Kissed a Sad Goodbye

“In here, sweetheart.” Gathering up her shears and the florist’s paper, Jo headed for the kitchen. Her daughter stood just inside the door, her dark hair disheveled, her cheeks pink from the heat. She’d spilled something that looked suspiciously like Coke down the front of her tee shirt, and the waistband of her little flowered shorts had worked its way below her navel. At four, Sarah was a highly articulate and skilled tattletale.

“Harry’s in the shed, Mummy. You said he wasn’t to go in there. And I know he broke something, ’cause I heard it smash.”

Jo felt the swiftly rising bubble of anger; she clamped down on it. Sarah didn’t need any encouragement for her righteous indignation. “I’ll deal with Harry—you wash your hands at the sink. You’ve been into the Coke again, haven’t you, missy?”

Sarah glanced down at her shirt, and Jo saw the swift calculation pass across her heart-shaped face before she said earnestly, “It wasn’t me, Mummy, really it wasn’t. Harry got it out and he spilled it on my shirt.” She tugged the stained fabric away from her chest as if removing any association with it.

“Oh, dear God.” Jo closed her eyes and breathed a prayer. Her precious baby daughter was going to be an actress or a criminal, and she felt incapable of dealing with either possibility just now. She took a deep breath. “Right. When you’ve finished with your hands I want you to pick up your toys in the sitting room, and I don’t want to hear any more stories. Is that clear?”

Sarah put on her best injured face. “But, Mummy—”

Jo, however, was already pushing open the door to the garden. She was learning that the only way to manage her daughter was to disengage from the dialogue, because if she continued to participate the child would eventually wear her down. With Harry, things had been different. The slightest reprimand had been enough to bring the boy to tears, as if his emotions ran uncontainably close to the surface. And now that sensitivity seemed to have been translated into a sullen anger she was unable to breach.

The garden was quiet except for the drone of the bumblebees in the lavender, and it seemed deserted. The only signs of suspended activity were a chipped cricket bat and an old rubber ball lying in the thick grass, but at the bottom of the garden the door to the shed stood open. The small mail-order building was her retreat and studio.

She’d painted the outside a color called Labrador Blue and picked out the trim in white. Inside, she’d washed the walls with diluted emulsion, then furnished the space with bits and pieces of old furniture, a few watering cans, and books. Here she experimented with the custom finishes that were her trademark, or read, or sometimes just tried to sort out her life. And the shed was strictly off-limits to both children.

Slowly, she crossed the lawn and stepped inside. Harry sat on the floor with his back to the bookcase, his knees drawn up to his chin. Beside him lay the cut-glass jug she’d filled with roses from the garden, its handle snapped off. Water pooled on the floor and ran into the rag rug; roses lay scattered like flotsam from a storm.

Jo knelt and touched him on the shoulder. “Did it cut you? Are you all right?” When he didn’t answer she pried his hands from his knees and checked them. They were unblemished. She kept one hand in hers and tried again. “Harry, did you break the vase because you were angry with me? You know what you did last night was wrong, but maybe I was wrong to punish you instead of talking about it.”

Harry turned his head further away from her and the sunlight slanting in from the window lit his hair like a flame. What an irony it was, thought Jo, that while Sarah had inherited her own dark auburn coloring, Harry might have been cloned from her sister’s genes. And her father, who had always adored Annabelle at Jo’s expense, had fastened his expectations on Harry as the heir to, if not the family name, at least the family tradition.

“Sometimes mums can be wrong, too,” she continued. “But somehow I have to make you understand that you can’t say things like that to people. I’m sure you hurt Annabelle very—”

“I don’t bloody care.” Harry snatched his hand away and for the first time looked at her. “She’s a whore. I meant to hurt her.” He blinked and tears spilled over into his pale lashes.

“Harry, you mustn’t use words like that. You know better—”

“I don’t care! I hate her.”

“Harry, darling—”

“Don’t call me that.” He pushed himself up from the floor and stood over her. “I’m not your darling, and I hate you, too!” Then, with a slam of the door, he was gone.