You thought of the time you’d chucked all them fotos in a bin liner. She’d been admitted overnight with another low white blood count and you figured, fuck it, if Ramona really wanted to see where you lived, that evening would be as good a shot as you’d ever get. No, Mum, look this way – over here. I’m way over here. Hadn’t planned on hiding away the framed fotos – to begin with, you just wanted to clear away all her C-bomb stuff. The pills, the wigs, the kidney bowls, the cannula, the tubing, the pills to counteract the pills, the crutches, the Caucasian-coloured prostheses, the pills, the Asian-coloured prostheses. Then you figured that, while you were at it, you might as well chuck in all her chintzy kitschness. The porcelain ballerinas. The embroidered proverbs. The long-distance lace table runners. All those romantic weekend wellness break fotos. Her with her tunics and telltale headscarves. Ramona texted to say she was on her way. You looked at the clock: six minutes – shit. Cleared away your mum’s kitsch and cancer pap like some maniac burglar-impersonator. First, taking fotos with your fone of how everything was arranged so you could put it all back perfect whenever she got discharged. You looked back at the clock: six minutes – shit. And then the doorbell rang and you unloaded half a can of aftershave in your hair. And then the doorbell rang again and you dabbed your mum’s foundation on your zits. And then the door opened by itself and your mum hobbled in. “Guess who’s still got the fight in her.”
“Mum?”
“I don’t need to block a hospital bed – I don’t need to get in the way.”
This way, Mama. Look towards the lens. Over here on the sofa. Stop slumping by your deathbed-to-be and come and sit here next to me. Just allow all those anonymous aunties who are leaning on your dressing-table-cum-sideboard – what the hell is your dressing table doing down here anyway? And who the hell bought you that Get Well Soon calendar shaped like a flower? The one where you tear off a fucking petal after each month.
Soon as your Mum limped into the living room, you texted Ramona to tell her she couldn’t come over cos you suddenly had to go out or someshit. Next up: how to douse out your aftershave.
“Er, Dhilan …” The words from your mum like some worm too scared to leave the nest. “Dhilan, where is everything?”
You told her you were in the middle of tidying up for her. Nothing drastic, just dusting – “I was gonna surprise you, Mum. Make everything nice.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Dhilan. One good thing about dying young is I’ll die before I go senile.”
“You ain’t gonna die young, Mum.”
“Clearly not young enough for you. Better make sure you save some of that aftershave for my funeral. You can talk to all the girls you like then – believe me, they’ll all want to be your special friend.”
“It’s deodorant.” Ramona still hadn’t texted you back. You looked again at the clock: six minutes – shit.
“You can even kiss them on the lips if you want to, Dhilan. They won’t bite you with the mouth ulcers. So, tell me, then, what time is she coming here … wait – you put away all the photos because you’re embarrassed of me? You’re ashamed of my swollen face.”
Look up, Mama. I’m over here. The camera’s over this way. Stop talking to Uncle Kushil and come and sit with me. After all, I’m still your BBF and soulmate and so on. And I ain’t just saying that shit just cos everyone wants to be the dying person’s best friend.
Two minutes after she’d noticed the framed fotos were missing, she realised the rest. “Dhilan, where are all my medicines? And my wig?”
You nearly told her: “In a bin bag.” Instead you told her: “It’s just a game, Mum.”
“Bloody, what game?”
And still Ramona hadn’t texted you back. You looked once again at the clock: six minutes – shit. “I was so upset about you being readmitted that when I got back from school I decided to play a game. The game’s called ‘Mummy’s Been Completely Cured’. That’s why I had to clear away all the traces of your illness.”
Then, like some special kinda bullshit buzzer, Ramona finally texted you back.
“I suppose that’s her, is it? Your little girlio. But I want you to have girlfriends, Dhilan. I don’t want to be that kind of a mother.”
“Nah. It’s just some girl called Ramona. Actually, she wants to come over and borrow an essay.” This much was actually true: Ramona’s text message said that even if you had to head out, she still needed to borrow your Thursday night Economics homework. You looked at the clock on your fone: six minutes – shit.
Anyway, fuck the bin-bag incident, Mama. Remember how I used to bring you flowers, Mummy – all those battered bunches. I know everyone buys flowers for people in hospital, but didn’t I get you that bunch after my first day at uni? I wrote in your blog that it was the happiest moment of your life. Just turn to the camera and come and sit with me.
“I’m not a bloody idiot, Dhilan.”
“It isn’t what you think, Mum. The thing is, Ramona – this girl – she doesn’t know you’re sick. I never told her cos you told me not to tell anyone.”
“But I told you it was fine to start telling people after it spread to my hip.”
“Yeh, but it was too late for me to tell her then. I’d already lied to her too much.”
“But I don’t understand why you needed to hide all my medicines. Just tell her I’ve only recently fallen sick.”
“Don’t you understand? She thinks you’re alive.”
“What? Are you on drugs, Dhilan? I am alive.”
“You know what I mean.”
Then you looked once again at the clock: six minutes – shit.
It was that whole cancer-props-in-bin-bag routine that first gave you the idea: what if you slowly started stealing her hats and stuff? Little by little. Wrap them up in cling film. So that if by some miracle she was mortal after all, then five years or so later, after she finally checked out, at least you’d know you’d kept the scent of her scalp alive.
“Please don’t be upset, Mum. How about a cup of tea – would you like a cup of tea? I can bring it up to your bedroom.” Six minutes – shit. “I can bring you one of your wigs, even.” Six minutes – shit. “She’ll be here in six minutes, Mum. Don’t you understand? She’ll think I’m a liar. She thinks you’re alive.”
“Dhilan, I am alive.”
“You know what I mean.” Six minutes – shit.
And why not cling-film her shower caps and hooded anoraks too? And if by some miracle she was mortal after all, maybe you could frame her shopping lists and Post-it notes along with the fotos – just to preserve her handwriting and that.
“No, actually I don’t know what you mean, Dhilan. I am alive. I can see quite clearly from all your little home improvements that you can’t wait for me to hurry up and die, but I’m afraid I’m still very much alive.”
“They ain’t home improvements, Mum, I’m just customising the house to realign the facts with Ramona’s alternate reality. In fact, I think the era of mass-customisation as opposed to mass-production actually started with customised home furniture.”
“What?”
“Ramona’s alternate reality – the one I basically bullshitted into existence. Mum, please. She’ll be here any minute.” You checked your watch. Six minutes – shit.
Then the doorbell started ringing. “Mum, please. Otherwise there’ll be a catastructive context collapse – like when you see fotos of your teachers getting drunk on Facebook.”
“But I’m not going to collapse, Dhilan.”
The doorbell rang again. You looked again at the clock: six minutes – shit. “Mum, please, I’m begging you. She doesn’t know you’re sick. She doesn’t know how much I’ve lied. She won’t speak to me again if she finds out. She thinks you’re still alive.”
“Dhilan, I am alive.”
“You know what I mean.”
Or maybe you’d be better off converting all those fotos of her into personalised mouse-mats and T-shirts and coffee mugs. Useful, functional crap.
Cos if by some miracle she was mortal after all, there’d be no point simply staring at framed fotographs of her like as if she was somehow trapped within them. No point dicklessly talking to them – or even talking to the sky or the sunset or the ceiling.
“You want me to go and hide in my bedroom in my own house, Dhilan?”
The doorbell rang again as if confirming this on your behalf. “Mum – she’s already here.” You looked at the clock. Six minutes – shit.
And how about Perspex cases for her plastic prostheses? The old pair she’d chucked by her feet at the foot of her bed. Still warm even though they’d been lying on the floor for a month – as if you could just mould the shape of a breast out of Blu-Tac or Plasticine or pizza dough and it would just miraculously generate heat. Allow it – technically, it ain’t foreplay if you just endlessly fondle.
So fuck it, why not just put your mum in the Perspex case and put the prostheses in the coffin. If you mummified your own mummy, would her corpse still have the C-bomb? And, anycase, how the fuck would you lug around a cling-film-covered bed?
“You really want me to go and hide in my room, Dhilan? Because you’re embarrassed of my bald head and swollen face?”
You looked at the clock. Six minutes – shit. And so, for reasons you’ll never really understand, your precise words in response were: “Yeh, Mum. Yes.”
Okay fine, Mum, even if you won’t leave all them other people to come and sit here with me, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re still my BFF. Why does there have to be a reason, anyway? Why can’t we just say I fucked shit up and leave it there? Can’t we just say that I shouldn’t have? And why did you have to keep telling me all that crap about being your soulmate, Mum? I’d have been your soulmate anyway, but why did you keep on telling me I was? Come and sit with me, Mum. Fuck you – you ain’t dying; fuck you.
39
RAMONA ASKS HOW many more Tube stops till Acton Town. I list all six stations like a time-stretched audio file. As if saying their names in slow-mo will somehow long out the distances between them.
See, I finally found me a way to stop lying to her about my mum but without having to tell her the truth: I’m gonna show her the truth. Just show it. See what happens. As if the lying-ass part of my brain is now maxed out and busted. Like father, like son, my bony brown butt. No more bullshitting my girlfriend just cos I’m scared of losing her.
“But it was six stops last time I asked.”
“Didn’t you notice that time stood still while we was kissing?” And then I lean in again. Try and buy us some more time.
“Er, simmer down, Dillon.” Ramona disconnects me from her mouth. “We’re in a Tube carriage.”
Didn’t even use tongue out of chivalry and hygiene and general rules of engagement. She’s been blocking Public Displays of Affection ever since we accidentally went full-penetration in that kitchenette in my client’s office. New access restrictions suit me too – less risk of physical escalation, less risk of cross-contaminating, less risk of being spotted round London by one of my aunty-informing cousins. But today, I figure, fuck it. Today, I ain’t got nothing to lose.
“Oh, don’t look so wounded. I just don’t want to have to redo my lipstick. Do you think I should’ve worn a cardigan? Not for modesty, obviously. I mean in case it gets chilly.”
One last lie, though – just for old time’s sake. Before I gotta watch her face as she works out just how many other lies there’ve been. I’d told her we was headed to my house for a barbecue to celebrate my mummy’s fiftieth birthday. Get it? Got it? Good.
The props are all in position. The paraphernalia, the souvenirs, the disposable paperboard pap. The pills, the bedpans, the kidney bowls, the sick bowls. The pills, the syringes, the tubing, the dressings, the ointments, the Caucasian-coloured prostheses, the Asian-coloured prostheses, the breast in formaldehyde, the breasts in glass museum cabinets, the backlit framed sickness certificates, the dummy pre-death death certificates, the wigs on velvet mannequin busts that have had their actual busts sawn off.
Oh – and one last lie told to Naliah, too. Just to draw a line under that whole father–son thing with my father. Told her I’d been fucking up my dad’s shit on purpose. Not cos I resented her or her mother or nothing – and deffo not cos he’d cut contact with me/washed his hands of me/abandoned me/poor, poor me, etc. Nope – instead, I’d told Naliah this brand-new blend of bullshit: that I was afraid my new-found father–son thing weren’t gonna last, seeing as how I didn’t deserve it, and so I’d been subconsciously sabotaging shit on purpose. Like a wrecking ball for removing uncertainty. A crystal wrecking ball.
Tube train’s now on some red signal hold-up. Driver dropping surround-sound apologies. Delay ain’t a licence to bail or wuss out, though. More like the opposite: the hold-up is telling me to tell her. Not just show Ramona the truth, but sit her down on one of these puke-stained Tube seats and fess the fuck up, right now. Cos showing her instead of telling her would be gutless. Showing instead of telling would be too clever. And I ain’t wanting to be clever about this shit.
Then, “Please stand clear of the closing doors.” And we carry on rolling towards Acton Town. Pulling Ramona towards me. Telling her I’m only doing it so she ain’t gotta touch no flu-infected handrail. Tucking the tulips under my armpit, even though today’s bunch ain’t mine to crush. She’d even asked if my mum and me had the same pollen allergies.
“Okay – but this time please try and resist your urge to kiss me.”
“It’s a westbound Piccadilly line. People will just think one of us is dropping off the other at Heathrow – that we ain’t gonna be seeing each other for weeks. Maybe months. Maybe even ever again.”
Hold her tighter; the train speeds up.
“Doubtful, Dillon – we don’t have any baggage.”
Tighter than any handrail has ever been held in the history of public transport.
“This train is now ready to depart.”
“Please stand clear of the closing doors.”
Anyway, allow it – kissing is proper wrongness now. Not just in our own fucked-up situation, but also kissing in general. Don’t need no postgrad degree in biology to see there’s maybe some link between kissing and breastfeeding. Clue: humans didn’t develop lips in order to make out in nightclubs.
“Due to essential maintenance work, escalators at the next station are not in service.”
Obviously there was an in-between stage – people didn’t just jump from suckling to tongue tennis. Before human evolution developed Heinz baby food, mothers used to beef up their breast milk by chewing mouthfuls of actual beef and other iron-rich meats and then, instead of swallowing, they’d basically French kiss their babies. Technical term for this is premasticating. Birds and apes still do this. Why the fuck did both Google and Facebook decide I wanted to know this shit?
“Please stand clear of the closing doors.”
Not all experts agree that kissing evolved from premasticating. Some say it’s a pre-loaded program, like breathing and blinking. Experts also don’t agree on whether premasticating is good or bad for a baby’s health – they reckon most probly it depends on the mother’s health – her oral abscesses and mouth ulcers and so on. Don’t ask me why people always blame mothers when it comes to this stuff. Ain’t like you need breasts to premasticate.
Honestly, Naliah, my dad’s a really good guy. Kind of man a son can look up to and then stand tall. I’d even set him up with my own mum, but obviously that’d be ridiculous.
Dad had foned last night to tell me that the ashes that had spilled out of his thermos flask weren’t human. Didn’t admit that it was his cuttings book, though – just told me it was some clever alternative to document shredding. Bank statements, bills – copies of tax return, probly. Hit the bullshit right out the park. “After all, Dylan, these days identity thieves can use software to piece together shredded paper. So I give all my old bank statements and confidential papers to a man in the City who runs a special d
ocument crematorium. But for health and safety reasons you have to dispose of the ashes yourself. That’s why I had to use a thermos flask.”
No lie, Naliah – he’s a really great, straight-hitting man.
Cos, fuck it, man’s just dealing with his shit. Having gone and told Naliah and her mum some CGI story about why he had no contact with his son, he ain’t got no choice now but to keep pushing that story. Not cos he’s gotta cover up the truth but cos he’s gotta cover up the bullshit.
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