by Jaap Robben
This time we sat at a different table. Everyone who came into Chez Pierre said hello to us or raised a hand. New faces asked, “Is that your boy, Maurice?” I didn’t know so many people knew my dad. The television above the bar was showing a mud-spattered bike race.
Dad gave me a five-euro note to change. He took his beer over to the fruit machine and plonked himself down on a barstool. Then he sat me on his lap. I leaned into him and it felt like a hug. His fluorescent yellow jacket was creaky and smelled new. It was back when all the crossroads were being turned into roundabouts and he used to direct the traffic. He had high-vis trousers too, but at weekends he only wore the jacket. I felt proud because he looked kind of like a policeman.
“Having fun?” he asked.
I nodded. “But Lucien’s all alone.”
“Do you think your brother notices if we skip a week?”
“I don’t know.”
“Take it from me, he’ll be asleep most of the day. Not much point hanging around watching him snooze all afternoon, is there?”
“But what if he wakes up?”
“Here.” He gave me a coin to shove into the slot. The lights on the fruit machine all started flashing at once. “Do you want to press the button?” he asked and put his hand over mine. We pressed it together. And won nothing. I was lifted from his lap and deposited on the floor. I thought of the rec room and hoped Lucien had been parked among someone else’s visitors. And that he couldn’t tell they weren’t us.
“But aren’t we letting Mum down? I mean, didn’t we promise her?”
“Well she’s not visiting either, is she?”
Dad went over to the bar for another beer and returned with a placemat and a box of felt tips. “Time to draw your mum another masterpiece.”
At home we told her Lucien said “Mama” again. And I said he had burst out laughing when I tickled him. Dad slipped me a wink. Mum called us sweethearts and promised that next week she really would come with us. I didn’t know what else to say, just watched her standing there by the window. It was like looking through the wrong end of binoculars. The harder I tried to see her, the smaller she became.
One afternoon a few weeks later, the school bus dropped me at the end of the street as usual. I rang the downstairs bell, but Mum didn’t pick up the intercom. I rang again. Luckily, someone with a key came along and I was able to slip in behind them. I didn’t want to wait for the lift, so I ran up the stairs and sprinted to the end of gangway. There was no string hanging out of the letterbox for me to open the door. I rattled it angrily and shouted that I was going down to play football. Peering through the slot, I saw that the hall was full of things. Some of them were broken. I stood on my tiptoes and looked in through the window. All the kitchen cupboards were open. She had left empty spaces on every shelf.
Later we found out Lizzy’s mum had called to see if anything was wrong at home. It was so long since anyone had been to visit Lucien.
-
35
With the shower head aimed at the wall and the tap on full, I wait for the water to warm up. As long as Dad’s not home, the power stays on and the boiler works. Stripped to my underpants, I hold Lucien upright on the white garden chair in the shower.
“Don’t panic,” I warn him and spray his whole head as quick as I can. Lucien gasps and snorts in all directions, tries to hide his face from the water. I run my fingers over his scalp, feel sand under my nails, avoid the cuts. Squeeze shampoo on his head and rinse it straight off again.
Lucien wants to rub his eyes. As the water flows over his neck and shoulders, he tips his head back and calms down. “Does that feel good?”
Then I point the shower head at his legs. The soles of his feet are brown, but he won’t let me clean them. Same goes for the dark rims under his toenails.
Lucien licks the water from his chin. I push him forward. His bum is caked in shit all the way round to his balls. Most of it rinses off in little flakes that disappear down the drain. His skin is pinkish up to where his nappy reaches.
Then it’s time to do his front.
The pale skin between his legs looks thin enough to slice open with your thumbnail. His pubic hair is a nest of wiry curls, his dick sticks up like a periscope. “Sorry, but I have to,” I say, mainly to myself, and aim the full force of the jets at his crotch. Lucien doesn’t seem that bothered, just sits there lapping water.
In next to no time, Lucien is lying face down on the bed, dried off and naked. He lifts his bum enough to slide one hand under him, then raises it a little higher. “Are you wanking off?” The noises he’s making sound like an argument going on inside his mouth. His body starts to shudder. Even my bedside lamp rocks along. I tug at his cramped elbow. “Stop that!” Lucien doesn’t give an inch, his breathing only gets heavier. I wonder if it’s Selma he’s thinking of.
“Go on then,” I sigh. “But don’t be long. I’ll wait outside.”
I sit on the aluminium threshold, my feet on the Astroturf. The poplar trees behind the caravan are rustling, but I can’t feel the breeze. Jean is lugging a cardboard box into his own caravan. Behind me I can hear Lucien’s noises.
Maybe I could bring Selma over here on the back of my scooter for her birthday present. Take a ride together.
Lucien is lying still on the bed, eyes half closed.
“Finished?” Carefully I roll him onto his back. His dick is flattened against his belly and a spatter of white snot glistens among his pubes. He’s made a stain on the sheet. It smells of swimming pools, just like when I do it.
I bunch my pillowcase into a big ball and wipe his belly clean. Then I drag him back over to sit in the shower. Sliding my hand under one buttock, I ease him off the seat and work a clean nappy under him.
“Where are my billy goats gruff?” Dad shouts. I didn’t hear him coming back. Quick as I can, I stick the tabs of the nappy in place. “Hey, something smells good around here. Shampoo!”
Dad leans forward and pokes Lucien in the ribs a couple of times.
“He doesn’t like that.”
“Ngang-ngang-ngang.”
“Ha, see! Our Lucien’s always in for a bit of fun,” Dad smiles. “Everything okay around here?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” I shrug.
My radio alarm is dead again. I try the light switch, but that’s not working either.
“What do you say the three of us go for a drive? Get some shopping in? We can call in at the bank. Maybe get ourselves an ice cream on the way.”
-
36
I wheel Lucien down the aisles of the supermarket while Dad fills the trolley. As we roll past the soft drinks, I don’t see my brother’s outstretched arm until it’s too late. Seven bottles of orange cordial spatter across the floor tiles.
At first, they want to make Dad pay for the damage, but when the manager sees Lucien in the wheelchair, he changes his tune. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “My apologies.” And he lets us get on with our shopping. Next stop, the bank.
I look out at myself and Lucien from the front seat of the pickup, reflected in the bank’s bronzed windows. First off, Dad tried to withdraw money from the cash machine. When that didn’t work, he had to go inside.
Lucien keeps bashing his knees on the glove compartment. Every time he moves, the plastic raincoat Dad put on him crinkles.
A man shuffles past in bedroom slippers, braces strapped over a white shirt that’s way too wide. A bag of bread rolls clutched in one hand, he drags a limping Scottie dog behind him with the other. He stops and stares at Lucien, then jumps when he sees me sitting beside him.
“Come any closer and he’ll bite your head off.”
The man tugs the leash like it’s the dog that made him gawp.
Dad made me sit in the middle, in case Lucien lunged at the gearstick. Or pawed at the steering wheel and sent us hurtling into
a crash barrier.
At long last the door of the bank swings open.
“Not a penny.” Dad gets behind the wheel, fuming.
“How come?”
“Madam in there claims no money’s been transferred. I know for a fact it was due in today.” As soon as he starts the engine, Lucien starts ramming his knees against the glove compartment again.
“Bry?”
“What?”
“I can’t cope with that racket right now.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Think of something. He’s your brother.”
I try to hold his knees still but that only makes him ram all the harder. “Hey, what’s this?” I take a toy car from my trouser pocket. It does the trick. Especially when I do hairpin bends on his shoulder and loop-the-loop around his ear.
“Have we got any money left?”
“Spent the last of it on the shopping.”
“But you’ve got work, haven’t you?”
When the silence turns prickly, I try to fill it up quick. “I can pay you back for those cans of energy drink.”
“Sure, that’ll make all the difference.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Wait till Monday,” Dad sighs. “We’ve got enough food to tide us over.” Before we set off, he peers through the steering wheel at the fuel gauge. “Just as well Benoit works Mondays.”
-
37
“What’s up with you?”
“Nothing,” Dad grins. “Can’t I smile at my boy once in a while?”
I can feel him angling for my attention, but every time I look his way he looks back at the TV. It’s not even on. Lucien is lying on his outside bed, chewing a toggle on the hood of his yellow raincoat.
“Tum-ti-tum,” Dad says.
“What?”
“What do you mean ‘what’?”
“You tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
At least the twinkle is back in his eyes. The same twinkle he had in the supermarket car park, before we drove to the bank.
I go outside to give Lucien his beaker. “Shit.” Lucien’s brandishing the handle for winding down the car window. “How did you get hold of that?”
“Check his pockets while you’re out there!” Dad yells.
“What for?”
“Just do as you’re told, will you?” Dad insisted we put the raincoat on Lucien before we went into the supermarket. In case he caught a chill from the aircon and the freezer units.
“Well?” Dad shouts.
“He’s all sweaty,” I say and stuff the handle under his sheet. I lift Lucien’s shoulder and tug at one of the sleeves. “Here’s your beaker. Drink it all down.” He can lift the spout to his lips now, with only a little help from me.
“Well?” Dad asks, peering impatiently through the kitchen window.
“What’s the matter? Have you lost something?”
“Might have.”
I pat one of the deep pockets and pull out a wrench. Followed by a cloth hanky and a broken lighter. “You mean this?”
“Try the other pocket.”
I feel a flat square of plastic and fish it out. Razor blades.
“Well, I never. That brother of yours …” Dad sticks his hand through the window to grab the box. “And my brand to boot! Go on, have a good feel in the other pocket.”
“Do it yourself.”
He comes out looking all pleased with himself and fishes around in the pocket I already looked in. “Hey, it’s Christmas come early.” He holds up a little pack of thin batteries. “Expensive little buggers.”
“Did you slip all this stuff in his pockets? What if they’d caught him?”
“Ah, but they didn’t.”
“Yeah, but if …”
“He’s a spaz in a wheelchair, Bry. Do you really think they’re going to frisk him? And even if they did, all I have to say is ‘Bad boy, Lucien! Shame on you!’ And lay the stuff on the counter, nice and decent like. And off we toddle into the sunset while your brother waves the bottles goodbye.”
A thump on my shoulder.
“And if they had tried to detain us, your brother would have kicked up a shitstorm and the blokes from security would have been all too happy to see the back of us.”
Lucien has drained his beaker and is mainly slurping air.
“Bry,” Dad says, milder now. “No one in their right mind is going to call the police over what some spaz has in his pockets … Get it?”
“Stop calling him a spaz.”
“Okay, okay.”
“You nicked that stuff. Not him.”
“Don’t be so uptight. Christ, it’s like being back with your mum.” And he gives my shoulder another thump. Without thinking, I lash out and whack him full on the cheek.
“Fuck’s sake.” His fists clench in a reflex, but slacken just as fast.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was aiming for your shoulder.”
Dad runs his tongue along his teeth.
“What if they had reported it and the police had carted him off?”
“Okay, say they had …” he sighs, summoning the last of his patience. “What are they going to do? Take him to court? Throw him in jail?”
I say nothing.
“Boys like your brother can’t be punished. He’s had a life sentence since the day he was born. What else can they do to him?”
But Dad must feel like he owes me, because after a while he says, “Why don’t you take your scooter for a spin tomorrow?”
“Who’s going to look after Lucien?”
“I will.”
-
38
His fingers stink. He’s spent half the night scratching at the wallpaper and sucking on them. As I try to wrestle him into clean clothes, Lucien twists and slams his knees against my shoulder. “Cut it out!” Not caring if it hurts, I pin him to the mattress. “Cut. It. Out!” But as soon as I let go, his knees shoot up again. “Ow!” I shout, more in anger than in pain. “Put your own bloody clothes on.” I fling the T-shirt in his face. Lucien thinks it’s all a game. “Drop dead.”
Dad left three hours ago. Last night, all I could think of was seeing Selma again. And I don’t dare ask Emile to look after Lucien.
His nappy is a soaked sponge that gets squeezed every time he moves. Drops of piss seep along his legs. Lucien doesn’t seem to mind, so I pull a blanket over him. “Dad can do the rest when he gets back.” The cans of energy drink in my pockets have gone lukewarm, so I put them in the freezer compartment and decide to wait five more minutes. When they have ticked by, I wait another three.
Lucien’s eyes are staring past me in a weird kind of concentration. He’s having a shit. “Jesus! Hold it in, will you? Wait till Dad gets here.” Mum always used to say with a kind of pride in her voice that she never let Lucien lie in a dirty nappy for more than five minutes. “Not like some mothers …” she’d tut, with a shake of her head.
“Okay.” I relent and pull a clean nappy from the pack next to the shower. “But you’d better cooperate.” Lucien lies there, unexpectedly calm all of a sudden, so I pick open the tabs and fold down the heavy piss flap. His dick springs to attention. By accident, I smear shit halfway down his leg. “Oh fuck …” Rico starts barking and Lucien turns to see, spreading the contents of his nappy across the sheet. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Quick as I can, I shove the clean nappy underneath him. A brown splodge sticks to my hand. The nappy’s on crooked but it’s the best I can do. “You’ll just have to lump it. I’m off to see Selma.” That starts Lucien shuddering again.
I take my two cans out of the freezer—not much colder than when I put them in—then wash my hands and run outside. Rico rears up against the bars of his cage, tongue lolling. “Moo-wah-wah!” Lucien shouts, and Rico’s tail wa
gs twice as fast. He barks three times, short and sharp. “Come on then.” I slide open the bolt on the cage. Rico trots around the party tent and the outdoor bed, slips as he leaps onto the step, and scampers inside. I make a grab for his collar and miss.
In the short gap between my door and the bed, Rico manages to pick up speed. He jumps up beside Lucien, who wallops him in a mixture of alarm and enthusiasm. “Here!” I command, but Rico’s not going anywhere. He licks Lucien’s face and stretches out beside him. “Have it your way,” I mutter. “Just make sure you look after him.”
-
39
We down our cans of energy drink in no time. Selma still hasn’t asked me for her present.
I move two of her dolls and slide to the foot of her bed, tucking my legs under me so that I’m leaning against her cupboard, below the poster of scooter boy and his girlfriend. Out of sight, if anyone walks past.
“Can you do belly-belly?” Selma asks.
“Belly-belly?”
Her ponytail swings in time with her nodding head.
“What’s that?”
Her finger makes a dent below her navel. “Belly’s here.”
“Do you mean doing it?”
Selma nods.
Sliding off the bed, she wobbles herself upright and heads for the door. “Come on.” She looks over her shoulder and beckons me like I’m a dog.
A girl is scurrying about at the far end of the corridor, stopping and shaking her head like she’s got water in her ear. There’s no one else around.
We walk side by side.
“Here.” She opens a wide bathroom door. The tube light flickers on. There’s a bath on wheels, waist height, made of thick tarpaulin. The kind they use to take stranded dolphins back to the sea. “Come on, come on,” she says, until I squeeze past her.