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“I know,” says Connie. “But tell me.” This was a technique she had stolen from Ibrahim. Ibrahim would get Connie to listen to herself. He knew where he wanted her to go, but she had to find her own way there. If you find your own way somewhere, you can go back whenever you choose. That was Ibrahim’s idea anyway, probably nonsense.
“When we have a dilemma”—his KitKat story is true, by the way, but is maybe for another time—“we ask the person who will give us the answer we already know. And that’s why you asked me. Paul is wonderful, you are wonderful, today is wonderful.”
“To really understand—” says Nick. “No,” says Elizabeth, a little firmer this time. You sometimes have to be firm with amateurs. She had learned that with Joyce, though Joyce could pass for a professional these days. “Start with the headline and we can work backward if I’m interested. You have ten words, or I’m returning to the party. Eventually they will play a song I recognize.”
How many men like Jasper sit behind beige front doors in quiet bungalows, not knowing how to dress or what to eat or where to go? Wanting above all else not to be a nuisance? Joyce wishes she could save them all.
Danny is not a rational man. He has what passes for pride in men who grew up with pride denied to them.
Why didn’t she? That’s a very good question. Why does she always push her mum away? There’s something about that relationship, something about being a child, and the need of a child to be an individual, to be something more than the things she’s been taught and the way she’s been raised. The need to somehow teach a lesson to the person who has taught her so many lessons? Joyce’s love for her is unconditional, Joanna knows that, but, really, unconditional love has a huge flaw. If you love me no matter what, who I actually am doesn’t matter. If someone loves your essence, your very being, what
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And it’s not just that. There is a further problem with unconditional love, isn’t there? Because what if you don’t love yourself? What if, like Joanna, you obsess over your flaws and weaknesses, you constantly update the balance sheet of your own personality and find it wanting? Well, then the unconditional love of a parent is a sign that they simply don’t know you. If they truly knew you, their love would be peppered with caveats. “I love you, but…”
“It’s me, Mum,” says Joyce. “Ooh,” says Joyce. She always sounds so excited when Joanna rings that it breaks her heart for all the times she hasn’t rung over the years. “I’ll just turn the volume down on Flog It!” “You can pause it, Mum,” says Joanna. “My television doesn’t have pause,” says Joyce. “It does, Mum,” says Joanna. “I showed you last time we were down.” “Yes,” says Joyce. “But the button you pressed doesn’t pause anymore.” “It does, Mum,” says Joanna. “You must be pressing the wrong button.” “I’m not pressing the wrong button,” says Joyce. “I’m pressing the one you showed me.”
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We were all looking at the bomb. All that heat and all that noise. So we missed what was important. When things are noisy, and everyone is asking you to look at something right this instant, we mustn’t forget all the things still going on in quiet corners. There’s the news, and then there’s life.
