The Address He Sent

The message contained an address, a time and six words I read so often they stopped looking familiar. Come on your own, if you come.

My son had not invited me anywhere for three years. I replied that I would be there, then sat at the kitchen table while my husband watched a quiz programme in the next room. I could hear him offering confident answers to questions he had misunderstood.

Tom was twenty-seven. He lived with a man called Andre, whom I had never met. The last time Tom came to our house, his father said things I won’t repeat because repeating them carefully now would not alter what I did then. I sat beside the fruit bowl and asked everybody to calm down.

Afterwards I told myself I had tried to keep the peace. Tom told me there had been no peace for him to keep. He left, and for three years I sent birthday cards addressed only to him, avoiding the life I thought he might eventually agree not to mention.

Then, in April, I sent a different card. On the envelope I wrote both names. Inside I said I was sorry for treating Andre’s existence as an obstacle to having my son back. I did not ask for anything. I included my own telephone number, though Tom already knew it, because I wanted to make clear that an answer did not have to pass through the house.

It took six weeks. The address arrived on a Thursday. Sunday, two o’clock.

I told my husband on Friday morning. He put down the newspaper and asked why I was going alone. I said that was the invitation. He said he wouldn’t have gone anyway, as though refusal had been an option someone offered him.

I could have argued about that. Instead I said I would not discuss Tom or Andre unkindly over breakfast. My husband looked at me as though a familiar appliance had begun issuing instructions. I kept eating my toast. It was not a brave speech. It was one sentence I should have learned much earlier.

On Sunday I bought flowers, put them in the car and then took them back into the shop. I did not know whether they had a vase. I did not know whether Andre disliked strong smells. Mostly I realised I wanted to arrive holding something that might make me easier to welcome.

The florist gave me a refund without asking why I looked close to tears. I drove to the address with empty hands.

It was a flat above a small grocery shop. The stairs smelled of someone else’s lunch. Tom opened the door before I knocked a second time. He had grown a beard that made him look more like my brother than his father. I wanted to touch his face. I kept my hands by my sides.

“Hello, Mum.”

“Hello.”

He stepped aside. Andre stood in the sitting room beside a table with three cups. He was taller than Tom, with a serious face that softened when he said my name. I had practised saying pleased to meet you. Now it sounded inadequate, but I said it anyway.

He said he would make tea. Tom asked whether I wanted my usual. I was absurdly grateful that my usual still existed somewhere outside my own kitchen.

The flat contained books, a bright rug and a picture of a harbour painted in colours no harbour had ever possessed. I looked for signs of my son and found them everywhere once I stopped expecting his childhood bedroom: the mug he chose for himself, the plant listing towards a window, the little pile of opened envelopes weighted by a stone.

We sat. Tom asked about the journey. I answered in too much detail. Andre asked whether I found the turning behind the station. I said yes. Then the safe subjects ended.

“I don’t want to begin by pretending we just haven’t had time to meet,” Tom said.

I nodded. “Neither do I.”

He asked whether his father knew I was there. I said yes. He asked what he thought. I said he had been difficult about it, but that I had not come to deliver either his opinions or an excuse for them.

Tom looked at Andre. There was a brief conversation between their faces I was not part of. Then he asked why the card had changed.

I wanted to tell him about missing him. That was true, but I had missed him throughout the years when I still expected him to make my life easier. I told him instead about a family lunch at which my niece mentioned her boyfriend’s name and everybody asked ordinary questions. Where did he work? Did he like the new flat? Had they enjoyed their holiday?

“I realised I had never asked you those questions,” I said. “I wanted you to speak about half your life so I could keep calling myself a good mother.”

He looked down at his cup. Andre remained still.

“I didn’t need you to make Dad into somebody else,” Tom said. “I needed you not to agree by sitting there.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

The question hurt. I let it. I described the fruit bowl, my request that they calm down, the way I telephoned afterwards and asked whether he could try again when his father was less tired. Tom closed his eyes for a moment.

“You made me responsible for finding the right version of him.”

“Yes.”

It was the shortest answer I gave and the hardest one not to decorate.

Andre spoke then. He said he did not expect me to know him simply because Tom and I had history. He was willing to meet, but he would not spend every visit demonstrating that he was harmless or suitable. He had work, friends, a sister who borrowed money and a terrible habit of buying chairs they had no room for. He wanted to be an ordinary person in the conversation.

I almost said of course. Instead I asked about the chair beneath me. It was yellow and considerably more comfortable than it looked. Andre laughed, surprised, and said that one had been Tom’s idea.

The room eased a little. We talked about their jobs. Tom repaired audio equipment. Andre worked at a community sports centre. I asked questions and tried to notice when curiosity became an interview. Sometimes I got it wrong. Once Tom said, “You can ask me that directly,” when I addressed something to Andre that concerned him. I corrected myself. Nobody ended the visit.

After an hour and a half I began to feel we were doing well. That was when I made the mistake.

“Perhaps you could both come for lunch sometime,” I said. “Your father might be better once he sees—”

Tom put down his cup. The sound was small and final.

“No.”

I stopped. Andre looked towards the window. I could see the afternoon withdrawing from me, and my first impulse was to insist that I meant something kinder than the words I chose.

Instead I said, “I’m doing it again.”

Tom waited.

“Trying to use you to make things easier at home. I’m sorry. You don’t have to come.”

“We won’t.”

“All right.”

It was not all right inside me. I wanted my old Sunday table filled again. I wanted a photograph that could make the years look like an interruption rather than a choice. But wanting those things did not entitle me to arrange them through my son.

We finished the tea. When I stood to leave, Tom came to the door. I thanked Andre for having me. He said thank you for coming, carefully, as though neither of us should make more of the sentence than it contained.

On the landing I asked Tom whether I could hug him. He said not yet. I nodded, though my throat tightened so painfully I could barely answer. He touched my arm before I went down the stairs. I carried that touch home without turning it into a promise.

My husband asked whether I had enjoyed myself. I said it had been difficult and good. He made a remark about Tom being dramatic. I told him to stop. He said I had changed after one afternoon.

“I hope so,” I said.

That began an argument we should have had three years earlier. I did not win it. He did not suddenly understand. I went to bed tired and uncertain, but without having repeated a single private thing Tom or Andre told me for the purpose of proving a point.

Tom messaged the next morning. Thank you for coming. We can talk again.

I answered, I’d like that. Then I put down the phone. I did not send another apology. I did not ask how soon. I went to work and found that ordinary tasks could occupy a day even when something important remained unresolved.

That week I had coffee with my friend Rhoda. I told her enough about my marriage to admit I needed somebody besides Tom to listen. She asked questions I had avoided, including what I wanted my own days to look like. For years I had discussed my family as though I were only the corridor connecting everybody else’s rooms. I had work, friends and decisions of my own. Rhoda invited me to an evening class she enjoyed. I went once, disliked the subject and told her so. We found something else to do together instead of making my attendance another duty.

We spoke the following Thursday. He told me about a difficult repair. I told him about a colleague’s leaving lunch. The call lasted twelve minutes. Afterwards I cried because I had wanted twelve ordinary minutes for so long that receiving them felt almost unbearable.

In June we met at a garden café. Andre came for the first half hour, then left for work. Tom and I walked afterwards. He asked whether I was taking care of myself. I said I was trying. I did not make him responsible for whether my marriage survived being examined honestly.

At the car park he hugged me. Briefly, his cheek rough against mine. I held him and let go when he did.

By autumn I knew which football team Andre supported and that Tom disliked the harbour picture until he noticed it made the room brighter. I had visited three more times. Once they visited me while my husband was away, after I explained the arrangement plainly and let them choose whether it felt comfortable. We ate in the garden because it was warm. There was no family photograph.

The following Christmas I received a card signed by both of them. Inside was an invitation to breakfast on the twenty-fourth. I bought a jar of marmalade because I now knew they liked it. At the florist’s window I stopped, smiled at my own reflection and kept walking.

When Tom opened the door, Andre called from the kitchen to ask whether I wanted the strong tea or the ordinary one. I said the strong one. I took off my coat, put the marmalade on the table and sat in the yellow chair, which they had kept despite buying another they didn’t need.