A Tiny Bit Marvellous (13 page)

Mo

After my panic about Dora’s possible pregnancy I realized it was time to get her along to see the nurse about some decent contraception. She yells at me that she is still a virgin but I have no idea what she’s really up to during this time of total communication breakdown. She will only speak in monosyllabic grunts and snorts and cannot look me in the eye. Consequently all information between us is conveyed in bulletin form. If spoken it is understood that it will be short, precise and instructive data. For instance, when she wants her allowance, she stands near me, looking away but holding her hand out saying:

‘Pocket money necessary … please … immediately.’ Or ‘Shampoo required …’ or ‘Dog sick behind kitchen door. Action needed.’

If written, it’s usually on Post-its left on the fridge or by the phone, again, concise and to the point. One particular Post-it simply urged me to ‘Butt out you wonk!’

Charming. Absolutely no incidental conversation is happening, no discussion. Occasionally, if there are other people in the house, friends and wotnot, she will engage in a kind of fake functional relationship to ease the tension and to appear sociable. Dora is caught in the unenviable limbo between her own self-interest and what she knows is socially acceptable. It’s classic ‘Sturm und Drang’. We, the family, are simply obstacles the storm must batter in its path, in order to blow itself out.

I know this to be the relevant psychology but, frankly, what the cocking hell is wrong with her?! I’m sorry she is undergoing so much, but I have made it quite clear that I understand the process, for two reasons:

It is my job to understand, as a shrink. I once was a teenager myself, thank you very much.

I know what’s going on and so would she, if only she stopped raging for a moment to realize that I’m right. If she would just stop being so obnoxious, listen to me and take my advice she might even be able to skip the worst of this frenetic teenage turmoil. I could give her hints on how to sidestep it. For God’s sake, she has exactly the resources she needs right under her nose at home.

I know Dora isn’t the brightest spark academically, and I honestly don’t care about that, but I did think she had a pretty good sense of self-preservation, so why doesn’t she swim towards the light, towards me? I can’t force her. All I can do is organize stuff around the periphery of her chaos.

That’s what I did today, I made an appointment for her to see the nurse about sex. The sex-nurse. Oh God my daughter is going to/may already be having sex. I did sex and consequently had a daughter and now that same daughter is ready to do sex herself. But in my head she’s only twelve. I have lost all concept of Dora time and while I’ve been busy, she has raced past me. Unbelievably, she will be EIGHTEEN in a minute. Actually I did my first bit of sex at sixteen but I shan’t be telling her that …

I suppose it’s only natural that I would be thinking about such a thing on the day I have my breast examination and smear test. I do panic about these appointments. I purposely book them for first thing, so that when I wake up there isn’t too much time to do the dreadful dreading. I have been through it many times before. I know the routine. I know it doesn’t kill you. Why, then, do I go stone cold at the very thought of it? I physically quake. I can’t camouflage that, however hard I try. I’ve even heard myself say ‘oo, it’s cold in here, isn’t it?’ to try and excuse my pathetic shivering. The nurse always agrees that it’s cold, in her feeble attempt to comfort me, but she’s the same sadistic witch who is about to clamp my tits in a vice and penetrate my frightened, frozen fanny with a metal boot-stretcher. All the while regaling me with tales of local council problems and the progress on the M4 bypass at junction eleven. That’s her dirty chatter whilst she violates me, and of course I join in, keeping it as chirrupy as possible to minimize the awfulness of it all.

Occasionally during the humiliating probe, she requests that I should ‘relax’. I agree. I should relax, yes. It would help, yes. But how can I relax when I am being entered by a woman I otherwise only ever see occasionally wandering around the biscuit aisle in Sainsbury’s where we exchange pleasantries, all the while trying to ignore the fact that she has regularly peeked inside me and seen private areas of my body even I have never witnessed? I always imagine I see ghastly traces of screaming horror under the mask of affability she wears on her Sainsbury’s face. As if looking at me takes her mind immediately to my nether regions. Is mine worse or better than others? Does she fleetingly think, ‘Oh there’s that woman with the lovely, healthy, tidy fanny’? Or does she think, ‘Oh there’s that old wreck with the monstrous mutant minge – the one I’ve taken pictures of to send to medical magazines as an example of a lopsided freak, or perhaps just to hand round at jovial nursey dinner parties as an amusing ice-breaker’? Which?!

Yes, Mrs Nurse woman, I would LOVE to relax, but I can’t, can I, because I must remain tense at all times in case you breach our gynaecological contract, and go a step too far. You might perforate me or pinch me or lance something whilst you are burrowing around clumsily in my flue. Should something like that happen, I need to be braced for it like a coiled spring, taut enough to instantly expel you with the superhuman power of my mighty vulvic muscles of steel, catapulting you backwards like a Trident missile ’til you slam into the brightly coloured communicable diseases poster on your wall. And that’s why I won’t be ‘relaxing’ laydeee … OK?

Actually, it wasn’t too bad today, even the breast-scanning machine didn’t bite me too hard. Mrs Nurse’s foot is on the pedal and she decides just how flat the bosoms will be pressed. Today the setting was ‘flat as an omelette’, whereas in the past, when she was particularly peeved, I swear she has set it to ‘flat as a crêpe’.

Whatever the horrors of the examinations, they are nothing compared to the worry whilst waiting for the results. The only happy moment is when the letter that plops on to the doormat reveals a negative result on all counts. I remember getting one result that announced ‘subtle cell changes’ which sent me spiralling into despair until the following examination, when the result indicated all was, thankfully, back to normal. Since then I am certainly jumpier, I admit.

On arriving home, I have informed Miss Dora via Post-it on her bedroom door that she has an appointment to keep with the sex-nurse. I will certainly sleep easier knowing she is fully contracepted.

I popped in on Pamela on the way home. It was an impromptu visit, no particular reason. When she opened the door, she greeted me with huge usual warm surprise and I followed her into her cluttered living room. She was mid-Emmerdale as usual, but she turned it off and put the kettle on.

‘Why didn’t you call to say you were coming, Mo? – I could have made you a beetroot cake to go with your tea, you twit.’ She was right, I should have told her. That’s my favourite cake of all the ones she makes. She’s made it for me for years. I love that cake.

We made do with digestives and tea. I told her about the day I’d had and as always she sympathized. These soft moments with Mum, when she’s not telling me off, are so nourishing, why don’t I make more time for them? However much we disagree, and we often do, she still has a calming effect on me. She still grows me. I am always her daughter, however old we both are. Sometimes I forget how much I need that whilst I am busy scurrying about trying to harness the chaos of four people’s turbulent lives.

Yes, she is kind and good and generous, BUT, yes she is also an interfering old bat. Just as I was settling into comfortable loved daughterliness, she spoiled it by steering the conversation away from my stresses to talk about Dora.

‘It’s just that, listen, love, I don’t want to interfere, but I am a bit worried about her, to be honest. I think she’s feeling sort of … distanced from you, and while she’s so untethered I truly believe she is quite vulnerable actually. Don’t you? She needs to feel more, kind of … anchored, that’s the right word. Or she could really drift off, Mo. Permanently. And we don’t want that. Have a think about it, love, I’m just … frightened … that she’s heading for trouble. That’s all. ’Nother biscuit?’

What a cheek! Firstly, Dora’s feelings are completely typical of her age, and secondly, she is in no real ‘danger’ whatsoever. I wonder whether, at some stage, ANYONE in my family might bother to notice that I AM A TRAINED CHILD PSYCHOLOGIST. If anyone knows how to deal with these developmental difficulties, it’s ME. I would be the first to notice anything seriously wrong with my own daughter, for God’s sake. As I said to Mum, Dora is going through a classic phase of bewilderment that occurs when an adolescent attempts to separate whilst still far too immature. She is living in a bubble of misguided self-belief punctured only by her confusion. She and I are actively engaged in a dance of such complex proportions, Mum, you couldn’t possibly understand … and it ain’t the Excuse-me Waltz.

In the end, she was irritating me so much I had to drink up, make my excuses and go. Why couldn’t she just leave well alone? I was enjoying our rare moment of intimate time and suddenly, out of nowhere, she’s gone and bloody hijacked it, to address something she has no idea about whatsoever. Why doesn’t she just bloody leave me alone, and BUTT OUT!

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Dora

How bloody insensitive to book a bloody thing with a bloody nurse about sex when you haven’t even got a bloody boyfriend and you are still a bloody virgin? That’s harsh. Yeah … why don’t you just like, punch me in the face or something Mum, you wanker!

Anyway, I’m not going. She’s the one saying I’ve got to concentrate on my bloody exams for God’s sakes. Well let me do that then. I don’t need this right now.

JUST LEAVE ME ALONE, AND GO AWAY!! AND BLOODY DIE!!

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Oscar

Slowly slowly catchee monkey. Fortunately, I have been very badly brought up and consequently I have no regrets about the guile I am bound to employ to win my prize.

Mama has been psychobabbling on for months now about how she feels I need some therapy to ‘explore’ why I feel such an affinity with Oscar Wilde. Oh, but she does go on, jibber jabber, yak yak. Such pointless verbiage couldn’t impress me less; BUT lo, an opportunity has been born out of this very same drivel. I have conceded that I may indeed need some guidance, but I have agreed only on the proviso that my practitioner should not be the eminent George as she suggests, but rather, the eminently more suitable Noel. I pointed out to her that he is closer to my age and we share no history, and that’s why I claimed I would prefer him.

Mama, bless her, has not an inkling of my intentions nor my lusts and thus she has willingly agreed to organize it post haste. I couldn’t be a more cunning cad if I tried and frankly, I don’t really try. I simply am. I am all smoke and mirrors, my dear. Watch me while I vanish, why don’t you?

Thus, my own mother is the unknowing architect of my destiny. She even offered a surprisingly positive account of his prowess in the decidedly dubious world of teenage analysis. She thinks he has ‘potential’. She thinks he is ‘bold’ and ‘forward-thinking’. I fully intend to thrust his thinking very far forward and boldly display to him the entire landscape of my own particular potential …

The appointment is in two days’ time. Just the correct duration. In the interim I intend to moisturize myself incessantly until I achieve the radiant glow I will need to blind him with my irresistible enchantingness. I know for sure I have it, but I’m a tad dry presently and am spotted here and there about my body with tell-tale blemishes of the flaky eczema variety. I have no doubt whatsoever that by the appointed hour on Thursday, I will be thoroughly moist.

I am delighted to announce that my bedchamber is now to be the chosen sanctuary for the increasingly expanding Poo. Why should anyone doubt that she should choose the nearness of me rather than any of the considerably lesser others in this family? It’s perfectly clear to all that I am her obvious protector, I am Lord Bountiful. That the dog has recognized this comes as no surprise to me. I am delighted to be able to host her confinement. She has appropriated my sock drawer which remains open at all times and is now a dog nest of sorts, where she has installed herself among the assorted hosiery, suspenders and garters. With the exception of an occasional visit to the garden for the purpose of ablutions, I expect her to remain settled therein until the happy event.

I am going to be a father. How thrilling.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Mo

I am reeling.

What’s happened?

Has anything actually happened, or am I just a silly menopausal twerp? I don’t know. All I do know is that I feel entirely unruddered. Shaky. I’m shaking. I’m not even breathing properly … Calm down. Calm down.

I’m so glad of this little study. I’m grateful to be able to hide here. I have to lie low while I think. Come on, Mo, think. Isn’t it funny how when you need to really focus, you suddenly notice random unimportant things in great close-up detail? I think it’s to avoid concentrating on the momentous all-consuming attention-commanding thing in the extreme foreground. We sort of look straight through that, and find everything on the shelf behind supremely interesting.

So I look around this study and see that, in truth, I have acquired it for myself. I have occupied a good nine tenths of it for my book research and all my incidental jumble. I have in effect seized it from Husband who, I now notice, has only one small corner he’s valiantly stuffed to the gills with his own things. The computer is in his corner. He uses it. The children use it. I hate it. I begrudge it, actually. I begrudge the time it pilfers from us as a family. I am noticing how very dusty it is – the screen, the keypad. And there’s a sort of rainbow effect ghosted on the black screen. Where’s that coming from? The light must be spilling in somewhere, through something prism-ish? The curtains are open but the light isn’t very strong. It’s a cloudy day. No direct shafts of sunlight atall. Hmn. Maybe the screen is made of mercury or something? Something that reacts with light like this. I’m very fond of these curtains. We brought them with us from the last house. They were in the kitchen there. I suppose they are a bit more kitchen-y than study-y. Study-ish? Study-like? Huge bold red roses on a pale blue background. Quite retro. Very Cath Kidston. But not. Very female. For a female study, really. Yes, I was marking my territory right from the start, wasn’t I? Oh and there’s that little wooden angel Dora made when she was at Coombes Infants School. They made them every year for Christmas to hang on the tree. She was supposed to paint her own name on it as they always did, but that year she painted a very wobbly ‘Mummy’ instead. Insisted on it, her teacher said. No other kid did that. She could only have been … what? … six? I was disproportionately, uncontrollably touched by it, and wept openly. Dora was scared I was upset. I wasn’t upset. I was surprised by how moved I was. Her little heart to my big one. A direct line. Not there now. No line at the moment. None. My books are so untidy, I must try to straighten them up, I can’t read the titles properly. There’s psychology theory, case studies, grand autobiographies of the great and good I always get for Christmas and never have time to read, there’s the new Annie Proulx and Andrea Levy and Lionel Shriver and Marian Keyes. There’s a book of quotations and copious atlases and what’s that on the end? Something in tin foil? Oh God, it’s an unopened copy of Madonna’s God-awful sex book. Never even looked at it. Husband said to keep it in the wrapper – be worth something one day. I wanted to look at her naked body. But no. There’s that lovely ink drawing in the style of Aubrey Beardsley, by a nine-year-old Peter. Extraordinary really. A precociously talented child. A good office chair. Husband found it on eBay, and got it because of my sore back. A red futon. Christ. Haven’t used that since … well, never, really. Poo likes it. Got her hair on it. Smells. She’s not using it at the mo. Sleeping in Oscar’s sock drawer in readiness … double Christ – the puppies will be here soon. How’s that going to work out? It’s all chaos –

STOP IT MO!

Come on.

Think.

What happened?

How did it go?

Go back over the whole thing …

Right. I had breakfast. Normal. I went to work as normal. Same old route. Left, right, left, second right. Same old shops, same old school, cricket field, memorial. Nothing peculiar there. All familiar, life as normal. Parked, went into the practice, said hi to Lisa. Lisa shows me she is wearing a gun belt, but with her mobile phone where a gun should be. Thus far, all is normal, very normal. The car is the car I know, Lisa is the Lisa I know, I am the Mo I know.

Noel comes into my office and we go through his cases for the day. Normal. At the end of that catch-up he explains to me that his own shrink has recently retired and would it be possible for him to do his supervised therapy with me? Now, I know it’s good practice for all therapists to continue their own personal therapy, especially the less experienced ones, we actively encourage it. I was heartened that he should be so dedicated, and yes, I was flattered that he should seek my counsel. I am not related to him, and he is already halfway through his internship with us, and has proven to be both professional and enthusiastic. There is no hard and fast protocol that would prevent me from conducting a few supervising sessions with him. That is entirely valid, and completely legitimate. It’s a bit unusual to have therapy with a practitioner at the same practice, but it’s certainly not unheard of. Again: normal. A quick peek at the respective diaries and we asked Lisa to block out the last hour of the day. Normal. Saw my clients. Normal. Well, they’re not that normal, but normal for us to be there together. Had lunch. Normal. Found a sardine in my tuna sandwich from the sandwich shop. Not normal. Revolting, actually, but nothing to knock me off-kilter. Clients in the afternoon. Relatively normal.

Four o’clock and time for the session with Noel.

He came in and sat down.

He looked too tall for the chair. And as he tugged his trousers up at the knee to sit comfortably, I noticed he wasn’t wearing any socks. Brown ankles. It was pretty routine to begin with. I didn’t say much, just invited him to voice whatever he felt he needed to. He explained to me that most of his therapy so far had been the exploration of his severe loss in early childhood. His mother had died and his father hadn’t been able to cope and so handed him over to his maternal grandmother for safekeeping. He was an only child. The grandmother was not unkind, but she was emotionally chilly, and had always been so. She was also elderly and fairly infirm, so not much fun. He looked away as he told me how abandoned he had felt. How responsible. Responsible for his gran, responsible for his mother’s death and responsible for his father’s ineptitude. A whole bunch of misguided culpability.

He seemed to have investigated it pretty thoroughly, as a Kleinian practitioner should, and spoke of learning not to beat himself up. He also spoke of an awareness of his propensity to extol women, genuinely being inspired by certain women and less so, if ever, by any man. I was interested to note that he acknowledged there are remarkable praiseworthy men, but possibly because of his need for his absent mother, he finds himself less critical of women and even pathologically eulogistic.

This was all quite compelling for me since, working with adolescents the majority of the time, I come across very few idolatrous complexes of this nature. Then I remembered that he had indeed told me that he ‘admired’ me, and I suggested this might be symptomatic of what he was referring to. He went very quiet, and for a long minute he didn’t speak and kept his head bowed. I thought he was contemplating the session and all we had just discussed.

Then he looked up, sighed and began:

The dawn was apple-green,

The sky was green wine held up under the sun,

The moon was a golden petal between.

She opened her eyes, and green

They shone, clear like flowers undone

For the first time, now for the first time seen.

He just kept looking at me, holding my gaze. Daring me to look away. Neither of us spoke. I felt as if I had been tipped out of my life. What was taking place? I had no tools, no equipment, no idea how to deal with this moment. Then he said,

‘D. H. Lawrence. It’s true, Mo. For the first time seen …’

He left the room. Left me sitting there alone with that still hanging in the air. I was stock-still but my mind was fizzing. I tried to rewind it in my head and play it again to understand it. What? WHAT? I felt like I’d been punched. Then I felt like I wanted to be punched again immediately. Come back and punch me again so I can try to understand it. What did he mean? Are they my green eyes?

How many minutes passed? Could have been three, could have been three hundred, before Lisa knocked on my door to chase me out. Then, somehow, I drove home, feeling as if I was starring in my own foreign film. It was all so shocking and strange. Perhaps my life from now on will have subtitles and be permanently incomprehensible. I arrived home and I came in here, into my lair, to sit and stare. So here I am.

My family are gathering out there, in my home. Is everything different?

What now?

A Tiny Bit Marvellous