Chapter 9 ~ De Nada
March 17, 2010
My parents and I didn’t talk that much. We were ships that didn’t even sail the same sea; they left port in the morning, me in the twilight hours.
In my teenage years, I had more conversation with Oliveria, the cleaner, than with my mother or father.
When I turned nineteen, she gave me a little bracelet with my name inscribed: Ken. Not Kenneth, not Kenny, not Walter. Ken. It was wrapped in colourful wrapping paper, a flower-and-leaf print that reminded me of old people; the light blue box within was unmistakable, though. Tiffany’s.
She didn’t have to buy me anything.
But she had.
A tear began to swell in my eye. The last time I’d got a real birthday present from my mother or father, when they’d actually gone out and spent time browsing the shops, trying to work out just what would make me happy, had been when we were still in the UK. Even then, I’d have been surrounded by my entourage – the Manager, the Agent, the Producer, the Director and all the other hangers on – so my memories could well be lies. Almost definitely, I would guess.
Any affection they have ever shown has been dictated by my therapists.
Oliveria had taken the time though.
It wasn’t as if Oliveria could claim to have become a virtual member of the family. My parents rarely spent time speaking with her, let alone getting to know her. That would take more than a moment of not being selfish; impossible for them, simply impossible.
“For me?” I asked and realised immediately that it was the most corny thing I could have said, patronising her despite her honest gesture.
She simply nodded her head at the Tiffany box, ordering me to open it.
The bracelet lay on a foam pad, nameplate upwards.
Ken.
My heart choked my throat; tears coming now, unstoppable.
“Ken,” she said, nodding, “it is your name. Su nombre.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why?”
“Why what?” She shrugged.
But I couldn’t get a word out, my throat constricted, dry, making it impossible to swallow.
“Shhh…” she said, guiding my hand to the bracelet, “put it on.”
Where she led, I followed and the gift was soon on my wrist. She looked at it for a long while. Eventually, she nodded for a final time and fixed my eyes with a stare, her dark eyes suddenly voluminous.
“Su nombre,” she said, voice quiet, “no lo olvide.”
And she was turning around and walking away and I was left in the kitchen, wondering how she could have afforded this, why she had been willing to afford it, why the present, why the message, why she…
“Oliveria!” I shouted and was on my feet before I could think about it.
She turned and I was on her in an instant, hugging her tight and sobbing into her shoulder.
She didn’t say anything for a long time. Not until the sobs had dwindled, not until her shoulder was soaked with my tears.
“Why?” I asked, voice muffled in the material of her housecoat.
She didn’t reply.
“Why?” Again, more insistent.
She pulled back and looked me in the eyes again, shaking her head slightly.
“De nada,” she said, “nada.”
And this time she did leave, regaining her coat and bag on the way up the hall, closing the door without looking back to see whether I was watching, following or collapsing in a heap on the ground.
That’s how I remember my nineteenth birthday.
What a way to recall it; tears and mystery, jewellery and a moment’s solace.
* * *
About two weeks before Bella, I came home to find my parents sharing the dining table, sharing a meal. Even sharing a conversation; unusual enough to make the memory very clear.
He was at the head of the table, her a couple of seats down one side.
A Matisse hung over the fireplace, some obscure piece likely to be desired by every museum and gallery in the world. They had bought it on a whim in Paris about ten years previously. She’d liked the colours. That’s what she’d said, I like the colours, and it had been bought within the hour. They might as well have bought an empty frame and hung it there for how much they looked at the Matisse once it was hung in the apartment. They rarely sat to eat in this room.
Even though their meal was unusual, I wasn’t really interested enough to listen to their discussion. I was passing towards the kitchen to find something to gnaw on when he called out to me.
“Ken,” he said and then paused, waiting until I turned around.
I wondered whether I should give him the satisfaction.
“Ken,” he said again, by way of confirmation that there was no choice.
So, I turned to look at him. Despite the imperative, he wouldn’t meet my gaze, turning instead to look at my mother who, in turn, scrutinized her half empty plate like it was a photograph developing in a darkroom.
This wasn’t their normal abnormality. Something was up.
He coughed, quietly but enough to make his point.
“Your…” she started to speak, unsure of how to move forward, “your… Grandfather has… He died, Kenneth. Your Grandfather is dead.”
My father chased a potato around his plate.
“Really?” I asked, trying to put some emotion in my voice, trying to recall the few acting lessons I’d had towards the end of Family Rules! when they’d finally realised that I was speaking more than Chris or Martin, that I was becoming pivotal to the comedy on-screen and the drama off.
Now she looked at me; her stare could freeze mercury in an instant.
“Don’t give me that,” she said, hissing, “don’t you dare act like… Like…”
“I…”
“You have never met him,” she said, speaking the truth we all knew too well.
Not as if it was my fault that her family didn’t meet but once a year, when they held their family summit at a lakeside chateau near Lausanne. To which the kids, cousins I hadn’t met, weren’t invited unless they were investment bankers doing something productive to further the family fortune, not denude it like me.
I’d never been to Switzerland.
Never been to the family summit.
Never met my Grandfather.
Why should I care? I thought.
The silence in the room was so dense that I began to wonder if I’d said it out loud. They both watched space rather than me, rather than each other.
I was still hungry.
“So?” I asked, more to break the stalemate than wanting to know why they felt it necessary to tell me.
My father was the one to answer the question, my mother seeming to realise she’d been further outside her shell in the previous few minutes than in many years; frosty exterior breached, even if only for the shortest moment.
“We have to go to the funeral,” he answered.
“Well, duh…” I couldn’t help myself. Neither of them even rose to the bait.
“We have to go to the funeral,” he repeated and I suddenly realised that he wasn’t actually talking to me but to her instead. And that one sentence, the emphasis, the imperative… She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to have to go.
Funerals engendered emotion, and she didn’t do emotion, not at all. It was so straightforward. So simple.
So typical.
That was why they’d been sitting there, having dinner when most nights he was out drinking while she was out comparing fashion notes with the Upper East crones. He would have suggested they talk it through because somewhere in one of his management consulting books, in some easily forgotten paragraph in some hotel room somewhere, he’d read that it was important to talk through issues.
Totally ignoring that his whole marriage had been based upon avoiding that sort of sound advice.
That night, she’d have been fighting him tooth and nail that they weren’t going and he’d have been pushing back. Which made me wonder why he was suddenly so concerned that they do the right thing about a member of either of their families.
Probably worried that she’d be cut out of the estate.
Probably.
I decided to twist the knife, bloody from where they’d been stabbing each other all evening.
“Do you want me to come?” I asked.
They both turned and looked at me, speaking in unison, voices flat, hard, not a single emotion for me to grab hold of.
“No.”
I looked at them, they looked at avoidance. And the conversation was over.
I went to get some food.
* * *
The next day, I tumbled out of bed a little before noon to find a note on the kitchen counter, written in his hand.
Further to our discussion, we’ve gone to
your Grandfather’s funeral. We’ll be gone
for a month or so.
And that was it. No signature. No ‘look after yourself’. No ‘see you later’. No ‘we’ll call when we arrive’ Nothing.
I went back to bed.
* * *
If you ask me whether the lack of real affection in my family had anything to do with Bella, with what happened, I’d have to tell you that I don’t know. On the surface, maybe.
Maybe.
One thing I know for certain, though. Below that surface, the water is deep.
Chapter 8 ~ Family Rules – Part II
