Distortion

by Gautam Malkani

  Or maybe – oh, shitfuck, no, please, no – maybe she’d kept it hush cos she didn’t wanna admit the dirty stinking mess that your daddy had done?

  “But … why, Daddy?”

  “You mean why didn’t your mother tell you all this herself?”

  “No, why did you tell me, Daddy? Why tell me all of this? I only asked about your fake news stories. But your news stories had nothing to do with all this.”

  “Oh, wake up, Dylan. Just please, just wake up, son … ”

  If you woke up with me, Dhilan, I wouldn’t have to face the sunrise by myself.

  But I am awake at daybreak, Mummy. I do my homework at five in the morning.

  “… After all, now that you’ve awoken me to all of this, the least you can do is see it with me, Dylan.” Your daddy speaking through the fabric of his handkerchief now. “Because, yes, I think that maybe that’s the reason why. Yes. I really think maybe it is. It isn’t what I’ve always thought happened – I always thought that your mother and I just generically grew apart. But now that you and I are talking, son, I’m no longer so sure.” Your daddy just whispering behind his hanky now. Ain’t no need for vocal projection when mostly talking to yourself. “…Or at the very least, if we did grow apart, then I think that maybe I grew apart from your mother first. And I think perhaps it had nothing to do with our incompatible personalities or my workaholism. Dylan? Are you listening? I’m saying I think it was because after her operation I think maybe I couldn’t stand it. But what exactly am I saying? What couldn’t I stand, son? It. I couldn’t stand it – I couldn’t stand the sight of it. But it wasn’t repulsion or anything, Dylan – I never said it was repulsion. It was more like an anxiety that I had. Irrational fearfulness. Okay? Happy now are you, Dylan? I couldn’t stand the sight.” Wet patches in his handkerchief. Sniffle, sniffle – various assorted bodily fluids. “Anxiety, Dylan, not repulsion. After all, why do you think all those redneck American congressmen want to regulate women’s bodies even more than hardline mullahs do? Why they’re all so obsessed with purity and menstruation. It’s because they’re anxious and afraid of women’s bodies too. But because they’re too macho to admit they’re afraid, their anxiety gets distorted and turns into domination or disgust or abuse or hatred. So, you see, it’s not just me, son – men have always had these issues.”

  “The fuck, Dad? Is that seriously supposed to be your defence?”

  You realise that with him it’s the other way round: you can handle all the eye saliva, just can’t deal with all these noxious secretions coming outta his mouth.

  “Dylan, you have to remember that when we split up, she was two years into remission. We thought that original lump was probably benign. I mean, I didn’t think of it as divorcing a cancer patient, Dylan. We thought she was cured. And it wasn’t as if I didn’t try, son. I tried to be more positive. More responsive. I tried. I tried very, very hard. Nobody in the world could have tried harder than I did.”

  You wanna tell him, What the fuck, Daddy? Are you having some kinda internal competition with yourself to see how low you can make my opinion of you freefall?

  But you don’t tell him this.

  You just tell him, “But why, Daddy?”

  Or, actually, maybe this time you don’t ask him why. Maybe don’t say nothing at all. You just cut him a look and then watch that old familiar fight on his face – the one between embarrassment and angryness.

  “Oh, don’t sit there and judge me like that, Dylan. Or rather, Dhilan. Anyway, this isn’t about her scarring – I never even said it had anything to do with her scarring. As a matter of fact, this happened even before she got sick. I mean, do you even realise that you didn’t just get the Good Morning kiss, Dhilan, you got the Welcome Home kiss even when I was the one who’d come home from work – working harder than any man in the world works. And eating from the same plate, even – she used to say, ‘So what if we share the same plate and cutlery? Dhilan would never be disgusted with me.’ In any case, she wouldn’t have been able to spend time with me even if she wanted to because every time she was out of your sight, you’d start crying. It was as if you were afraid of her disappearing or something. You cried when the two of you played peek-a-boo. And then running to our room every night to make sure she was still there. And, anyway, do you have any idea how long you were breastfeeding for, Dhilan? Until you were four years old. Four years old! All that suckling and soreness, Dhilan. That’s four years of no access for me. Just staying up till five in the morning and getting stuck in a rabbit hole of online pornography – do you have any idea how the web takes hold of your minor fixations and then warps your whole mind with them? And during all that time I stayed with her – my one attempted indiscretion with that other woman notwithstanding, I stayed with your mother. But then that horrible operation and I’m sorry, Dhilan, I’m really sorry, but I’m now beginning to realise that maybe that’s the real reason I started growing apart from her. In fact, why the hell am I still qualifying and couching – why don’t we just embrace the certainty of it now. Because now that I’m thinking about it, son, I remember that, one day, I even physically retched. And your mother pretended she didn’t notice me retch. And no, not just at her post-surgical scars, but even before that – my retching in repulsion at the thought of you suckling on them. So I’m sorry but fuck it, Dhilan, her breasts belonged to you anyway – maybe I thought you’d look after what remained of them better than I ever could.”

  “Good,” a voice rolls in from further up the tunnel. “Absolutely fucking contemptible, but good.” The botched-Botox man steps out of the blackness into the beam of the flashlight. He nods at you, then pats your weeping father on the back. “Good that you’ve said it, Deckardas. It’s a pity that it came to it, but given that it came to it, it’s good that you’ve said it.”

  Something about the botched-Botox man is different now. Different down here. His biker jacket is now a long grey raincoat. His stubble now firmly heading towards full-beard. He kicks the trolley gently into your daddy’s knees. “Now both of you can get on with deleting all these wilting newspapers.”

  He reaches into his raincoat and busts out a bag of mint chocolate chip cookies. Offers you the bag, says it’ll help boost your energy. But this time you wise up. This time you don’t accept his cookies. “Aw, Dillon, I thought you liked mint chocolate chip.”

  “What’s going on here?” goes your daddy. “Do you two already know each other? You sent my own son to snoop on me?”

  The Botox man eye-rolls till his eyes meet yours. “Don’t look so angry, Dillon. I know your father’s beyond the pale, but don’t look so angry. After all, you and I both know that you’re going to forgive your dear little daddy, don’t we? And we both know why you’ll forgive him.” When you don’t respond, he shouts at you, “Come on, Dillon, don’t be afraid of this. Don’t be like your pitiful old man over there – the kind of man who keeps flipping his fears into hatred. That’s too easy, Dillon. It’s too easy to feel repelled by the things you fear, and it’s too easy to be hating and demonising the things that repel you. Yes, this is going to feel uncomfortable. Yes, it will hurt you and may even mutilate you. So let it. Why do you people always have so much trouble accepting things that cause you discomfort and pain?”

  You tell him you don’t know what he’s talking about.

  “Well, that’s a very disappointing start, Dillon. Haven’t I told you many times before about all the terabytes of data? The search histories, the messages, the seamless recording and uploading? Which means pretending you don’t remember something is like claiming you don’t know something. But you already know this, yes – you don’t even need a search engine to tell you it.” He places a hand on each of your shoulders. Pats twice and then smiles. Then he lets go and steps back. Clicks the neon strip lighting back on, relieves you of your flashlight, then heads down the tunnel in the direction of the exit.

  When he’s gone, your daddy finally grows the balls to step closer. “Dylan? Son?
”

  He looks for a chair. There ain’t no chair.

  “Dhilan? Dylan? What’s wrong? Do you want me to call a doctor?”

  You mean an ambulance, Mummy. An ambulance.

  “Dylan, what’s happening to your face?”

  Apparently you can cure ulcers and other oral infections with salt.

  “Son, what the hell is happening to your face?”

  44

  AND THEN YOU were back in your mother’s hallway. Opening the front door in one last attempt to persuade Aunties Number Three and Four not to leave your ass alone with her. To tell them you’d go Tesco yourself later – you’d get whatever Mummy needed. But they’d gone, were long gone, you already knew they was gone. Been gone for thirty minutes. And then your mum started complaining about the door being open, about the draft slicing through into the living-room-cum-bedroom-cum-crematorium-anteroom. “I can feel it under my blanket,” she moaned, the breeze is making my down-below cold. Like she was fine to suffocate on some tumour or choke on her own vomit just so long as she didn’t catch a chill.

  You slammed the front door as if slamming it shut behind you. Framed photographs falling. And then you – no, not you. Me.

  I did what happens next.

  Because at some point that afternoon – in that house-cum-fucking-hospice – you realised that this was all just gonna end in sadness. Heartstrings, violins, handkerchiefs. Teardrops and snot – I’m very sorry for your loss. Pandemic dribble of your mummy’s liquefying jaw. Big group hug and then everyone cuddle whoever cries the most. You’d seen that shit in movies and oncology wards all across west London: sadness always leads to consolation. But after all the fuckugly shit she’d been through and fought through and all the things she’d done for you – after all her battles, all her muscles to smile through all the pain, all the selfless angelic sacrifices she’d made – surely sadness and consolation would be an insult? What for all the bubbles of vomit and shit and blood if all we’re gonna do is cuddle and sniffle and comfort each other with cups of sweet milky tea? So, you see, that’s how it finally hit you: this couldn’t just end in standard-issue sadness. This shit had to be proper horrible.

  When you stepped back into the living-room-cum-bedroom, the gastropub-cum-restaurant still hadn’t full-on dissolved. The bed, the oxygen cylinder, the tables, the waiters, the diners. Your mum still dribbling eye saliva down her thighs – through the table cover, through the duvet, down her thighs. “I thought you’d gone away,” she whimpered and snivelled and whimpered, “Dhilan, my sweetheart, when I heard the door slam I thought you’d gone away.”

  The smack of your hand on the wall like the sound of a knock on the door – not the front door, though, instead that knock on that door. The one where your student hall security guard bangs on your student hall door, tells you to stop sucking so-and-so’s feet and get the hell outta bed, get your coat, get your keys. There’s been an accident, a fatal side effect – the final fatal side effect. The chemo-induced pulmonary embolism and so on. All over the internet, minicab with sirens, what the hell is wrong with you, you weren’t answering your fone. Culmination of ten years’ hormonal action-hero fantasies about various assorted emergency scenarios, and now finally you understood why: cos this couldn’t just end in standard-issue sadness – it had to be horrible.

  “Why do you keep slamming the door and slapping the wall, Dhilan?”

  “I don’t keep doing it, Mummy, I only did it once.”

  “You did it twice.”

  “No I didn’t. I did both things once. Two things, one time each.”

  “Two things once is the same as twice. Anyway, why even do it once, Dhilan? What is it? Tell me. You want to smash up the house? You want to break all the walls just because I asked you to close the front door? What is it you want from me? I’m bedridden. What do you want me to do?” And so on – as if she realised you now needed a row as a ruse to turn around and walk outta the home-cum-house-cum-hospice. That only by bailing on her could you make sure this shit wouldn’t end horribly.

  “I have to go now, Mum.”

  “But – where? Why? Why do you have to go?”

  “Nowhere. Just the newsagent’s. Just to get some stuff. Some milk.” Do you need anything, Mummy? Any asprin or vitamins or sanitary napkins?

  “But, Dhilan, we have milk. And – but you hate milk. And, anyway, what are you talking about, sweetheart? You just saw that your aunties have gone to Tesco – they’ll get the milk and all my things. They always get for me all my things. So, no, Dhilan, no. You’re here now, so now you stay here. Right here. With me – you and me. Like how we always used to. How we’re meant to.”

  You smiled at a couple now kissing two tables to your left. The menus, the cutlery, the moody waiters. It would’ve been wrong to just leave your mother there by herself. All by herself in the afternoon. On a Tuesday afternoon. Not as shitty as leaving her by herself on weekend evenings and mornings and evenings and afternoons and mornings and evenings and weekends, but, nonethefuck, still wrong.

  i.e. you shouldn’t leave her, Dillon.

  Dylan, you mustn’t leave her.

  After all, Dhilan would never have even moved out to student halls – Dhilan would’ve probly got himself homeschooled. So just stay put, stay here, stay and learn some lessons from Dhilan.

  Do what Dhilan would do.

  What Dhilan would’ve done.

  For instance, if you weren’t allowed to head to the newsagent’s, you could always go chill in your bedroom – her bedroom, your bedroom, whatever. Count to ten. Think about the way she used to smile back when she was still herself. Or, better still, just go hang out in the toilet. Not her pantry of multi-buy bedpans, her actual downstairs accessible toilet. Bog-standard lid-free toilet seat; step-free, curtain-free shower cubicle. Handrails and handles everywhere like as if the tiles had contracted some kinda towel-rail disease. Dampness cos both the window and extractor fan were bust. If you smell a puddle of blood for long enough without it drying up, you’ll notice it starts to smell a little sweet. Same with vomit. Same with excrement. Same with horrible.

  You looked around the gastropub-cum-restaurant for the door or the stairs to the men’s room. Just go to the men’s room and be done with it. Cos there really weren’t no other choice for you. For serious – what were your other options? Bog-standard hugging? Bog-standard cuddling? That bog-standard sadness fuckery? Bog-standard sadness-followed-by-consolation-followed-by-time-heals-everything? Or how about bog-standard compassion-fatigue followed by visions of euthanasia? Bog-standard accidental matricidal overdose? Bog-standard mother–son smothering flipped 180 into literal smothering combined with compressive asphyxia? But surely that shit just leads to sadness too – still bog-standard sadness. Well then, how about a bit of bog-standard Oedipal incest? Bog-standard bathtub awkwardness? Only it couldn’t be bog-standard cos it had to be horrible. When you was a little boy, you used to be so, so scared of your mummy dying in some accident – so fixated by the fear of it that you kept wetting your bed. So what the fuck happened? What the fucking cuntfuck has happened here that you stopped being allergic to the thought of it? Did you start mourning her sooner than you actually needed to? How do you fix the bereavement equivalent of peaking too early? And if you can’t stop grieving for someone while they’re alive, how the fuck you gonna stop grieving for them when they actually dead? Cos she was dying and dead and dying. Your mum is dead, your mum is dead, your mum is dying and dead and basically all but oven-ready dead. Cos how to make that sentence less awful? Delete the word “dead” and replace it with “dying”? Delete the word “dying” and replace it with “not dying”? And when that no longer works? Could you then delete the word “mum”?

  “Mum?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “Mum?”

  “Yes, Dhilan?”

  “Nothing. I won’t go newsagent’s. I’ll stay.” I’ll stay. And watch. And wait. See what happens. Let things bubble up to the surface. “I’ll stay
.”

  And so you just sat there and sucked your mouth ulcers. Your Dylan, Dillon and Dhilan fones all switched to silent then laid out and surrendered on the dining-cum-dressing-table. Just plastic rectangles now that no longer spoke, no longer glowed, no longer corroborated your own dirty distortions, no longer foretold.

  “Why do you keep chewing your cheeks, Dhilan? Is it the mouth ulcers again? Stop sucking them, sweetheart, just put some salt on them.”

  You told her you’d already put salt on them. That you’d gargled with salt water while heating her soup. You’d even drunk some of the salt water, like the closest you’d ever get to downing a fun-filled shot of tequila.

  And then you slammed the empty shot glass on her dressing-table-cum-dining-table-cum-bar.

  “WHAT IS IT, DHILAN?” she screamed. “WHAT IS IT, WHAT IS IT, WHAT THE BLOODY FUCKING HELL IS IT? WHY DO YOU KEEP SMACKING THE TABLE AND THE DOORS AND THE WALL?”

  Breathe. Count to ten.

  Another ten.

  Delete the word “dying”.

  Delete the word “dead”.

  Delete the word “mum”.

  “Daddy?”

  “What?”

  Not knowing why the fuckness you was suddenly bringing your dad into it – back then you didn’t even know your dad, hadn’t even seen the man in years. Couldn’t seriously be pining after your father like some sappy, emo-listening sixth-former – and yet you went and said it again: “Daddy”.

  “You want to go live with your father? Is that it? Is that what this is? Give me my phone, then, Dhilan. Go on, give me my phone, maybe I still have a number to call him. Though why in the hell you can’t just wait till I’m dead … ”