Songs For Your Mother by Gordon MacMillan (first color ebook reader .TXT) 📕

imagine come from deep within my DNA and my biological make-up. It is almost as though I am broody for the experience I missed out on with Luke, and the knowledge that I lost. If I had that then maybe I would not be feeling so out of my depth.

The waitress, a pretty twenty-something Spanish girl, who works at the café at weekends, comes over and says hello. I’m tempted to say hola. I usually do. Today, however, I keep a lid on it. The world doesn’t need me practising my limited Spanish and attempting to flirt with her at this particular moment in my Saturday morning routine. Instead, I stick to a simple ‘hey’, and she hands me the menu. She asks if we’d like any drinks.

‘What would you like to drink, Luke?’

‘Can I have juice please, I like juice,’ he says.

‘Orange?’

Luke nods, and the waitress smiles at me in an uncertain fashion. I can see it on her face, as she remembers me. She’s worked here for a while, and I’ve been here a lot. Mostly, when I come in here, I am either on my own or with Susan. The puzzled look lingers on her face, as she asks herself what is going on here and tries to work out why I have a child with me. She then makes an incredible intuitive leap. It must be a Catholic thing.

‘Oh, he’s American,’ the waitress says, in her lovely Spanish accent. ‘Is your wife American?’

It’s like she did an instant hard reset and wipe of any memories she might have had of me. At this point, I want to close my eyes and ask to be boldly beamed away. I am not ready for these questions. I’m unprepared, and I’ve had no time to think of a cover story for how Luke came to be here with me that I can readily reel off to those I meet. There’s this immense gap in my knowledge, great redacted blank spaces where crucial information should be. I don’t have answers to even the most basic of questions about this situation that I now find myself in. Beginning with, and certainly not limited to, the answer to the question about my non-existent American wife. So, I do what I do best, and I gloss over the detail.

‘Not my wife,’ I say. ‘His mother is American though.’

‘Oh, your girlfriend? Sorry, of course, not sure why I said wife. I always think wife,’ she says shrugging to herself.

When she says this, how she ‘always thinks wife’, I feel a pang in my chest. It stabs at me, and I have useless thoughts again about what might have been. In another life I could be sitting here with Lauren this morning. Again, I am hit by this huge sense of loss, and everything that I missed out on with Lauren and Luke. If I had managed to return to Santa Cruz and Lauren and I had made it as a couple, we would have morphed into a family. There would have been three of us, and we would have had another life. It is as though when that truck hit our car and Will died the trajectory of my life was altered, and the life I am living right now is not even my life, just a version of it.

I smile at the waitress and let the pause stretch and, maybe if I don’t say anything else, offer no confirmation or denial, she with her Catholic inclination to picture marriage and children, will let it go. One night together almost six years ago, even by my standards, doesn’t count as a girlfriend. However, before I have a chance to say anything else Luke surprises me and steps in and fills the silence.

‘My mommy is sick,’ Luke says.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I hope she gets better soon,’ the waitress says.

Luke shakes his head. ‘She isn’t getting better. She said so.’

I’m shocked when he shares this bleak piece of news. I immediately start to question how much more he knows? He is obviously aware that his mother is sick. Although I am not sure what that means to a five-year-old in terms of understanding. What it does tell me, however, is that they have had some horrible conversation where Lauren told Luke.

The waitress touches Luke’s head, very lightly, and she smiles angelically at him. I can see other people are taking an interest and, not for the first time this morning, I worry about escalation. Before either of them has a chance to say anything else and turn getting a cheeseburger into a tearful trans-Atlantic drama, I jump in.

‘It’s a long story,’ I say. ‘She’s not very well.’

‘Of course, very sad to hear,’ she says, and she places her hand over her heart and then on Luke’s head again, stroking his hair, and I’m not sure I can take much more before I fall to pieces.

‘It’s okay, thank you. Luke, did you want a cheeseburger and fries with that juice?’

Luke nods, and I smile and relax. ‘Great, can I get some black coffee and brown toast with Marmite? Oh, and a latte. Thank you.’

The waitress smiles kindly and takes the menu and walks to the counter. As I sit there and look at Luke, I’m trying to see what Rachel saw when she said he looked like me. I’m trying to see myself in Luke, at least some physical connection, and I can’t see it. At the moment, all I see is the dark brown hair, and maybe a faint reflection of myself as a child. It makes me think of those old school photographs my mother has of me, complete with a bowl-cut mop of brown hair, which sit proudly on her sideboard.

I have to start asking Luke some questions, which I’ve studiously avoided doing since he arrived on my doorstep with Josie. There are things I need to know, and I don’t know if he will have any answers. If Josie had not been