Something I'm Not: Is there a Mother in every Woman?
Lucy Beresford
Language: English
Pages: 132
ISBN: 2:00336234
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
To her friends, Amber leads the perfect life with her successful marriage, powerful job in London and her immaculate style. But as more of her friends fall pregnant, and her best friend Dylan announces his decision to adopt a baby with his gay lover, Amber's carefully structured world begins to fall apart. Amber has built her life around her decision not to have children, but now she questions the underlying reasons for the choices she has made. The parallels between her rash emotions and those of her mother years before soon reveal themselves, as Amber fears that she is losing the love of those closest to her and succumbs to her overpowering insecurities. Struggling to make sense of the fragmented memories from her childhood, Amber is forced to confront her difficult and painful relationship with her mother.
A change of name – yes, fascinating. They don’t appear to have heard what I heard: a tale of early hurts and hidden wounds. But I’ve heard it, and yet I sit here, rigid, helpless. I feel anger towards Jenny’s parents, and hatred towards Jenny’s schoolfriends, and I say nothing, do nothing at all. Jenny reaches for another éclair. Guilt burns my gut. And I make a decision, there and then, to reach out to others; to put ‘you’ before ‘I’ in my dealings with the world. To improve myself. I must
latest John Updike. He peers over the top of his spectacles. ‘Jet lag?’ he mouths. I grin and shake my head. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it!’ I whisper. ‘It’s three in the morning our time, and I’m wide awake!’ ‘I know the feeling.’ The man removes his reading glasses. Late forties, I reckon. A youthful fifty at most. Clean-shaven, despite the hour, and with groomed greying hair. He wears a white linen shirt, which hangs in soft folds around his chest. Attractive laughter lines draw attention to his
bed and make all my horrid feelings go away. And sometimes when I’m in a really self-pitying mood, I will tell him this; and Matt will laugh and say I could never afford his fees. Louisa utters a moan just as Prue appears in the doorway – as though, even in sleep, she can sense her mother’s approach. As if the very air around a mother quivers with the static of maternal concern. Matt and I stand up. ‘How is she?’ gasps Prue, to no one in particular. Her voice is taut, her words clipped. At the
back and I sink into it, with jerky sobs. Tears dribble sideways into my left ear. And a familiar voice is telling me that it’s all right, that it will all be all right. Had someone been watching from the choir stalls, they might have mistaken Dylan for a parent soothing a child after a particularly virulent nightmare. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I eventually croak. ‘I know,’ said Dylan, still stroking my hair. I brace myself to withstand anger, but it never comes. After a while, I pull away slightly.
words only he is privileged to hear. It’s highly nuanced communication of the utmost intimacy. Osmotic. Where each picks up something unspoken from the other. And when Dylan lays the baby gently in the water in the font, the baby looks about him not with terror, but with recognition, that this lilting liquid is a place of safety, of glorious beginnings. And he lets out a gurgle of contentment, as though he has finally come home. I repent. Parents and godparents take turns to hold the baby, now