by Irvine Welsh
It sounded plausible, but it hasn’t quite worked out that way. But I’m not complaining—well, not much. I guess we’re all great self-justifiers. I know I’d have been just as fulfilled in a career, though in a different fashion. But as a mom, in many ways, I’m at my happiest now. It isn’t all roses, though, nothing is, and I do get a little tired out with Nelson. He needs a lot of attention, and sometimes Lena can’t help that much, as she’s working most days in her studio.
I shut my laptop and I’m watching that Michelle bitch in her crappy weight-and-date show. Lena comes in with a big frown on her face. — What’s up?
— Nothing . . . in fact, it’s pretty damn good news, she says, forcing some cheer into her expression, as she hands me a copy of a bill of sale.
I look at the bottom-line figure and hear my own gasp of disbelief. Then I throw my arms around her. — Jesus fuck almighty!
— They’ll be coming to take him away next week, she says glumly, like she’s talking about Nelson.
— Oh, right . . . I try to inject concern into my voice. I never get this crazy artist thing about selling their work. I’d just think about the money and get on with knocking out the next piece of shit.
She reads my mind. — I know, she smiles, kissing me, giving me a scent of her fresh sweat, — I gotta let go. Mom and Dad up yet?
— Haven’t seen them, I drop my voice, — but I’ve heard grumblings from the guest suite. I feel my mouth tighten, as I cup my ear. — And gurgling noises tell me Nelson’s awake.
Lena goes to shower and change and I start to get myself and Nelson ready for the short drive to the airport. The Sorensons join us for breakfast bagels and orange juice. It’s strange how different they are from how I pictured them during that clandestine email correspondence (which they still believe was with their daughter). I’d envisioned Todd as a tall, thin man, but he’s short and squat, with a gray-blond crew cut and a deep-lined face. He says very little. Molly talks for them both: wasteful, inconsequential chatter. She has a steel-wool permed mop, and hawkish features, with a double chin, fleshy arms, and a ton of cellulite. We eat while discussing mundane stuff, Molly going on about some kind of dream she had about yesterday’s Thanksgiving. — I think it came from being in a house surrounded by water . . .
I never, ever thought that my father would move down here, but he bought the house from a fading basketball star Miami Heat traded to Cleveland, or some other Rust Belt franchise on its last legs. I confess to sometimes feeling aggrieved that Mona’s living in that level of luxury and she’s almost certain to be Dad’s main or even sole beneficiary, especially when their kid arrives. I can’t exactly complain though; I like living up here with Lena, and she’s let me put my own touches to the house, like splashing a little color on those walls.
We get into the 4X4 which we bought when Nelson came along. Lena is driving, and I’m sitting with Nelson and Molly in the back, the Sorensons’ considerable, largely redundant luggage behind us. Molly’s gamely trying to distract Nelson from the squealing pig toy he loves. Todd is looking uncomfortable in the front; I see his creased face in the mirror as he blinks in the unaccustomed sunlight like a black bear disturbed in its hibernation. The day is described, as always, as “unseasonably hot” on a local radio station. It’s the high or mid-eighties, depending on which phone app you open, with an angled golden light blinding me at the intersections, even through my Ray-Bans.
— Oh, for cute, Molly says to Nelson, as the pig wheezes breathlessly again.
It’s bad manners, but when an email from my mom pops onto my iPhone, I’m happy to open it, and escape from the Sorenson banalities into the more familiar Brennan ones.
52
CONTACT 19
* * *
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Happy Thanksgiving
Lucy,
Didn’t want to phone you as I knew you were at you-know-who’s, and I’ve made my feelings plain enough about that lunatic and his controlling ways. If you and Lena ever consider having a second child: DO NOT LET THAT IDIOT HAVE ANY INVOLVEMENT WITH IT!
It’s beyond me that you think you owe that old fool some control in your life because he caught you fooling with some boys in the bushes of Abbie Adams Green. Yes, we were both worried about you back then. But you never disappointed us, honey—the promiscuity was all about you as a young girl acting up, because our marriage and our family was crumbling and breaking up. But do not let him pull that Catholic guilt-trip shit on you! Your mistakes are your own (and we all make those—hell, I married the asshole), so don’t allow him to dictate your life!
Enough. I’m ranting.
I’m still loving Toronto. The Canadians would never have a national holiday that celebrates land theft and genocide. I was saying to Lieb the other day, this is the future for you and Lena—not to be treated like second-class citizens as in the US. And to think I was a Republican for years—though that was mainly to annoy your father. The real-estate market is booming, and we have a great standard of living and free universal health care. All I miss is the Miami weather. It’s so cold outside! Even Boston is temperate in comparison.
Come see us soon, and bring that adorable child of yours.
Much love,
Mom
53
THE RAID
JESUS, THAT WOMAN is a fucking fruitcake. But her shit tells me that I’ll never really be free until I’ve had the conversation with both her and Dad—separately of course. We’ve dropped the Sorensons off at Miami International Airport, and are heading down the 95, toward the Beach. We’re traveling in total silence, relieved that it’s just the three of us, but drained from the stress of enforced, extended family contact. Even Nelson is uncharacteristically dozy, strapped into his seat.
Just as we turn into SoBe on 5th, I see the big movie poster above us:
THE SEX LIVES OF SIAMESE TWINS
It shows the actors Kristen Stewart and Megan Fox attached from the hip up, sitting on a park bench, snootily turned away from each other. Ryan Reynolds stands behind them, looking on in hapless appeal.
It has the split logline:
TWO FEISTY GIRLS
ONE SMOKIN’ HOT BODY
BIG TROUBLE
The real twins, not the movie variety, have settled down and found religion. I saw them recently on one of those kooky daytime programs. The movie has brought them back into the spotlight, with Amy disowning it, and Annabel, apparently, refusing to comment.
Good luck to them with that circus. I like the quiet life and I certainly don’t miss the TV people or the paparazzi up my ass. I love that there isn’t anything about me in the media. Jillian left The Biggest Loser, and it hasn’t been the same since. They gave the gig to some Russian tennis chick who wanted out after six months. Shape Up or Ship Out is due to start its first season this summer, with another ex-tennis player, Veronica Lubartski, of Game, Set, and Snatch fame, as one of the presenters. Good luck to them all.
The really fucking great news is that Congressman Quist is set to resign after some financial scandal. There hasn’t been a politician in Florida who has refused some type of kickback, and it was inevitable that Quist would fall, like so many others, on the sword of a shady real-estate deal. I watched his red face on TV in a soundless interview a few months back, while I was cooking lunch. In the background, behind him, the head of a panther on his wall. Assholes like him are the reason panthers don’t exist in Florida anymore, except on sports jerseys. But Quist soon won’t be existing in Florida politics, which is good news, if a little late for my benefit.
But I did learn a lesson through being incarcerated by Lena and pumped up with crud; I’m more tolerant to other people now. Yes, I’ll have to check my name-calling shit. Lena has told me to quit referring to other women as bitches and hoes. She knew that those were Clint Austin’s words, rasping menacingly in my ear in that park, and coming out my mouth in the same way
since then. Now that I’ve acknowledged that as a truth, I should be able to stop. Except in the case of Mona, of course. If the cap fits, as they say, and no other names are more accurate in her case.
Yes, family life is good, and it’s improving dramatically, with the Sorensons now bound for Potters Prairie, Otter County, Minnesota. The very thought of such a place existing causes a chill to spread over my bones. There might be more rabid, religious dumbass fuckers in America than ever, but the response to that has just been more irony. Now terms like “America,” “Democracy,” “Freedom,” and “God” are used in a mocking, derisive way, usually by people who realize that those deploying them without irony only want to control you, or sell you shit. The Sorensons weren’t that ambitious, they only wanted to dominate one daughter. Lena takes the words out of my mouth as we leave the 95 from Miami International: — It’ll be so good to have the place to ourselves, love them as I do-oo!
But our peace is short-lived. We aren’t long back home, and I’m in the garden watering some plants. The sun’s starting to go down and a musty darkness is insinuating itself. My sweat is trickling and dripping, as insects whir round me. The pool attracts mosquitoes at this time of night and I feel one fat bloodsucker injecting my ankle. I slap at it, making contact with nothing but my own flesh. As I curse, I look at the light from the office window, and see Lena with Nelson on her lap, printing stuff from the computer and coloring it in for him.
I’m suddenly aware of a vehicle pulling up outside the front of the house, and somebody, more than one set of footsteps, exiting and marching down the driveway. Then a forceful knock at the door. I go back inside, as tense as a guitar string, following Lena down the hallway, Nelson in her arms, as she opens the door.
It’s the police. One of the officers present is Grace Carillo, whom I haven’t seen in a couple of years. As our eyes meet, she dispenses a curt nod, but one which lets me know that this isn’t going to be about catching up. She’s put on weight; the promotion I heard she’d been given must mean longer hours and less gym time.
I know what it’s about. I’ve been waiting for this day. I kept my word to Lena (barring the night of the conversation, when she set me free), the promise that I’d made to her when she first imprisoned me, about never mentioning Jerry’s name. But I can’t help thinking about him, given that it’s a strong possibility that I see bits of him every day. Lena’s finished the construction of The New Man, but I know through previous cop visits that at least one senior Miami police officer believes that parts of Jerry have been incorporated into the piece—the skull and pelvis in particular. And they do look like human dimensions and shaping, just about visible through the glaucous, translucent skin.
Now I feel the heat draining out of my body as Grace Carillo tells Lena that the installation is to be removed, where it will be broken open, so that a DNA sample can be taken from the bones. She points outside, where two blue jumpsuited men start pushing a large cart down the driveway.
Lena shakes her head. — I’m afraid I can’t authorize that.
— It’s no longer in your hands, Ms. Sorenson.
As the shock waves bombard me, my heartbeat races. I look to Lena, who remains totally unfazed. There’s a playful smile enlivening her face as she casually shrugs, — That is exactly what I’m trying to say to you, Detective Sergeant Carillo. I’m not in a position to authorize it, as the sculpture is no longer my property. The gallery sold it to a private collector on Tuesday morning, and she moves, swiftly but with poise, into her office and returns brandishing an email, which she hands to Grace. — The individual in question, who now owns the work, is estimated by Forbes Magazine to be the third richest man in the world. Once the sculpture has been breached, even by the thinnest needle, the resin cracks and it will be ruined. You’ll note that the buyer has paid 16.25 million dollars for it. If the bones inside are the bones of Jerry Whittendean, then I obviously have a big problem. If, however, these are my moldings rather than human bones, then the big problem becomes yours. The new owner will almost certainly sue Miami-Dade Police Department. And he will almost certainly be successful. So the question is, Detective Sergeant Carillo: just how darned lucky do you feel?
Grace glares at her. Lena’s cloying soccer-mom-from-Minnesota expression never changes. Grace then turns to me, in some sort of desperate appeal. I shrug, and look toward the other plain-clothes cop, who has taken the email from her and whose neck is flaring in red liver spots as he reads it.
Lena points at the email in his hand. — You now have to take this up with the individual in question.
Grace flushes, glancing at her fellow officer. Trying to claw back some power, she barks, — Rest assured: we will do just that!
But she’s like a cocker spaniel trying to impersonate a pit bull. Lena reads it as such. — Good luck with that one, she smiles as Grace and her colleague exit, grimly. We watch them instruct the two guys to wheel the empty cart away and load it back into the truck.
When did she get those balls? Lena played those suckers and they backed the fuck down! Mind you, I had always suspected that Grace (the pussy formerly known as hot) was a little gun-shy.
And the big bones sit in there, the pelvis and the skull, suspended in Lena’s translucent sculpture like big chunks of fruit in Molly Sorenson’s Jell-O. I dunno if they are Jerry’s bones. They could just as easily have come out of one of her molds that the police took away. All I know is that the wealthy buyer intends to donate the piece to the Art Institute in Chicago, in the new modern art wing. I never asked Lena, although I know I will someday, but I really do hope that it is the vestiges of Jerry in there. I kind of like the idea of him being on permanent display in his alma mater. I think, in a strange way, that he might be at peace with such an arrangement.
Of course, if it is Jerry in there, life would have been so much simpler had we stuck to a version of the truth. Lena was working on an art project, I was looking after her house. Jerry came by, tricked his way in, and ransacked the place. I asked him to leave, he refused, he attacked me, and I accidentally killed him in self-defense.
But I think Lena tore off and intervened in the way she did probably not out of revenge over Jerry, but simply because she was an artist, and the authentic materials to finish her compelling project were suddenly at her disposal. Like Dad with his crappy novels, the world and the people in it are all just potential resources to those ruthless scavengers!
So once again Lena is making a big splash in the art world. She’s still basking in the success of her recent photography exhibition, the one that shows her getting fat, retitled A Year of Boy Trouble. Melanie Clement exhibited the photos at her GoToIt gallery to considerable acclaim. We had a great night at the subsequent Miami show a few weeks back. It was like old times; Chef Dominic, Emilio, Jon Pallota, Lester, Angie Forrest (whom I used to know as Henrietta James, and who occasionally babysits for Nelson), and even Mindy Tuck (the Liposuction Fuck) were all present to show support and, of course, to party. At the launch of the exhibition, Lena graciously repeated her acknowledgment from the catalog. — I couldn’t have done it without the assistance of both Lucy Brennan and Jerry Whittendean, who, in their different ways, really did enable my art career.
So I guess it’s true, as all those crappy books tell us, that great art is made out of a meeting of opposites. And this also might be true about great sex. Right now I can hear Lena putting Nelson to bed, and I’m hoping that the little guy gets down to sleep real soon. Real fucking soon.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Chris Andreko, Sarah Kahn, Emer Martin, Amy Cherry, Don De Grazia, Jon Baird, Trevor Engleson, Alex Mebed, Robin Robertson, Gerry Howard, Katherine Fry and, most of all, Elizabeth Quinn.
To various trainers, artists and friends in Chicago, Miami, London and Edinburgh, for not being Lucy and Lena.
To everybody who has bought the books and watched the films and thus saved me from having to get a proper job for years.
Irvine Welsh
Epub ISBN: 9781409041146
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Jonathan Cape 2014
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Copyright © Irvine Welsh 2014
Irvine Welsh has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Jonathan Cape
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780224087896 (Trade paperback edition)
ISBN 9780224087889 (Hardback edition)