Instructions for a Borrowed Mother

How it begins

First, find the recording where she tells you how long to boil an egg.

Not the one where she is laughing.

That comes later, when you can hear it without believing she has stepped into the next room.

Put the kettle on.

Ask whether you have kept the right saucepan.

The recording will not know.

It will say six minutes, depending on the egg.

This is more useful than most advice you have received.

My brother says we should label the files by date.

I say there are other ways to find a mother.

The one about the train.

The one where she forgets the word for coriander.

The one that begins with her saying I haven't got long, then continues for twenty-three minutes.

We keep that one under Sundays.

At first the silences frighten us.

We think the machine has stopped.

We think we have lost another piece.

Michael learns to turn the volume up.

I learn to leave the room before the answer finishes.

In the kitchen, the smallest saucepan has a handle that nobody repaired.

She used to wrap it in a tea towel and tell us not to make a drama of things.

We have made several dramas.

Some deserved better lighting.

Some a quieter ending.

Tonight I ask the recording whether I should call him.

For six seconds, my mother says nothing.

In those six seconds I hear the refrigerator, the traffic, the neighbor putting out bottles.

Then her voice says, Use the small one. It will do.

I pick up the phone.

Not because she has answered.

Because I have reached the part where the question belongs to me.

When Michael arrives, we make tea without opening the archive.

The kettle takes longer than either of us expects.

We let it.

Afterward, we wash the cups and leave them where a visitor might find them.