Jigsaw

“I think I’ll just head back to Edinburgh for Hogmanay."

The words had formed a week ago before the train even left Haymarket. Now they broke the silence.

“Okay-yyy,” said his mother, sitting on his left at the kitchen table, in the same drawn-out way he knew she would.

They were sitting over the jigsaw puzzle she had given him a few days before. Opening it on Christmas Day, he smiled at this new tradition that was, apparently, beginning to emerge. Last year’s 1000-piece puzzle was completed in intermittent bursts from Boxing Day to Hogmanay. It was supposed to be a novelty, a silly item picked up on a whim after Sarah recognised the film franchise he liked on the box (something about space?). But every time one of them entered the kitchen, their exit was hindered by the brief glance at the scattered pieces on the table that turned into a quick half-hour’s solving. Praise would be given in passing when apparent progress had been made in the other’s absence. Hours passed, also, in quiet companionship. Conversation rose and fell like the passing of waves; both were silently grateful for the time this gift brought them.

Perhaps it was this, the merciful conversation in a house that sat empty for months, that prompted Sarah to up the ante this year. 2000 pieces now lay before them, and they needed a concerted effort to organise the chaos on the table before the festivities were over, marking Matthew’s return to Edinburgh for the start of the new semester. This year, though, felt different. Contrived. Like they were reliving a memory instead of making a new one.

As they turned the pieces over, looked for the corners and filled in the outside framework, the assertion (not request – you’re not asking permission, he reminded himself) of returning to Edinburgh for New Year’s primed itself on his lips. Despite their conversation drifting in and out as they made their slow progress, it still took two days to build up the courage. He realised he’d have to say it soon before the thing was completed.

“I thought we were going to Katherine’s again?” his mother asked. The question’s probing nature was barely masked behind a thin sheet of bemusement.

“Yeah, I know, but a few people from uni are meeting up and asked if I’d come. I’ve already said yes.”

They sat in silence.

Sarah’s instinct that something had been occupying his mind had, as usual, proved true. She reached over, took a piece from his side that caught her eye and brought it back to her section. After rotating the piece a few times, she put it back on the table, unable to make the two pieces fit. He watched her struggle and knew she was formulating a response to what they both plainly knew but never properly discussed.

“Well,” she said, “that sounds nice. Where is it you’re going?”

“To Molly’s.”

He named the first girl on his course he could think of. Someone he had spoken to on his first day and had made some effort to sit near in most lectures. They had walked home a few times together, usually as part of a larger group, but only because they all shared a hall of residence and so were walking the same way out of necessity. Conversation was polite if stilted. No plans had ever been made to meet outside of class.

He sat silently cursing himself – he had meant to bring her name up earlier in the week, plant some seeds about his supposed friend of two-and-a-half years but nothing interesting or relevant came to mind. There was also the unavoidable fact that his mother could sense when he was lying like a bloodhound tracking meat.

The water in the radiator hissed in the pipes. At the other end of the kitchen, it was too far to offer any meaningful heat, and he noticed the lack of warmth in the room.

“To Molly’s,” his mother repeated, not taking her eyes off the table as she made a larger picture form from the pieces. She had his scent.

The assertion to make his own plans took enough out of him before the shoddy lie to the point where he could only nod. Time passed as more pieces were picked up, examined, then discarded once, after thorough experimentation, proved unable to sit flush.

“And where does Molly stay?”

“Morningside.” Mercifully, the truth. He didn’t know where exactly in Morningside she did stay, right enough. After their first year, students had to find their own rented accommodation in the city. He had seen her, walking ahead of him after leaving campus, waiting at the crossing to climb the hill to the right as he passed and descended to the left, down to his flat in Tollcross.

“Molly in Morningside.”

More pieces were picked up. Few were tried in new places. None fit. Eventually, their hands stopped searching and they sat still, looking at the mess that lay before them. It all at once felt too much to make sense of.

Matthew looked up at the wall opposite. Shelves interspersed with the same ornamental figures and knick-knacks from before he was born; cabinets filled with crockery that had never been touched. The frames on the wall pictured people he had never met, some whose names he had forgotten. He had known them once, old stories told to him on his mother’s lap. All had gone now. His mother often said that people had their own way of leaving, but none of them were easy.

An evening spent jigsawing was often filled with pockets of silence but this one felt charged. Electric. As if, behind the scenes, some machine was whirring up, building momentum, before switching on.

“Well, I don’t think so. Just think how busy it will be – Edinburgh, at Hogmanay! How will you get to Morningside? Or back to Tollcross?”

“I’ll get a taxi.”

The stillness of the kitchen was disturbed by a sharp bark of a laugh.

“Matthew, I’ve seen Edinburgh during Hogmanay. You haven’t. There isn’t a chance you’d get a taxi.”

“I’ll walk, then. It’s only up the road.”

“You don’t seem to understand how busy it will be. The streets will be packed. Heaving. You’d be lucky if you made it back with the crowds of people on the street - at all hours of the night. And you know what you’re like after you’ve had a drink. No. No, it just makes the most sense you stay down here and we’ll all go to Katherine’s. You can talk to her about that book you were reading, she’ll like that. I’m sure you’ll have time to see your friends when you’re back in the new year.”

Matthew sat back in his chair. He slumped petulantly, deflated at this conclusion so quickly and inevitably reached. All the arguments he had prepared for her usual rebuttals had left him. Why was it that any confidence he had garnered through the independence of living, working, studying miles from here eluded him the second he stepped through her threshold again? There, he was a debater, street-smart, self-assured. There, he had a backbone. Here, he was a child. Reduced to nothing more than his mother’s son. The boy he had been. How could he expect the conversations of childhood to have the grace to stay there when he himself was struggling to leave? How many conversations had ended like this? School friends turned away at the door; curfew set at unreasonable hours. And what had he done? Bit his tongue. Appeased her. Easier to say nothing than to cause a row. Now, again, the attempt at making his own decisions under her roof were shot dead in the water.

Sarah reached over to the piece that caught her eye. It was put snugly to bed on the first try, followed by a performative hum to mark the achievement. Progress sprouted as she successfully placed four – five – six pieces sequentially. Things were back on track.

“Did you hear Carol down the road is pregnant?” she asked.

“No.”

“I know, just think, her and that useless husband of hers. He’s just opened a new place on the Main Street. Doing pizza, I think. We should try it in the new year before you’re back up the road.”

He pulled his chair back, pushing off the table, disrupting the pieces. The hard wooden legs grated against the cold tiled floor in a harsh screech, causing both to silently recoil.

“Where are you going?” asked Sarah, with more panic in her voice than she had intended. Had she pushed it too far? This was the moment he’d retire to his room, and she’d be left in the cold.

“Just getting a drink.” He filled a glass with leftover soft drink from Christmas. It had gone flat. He leaned over the kitchen worktop and looked out at the garden in the dark. A thin layer of frost was beginning to set over the grass. He turned and looked at the back of her head as she picked up piece after piece. This was how he was to spend the rest of his break? Playing children’s games with a woman who didn’t know the first thing about him anymore? He knew that probing again would draw suspicion, but he had to try.

“What difference would it make, though, really?” he asked.

“What’s that, dear?”

“Going back a few days early.”

“Oh, not this again. I thought we decided you were just going to leave it?”

“That’s what you decided. I really don’t see the issue. I’ve told them all I’m going so I can’t just not come now.”

“Just tell them you’ve decided to spend some time with your old mother! I’m sure they won’t mind. I need to hear more about these friends of yours, I don’t think you’ve mentioned them before. Tell me about – what was it? Molly?”

He thought of James waiting for him. Something began to stir inside him.

“So, what? That’s it then? That’s that decision just made for me? I’m not allowed to go back to the city I live in now because my mum says so? I’m twenty years old - do you know how weird that is?”

He had never spoken to her like this before. Whatever this was, it was real. Sarah felt the wind changing direction but couldn’t adjust her sails fast enough. Her course was set. She twisted round in her seat to face him.

“Honestly, if you saw how busy it’s going to be – and the weather! – you’d know I’m doing you a favour-“

“Will you just stop? It’s not about the weather or the busy streets or whatever else you’ve got in your head. You just can’t stand the thought of me doing what I actually want to do. You’ve always controlled what I do and who I see. And now I can’t get on a train a few days earlier without your say so. No, you need to parade me round Katherine’s. To talk to your friends about books because of how good it will make you look.”

Sarah cocked her head to the side.

“He must be some boy to get you so het up like this.”

She stared at him. Did he not realise she knew this face better than he did? That guilty face from boyhood that alerted her to a broken window before seeing the shattered glass. She saw it the second she picked him up from the train station but hadn’t worked out what was on his mind until now. She knew as well as he did there was no Molly. He might have changed his hair, his clothes, and his attitude since moving away but his eyes stayed the same. And right now, they were wide with fear.

Matthew tried to speak. Only air came out. He cleared his throat.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Barely more than a whisper.

She looked at him with eyes that were not unkind. They searched him for answers and were content to wait until he was ready to share. The kitchen worktop at his back was akin to being backed into a corner.

“I-I’ll be up early and get the train back in the morning.” He lumbered forward in a daze. Stopping at the door, he turned to her. She held the same look of patient curiosity. An attempt to bid her goodnight was foregone for fear of his voice failing him again. He left her with a nod.

Sarah turned back to the table as she listened to his footsteps receding upstairs. When accosted by old acquaintances, churchgoers, or neighbours in public places, she was often asked some variation of: “What’s it like, that boy of yours off to university?” She thought she knew what they meant and gave them the answers they wanted to hear to make them leave. Finally, she had the real answer. It was listening to footfall on stairs getting gradually quieter, more distant, and waiting for a bedroom door to close. With each day, he gets further from her, only to shut her out completely once he finds what he’s been looking for. And she’s left here.

A lonely finger traced its way around the curves and grooves of the pieces who found their place. The puzzle was maybe halfway finished, with sad islands of progress dotted in a listless sea. Sarah’s eyes rose from the puzzle to the frames on the wall and shelves. Smiles from photos behind the pane of dust. Her parents, now gone. Her sister, in Australia. Her daughter, down south with work. When was the last time she had seen her? The most recent photograph of Matthew was when he was a boy. The serious face with his cheeky eyes looked down at her. Her boy.

People had their own way of leaving. None of them were easy.