My Mother's Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun.
First published in 2001
This is NOT a William Fic. S8 & 9 never happened in this twisted little universe of mine.
RATING: PG-13
CATEGORY: MSR.
TIMELINE: about 15 years after Requiem.
KEYWORDS: Progeny, Angst, third person POV.
SUMMARY: A teenager muses on his mother's unspoken feelings.
***
"It is as if the dead saw thru our eyes, other for a moment borrowed these windows, gazing."
- Diane Di Prima -
***
My mother hates me.
There.
I know the Truth.
Today she gave me the proof I needed. With hindsight, it came as a relief, after years of not knowing, of wondering whether I was paranoid or not. Mothers love their children; it's a fact of life, which is probably why I've had my doubts for so many years. But today she gave me undeniable proof.
It was there, so clear in her deep blue eyes. The same shade as mine.
She didn't even try to hide it this time.
In the past I've caught glimpses, wafer-thin slivers of hatred quickly swallowed in the shadows of her pupils, like a mortal sin too terrible to be confessed.
Because I'm sure as hell she never told her priest about it. My pretty Catholic mother, with her pale skin and strange accent is full of secrets.
I wonder if she ever shared them with my father.
Whoever he is.
My birth remains a mystery. I did ask, of course, many times. Her answer, when I get one, is always elusive. "It's complicated," is the best I've ever got.
I've been looking for clues, mostly by examining myself in a mirror. I have her eyes but not her hair and *definitely* not her nose. And I'm tall. Mum is a titchy redhead.
I can't remember any men ever living in our house, even when I was little. We've led a rather secluded life. Mum doesn't like to socialise and doesn't have any friends over here. Well, none that I know of; maybe she's got some at work. She does come home late at night sometimes, but never brings anyone with her.
Mum is a lecturer in pathology at Oxford, 20 miles from here. That's a fancy way of saying she cuts up dead people to make students reconsider their choice of career. The Hippocratic oath doesn't seem so glamorous when you're elbow-deep in lower intestines.
She loves her job. She spends hours writing medical stuff on her computer. That's something, I guess.
Mum likes her people dead and interesting. She's not very good at dealing with the painful living ones. Like me.
She does have two men in her life, though.
Americans. Like her.
George and Walter.
The only two other people she allows in our house. She probably thinks that making them stay in a B&B after they've crossed an entire ocean to reach us would be too much to ask.
I call them the Men in Black. They both look like undercover CIA agents or something, although they don't wear guns. They move with the caution of spies, like the ones you see in the movies. Come to think of it, Mum moves a bit that way too. Is my mum a spy? Did she come here because she was running away from something? I know it seems farfetched, but sometimes I wonder why she left America, since it's obvious British culture leaves her indifferent. She sighs when I watch Eastenders and she doesn't even like cricket. I think she prefers baseball: I've never seen her watch any sport on telly but there is an old baseball bat in the attic which I'm not allowed to play with.
Anyway. Back to George and Walter.
Walter is a tall, bald, sullen man who doesn't talk much, which I know suits Mum just fine. He comes once a year or every other year, it depends. He hugs Mum and they share small talk in front of me over dinner. They're not very good at it, even I can see that. Walter asks me about school, and listens distractedly as I explain to him the finer points of our school system, which is a bit pointless as he never remembers a thing from one year to the next. Then he and Mum disappear into the study where I'm persona non grata. He's usually gone in the morning.
I like Walter but I don't think he's my dad.
Now, George is a different kettle of fish. Mr. Hale's coming and goings are more erratic. He wears a leather jacket and kisses Mum on the forehead. When I was small he used to come quite often, twice a year or so, and would sometime stay a few days. He even stayed a full week once, the summer I was six. We all went to the London Zoo and he let me give some of his sunflower seeds to the monkeys. Mum said that only monkeys would appreciate that gift, but she was smiling.
George manages to do that, make her smile. Sometimes.
I was happy that day. I wanted him to be my dad.
When Mum put me to bed that evening I told her so. Her hands froze on the covers, and when I looked up at her she turned her head away quickly to stop me reading her expression, but I saw. The raw pain in her eyes made me want to scream for her. If she couldn't let it all out maybe I could.
Of course, I didn't.
I am, after all, my mother's son.
She left the room without kissing me goodnight. I heard George leave that night. I never mentioned the subject again.
It might have been two years before he turned up again. His hair had gone even whiter than before.
George plays havoc with Mum's nerves. I've never seen her lose her temper with anybody but him. Well not *seen*, exactly, but I've heard doors slam.
George makes Mum cry.
I know that because every time he leaves, her eyes go grey and just a little too bright, and she goes very silent for several days.
George makes love to Mum.
Or at least used to. When he's around nowadays I always find him on the couch in the morning. Maybe the separation is less painful for her that way.
But once, when I was little, I woke up in the middle of the night with something I couldn't keep to myself. I made my way to Mum's bedroom, torn between the need to show her and the reluctance to wake her up. I saw soft light filtering from under the closed door, so I opened it carefully in case she'd fallen asleep with the lights on.
I froze when I saw she wasn't alone. George was there, kneeling on the bed. He must have arrived while I was asleep. They were both naked and rocking gently in each other's arms, Mum's ankles locked against his back, her cheek resting on his shoulder. She was making soft sounds like a baby cat.
Then she opened her eyes and saw me.
I held out my bloody hands.
"John!"
She jumped off the bed, and rushed towards me, struggling into her discarded bathrobe, her flushed face suddenly turning paler than the sheet George had thrown over himself.
After cleaning me up, she carried me back to my bedroom. She kept repeating "You're fine, you're fine," into my ear as she did so. I felt fine, but I don't think she did.
She stayed by my bed until I fell asleep, holding my hand and stroking my brow, a sure sign she was very upset. She's not really the touchy-feely type, you see.
I don't know why she was so worried.
It was, after all, only a nosebleed.
Mum never gives anything away, but I'm slowly learning to read her. Too slowly though. Maybe that's why I want to study psychology when I go to university in a few years time, to try to understand what's going on in her head.
I know she didn't want to hate me; she'd been trying very hard not to for so many years, since I was born in fact. She did try to love me in her own clumsy way. But she never really got the hang of it. Another thing Mum can't do is lie.
Mum is a fundamentally a good person, I think. I've never known her to be unduly cruel or unfair, merely distant. I know what she feels for me must be very disturbing to her. One thing she can't hide from her eyes is the guilt. And thank God for that, because it helped me reach the conclusion that I was not to blame.
Because of course, I did wonder for a long time. Ever since I was sentient enough to form coherent thoughts, I knew there was something wrong. There was a restraint in the way she held me, fed me, changed me, kissed me, sang (badly) to me; an elusive but tangible distance about her.
I tried to be the perfect son. I hardly ever fussed, never threw a tantrum. I tried to keep to myself, tried not to need her too much even when I was little and nightmares plagued my nights. I never told her about the white light and the smelly old man I swore I could see lurking near my bedpost. Even after all these years I can still recall the exact taste of the damp pillow I stuffed in my mouth in order not to cry too loudly. Salt and Tesco's fabric softener.
I tried to love her the way she loved me: at a distance.
I tried to be this stranger she had to care for without having to bear the burden of emotional attachment.
I tried to be her John Doe.
Today she came home early. It was a pleasant half-term spring afternoon and I was outside fixing my bike by the shed. I had paused to enjoy the timid caress of the sun on my cheeks, looking at the clouds, trying to give them names.
I was hesitating between a radish and a squirrel when I heard a faint sound like a sharply indrawn breath.
Mum was standing very still near the open wooden gate, her eyes fixed on me.
As I met her gaze, I saw something die there, whatever tenderness she'd ever held for me withering away and being replaced by a hatred so colossal it took the breath right from my lungs.
All pretences were gone.
There was no mistake: it was directly aimed at me. I looked down, mostly because I couldn't stand the terrifying finality of her stare.
I heard the gate slam as she left, then her car, tyres biting the gravel.
What I'd been holding dropped from my numb fingers and fell noiselessly on the freshly mown lawn as my hands began to shake. A panicked voice in my head was shrieking like a fast-forwarded tape that she was only mad at me because of what I'd been doing.
Of course I couldn't believe it. If only because the tip of this terrible iceberg lodged so deeply within my mother's heart had often surged through her icy blue eyes when she wasn't careful; but also because the so-called logical explanation vainly trying to get a grip inside my head just didn't make sense.
It was, after all, only a cigarette.
The End.
Soooo...
* Who is John's father? Justify. (10 points) * Reference from Little Green Men? (1 point) * Reference from Arcadia? (2 points) * Reference from Detour? (1 point) * Reference from The Unnatural? (1 point)
