by David Jester
I frowned at her, turned back to the melee, and then, between the warring parents—some arguing that they had been duped, some arguing that the retreat was helping, both prepared to fight for their stupidity—I saw Ben. I had left him on the floor in front of the teacher, which meant that he was now in the eye of the storm.
Shit.
I ran forward and barged through the crowd, catching some elbows and curses for my troubles, before scooping him into my arms. I expected him to be crying like the others, but he was loving the chaos and was annoyed at me for forcing him to beat a retreat.
“It’s okay,” I told Lizzie as I carried him back to her, struggling to keep him in my arms as he tried his best to wriggle free and get back to the front line. “He was actually having fun,” I said. “I think he likes the shouting and the arguing. Just like his mother, eh?”
Again I smiled at her and again she gave me a stern grimace in reply. She propped open the door and nodded for me to walk through.
“You’re really not in a smiley mood today, are you?” I asked on my way out.
“Can you blame me? Have you seen what you’ve done?”
I nodded and did my best to look ashamed, but I was still a little proud. I didn’t like to cause chaos, but I’d had a chance to vent and to piss on that pseudo psychologist’s little enterprise. There was a good chance that I had made a very angry enemy or two, but one or two more of those wasn’t going to make much difference.
7
Matthew, Ben, and the Night to Forget
“Are you sure this is a good idea?”
Lizzie nodded. “Again, yes.”
I sighed, still not convinced. We were going out for the night, and hiring our first babysitter had proved to be a traumatic experience. For me, anyway. Our options had been limited, and although it had been me who suggested the babysitter we eventually agreed upon, it wasn’t a suggestion I fully intended or one I expected her to go with.
Ben was over a year old, and we had enjoyed nights out several times throughout that year, but we hadn’t enjoyed a night out together in a long time. Not since before she was pregnant had we enjoyed a night where we could both eat, drink, and enjoy ourselves. Her moods, the occasional issues, and the fact that she couldn’t drink had put a stop to that. After the birth, we had argued about letting our parents take control. I didn’t want her parents anywhere near my child, worried that they would sell his soul to the devil or give him to a cult, and she insisted that if her parents couldn’t babysit, then neither could mine.
It was a stalemate. And when we finally were ready to let parents take over, none of them were available. As a result, we were forced to go with someone I didn’t really trust and someone who probably wouldn’t sell my child’s soul to the devil, but might do something just as bad.
“I’m going upstairs to get ready,” Lizzie said. That was her signal that she didn’t want to listen to me any longer.
I watched her go, leaving me standing in the hallway with Ben in my arms. Maybe I was projecting, maybe he had misunderstood and thought we were dumping him on his grandparents, but he looked as worried as I did. One of the few upsides to my chosen babysitter was that it wasn’t Lizzie’s parents. Even just five minutes with those crazy bastards could pollute his mind beyond repair. It’s amazing Lizzie made it out with her sanity intact.
I heard the front door open, swing on its hinges, and then slam shut. The babysitter had arrived, and he seemingly wanted the entire street to know. Only three people walked into my house without ringing the doorbell. My parents didn’t do it because they were worried they’d catch us having sex. My mother wouldn’t even venture into the bedroom for fear we had turned it into a sex dungeon, after which she would have no option but to disown me. Lizzie’s parents didn’t do it either, presumably because they knew I’d feign a break-in, beat them to death, and then claim they were trespassing and I was acting in self-defense.
The only person other than myself and Lizzie who entered without knocking was Matthew, our babysitter for the night. I knew him well, of course, and that was a good thing, because when the police quizzed me at the end of the night, I would be able to tell them everything they needed to know.
Matthew strode past where I was standing, completely ignored me and the baby, and went straight into the kitchen. I heard him open the fridge, burp ceremoniously, and then groan at the lack of offerings. Moments later, he strode into the living room, plopped himself on the couch, popped open a can of beer, and turned on the television. The fact that I was standing in front of him holding Ben, the child he was supposed to be protecting and caring for, the very reason he was there to begin with, seemed to be nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
“Make yourself at home,” I said.
Matthew turned to look at me, as though seeing me for the first time. “You’re in the way.”
I sighed but stepped aside—I was British, after all. We did annoyed and we did angry, but we didn’t do rude. “Help yourself to some beer,” I offered sarcastically, another thing we did very well.
“Will do.”
“You’re late.”
He dragged his attention away from a re-run of a topical news show that hadn’t been topical for three years. “I’m doing you a favor,” he reminded me with the air of someone waiting for his medal. “The fact that I’m here at all should be enough. Who else would look after your dog for the night?”
“I don’t have a—” I paused. “You’re fucking with me, right?”
“Of course. So, what time are you getting back?”
“I don’t know. Late. Ben will be asleep soon and he should sleep for the rest of the night.”
Matthew looked disappointed. “But I have a full night planned,” he argued. “There’s a film on pay-per-view we were gonna watch, and I was gonna order a pizza.”
“A pizza? You realize he’s just a baby, right?”
He shrugged. “I’ll get him an eight-inch.”
I rolled my eyes and watched a grin spread across his face. “Don’t fuck this up,” I warned him, covering Ben’s ears on cue. “This is the first night Lizzie and I will be alone together since before Ben was born. The first time, well, you know.”
“The first time you can have sex without worrying that your dick’s gonna give the baby brain damage?”
Matthew seemed amused with himself, but I was incredulous. “How did you—”
“I told him.” Lizzie strode into the room, swinging her handbag and using it to smack Matthew over the head. “He’s your best friend, he won’t judge.”
“No, that’s exactly why he will judge.”
“He has a point,” Matthew conceded, rubbing his skull and flinching when Lizzie gave him the evil eye.
“Anyway, that’s not what I meant, we’re just going for a meal and a drink. I don’t plan on having sex with my wife at a restaurant.”
“Only because you’re too boring and too scared to do it anywhere that isn’t your bed.”
I turned to Lizzie, shocked and appalled. She shrugged back. “I didn’t tell him. He took a shot.”
Matthew laughed. “And he scored. You’re such a loser.”
Lizzie tried to suppress a laugh. “Come on, let’s get moving.” She took Ben from me, gave him a kiss, and then lifted him into Matthew’s arms. She made sure he was holding him properly before kissing Matthew on the side of the head and pointing a stern finger at him. “Don’t mess this up.”
He seemed appalled that we would even suggest such a thing, apparently forgetting that we knew him. “What is it with you two? I’ve got this, trust me.”
In my worst nightmares, of which I’d had many since leaving the house, I imagined horrible things. I worried that Matthew would burn the house down, leaving nothing but crisp remains of where my livelihood used to be. I worried that in an effort to impress a kinky girl—his favorite type of girl—he would let her use Ben in a Satanic ritual and I would return to find him naked in the middle of a flaming pentagram with a drippin
g goat’s heart in his hand. I worried that he would simply forget about Ben, lost in his own little world as he so often was, and my son, the light of my life, would choke to death on his own milky vomit.
I worried about so many things that I was forced to question my own motives for leaving my son with such a feckless deviant in the first place. Then I reminded myself that it was Lizzie’s idea and that if anything did happen, at least I would be able to blame her for it. She had been the one who insisted that Matthew wasn’t that bad deep down, that he was still a close friend and a good man, and that he, perhaps more than anyone, had something to prove and would go out of his way to be the good guy.
I didn’t believe her, but we had no other choice. Her parents were in Australia, hopefully receiving several different shots of venom from several different murderous creatures, and my own parents had gone to spend two nights in Blackpool, where good fun, good manners, and great entertainment are always at least fifty miles away. The differences in our parents were never more evident than when they went on vacation, but although Lizzie’s mother and father had the money for lavish hotels and bucket list adventure vacations, I knew that my parents, stuck in a cold caravan while monsoon weather tore the shit out of the resort around them, would be the ones having the most fun. That was the problem with Lizzie’s parents: they were so busy bragging about their experiences that they forgot to enjoy them.
Lizzie’s friends refused. One was at a wedding, another had chlamydia—or it could have been a cold, I wasn’t really paying attention. Sharon, Matthew’s wife, was on a “business trip” to Birmingham, taking a rich businessman’s respect, dignity, and money before he went home to a neglected wife who presumably did the same to him.
I would have asked Max, if I could find him, and I would have asked my other friends, if I had any. In fact, I would have asked anyone before I asked Matthew. Lizzie refused to use a paid babysitting service, insisting that she didn’t want to leave her child with a stranger, even if that stranger was qualified, capable, sensible, and sane, and the person we chose in their place was none of those things.
During the car ride, I couldn’t get Matthew’s incompetence off my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the things he had done in the past and of all the things that could go wrong. At the theater, those thoughts faded slightly and they were completely gone by the time we sat down for a meal. I had allowed myself to listen to Lizzie’s assurances. He was my friend, after all, and I knew in my heart that he wouldn’t intentionally do anything to hurt Ben. I was being paranoid, stupid, irrational.
As we drove back home, with Lizzie concentrating on the dark roads, sticking her tongue out like a kid on an Etch-a-Sketch, the worries returned. And as we pulled into the street, I realized that, for once in my life, I had been right all along.
My fears were not unfounded, and Matthew really had fucked it up.
There was chaos in the street and most of it was focused on our house. There were police cars parked outside, their lights pulsating to the rhythm of my rapidly beating heart, the blue glow exposing ghostly expressions worn by a horde of shocked onlookers.
Of all the things I worried about, nothing came close to the scene that stretched out before me as I clambered out of the car and stood on weary legs. I was too shocked to speak. A small part of me hoped that this was a dream, or an elaborate joke. I had been incredibly tired of late, and it wouldn’t be the first time Matthew had pulled such a dick move in the spirit of humor. But this wasn’t a dream, and it didn’t feel like a joke either.
I spotted police cars, an ambulance, a fire engine—and half of the neighborhood out to watch them. Mr. and Mrs. Andreasson, the quiet, middle-aged couple who lived in the house behind ours, were next to the ambulance. She was standing outside, fully exposed to the cold, and he was sitting down just inside the ambulance. They were dressed in their nightclothes, she in a satin nightdress hidden by a man’s dressing gown, he in his pajamas. She seemed alert, but he wore a vacant expression as two paramedics saw to a nasty wound on his head.
She was more than alert; she was annoyed. I watched as she checked her watch several times and tapped her feet in irritation, seemingly oblivious to the cold wind that swept through her clothes and threatened to expose her. As much as she hated her current predicament, whatever it was, her husband seemed to be enjoying himself. The paramedics had placed a blanket over his lap, but his excitement had pushed on the fly of his pajamas and was pitching a little tent. He seemed oblivious to it, but the paramedics were doing their best to stay clear, keen not to overexcite him and give themselves more to clean at the end of their shift.
Next to one of the police cars, chewing the ear off a very bored-looking officer, was a young woman I recognized as one of Matthew’s ex-girlfriends. She had a huge mouth on her, and she was incredibly annoying, but she had a huge pair of tits, and for Matthew, that made her a viable target. Seeing her again incensed me, and I had images of Matthew using my house to cheat on his wife—and doing so with a woman he had never really liked. He had once said that she could have a personality disorder, if only she had a personality.
She was smoking a cigarette that dipped in and out of her mouth, inhaling a toxic lungful between each erratic sentence.
Next to her, gathered around the front door of our house, were four young lads, all of them looking annoyed. They appeared to be in their late teens, early twenties at a push. They all looked fairly well-built, two of them in small T-shirts that exposed puffed-out chests and biceps as thick as my neck. Another—in attire more suited to the cold air—I recognized as one of the neighbor’s sons. He was a rugby player, a mischievous and annoying little shit who was the apple of his mother’s eye, but only because she was always too drunk to realize what a waste of space he was. His mother was also loitering nearby, her arms folded across her chest as she looked up at my house, next to the fourth boy whose shirt was wet through and whose expression was even more annoyed than the others’.
I was rooted to the spot. Only a few seconds had passed since getting out of the car, but it felt like hours. When I saw Ben, time reset and my entire being seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. He was being cradled by one of the many firefighters standing in front of the house. Lizzie also spotted Ben and ran up to him. I joined her and for a moment neither of us cared what was going on, neither of us cared what had happened. We had our son and he was healthy—that was all that mattered. Only when the relief died down and the curiosity peaked did we realize that the people in front of the house were looking up at the roof, and when we followed their gazes, we saw that Matthew was sitting on the top of it, beaming down with a sheepish expression and giving us a little wave.
“What the fuck did you do?” Lizzie barked.
The noise around us ceased and all eyes turned to her. Matthew had been sitting with his legs dangling off the edge, but when he heard her voice and saw the anger on her face, he shot to his feet and backed off, his hands held up submissively. He tried to defend himself, to explain himself, but Lizzie didn’t let him speak.
“What did you do?” she demanded to know. “What are you doing on the roof, and what did you do to my baby?” She was breathing heavily, her face getting redder and redder. I thought about taking Ben from her, but I didn’t want to do anything that might direct that anger toward me, so I remained passive. “And why is my front window smashed?”
I hadn’t seen the window until she mentioned it. It looked like the entire sheet of glass had been removed, and if not for the broken pieces at the edges, and the fact that the curtains were billowing in the wind, it wouldn’t have been visible.
“I’m afraid that was us.” The firefighter who had cradled Ben stepped forward. “I’m assuming by the way you snatched him off me that this is your baby?”
Lizzie nodded, sensing some sarcasm in the firefighter’s voice. I also sensed it, which is why I backed up another step. He was in trouble.
“Yes, he’s my fucking baby,” she spat. “What’s
going on, why did you break my window, why is that prick on the roof?” She turned around, gesturing to all the angry faces. “What are all these people doing here?”
“That’s a long story.” A policeman, previously idle by his car while he let his partner talk to Matthew’s crazy ex, stepped forward. “Do you know the man on the roof?”
I nodded. “He’s my friend. Was, my friend.”
“Ouch!” I heard Matthew yell. “Nice to know that you have my back.”
“Are you shitting me?” I shouted up at him. “I ask you for a small favor and I come back to this. What the fuck?”
He nodded, his hands on his hips. “Good point, you have me there. But I can explain.”
“And I think he’s the best one to do so,” the firefighter said. “But he won’t come down. We try, but he keeps kicking the ladder away. He’s clearly a threat to himself and maybe to others. We have reason to believe that he was also going to harm the baby.”
“No!” Matthew yelled. “I told you, that was bullshit. I’m not here to kill myself.”
“Then why did you tell all of these people that you were?” the firefighter asked.
“I didn’t!” Matthew barked. “They misheard!”
“All of these people misheard, did they?” he asked, the same condescending tone he had previously directed at Lizzie.
“Yes!” Matthew snapped. “Because they’re all fucking useless, and it doesn’t help that that stupid bitch is egging them on.”
At that point, everyone turned to Matthew’s ex, who gave him a pitiful look. “It really is a shame what’s happened to him,” she said, forcing another frustrated noise from Matthew. “But I guess it was always on the cards.” She paused, drawing everyone’s attention as she sucked on her cancer stick. “He’s crazy,” she finished in a matter-of-fact way.
The friend of the neighbor’s son stepped forward and I noticed the others back away as he did so. When he edged closer I realized why: he stank. Whatever he had been soaked in, it clearly wasn’t water. “It’s because he’s a chicken,” he announced. “He knows what’s waiting for him and he’s scared.”