LOVE PROBABLY

1.

Mom is dead. Now I’m an orphan. We didn’t always agree, to say the least! But she left too soon. I didn’t see anything coming. And above all, I didn’t know how to tell her… that I loved her. Neither did she. Sweet words, kindness, hugs, it wasn’t our forte in the family.

My parents had me late. It seems that mom had prayed a lot to have me. My first name is Madeline. I guess religion has something to do with it. Mom was already called Mary, we couldn’t both have the same first name. Mine wasn’t the one that had the best reputation in the time of Jesus. If only we could choose our first name, it would save us a lot of disappointment.

Mom was thirty-eight and dad ten years older when I came into the world. Later, when they picked me up from school, my classmates thought they were my grandparents. I was ashamed, of course. So very quickly, they no longer came to the school gates. I took the school bus with some other students from neighbouring villages. Anyway, they were far too busy with the animals and the fields.

I’m an only child. Despite my pleas to have a little brother or a little sister, they had no other children. I was too young to understand my mother’s response, which was: “The machine is broken, my daughter! Don’t insist!”

And then, growing up, I realized that children weren’t born amongst cabbages, and weren’t carried by storks. The mould was well and truly broken because, as dad said, “Mom was too old.”

They wanted me so much. Well… her, especially. Then I finally arrived. But it’s like everything when the thing is there, we don’t really know how to go about it.

My father is only a vague memory. He died on a summer evening, more than twenty-seven years ago. He was only fifty-six when he passed. I was eight. I found him dead. I don’t remember much of my childhood but that moment, I remember like it was yesterday.

Dad had gone to pick some tomatoes in the vegetable patch so that Mom could make us a salad for dinner. Usually, that was my job, but that night I had the job of stalking green beans. So I stayed near Mom, in the kitchen, watching Knots Landing on our small television set, in black and white at that time. A collector’s edition that the youngest hasn’t experienced. After a while, the episode being over, we started to wonder what was keeping Dad. Mom especially. She was moaning.

“He’s taking his time, your father! He doesn’t like soap operas, all right! But still… What the hell is he doing? See if anything happened to him!” she growled, annoyed.

“Yes, Mom!” I said, jumping up, rather happy to take a break.

Arriving at the vegetable garden, my joy was cut short. I found the basket and the tomatoes scattered on the floor. My father was lying like a sack of potatoes, his head buried in the lettuce. Despite my young age, I understood immediately.

“Moooooooooooooooooooooooooom! Come! Daddy, he isn’t moving anymore! Looks like he’s dead!” I shouted with all my might.

I was paralyzed and started to sob. Eyes drowned, I heard my mother’s footsteps on the gravel of the courtyard. Still, with my eyes closed, my face flooded with tears, I guessed Mom threw herself on my Dad’s lying body. She was yelling his first name: “Jacob? Jacob?” Then others, in a loop, those of “Mary, Jesus, Joseph!” Very quickly, she ordered me to go and call the police. I ran into the house, cordless phones didn’t exist yet. There may have been some, but we were rather backward in the region. Anyway, in our household, we still had one of those corded telephones, which you had to turn the dial to the right to dial the number, eight digits in those days. The telephone was like television: as long as things worked, we didn’t change them!

My fingers were shaking so much that it took me a long time to manage to dial 999. When someone answered, I stammered despite untimely nervous hiccups:

“My father! He’s on the ground in the salad! Hic! He’s not moving anymore! Hic! He may be dead, hic!”

“Where are you, young lady?” calmly asked the deep voice on the line.

“Well, home!” I say with the spontaneity of my young age as if it were obvious.

“And where is your house? I mean... what address, child?” he clarified, nervously.

“The road with the fir trees. Hic! It’s the house with the blue shutters. Hic!”

“Houses with blue shutters, there are heaps in the area! In which village exactly?” he said, more and more urgently.

“At Wheatacre. Hic!”

"Wheatacre in Beccles. Is that it?”

“Yes, sir! Elm’s Farm. Hic!”

“I see. We’ll send help. Don’t touch him, okay?”

“It’s too late. Hic! Mama’s hitting him,” I said, noticing through the living room window that Mama was pounding on Daddy’s chest, screaming his name like a lost soul.

“We’ll be there as quickly as possible!” he concludes before hanging up.

He had said quickly, yes! Except that quickly in the Norfolk countryside, it’s not so fast. Anyway, it wouldn’t have changed anything. Dad had been dead for a while. He had a heart attack. In an instant, my mother no longer had a husband and I no longer had a father.

Instead of bringing us closer, the loss of the man of the house created an even greater distance between the two of us. We never talked. We kept our moods to ourselves. I had a visceral need to express myself, but I didn’t know how to restore communication. When I wanted to talk to her, explain my thoughts or my questions, even the most insignificant, she cut short any conversation. Clearly, she was rejecting me. At least, that’s how I experienced it. When I was sad, she scolded me. Little by little, we dug ourselves into silence, each on our side. And yet, God knows how much I needed my mom, at this time of life where we build ourselves, where the personality is forged, where adulthood reaches out to us. Only uninteresting television programs brightened up our very sad daily life. We never did anything, no outings, no entertainment, no hobbies. I didn’t know the definition of the word pleasure.

Finding herself a widow, Mom could no longer manage the farm. Little by little, she sold our land and our animals, keeping only very few possessions: a cow for milk, hens for eggs, two or three pigs, to make sausages the following winter and the vegetable garden. where we always grew all kinds of vegetables as soon as the good weather permitted. We never talked about money. That said, we lacked nothing. Subsequently, she became a seamstress at home and taught me how to do everything. The work was coming to us. I never asked any questions. I spent my adolescence in the greatest ignorance of human relations. Very naturally, I left the school system at the age of fifteen. Anyway, where I live, you don’t need to study. What use would that have served me? Ideally, I would have found a husband to get me out of this, but even that didn’t cross my mind. I never left mom and she didn’t push me out either. Meeting someone was never a topic. Nothing was a topic. We could both just as easily have died at the same time as dad, I wouldn’t have felt the difference. The years passed, in the most total calm.

Several months ago, mum’s state of health suddenly deteriorated. I saw that she was struggling to breathe at times, that she was subject to anxiety attacks that sometimes made her delirious, sweating or shivering. Several times, I wanted to take her to the hospital but she refused all the time, claiming that medicine could do nothing for her. I still don’t know how she did it, but she got back on her feet very quickly, until the next attack.

With the illness, she had mellowed a little, but for all that, she never verbally expressed to me the simplest things, the banalities that a daughter would have liked to hear from her mother. And then… the last crisis was fatal to her. I just had time to call the family doctor to come and visit her at home. When he walked out of the room, his face said it all. I understood immediately that her days were numbered. I was going to lose my mother.

I had to talk to her. It was now or never! But the lump that had formed in the back of my throat during all these years prevented me from telling her what was in my heart. Note, she hadn’t looked for it, my mother. Since dad died, I barely existed.

When I returned to the room after the doctor’s visit, Mom was pale, her head buried in the pillow. Her sunken, glassy, wet eyes never left my face. I felt like she was looking at me for the first time. With a lump in my throat, I approached the bed and took her hand, cold and frail. A simple contact that we hadn’t had for ages. At seventy-three, she looked ten years older, even twenty! I understood at that moment that it wasn’t even a question of days, but rather of hours, even minutes. She seemed to want to tell me something. Her mouth opened to close immediately. A tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek from having taken too much sun. I was expecting to hear a word of love, an apology, a regret perhaps… but when she finally managed to say a word, it was “notary” that she spoke.

Notary? I thought. Was she making fun of me? I didn’t have time to ask her to clarify her thoughts. A few seconds later, she passed away.

Stunned, unable to utter a word, I first wanted to scream in anger. And so what? No one would have heard me. I held back my tears. Crying is for wimps! was her catchphrase when I mourned Dad’s absence.

“Notary.”

I told myself that I had to call him, but first of all, what should I do? Mom had just died.

Unable to think and when I hadn’t shed a tear in many years, I threw myself on her to cry, heartbroken. The image of her own body thrown over my father came back to me. And I cried harder, harder and harder. Tears of anger, of course! But still tears. Leaving like that isn’t acceptable. She had no right.

My mother had planned everything. The inhabitants of the village helped me to organize the funeral. It’s the custom. As soon as the news spread, thanks to the doctor, supposedly bound by professional secrecy, the closest neighbours came knocking on the door to take matters into their own hands. It’s strange. As if my mother knew she was doomed. I want her even more. Me, I’m a ghost. I was already not quite alive before her death, but now I’m only a reflection of myself. For three days, the inhabitants of the village took turns watching over Mama’s body, night and day. Her room was rearranged to accommodate the coffin. It was creepy as can be. The incessant parade exhausted me even more. I think everyone in the area came to pay their respects. The church was packed. I have rarely seen so many people at church. The ceremony was worthy of a Christmas celebration, but instead of celebrating the birth of Christ, we were celebrating the death of Mary, my mother. It was a very special moment. I couldn’t express my feelings to you. Our neighbours dragged me to the church, then from the church to the small cemetery, all on foot. As if I too had just lost my life.

I didn’t need to call the notary. It was he who came to me. I was in front of the coffin, for the burial. People, familiar faces from afar, lined up to send me their heartfelt condolences. And then, an old gentleman approached me.

“Miss Madeline Jordan, I was expecting your call. I’m a notary. The notary. I need to see you soon.”

“Yes, but here we are burying mom,” I whispered so as not to shock her old friends who surrounded me, deaf, of course, but whose ears are still hanging around. “There’s no rush, is there? Isn’t there a legal waiting period of six months anyway?” I say, drawing inspiration from the speeches of spurious soap operas seen on TV.

“Normally, yes! But for you, no.”

“Oh, good? And why do I deserve this honour?” I say bordering on insolence.

“I’ll expect you at my study tomorrow at 3:00,” he said calmly, without responding to my provocation.

“Good. Since it’s urgent, I’ll be there.”

“Perfect. See you tomorrow, miss. All my condolences for your mother,” he added, sincerely pained.

A fine rain had started to fall. I took one last look at mum, gone to join dad. Then, some neighbours walked me home. They stayed a little longer, mostly talking to each other as my thoughts wandered about what my life was going to be like now. Drained of all energy, I dozed off on the couch. A few hours later, I woke up, a pillow under my head, barefoot and covered with a blanket. The day was already over.