by Nicole Trope
Alex could not remember his father ever having done anything in the house before his mother left. He remembered his mother making lists and putting them up on the fridge but his father just took them down and threw them away. ‘I work hard enough,’ he would say. ‘I’ll get to this stuff when I’m good and ready.’
After she had left he had made his own lists and crossed off each chore with a thick black marker, obliterating the words underneath.
Alex had supposed at the time that he was lucky. There were worse things his father could have done than fix the house and have a bad day every now and again.
His father never drank so much that he couldn’t function and there was always a meal on the table at dinner time. But there were the bad days. Days when his father could find nothing to fix or clean were bad days. Those were the days Alex retreated to his room, where even the books on the bookcase were perfectly aligned.
Alex could picture his father now with hair that used to look like his but was now grey and thin. His father might know what he could do about the ache on his chest and Liz who was so cold she’d called the police on him.
‘I just wanted to talk to you, Dad . . . I just . . . I don’t know.’
‘Alex, I’m in the middle of something here. Maybe you could come round for a beer later?’
‘No, Dad . . . I don’t think that later would be good. I don’t feel so good, Dad.’
‘What do you mean? Are you sick?’
Alex laughed. ‘Sometimes I think I am sick, Dad. Not the kind of sick you mean. I’m just so . . . so . . . sad and I don’t know how to stop feeling this way. It’s hard to breathe and there’s an ache across my chest. I feel like I can’t take this anymore. I can’t be away from her and Luke. I just can’t. I don’t know how to . . . to . . . be.’
‘Come on, boy, that’s ridiculous. You need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get on with things. I told you that woman was no good for you. It’s the best thing that could have happened. You can move on with your life now. Find someone who really appreciates you. Find a woman who can make you happy. Let go of that Liz, Alex. She wasn’t right for you from the start. You have to be strong, Alex. You have to be in control. You have to set a good example for that boy of yours. Weren’t you supposed to see him today?’
‘I was . . . I mean I am. He’s here with me now. He was supposed to be home hours ago but I just wanted to keep him with me. I should have taken him home but I don’t want to and Liz keeps calling and now she’s called the cops on me.’
‘Called the cops? What the fuck for?’
‘She wants me to bring Luke home. She’s angry that I’m late.’
‘So you’re a little late—the cops must have laughed at her. Don’t worry about that, boy. They can’t touch you just because your wife is crazy. She really needs to be put in her place, that one.’
‘How did you do it, Dad?’
‘How did I do what?’
‘How did you survive after Mum left? How did you go on? I can’t see how I can go on, Dad. I loved her so much and she’s left me and I know that she’s going to turn Luke against me. I can already feel it happening. In a few years he won’t want to talk to me. I’m going to be left with nothing again, Dad, and I don’t think I can stand it.’
‘Steady on now, Alex. This kind of talk is just rubbish. Liz can’t take him away from you. There’s such a thing as a father’s rights, you know.’
‘How did you do it, Dad?’
‘I don’t . . . oh Jesus, Alex, I don’t know. We weren’t getting along too good before she left. I guess I thought it was a bit of a blessing really. We muddled along okay, didn’t we? We did all right?’
Alex didn’t know how to answer the question. Muddling along wasn’t the same as being all right. They hadn’t been all right. Frank had gone to work and Alex had gone to school and they had tidied and cleaned and fixed and, as Frank put it, ‘muddled along’, but they were just pretending. Alex had never been allowed to shed a tear for what he had lost, had never been allowed to talk about her, and even as a kid he had felt his heart weigh him down. His mother’s absent presence filled every room. Each time his father changed something in the house or threw out something that had belonged to her she took up more space in the house.
‘Yeah . . . I guess, but I was a sad kid, Dad. I know you were trying to do your best but I felt like there was something sitting on my chest for years. We should have talked about her. She should have visited me or written letters or something. Why didn’t she want to see me?’
‘Alex, you’re a grown man and you sound like a whining child. You need to leave the past where it is, son.’
‘You know she has a whole new family. I found her picture on Facebook. She’s got other kids and everything.’
Frank was quiet for a moment. ‘Did you contact her?’ he asked.
Alex sighed. He knew what his father was asking. He wasn’t asking about him and his mother. He wanted to know if Alex had spoken to his mother and if she had said anything about him. Frank wanted his secrets to stay buried, along with the memory of his wife.
‘I didn’t contact her, Dad. What would be the point? If she had wanted to be a mother to me she would have made sure that we stayed in contact.’
‘Quite right,’ said Frank. ‘She was a selfish woman and I know you may not believe me, but she wasn’t a very good mother either.’
‘Good mothers don’t leave their children.’
‘Exactly. Now, boy, you need to let all this go. You need to find yourself a pretty girl and, you know, bonk her brains out. You need to go out and laugh and drink and just leave Liz to do what she wants with her life.’
‘But Liz made me feel better. She was the one who saved me. I know you don’t like her but she lifted the stone off my chest and made me feel alive. She made me so happy, Dad. We were supposed to be the perfect family. And now she’s a complete bitch. She’s so cold and so harsh and she hates me so much. I can’t take it, Dad.’
‘Look, Alex, why don’t you come over for a beer? I know she’s a bitch. I always said that. Give me a few minutes to finish up what I’m doing and then we’ll have a beer. You can bring your little lad and Liz can just wait until you’re good and ready to bring him back.’
Alex thought about the taste of a cold beer on his tongue but he had no desire for it. He had no desire for anything. He could see his future as one long dark tunnel. He couldn’t see any light; he couldn’t even see the possibility of a light.
‘I bought a gun, Dad.’
‘Jesus, Alex, what the fuck for?’
Alex knew he didn’t have to answer the question. His father knew what the gun was for.
‘For protection,’ he said.
‘Where would you get a gun, Alex? Guns are illegal.’
‘Yeah, well, I know someone who knows someone. You know how it goes.’
‘If the cops know you have a gun you’ll be up for it, Alex. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I do, Dad, but . . . I don’t think I care anymore. I just don’t give a fuck anymore.’
‘Now look here, Alex—you don’t want to be doing anything stupid. Come over here and we’ll talk. We’ll figure this out. Barbara will make us all a nice meal.’
‘I don’t think so, Dad. I just want to be with my boy. I wish I’d never met her, Dad. Then I wouldn’t have to feel this pain.’
‘Alex, where is this gun?’
‘It’s here with me, Dad. In the car.’
‘Alex, just come over here now. Please, you have to listen to me—just come now. Or I can come to you. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you both. We can go down to the pub and order a pizza. We can give your little lad his first sip of beer. That will really piss off that wife of yours. Come on, Alex, don’t be a fool, boy. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.’
‘I don’t think so, Dad. I’ll see you, okay? I love you, Dad. I know you did your best.’
‘Alex, just listen . . .’
<
br /> ‘Bye, Dad.’
Alex switched off the phone again. His father couldn’t help him. No one could help him. Luke’s breathing was slow and even. He had to make the pain stop but he couldn’t think how to do it. He just couldn’t organise his thoughts into a straight line.
13
Frank frantically dialled Alex. He dialled once, twice, three times and then he gave up. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ he thought. What on earth was Alex talking about?
He was probably just having a bad day. Frank remembered the bad days after Margaret left. They came at you out of the blue. One morning he would just wake up and feel this terrible sadness take hold of his body.
‘Maybe I should call that Liz,’ he thought and then he shook his head. He had never had a real conversation with his former daughter-in-law. What on earth could he say to her now? He really didn’t fucking need this crap now. He was trying to fix the handle on the door Barbara kept going on about and he wanted to get it done before the match started. She had stood with her hands on her hips that morning and said, ‘That door handle better bloody be fixed by the time I get back, Frank.’
The handle had been sticking and difficult to move for two months and when Barbara’s hands went on her hips Frank knew she meant business. The thing about the handle was that it wasn’t really broken. All you had to do was jiggle it a certain way and it worked perfectly. It wasn’t his fault that Barbara had no idea how to move the thing.
Frank had just given her a look and she had shut her mouth and left but he thought he might as well do the handle. A man could go crazy being nagged about the same things all day every day.
He didn’t understand Alex. Why couldn’t the boy just let go of that woman? He had always been a bit of a clinger, especially when it came to women. Even when he was ten and had a little girlfriend, he didn’t seem to be able to give her enough space. The mother eventually called Frank and asked him to put a stop to the phone calls and the way Alex followed the girl around the playground. Frank had laughed at the woman but he had told Alex to back off.
Alex had been devastated. Frank remembered him spending whole weekends in his room and only wanting to eat cake. The boy had a strange love of cake. Some weeks he couldn’t get enough and then there would be times when he went for months without it. He hadn’t wanted any since he met Liz. He wouldn’t even eat a piece of the wedding cake. Everyone had laughed about him wanting to look good for his bride but Frank could see people found it a bit strange.
People had always found Alex a bit strange. He lied a lot when he was a kid and he couldn’t understand why the lies pissed people off. It was like he just didn’t get it. A good belting had always sorted him out for a few months but it was like the kid was addicted to creating stories about his life. The teachers at school had told Frank more than once that they thought therapy would be a good idea but there was no way he would do that to Alex. People went into therapy with some small problem and landed up spending their whole lives whining about everything. Frank didn’t want that for Alex. Alex needed to be strong. Neither of them had needed to blub to some stranger about how they felt after Margaret left. They had needed to find a way forward. They had managed, hadn’t they?
Alex would be fine if he just got out of his empty house and found himself a new life.
He needed to get on with things and leave Liz behind. It was never good for a man to get so attached to a woman. Frank knew that even before Margaret had upped and left for who knew where.
He had managed to let go of Margaret all right. The day after she left he had cleared the house of everything that reminded him of her. She’d left a whole lot of clothes and knick knacks and bits of crap and he’d just gone through the house and tossed out every single piece. Occasionally he would find something that he’d missed and out it would go. He enjoyed watching the things she’d loved crack and crumble when he tossed them in the garbage. They did without teacups for a few months rather than save the ones she had inherited from her mother. It wasn’t like they were giving many tea parties anyway.
If she ever came crawling back he would show her that she’d been wiped from their lives without a second thought. He wanted her to know that she meant nothing to him. He wanted her to know that he and Alex were getting on with their lives as though she had never even existed.
During the day he managed to pretend he was okay with it all. At work the ex-wife jokes rolled off his tongue. ‘Me and the boy are doing just fine,’ he told anyone who would listen. He kept the house well oiled and running smoothly. Alex never went to school dirty and the boy knew how to clean up after himself by the time he was seven. At night things were a little different. Then he would have to look at Alex, who had her eyes. At night, sometimes he forgot to hold on to his disdain and some memories would creep in and screw him up. Alex had her way of looking at him, like she was confused about something. It drove him a bit crazy.
He could feel the boy’s desperation and longing for his mother but he couldn’t give in to it. He wanted him to grow up to be stronger than his father was. She should have taken Alex. What kind of a mother just abandons her son?
Someone who wasn’t capable of loving anyone but her own selfish self, that was for sure. He hadn’t meant it when he said he would track her down and kill her if she took the boy. It was all just talk, really. That’s what men did. It didn’t have to mean anything.
Margaret was just another cunt looking to control some man, like Liz. Jesus, women were difficult. Barbara said that he could do as he pleased and that all she wanted to do was take care of him, but here he was trying to fix a door handle that didn’t really need fixing in time for the match. He looked at his watch. He’d missed the first few minutes already.
All a man really wanted was a bit of peace, but women couldn’t let go. If he could have lived without sex he would have done just fine. Your cock got you into all sorts of trouble. God that Liz was a bitch. Imagine calling the cops just because Alex was a bit late bringing the boy back. He could understand why Alex felt the need to give her a bit of a smack now and then. He’d said as much to Barbara when Alex told them what Liz was saying about him and Barbara had gone all funny. ‘So you think it’s okay to hit a woman, do you, Frank?’ she’d said, and then she’d gone to bed and refused to talk to him.
‘I didn’t say it was okay,’ he told her the next morning. ‘I just said that with someone like that Liz I could understand it.’
A man could only be pushed so far and that was the truth. He never told Barbara that there had been times when Margaret had pushed him a little too much. He didn’t like to think about it now but there had been the odd smack or two. He just got a little angry with her and it had only happened a few times. Of course he’d said he was sorry afterwards and he really had been. He never wanted to hurt Margaret or Alex, but wives and kids were the same really. They needed to learn.
He’d never raise his hand to Barbara, of course. She’d probably kill him in his sleep if he tried any funny business with her. He quite liked that about her. Margaret had moaned a lot and cried a lot. It was enough to drive a bloke mad.
What was it with women? If you went out and did a fair day’s work you were entitled to be left alone when you needed a bit of time to relax. Women just didn’t get it.
Frank put down the screwdriver. The handle was old and the screw was stripped. Bloody thing wouldn’t come out. He should have told Alex to come over and help him. Not that he needed help with something so small but maybe if the boy had something to do with his hands he wouldn’t be thinking all these things. It was all very well to get yourself an education but Frank believed that if your hands were busy your mind could just rest. That’s what he’d done after Margaret left. He’d fixed everything in the house—even remodelled the bathroom. All the shit she used to nag him about got done. He wanted to call her up and say, ‘See? All you had to do was stop nagging.’
Margaret would probably just have laughed at him. He pitied the poor bloke she
’d managed to catch after she left.
She had sent stuff to Alex over the years but Frank knew that the boy needed to move on. He’d tossed it all in the bin without a second thought. There was no way he was going to make it easy for her to have a relationship with Alex. If she wanted to see the boy she could bloody well come back from wherever it was and see him. After about five years nothing came through the mail anymore.
He had done his best. Alex thought he’d been a sad kid but he was wrong. They’d both been fine. They’d done all right. There were difficult days but everyone had those—and what kid hadn’t had a few smacks over time? Alex did him proud in the end. After he got kicked out of that one school for fighting they’d had a long talk about the future and Frank had set him on the straight and narrow.
He straightened up again and stretched his back. Alex wasn’t serious about the gun, was he? He wouldn’t do anything to himself or . . . or Luke?
Frank rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. In the first days after Margaret had left he had wished Alex had gone with her. Kids were too much fucking work. He had wished the boy gone a few times over the years but it wasn’t like he’d ever done anything about it.
He should probably give Liz a call. She didn’t deserve a phone call, of course. She had never been known to give him the time of day.
Still, Alex did say he had a gun, and maybe that was all just talk but it was pretty easy to get a gun these days. In the pub a few weeks ago he’d gone to have a piss and walked in on two guys exchanging a package that looked a bit big to have drugs in it. He’d pretended to be drunker than he was and the blokes had written him off as harmless and left. It was only a suburban pub and there was all sorts of shit going on when the night headed towards dawn.
If she had called the cops already they could help find Alex and then maybe they could have a beer together and talk this thing through.