Chapter 15
He was fifteen when Beverley sat down with him on a Sunday evening and had the conversation she had been arranging in her head for several months.
He could tell it was a prepared conversation she had made tea, which she did when something mattered, and she sat across from him rather than beside him, which meant she wanted to see his face clearly.
"I want to talk to you about your mother," she said.
Marcus waited.
"Diane is one of the strongest people I know," Beverley said. "Stronger than me, I think, though she would never agree. And part of her strength is that she doesn't ask for things. She doesn't show the cost of things. She just pays it and moves forward."
"I know," Marcus said.
"I don't know if you know the half of it," Beverley said gently. "She works six days a week. She's been working six days a week since before you were born. She sends money to keep your school fees from falling behind, even though technically the scholarship covers most of it. She doesn't spend money on herself. She wears the same three dresses to work."
Marcus said nothing. He was very still.
"I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad," Beverley said. "I'm telling you because I think you're old enough to hold it properly. To know what the truth of things is. Your mother is not only your mother. She's a whole person, making enormous choices, every day, on your behalf. And she would never tell you that. So I'm telling you."
He thought about his mother at the small table by the window, writing in her notebook. He thought about the way she had looked at him at the airport dry-eyed, steady, giving nothing away except the one thing she'd said: I'm proud of you already.
"What do I do with that?" he asked.
Beverley picked up her tea. "You don't do anything with it yet," she said. "You're fifteen. Your job is to learn and grow and become the person she's paying for you to become. But you hold it. You remember it when things feel hard and you want to stop. And when you're a man when you have something to give back you give it."
He nodded slowly.
"She loves you more than anything," Beverley said. "That is the realest fact I know."
"I know," he said.
"Good," Beverley said. "Now drink your tea before it goes cold."