by Chloe Daykin
He drops the bun. ‘I don’t know, Elvis.’ He swallows. ‘I don’t know.’
When we get back to the car, it’s slumped on one side. My side. I put my slice on the roof and squat down. Dad just stares at it, sandwich in one hand, coffee in the other. ‘Slow flat,’ he says. ‘The pellet must have stuck.’
I run my finger over the hot black rubber. ‘Unless someone knifed it.’ I point at a slit leaking air.
‘Change it, George, change it!’ Lloyd jumps up and down.
‘I’ve never changed a tyre,’ Dad says.
I look at my watch. ‘The ferry leaves in two hours.’ I wipe my hands on my jeans. ‘We can google it.’
‘We have to!’ Lloyd puts his hand to his head. ‘We have to!’
‘Yeah.’ Dad sighs. ‘But I can’t fix it fast enough.’
‘We’re at a garage.’ I point at the sign. ‘They can fix it.’
‘That’s actually a really good idea,’ Dad says and goes in. I watch them talking through the window. Lloyd paces back and forth. Dad comes out shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says and puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘They only do the selling. They’re not allowed to leave the till. Regulations.’ He shrugs. ‘We’re stuck for tonight. We’ll never make it.’
‘No!’ Lloyd yells. ‘This can’t be happening!’
‘Chill out, Lloyd.’ I try to put a hand on his arm.
‘How can I?’ he spits.
‘Whoa!’ Dad holds up his hands like Lloyd’s a wild horse.
Lloyd yells and swings his bread-roll bag up and down. ‘What if he gets there first? What if he gets there first?’ Lloyd pales. ‘We could get a helicopter. We could get a new car. We could steal a car.’
He starts looking around the parking lot.
A car beeps behind us. We’re blocking the pumps.
‘We’re not stealing a car,’ Dad says.
The car behind beeps again and yells something I don’t get. Dad waves his hand like, Yes yes we’re going. ‘It’s just one more day. What difference does it make?’
‘All the difference in the world.’ Lloyd slumps on to the ground.
I stand over him. ‘Why, Lloyd?’
‘Floyd doesn’t want you to meet your mother, Elvis,’ he says.
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t say. I can’t say!’ He throws up his arms and bursts into tears and Dad scoops him up under both arms and shoves him into the back seat.
Close
Dad drives off into the parking space.
I turn round and look at Lloyd.
It was him who rang. It must have been him. Was it?
‘You rang the house. It was you!’
Dad looks totally confused.
‘Yes.’ Lloyd hangs his head. ‘It was me.
‘Did you speak to her?’
‘No.’ He shakes his head.
‘Who?’ Dad holds his hands up.
‘Lloyd rang my birth address.’
‘So did you.’ Lloyd points at me. ‘I wanted to make sure Floyd wasn’t there. I wanted to make sure Floyd hadn’t got there first.’
‘Why didn’t you speak to her?’
‘She wouldn’t.’
‘Why not?’ I screw my eyes up.
‘She only wants to speak to you.’
‘You said no more secrets! How can I trust you if you don’t tell me the truth?’
‘Sometimes the truth is hard.’ Dad sighs.
‘Like what?’ I turn on him. ‘What do you know?’
‘I don’t want you to get hurt.’
‘You deserve better …’ Lloyd puts his hands over his eyes.
‘Is that where you went?’ Dad looks at me. ‘On the train. You went to ring the address?’
‘No, on the train I went to find Floyd.’
‘Great.’ Dad taps the steering wheel and rubs his hair. ‘So you keep secrets too then yeah? That’s how secrets are. Complicated.’
I tuck my hands in my armpits. ‘At least mine are about me. They’re not about anyone else.’ I look at Lloyd. I think about the Ks. ‘Is it Mrs Phipps?’
‘Who’s that?’ Dad spins round.
Lloyd looks surprised. ‘No.’
‘Why doesn’t he want me to meet my mother,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It’s news to me,’ Dad says. He looks at Lloyd. ‘And we’re going, whatever Floyd says.’ He takes a swig of coffee. ‘But not tonight.’ He hands me the phone. ‘You wanna pick somewhere?’ I click the app open. ‘Just make it close.’ He takes a bite out of his sandwich. ‘And be quick before the tyre hits the ground and I have to drive it on the rims.’
Magic Hands
I pick Tiny’s Retreat ’cos it has a cool dog and we drive there in silence.
Lloyd’s hunched in a ball in the back seat and won’t speak.
I eat the pizza and think.
Floyd wants to get there first.
Bjorn was right.
We’re definitely going to the same place.
Why?
Lloyd won’t say.
Dad doesn’t know.
There’s only one person to ask what’s going on.
I need to ring back.
I have to ask her.
This time I actually have to say something.
We drive on along by the sea, past little bundles of houses stuck in clumps to the edges like shells on rocks.
Slowly.
We go left off the road, roll down through a thick green fir forest. The car bumps and bounces. I slide over the wrong side of the seat and we go out the other side of the woods and into the driveway of a cabin.
‘Tiny’s Retreat,’ Dad says and looks at the sign. The house looks massive and made of wood.
‘It’s not that tiny.’
‘No.’ He taps the wheel.
A dog the size of a polar bear trots out to meet us, ears pricked. It puts its paws up on the Peugeot window and looks in, like we’re seals under the ice flow. Its eyes are big and blue.
It’s bigger than the photo.
We stare back. Dad waves.
A woman comes out and claps her hands and says, ‘Tiny. Nei. Nei, Tiny,’ and he gets down and walks back to the house.
‘Hei hei!’ She waves and we get out.
‘I’m Jean,’ she says and we shake hands.
‘I’m George Lucas, not that George Lucas,’ Dad says.
‘I’m Elvis. Not that Elvis,’ I say.
‘I’m Lloyd,’ says Lloyd. ‘I used to be a Partington but now I don’t really know who I am.’ His eyes are watery and red.
‘OK.’ She smiles. ‘This is Tiny,’ she says. Tiny barks.
We follow Jean and Tiny into the cabin and take our shoes off.
Outside it is bright red with a veranda all the way around. It has a porch swing and candles hanging down in lanterns. Inside it is white and wooden with rugs and lots of windows and walls full of photos of people up mountains and in canoes with sparklers and eating hot dogs.
We go down into the basement. It’s cut into the rocks and looks out on to the lake. We have our own flat with windows that go down to the floor and open out on to a wooden deck with a hammock and a bench with deer painted on it and a beach with a canoe.
We leave our bags and go back up into the kitchen where Jean makes cups of tea and a man with a blue baseball hat comes in through the back door. He kisses Jean and hands her two big fish from behind his back. He wipes his hand on his checked shirt.
She smiles. ‘This is Steinar,’ Jean says and puts the fish in the sink and says something to him in Norwegian.
He shakes hands with everyone and Dad says, ‘Are you any good with flat tyres?’
And he spreads his arms and says, ‘Of course!’
And they go out to fix it.
I go down to the basement. My bed is built into the wall. An old plank of wood comes down from the ceiling and one from the floor. It’s like a bed envelope. I post myself in and lie on the sheepskin rug inside.
Jean knocks and comes i
n with some chocolate cake with squirty cream and sweets on the top. She and Steinar are so smiley and nice.
I put the cake on the table and look out the window at the water.
I get my phone out and listen to:
Power.
I slide my back down the door, using my body to keep it shut.
My heart beats.
I switch the phone on.
I feel hot. My hands sweat.
I press green.
It rings.
A long beeeeeeeeeeeep
pause
A long beeeeeeeeeeep
pause.
Click, she answers.
I say it fast before she can speak.
‘It isn’t Lloyd, it’s Elvis.’
‘Elvis …’ She pauses.
I think I’m freaking her out. That makes two of us.
I hate phones. They don’t leave space for gaps. Gaps sound stupid. People need to speak without speaking. Sometimes there’s just way too much to say.
‘I’m coming.’ I try to fill the silence, to keep going. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘OK.’ Her voice is hard to read.
‘On the ferry …’
‘Someone will be there to meet you,’ she says and hangs up.
Guessing and Surprises
I sit there for a while. I don’t know how long.
Was that her?
Why didn’t she say so?
I feel angry.
And stupid that I didn’t ask.
Someone will be there to meet you.
That’s good isn’t it?
Someone walks into the door from the other side.
‘OW! … Elvis.’
‘What?’
‘Open up.’
Dad is standing there in a wet towel. ‘We fixed the car!’
‘Cool.’
‘Jean’s made dinner.’ He pulls a T-shirt over his head.
‘You all right?’
‘Yeah.’ I turn away.
‘Hey.’ He pats my shoulder. ‘We’re still going. Tomorrow you get to see where you were born. That’s all that matters.’ He breathes out. ‘Anything else is a bonus. OK?’
‘OK.’
He stares at the mountains and sings,
‘The hills are alive with the sound of music.’
‘Right?’ he says. ‘Or do you want me to sing it a little louder?’ He comes right up to my face.
‘OK.’ I smile. ‘OK.’ And we go off into the kitchen to eat meatballs and gravy with potatoes without skin that look like hot eggs and talk about England and fishing and life in the mountains.
‘In the winter we dig our way out with a tractor,’ Steinar says and ladles thick gravy out of a yellow jug.
After dinner Dad and Lloyd help with the washing-up and me and Jean and Steinar take Tiny swimming in the fjord and throw him sticks. He doesn’t like giving them back so we have to keep finding new ones.
‘Why are you here in Norway?’ Steinar says.
‘I was left on a bench as a baby,’ I say. ‘I’m here to find out why.’
‘OK,’ he says and snaps a twig in two in his thick hands. Tiny barks his head off. ‘So when will you find out?’
‘Tomorrow. Tomorrow we go north.’
‘The north is so special.’ Jean puts her hand on her heart.
‘Jean and I could never have children,’ Steinar says. ‘It was not to happen for us.’
‘Oh.’ I pick the bark off a stick. ‘Sorry,’ I say.
He shrugs. ‘It is good to know these things. You are not all the time guessing. You get on with your life.’
‘Tiny is our baby now.’ Jean smiles and Tiny comes out of nowhere and shakes water all over us. They laugh.
Dad comes out and we light a fire to keep away the flies and watch the sun not setting over the water and when I go to bed I lie there thinking about tomorrow and how messed up the world is.
People who want kids can’t have them.
People who can don’t want them.
They didn’t want me.
Didn’t they?
I think about what Steinar said:
You are not all the time guessing.
Whatever happens I won’t be guessing any more.
Not after tomorrow.
And it doesn’t feel weird.
It feels good.
Cold and Empty
I have this dream about a room.
It’s cold.
And empty.
And there’s a mirror in it.
But I can’t see the reflection.
I go closer.
Closer.
And a hand comes out and circles over my face. It stretches and tries to grab me.
I back away. It stretches and stretches. Feeling around. Desperate.
It reaches my chest.
I back into the wall.
And wake up with a shudder.
Belonging
I look at the clock. Four thirty.
I get up and walk into the kitchen.
Tiny’s in his basket.
I put my hand out so he can sniff that it’s me and feed him some ham out of the fridge so he doesn’t bark. He barks for more ham.
His claws click on the floor as he paws them up and down.
Steinar comes in.
He is dressed and rubbing his eyes.
‘You big beast, Tiny.’ He yawns and pets Tiny’s head. ‘I am fishing,’ he says and smiles. Tiny nuzzles into his leg. ‘You are early.’ He looks at me. ‘I think you are worried about today, yes?’
‘I had a weird dream.’ I put my fingers deep into Tiny’s fur.
‘OK!’ Steinar says and looks excited. ‘Tell me about it!’
He gets a packet out of the cupboard and a pot of cream out of the fridge. ‘Romigrot.’ He taps the packet. ‘Norwegian porridge, very special. Let us celebrate this weird dream.’
He gets a pan down and starts making the porridge. ‘We heat this till the cream turns to butter,’ he says and pours the cream in. ‘I am listening.’ He stirs.
I tell him about it.
His eyes go big.
‘You know, Elvis, in my life I have many dreams also.’ He pours the porridge into the bowls and shakes cinnamon on top. It flows into the liquid butter.
‘Once my mother was on holiday in America and I have this dream about bridges. A big long white bridge – all the way across the ocean. A mighty bridge.’ He makes his arms mighty and I smile. ‘She rings the next day and says, I was on this bridge yesterday … and describes to me the exact same bridge. And I say yes, it is exactly the same bridge. How can I know this?’ His eyes go big. ‘How can I dream this? I don’t know, but her thoughts pass into me. She even buys me this.’ He points to a fridge magnet with a big white bridge on. ‘When Jean cannot have babies too, I know. I have this dream. The room is dark. It is cold and there is no one in. It is very sad. I wake up and say, Jean, I think the baby is not here. We go for the scan and the baby is not there any more.’
He looks into his empty bowl.
I think how his dream is kind of like mine.
‘But I don’t think you are dreaming about babies?’ He grins. ‘Are you, Elvis? You are not thinking about being a daddy. Not yet! But perhaps you are thinking, I wonder what my mother will be like, I wonder if she will be there, yes? Maybe this dream tells you something?’
‘Maybe.’ I smile. Steinar makes everything seem so normal. Like anything is possible.
‘The world is stronger than we know. Your body tells you things.’ He puts a fist on his chest. ‘Trust your body,’ he says. ‘Listen to yourself.’
He looks me right in the eye and grins. ‘OK!’
‘OK.’ I nod.
‘Good!’ Now we must do the washing-up before Jean gets cross and says, “Steinar, where is my porridge?” yes!’
Steiner puts the radio on.
We wash the bowls and spoons and pans.
Tiny gets under our legs.
Dad comes in and yawns. He puts a hand
on my shoulder. ‘You’re early.’
I nod. ‘We had romigrot.’
‘Cool.’ Dad squints and makes coffee.
Steinar goes out to fish. I go out too to say goodbye and check over his boat. If he stabbed our tyre, what else is Floyd’s shadow gonna do?
We walk past a boat with two men and a baby in a car seat, stuffed in with a life jacket. The baby’s eyes are very big and staring.
‘Hei hei,’ they say.
‘Hei hei,’ we say and I check the boat for holes. It seems fine. Steinar pushes it out from the shore till his boots are soaking and I wave until he’s a tiny dot in the water.
Dad puts the cases in the car.
Lloyd trails out and slips on to the back seat.
Jean gives me a stick. ‘In Norway we say that our lives are like collecting wild strawberries on a straw,’ she says. ‘The strawberries are the great moments. I hope you find one today.’
We hug and wave.
I get in.
Maybe staying here was a strawberry.
Clink
The car door shuts.
Clunk
The seat belt slots.
Scrape
Tiny’s claws slide down the windscreen as he slips off the roof of the car.
He is sitting on the bonnet.
Maybe he doesn’t want us to go.
Or maybe it’s just nice and warm on the bonnet.
‘Down, Tiny. Down!’ Jean tries to drag his collar.
He doesn’t move. Tiny does not come down.
Dad reverses.
Tiny stays put.
He sits and stares through the glass.
We go over a bump.
He slides off.
We turn round and drive down the drive.
He chases us.
I see his big white polar-bear fluff romping. Paws up and down. Determination in his eyes.
‘Here, Tiny! Here!’ Jean yells.
Tiny does not come here.
Engine
Bark
Engine.
We drive through the woods.
He looks like a prehistoric beast.
A white streak in green.
Muscle and eyes and paws.
He runs.
The engine growls.
He runs.
We come out of the dark and the woods and crunch in the gravel.