WEDNESDAY
06 NOVEMBER, 1996
ISAIAH

               As much as I loathed her, at no point in my life did I intend to kill my mother. But that's what I've done.

Our October phone call is stuck on replay in my mind: her cough, her reluctance to fix the heating, "nun that'll kill me, not that you'd care". In hindsight, I'm able to rearrange the words to their true meaning: when I die, it'll be your fault.

The solicitor, sitting opposite me in a drab brown suit, speaks in the kind of semi-whisper used to show respect as he goes over her possession and assets and how inheritance tax is calculated. At least, that's what I think he's doing; I haven't caught a word in the last quarter of an hour.

All I'm able to focus on is the repetition of "not that you'd care" and "I need a cigarette" revolving in my thoughts. Until I shove a hand on my knee to stop the accelerating bounce of my leg under the table and cut him off.

'I ain't want it.'

The solicitor — Philip Gibson, I now remember — goes on for another sentence due to sheer inertia before he realises my interruption and stammers into silence. He stares at me. 'Pardon?'

'I ain't want it,' I repeat, calmer this time. 'Nun of it.'

Gibson blinks. 'Perhaps we should return to this in a few months when you've had time–'

'I ain't need no time–' I clamp my tongue to the roof of my mouth. Watch your tone. I do my best to obscure the irritation from my expression as I reel my accent in, trying to find a balance between polite and succinct. 'I don't want it. It'll only be trouble and none of it has worth, not monetary or sentimental. I'm happier not having to waste my time on it.'

'I-If you're entirely sure–' he says this in a voice that makes it clear he doesn't believe me to be '–you can disclaim the will. All your mother's property and assets will go to the Crown as bona vacantia — unclaimed property.'

I nod. 'I would like to do that then.'

Gibson remains sceptical. Since there are none in Lower, I had to find a solicitor in Upper Halsett and thus, he doesn't know me or Muma. If he did, I'm sure he wouldn't find this so surprising.

'It can't be undone.' Arranging the documents in front of him, he glances at the wall behind me as if expecting to find instructions for how to proceed. 'Mr Matalon, I don't know whether you understand what it means. Once a will is disclaimed, you cannot change your mind. I implore you to take a moment to think it over — it's rather common for people still experiencing denial or anger to act rashly and come to regret things later–'

'I understand.'

My impatience starts to hew at my mask. Could he shut up and just listen to me? I didn't come here for advice, did I? My leg starts to bounce again. I need a smoke.

'You've seen the state of her "assets". All I'll inherit are unpaid taxes and a broken phone. I don't want anything.'

'Don't forget your home–'

'That house ain't my home.'

Gibson stares for a moment longer, then, finally, he gives in. 'If that truly is what you want, I'll go arrange the paperwork.' Collecting the now-incorrect papers into a stack, he stands. 'Er... some of my colleagues will need to speak to you while you wait.'

Before I can ask, he opens the door and two other solicitors walk in, both younger and dressed in finer suits. Neither approach to shake my hand — in fact, they file around the table at an unnatural distance. Not that I'm complaining; I don't think I have any smiles and "nice to meet you"s in me right now.

The man who took Gibson's vacated chair speaks first. 'I'm Joseph Schechter from Public Health and this–' he gestures to his colleague '–is Dajuan Brown from the Coroner Liaison Office. We're here to discuss your mother's death certificate.'

I don't trust my tone to keep itself in check so I say nothing.

Schechter watches my fidgeting with a cool stare before he continues. 'Due to the circumstances of how she was found, a post-mortem examination was deemed necessary–'

I jerk upright. 'What have you done with her? We're Jewish, you're not allowed to–'

Brown puts up a hand to silence me. 'Your chosen funeral service will prepare the body exactly as you ask.' His voice and posture are soft but it does little to pacify me. 'All the coroners have done is their best to preserve it which was promptly necessary. The... investigation estimates she passed two or three days before she was found.'

My lungs deflate. So much for an observant Jewish funeral.

'As you were informed on the phone, your mother passed due to untreated pneumonia. The infection seems to have started months ago though there is no record of her seeking medical assistance.' He hesitates, tugging at the knot of his tie, and glances at his colleague.

Schechter needs no bribery to pick up the conversation. 'There were other infections too, several of them...'

The way he speaks makes this feel more like an interrogation by the syllable though I don't understand what I'm being accused of. I'm a bad son. That's not illegal.

'Quite terrible health for someone to be in without seeking a doctor.'

Do they expect me to be surprised? She's an addict– was an addict: she wasn't unfamiliar with odd sensations in her body and the drugs she used work as painkillers. There's a chance Muma genuinely had no idea she was dying. 

The understanding claws at my insides. She needed me here to notice what was obvious to a sober mind. I should have come back, driven out here every once in a while, at the very least for Yom Kippur. I would've noticed something was wrong. I should've taken her to a hospital. She could be alive now.

Her words are scraped into a chalkboard at the back of my mind: "Nun that'll kill me, not that you'd care."

'Okay, so she didn't go to hospital. What am I supposed to do about that now?'

Brown smiles though it's a taut gesture. 'Nothing, of course... But the coroner was made suspicious and he decided to carry out a post-mortem enzyme immunoassay test of her blood which confirmed his suspicions.' He glances at Schechter again. 'Your mother passed due to infections caused by AIDS.'

A weight drops into my stomach. But it has become bottomless and the weight — somehow connected to me so that I fall with it — continues to plummet through the floor, into the building foundations, and deep into the Earth's crust.

I try to speak but my voice only chafes my vocal cords.

'Legally, we're required to state HIV-related infections as the cause of death for the public record.'

Schechter takes over. 'Our priority for the present conversation is you.' He cuts through pretence along with the gelatinous buzz that encapsulates me. 'Have you been tested?'

'Excuse me?'

Brown hurries in for damage control. When in the midst of violent dizziness do I find the time to wonder if this is a good-cop bad-cop dynamic they agreed to beforehand? 'HIV can live in the body for decades before developing into AIDS. Your mother's death now doesn't exclude the possibility that she had contracted the virus twenty years ago.' Ah. So that's why they acted so strange when they entered. 'She could have been infectious when she was breastfeeding you or even when she was pregnant.'

'I was tested last month.'

'Have you got a transcript of that?' Schechter asks.

'You reckon I walk around with all my doctor's notes in my back pocket? You can get a warrant and check it from my medical record yourself, I think.' Anger dilutes my vertigo enough for me to stand. 'Tell Gibson I'll be back tomorrow to sign whatever he needs me to.'

My brain buzzes with their voices as I walk down the street to where my car is parked. "She passed two or three days before she was found." "Your mother died from AIDS." Dorian is still in the passenger seat where I left him and the maelstrom in my gut wanes a little. He has spread notes over the dashboard and has his headphones on as he writes into the score notebook on his lap.

I open the door and he jumps.

'Sorry,' I say as I get into the car, sweeping raindrops from my shoulders before they seep into my button-up.

Though he's still a little spooked — obvious by the way he flattens a palm over his chest to ease his heartbeat — there's a spark in his eye I haven't seen since we were eighteen. A spark that means inspiration, almost a mad glint that sucks him into his work and won't let him go until he's done, even if he hasn't had a sip of water for hours. Despite that, he leaves his pencil on the centrefold of the notebook to watch me sink into the driver's seat.

I don't turn the engine on. The rain raps the roof.

His eyes glue to my hands as I undo my cuff buttons to shove the sleeves up my forearms. And because I feel like the gesture needs to be returned in kind, I move my gaze to his tapping fingers. What is it that's so enchanting about his fingers? I could watch them forever.

Forever, until it strays to the glovebox.

My tobacco calls to me. I think I know what siren songs sound like. And why so many sailors in stories end up at the bottom of the sea despite countless warnings: right now I honestly couldn't care less if my next inhale kills me on the spot, I just need to burn the layer of sandpaper that has grown under my skin since this morning.

I pry my stare from the compartment and find Dorian's. 'Thank you.'

'Hmm?'

'I realised I ain't thanked you for coming here with me, so... thank you.'

'I'm happy to help.'

I know he's sincere yet a voice at the back of my head is already posing the critical question: how? That's the crux of the issue, in the end. I always thought Dorian was incapable of lying and now he wants me to believe everything he said and insinuated the night he left was a lie, and if he's able to lie so convincingly, how should I know when he isn't?

I want to forgive him — I want it so bad. I want to ask him to hold me. I want him to hold me and pull me from the void at my ankles that grows by the hour. It would be so easy to slip into the comfort of the dark and I need him to stop me. I need him if I'm going to survive this.

But I can't.

It's not the fact that he left that hurts, it's that he never came back. I would have forgiven him at the first apology if he came back, if he actually looked for me, if he wasn't here right now due to pure serendipity. How am I supposed to believe he cares if he didn't once look for me?

Someone walks past and Dorian. His stare follows the stranger until they turn a corner and when I can see his face again, fear is etched into it.

It brings forth a memory. I was mocking him for being so daunted by the thought of buying condoms because "an eighteen-year-old boy buying condoms ain't gon make it to the paper". He stared at me and said, "My mum knows everyone. She'll find out." It's that same fear that possesses him now. Ice cold terror. His mother will find out.

He's terrified and still offered to come here with me.

'Thank you.'

Dorian takes a moment to focus on me, to decipher whether he's experiencing deja vu or if I'm repeating myself. The fear melts and he smiles enough for his dimples to appear. 'I'm happy to help.'

It would be so easy to reach out. I miss his warmth. I'm doomed to a perennial chill under my skin every moment of my life I'm not touching him.

'She had AIDS.'

The words have to be pried from my trachea like twisted nails from a piece of hardwood and rust floods my tongue.

I press my knuckles to my temple to keep my expression out of his sight, though the effort is made redundant when my voice quakes. 'It's a joke. I get tested every month and this whole time — this whole fucking time — my muma's been positive. It's fucked.'

My jaw and throat throb. The headache caused by the lack of nicotine in my system worsens.

I suppose I always knew drugs were going to kill her, I just didn't think it would be like this. If I picked up the phone to be informed of an overdose or a targeted murder because her debts stacked too high, I think I'd've heard the news with nothing but resolution and closure. But I never, not even subconsciously, made peace with this. This is cruel.

It's my fault. It was my responsibility to take care of her, to make sure she'd find rest, and I failed. And I took three days to find out. I'm not the one who found her; it was the neighbour who went to investigate. She won't be buried within the twenty-four-hour window proper for a Jewish funeral — not even that, did I manage to give her.

'It's supposed to be me. Everyone knows it's supposed to–'

'Don't say that!' The fury in Dorian's voice is so unfamiliar, it forces me to look at him. His eyes boil. 'Don't you ever dare say that. Not around me. You're not funny.'

I want to say I wasn't trying to be funny but instead, I paraphrase my initial thought. 'This is my fault.'

The anger seeps from him to be replaced by kindness. 'Of course, it's not your fault.'

Closing his score notebook, he slips it on top of the rest of his papers on the dashboard and shifts to the edge of his seat. The invisible wall between us finally shatters as he places one hand on my leg and cups my face with the other to guide my teary gaze to his.

'She was ill. Your mother died because of an illness. You didn't cause it.'

'I think I did.'

At the end of the day, it was the pain medication intended to help her heal from the caesarian delivery that was the first of her drugs. They slowly built into an addiction so that, when the wound was only a scar and there was no physical pain left from the procedure, she continued to use them and when the doctors refused to refill her prescription no matter how much agony she pretended to be in, she found the aid somewhere else.

She started using to get away from me, so she wouldn't have to look at me. I ruined her life. She wouldn't even be in this country, in this shit town, if it wasn't for me. I might as well have killed her myself and the worst part is I still don't feel sad.

Among everything I've felt since the news arrived, sorrow has not made an appearance. I killed my mother and I don't feel sad.