I'll wait until you're dead

part one || A broken promise

It’s the end of June and perfect seaside weather. I’m walking along the seafront with my parents and my father’s dog, trying to balance their competing need for my attention. The dog is old and reactive to other dogs—the perfect excuse for L, my partner, to stay at home with our own reactive pup and stay out of this clusterfuck of family dysfunction. 

The talk is small—focussed entirely on my parents’ own recent activities and ailments. I put them both on an information diet a long time ago. My mother because I never know what small detail of my life might be stored for future ammunition. My father because, much as I love and kind of trust him, and although they are legally separated, he still loves and is entwined with my mother and shares everything with her.

It was easier when they lived separately and further away and when conversations could reasonably be limited to short phone exchanges. “Chips and egg” conversations, my partner calls them, limited to what’s for tea, recent illness and who’s died. But of course I can’t talk about chips and egg with my mother. That’s the kind of meal she’d disapprove of. Lentils and quiche conversation then. Something middle class and healthy.

The information diet is harder face to face when whole hours of time are spent in each other’s company. L and I have done well to avoid these meetings. The physical and practical distance made it easier when both my parents lived three to four hours away in heavy traffic and in opposite directions.

But now that they’ve decided, forty years after their legal separation, to sell their separate homes and buy adjoining bungalows only forty minutes from my chosen home, it’s getting harder. The threat that they’ll turn up on our doorstep uninvited is real and made frequently. 

So this visit is a sop. A small offering of my presence in return for a few more months of peace. This meeting has been demanded in honour of my birthday which fell a couple of weeks ago. In the hour since we met, no mention has been made of my birthday. No happy wishes have been offered. And I’m about to pay for my own birthday lunch.

We’re walking to a local seafront cafe that serves locally caught dabs in home made bread rolls. The kind of meal that suits both my mother’s outdated orthorexic habits and my father’s insatiable appetite for fish’n’chips. It’s one of his primary reasons for moving to the seaside where fish and chips is an English staple.

The small talk turns to the weather, and the need for sunglasses. I admit—cautiously—to having bought an expensive polarising pair when we moved here ten years ago. The cheap chemist ones I used to tolerate weren’t up to the coastal glare. My mother scrutinises the glasses on my face. They’re a little scratched but still going strong. She holds her hand out for me to pass them to her. I oblige and she places them on her own face and winces—disapproving.  

“Oh no! These are far too dark.”

 I shrug. “Yeah, that’s kinda the point I guess.”

“Oh no.” 

She returns them to me, pulls her own sunglasses from her bag and dons them with a small flourish, face up toward the sun. Then she turns to me and presents herself.

My left eye squints briefly and involuntarily. It’s not the sunlight—my own glasses are protection enough against that. And thankfully the mirrored lenses prevent her seeing my incredulity.

“I got them from Boots.” 

“Uh-huh. They’re—very nice.”

“Five pounds” She preens. She loves a bargain.

“Are they—are they polarising?” As I ask the question I realise they can’t possibly be. Not at five quid. But there’s something—else. They’re oddly flat. Shiny, black plastic Ronnie Barker frames with no hint of curve or shaping. The grey lenses reflect the light and seem to dip in the centre. They look kinda familiar. 

She turns to face forward again—side on to me. And then I see it.

“Are those—are you sure they aren’t 3D cinema glasses?”

She slams her head back in my direction—looks at me askance. 

“Of course not. I bought them from Boots.”

“Oh. Only they’ve got ‘3D’ written on the side.”

She takes off the glasses again and holds them at arms-length to bring the characters into focus.

“Do they?” 

“Can I—may I have a look?” 

It’s my turn to hold out my hand and she passes them to me. Her glasses are  feather light and now that they’re in my hand I see that the strange bent lenses are just a thin acrylic film. Two characters “3” and “D” are printed in bold white on the black arms.

“Well, if they work they work. But they won’t protect your eyes. Have you looked at getting some with UV protection?”

She snatches them back and replaces them on her face.

“I was just wondering. Y’know—since you’ve had two cataract operations already?”

“They work just fine.”

“O—kay.”

I smile. I’m hoping to draw her into the humour of the situation. But I’ve forgotten (infrequent interaction will do that) she doesn’t do humour about herself. She is a Very Serious subject.

She’s angry now. Hurt.

“I bet you write about this. I bet you put it in your book!” 

She spits the last word of this accusation with such venom that I’m momentarily taken aback. The shock is quickly overtaken by confusion. Does she truly believe I’m writing? That I’m working on a book? Why? This is another of those moments (there are many) where I wonder whether her incapable weebling persona is a far more elaborate and sophisticated front than I give credit. Is her tech-phobia part of the front?  Does she have some form of spyware on my computer? Is she hacking into phone calls and Zoom chats? 

Nah. 

Maybe she’s simply still living in the dream of my one day publishing a book that she can claim credit for herself?

“I taught her everything she knows, you know.”

And that the book will be all about her. (Well, she’s certainly given me plenty of material.) 

Or does she know me just well enough to be able to tap into my own dreams and target them against me?

All this flashes through my mind in the instant before I reply—

“Don’t worry. I’ll wait until you’re dead.”

The moment I say it, I regret it. It’s intended as a lighthearted riposte—the sort of thing I’d say to a friend who knows me well enough to know no malice is intended. It’s in keeping with the laughter I’ve been trying to draw her into. But my first reach for laughter was rejected. And so too is my  “joke”. 

We walk in silence, each walled behind our sunglasses. 

And I wonder—do I really have to wait? For how long?

My mother is still very much alive. If you’re reading this, you already know I’ve just broken my promise to wait until my she’s dead before I tell this story. This is the first part of a multi-part essay. The next instalment explores why I’m not waiting any longer. That’ll will be published in a few weeks time. I don’t yet know how many parts this essay will have. Probably about three? But at the rate my notes are expanding, it might turn into a novel. Or not. Eh. This is the cow path way. I’ll see where it takes me.