Sunstroke and Other Stories (18 page)

Nia suggested to her mother last Christmas that in the spring the two of them should fly together to New York, to see the exhibition of Rubens drawings at the Met. The teacher at Helen’s art classes had said how wonderful they were; and Helen had never been to America. It should have been one of those brilliant late-night inspirations that crumble to nothing in the light of practicalities, but somehow they really went ahead with this and booked their flights and their hotel. Then it was too late to change their minds, although in the week before they left Nia was consumed with doubt and dismay, imagining every kind of disaster. Her mother who suffered from angina wouldn’t be able to walk anywhere; she would be taken ill, and Nia would have to deal with the American medical system. Or
they would quarrel over something and not be able to escape from one another. On the flight over, Nia sat in the window seat and looked down at the unpopulated earth below, wherever it was, Greenland or Canada: for hundreds of miles, nothing but the black whorls and coils of rock, snow and winding rivers and frozen lakes. There was no cloud layer; there must be unbroken cold sunshine down there. She calmed herself by imagining she was translated down into that landscape; though not of course in her hopeless human body, which would only know how to stumble around in it and die.

They arrived in New York in torrential rain. The hotel in Greenwich Village, where Nia had stayed once before with Paul, looked rougher than she remembered. It was the kind of place she and Paul enjoyed, full of atmosphere and the traces of an older New York which they knew from films, with a marble-faced dado and huge gilt mirrors in the hallway, little metal mailboxes for the permanent residents, a lift painted around inside with acanthus blooms, oddly assorted books on the shelves in every room. Now she could only see it through her mother’s eyes. The furniture was cheap, made from split cane. They had to use a bathroom out on the corridor, and the first time Nia went in there she found a dirty sticking plaster on the floor. The breakfasts were awful, in a basement where a fierce Hispanic woman presided over Thermoses full of coffee and hot water. Mother and daughter were both shy, transplanted out of the worlds they knew. Nia was often anxious, worrying about how to get from place to place, and where to eat, and whether Helen was tired; probably Helen was worrying too.

They were also always aware, however, that they would think about the things they were doing as wonders, afterwards, when they got home. Their shared bedroom had a view on to the street of elegant and wealthy brownstones,
where the trees were just coming into leaf. While Helen did her face and hair at the dressing table in the mornings, Nia (who only showered and towelled her short hair dry) watched out of the window, exclaiming at the New York dogs: extravagantly big or small or pampered, sometimes being exercised in gangs of five or six by bored professional walkers. They gave up the hotel basement and found a place round the corner which did breakfasts of rough peasant bread and seed bread with real fruit jam and
café au lait
in bowls; they made friends with the waiter. And on their second day the sun came out and was even hot; they took a boat trip to the Statue of Liberty and the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island; they marvelled at the Manhattan skyline. Helen persuaded Nia to let her pay for some oatmeal cotton trousers and a long moss-green cardigan; Nia in the expensive Fifth Avenue shops felt cornered and oversized and fraudulent. She longed for the new clothes to transform her, to prove that her mother’s old instincts hadn’t lapsed or fallen out of date.

After they had seen the Rubens drawings they had tea in the American Wing café in the Met, and watched through the glass wall a gang of workers in Central Park, pulling the ivy out of the bare winter trees. They tied ropes around it and heaved together until the ivy came away in heavy masses, which the men then fed on a conveyor belt into a shredder. Helen that day was wearing a grey suit and a silk scarf decorated with blue and yellow birds; the scarf had got somehow skewed sideways so that it stuck up rakishly behind one ear and made her look as if she was drunk or slightly dotty. Nia could see, too, where her lipstick was bleeding into the fine wrinkles at the edges of her lips. She talked about the mistakes Sophie was making with her children, in a tone of tactful light regret which Nia knew Sophie found particularly maddening. After tea when Helen came out from the Ladies, where she would have checked
herself in the mirror, the scarf was tidied into its usual casual elegance. She looked tired, though, and had to use her angina spray when they were walking from the museum to find a taxi.

—Don’t those exquisite drawings simply make everything worthwhile? she said when they were back in their hotel room, groaning and easing her feet out of her shoes.

—Are you all right? Nia stood over her, surly because she was worried.

—Don’t fuss, said Helen. —I’m an old woman.

She undressed down to her petticoat, so as not to rumple her suit, and lay on her back on her twin bed, her head propped on the pillows in the careful way Nia recognised as protecting her hairdo. The room was bright with evening sunshine. They had made its seediness homely with their clothes hung about, their scarves and beads and books mingled together, their flannels and bottles and sponge bags on the sink.

—Where would you like to go to eat tonight?

Helen sighed. —I’m so comfortable here.

—We don’t have to go out, said Nia, full of doubt. — But won’t you get hungry?

—I’m not worried about me. But what about you, darling? You’ll need something.

Nia went to find the delicatessen they had noticed a few blocks away, to buy food they could eat in their room. It was the first time she had been out alone, and it was a relief to be able to use her long stride instead of continually adjusting her pace to her mother’s. She felt as if she was really part of New York at last, choosing cold meat and bread and olives, and fruit juice. She bought yogurts, too, forgetting that they didn’t have spoons; it was Helen who suggested that they could scoop these up with the wrong ends of their toothbrushes. While they ate their picnic they became deeply involved in a real-life courtoom drama on
the television, debating it passionately. When that was finished they undressed and climbed under the bedcovers and fell asleep, even though it was very early.

Some time in the night Nia half woke and was confused, not knowing where she was. Outside on the street a car started up, and then the drone of its engine faded into the distance. She lifted her head off her pillow in the incomplete dark, and knew from the smell of face powder and cake and the light snoring that her mother was somewhere close by. She seemed to feel the radiation of her heat; and she remembered the seersucker pyjamas, dotted with little blue rosebuds.

—I’m still here, Nia thought, reassured and happy, falling back easily into her sleep.—She’s still here.

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Epub ISBN: 9781446499924

Version 1.0

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Published by Vintage 2008

Copyright © Tessa Hadley 2007

Tessa Hadley has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

‘Sunstroke’, ‘Mother’s Son’, ‘The Surrogate’, and ‘A Card Trick’ were originally published in
The New Yorker
; ‘Buckets of Blood’, ‘The Enemy’ and ‘Matrilineal’ in
Granta
; ‘Phosphorescence’ in the
Guardian
, and ‘Exchanges’ in
You
magazine

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Jonathan Cape

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780099499251