Shtum

by Jem Lester

  He stands and she takes him by the elbow, leading him out into the busy corridor. I follow on and turn left as they turn right. I would stay, I want to stay, but what could I say? I don’t know how to breach this crevasse between us, to cross it before it’s filled with all the longing, regret, hurt and the difficult, complicated love that I share with my father.

  We eat in silence at McDonald’s. I have a Big Mac Meal – which I hardly touch; Jonah has his usual three large fries and two Fruit Shoots. Who is there to phone? I scroll back and forth among the list of contacts on my mobile. Only Maurice, but I don’t have his number and, even if I did, could I tell him? Emma? She deserves to know, I need her pity – so I call. Voicemail. Message left: Dad’s dying. Jonah begins throwing chips around. ‘Come on, Jonah, let’s go home.’

  He’s an incongruous lump in his Bob the Builder pyjamas – too short in the arms and legs and stretched across his belly – but he feels warm against my naked chest and smells of the bubblegum shower gel I used in his bath.

  Tonight, he is snoring contentedly, while I am wide awake despite the half bottle of brandy. Tonight he chose to climb into my bed and lie nose-to-nose staring at me until he fell asleep. Tonight is going to be very, very long.

  I vaguely register a finger poking at my cheek, but as I turn on the bedside light, all I get is a fleeting glimpse of a dangerously overfilled nappy defying gravity. I throw back the duvet and stumble after it.

  I chase him across the landing watching his nappy slip from his hips like the jeans of a schoolyard gangster. He’s halfway down the stairs as I reach the top and my momentum carries me forward in an arm-spinning slide.

  ‘Woaah …!’

  Somehow, I avert disaster by pressing out against the walls and using my toes as brakes.

  My toes.

  My little toe.

  Fuck! It’s pointing up at me at an angle it’s never done before, addressing me with contempt like a raised middle finger, and is beginning to throb.

  I’m scared to touch it, as if it’s a dead wasp or a bank statement.

  Jonah has returned to the bottom of the stairs. Naked. A bagel in his mouth, he stares at me poker faced, shining lumps of butter in his wild bed hair.

  It’s not unbearably painful. Is that good or bad news? Surely it should be agony? Has my toe been killed off totally?

  ‘Jonah!’ He’s off back toward the kitchen.

  I shuffle down the remaining stairs on my bum, then pull myself up on the banister and begin hobbling after him, my toe still flipping me the bird at every step.

  ‘Fuck you, toe.’

  There’s a new pack of wipes under the kitchen sink and I manage to grab both Jonah and the wipes without putting pressure on my ailing toe, until he steps back and puts his full weight on my disfigurement. The scream is of shock, there is still no pain, and as he casually saunters off towards the lounge, half a wet-wipe still lodged in his bum crack, I look down and see that my lump of a son has restored my toe to its regular position. I perch on a kitchen chair and reach down to touch it – it moves easily in all directions like a video game joystick. Then the pain begins.

  ‘Aaron said you have to go to A&E for an x-ray in case there’s any blood-vessel damage,’ Johnny says.

  ‘Do I really? He always was a bit of a tart.’

  ‘Aaron’s the doctor, Ben.’

  ‘I can’t take Jonah to A&E. Can you imagine? Could you have him, Johnny?’

  ‘We’ve got the captains playing in at the golf club.’

  ‘Jonah likes golf.’

  Johnny laughs down the line. ‘Just go there with him and explain about his autism. It’s a hospital, for goodness’ sake, they’ll understand the situation.’

  Jonah’s sprawled on his back on the sofa, crumbling his bagel on to his bare chest. He smells a bit. I try to sit by his feet and he kicks me in the small of the back. I pour myself a medicinal whisky and slump on to one of the dining chairs.

  This is a scene. Curtains closed at midday, behind which sit a naked father and son staring into space. I am devoid of options as my father, Johnny and Amanda are the only people Jonah trusts that can cope with his rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and will actually have him in their house. Why couldn’t it have happened on a school day?

  School. His teacher, Maria! Where did I put her bloody number? I know it’s not in my wallet, but I search there nevertheless. It’s not there.

  I think back to when she gave it to me in the school car park. What did I do with it? I got into the car, began arguing with Dad. The door pocket! It’s in the door pocket!

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute, Jonah.’

  There’s no answer, so I leave a garbled message on her voicemail and begin the half-hour process of dressing, stroking my toe and licking my wounds.

  Jonah won’t leave the automatic door alone, jumping up and down in wonder and excitement as people wander past him into North Middlesex A&E. Each passing emergency represents another twenty minutes’ wait for us and I’m getting edgy as my toe begins to throb.

  ‘Jonah, in you come,’ I say, slapping my thigh. ‘Come on, Jonah!’

  I manage to pull his torso through the door, but not his legs. I put my arms around his chest, clasp my hands behind his back, lift him off the floor and swing him into the heaving waiting room. A fuzzy giant LCD monitor on the wall tells me the average wait is currently four hours – this is not even remotely possible. I pull Jonah with me to the reception window.

  The nurse addresses me with her head down.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Ben Jewell.’

  ‘Ben Jool,’ she repeats as she types. ‘Problem?’

  ‘Badly broken toe,’ I say.

  ‘Possible broken toe. GP?’

  I give her details twice then pull Jonah in front of the window.

  ‘Look, I’ve had to bring my profoundly autistic son with me, he just won’t be able to cope with being here very long. Is there anything you can do?’

  This time she looks up, her thick glasses reflecting the strip lighting back into my eyes. ‘Take a seat and a nurse will assess you as soon as possible.’

  No points for that, then. Perversely and irritatingly, Jonah has calmed down. He’s fiddling with some thread-like thing he’s found on the floor. I daren’t imagine what it is.

  This A&E is a United Nations of the unwell – babies, burkhas, hoodies, sandals, saris, smatterings of European languages I recognise, cluckings of African ones I don’t. I wonder what they make of Jonah and his personal, evolving language for one. Why does everyone in A&E have a cough, even if they’re here with a gashed head or a broken ankle? Are we that insecure that we always feel the need to embellish? I look at Jonah, quietly fiddling. Jonah doesn’t embellish, Jonah just does.

  The piercing sound of unoiled trolley wheels announces the arrival of a miserable-looking sixty-something black man and his even more miserable selection of chocolate and crisps. Jonah sniffs the air like a meerkat. I’ve got no cash with me and the packet of pitta bread in my bag will be hurled if I offer it now. No, I’m going to have to say no.

  He’s at the trolley before I have a chance to move, a family-size bag of bacon-flavour crisps gripped in both hands. I try to take it off him and the growling starts. He releases one hand from the packet and makes a grab for my neck, then he presses the swollen packet with all his force and bacon crisps erupt from it with a bang! This only makes him angrier and he turns back to the trolley and sweeps the remaining bags on to the floor and jumps on them and, as much as it hurts, I cheer him on in my head, ‘Go on, my son!’

  In an instant, A&E is all activity and a triage nurse is miraculously available. An arm has gone around Jonah’s shoulder and is clutching him in an embrace. Maria’s red bob appears above his right shoulder.

  ‘Sorry it took me so long,’ she says.

  ‘No,
no, I’m just so grateful that you’re here.’

  Why do redheads blush so readily? I wonder.

  ‘Leave him with me, we’ll be fine, won’t we, Jonah?’ she says, as one of his tears rolls down her cheek.

  They’re both waiting for me when I re-emerge from the x-ray room, little toe strapped to the next in line, clutching a box of high-octane painkillers. Jonah has his hand palm down on a pad of paper, fingers spread, while Maria traces round it with a ballpoint. Occasionally the pen touches the soft skin connecting his fingers and he giggles. Maria laughs back at him. They both spot me. Maria looks up with a smile.

  ‘All done then?’ she says.

  ‘Apparently I’ll live,’ I reply.

  ‘Thank heavens for that! How would we cope without him?’ she asks Jonah.

  Now I’m blushing. At least, I feel hot. Her eyes have not left Jonah. How old are you? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight? I follow them out to the car park where we stand in a triangle by the car.

  ‘So what else have you boys got planned for the day, then?’

  ‘A supermarket, then back to the hospital to pick up my dad.’

  ‘Yes, I heard, I’m so sorry. Let me come and help. You’re injured, remember?’

  ‘But I’ve taken up enough of your Saturday already.’

  ‘I was only going to slob around. No, I’d like to help, if you don’t mind?’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind, and Jonah would love it, obviously. Where did you park? Do you want to follow us to Tesco?’

  ‘I came by bus,’ she says. ‘It’s why I took so long.’

  She came by bus? I think: Jonah, you’re a lucky boy.

  ‘Well, hop in!’ I say, opening the passenger door. ‘And don’t worry about the mess on the floor, just stamp on it.’

  I feel self-conscious strolling the aisles of Tesco with Maria at my side. Jonah fills the trolley with apples, crisps and Smarties, eating as he goes – it’s the only way to get him round. Emma and I developed a system whereby a ‘double’ is kept of whatever he eats, which is then scanned at the checkout and handed back.

  Maria laughs at Jonah as he examines each shelf like a seasoned bargain hunter.

  ‘He’s such a sweet boy,’ she says. Her voice is soft. BBCish, Dad would call it.

  ‘I feel really guilty,’ I say. ‘Keeping you from your weekend, from your friends.’

  ‘Please don’t, really. I’m so sorry for the way things have worked out for you. I find it so disheartening that we can’t just be honest.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I interject. ‘Jonah! No butter, leave the butter alone.’

  He drops it and skips towards the bakery. Instantly, Maria follows him and, sensing her behind him, Jonah laughs loud and high and speeds up. I hear them both laughing and skipping as they turn down the canned vegetable aisle and Maria trying to slow him down as they reach world foods. They’re skipping hand in hand when they arrive back next to me.

  ‘That seemed like fun?’ I say.

  ‘It was, wasn’t it, Jonah?’ she says. ‘I don’t know why anyone would deny that Jonah needs the waking-day curriculum you’re fighting for. How could you say no to him? I mean, look at this face,’ she says, gently taking Jonah’s face between her hands. ‘Who could resist this face?’

  ‘It’s one only a father could love,’ I quip.

  ‘How does that work, when you’ve got the same face?’ she says.

  We sit nursing watery coffees in the supermarket café, while Jonah turns a chocolate gingerbread man to dust.

  ‘I speak to Emma every Thursday,’ Maria says.

  I didn’t know. ‘What do you talk about?’ I ask.

  ‘Jonah, of course!’ She laughs. ‘What else?’

  How shit am I? The fantasy that has been swiftly coalescing in my head reforms into visions of unfaithfulness and recrimination. I feel my toe throbbing again and throw back a painkiller with my coffee. Women tie me in knots. Always have. Am I surprised by Emma’s weekly updates from Maria? Not when I think about it, it’s just I feel shitty because it has never occurred to me to do the same. I feel ashamed and jealous that Emma does these caring, responsible things for Jonah and it has rarely crossed my mind to do so. This knowledge chips away at my sculpted monolith of Emma’s culpability and leaves me coated by the dust of shame – shame at the kernel of an idea, a fantasy of a relationship with Maria. Talk of Emma has popped the dream bubble and the reality is all pain and a sense of foolishness, that a desire for more than I have could ever be realised or deserved, that I’ll ever be over Emma. Silly middle-aged sod.

  ‘Ben, I’d be really happy to spend more time with you and Jonah, if it would help?’

  This hasn’t ended the confusion. Of course it would help, but here’s the strange paradox of my thinking: if she finds me attractive then it would be unfair to lead her on right now; but she can’t truly find me attractive, so she is offering out of pity and I can’t live with that either. I am arrogant and insecure, simultaneously. How to Turn One’s Life into a Lose-Lose Situation by Ben Jewell.

  ‘I understand,’ she says in the face of my silence, her words muffled by Jonah’s crazy thick hair.

  ‘No, no,’ I say, ‘it would be great, but with Dad and everything, it’s difficult to make plans.’

  She removes her face from the back of Jonah’s neck.

  ‘Could we play it by ear?’ I ask.

  She holds my gaze and I notice that she has dimples. ‘Absolutely,’ she says. ‘Plus, I’m travelling all summer when school finishes, so.’ She shrugs.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Latin America,’ she says.

  ‘Amazing,’ I say.

  ‘By myself,’ she adds.

  ‘Brave.’

  She grins. ‘It’s an organised eco-tour – guides and everything.’

  ‘Very sensible,’ I say. ‘You must send us a postcard.’

  ‘Deal,’ she says, holding out her hand to shake on it.

  After dropping Maria home, Jonah and I head back to the hospital, where we find Dad sitting up in bed drinking a cup of tea. Jonah slumps in the armchair and stares at the heart monitor next to Dad’s bed.

  ‘Even has a battle plan, this cancer of mine, like Hitler. First he took Czechoslovakia, then Poland. Mine? Invades my neck and has designs on my lungs.’

  ‘It’s in your lungs?’

  ‘Three little lumps like Myra’s matzo balls, only less toxic, he says.’

  ‘Do you want me to contact Mum?’

  ‘After I am gone, I could not bear to think of her miserable face at the funeral. Have you called Maurice?’

  ‘Don’t have his number.’

  ‘Here,’ he says, thrusting out his hand, ‘pass me your phone.’

  ‘You need to do the 020 …’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  It takes him three tries to enter the correct number, but it’s answered immediately.

  ‘Maurice. Georg. You need to practise the Kaddish. Yes, that bad. Wellington Ward. No cigars.’

  He hands me back the phone without ending the call, so I catch the tinny whimpering of his diminutive friend.

  ‘He will be here in an hour.’

  Do I have to wait here with him until Maurice arrives? The whole hour? I can’t spend sixty minutes talking to him, cancer or no cancer.

  ‘Shall I go and pick Maurice up?’

  He answers without looking up from his paper. ‘No, he needs the time to calm down.’

  ‘Tumours in the lungs, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But nowhere else, thank God.’

  ‘What? The lungs are not enough? You don’t need to breathe?’

  ‘I just meant …’

  He pats my hand. ‘I know what you meant.’

  I unlock my phone and flick through the latest new
s stories. My attention is drawn to the picture of a mouse with a human ear growing from its back. Surely if they can do that they can knock him up a new thyroid and a couple of lungs. Medical science. Whatever the incurable condition is, the scientists always claim to be just on the verge, rather than saying: yeah, we can fix that, no problem. I study Dad with his red pen and his Daily Mirror. He is regrouping, preparing for a battle, I can feel it. I feel proud of him, this man of mystery with his camouflage fatigues on, getting ready for his own personal Stalingrad.

  Jonah is up from the chair and is twiddling a feather in front of his eye by the window.

  ‘So what are they going to do?’

  Dad sighs and folds his paper neatly, placing it next to him on the bed.

  ‘Apparently, they are having a conference this morning to decide. Probably radiation with chemotherapy for dessert. But if I do not like the menu I may not eat at this restaurant.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m an old man, Benjamin.’

  ‘You have to try.’

  ‘For who? Me? You think I want you and JJ watching me shrivel like a prune? I will not have it.’

  This is not the kind of bravery I want from him. No! Not surrender, it doesn’t suit him and it doesn’t suit me. The pride has turned to the vertigo of abandonment. Selfish old bastard.

  ‘Oh, you’re just so noble, aren’t you?’

  ‘There is nothing noble about death.’

  ‘You’ve got to fight it, Dad.’

  ‘What, death? Cannot be done.’

  ‘The cancer. Do the radio and chemo, please.’

  ‘Ben, I’m seventy-eight.’

  ‘Jonah …’

  ‘That is unfair.’

  ‘Maurice.’

  ‘Will agree.’

  So I’ll work on Maurice. No, Maurice is his lapdog. Jonah, Jonah is the only way of changing his mind. I put my face in my hands and press the trio against the mattress. Then I sit up and clasp his hand.

  I say, ‘Tell you what. We’ll make a deal. You start the treatment and if you can’t take it, stop, and I’ll say nothing else.’