The costume lay propped up on the couch as if it had fallen asleepwatching TV. Whenever Tom wasn’t wearing it, we called it ‘the egg with no legs’. We’d been working on the egg with no legs for about a month. I never made anything anymore, unless it was to help with a school project, but I’d still done a good job. I had one of those breakfast time fantasies, when sleep still hangs in the air like boiled egg fog, and I considered going into costume design, or at least populating the entire house with weird effigies of Alice in Wonderland characters. I could host my own Mad Tea Parties every Tuesday.I could make my own Alice.
Tom was looking at the costume too; the white of his egg was preforming a jelly wiggle on his teaspoon as it hovered in the no man’s land between his plate and his mouth.
‘Will it be the best costume?’ he asked.
‘It’ll have the best actor in it’ I said.
We’d started off with these John Tenniel illustrations which I’d photocopied at the library, and what followed was late nightssitting on the lounge floor and scribbling wax crayons away to nubs, trying to come up with the right colour combination.
‘You’re going over the lines’
‘No I’m not’
‘Yes you are’
‘It’s just a sketch; it doesn’t matter’
‘It does matter. Keep in the lines’
In the end we’d decided on a sort of burnt red brown for the huge rounded waist. I made an enormous bowl out of papier-mâché and once we coloured it, it looked like a giant acorn cup in a Quality Street wrapper. For the ruff we went for Royal Blue, and in hindsight thismight have influenced what happenedon the night of the performance. We weren’t sure what to do about the legs.
‘I don’t mind wearing tights’
‘I’m aware of that’
‘Are you still mad about the dress?’
‘I was never mad about the dress.’
So we went with bright red tights and I cut leg holes into thepapier-mâché.Then I attached braces and watched my skinny son wobbling around the living room and thrusting out his new ballooning clown gut.
The egg itself was the most difficult part. I desperately wanted it to actually crack in two after the fall, so one night I stayed up till dawn trying various adhesives, trying to find something with the equivalent temporariness of a post-it note. At half seven Tom came down the stairs in his pyjamas to find me cross legged on the floor, staring dejectedly at the space between two halves of a downscaled prototype egg. I clapped them together like the husks of coconuts I’d used at my own school play all those years ago, back when Jesus rode a donkey into town.
‘It doesn’t matter, Dad’ he said, laying a hand on my shoulder. ‘As long as it stays together’
I kept my face hidden. I went over to the TV, put ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ into the DVD player so Tom could rehearse, then went to make a start on breakfast.
The television blared in the background, the coffee pot boiled and I scratched peanut butter across toast, and felt better. Tom was watching the fall scene.
‘I won’t have to fall from that high, will I?’
‘No’
‘Or do a Welsh accent?’
‘No’
‘Can I have a tiny top hat?’
The following night I was in my bedroom thinking that if the smell of Jenny didn’t fade soon I was going to have to get another bed. I hearda rhythmic creaking coming fromthe landing, so I turned the TV down to listen more closely. It was Tom doing two voices,one high pitched and one low, reciting lines.
He was doing my favourite part:
‘When I use a word’ the low voice growled, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean’
‘The question is’ quoted the high pitched voice, ‘whether you can make a word mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ the low voice replied ‘which is to be master?’
I opened the door to congratulate Tom, and found him standing at the top of the staircase, dressed in the costume and swinging his hands backwards and forward, building up momentum.
‘Impenetrability!’ he shouted.‘That’s what I say: Impenetrability!’ He would have jumped if I hadn’t managed to pull him backwards. My hands didn’t reach all the way round the body, and my fingers couldn’t get purchase on the waxy surface, but I managed to claw him down on top of me. The costume weighed more than I’d imagined, and it knocked the wind out of me. He was flailing like a flipped over tortoise, tiny arms and legs thrashing the air. To God, it must have looked like theplanet’s strangest birthing scene; I wasunleashing a giant egg child into the world.
I managed to roll him off, and I lay there gasping for breath against the astro-turf scratch of the carpet.
‘What the hell were you doing?’ I wheezed at the ceiling, still not ready to move.
The egg appeared in my vision like a rising moon, the face in the middle giving me a look like I’d just guessed the punch-line of a rhetorical ‘why did the dinosaur cross the road?’ joke.
‘I was method acting’it said, then rolled off with a grumble.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * *
The curtain went back and there was my egg-son sitting cross legged on top of a seven foot façade painted up as a wall. The spotlight was on him and I worried that he might boil inside the costume.
The adults were accommodated on long gym benches. The veterans had had the foresight to bring cushions, but I hadn’t been able to think about anything that wasn’t to do with the egg costume as I’d hurried Tom into the car whilst he monotonously intoned his lines to himself. I’d been backstage for the whole play so far, trying to reassure him. I left him a few minutes before his scene so I’d have time to get to my seat. I had no choice but to perch on the very end of the row, where the benches had these semi-circular protruding white boltsthat looked, ironically, like imbedded eggs. I shuffled myself for the hundredth time, and looked down the row. Jenny was the next person but three, and the next person was Colin. They’d struck that infuriating pose of crossed wrists and hands on each other’s legs. I got a nod from Jenny. I turned back to the stage before Colin could notice who she was acknowledging.
I’d known all along who the cast was going to be; Tom had told me how rehearsals were going, who was shy, who kept messing up their lines, who was up themselves (my words, not his). It still didn’t help when I saw Alice for the first time. They’d gone for the typical Aryan poster girl; the yellowy blonde hair,the eggshell skin. She had this horrific nasal English voice, and though I knew it probably made me a terrible person (she was only a child, after-all) I hated her.
‘And how exactly like an egg he looks!’ Alice recited as she pointed at Tom but looked at the audience. I could feel them all beaming at this precocious child.
‘Of course he looks like a goddam egg’, I thought ‘Do you know how many cartons of eggs I’ve bought this past month, how many hours I’ve spent studying speckles? All you had to do was buy a blue dress’
‘How old did you say you were?’ said Tom, and Alice answered that she was seven and a half years, to which the egg pedantically returned that she had said no such thing. Then Tom said the line about seven and a half being ‘an uncomfortable sort of age’ and lamented the fact that Alice didn’t ‘leave off at seven’, and that gave the audience quite a laugh, seeing two six-to-seven year olds talking philosophically about their age.
Even after the various adaptations that we’d watched, the old radio plays we’d listened to, the nights we’d worn away the print of the old edition I’d found in a charity shop, I still hadn’t been able to figure Humpty’scharacter in Alice Through The Looking Glass. You’d have been forgiven for forgetting he was even in the book, though of course you wouldn’t hav
e been forgiven by a seven year old boy who came home one day and excitedly proclaimed that he’d got the part in the school play, so you’d just say that Humpty had always been your favourite character, and by the end of all your research, after all the sketching and the painting, the sticking and the re-sticking, he would be. Both wise and ridiculous at the same time; a rude but pitiable character, totally convinced of his convictions.The King had promised that, in the unlikely event that Humpty fell off the wall, all the King’s horses and men would put him back together. The Egg refused to believe that falling off the wall was even a possibility.Humpty was in the best position. You have to feel pretty safe when you’ve got contingency plansfor the aftermath of impossible events.
Tom stood up awkwardly, wobbling slightly with the weight of the costume, arms thrust out to the sides. He surveyed the drop below him. I knew that there was a thick rubbery gym mat hidden behind the cardboard flowers, but I’d being flung down on one of those things back when I was at school, and I remember it hurt like hell. I had a sudden urge to rush down to the stage, elbowing all these sadistic voyeurs out of my way, screaming ‘don’t do it, don’t do it, they won’t put you back together again, you can’t trust them’. Instead I stayed where I was with my anxiety and my questions. What was Humpty Dumpty thinking as he plummeted from the wall,when the world dropped out from under him and the earth rose up to meet him? Did he still have faith in the King’s horses and the King’s men? Perhaps he just lay there in pieces, not worrying overmuch, just biding his time, like when an athlete waits for the stretcher to come take him off the field.
Over the last few months I’d seen a number of Humpty Dumptys, each actor trying to make the egg their own. Maybe there’s a consensus that W C Fields set the bar in 1933,but for me, the best performance played to a sell-out crowd of parents and teachers in a small and sick smellingprimary school gymnasium.
Some kid started a snare drum roll in the wings, and Humpty poised like he was a diver, or maybe Christ, and the whole audience moved forward a little on the benches. But the snare drum kept rolling, and Tom just stood with his eyes looking far away to the back of the gym, up to where the exit was. Seconds passed, maybe a whole minute. The kid broke off his drum roll and stood massaging his wrists. Tom dropped his arms and looked down at Alice who was probably worried that he would ruin everything.
‘I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet’ he said, in this booming accusatory voice that I’d never heard before. Alice looked completely confused, which is exactly how she feels in the book, though I doubted she knew that. The teacher in the wings was looking confused as well. Tom was giving the director’s cut; the bits they’d left out. Alice looked around for help, but the teacher just shrugged at her and then whispered an order to someone off stage.
‘You’re so exactly like other people’ shouted Tom, making Alice tremble. Then he pointed his finger and swept the audience with it. I chanced a look down the row and saw that Jenny was scowling at me as if I’d just sat on her un-Birthday cake. ‘This is all your fault’.
‘You all want me to fall!’ screamed Humpty, and for a moment I worried that he would lose his balance and topplebackwards.
‘I won’t fall; I don’t want to, and I won’t jump either.’ His bejewelled collar caught in the spotlight and a few of the audience had to look away.
‘You always want to cut out the best parts,’ Tom said‘you’re always breaking things’. This wasn’t in the script. This was in some script for a play that someone else had written, and I felt ashamed of my part.
‘And you,’ Tom said, pointing his finger at the terrifiedlittle girl, ‘I could have been a better Alice than you’.
At this point there must have been some order given because the king’s horses and king’s men charged in, hooves and crowns and arms and legs falling over each other, all trying to reach Humpty Dumpty with spears and swords which got nowhere near him. Amidst the cries and the snarls and the shouts, Alice started crying about how everything was ruined, the teacher rushed in to try fix things, and Tom simply crossed his legs and sat downon the wall. He looked like the moon, high above everyone, gazing down and seeing everything. He scanned the audience, found me staring at him with a mixture of fear and awe and respect, and he waved. I returned the wave automatically, and felt the eyes and the blame of the parents fall on me. I’d identified myself to the mob, but I refused to break eye contact with Tom. We both sat there, in the middle of our respective chaos, watching each other and trying not to be unseated.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * *
In the Principal’s office, me and my son were again trying to keep our diminutive seats as our accusers towered over us with their kind concerned fingers, their disappointed hostile eyes, and their ‘you couldn’t keep your wife and you can’t keep your kid’ smirking smile.
Although they seemed so high above us, I felt like we had the furthest to fall. I started wondering about all sorts of facts and records, like what’s the minimum height you have to fall from to get hurt? I thought about people who jumped from burning buildings, from 15 storeys up, and walked away back to their families, coming into their living room just as the news story broke on TV. Maybe it was the landing that counted, and the falling was a myth, like the trick someone plays on you when they tell you it’s impossible to break an egg if you squeeze the top and the bottom between your thumb and forefinger as hard as you can. Maybe you could have a Great Fall by falling off the bed you used to share with your separated-but-not-yet-divorced wife?How does your son land when you throw him out of a dress? Is compromise falling?
I felt this tapping in the small of my back, as if someone were playing me like a piano. Though Tom was facing forward, I could see his temple flickering slightly with each pad on the back of my shirt. He was tapping out a message. Was it a question? There were too many questions already: Do people have more or less chance of survival if they cling to each other when they fall? If you land on the bottom can you save the person on top? I should have worn a dress; maybe if we both wore dresses then they would billow out like parachutes and we would float to the ground.
‘No-one is trying to limit Tom’s self-expression’ said the Principal, finger steeple reconstructed and ready for the next service.
‘You’d rather I’d pushed him?’ I said.
The Principal looked helpless, and Jenny looked murderous. He spread his hands, trying to offer something that I didn’t want.
Jenny said my name like a warning.
‘I’m serious. Should I have run up on stage, climbed up behind him, and pushed him?’
My name as a warning again, this time more urgent.
‘Mr Jackson,’ said the Principal softly ‘No one is trying to suggest...’
But I didn’t want to know what no one was trying to suggest, so I said:
‘Impenetrability’
I stopped them all for the second time that night; they all went back to their default expressions: awe struck appreciation, unsexed snarling beast, confounded pity.
‘Impenetrability’ I said again. I pulled my legs off the floor, crossed them, and tucked them between my buttocks and the childish chair.
‘What do you mean by “impenetrability”?’ asked the Principal in his best Grandfather voice. I tapped a message on Tom’s back that I hoped he would understand. I took a deep breath, and when I spoke, it wasn’t just my voice that said the words.
‘When I use a word’ me and my son recited simultaneously, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean’
Jenny let out a growl and pressed her fingers into her eyes.
‘This is not helping’ said the Principal, abandoning any attempt to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘We have a situation. The question is, what are we going to do about it?’
‘The questio
n is,’ I replied, ‘which is to be master - that’s all’
Joint Account – by Neal Mason
I, Craig Wheeler, wish to make a statement. I have been told I do not have to do so, but that anything I write may be used in evidence. I`ll set down all I remember, although I`m still suffering from the effects of concussion. My memory’s improving, but I still hear voices. It`s an odd sensation. It`s like driving a car without being fully in control. I`ll set down what happened, just as it comes. I won`t try to dress it up.
(Convincing, isn`t he?)
I`m not sure where to begin. I can hardly believe it`s me lying here, propped up in a counterpaned bed. My head`s aching and the pastel walls seem strangely vivid. The day before yesterday; a matter of forty hours. It`s as if it happened to someone else.
(Just as it comes? Won`t dress it up? Take my advice; don`t believe a word of it. He`s just softening you up.)
My difficulty`s not only to assemble the facts, but to face them.
(First, no doubt, he`ll set the scene and win your confidence with his openness.)
It happened in a house in Bryn Street. As you might know, Bryn Street`s just dingy rows of terraces on the outskirts of Swansea. I was renting a small flat on the ground floor. It was dismal. The whole place needed repairs and my windows looked onto a rubbish-strewn railway line. The roof leaked, the walls didn`t so much need re-pointing as rebuilding and the garden was a collection of rusting prams and Coke tins. I suppose I shouldn`t complain; there were other people worse off than me.
(Touching, isn`t it? Got your hanky ready? Personally, I find him a bit obvious, but then I know him better than you do.)
Carys, for instance. She rented the flat directly above mine. I immediately took to Carys.
(That`s me.)
Fall - A Collection of Short Stories (Almond Press Short Story Contest) Page 16