Free Candelo by Georgia Blain

to surmise.
    When I visit Vi now, she often wants to talk of her. After years of silence, it is hard to get used to this new mentioning of her name. But since my mother was told she has emphysema, a lot has changed.
    She no longer smokes. The doctors told her she has a choice. Cigarettes or death, and she has stopped, but not without wavering. She is out for dinner and she reaches for a packet on the table near her.
    Mari cannot believe it.
Even if you don’t mind dying, think of me
, she says.
Think of how I would be without you
.
    She also no longer works. Not in the way she used to. She has been told to rest. Until her blood pressure is lowered.
    This, too, is not easy for her.
    When I first used to visit her, Mari would always make her stay on the couch, a pile of books by her side. Novels.
    My mother has never read a novel in her life.
    And because Mari was terrified of Vi getting a chest infection, she would make an endless series of lemon and honey drinks that sat, barely sipped, by my mother’s side.
    I can’t bear them
, she would confess to me.
All that garlic
.
    She would ask me to throw them down the sink while Mari was not looking.
It’s ridiculous
, she would say.
I’m not even sick
.
    But on the bad days her cough is raw and the dark circles under her eyes are deep.
    She was a beautiful child
, she tells me and I know she is talking of Evie.
You were all beautiful
, she adds,
although you were the most trouble of all
.
    And I was. Like my mother, I was always the agitator. Twice suspended for being argumentative.
    But I was secretly proud of you
, she confesses and she wheezes slightly as she laughs.
    Sometimes I wonder what would have become of her
, and she looks out the window.
    I do not know what to say. I have also wondered this. What she would have been like. Whether we would have been close.
    I can’t help myself
, and she coughs again, a cough fierce enough to shake her whole body.
    She asks me to bring her papers in to her, the next bundle to sort, and I do. Because, unlike Mari, I think that not working is more stressful for my mother than working. But when I give them to her, she wants to talk of Evie again.
    She was stubborn too. Not compliant like Simon
.
    She was. I remember. Even with the nine years between us (eleven between her and Simon), we were already fighting.
    This age difference was one of the reasons why I know she was a mistake. The gap was too large. The other was my father.
    When Vi found out she was pregnant, he confessed. He had been seeing someone else. A couple of people actually. For several years.
    I was only eight, but I remember it clearly. I remember their fights. Sometimes they would last all night. Both of them shouting at each other, doors slamming, waking to find one or other of them asleep in the spare bed in my room.
    My father didn’t want another child. He never said as much. But looking back, it is not hard to see that this was how he felt.
    When he finally left, he did so without telling any of us. Not even a note. He just went off to work and did not come home, leaving everything: his clothes, his books, his records.
    Vi got a letter from him two days later, telling her not to worry, and then nothing. We did not hear from him for months.
    She threw all of his possessions out onto the street. Six months pregnant, tottering in her sandals, weighed down by the bundles she was carrying, refusing to stop until it was all gone. Every last thing.
    Well
, she said,
that’s that
, and she poured herself a whisky, lit a cigarette and sat down at her desk to write an article.
    When she went into labour, she went to hospital on her own. She packed her bags and called a taxi, dropping Simon and me at a friend’s on the way.
    Bernard did not visit her or the baby. He did not even ask after them. Years later, he tried to talk to me about it. He had just done a group therapy weekend and rang me as soon as he got home. He wanted to apologise. For