Story critique

The story below had mixed fortunes when submitted firstly to Writers' Forum Monthly Competition and then to Woman's Weekly.  It was short-listed for the competition, but not ultimately placed, and turned down by the magazine.  

Feel free to pull it apart and see why (a) you can see why it might merit short-listing and (b) why you think Woman's Weekly didn't wish to buy it.

You can be brutal - numerous rejection letters can give one quite a thick skin!

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THE VISIT 

Such a small thing. A bright orange teardrop on an eggcup. Small, but ominous. Like the butter-smeared plate on the rack and the remnants of juice, clinging to an upside-down glass.

Funny how, sometimes, you only notice things when other people do, isn’t it? Like now for instance. I’ve asked mother, twice, how she is but she hasn’t answered me. Too busy glancing awkwardly from the eggcup to the sticky lino, her face pink with embarrassment. “I’m afraid things have slipped a bit, Eileen,” she says.

I nod. “Never mind. Time enough to worry about that when the Health Visitor’s due, eh?” I have to call her the Health Visitor because the term Mental Health Nurse scares mother rigid. Which about sums it up these days. Me, walking on eggshells around the woman who was the toughest cookie in the tin until this.

I’ve tried telling her that some form of dementia is quite common in later years and that things could be worse. But all she can think is that they will be worse, and the thought terrifies her.

Bringing my mind back to the matter at hand I ask, for the third time, “So. How are you doing, Mother?”

“Oh. Not so bad, I suppose. You?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“Good.” She totters and leans forward, resting pale fingertips on the edge of the table. “Best take the weight off, I think.” Breathing hard, and looking every one of her eighty-odd years, she lowers herself into a chair. Shoving a space on the cluttered oilcloth for her elbow, her other hand, veined like blue cheese, lying in her lap, plucking at the thick stuff of her skirt.

“Elbows off the table, Mother.”

I’m joking, but she snatches her elbow away, as if I’ve slapped it. Remembering, perhaps, her broad, heavy hand on my bare arms in the past.

“For God’s sake,” I say, smiling to hide my frustration. “I was only teasing.” Cautiously, she returns her arm to the tabletop. “Now, how about a nice cup of tea?” I ask, because clearly she isn’t going to make one.

“I’m not fussed.”

It’s a typically apathetic response but I busy myself anyway, ransacking cupboards. Struggling to find things that are never in the same place twice, the muddle of the rest of the room going double behind the shabby, formica doors. Finally, I run the tea to earth in the cupboard under the sink, sandwiched between a dozen pairs of popsox, glinting in cellophane, and a pack of rusty Brillo pads.

The kettle comes to the boil and I splash scalding water into the dark brown pot on the table. “Shall I be mother?” I ask, sighing as she flinches and folds her hands in her lap, out of harm’s way.

I pour the tea, right-handed, and there’s no hiding the ugly, red wheals on my knuckles. Decades old now, but as angry as the day the milk went over them. My fault, mother said. Tugging at her arm as she turned from the stove. Well, that may be so, but the butter wasn’t my fault, was it? Frying my baby skin when cold water would have cooled and healed it instantly? Leper they called me at school.

“How’s dad?” I ask, making her cup rattle in its saucer, fit to break it, her eyes cutting from side to side, confused.

“Dad’s dead, Eileen.”

He’s not, of course. I saw him myself, only the other day, but I’m not going to push it.

Taking a sip of my tea, I change the subject. “So. What have you been up to since I last saw you?”

She brightens and I sit back to enjoy another of her little flights of fancy. “Well, I’ve been quite busy actually, what with the WI and everything.”

“The WI, eh?”

“Yes. We had a Bring and Buy, which went off very well.” She stops, peering warily at me from under the brim of the ridiculous fur hat she’s taken to wearing, indoors and out. “And I’ve been seeing something of the grandchildren.”

The grandchildren being not my kids, needless to say, but my brother’s. I doubt she’s seen them in years, though, any more than I have.

I nod, keen to see what else she can dream up, smiling as she goes on, “We all went to Alton Towers last week. The children are a little old for it, now, of course, but they humoured me.”

I nod again, doing the same. “So, a good time was had by all was it?” I ask, standing and clearing the tea things because someone’s got to. Adding, casually, “How did you get there? You and the grandchildren? Bus? Train? Coach and four?” I glance down at the crockery. “Flying saucer?”

She shifts in her chair as I pass behind it. “Cliff drove us. Margie navigated.”

That’d be my brother Cliff who, last I heard, had downsized his car along with his house in readiness for an empty nest. “Oh, right. Cliff drove you, did he? All six of you? Seven, if you took dad, which I expect you did, even if you’ve conveniently forgotten he was there. All crammed in Cliff’s little Vauxhall?”

“He hired a car,” she replies, thinking on her feet. “One of those big ones with three rows of seats. Plenty of room there was, for all of us. And the flowers.”

Now she’s really lost me. “Flowers? You took flowers to Alton Towers? … For a go on the rides, perhaps? Lupines, looping the loop? Roses on the roller coaster?”

“Don’t be silly, Eileen,” she says sternly, a glimpse of the old mother flashing behind her eyes. Taking me right back through fifty years to my teens. Don’t do this Eileen, don’t do that Eileen… Definitely don’t do the other, Eileen.’ Well, she needn’t have worried on that score, need she? Because they were hardly queuing up, were they, for a go at the leper?

“OK. I give up. Why did you take flowers to Alton Towers and back?”

“We didn’t bring them back,” she says, quietly. “Not all the way. We made a detour to your dad’s grave.”

I keep my temper with difficulty, inclined to just walk over to the phone, here and now. Make one call to Cliff who’ll be amazed, I’m sure, to learn of his recent excursion to a theme park and his visit to a nonexistent grave.

The kitchen clock chimes, making us both look up.

“Health Visitor’ll be along soon, Mother,” I say, hoping to scare her into action, because we both know today’s assessment is critical. The Nurse, trotting out her tricky little questions and noting down any signs of further deterioration. A poorly kept house, for instance, or not knowing whether your nearest and dearest is alive or dead. With the penalty for failure being, as ever, the threat of residential care.

Mother just sits there, staring at the table, as if the idea of some sort of Home no longer worries her. A safe haven, perhaps, for a mind in irreversible decline?

I try again. “Doesn’t look good does it, Mother? The house the way it is?”

She shakes her head, but makes no move towards the mop, or my dirty washing up.

© Karla Smith 2012