Anyway. There’s nothing I can do about my mum’s tragic dependency except hope that she doesn’t do too much damage to her life. (She’s already done major damage to our living room, after reading an “Interiors” piece about “Why not hand paint all your furniture?”)
So then Frank ambles into the kitchen, wearing his black I MOD, THEREFORE I AM T-shirt, his earphones in and his phone in his hand. Mum lowers the Daily Mail and stares at him as though the scales have fallen from her eyes.
(I’ve never understood that. Scales?
Anyway. Whatever.)
“Frank,” she says, “how many hours have you played on your computer games this week?”
“Define computer games,” Frank says, without looking up from his phone.
“What?” Mum looks at me uncertainly, and I shrug. “You know. Computer games. How many hours? FRANK!” she yells, as he makes no move to respond. “How many hours? Take those things out of your ears!”
“What?” says Frank, taking his earphones out. He blinks at her as though he didn’t hear the question. “Is this important?”
“Yes this is important!” Mum spits. “I want you to tell me how many hours you’re spending per week playing computer games. Right now. Add it up.”
“I can’t,” says Frank calmly.
“You can’t? What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” says Frank, with elaborate patience. “Do you mean literally computer games? Or do you mean all screen games, including Xbox and PlayStation? Do you include games on my phone? Define your terms.”
Frank is such a moron. Couldn’t he see Mum was in one of her pre-rant build-ups?
“I mean anything that warps your mind!” says Mum, brandishing the Daily Mail. “Do you realize the dangers of these games? Do you realize your brain isn’t developing properly? Your BRAIN, Frank! Your most precious organ.”
Frank gives a dirty snigger, which I can’t help giggling at. Frank is actually pretty funny.
“I’ll ignore that,” says Mum stonily. “It only goes to prove what I was saying.”
“No it doesn’t,” says Frank, and opens the fridge. He takes out a carton of chocolate milk and drains it, straight from the carton, which is gross.
“Don’t do that!” I say furiously.
“There’s another carton. Relax.”
“I’m putting a limit on your playing, young man.” Mum bats the Daily Mail for emphasis. “I’ve just about had enough of this.”
Young man. That means she’s going to drag Dad into it. Any time she starts using young man or young woman, sure enough the next day there’s some ghastly family meeting, where Dad tries to back up everything Mum says, even though he can’t follow half of it.
Anyway, not my problem.
Until Mum arrives in my bedroom that evening and demands,
“Audrey, what is Land of Conquerors?”
I look up from Grazia and survey her. She looks tense. Her cheeks are pink and her right hand is all clenched, as if it’s just come off a computer mouse. She’s been Googling “computer game addiction,” I just know she has.
“A game.”
“I know it’s a game!” Mum sounds exasperated. “But why does Frank play it all the time? You don’t play it all the time, do you?”
“No.” I’ve played LOC, and I really don’t get the obsession. I mean, it’s OK for an hour or two.
“So what’s the appeal?”
“Well, you know.” I think for a moment. “It’s exciting. You get rewards. And the heroes are pretty good. Like, the graphics are amazing, and they just released this new warrior team with new capabilities, so…” I shrug.
Mum looks more bewildered than ever. The trouble is, she doesn’t play games. So it’s kind of impossible to convey to her the difference between LOC 3 and, say, Pac-Man from 1985.
“They show it on YouTube,” I say in sudden inspiration. “People do commentaries. Hang on.”
As I’m finding a clip on my iPad, Mum sits down and looks around the room. She’s trying to act casual, but I can sense her beady blue eyes scanning my piles of stuff, looking for…what? Anything. Everything. The truth is, Mum and I haven’t done casual for a while. Everything is loaded.
With everything that’s happened, that’s one of the saddest things of all. We can’t be normal with each other anymore. The tiniest thing I say, Mum’s all over it, even if she doesn’t realize it. Her brain goes into overdrive. What does it mean? Is Audrey all right? What’s Audrey really saying?
I can see her looking closely at a pair of old ripped jeans on my chair, as though they hold some dark significance. Whereas in fact the only significance they hold is: I’ve grown out of them. I’ve shot up about three inches in the last year, which makes me five eight. Quite tall for fourteen. People say I look like Mum, but I’m not as pretty as her. Her eyes are so blue. Like blue diamonds. Mine are wishy-washy—not that they’re particularly visible right now.
Just so you can visualize me, I’m fairly skinny, fairly nondescript, wearing a black vest-top and skinny jeans. And I wear dark glasses all the time, even in the house. It’s…Well. A thing. My thing, I suppose. Hence the “celebrity” quips from Rob our neighbour. He saw me in my dark glasses, getting out of the car in the rain, and he was all like, “Why the shades? Are you Angelina Jolie?”