Page 45 of Eva Reddy’s Trip of a Lifetime

Mother & Child Reunion

It is dark by the time I disembark at Gaya Junction and head toward the main gate where my Single Girl’s Guide assures me I will find a perfectly acceptable mid-range hotel directly opposite the rail station.

The information is solid. I check into an establishment with an enormous mural of a laughing Buddha out front and lug myself and my backpack up to my room.

It’s been a long day and my plan is to sit it out until my mother contacts me.

And for once, she doesn’t keep me waiting. No sooner have I closed the door behind me than I get a text notification. Not another insane TikTok video—a text! I just about weep with joy. My mother has finally decided to use a conventional means of communication.

Welcome to Bodh Gaya, Bunny! Fun fact: this is where Buddha obtained enlightenment. And if anyone needs their chakras properly cleansed, it’s you, my darling. Text me back with your hotel details and I’ll have my driver pick you up tomorrow morning at ten sharp. Can’t wait to see you!

I don’t let my fingers return text until I can trust them to tap out my latest address without offering suggestions of where exactly she can stick her chakras.

But my mother’s niggling aside, Bodh Gaya does sound like the perfect place for our reunion.

I’ll need all the Zen I can muster to deal with Debbie Reddy.

And I wouldn’t say no to a dash of enlightenment on the side.

It might help me work out how I feel about Jonathan and Utkarsh and what I am going to do next.

I am downstairs right on ten o’clock the next morning and immediately spot a man wearing a chauffeur’s hat and holding up a sign that says, ‘Eveready Bunny’.

My mother does not know when a joke is over and done.

This one is more than three decades past its use-by date, but she still finds it incredibly funny.

Or she just finds it funny to irritate me, which is more likely.

I identify myself and follow the driver to his new model Suzuki sedan taxi and set off on the sixteen-kilometre trip into Bodh Gaya.

We cruise along a lovely avenue shaded by trees on either side and minus the usual piles of rubbish.

There are only two very tidy lanes of traffic.

I wind down my window to get a better sense of my surroundings.

I’m greeted with an immediate blast of heat.

The temperature will hit forty degrees today for sure.

But it’s worth it for the wonderful smells that waft into the car.

Dozens upon dozens of food stalls line the roadside, each one offering a single specialty.

The watermelon looks particularly good. We steer carefully around a pedal car touting ice-cream treats.

I hope I come across that again later when I’m hankering for something sweet.

I let out a deep, contented sigh. It seems I have landed upon the most peaceful and most orderly place in all of India, with abundant excellent food options. I don’t know about enlightenment, but Bodh Gaya could just be my nirvana.

The traffic, both human and vehicular, becomes steadily thicker as we get closer to the centre of town. Eventually the road becomes so narrow and the pedestrians so many that my driver stops.

‘This is as far as I can go.’ He tips his cap toward me. ‘Walk straight ahead another two hundred metres and you will find the Great Buddha. Your mother is waiting for you there.’

I give my chauffeur a decent tip then drag myself and my backpack out of the car and dutifully limp in the suggested direction.

It’s not long before I spot our meeting place, all twenty towering metres of it.

The Great Buddha is enormous, dwarfing the crazy woman frantically waving at me from its base.

I scan the area, looking for my father. He is seated nearby in an elderly approximation of the lotus position. He appears to be meditating.

I race up the long pathway as quickly as my backpack and injured leg will let me. Somehow, I pick up the pace as I get closer. Then, in a manoeuvre that surprises my mother and me in equal measure, I proceed to collapse into her arms and ugly cry, very, very loudly.

We stay like that under the Buddha’s benevolent gaze for maybe five minutes, my head on my mother’s bony shoulder, her hands inexpertly stroking my back until my body stops heaving. Finally, she stands back, grips my upper arms and examines me carefully.

‘Well, it’s good to see you too, Bunny.’ She brushes a strand of hair from my eyes.

Her plentiful bangles jangle prettily along her arms. ‘Obviously your face is a little mottled and puffy from all that blubbering, but other than that, you look good. In fact, it’s the best I’ve seen you look since you met that boy. ’

‘Jonathan, Mum. My husband’s name is Jonathan.’ I sniffle, wishing I’d thought to pack tissues.

‘Yes, yes. I know that. How could I forget? He’s been pestering me terribly. Calling every day and every night. He’s in India, you know.’

‘Yes, I know. I didn’t invite him.’

‘I guessed as much, seeing as he has no idea where you are. He really does seem very worried.’ Her eyes narrow.

I know the look. She’s been deploying it for fifty years whenever she wants to extract more information from me than I’m prepared to give.

Eventually I let out a sigh of resignation. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘I guessed that too. But I have a long story for you as well. Let’s go for a stroll.

Or a hobble.’ She cocks her head to one side.

‘What on earth have you done to yourself, by the way? You really need to be more careful. You are so clumsy. Always have been. Every year in dance school you were cast as a gnome or a goblin. Just once it would have been nice to be the mother of a fairy …’ As my mother launches into one of her stream-of-consciousness screeds focused on my various failings, I have to remind myself that I came looking for her and not the other way around.

I zone out while I wait for her to loop back to her original line of thought.

‘Alright then. I can tell you’re not listening. We’ll leave your bag with Dad. He’ll be meditating for a while yet.’

I drop my backpack at my father’s side and kiss him lightly on his bald head. He nods without breaking the rhythm of his chanting.

Mum and I walk together back down the path to the street outside, pressing on until the crowd thins out enough that we can talk without shouting at each other.

‘You know, I was frantic with worry when you decided to strike out alone in India. I mean in Dad’s condition, it’s plain crazy. Anything could have happened.’ I kick at a stone, sending it skittering down the road.

‘And yet nothing did happen, Bunny. You worry too much. You always have. Sometimes you just have to let life lift you up and ride it to shore.’ My mother straightens the sleeve of her sari.

‘And let’s face facts here. This will probably be your dad’s last big trip.

’ She lowers her voice as if my father is eavesdropping right behind us and not safely meditating a few blocks away.

‘He’s drifting away from us. The disease is manageable for the moment, but it won’t be that way for much longer.

I know how it goes, I went through this with my own father.

I want to build memories. Not for him so much.

His memories are already disappearing almost as soon as we make them. I need the memories for me.’

I find my eyes welling with tears again.

Poor old Dad. His intellect was always his greatest pride and talent and now it is being stolen from him.

My heart breaks for my mother too. For all her faults, she loves my father fiercely.

How hard it must be for her to watch him slowly slipping away from the world.

We walk for a while without talking. Finally, I stop, take a long swig of my bottled water. A goat bleats from the other side of the road.

It’s time to let my mother know what a mess I’ve made of my life.

‘There are some things I need to tell you about Jonathan and me.’ I stare down at my feet, trying to find the right words, but my mother interrupts before I can continue.

‘No, Bunny, there’s something I need to tell you first.’

I look up. My mother’s expression is unfamiliar—for her. She looks guilty. Remorseful, even. Whatever she has done, whatever she is about to tell me, it must be very bad indeed. I am immediately on high alert.

She allows a few seconds to pass, instinctively infusing the scene with drama.

‘I’m not just your mother. I consider myself your friend.’

Surely not. She didn’t. She isn’t. But I know what she is going to say next.

‘I am your Ernest Friend.’

From the journals and miscellaneous paperwork of Eva Reddy (Age 24)

September 16th, 1996

I’ve been married for just over a week and the nausea is at last beginning to subside. Both from my pregnancy and from my mother’s theatrics at the reception.

She behaved reasonably well at the church, if you overlook her Gothic mother of the bride look, complete with crepe mourning veil. And when the minister asked if anyone had any objections, the only noise from her section of the pew was a subtly lofted sniff.

I let my guard down, but I was having fun. And my mother was being charming, which happens occasionally.

The flash point was the end of my speech, when I announced I was pregnant. While all the other guests stood up and raised their glasses to our unborn child, my mother slammed her drink down on the table and marched out of the room.

I was sure people noticed—she had been at the table closest to the bridal party—but I pretended nothing was wrong and returned to my seat, a little shaky on my feet. As I sat down, Jonathan placed a firm hand on my leg. He didn’t exactly hold me down, but he was certainly expressing a preference.

‘Don’t follow her. Don’t buy in to her drama. This is our day. Not hers.’

My father called Mum a cab and explained to anyone who asked that she had a migraine, and the celebrations went on without the mother of the bride.

Somehow, Dad managed to maintain a smile through the formalities.

I knew he was desperately worried about Mum—I could see the strain around his eyes.

But it was my wedding day and he put me first.

It was almost time for Jonathan and me to say our goodbyes when Dad pulled up a chair beside me.

‘You do know she loves you, don’t you?’

‘Like a shark loves a small marine mammal? That kind of love? I’m sorry, Dad, but sometimes it is very, very hard to believe.’

He reached for my hands. His skin felt loose and dry. For the first time, I realised he was getting old. ‘Well, it’s true. And she will also love our grandchild. Passionately. She just needs to get used to the idea.’

He poured himself a glass of wine, his third of the night. It was the most I’ve ever seen him drink. But he usually has to keep my mother in check and that requires being well under the legal limit.

‘What you need to understand is that you are her world and she wants the best for you. The two of you just don’t always agree on what that is. Her life has been a disappointment. She wants more for you.’

I’d heard that excuse before. In the past, I’d shrug my shoulders and let it go. But she had just walked out on my wedding. It was too much.

‘You have to stop justifying her behaviour, Dad. She has a fantastic life. She has you. She has a nice home. A crazy number of interests and hobbies. She travels. She can do whatever she pleases. What more could she possibly want?’

He knocked back half the glass of wine before answering.

‘She wants the life that was rightfully hers.’

A life that doesn’t include a child and a husband. That was the truth of it. But unlike me, Dad didn’t care if he was Debbie Reddy’s Plan B or C or Z. He was just happy to be somewhere in her alphabet.

His eyes misted as he continued speaking, his gaze fixed somewhere over my right shoulder.

‘If only she had been born at another time to different parents. She was magnificent back in her day. An absolute marvel. Whatever she tried, she was the best at it. Sport. Arts. Academics. Did you know she was offered a place in the state hockey team when she was sixteen years old? But her parents refused to let her go to the training camp. They thought it would corrupt her and ruin her chances of a good marriage.’

I tried to imagine how I would feel if I’d had that kind of talent and wasn’t allowed to see where it would take me. I’d be angry. And resentful. But I don’t think I would torture my only child. Or act out with no thought at all for those around me.

‘When hockey was taken from her, she found another interest. This time she took up acting and dancing. She loved it. And she was very, very good. She was also very beautiful. She would have ended up in Hollywood. I’m sure of it.’

Dad was biased but he was also probably right. I remembered Mum’s turn in Hamlet when I was still at school. A career in Hollywood wasn’t that farfetched.

‘But again, her parents stepped in. She was smart enough to go to university, but they didn’t think a girl should be more educated than her husband. So instead, she went to work in a bank.’

A waiter came up and cleared the dessert plates from our table. Jonathan and I would need to leave soon.

‘I’d had a crush on her all through high school and I found a reason to go to that bank every day.

After a lot of cajoling, I convinced her to go out on a date with me.

I think, at first, I was just the better of two poor options.

She could live with her parents or throw her lot in with me.

It took her a while, but she made the right choice.

I’ve always given her the space she needs to follow her passions. And her greatest passion is you.’

‘Lucky me.’ I meant to sound sarcastic, but the words came out as a sigh. For my mother. For me.

‘She wants you to have everything that she couldn’t have. To be anything you want to be. And she will do whatever she thinks she needs to do to make sure of it. Her efforts can be misguided, annoying and downright embarrassing. But it’s her way of loving you.’

I was about to reply when Jonathan walked up carrying a huge plastic laundry basket full of wedding gifts.

‘It’s time, Eva.’

I gazed at the accomplished, handsome man who was now my husband and hoped that, like my mother, I had made the right choice.

Dad pulled himself to his feet. ‘You go, darling. And have a wonderful honeymoon. I need to get home and talk your mother out of the liquor cabinet and into bed.’ He gave me a quick peck on the cheek and chuckled. ‘You do know she will still be meddling in your life when you are fifty, don’t you?’

Oh God, please no.