To Mum’s credit, it was quite a relaxing process. I mean, I don’t think I became friends with the jigsaw. But I did get to know a reasonable amount about it.
“So,” asked Mum, holding a piece to the light like she was checking it wasn’t a forgery, “what has happened with you and Oliver?”
Obviously, it was complex, and there were two sides to every story, and Mum cared about both of us, and if I wanted her to give me good advice, I’d present the situation in the fairest, most impartial way I could. “He was just a dick,” I explained. “He’s been a dick for months.”
There was a pause, Mum carefully finishing Moomin Mama’s bowl of fruit. “Are you sure? Because you know I love you, but between you and Oliver, if I had to guess who was the bigger dick, I would not normally expect it to be him.”
“Thanks. And…and…I’ve been very reasonable. While he’s turned into some kind of steamrollery wedding tyrant.”
Another pause as Mum either thought about this or got distracted by weird blue-eyed children. “Marriage is complicated, and weddings are complicated, but most importantly weddings are not marriages.”
“Are you sure?” I demanded. “Because you know what they say.
Steamrollery wedding tyrant me once, shame on you. Steamrollery wedding tyrant me for the rest of my life, shame on me.”
“I do not like that idiom as much as be friends with a jigsaw.”
Mum sighed. “I can see why you are concerned, but you have been with Oliver for more than two years, and he has never been like this before—”
“Actually,” I admitted, “he’s quite like this. But I thought I liked it.”
“And you don’t anymore?”
I tried to wedge a piece of top hat into place, but it turned out to be part of a cat’s arse. “It just feels different now. Everything is all…I don’t know.”
“He’s also just lost his father,” Mum pointed out. “That can be very hard.”
“Yeah, but…but…I felt that made us closer. Like, if anything was going to break us, it should have been that and it didn’t. So why is it going to shit now?”
Mum put a consoling arm around me. “It is hard to say without knowing what type of shit it is. There are lots of different types of shit, and they are all shit in different ways.”
“It’s sort of…” I tried to pin my thoughts down but, thematically enough, it was like trying to nail shit to the wall. “We’re arguing kind of…kind of constantly about everything? And we never used to, not like this. And this morning we had the biggest fight we’ve basically ever had, and if you put a gun to my head, I’m not sure what it was really even about and just…is that what it’s going to be like? Is that what being married will be like?”
With typical sangfroid, Mum shrugged. “Probably not. Probably that is what organising big, life-changing events with lots of guests and rules and expectations together will be like. And you don’t do that very often.”
“We did it fine for the funeral,” I pointed out.
“That was not the same. It was his father and so he had the right to be a… What was it? A steamrollery tyrant if he wanted to. But your wedding, that is for both of you.”
“Oliver doesn’t seem to have got that memo,” I told her glumly.
Mum turned to look at me. There was an interrogatey expression on her face I felt quite ambivalent about. “Are you sure you sent it to him?”
“Well, I think so.”
“Because the Luc I know, he is not the sort of boy who would get cut out of his own wedding.”
That was kind of her. The Luc I knew would get cut out of his own funeral. Except if Oliver was cutting me out in order to create the heteronormative marriage of his dreams, you’d think he’d be…
happier about it? “I’m not even sure it’s that,” I said. “I’m involved, we’re both involved… It just doesn’t feel like us anymore.”
“Ah.” Mum looked sage. “Perhaps it is too many chefs. They are spoiling the sauce.”
“There’s not even that many chefs. Like, I know the wedding cliché is everybody else is trying to get you to do their thing. But normally that’s the families and my family is you, and Oliver’s family isn’t even speaking to him, so this is totally on us. We’re fucking up our own sauce.”
There was a long silence. Mum’s sage look had intensified.