by Maria Goodin
I felt a sudden surge of rage at my mum for not being here anywhere near as much as I’d expected. And then an even bigger surge of rage at my dad for being here and refusing to help. And then at Hellie for being useless. And at Laura and all my friends for being free…
“WAHH! WAHH! WAHHH!”
My chest started to feel tight, like I couldn’t get air into my lungs, like there was a belt around my ribcage being systematically tightened. I felt my heart rate accelerate as I started to panic. I tried to inhale deeply, to drag in some air, but I couldn’t quite catch my breath. I thought about my dad down the bottom of the garden, how far away that was.
I walked back into my room, craving the familiarity of my stuff, my environment. I jigged the baby up down up down, trying to prevent my fingers clenching around his tiny limbs, trying to ignore the need in my arms to hurl him away from me.
I slumped down on my bedroom floor, surrounded by bits of my clothing, the baby’s clothing, a maths textbook, a packet of baby wipes, a calculator…
The baby screamed on my knees.
I clenched my eyes shut and tried not to cry. No one could help me right now. I needed to calm myself down.
I needed to focus on my breathing, but the constant screaming wouldn’t let me, so I needed to make the baby quiet, but I didn’t know how the hell to do that!
He’d had milk, he’d been changed, he’d been winded. He had a Babygro and a cardigan on, so he had to be warm enough. I’d been shocked by the stifling temperatures on the maternity ward, the fact that even in that kind of heat the babies had all been forced into cardigans and little beanie hats. But, apparently, keeping small babies warm was essential, especially ones that had been born a bit prematurely like ours. We’d been subjected to a scolding by the health visitor when she came for her first home visit last month.
“Baby should have more clothes,” she’d said sternly, handling him like he was no more than an aubergine in a greengrocer’s. He was wearing nothing but a nappy, a doll-sized T-shirt and a pair of blue socks.
“I put a cardigan on him this morning,” Hellie had said, playing the angelic mother and glaring at me. “I don’t know why you took it off.”
I’d shrugged. “It’s July. It’s warm outside.”
“Yes, but we’re not outside, are we?” the health visitor had said abruptly. “Stick to Babygros.” She scribbled something damning in her report book.
But as I looked at the baby screaming on my knees, I noticed that his ears, cheeks and fingers were tinged bright pink. Sod what they said. He was too hot, I was sure of it.
I tore the poppers of his Babygro open, prised out his tiny limbs. His skin was warm and blotchy, his little chest rising and falling rapidly as he wailed. I unpeeled the fastenings at either side of his nappy, loosening it just enough to let some air circulate. I held his naked tummy against my damp T-shirt.
For a moment I just stayed there, listening to his crying, feeling his tiny body squirming awkwardly against mine. But then the crying started to subside, turning to more of a moaning, then a mewing, then finally, finally, there was silence.
For a second I contemplated the idea that I might have actually gone deaf.
But when I looked down at him, his eyes were flitting back and forth, contentedly examining the blue of my T-shirt, his little fists clenching and unclenching, grasping the material.
I turned him over onto his back so that we were facing each other. His eyes peered into mine, fascinated, like he was seeing me for the first time. The pinkness that had mottled his skin had subsided. I noticed that his chest was rising and falling almost imperceptibly now, his heartbeat having returned to normal. And with some surprise I noticed that mine had, too.
I couldn’t help it. I smiled. I even gave a little laugh. I’d done it. I’d figured out what the problem was and I’d calmed him down all on my own.
I held my little finger out to him and he clenched it tightly in his first.
And for the first time since his birth I felt hope that I might be able to do this after all.
I remember telling him: “This has to stop.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying you know.”
“I know.”
Michael sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, while I paced slowly around the increasingly small amount of space that was available for pacing. My sister’s old room was becoming a dumping ground for every wandering soul who came and went. Even though she’d been gone for almost four years, traces of Laura still remained: a wonky ceramic bowl she made at school, an old teddy bear perched high on a shelf, and those faded punk-rock posters that no one could be bothered to take down. Then there were Hellie’s contributions: some expensive jeans and tops in the wardrobe, a vanity mirror and some items of make-up. I didn’t know when she’d next be back, or even if she would, so I left it all there, month after month, like an open-ended question. And then finally there was Michael’s stuff. A couple of guitars, some scattered clothes, cigarette packets and bottles.
Far too many empty bottles.
Sometimes I wondered who Michael would have become if he’d never met me. What if Tom had never introduced him to metal music and Max had never shared that first cigarette? What if I’d never given him his first sip of alcohol? I knew he’d made his own choices, but still, I couldn’t help but wonder… Was part of this my fault?
“I’ll stop. I will,” he muttered.
“When?”
“Today.”
I turned my face to the ceiling and sighed heavily. It was like listening to all our previous conversations on replay.
“Yeah, but you won’t, will you?
“I will,” he muttered, rubbing at his eyes. Last year, he’d had a large, weeping angel tattooed on his forearm, its dark wings wrapping around his pale skin. Now a demon was emerging just above it, his twisted, angry face adorned by sketchy horns that couldn’t be completed until Michael had the funds to pay for it.
“I can’t have you around Josh if you’re going to be doing this,” I said, sounding almost apologetic.
Michael looked up at me. His face was white and his dark eyes were bloodshot.
“Josh doesn’t know what’s going on,” he protested, “he’s three.”
“Exactly. He’s three. He’s not a baby anymore. He sees things, he hears things. He understands things.”
Michael shook his head, dismissively. But I’d been thinking about it, and I knew I was right.
“I’m serious, mate. You need to sort yourself out. Or I can’t have you here.”
Even at that point, I wasn’t sure if I meant it. Where else would he go? After his GCSEs, Michael had spent eighteen months driving himself into a state of misery, trying to get to grips with his father’s business, but he’d struggled, just like he’d struggled at school. He was hopeless at his new role, out of his depth and full of anxiety. He’d quit more times than I could count but had always gone back as part of his endless, self-defeating mission to win his father’s approval. He’d started drinking and doing God knows what else just to get through, had fallen in with a few shady types he’d met on the local music scene, and finally got himself thrown out of both the business and his father’s home. Apart from a bit of gigging and busking, he hadn’t worked in almost two years, and if he wasn’t sleeping here, he’d be crashed out on the sofa at one of his new “mates’” places. I didn’t want that. I wanted him to be safe. I wanted him to get his life sorted out. But looking at him now – unwashed hair, nicotine-stained fingernails, empty bottles at his feet – he looked so far removed from that neat, innocent blond-haired boy I once knew that it was hard to believe he was the same person.
“Josh looks up to you, Michael, you know that. He worships you, for God’s sake.”
“But I wouldn’t ever do anything—”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you with him, I do. But you know what he said to me the other day? He said, Why won’t Michael wake up? It’s daytime.
”
“I was asleep!”
“You were passed out!”
“He doesn’t know the difference!”
“He knows something’s not right! Look, I just can’t have this around him! First Hellie, and now you. He needs people around him who are going to be stable, who don’t change from one minute to the next because they’re hung-over or stoned or drunk or—”
“Okay!” Michael snapped. He glared angrily at me, but his expression quickly changed to remorse. “You’re right, I don’t want Josh to see me like this,” he said, shaking his head sadly.
I could see I’d touched a nerve. Maybe this was my way in. God knows I’d tried everything else over the past few months. Shouting, swearing, begging, pleading, even shoving him hard into a wall out of sheer frustration. And fear. Fear that he was going down a path he might not come back from. But nothing worked. He apologised and promised to change and then went out and did it all over again.
But for Josh’s sake, maybe, just maybe, he might turn himself around. When my dad had been out at work, Michael had been the one who’d watched over Josh for hours on end while I’d poured over my A level textbooks and occasionally even managed to make it in to college for the odd tutorial. He’d walked him around and around the house, naming every object they’d come across, sung him songs, played him tunes on the guitar, made up lyrics with his name in. He’d been the fun one while I’d been desperately trying to knuckle down to study. I was pleased at that point that Michael didn’t have anywhere else to be, and I felt like I owed him big time. But what had started out as the occasional wild weekend had spiralled out of control, and I felt like I had no choice but to give him an ultimatum, even if it was just to shock him back to his senses.
“Josh is growing up, Michael,” I said, sitting down on the bed beside him, “and I want you to be a massive part of his life. Because he thinks you’re the best. He adores you. God, I think he’d like you to be his dad. But this…” I gestured to the mess around us.
“Yeah, I know,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s fucked up, isn’t it?”
“Look, you stop drinking and I’ll stop, too.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Yes, I can. It’s not like I’ve always made the best choices when I’ve been drinking,” I said, thinking of the night I slept with Hellie, and the night I scarred Libby’s face forever. “We’ll stop together, okay? Plus, you clean yourself up and I’ll get Josh one of those guitars you were talking about. And you can start to teach him, just like you said you wanted to.”
Michael shook his head. “Nah, you were right, he’s too little.”
“No, like you said, he’s smart and he’s got good concentration. He can just have a play around to start with, see what sounds he can make. But I want you to be the one to do it with him.”
Michael fingered a small rip in his jeans and nodded thoughtfully.
“Wouldn’t that be cool?” I asked, probing for some confirmation that I was hitting the spot.
“Yeah, that would be pretty cool.”
“And then he’d always have the memory that his Uncle Michael was the one who gave him his first guitar, the one who taught him his first strings or chords or whatever.”
Michael laughed at my musical ignorance. “Well, we’d better not leave it up to you.”
“Exactly,” I smiled, “he needs you.”
“Well, I do have a pretty mean version of ‘Froggy Went A-Courtin’’ I could teach him.”
“Yeah, not that version.”
“Really? Not that version?”
“No, not till he’s eighteen. Just the normal version, if that’s okay.”
Michael turned to me and smiled, his pink eyes regaining a little bit of life. “I’ll do it, okay? I promise. I’ll sort myself out. You get him that guitar and I’ll start teaching him. And I’ll be as clean as a whistle.”
I nodded and smiled, full of hope that I’d finally given him a reason to step off the path of self-destruction. Full of hope that this time he would change.
I remember Brenda saying: “He seems much more like his old self, doesn’t he?”
I nodded, squinting against the bright sunshine.
“Yeah, he does.”
“I think it was all the stress, you know. Ever since the takeover, the college has just gone bureaucracy-mad. I was up until eleven o’clock last night doing paperwork. I can’t wait to follow in your father’s footsteps and retire. One year to go and counting.”
I watched my dad dribbling a football slowly around the garden, Josh chasing him in fits of giggles, tripping over his own poorly coordinated feet every so often.
“Oh, he’s having a little lie-down again!” my dad would joke, making Josh giggle so hard he could barely get back up again.
“I guess he must have been more stressed than he seemed,” I said.
“Oh, he’s definitely been stressed,” confirmed Brenda, removing her sunglasses and examining them for smudges. “I know he always seems as cool as a cucumber, but how could he not be stressed? Thirty years teaching in the same place and then someone comes in and tells you to do it all differently? And then everything at home. Your mum and…well… you know… everything else.”
Brenda was a friend of my dad’s. In fact, it turned out they’d been friends for years. Apparently, they used to do the crossword together every lunchtime and share packets of Jaffa Cakes. I didn’t even know my dad liked crosswords. Or Jaffa Cakes. She was a small, neat woman with a gentle, motherly way about her, despite having never married or had children of her own. Whenever she came round, she brought comfort food – cakes, casseroles, lasagnes – and fussed over us “boys”, which is how she referred to myself, Josh and Michael collectively. She knew a surprising amount about each of us, and with a sense of disbelief, I realised that my dad – so quiet, self-contained, and reserved – must have spent years spilling out the details of his home life to someone none of us even knew existed.
“Stress can do such funny things to your brain,” said Brenda. “I’m not surprised he was losing the plot a bit. I won’t be surprised if I end up going a bit doolally myself soon.”
Over the past year, I’d become increasingly concerned about my dad’s mental state. He’d become forgetful and absent-minded, and he’d get frustrated and agitated about the smallest of things. None of it would have been particularly alarming or even that unusual for a man in his mid-sixties, but it just wasn’t my dad, who’d always been extraordinarily calm, organised and sharp-minded. Laura and I had engaged in several hushed conversations about the best way of conning him into seeing a doctor, but it seemed those conversations had been unnecessary.
Now, a month into retirement, he seemed bright, full of energy, and his “senior moments”, as we’d started to refer to them, appeared to have subsided. It was a weight off my shoulders. With him back to his old self I was even starting to think that maybe I could apply for university. Like he kept saying, now he was retired, he had all the time in the world to watch Josh, and as long as I stayed local, why couldn’t I make it work? After all, getting through my A levels had seemed impossible two years ago, but I’d made it. Just.
“That was some wonderful football playing!” grinned Brenda, as my dad walked across the grass towards us, holding his giggling grandson upside down.
“You’re going to be the next star striker for England, aren’t you, Jamie?” my dad joked, turning Josh the right way up and plonking him down. My son stumbled towards me, arms outstretched, laughing.
“Am I?” I asked, scooping Josh up in my arms. “It’s clearly been a while since you’ve seen me play, Dad.”
“You mean Josh,” Brenda corrected him.
“Sorry?” my dad asked, scratching his head.
“Josh,” she repeated. “You said Jamie.”
My dad smiled vacantly. “Oh, yes!” he laughed, realisation catching up with him. “Too many Js!”
They laughed heartily. I quite envied
that way the smallest things seemed to evoke a disproportionate degree of hilarity in older people.
I absent-mindedly stroked Josh’s sweaty head and watched my dad enjoying himself with his old friend. It was just a mistake, that’s all. Too many J’s. So easily done. He was fine. Fit, strong, healthy and as sharp as ever. I’d do it. I’d put in my application for uni and look at starting next year.
With the sun warming my back and my happy, tired son resting his head against my shoulder, I really felt like the future was opening up. I couldn’t believe how far I’d come. Everything seemed infinitely more manageable than it had just a few months ago, and for the first time since Josh’s birth I felt genuinely hopeful about our future.
Chapter 9
Reconciliation
“You all right, Jay?” calls Stewart from behind the bar. “You look a bit on edge.”
He finishes arranging bottles on the shelf behind him and runs a hand over his smooth head. It’s like he has to check every so often whether the hair that deserted him in his twenties has come back yet.
“Uh… yeah, I’m fine,” I tell him, picking my coffee up and moving tables for the second time, “I’m just… I’m meeting someone, that’s all.”
Where would Libby want to sit? In the corner? Does that seem too intimate? In the middle of the room? Does that seem too exposed?
“Oh yeah?” Stewart laughs mischievously. “I think I know who that might be.”
“Really?”
Jesus, can’t Michael just keep his mouth shut about my business?
“Yeah, she was in here Friday night asking after you. I won’t repeat some of the language she used. Women get pretty miffed when blokes don’t return their calls, you know?”
Oh God. Rachel. Tall, blonde, Australian Rachel who seems to think – perhaps understandably – that there’s something going on between us. Rachel whose hands were all over me at Michael’s gig the other night, right here in the centre of this room. Squashed in among the crowd of hot, sweaty bodies, the music pulsating through me, I’d been swept along with it. Arms around each other, some suggestive comments (mainly from her), lips against each other’s ears (the only way to make ourselves heard), her hand snaking under my T-shirt as we watched the band play. I hadn’t meant anything by it and had no intention of taking it further. I was trying to get my head sorted right now, not add further complications. But it seemed like I’d inadvertently gone and done that anyway. I’d meant to reply to her texts, but while I was figuring out a way to politely nip things in the bud, I’d forgotten to reply at all.