#Zero

by Neil McCormick

  He looked at me slyly. ‘I’m not that stupid. I was young once too, you know.’ And he winked.

  ‘I don’t want to think about that, Da,’ I protested.

  ‘Did I ever tell you how your mother got to New York?’

  ‘You never told me anything,’ I said. ‘But, you know, I figured it out.’

  He turned to look me in the eyes and almost started to speak, then he looked at his feet, then he looked up at the sky, then he tutted as if annoyed with himself. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been a better father,’ he said at last. He exhaled hard. He seemed relieved to have got that out of the way. ‘The thing about parenthood is …’ But he didn’t seem to be able to think what the thing was.

  ‘The thing about parenthood …’ I prodded.

  ‘Ach, the thing is, we’re all just making it up as we go along.’

  ‘Like life,’ I suggested.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Exactly like that.’

  We walked back to the village in silence. I wondered if that was it, we’d had our conversation now, and we’d just go back to tip-toeing around each other. But as La Esperanza hove into view, he suddenly piped up again. ‘So, what about this Penelope Nazareth, then? Are you really gonna marry her?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Da,’ I admitted.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘cause she stayed in the hotel where your ma and me worked in New York, you know. And to tell the truth, she was kind of a bitch.’

  23

  Anyway, I went back to Ireland. I flew home to the Emerald Isle, my real home, far from the towers of New York or the mountains of Colombia. I agreed to be admitted to a discreet rehab and recovery clinic in Roscommon. I was privately assured that it was really like an exclusive spa hotel, only with no minibar in your room.

  I had my own therapist assigned to me, Dr Paige Underwood, and she diagnosed me as having suffered a nervous breakdown due to acute stress, exacerbated by alcohol and substance abuse, with underlying family and relationship issues. I don’t know. Maybe I did have a nervous breakdown. It sounded good on the insurance paperwork anyway, so Beasley was happy.

  What bothered me were the issues. Everybody’s got fucking issues these days. If you don’t like what you see in the mirror and try to do something about it by working out or dieting, you’ve got body dysmorphia issues. If you just don’t give a shit, eat too much crap and put on weight, you’ve got low self-esteem issues. What if you just like junk food? Then you’ve got junk food issues. If you don’t want to sit still and listen to someone waffling on about fucking issues, well, you’ve got concentration issues. Or avoidance issues. Or commitment issues. If you dare to question how a woman you’ve only just met is supposed to know you better than you know yourself, you’ve got female authority issues. And if you get angry about being incarcerated in an institution and having to listen to all this shit about issues, well, you’ve obviously got hostility issues. I hate fucking issues. But, of course, that only means I have issues.

  But the doctor and me, we could never quite agree on what the issues were. Dr Underwood proposed we start with well-documented substance abuse issues and sexual addiction issues. But I’m a fucking pop star – those aren’t issues, those are part of the job description.

  And I insisted there was no way I was doing group therapy and talking about my issues among complete strangers who might secretly tape them and sell them to the press. So she added trust issues to the list. I said now you’re talking, Doc, I have a hard time trusting anyone after my own personal webmaster, Spooks McGrath, turned out to have been keeping records of every private conversation for two years and was currently having his salacious memoir, I Was Zero’s Doppelganger, serialised in the Daily Telegraph. So she had to concede I had a point.

  So Dr Underwood came up with a novel approach to group therapy, which involved an actual group. My old band The Zero Sums were rounded up and brought in and they were supposed to tell me how they felt about my dumping them, and I was supposed to say sorry and we were all supposed to hug and make up. Dr Underwood stressed that this was a safe environment where we could all speak the truth, and for a while I sat there and took it like a man while they told me what a selfish, egotistic, pompous prat I had been to work with. Only I had a few home truths of my own to impart, like the fact that I didn’t see the point of being in a band where I could play all their instruments better than they could, the drummer couldn’t keep time, the guitarist was off his tits on ketamine, the keyboard player had personal hygiene problems and the bassist was a moron who was only tolerated because he had a hot, slutty girlfriend and we all used to hump her behind his back.

  ‘Is that true?’ the poor fucker shouted, and his bandmates had to sheepishly admit it was.

  ‘How is Sally these days?’ I asked. And then, sensing I might have really put my foot in it, I added, ‘She’s not still your girlfriend is she?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ashen-faced. ‘We got married.’

  Anyway, that didn’t go so well.

  As for dealing with substance abuse issues, the whole clinic was awash with class As. There were parties going on in the patients’ rooms every night. Well, what do you expect? The place was full of drug addicts, for fuck’s sake.

  The sex addiction therapy was going quite well, all things considered, until I made a pass at the doctor. I thought she was kind of hot, in her tailored business suits and black-framed glasses and pinned-up hair. ‘I’m much too old for you,’ she gasped, when I tried to kiss her in the middle of a session.

  ‘You know I have a thing for older women, Doctor,’ I said. ‘It’s my Oedipal issues.’

  ‘Complex,’ she corrected me.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, slipping my arm around her waist. ‘I am.’

  Who knew they teach self-defence in medical school? She kneed me in the groin with such clinical efficiency, I didn’t think I’d be able to walk for a week, then calmly continued the session while I rolled about dry-retching on the floor. She said it was further proof of my sex addiction and, if I preferred, she could refer me to a male analyst for further treatment. I said all it proved was that I was a horny young buck going stir crazy and did I really need some psychiatrist explaining that my extreme reaction to Penelope Nazareth’s imaginary adultery was a manifestation of the grief I felt over abandonment by my mother? I didn’t want to analyse it; I wanted to write songs about it. Which I took as proof that I was getting better, so I checked myself out and went and stayed in my brother’s hotel.

  That was an improvement. That was a proper talking cure. I hadn’t spoken to Paddy much in the years since leaving home, and maybe not even in the years at home, either. There was so much silence in the flat where we grew up, two lost boys depending for survival on a man who was even more lost than us, raging at the empty space the only woman in our lives had left behind, unable to even comfort one another.

  But finally there we were, Paddy and me, sitting up in my suite every night after he’d finished his work, sharing a bottle of wine and talking about our mother and father and our upbringings and jealousies and insecurities, getting it all off our chests. There was so much to catch up on. A whole lifetime. It was a revelation for both of us. I had felt so alone in the world, I felt like an orphan, and now I had found my brother, who had been there all along. We were so different but we were also the same, the same eyes, the same gestures, the same history. We even invited my old man around sometimes and all managed to sit together and share a bottle of wine and not get into a single fight. Mind you, on those occasions, we mostly sat and watched football matches on the television and shouted at the screen as a substitute for shouting at each other. But sometimes, if we were lucky, Da would loosen up and tell us a story from his life with our mother, and manage to get through it without wincing, or crying, or even swearing. Then, one day, he came around with some shoe boxes full of old photos, and we all pored over them together. And there was some crying done that day. But I finally felt like I was getting back my memories of my mother, h
owever vague and impressionistic. Little triggers would almost conjure her up and I could think about her without being filled with anger or grief or anxiety. Well, some of the time.

  So why did I still feel so empty? Like there was a hole inside that could never be filled? Maybe I needed it just to function, a greedy vortex sucking in the world then spewing it out as musical anti-matter, my own supermassive black hole. Was I secretly afraid that without the pain I really would be nothing, no one, Zero? The Shitty Committee may have been struck from the register of my subconscious and for their dumbness I was truly grateful, but sometimes the silence itself became oppressive, like a pillow suffocating me in my sleep, and I would wake gasping for air, filled with a strange conviction that I had lost something really important, and if I just lay there, lay very, very still, I would remember what it was.

  But I knew what it was. Surely deep down I knew?

  Paddy had a girlfriend, Fiona, who worked for him in the hotel. She was smart and friendly, even if she had terrible taste in music. She only listened to jazz and didn’t know any of my songs. They were sort of engaged but in no hurry to tie the knot. ‘Do you not want kids?’ I asked.

  ‘After the mess our old man made of us,’ said Paddy, ‘I haven’t exactly been in a rush to repeat his mistakes. How about you?’

  ‘I still feel like a kid myself,’ I admitted.

  Anyway, I had all the kids in La Esperanza to take care of. I had instructed Homer to set up a fund to formalise my support of the school and look after all their education and medical needs. We were also in talks about building an orphanage in MedellÍn. I often thought about little Jesus, and little Maria, and wondered what their lives would be like if I hadn’t stumbled into them? I actually felt some responsibility towards their futures, and that was the most grown-up I had ever felt about anything. ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ I said, with sudden determination, ‘If I do ever have a kid, I’m never going to let them out of my sight. Never! I don’t want them to feel abandoned, the way I’ve felt all my life.’

  ‘You know, Pedro, our mother didn’t abandon us,’ Paddy reminded me, as people had to keep reminding me. ‘And neither did Da. He did his best, even if it wasn’t up to very much. Anyway, it’s not like you’ve got such a great record of sticking by people.’

  I knew that was true. There was a constant thorn in my conscience, memories that haunted me like a terrible refrain, a sad song you have to keep playing, even though it’s making you miserable. One night I told Paddy there was only one person from my past that I really wanted to see just to apologise for everything I had done, and that was Eileen.

  ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ he said, which surprised me.

  ‘She’s been on my mind a lot,’ I told him.

  ‘Well what about what’s on her mind? You really hurt her. I think you should leave her alone. You’re just going to open up old wounds.’

  ‘I knew you always fancied her,’ I said, sulkily.

  ‘Half the boys in town fancied her,’ he retorted. ‘You didn’t know a good thing when you had it. You fucked up there, Pedro. But it’s all in the past now. And some things are better left that way.’

  But I couldn’t leave it alone and brought it up again over dinner with Paddy and Fiona the next night. I said I wanted a female opinion. ‘Paddy’s right,’ said Fiona. ‘You just can’t go waltzing back into an ex-girlfriend’s life. You don’t know what she’s got going on, you might upset a delicate balance.’

  ‘I might not,’ I said. ‘D’you ever think she might actually be happy to see me? She was the love of my life.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, you were just kids,’ grumbled Paddy. ‘What did you know about love? Or life?’

  ‘And anyway,’ said Fiona, ‘hasn’t she got a family of her own now?’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that,’ I griped to Paddy.

  ‘Did you think she was going to sit around and wait for you to come to your senses?’ sighed Paddy. ‘You blew it. Just move on and leave her be.’

  ‘So who’s the lucky fella, then?’ I grumbled, feeling a pang of jealousy I had no right to. ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘You’re such a chauvinist,’ said Fiona. ‘The first thing you want to know is what man’s having his wicked way with your ex. Why would you assume it has to be a fella? We’ve got all kinds of couples in Ireland now. We’re very progressive.’

  ‘Are you saying Eileen’s a lesbian now?’ I said, not quite following.

  ‘Fucking hell, boy, we’re not saying anything of the sort!’ exploded Paddy. ‘If Eileen wanted anything to do with you, I’m sure she’d have been in touch by now. The whole world doesn’t revolve around your fucking ego, you know. People move on.’

  ‘I just said I’d like to see her,’ I wheedled.

  ‘For what?’ said Paddy, witheringly. ‘So you can fuck her about again?’

  I changed tack. ‘My therapist said I have to make reparations to the people I’ve done wrong. I want to say sorry, that’s all. I feel like I’ve been saying sorry for the past two months to everyone I’ve ever offended, and that is a big long list, but Eileen should be top of the list. She’s the only one I really, really want to say sorry to.’

  ‘You haven’t said sorry to me,’ said Paddy, huffily.

  ‘What have I got to be sorry about? I bought you a fucking hotel, didn’t I?’

  He shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’

  If I couldn’t see Eileen, at least I wanted to see my mother’s grave. The problem was I had effectively become a prisoner in the hotel. I wasn’t sure which was worse, the paparazzi hiding in the bushes or the fans holding vigil by the gate. Journalists kept checking in under false pretences, and it got so I couldn’t even use the bar or the restaurant. Paddy was delighted, of course. Business was booming, and he didn’t react well to my suggestion that we kick everybody out and I take over the whole place. ‘You know the thing about a silent partner,’ he said. ‘They’re supposed to keep silent!’ So instead, I occupied the top floor. But I was in danger of turning into Elvis up there, with blacked-out windows, not knowing whether it was day or night, writing songs and living on room service.

  I instructed Homer to buy me a house but he didn’t appear to be making much progress. Which wasn’t actually his fault. The usual procedure in house-buying, he pointed out, was to first decide where you wanted to live. And I hadn’t made my mind up about that. Or anything else. It was as if I had fallen into the doldrums, caught between the twin ports of Prevarication and Procrastination with no wind in my sails. What was I going to do next? Where was I going to go? Who was I going to be? I needed something to happen, a freak wave to come crashing across my bows and get me moving.

  Not that anything had really stopped. The album just kept selling, I couldn’t have slowed it down if I wanted to. It was turning into an old-fashioned blockbuster. Every time it started to flag, something else would boost it. They cut a video for my single ‘Life On Earth’ using footage shot by news crews in MedellÍn and it was huge just about everywhere on the planet. Then our film came out, #1 With A Bullet, and was a smash hit, despite getting panned by critics. The title track lived up to its billing, giving me my third number one of the year. I didn’t need to do any promo because I was never out of the news. The Perry women from Siren Creek all appeared on Oprah dishing the dirt on my week as their lover, then did a family spread for Playboy magazine, and my record sales jumped on both occasions. Devlin signed that deal she had always dreamed of, and had a minor hit with ‘Not For Sale’, with some critics hailing her as an authentically primitive new voice of Americana. Aunt Velma got an exhibition in a gallery in New York and sold her painting of me for nearly quarter of a million dollars. Last I heard, she’s going to have an exhibition in Paris. And I believe even Marcy has a new career as the star of a hardcore porn pastiche entitled #1 With A Dildo. The rap crew from Philadelphia, Master Beatz and Roc Bottom, had a hit with a novelty record, ‘Pimpin’ Zero’, using an uncleared sample fro
m ‘Never Young’. Beasley wanted to sue them but fuck it, it’s just music, and I was glad it was being put to good use. Maybe they could use some of their royalties to pay SinnerMan’s bail. Even old Clarence Urreal ‘Honeyboy’ Burnside got signed to Fat Possum records. Billed as the last authentic living bluesman, he became the oldest person ever to win a Grammy. He actually thanked me in his speech.

  And while we’re catching up with old friends, Grover eventually made it home in one piece, after Doña Cecilia cut off his supply of hooch and practically booted him off the mountain. According to Homer, he cut a lonely figure out there at the airfield for a while, forswearing alcohol and nicotine and all worldly vices, until Consuela called from MedellÍn and told him he could come and get her if he still wanted her, but she wouldn’t be alone. They flew in four orphans. Homer had his work cut out fixing it with immigration. But I’m sure Grover has it in him to make a good father. Well, put it this way, he couldn’t do a worse job than my own.

  I don’t know what became of Reverend Salt and I really don’t care. He’s probably holed up somewhere, praying for the end of the world, while Marilyn’s sneaking cigarettes and wondering why it’s taking so long. Anyway, I don’t want him taking any credit for my conversion. Not that I’m saying I believe in God, you understand, but after everything I’ve been through I’m just not so sure what forces are at work in this world, whether they come from within or without, and does it really make any difference? Anyway, there was something Doc Underwood asked me that made a lot of sense. ‘Why are you so angry with God if you don’t even believe in Him?’ I’m evoking the Hamlet defence: ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ See, Ms Pruitt? I was paying attention. I’d like to talk it over with Freeman Tally someday. I’m heartened to hear from Homer that he is still at liberty, sowing discord and conspiracy theories.

  As for Beasley, well, he wanted me to record some of my new songs, put out a special extended version of the album, then reschedule the tour. And I’m warming to the idea, if we can somehow tie it in with my new charitable initiative, the Motherless Child Foundation.