‘Thanks, dude,’ he says softly.
‘No need to thank me, Lou,’ I say.
‘You’re a good friend. A good person.’
‘I’m so sorry about your mum. I’m truly sorry.’
He says nothing, just tilts his head ever so slightly and approaches me. Reality: we approach each other, our eyes fastened. It happens. We allow it. Consent granted. Our lips connect, and it transports me to somewhere safe. Somewhere magical.
‘I can explain,’ Lou says when we break.
‘There’s nothing to explain,’ I tell him, dropping my hand from his neck.
‘No, not about that. I can explain about what I said. I can explain everything.’
‘I think I know, Lou,’ I say.
‘No, you don’t.’
I’ve known all along, if I’m being totally honest. Unlike the rest of us in Poztive, Lou’s never been racked with exhaustion or looked haggard when he turns up to the sessions. I can’t recall him having to bolt to relieve whoever was watching his mum. We never heard him share information about his experience. And his house is showroom tidy. That time at his place I knew something was off. There were no visible signs that Lou cared for anyone. But all along I suppressed these thoughts. I mean, you’d have to be pretty fucking damaged to even attempt a stunt like that. Anyway, I wasn’t going to chin him about whether his mother’s illness was kosher or not, was I? Any suspicions I had remained dormant. Until now.
‘OK, here I am. Give it to me. I’m all ears,’ I say.
‘It was what we were talkin’ about earlier.’
‘When?’
‘Before we went to have pizza. All that talk about Mom and Dad.’
‘Right. Are you telling me that was all bullshit now?’
‘No, none of it was bullshit, none of it.’ Lou gets up from the bed and begins pacing the room. ‘My old man is in the States, he is an asshole and Mom did have a terminal illness and I was her carer. All that is true, every last detail of it is true.’ He punches out the emphasis, sits again.
‘Lou, I want to understand, really I do, but you’re not making it easy for me. You’re not making much sense.’
He lowers his head.
‘Mom was dead, Bobby. She was dead. Every day she was dead. Lyin’ there in her room … dead. No body or brain function, not so much as the flicker of a goddam eye or the movement of a goddam finger. Dead! All that was keepin’ her alive was a machine and a bag of fluid. Her organs reacted well to that apparently.’ Lou looks at me, raises his voice. ‘That fuckin’ machine, Bobby. That fuckin’ machine, huffin’ and puffin’ all night long. Night after night after goddam night. It was like livin’ with an asthmatic monster. Every day I wanted to throw that fuck piece out of the window.’
I hold his stare. Allow the long pause to penetrate his brain. He lets more tears fall. These tears are no smokescreen: they’re manifesting his dishonour.
‘What I don’t understand is, why lie all this time?’
‘I know. I’m so sorry, dude.’
I doubted this though.
‘Why are you even in this group? I mean, why do you go to the meetings if, you know, you don’t need to?’
His demeanour and gait remind me of an altar boy. Maybe he is genuinely sorry.
‘I need the group, Bobby. I need you guys, even though I don’t show it.’
‘Need it how?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Try me.’
His posture changes; he stares at the wall in front of him, taps fingers off his thigh.
‘I go for the company. I go because I’m kinda makin’ friends there. I go to forget. But I also go to remember, which is crazy, I know.’
‘That’s not clearing this up, Lou.’
‘I get to remember those days of carin’ for Mom. You guys transport me back to that time and what I felt like durin’ it. I’ve experienced those things you talk about too, don’t forget that.’
‘I don’t doubt it, but how does it help you forget? That I don’t get.’
‘Doin’ stuff that’s not about lookin’ after sick people. Comin’ down here, for example. I could be sat at home all weekend with my head buzzin’. Poztive takes me away from that world. It helps.’
I have little to offer him, no words of comfort, no reassurance that I understand. He just needs to keep talking.
‘Look, Bobby, I was carin’, but not like you guys. I’d no meals to prepare or no ass to wipe. A team of nurses did everythin’ in the daytime, then I took over. My job was to make sure Mom was gettin’ the correct amount of fluids in her system, or that the machine didn’t run out of steam in the middle of the night. Pretty simple.’ Lou looks into the fibres of the carpet. ‘You can imagine how much sleep I got. I looked like shit all the time.’
There was one obvious question to ask:
‘How did she die, Lou?’
He’s on his feet once more, pacing the room, fiddling with that hair of his. He doesn’t look at me.
I can’t keep my eyes off him.
‘What you have to remember, Bobby, was that she was dead. The stroke destroyed her, everythin’. She wasn’t my mom any longer. Just some lifeless woman in my house every day.’ Suddenly he stops pacing, covers his face. ‘Oh, God!’
I jump up. Steady him with my hands. He needs me, and I want him to need me.
‘Lou, what happened is a natural thing after a big stroke, isn’t it?’
‘I guess.’
‘Sick people pass. They pass.’
His head arches downwards.
‘Yeah, she passed, dude. She passed,’ he says.
Gone are the tears.
I take a baby step back from him.
‘I feel there’s a but, Lou,’ I say.
He smirks.
‘There is a but. A giant but,’ he says.
‘So …’ I stretch out my arms in order to welcome what he’s about to tell me. He’s on the bed again, gathering his thoughts.
‘I helped her along.’
‘What?’
‘I helped her pass, Bobby.’
He twiddles with that dangling loose thread on his jeans. If I’d brought scissors I’d cut the thing off.
‘Lou?’ I say gently. ‘Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?’
He nods his head.
‘I am, Bobby. I am. You got it.’
‘But how?’
‘The machine.’
‘What? You turned it off?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Exactly what then?’ I don’t want to seem as though I’m interrogating him but I’m immersed. I require fine details. I need them. Mum won’t suffer any tin machine keeping her alive – no way will she allow one in her house. Stuff will happen before it gets to that stage … if she has her way.
‘How, Lou?’ I ask.
‘One night I’m lyin’ there listenin’ to it, as I normally did – it’s like the wind, you know, you live with its constant noise in the background. You get so used to it that sometimes you don’t notice it at all.’
‘Is that what happened? You didn’t hear it?’
‘I was readin’. I heard it, but I didn’t hear it stop, if that makes sense?’
‘I can see that,’ I say.
‘I remember thinkin’ that I hadn’t heard it for a while. The book I was readin’ was cool. That noise became part of the night, as if darkness was breathin’ in the house. Like I said, Bobby, I stopped noticin’ it after a time, and I guess that’s what happened when I was readin’ that book. I didn’t zone in right away, so I didn’t know how long it was actually off for.’
‘What alerted you?’
‘If it malfunctions an alarm sounds after a few seconds. I heard it ring but chose to tune out the noise, and then eventually I sat up.’
‘Then what?’
‘I let it ring for maybe another minute or so. I knew what I was doin’. I was totally with it, in complete control.’
‘That was it then?
That’s how your mum … ?’
‘Not exactly,’ Lou says, looking at his hands. I get the feeling that what he sees is something else entirely: he’s looking at two weapons of mass destruction located at the bottom of his arms. I alter my position.
‘What do you mean, not exactly?’ I say.
‘I went into Mom’s room. She looked so peaceful, Bobby. She looked beautiful. I knew she was smilin’ inside. I knew she was willin’ me to do it. She looked so fuckin’ beautiful, you see. In that instant I knew exactly what I had to do.’
I try to disguise eagerness for sensitivity.
‘What did you have to do, Lou?’
‘I didn’t put the emergency switch on,’ he says.
‘So you let the machine break down?’
‘No.’ Lou’s eyes remind me of a boxer’s in those seconds before combat commences. ‘I let the machine die, Bobby. I let it die.’
‘Who else knows?’ I ask.
‘Not a sinner.’
Suddenly I feel a chill in the air.
‘I was sleepin’ all the way through it, right?’ he adds. ‘That was my story. My mantra.’
‘But you didn’t technically kill her, Lou. The machine failed, not you. You’re not to blame.’
Lou’s eyebrows hit the roof. He stares at the cracked ceiling.
‘Right, Lou?’
‘Right … and wrong,’ he says. ‘There’s more to it than that, Bobby.’
More?
‘You don’t have to tell me everything. If you don’t want to.’
‘No, I want to.’
He sits forward, arse on the edge of the bed. Legs spread wide. Very manly. Very worried.
‘I removed the breathin’ tube she had in her mouth,’ he says.
What follows is the longest pause in the history of conversation; I’m a prisoner to the pause, his words, his stare.
‘And then I smothered her,’ he says. My mouth gapes. ‘I put her out of her misery.’
Put her out of her misery! Really? Is that the technical term for a psychopath? Is that what Mum wants me to do? Is that what Harold Shipman thought he was doing before he became intoxicated by it and was unable to stop? Someone who could clean away other people’s problems, wipe out their suffering. I mean, he was a doctor – he must’ve had some sort of brain function. Or are people like that just downright nuts?
It’s horses with broken legs and cats with cancer who get put out of their misery, not parents. Not mothers. Not anyone simply because they’ve asked for it. I’m no Shipman. I’m no serial killer. I’m just a son with a sick mum.
‘That’s what I did, Bobby, I smothered my mom,’ he tells me again.
I swear a shiver shoots right up my spine. I’m thinking just how much easier I could’ve made this for him. Perhaps I should be holding his hand throughout. All I’d need to do is share my own load, enlighten him about life’s parallels. Throw him a bone. Empathise. Something. But why don’t I? Why do I back off? Of course I know why. I’m no fool. I want to listen, to hear the black tale, to understand his modus operandi. Pick his brain without him cottoning on. Ultimately, I don’t share because I haven’t done what Lou’s done. His crime is not mine. By telling Lou it would only make it real, and if I make it real it means that it’s going to happen. And the thought of that drenches me in a whole lot of guilt, even though I haven’t done anything. Yet.
‘What? You … I mean … how?’ I say.
‘A pillow.’
‘Over her face?’
‘Covered her face and held it down. Forced it on to her.’
‘But you could’ve just left the machine off, you didn’t need …’
‘I never trusted that thing, I needed to be sure she was gone.’
‘Fucking hell, Lou.’ I try not to sound astonished or judgemental, especially given my own circumstances. ‘Does anyone know about this?’
‘If they do, I don’t give a shit. The way I see it, I helped Mom out of her burnin’ hell. I helped her live again, you get me?’
I’m nervous.
‘Course,’ I mutter.
‘I freed her from her very own Guantanamo fucking Bay. Now, you tell me, Bobby, who wouldn’t do that for someone they loved?’
My head spins. I consider my own situation, play through some of the scenarios that circulate. So many things I don’t have the nerve to ask.
‘You’d do that for someone you loved, wouldn’t you?’ Lou says. ‘You’d do that?’
‘I don’t know … I mean … I’m …’ My tongue is dry.
The whites of his eyes are pink diamonds. He’s dropped the coolness he arrived with, doesn’t care that his hair is disobedient. His hands shift between thigh-rubbing and clenching. I want to anchor him in my arms.
I want to hear more.
‘It was like a mountain bein’ lifted from my shoulders, dude. Like I’d been luggin’ this dead weight around with me, a weight that kept forcin’ me down, like a fuckin’ elephant slouched on your chest. Know what I mean?’
‘Was there no hope at all?’ I ask. For someone in my position this is beyond being a stupid question. ‘I mean, was it confirmed that she wasn’t ever going to get better? No chance of her getting well?’
Lou digests my question, his face stiff and emotionless. He kind of half smiles to himself. I don’t know if it’s amusement or scorn. Knowing Lou, it could’ve been either. It unnerves me.
‘I mean … what I mean is … that … sometimes hope is all we have,’ I stutter. Lou doesn’t respond. ‘Hope is what we cling to, right, Lou?’ His eyes click back to reality.
‘Hope? Fuck hope, man. What we’re talkin’ about here is goddam ethics. Forcin’ people to stay alive against their body’s will. Forcin’ the dead to stay alive. Forcin’ everyone to grasp on to the only thing that remains: Goddam hope. What a bullshit concept that is. Believe me, it’s all about fuckin’ ethics, dude. Ethics that forced Mom to exist without livin’. That stripped her of her damn dignity. Condemned her on some jumped-up dictum created by a band of legal fuckheads and religious moralists.’
I rest my hand on his. He stops fidgeting.
‘I’ve never seen it that way before,’ I say, and it’s true.
He sandwiches my hand between his.
‘Yeah, well, not many people do, Bobby.’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Sure.’
‘How’d you get away with it?’
Lou unleashes my hand. Seems put out by my question. Does the whole hands-through-hair routine.
‘You really wanna know?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘I put the breathin’ apparatus back in her mouth and turned the machine back on after it had stopped workin’. I covered my tracks. The story was tight. Machine fucked up and I was too late to fix it. Shit like that happens all the time, doesn’t it?’
I searched for something behind his eyes, a sign of the confident Lou. This was him bare and exposed. I sat there nodding my head like a little lapdog.
‘Were you not sad, Lou?’
‘Sad? I was distraught, Bobby. Genuinely distraught. I’d just lost my mom. It’s not as if I was doin’ goddam cartwheels all over the place. People sympathised with me.’ I nod in agreement. ‘Mom died because the machine broke down.’ He starts rubbing his forehead. ‘No, scratch that. Mom died because of that fuckin’ illness, that disease. It butchered every bit of her. It was nothin’ else. Nothin’ else. That’s what I have to keep remindin’ myself in order to remain sane. I get what I did, I get it, but I also know why I did it. I did it because I needed to carry out an act of compassion. That act of compassion, Bobby, is the knowledge that keeps me sane.’
‘I get it, Lou, I really do. But what now?’
‘Meanin’?’
‘Well, how do you survive? I presume your mum’s disability payments have stopped.’
‘Dad puts something in my account every month. You know, to keep food on my plate and a roof over my head.’
�
�I thought you and your dad don’t speak?’
‘We don’t, but he needs to do somethin’ to ease that damn conscience of his, doesn’t he?’
‘Suppose so,’ I say, yet I had further niggles.
‘I see you, dude. Your eyes are fightin’ to stay up with your mind,’ Lou says. ‘You want to know everythin’, right?’
‘I … eh …’
‘Go ahead, ask.’
‘When did all this happen?’
‘With Mom?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Seventeen months ago.’
‘I was also kind of wondering how you get to attend all the meetings without anyone questioning you being there? Considering … you know … considering …’
‘Considerin’ that I no longer care for anyone? Considerin’ that Mom’s no longer here?’
‘Right.’
‘It’s easy,’ he says. ‘No one has ever asked me to leave. I used to go to similar meetings when I was lookin’ after Mom – different Rod, different carers, but same shit really.’
‘So no one has ever questioned you?’
‘No soul, no sinner.’
‘That’s weird.’
‘So I figured I’d stay until they kick my ass out.’
‘They must know,’ I say.
‘What?’
‘That your mum is no longer here, that you don’t look after her. They must know.’
‘Course they fuckin’ know, how could they not? They’re not stupid. They connect with the authorities, they do their research. They know.’
‘So why you still … ?’
‘What, you think because Mom is dead that I don’t need help? That you stop being a young carer just like that?’ Lou clicks his fingers. ‘No, dude, I need just as much help as you do.’ He softens his voice. ‘They don’t ask me to beat it because I guess they think the same – they sympathise with me.’
‘But you hate it, don’t you? I mean, you always look as if you never want to be there.’
‘Who does want to be there?’ he says.
‘Well …’
‘See, it’s not a question of want, Bobby. It’s all about need. We all need to be there, for our sanity. I might not say it too often but I need folks around me as well. I need to pour shit out to folks who understand, folks who …’
‘Who empathise?’
‘On the button, dude. Empathy.’
The Weight of a Thousand Feathers Page 17