Page 49 of Statistically Speaking
“Perhaps,” I say, when I see his crestfallen expression. He is trying, so very hard, to keep hold of me. It’s as though he can see me slipping away from him, sense that I am dissolving from the inside out.
“Who else would know?”he’d asked as we’d walked away from the estate and onto busy roads lined with kebab shops and Subways and nail salons.
“I don’t have a clue. I don’t know which doctor she was with, if she even was. I could probably search for a death certificate with the records people, but I don’t have any dates or know what address she was at or... I don’t know. Maybe her social worker, if she still had one?”
He doesn’t understand how chaotic she was, of course. He doesn’t know that she had a loose relationship with reality, that she missed appointments, that she imagined people were against her and went on huge rants about them before dropping out of the system. She was hard to keep hold of too—maybe I’m more like her than I’ve ever admitted to myself.
So now we are here. Outside a monolithic building that has crawled along since the 1960s, growing and expanding in ever-uglier incarnations. Ambulances come and go; cars zoom to the new parking garage; staff trail, exhausted, to the bus stop. It is, as all hospitals are, constantly in motion, a busy landscape of life and death and everything in between.
We are near to the automatic doors, running the gauntlet of illicit smokers. Every time Karim moves, he sets off the sensors and the doors whoosh apart.
“He might still work here, you know—it’s not that long ago.”
“It’s eighteen years, Karim,” I say, too tired to put up much of a fight. I am screwing up my sore eyes, the memories of thelast time I was here whooshing open just like the automatic doors.
It was the day after she was born. I’d had a long labor, but a straightforward one, and I was declared well enough to leave the next morning.
I remember standing outside the maternity unit, just around the corner, the school bag I’d taken with me clutched to my still-flabby belly. A belly that was now empty, lifeless, useless. My boobs were sore, and I was bleeding into a sanitary towel they’d given me, and I still felt in shock.
I stood there for so long, leaning against the wall, watching other women arrive, other women leave. Women with parents, with partners, with people who loved them. Women with husbands who carried car seats containing their precious cargo, heading to their new lives. Women who weren’t me.
I was sixteen, and I was alone. Geoff with a G had said he’d arrange a taxi back to Audrey’s for me. That he’d meet me there if I could wait for him until the afternoon.
I couldn’t. I had to get out. I had to escape the smells and the babies and the other people and the all-consuming sense of loss.
In the end, I got the bus. I sat there, pale and shaking, school bag on my knees, every swerve and every stop jolting my sore body. I spoke to nobody. I heard nothing. I told myself that eventually this would all seem like a bad dream. That one day I’d look back on it from a better place.
And now here I am. In my so-called better place. Looking for a kind man who was part of my world a lifetime ago, in case he can help me find my mother through her social-work records.
I follow Karim into the lobby, past the small shop with its chocolates and newspapers, past the café. He heads for the information desk and starts to chat to the woman behind the counter. She looks about twelve years old—but maybe that’s just because I feel about a hundred.
“What was his surname, Gemma?” he asks over his shoulder.
“Wainwright,” I reply, “and it was Geoff with a G.” The receptionist pulls a face and says she doesn’t think there’s anybody called that working there, but is helpful enough to check the staff directory for us.
“No, sorry—though it could be he’s only here part-time, or he’s down as a guest instead? I do know most of the social-work staff, though, and I don’t think there’s a Geoff. With or without a G.”
“That’s fine, thanks for looking,” I answer, managing a polite smile as I tug Karim away. He looks more disappointed than I do.
We go back outside, and I sit down on a bright yellow metal bench. He sits next to me, puts his arm around my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Gem,” he says, dropping a kiss on my head. “I thought I was helping, but you look wiped out. I wish we were at home so we could just climb under the covers.”
“So do I. And I suppose we’ll be back there soon enough. But I don’t think I’m good for much else now, to be honest. I need to sit still, and maybe have a drink, and then we should get back to the hostel. I’ll be all right in a bit. I’m just... running on empty, you know?”
“I know. I just wanted to help. And now we’ve stopped for a minute, I’m sorry. I think maybe I’m a bit more sensitive about dead mothers than most people are, and I didn’t wantit to be true for you, and that’s not your fault. There’s a pub near the hostel—maybe I should ply you with your fifth-ever brandy?”
“Aah, you remembered—how sweet!”
“I remember everything about you, Gemma Jones. I’ve always thought you were pretty amazing, but seeing all of this today—well, you’re even more amazing.”
“Yup. That’s me. Gemma the Amazing. That sounds like my magician name...”
I am feeling a bit spaced out, and I’m aware that I’m talking nonsense. Karim wisely realizes this as well, and manages to flag down a black cab after it drops someone off. He helps me inside, and fastens my seat belt for me, and is the very model of loveliness.
This time, at least, I tell myself, I am not leaving the hospital alone. I am leaving with someone who cares about me. I can’t quite rejoice in that now—my senses have been ambushed by the past, by the news about my mother. I am shell-shocked by it all. But I lock it away, a small, happy note in a gray day, to look at later.
The pub is Victorian, called something to do with a horse, and is draped with fading flowering baskets outside. We find a small spot in a corner, and Karim gets drinks at the bar. I look around, at the dark wood and the heavy red-velvet curtains, and realize I am automatically scanning the room for any stray students. I don’t see any, so I assume those of pub age have at least been savvy enough to sneak into one that isn’t right by our home base and where angsty teachers might also be taking a medicinal snifter or two.
