Necessity – Nessie to those who know her well, Mrs N to those who don’t – was the mother of invention and right now her daughter was driving her to distraction.
“I won’t!”
“You must!”
Mother/daughter conversations could be a thorny issue at the best of time but when the product of your womb is a teenager, well….
“Shan’t!”
Nessie took a deep breath and started counting to ten. She hadn’t heard anyone use the word shan’t in a long time and for a moment she admired the fact that Invention’s vocabulary had enriched itself since their last argument, but then she got to five and couldn’t hold back any longer.
“Look missy,” she only used this term when she was particularly angry, “it’s essential, fundamental a ….” She wanted to say inexorable but she was suddenly very aware she was sounding like a Thesaurus so she settled for… “please.”
Necessity looked at her mum and almost choked - it’s difficult to snort with laughter at the same time as spitting venom.
“Here,” Nessie pushed a glass of water across the table from which it was willing retrieved and drank very quickly.
Too quickly perhaps.
The burp that followed would have made a flatulent toad proud, as it was it burst over the pair of them in a colourful mixture of asparagus (which Invention had eaten for lunch) and bubblegum (that she had been chewing at the moment of choking.
Invie – as her friends knew her, or ‘Tion as her enemies were want to call her – smiled.
“That was something? Eh?”
Nessie allowed herself to smile.
“It certainly was.” She no longer felt like a Thesaurus but Oliver Hardy the silent, then un-silent, film star. Stan and ollie were among her favourites.
“Ok,” she scratched her head just as Laurel would have, knowing that her daughter would appreciate the gesture. “Let’s start again.”
“From the beginning?” Invie asked.
“It’s a mighty fine place to start,” her mother concurred. “Do you have any plans for tomorrow?
It was an innocent question but considering how quickly it had escalated into open warfare just a few minute earlier, Invie considered the options available to her. She could be honest and admit that she had been planning to spend the day in bed, but that would leave her commitments for the day open to negotiation. She could invent something, the funeral of a close friend perhaps – but that would backfire pretty quickly and all the family members likely to die already had so that was not a realistic idea.
“Er..” As she said this she realised the mistake.
“All those who hesitate are lost,” her mother chimed. “So….”.
“Ok! Ok, you win. But I’m doing it as a favour and you owe me.” And she knew instantly that this was a mistake too, her mother would now start singing.
“My little girl….” The original lyrics say boy but that had never got in her mother’s way.
“Mum, you don’t need to...” Invie tried to stop Nessie but it was too late.
“While I was fixing supper..”
The lyrics came from a song written by Harland Howard which Nessie had heard sung by J.J.Barie when she was growing up in Europe in the 1970’s. She had started singing it to her daughter when Invie was about five years old though neither of them now could remember why.
Well, not specifically. Something to do – as it was now – with debt.
“For the nine months I carried you… no debt.” Nessie would change the lyrics a little to suit the occasion but the message was always the same and one that was impossible to fight against.
“For the nights full of dread, and the years..”
“Ok Mum! Stop. I know! NO CHARGE.”
Nessie stopped and smiled.
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