs, wincing at the creaks he should have remembered were there. It is instilled in him that death is quiet; something the living shouldn’t flaunt themselves in the face of.

Aunty Val’s door is open. He stands outside for a moment and peers in, instantly smelling the sorrow, hanging in the air like smoke clouds. The walls seem to be quivering in disgust, the paint flaking like dead skin.

“Hello”, he whispers through the c***k in the door and slowly moves his head through.

Aunty Val gasps. A fresh tear is rolling down her face, an afterthought, because now she has turned white as paper. She is breathing hollowly, holding herself up with her arms. Then after a few minutes of looking at him, proofreading his features, she gulps in air and starts to cry again.

It’s only now that he springs into action and rushes to her side, taking her in his arms. She is crying words into his body, something like “your voice” and “Daniel”. Thom doesn’t want to think about what she is saying though, feeling his heart begin to shiver behind his rib cage, so he presses her into him until her words are too muffled to hear. It isn’t the first time someone has mistaken his voice for Daniel’s but this is the only time when it scares him.

Yet, almost thankfully, she is too concerned with crying to continue moving her mouth, and her lips forget. She sobs onto his neck and he remembers sobbing onto hers for a week after he’d first moved here. He knows from those times to let her finish, let her run out of water, and let her moans grow muted, disappear.

When these things happen, she looks up at him shyly. Thom tries a smile but even his mouth knows it’s stupid. She leans her head on his shoulder. He thinks her eyes are washed out, as if somebody has diluted them. They used to be a much stronger green. He knows it’s to be expected but when he thinks back to a month ago, when he last came to visit, he’d noticed it then too. She has let her hair go grey, when usually she keeps it coloured a medium blond.

Aunty Val always keeps herself well dressed and maintained. He always thinks of her saying, “You’ve got to keep up the hard work if you want to look good”. She is fifty-two and looks good for it, although she is always embarrassed when a man shows interest in her.

So did this neglect start a month ago? Or even longer? He hasn’t visited as much as he should have. And if this neglect had been occurring before Daniel’s death, then why? Had she been worried about Daniel? Perhaps this supported the theory that he committed suicide. But would he have? Thom guesses they are questions he can ask later (and some which he cannot) but now he has no right to bother her.

“He’s really dead”, is how she breaks the silence. It seems obvious but Thom feels like it stabs him in the ribs then. She is right, he can’t argue. He can only nod, trying to breathe.

“Did you like the song we chose?” she asks.

“It was good. Did Daniel like it?” he blushes.

“It was one of his favourites”, she confirms, and he feels himself smile, glad that at least one person feels certain regarding Daniel. She is the kind of person who always takes notes and stores them in a mental filing cabinet, in order to refer to them later. Thom on the other hand keeps forgetting people’s birthdays and buying Emma gold jewellery when she only likes silver.

“I’m sorry”. He throws in a worthless phrase to secretly apologise for not knowing Daniel and now it’s too late.

“I’m too young to be losing kids”, she says, adding, “like you were too young”.

“Let’s not talk about that”, he dismisses, and kisses her forehead.

“But I want to”, she croaks, wiping her nose on her sleeve. He can’t help but find this uncomfortable, especially as she has always been so strong for him, more so than with her own children. She faces him and holds onto his arms at the elbows, pressing down, needing to make her point. “I know it’s different but I thought you would be the best…” Her lips rebel against her, muffle her words. “I thought you would understand this…”

“Okay”, he interrupts.

“No Thom, please”, she begs, “I know you hate talking about it”.

“It’s not the same”, he tells her, wriggling in her hold.

“But it was wrong too”. She is staring at him, searching. “Your parents shouldn’t have died then and Daniel…” she falters again, “shouldn’t have...”

“What do you want me to say?” He cuts over her, unable to go back, even for her. He has never been able to discuss it properly. The week he cried himself to sleep is the closest she ever got to it. The closest anybody has got in fact. Even he struggles to get near to his feelings about it all. Perhaps back then, he asked somebody why or what happened or some question that didn’t matter like what happened to the car but he hadn’t opened a showroom to let everyone examine his feelings. Perhaps, this is his problem. Perhaps that is why he has a job where he always knows what to say because there is a handbook.

“I don’t know what I want you to say”, Aunty Val eventually admits. He moves and puts his arm around her, pressing her shoulder against his.

He thinks about work, about the people who phone about a loved one’s life insurance, how they’ve lost that person and to really rub it in, they have to argue with him about the clauses in the contract. And so he says what he says to them (because he isn’t a bastard), “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll do all I can”.