My father gave me a wooden yo-yo. It had a ladybug painted on it. I was afraid of ladybugs. Maggy always made fun of me because of it. My father did not like it at all. ‘No child is afraid of ladybugs,’ he had snapped at me once. And because no child was afraid of them, I was not allowed to be afraid either. That I didn't get that, worried him. Everything worried him lately, especially if it concerned me. And now I got a yo-yo with a ladybug on it. It was not just some piece of wood with a string attached to it, it was a statement. A statement which I refused to take. My father was furious and sent me to my room. I stomped up the stairs angrily. I opened the door to my room and remained standing in the doorway, the doorknob still in my hand. All my posters of horses had been replaced with pictures of ladybugs. I opened my eyes, stared at the ceiling and realized that I had not visited my parents for months.
I took a few deep breaths before I drove onto the driveway. My mother had filled up the front yard with hydrangeas and violets once again. The windowsills were also completely covered in flower pots. The result was a cacophony of colors and shapes which was just the teensiest bit too showy to be really pretty. I could not remember our front yard looking any other way. During the summer, it had always taken my mother half an hour to water her flowers. Other favorite hobbies of her were the weekly mowing of the lawn to an exact height of 4 centimeters, as well as trimming the conifers into perfect, geometrical shapes. My father never got the idea in his mind to dig up the gardening tools. He would be signing his own death warrant if he did.
I parked my car next to my parents’ gray sedan, which, apparently, had just been washed. Their car always looked like that. That, on the other hand, was one of my father’s passions. Scrubbing the bodywork of the car with a soft sponge seemed to give him intense joy. Before pushing the doorbell, I took a couple of deep breaths. Less than two seconds later, my mother’s head, with its blonde dyed hair appeared in the doorway. I gave her a quick kiss on both cheeks.
‘Long time no see! How are you, mum?’
‘Take off your shoes,’ she gestured.
I unzipped my boots and quickly slipped them off. When I visited my parents, I always wore shoes that can be easily put on and taken off. I hated hopping on the sidewalk on one foot and I didn’t even think of keeping my shoes on. I wasn't tired of living just yet.
My mother scrutinously watched as I took off my boots. ‘There’s a hole in your sock.’
There was indeed a hole in my sock. I hadn’t seen it, but the fact that it annoyed my mother did make it nice. I smiled contemptuously and followed her to the kitchen, where I had eaten boiled potatoes and Brussels sprouts with a pout for twenty years. I still didn’t like Brussels sprouts. My father was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper. He didn’t look up when I entered.
‘Hey, dad.’
He didn’t react. I hadn’t expected him to. I politely said ‘thank you,’ when my mother poured me a cup of coffee without asking anything. It was no use asking whether or not they had soft drinks or if they could make me a cup of tea. When I went to my parents, I got a cup of coffee. I threw a quick glance at the back yard. Over there, it was a sea of flowers as well. Rhododendrons, sweet Williams and a lot of flowers of which I had forgotten the names – my mother had, to no avail, tried to train me to become a perfect housewife that could clean, cook and garden and remembering the names of plants had been a cornerstone of that education – fought over my attention. I knew from experience that you would get a little nauseous if you kept looking at them for too long. ‘The garden looks lovely, mum.’
She put the small, floral sugar pot down on the table and looked suspiciously at me. ‘Of course it’s lovely. I’ve worked in it every day this week. Several hours a day.’ She glanced secretly at my father. ‘Sometimes I just need to get out of the house for a while.’
For a moment I considered mentioning to her that most people would go out and have a drink with friends instead of planting hundreds of flowers in their garden, but I quickly gave up on that idea when I saw the look on my father’s face. ‘Is that another subtle gibe directed at me?’
My mother poured a dash of milk in her coffee. ‘No, dear.’
She only called him ‘dear’ when she was bothered by him. I slurped from the porcelain cup. ‘Good coffee.’
My parents both looked at me as though I had just said a swear word. I choked on my coffee. They did not move to slap me on the back.
My mother inspected her fingernails. ‘As you know, your father has retired last month.’
I did not know that at all. ‘Right! Are you keeping busy?’
He folded and closed his newspaper and looked at me with frowned eyebrows. ‘Of course. I’m not too old or too cripple.’
I took a biscuit from the round biscuit tin that my mother had placed on the table. ‘So, what do you do all day long?’
My father snorted loudly. ‘I’ve bought an electrical bicycle. And I finally have the time to go fishing again. And we’re planning a trip, your mother and I.’
‘A trip?’ As far as I knew, my parents had never traveled before. As a child, when I nagged that I wanted to go somewhere during the summer, like the rest of my classmates, my father always asked me what was wrong with Belgium that made me want to go to some exotic place.
‘To the South of France or Portugal. Maybe we’ll book a week in Turkey.’
At the other side of the table, my mother stared in her coffee.
‘Sounds fun. You definitely should.’
The telephone rang and my father promptly disappeared into the living room. The kitchen went silent. I cleared my throat. ‘When are you guys leaving?’
My mother dipped a biscuit in her coffee. ‘We haven’t fixed a date yet. Currently there’s too much work in the garden.’
‘Yes, I can see. And do you two often go cycling?
‘He may have bought that bicycle, but he has only ridden it once so far and it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t ride it again. A waste of money.’
I took another biscuit. My mother looked suspiciously at the crumbs I spilled on the table cloth while doing so.
‘Isn’t it odd that he’s around all the time?’
She looked a little startled at me. ‘Why would that be odd?’
‘He used to be working all the time and now he’s sitting here all day...’
‘Oh, but that doesn’t bother me, you know.’ She laughed somewhat nervously. ‘Usually he’s watching football or a race. Or he’s reading his newspaper.’
The room became quiet again.
‘You know, my health has improved quite a bit nowadays.’
‘That’s nice.’ My mother got up, picked up a dish cloth and started wiping the table with it. I didn't dare take another biscuit. Why had I not eaten before I came here?
‘No, really. I’ve discovered a new treatment and now I’m much less tired and my muscle aches are a lot better as well. I regularly go for walks again.’
‘That’s good for you.’ My mother distantly stared at the living room, where my father had just hung up the phone.
We both looked at him as he walked into the kitchen again. ‘It was Pierre. He wants to go fishing tomorrow. What did I miss?’
‘Oh, nothing special,’ my mother forced a smile.
I emptied my cup. ‘I was just telling her that my health has really improved a great deal. So yeah, nothing special.’
‘Ah.’ My father opened his newspaper again. ‘So that means you’re working again?’
I took a deep breath before I answered. ‘No. But for the first time in months, I have the energy to look for work again.’ The truth was that I did not really feel like looking for work and that I was afraid that my complaints would quickly become worse again if I did go working again.
‘H'm. Good that you ended that phase.’
‘Phase?’ I bit the inside of my lip.
‘That chronic fatigue.’
‘H'm.’ I breathed in and out deeply a few more times. I had intended that I would not finish my first visit to my parental home with a fight. I made this resolution every time. Why did my father always have to make it so difficult to stick to it?
I started when my mother pushed her chair back, scraping across the floor. ‘I’ve planted rhubarb. Shall we go and take a look?’
I did not feel any need to go look at rhubarb, but I rose nevertheless and followed her outside. The scent of hundreds of blooming flowers hit me right in the face.