by Jon Bauer
She’s humming tunefully along now, a few of the lyrics coming easily out of her for some reason, and me joining in tunelessly, under my breath.
We bag up the stuff, throwing out things that may have been on these shelves when Dad was here. Things which perhaps sat and looked at him as he went into the larder and did that Dad thing — standing with glazed-over eyes and calling out, ‘Where, love? Where did you say you were hiding it?’ And she’d go in and find it without looking, the way he’d looked for it without looking.
I’m laughing along with her but the sadness is coming behind it too because we’re throwing away all that history — sending it out the house in a plain black bag. A thought that stops me, makes me look at Mum and her hive of activity. The way she’s coming in and out the larder, laughing, smiling, singing, the table filling up with old, faded, out-of-date packaging. Mum stopping to try and make a comment but having to go away again.
It all comes to a black bag in the end.
A DJ starts chatting, a fake smile tainting his voice. I turn the radio down and Mum unloads more stuff, a wet patch at her crotch, which drops me that inch that sadness drops you.
I’m stood here wondering what the rest of the world is doing now. Cars spewing up and down roads and I feel like nobody out there is understanding or living like Mum and I are. That’s how it feels to me anyway. It feels like right now, in this moment, only that fragile Mum-type lady and me are really with life. We’re the only ones where life is fully hitting home. This being one of those moments when you can feel the record light flashing in the top lefthand corner of your life.
She shuffles out of the larder, holding porridge oats.
‘Come ’ere,’ I say and pull her to me, the porridge packet digging into us. I wrap my arms around her and we’re there for a second but she laughs and pulls away, goes and sits in a chair and just like that, she’s sad and quiet.
Just like that she’s through laughing and out into sadness, changing quickly down through the emotional gears. Just the way Robert always did after his accident. The way he could be grinning but with his eyelashes still wet from crying.
Now she’s sobbing, holding the porridge like a hot water bottle and I’m asking her what’s up, even if my feet are planted on the spot rather than going to comfort her. Her face asking me how this happened. Her tears showing me that she sees it finally, what these best-before dates signify. That she’s lost control. She’s getting left behind. Running to keep up but life is moving on without her.
Everything is going to go on without her. Even I am going to have to go on without her.
‘It’s ok, we’re setting it straight, Mum.’ I turn to the table of things, wanting to meet her eyes but failing. ‘Look,’ I say, picking up a box of instant mash, ‘this is only three months out of date, can’t throw that out for at least a decade.’
There’s a smile for a moment but it has tears running over it. She licks her lips and one of those tears goes inside her. Icing sugar and flour on her cardigan. Me standing here fidgeting in the mixture of messes on the floor.
She’s not the only one pressed up against the wall by her illness.
The doorbell goes and I stumble away through the house, running a hand along the corridor walls. I peek through the security eyelet and it’s Mandy, the social worker — older, but there she is. She was forever in and out of our house, the conduit between our family and the foster-care system. Plus there’s a man behind her, about my age, maybe older, holding a big bunch of flowers.
I look down at my clothes, raising a hand to brush the antique food off but it’s a lost cause. I open the door and they bustle in with their happy rhetoric.
‘Hello, how are you, this is Marcus. You remember Marcus!’
I remember Marcus. I spent two hours up a tree because of Marcus. Angry Marcus who liked to put pins facing up out of my bedroom carpet.
‘How’s your mum?’ she says, all earnest and serious.
I lead them through the house rather than stand here being looked at. ‘We’re just clearing out the larder, actually. Most of the food’s from the Jurassic era.’
‘Oh well, you can still eat that for years yet!’ Mandy says and Marcus adds some quip but I don’t catch it.
Mum’s still in the chair clutching the porridge when we come in, her eyes lost to something out the window, far away.
‘I’ll leave you guys to catch up,’ I tell them, unable to watch Mum fail to navigate the clear discrepancy between what she was and what she’s capable of now. These people knew her when she was that strong, forthright woman. Now look at her, whittled down to almost nothing. Threadbare.
I shut the front door behind me and march up the hill, hell-bent on cigarettes. Enough is enough, this isn’t the time for martyrdom. Even the condemned get their smokes and their phone call.
The cloud is low but intermittent, the sun peeking through, the light changing every few seconds and the temperature making me lament the absence of a coat. Just a t-shirt with flour all over it. I look like a cocaine addict who sneezed.
Coming back out of the shop I put the change in my pocket and a cigarette in my mouth, take out a match. But now I’m finally about to give in, my mouth full of expectant saliva, I don’t need it so badly. So much of temptation is about the giving in rather than the actual pay-off once you’ve weakened. We just like to weaken.
By the time I get back, Mandy and Marcus are shutting the door, grave expressions on their faces that are quickly discarded when they see me, the cigarette still in my mouth, still unlit.
‘Forget your lighter?’ Marcus says, all smiles.
‘Must have left it up a tree,’ I say then turn to Mandy, sensing Marcus dropping his face for a moment.
‘Tell me,’ Mandy says, ‘what have the doctors said? What treatment’s Mary having?’
‘She’s had all the treatment, I’m afraid. Now it’s just —’
‘The poor love. Just awful.’ She sucks air in over her teeth. ‘Listen, I’ll stop by again. In the meantime you take care of both of you.’ And she’s tottering up the garden, the overgrown hedges forcing her from the path. She can’t get away fast enough.
I ignore Marcus’ retreating face and go and stand on the doorstep, the light going out now as the clouds win the tussle — Marcus shutting the gate behind him then giving me a last needy look like I’m his long-lost brother rather than a kid in a foster home he terrorised.
So many people have kids they can’t cope with. Kids who then get deposited in other people’s families. Sometimes it’s not the parents’ fault. Sometimes life is too much. But sometimes it’s not like that. Like Robert’s parents, the worst of all cuckoos, the way they left their offspring to be raised in the nest of another. And we know what happens to the offspring whose nest a cuckoo chick ends up in.
I put the cigarette back in my mouth, reconnecting with a grim, old friend, a match in my hand ready. It’s amazing what a context can do, the way it can invite you effortlessly back into old feelings — old personas. This old anger and resentment, this old smoking habit. I look at the match, me stood on the doorstep between what I have to face indoors and the rain threatening out here. A car going up the hill with its lights on already. Daytime darkness.
There’s bad weather coming. I can feel it. Rain forecast and nothing but old habits for company.
8
I thought I’d be in the biggest kennel but Mum and Dad went and steamed up the car for hours and the next day I got my own TV instead of having to go and see Mr Jaws Gale ever again.
My OWN telly. In my room! Robert doesn’t have a TV and he isn’t allowed in my bedroom under any circumstances, unless I let him which would be nice if I did. Dad said so.
‘Your home is broken, Robert, which is why you’re here and why you don’t have a TV in your room. Once your home is fixed you might have a TV in your room too.’
Sometimes I sit and watch it even when I’d rather be outside or downstairs or something, just because it’
s nice to have one and nice that Robert doesn’t.
I hear him when I’m in my room, my TV on but the sound down and me listening to the bubbling of their voices coming up. Robert is all little when I’m around but I hear a whole lot of him when I’m not. Plus Mum and Dad always sound happy when he’s chatty as if it means they’re special. Like it’s their fault he’s talking.
I got the TV though.
He gets good marks at his new school now since he’s been borrowing my parents. Mum says his grades are going up and I should let him help me out, that he won’t be here forever and I should take advantage of his brain while I can. She always says that to me. ‘He won’t be here forever.’ Sometimes that makes me feel better for a little bit. Except it already feels like forever.
Plus Robert is always good, not like the usual foster boys. His only weakness is he eats too fast. Dad hates the food competition, he says. But he told me once that actually Robert eats like that because he never used to know where his next meal was coming from.
They don’t tell him off about his manners either, they just let him pig out. Meanwhile I get told off all the time. ‘Elbows off the table. Don’t post it. Chew properly. Cut don’t tear.’
They say Robert just has to get it out of his system but when I try that line it never works.
The only thing Robert gets kind of in trouble for is that Mum and Dad keep finding things hidden in his room. Food normally but also yucky things like rubbish, banana skins, empty crisp packets, and lots of Mum’s cotton wool that she uses to take off her make-up with. Even her perfume and dirty clothes. Knickers!
A lot of Mum’s things but mainly food. Mum checks his room every few days and if he hasn’t hidden anything he gets a prize. I don’t hide things and I don’t get a prize, except sometimes, sometimes she gives me a prize too. She does.
Robert stayed late at school for something today so I’m on my own in the back of the car on the way to get him, turning my robot into a monster and wondering what’s coming because I had to wait in class today while Mum and Miss Marshall had a chat without me. Which means about me.
Mum says my name in that sort of way which sounds like something’s coming. I look out the window then quickly start turning my monster back. Robots don’t feel anything. Like Roberts maybe.
‘Yes,’ I say to her while I’m looking at a man who’s hitting his dog beside the traffic lights and the dog can’t hit back. It’s just squishing itself closer to the pavement and sort of licking the front of its lips really slowly and crouching down.
‘Miss Marshall had a word with me at school today, Sonny Jim.’
A robot doesn’t feel anything and is superhuman but monsters have feelings, like King Kong who fell in love with a woman even though she was too small for him.
‘When’s your birthday?’ she says.
I stop changing the Transformer for a moment because my scarred for life hand is sore. I only just had the bandages off and the doctor said it all depends on how the scar responds to my hand growing. Plus I thought this chat was going to be about what I did to Simon during English.
I answer her and keep holding the robot, flipping its legs round. From green and blue to blue and green. Nearly there, I go faster. I used to time myself changing from the robot to the monster and my record is 42 seconds but that was when I had the flu and I was only just 7. I’m slower now though probably, with my hurting hand.
‘And where was I when you were being born, hmm?’
I sit the robot in my lap and hold on to him. My burn is singing a stinging hot chilli song.
‘Can you sit up?’ she says. ‘In fact move to the other seat so I can see you.’
I do what she says a little bit so she can probably only see the top of my school cap which I pull down. She reaches round and touches my knee, then comes back to change gear. Not a bad gear change, for a woman.
‘Where was Mummy when you were being born?’
‘In hospital.’
‘The same hospital as you were born in?’
She’s gone doolally. I nod.
‘Yes. So you came out of me?’
‘Yeeessss.’
‘And Daddy was who got me pregnant?’
I giggle and she looks round and grins at me. When she turns back her face goes stiff.
‘So why did you say you were fostered today, in class?’
I shrug then smile at my robot, a bit of the beetroots making my face feel like my hand.
‘Robert’s fostered, lovey. He was born to different people and we —’
‘I know.’
‘We’ve got him only until his parents can straighten everything out in their lives. Some people struggle more than —’
‘I know I know I know I KNOW.’
I’m breathing fast and the snake is thick inside.
‘Alright, alright. So you can’t be a foster kid unless something happens to Mummy and Daddy and you have to go live with other people but you know we’ve made arrangements for if that happens. Not that it’s likely at all.’
I think I’d rather go live with the real Jaws than be brung up by Auntie Deadly. When she hugs me my face gets wedged into her enormous fun bags. Dad is a big fan of fun bags but he says Auntie Deadly would have to lift her frock to show off hers.
She’s old now and actually my mum’s auntie. My great aunt. Only she’s not great, she’s crap.
She had a big fall once and Dad says she probably just tripped over her tits.
Mum’s ones are quite small but that doesn’t matter, we’re all the same underneath. Except me. She’s talking about foster parenting again and how it’s our duty to play a part in the whole world and not just our bit of world and I’ve heard it heard it heard it heard it and me and my robot are looking out the window and forgetting to speak instead of nod so that she always makes us repeat our nodding in words. The robot is answering for me. I’m not here.
‘But can you see how it would hurt our feelings then to have you say that in class? Can you see how I’d be worried about you thinking that?’ Then she says ‘I love you, you know, silly head.’ But only to stop me embarrassing her at school again.
We’re late for Robert cos of me which I don’t mind. Whenever we get to his school I always try and be the first one to spot him before he sees us and before Mum sees him, which is pretty easy cos he doesn’t have a school uniform and everyone else does. This is his new school while he’s with us and Social Services haven’t coughed up the money for uniform yet. Mum hates that part, the getting money out of them. Meanwhile Robert just wears a white shirt and trousers until they buy him a uniform. We can’t even get him a haircut without permission.
Today I see Robert first. He’s not sitting in one of his usual spots reading, but standing with his arms round himself and shivering.
‘Robert’s all wet, Mum.’
When he sees us he leans down and picks up his bag and walks slowly over.
‘What’s happened to the poor love?’ she says and unbuckles herself, puts on the handbrake and opens the door all at the same time. She rushes over and I watch their faces and mouths like it’s a film on TV somewhere where the sound’s turned down. Like the fish and chip shop. Or my TV.
Robert doesn’t say hardly anything and his hair looks blacker and all stuck to him, same as his trousers and shirt. You can see his nipples!
Mum takes his bag and goes to put a hand on his shoulder but he throws his arms around her.
‘You’re getting her wet, Robert! ROBERT!’ They can’t hear me with the windows up.
They come over together and he gets in and just gives me a look, doesn’t say hello. Normally he says a little hello. Tiny. And Mum always says ‘Say hello to Robert then’ before I can get a word out.
She gets in and keeps looking in the mirror at him while she puts her belt on and the car in gear. The indicator is going and she noses out into traffic and I’m watching Robert looking out at the streets.
Sometimes when we pass something dark I se
e his reflection in the window for a second, like a sad ghost hovering along the road with us, just outside the car.
‘Please tell me why you’re wet, Robert?’ She says it in her extra special Robert voice. Peanut butter and honey. He’s looking down at his trousers, his hands in bad fists.
‘Why are you wet, Robert?’ I say. ‘Did you fall in the pool? It hasn’t been raining since Tuesday. Nine millimetres.’
He shakes his head without looking at anyone. ‘It’s nothing.’ We pass a dark parked car and the ghost is crying.
‘They been picking on you again?’ Mum says and the car slows down a bit as if it’s waiting for the answer too.
He wipes his eyes with his wet sleeve.
‘Let’s just get you home shall we, poppet? Anything you want for tea tonight. Anything at all. Ice-cream soup if you want, eh!?’ And she’s leaning in closer to the rear-view mirror to smile at him into it even though that takes her further away from him. She’s got wet in her eyes.
‘How come he gets to choose dinner just cos he cried!’
‘Shut it, mister, or you’ll be having no dinner at all. Robert’s had a bad day.’
He wipes his eyes again with his wet sleeve.
‘Use my sleeve, Robert, it’s dry.’ And I hold out my arm to him but he just gives me a wet smile and turns back to sniff at the sad ghost.
9
I bag up the hedge I’ve trimmed. There’s still some left to cut but it can wait till later. There’s only so much hedge you can cut. Only so much Dad you can bag up ready to burn on an evening fire — smoke hovering in the cooling air, splitting sunlight into rays.
While Mum is upstairs assembling some clashing clothing ensemble, I seek out where she’s hidden her plastic tablet container. Finding it, eventually, slipped beside the microwave along with the old takeaway menus — Dad having circled things she’d have called out to him on some Sunday night while she bathed Robert or struggled him to bed. Me out stewing in my adolescent funk.