Donor, The

by FitzGerald, Helen

  Preston had either stopped following me or gotten very good at it. It had been three days since he’d watched me in Reece’s house and I hadn’t spotted him since. What a weirdo, to enjoy being followed. What a weirdo, to analyse it the way I analysed everything, concluding in this case that being followed made me feel important. My every move was interesting to somebody. My stalker committed time and energy to the pursuit of me. He might have given up going for a run to see me buy a packet of fags at the corner shop. He might have missed his favourite E4 drama to see me brush my teeth.

  I hadn’t felt important my whole life. I had a good friend who almost made me feel that way, but when I dropped out of school she dropped out of my life. As much as I loved Kay, she made me feel the opposite of important. How can two identical people be so different – her so good at everything, me so shite?

  As soon as dialysis was over, I decided to go home and get Preston’s number from Dad’s mobile. I’d ask him why he had stopped following me. Had he found someone else? Was there something I could do to make stalking me more intriguing for him?

  Reece was on shift. He walked into the ward with a very professional I-don’t-wear-women’s-clothing kind of face. He set up my machine and he gave me the ‘you’re a dirty girl’ look. It’s okay to be dirty at the time, but afterwards it’s a character flaw. Slutty, easy girl, he said with his eyes. I had to stop myself from leaning over and biting into his shoulder.

  I was angry enough to bite very hard.

  Not only had my mother turned out to be a transplant gone wrong – a yearning, a waiting, a perfect answer … and a rejection – but poor Evie had just died from exactly that.

  She was all excited when I saw her two nights earlier. Her trolley whizzed right by me and my Alfred. She was convulsing with tears.

  ‘Good luck, Evie!’ I yelled.

  ‘Way to go, Evie!’ Kay yelled.

  Just like the last scene in An Officer and a Gentleman. Saved, carried off, cheered.

  I found out the following day that Evie’s body had been downright rude to her new kidney. Rumours spread in her blood that an invader had entered the room. A battle was fought and won. It wasn’t a victory for Evie, or for her granddaughter, who had loved Evie enough to donate.

  Evie’s Catherine Cookson DVDs were on the table in the corner. Maybe I’d watch one, to suffer in her honour.

  Kay was making me angry too. Not by doing anything bad, but by going all fuzzy. It was as if she’d taken invisibility tablets which were slowly making her appear wobbly to the world. One day soon I’d turn around and she’d be gone altogether.

  I missed Kay. The glass-half-full girl had turned glass-doesn’t-even-exist. A few days after we met our mother figure, she decided against sitting her exams. ‘I can’t read more than a page without needing a rest,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it next year.’

  Next year. Would there even be a next year?

  She’d taken to staying in bed most of the time. She didn’t even turn the telly on. She just lay there and stroked her phone. Last night, I heard her talking to it (and there wasn’t anyone on the line). ‘Please please, go on, go on, you can do it,’ she whispered. I didn’t let her know I’d heard. She’d be embarrassed and I was the last person who should make her feel embarrassed for talking to a dead-as-doornails handset. I did it all the time.

  *

  Dialysis over, Kay and I got a taxi home. Misbehaving after dialysis was becoming unthinkable. I didn’t even have the energy to walk to the pub. Instead, I poured myself a glass of water while Kay went up to her room.

  Desperate Housewives was on. It made me think of Dad, who had left a message to say he was over at Linda’s house. Good on him, I thought. If anyone needed to shag a desperate housewife it was him.

  One of the wives was shooting at one of the other wives when the doorbell rang. I dragged myself to the front door and opened it.

  ‘Hi, Kay,’ the woman at the door said.

  ‘It’s Georgie,’ I replied. ‘The ugly one, remember?’

  I was very glad to feel nauseous and exhausted. Otherwise, my resources might have been irretrievably sucked into Planet Cynthia.

  ‘I know I don’t deserve it,’ she said, leaning on the kitchen bench as I stood, arms folded, against the fridge. ‘But I want to get to know you both. I want to make up for …’

  She was having trouble finishing the sentence so I finished it for her … ‘for being a crap mother’.

  ‘Men assume women should be nurturers. It’s a way for them to control us. We don’t have to do what we’re told to do.’

  So she had come to teach me how to be a woman.

  ‘I’ll go get Kay,’ I said. ‘Do you want to put on some tea? Or is that an affront to your feminism?’

  I went up to Kay’s room.

  ‘Kay! Our mother figure is here.’ Although she was asleep, she was still clutching her mobile.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cynthia … our mother … I don’t know what to call her. She’s here. She says she wants to get to know us.’

  ‘Is Dad back?’

  ‘No.’

  Kay stared at the ceiling for a moment, not deep in thought, but vacant. ‘Tell her I’m asleep.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I don’t want anything to do with her. And make sure she’s gone before Dad gets back. It’s the last thing he needs.’

  When I got back to the kitchen, mother figure had opened one of the bottles of red Dad bought earlier in the day and had poured herself a large glass.

  ‘Help yourself,’ I said.

  ‘Can you not cut this shit and have a glass of wine with your mother?’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘You are the cliché, Georgie.’ She poured a second glass of wine and handed it to me. ‘Where’s Kay?’

  ‘Asleep. She needs her rest.’

  ‘So she doesn’t want to see me?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t want to see you.’

  We drank the same way, me and my mother figure. Neither of us let go of the glass, ever, and we drank small sips but very often. It wasn’t long before she was opening another of Dad’s bottles.

  Mother figure had obviously rehearsed what she said next. It would have been beautiful, if it wasn’t such a crock of self-indulgent shite.

  ‘I want you to know why.’

  ‘Tell me, then. Why? Why did you abandon us? Why did you never contact us? Not even one tiny phone call or letter or birthday card or email? Did you ever even think about us?’

  ‘Every day! Georgie, every day. Let me explain this to you …’

  She put on the kind of voice an ordinary mother might use when her child had done something bad, like stealing sweeties from a shop. She would make me understand the moral truth.

  ‘I have always loved Heath. It’s hard to convey just how much I love him, or even why. He’s the other part of me, always has been. Your father – well, he was an interlude.’

  ‘An interlude.’

  ‘An attempt at mediocrity.’

  ‘An attempt at mediocrity. Nice.’

  ‘I had a career. Have you ever heard me sing?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Well, you should know then that I’m talented, Georgie. People said I was the next Stevie Nicks. I had to try, didn’t I? Wouldn’t it have been a waste not to try?’

  Was she really asking me to make it better for her? To say, yes, I understand Mother, you are the next Stevie Nicks, whoever the hell that is?

  ‘Don’t you crave freedom? Don’t you want to break down the walls they build around you? You’re surrounded by them here!’

  I didn’t mean to nod.

  ‘I needed the thing most people only dream of – freedom. And you know what?’ she said, looking at the judgement in my eyes, ‘I’m sick of being judged. I was a monster mother. I was angry and upset all the time. I slapped you both when he wasn’t looking. I thought about throwing you out the window. I was depressed, suffocated. And I wasn’t making him happ
y, or you girls.’

  She emptied her glass and continued. ‘I decided I had a responsibility to myself. If I couldn’t be the person I wanted to be, how could I be the person you children wanted me to be? I’m not mentally ill. I’m not evil. Lots of women do this nowadays. Single fathers are common. Why do we judge that when we don’t judge it the other way around?’

  ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘Not without Heath. I need him … I count the hours till I can see him.’ She paused, bit her nails. ‘I do understand I was awful. I let you down. I spoilt it all. I ruined it all. But I didn’t think you should have to face the consequences of my behaviour.’

  ‘You really think we didn’t?’

  ‘I think you’re both outstanding people. That’s what I think. If I’d stayed, I’m not so sure.’

  There, she’d finished her speech. She sighed with self-satisfaction. ‘Where’s Will?’ she asked, her tone different now.

  How dare she call him Will? I thought. ‘At his girlfriend’s.’ I loved saying that. Was she jealous? Did she feel anything in those huge blue eyes? Not as far as I could tell. Although she was a little sweaty. Had an itch on her chest she couldn’t relieve.

  ‘He’s a good man. I knew he’d be a good father to you.’

  I felt like telling her the truth: that he was a lazy no-hoper who’d wasted his life and done nothing. Instead, I said, ‘He is good. You did the right thing.’

  ‘Can I look at some photos?’ she asked. ‘I want to see you as little girls.’

  I looked in the glass-fronted cabinet, but most of the albums weren’t there. ‘I’ll check in the office,’ I said, making my way into Dad’s private room off the lounge.

  The room was always messy, but blimey, what had he been doing in there? Books and notebooks and photo albums and report cards and glasses and empty bottles of wine were strewn all over the floor. The filing cabinet was open. The drawer to his desk was so full of crap that it hadn’t closed properly, and – Ha! I knew it! – several joint stubs were on the top of the filing cabinet in a wee saucer. Sneaky wee bastard. I grabbed the photo albums and went back into the living room.

  I hate to admit it, but I was really excited at the idea of sitting with her on the sofa, showing her what we looked like as kids, telling her the things we’d been doing in the photographs.

  ‘We were so cold that day!’ I was going to say, for example, when I showed her the photograph at Loudoun Castle. ‘The three of us had a picnic on the grass and had to practically sit on top of each other to keep warm. Dad’s a good cuddler. So’s Kay.’

  I didn’t say this, because my mother figure, God bless her cotton socks, said, ‘I’ve signed on today. They’ve put me in some hostel till I get my own flat.’

  ‘That’s good.’ I pointed at the Loudoun Castle photo, still ready to impress her with emotional stories that might make her cry.

  ‘Thing is, it takes a while,’ she said.

  ‘This is at Loudoun Castle,’ I said.

  ‘Around two weeks, for the money to come through.’

  My face went hot all of a sudden. ‘You want money?’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m asking you this. I feel ashamed, Georgie.’ She actually took the album out of my hand, closed it, and put it on the coffee table. ‘I am a heroin addict …’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘There, I’ve said it.’

  My turn to pause, not for dramatic effect, but because my jaw refused to return to its rightful place. Eventually it did, and I said, ‘Go to your GP. Get on methadone.’

  ‘I was struck off a while before I left. I’ve requested another one. Again, it can take a while. Plus, I have to stay clean long enough before they consider me for meth, prove I’m susceptible to treatment. It’s a catch 22. I just need enough to tide me over.’

  Oh, the itch. She was going at it like mad now.

  ‘So you came here because you want me to give you money for heroin.’

  ‘No, no, no, no!’ she said, reading the anger in my voice and regretting her honesty. She picked up the album with shaky hands and opened it again. ‘Tell me about this photo. Is it in England?’

  She was biting her hand – not her nails, but the actual flesh on her hand. And rocking back and forth a little.

  ‘It’s in Loudoun Castle,’ I said. ‘It was cold that day. Dad is a good cuddler.’

  ‘Cold, hey?’ she said, her eyes flickering from one side of the room to the other.

  There were two things going on in my head. The first was that I didn’t like anything about my mother. There was nothing to like. She was a drugs sponge, that was all, nothing more.

  The second was that I didn’t want to give her money for drugs. ‘I’ll give you food,’ I said, slamming the album shut and putting it out of reach on the floor by my side of the couch.

  ‘I’m not hungry!’ she said. ‘Okay, it is for drugs. But can’t you understand? Haven’t you ever needed something so badly you could explode?’

  ‘Let me think.’ She didn’t note the sarcasm. Did she even remember why my father had sought her out?

  She didn’t start crying, but I think she wanted to – it would have helped with the performance. Instead she grabbed my hand and scrunched her face into a crying face and said, ‘Please, Georgie. Even just twenty quid. Come on! I’d do it for you.’

  ‘If I agree, do you promise to get a drugs counsellor or something?’

  ‘I promise! I’ll go to that place down the Gorbals. You don’t even need to make an appointment.’ She’d let go of my hand. Scrunched-up-crying-face suddenly became excited-’cause-I’ll-be-off-my-head-soon face.

  I pulled my hands from hers and got my purse from the hall table. There was nothing in it. No surprise, really, as no one in our house had an income. Pocket money had stopped along with the rentals in Spain. But Dad always kept emergency money in the filing cabinet under E. Retard. I went back into his office and opened the cabinet.

  Was that my diary on his desk? What the fudge! Putting that issue to the side for a moment, I retrieved a twenty-pound note from a small leather wallet in the filing cabinet, shut it, and handed it to my mother figure, who was now drooling at the door of the office.

  ‘So, you have got somewhere to stay?’

  ‘Aye. This hostel in Govanhill for now, but I’ll get a furnished flat from the council soon as the benefits are sorted.’

  ‘Let me know when you’re settled.’

  ‘Thank you, Georgie. I mean it. Thank you.’

  There were no kisses or hugs. I closed the door and sighed.

  *

  What was my diary doing in Dad’s office? I went back in and lifted it from his desk. Had he read it? He better bloody not have. Kay’s was underneath it. What was he doing with our diaries? Both had been placed on top of a brown notebook. Without thinking, I opened the notebook and read the first line of the first page.

  1) Cynthia

  Typical Dad. Years ago, when he announced that he was going to make another attempt at a screenplay, he locked himself away in the office for weeks, finally appearing, triumphant, with a similar notebook. In it, he had made a very long list indicating how he was going to write the thing.

  1. Treatment

  2. Synopsis

  3. Tagline

  4. Approach Scottish Screen with all of the above with view to getting script development money.

  5. Write two scenes per day.

  6. Research which producers are hot at the moment.

  7. Meet them! Network!

  The plan had seventy-five points, each with around five sub-points. He read it to us in the living room, proud of himself for making it. Dickhead.

  ‘You should just write it,’ I remember saying when he’d finished reading.

  He went back to his office in a huff, puncturing the list onto the metal spike he put all his defunct lists on. It was half full of lists, this spike. Dead lists.

  So this was his plan now – to write useless notes about how he might save us.

&nbs
p; Cynthia. Okay, so – unusually – he had actually found her, but it hadn’t helped. What was next on his list of things to either not do or do badly?

  Parents – useless pricks.

  Buy one.

  Oh my God, he’d printed out a picture of boys with scars, standing in line in their slums in the Philippines. How could he even think of this? It made me feel sick. Did he really believe we would agree to the idea? Even if it saved our lives? Well, okay, maybe. Probably.

  His notes about how to raise the forty grand made me laugh. His parents! The stingy stuck-up pricks that they were.

  The bank! What did he think they’d say? ‘Yes, here you go – O unemployed single parent – off and join the black-market organ trade.’

  The next way to raise the cash was ‘Linda’. That must be why he went there tonight. Should I go over there and tell him to stop this nonsense? That I hated the idea of paying for a body part from some poor child? I felt sure that Kay would feel the same. Yes, I decided I should go over there and confront him about it.

  But what was that – a blank page in the notebook followed by a missing one. He must have ripped one out. Why? I looked in the bin. It wasn’t there. Checked on the desk and floor – nup. Opened the drawer of his desk … Ah, look, there it was. A ripped, scrunched page. I sat down, straightened it out, pieced it together, and contemplated the headings: GEORGIE and KAY; PROS and CONS.

  38

  I was born unhappy and I stayed that way.

  I have found it difficult to conform.

  I am mean.

  Selfish.

  Horrible.

  I have no hope.

  No ambition.

  No kindness.

  I love no one bar a junkie who does not love me, she loves

  my twenty quid.

  I hate my father.

  He hates me too.

  I never knew.

  Till now.

  Do I want to kill him?

  It’s very easy to get a gun.