Sunday Lunch

Selwyn had brought Tressa a loaf of bread and a complaint about his washing machine. She let him finish both before she told him.

“I’ve been seeing Elian.”

He put the bread knife down. He had been cutting the loaf she had not asked him to cut, making slices too thick for the toaster because that was how he liked them.

“I know. The pool.”

“More than the pool. We’re seeing each other.”

Her son looked at her as though she had used a familiar word in the wrong language.

“Seeing each other how?”

“As people who want to be together. Romantically.”

She disliked the last word as soon as she said it. It sounded like a category on a form. But she had promised herself she would not make this easier by making it vague.

Selwyn moved the knife further from the edge of the counter.

“Elian?”

“Yes.”

“My Elian?”

She almost answered sharply. Then she saw his face and heard what the word meant beneath its ownership: the man she had encountered through a whole friendship her son had built without her.

“Yes,” she said again.

He sat at the table. She sat opposite, leaving the bread where it was. The kitchen light was on despite the afternoon sun. She had switched it on before he arrived and kept finding reasons not to switch it off.

“Since when?”

“The first swim was nearly two weeks ago. I asked him. We walked on the Sunday after it.”

“And you didn’t say.”

“No. I wanted to understand what was happening before I discussed it with anyone. I wasn’t going to keep it from you.”

“Those are rather different things.”

“I know.”

He rubbed his palms down his trousers. He was wearing the grey jumper she had bought him two birthdays ago. She wished, suddenly and pointlessly, that he had worn something she had not chosen.

“Did he know you were going to tell me?”

“Yes. He wants to talk to you himself. About his part.”

“You’ve arranged that.”

“We agreed not to let this go on while you didn’t know.”

Selwyn looked towards the window. “That sounds very responsible when you put it like that.”

She accepted the edge because some of it was earned. They had discussed him. They had needed to. Knowing the conversation was legitimate did not make it pleasant to find oneself on the other side of it.

“I can see why that hurts,” she said.

“Can you?”

“Not all of it, probably. Tell me.”

He stood and went to the sink. She let him. It took effort not to offer tea, food, some activity that would put her back into a role she knew how to perform.

“He’s my friend,” Selwyn said, still facing the window. “I phone him when I don’t want to phone you. Not because there’s anything wrong with you. Because that’s what a friend is for.”

“I know.”

“And now I don’t know where to put things I’ve already told him.”

There it was. Not a crude joke about their ages, not a declaration that mothers were ineligible for desire. Something she had understood in principle and had still hoped might remain theoretical.

“He hasn’t told me your private things.”

Selwyn turned.

“How do you know what’s private if you haven’t heard it?”

She stopped.

“You’re right. I can’t make that claim about every conversation. I can tell you that when I asked him whether you were tired, he wouldn’t discuss it.”

“You asked?”

“I did. On the walk. I shouldn’t have. He said he couldn’t know what would feel private to you. We left it there.”

Selwyn looked at her for a long moment. “That’s him.”

The words held affection as well as pain. She was glad of the affection, though it did not belong to her to use.

“I won’t ask again,” she said. “If I’m worried about you, I’ll ask you.”

“And if you’re worried about him?”

She had not thought that far ahead. “I won’t ask you to tell me things about him either.”

Her son leaned against the counter.

“I’ve talked about you,” he said.

She kept her hands still on the table.

“You were allowed.”

“You might not think so if you heard it.”

“Then it’s fortunate I haven’t.”

He gave a short, unwilling laugh. She nearly reached for it as evidence that things were improving, then stopped herself. Laughter was not an agreement.

“I don’t want to know,” she said. “Not because I don’t care. Because you were talking to your friend. You don’t owe me a transcript of being my son.”

He looked down. For a moment she thought he might cry, and she felt the old readiness to go to him, to make whatever had hurt him smaller. That readiness was part of her love. It could also make her lie.

“Are you serious about him?” he asked.

“I don’t know the whole shape of it yet. I like him. I want him. I want to find out.”

Selwyn winced, then looked ashamed of the wince.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t need the details. I won’t give them to you. But I can’t explain it only as good company because that would be untrue.”

He sat down again, further from the table this time.

“What happens to Sundays?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does he come for lunch now?”

“Only if you invite him. Your house is yours.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll see you separately.”

“You make it sound as if that hasn’t changed anything.”

She looked at him. “No. It will change things.”

They sat with that. Outside, a neighbour started a lawnmower and stopped it almost immediately. Tressa could hear her own refrigerator click on. It was a strange afternoon to be so ordinary.

“We have a weekend planned,” she said. “At the coast. Friday to Sunday.”

Selwyn’s expression closed again.

“This weekend?”

“Yes. I’d have told you about being away anyway. I wasn’t assuming lunch. You’ve been on Sundays twice this month.”

“I know my shifts.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

She had begun explaining the calendar because she could explain it accurately. The accuracy was no use.

“I don’t think I can do next Sunday either,” he said. “Lunch. Not yet. I don’t think I can listen to your weekend and then go out with him and pretend I don’t know where he was.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to pretend.”

“I know. I just need somewhere this isn’t happening for a bit.”

She felt it then, the loss of an easy thing she had not known she was counting as permanent. Not a dramatic expulsion. A Sunday that would no longer contain her son’s cluttered table and the mild argument about whether he had bought enough potatoes. A pause he was entitled to ask for, and which still hurt.

“All right,” she said.

“It doesn’t feel all right.”

“No. I mean I’ll respect it.”

When he left, he took the bread knife to the sink and rinsed it before putting on his coat. She let him do the small thing. At the door he hesitated, then hugged her. It was brief and awkward and it was still his embrace.

“I love you,” she said.

“I know. I love you too. I’m just not ready to be pleased.”

“You don’t have to pretend that either.”

She watched his car leave. This time Elian was not waiting in her kitchen when she turned back.

· · ·Scene break

Elian came over that evening after he had spoken to Selwyn by phone. He told her Selwyn did not want their usual walk this week. He did not tell her what else had been said.

Tressa gave him water and sat beside him at the kitchen table.

“Did you tell him I asked you first?”

“I told him I wanted you. That’s mine to explain.”

She looked at him. He looked tired, though she knew tiredness could mean many things and had recently made a mistake by treating it as an invitation to investigate.

“I’m sorry it was difficult,” she said.

“So am I.”

He reached for her hand. She let him hold it, but the touch made her eyes sting.

“He’s paused lunch,” she said. “At his house. He needs some time.”

Elian nodded.

“I knew he might,” she said. “I thought I knew.”

“Knowing beforehand doesn’t make it feel the same.”

She looked at their hands. She wanted Elian closer and also wanted to be alone long enough to find out which part of her wanting was asking to be distracted.

“I’m afraid I’ll make you responsible for it,” she said. “For the bit that hurts. Even though this is my choice.”

He was quiet, then loosened his hand without removing it.

“I don’t want to be what you take because you can’t have Sunday lunch.”

“You aren’t.”

“I know. Tonight you don’t have to prove it.”

She looked up.

“I do want to come away with you.”

“I want that too. If you need to postpone, tell me. We can lose a weekend without losing everything.”

The relief was immediate, followed by a sadness she had not expected. He was giving her a real choice. She could take the reprieve, say they would go later, let this be a small pleasant episode with an indefinite future.

“And what would you prefer?” she asked.

He looked at her for a moment before answering.

“I’d prefer you to come. Because you want the days with me. I’d like not to be the sensible thing you give up first.”

She took his hand more firmly.

There was no accusation in it. There did not need to be. She had asked him to tell the truth instead of making himself easy to refuse.

“I need to sit with it,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Until Friday morning. Can we leave the bookings and decide then? We can afford the rooms if I change my mind after Thursday.”

“I can. Can you?”

“Yes.”

They agreed he would come at ten on Friday, and they would speak before anybody loaded a car. If she cancelled, they would discuss another day instead of quietly disappearing from each other’s lives. He asked whether ten was too early. She said it was late enough for her to have found both shoes.

He stayed for half an hour. They talked about the bread and his unfinished book. At the door she kissed him, briefly but because she wanted to, and he held her close for a moment before letting her go.

On Thursday evening she packed a bag.

She put in the blue dress, a swimsuit, the shoes that did not hurt and the book she had failed to read all week. Then she took the dress out and laid it on the bed. The bag would be easier to close without it. The trip would be easier to explain as a walk by the sea.

She looked at the dress for a long time.

Then she folded it back into the bag, without fastening the zip.

Packing was not going. She still had to choose the part of Friday that came after the knock at her door.