Theo

by Ed Taylor

  You’re not my dad.

  No. But I’ve known you your whole life. I was in Tunisia with Frieda and your dad when she got pregnant. Your dad wrote a song about you before you were born.

  I’m not like you.

  Yeah, maybe not. Roger laughs: I sure hope not, for your sake.

  You don’t want people to be like you. What does that make you.

  Maybe when you’re older you’ll get it. If you even remember. Roger laughed again.

  You’re always laughing. I don’t see what’s so funny.

  Theo, man, I’m not the enemy. I’m a friend. I just want to help.

  That’s what everybody says. Because my dad’s famous.

  Roger’s looking at Theo the way adults look at things from an oven to figure out whether they’re cooked or not. Roger’s assessing whether Theo’s ready, for something. More advice they think he’s too young to understand.

  Your dad’s trying, mate. He loves you very much, but you’re going to have to figure out a lot of things yourself. He’s hopeless: Roger laughs.

  I don’t need any more advice.

  No more advice, my friend. But maybe some news.

  News. Are the police here.

  No, that’s not the news. But we’ll handle them, no worries.

  His dad’s slinking into the ballroom now; Adrian’s blinking at the bright light and someone’s handing him sunglasses and Theo’s running to him.

  Why is Colin going to jail.

  Whoa, hold on, mate. Colin’s not going to jail. Jesus, it’s like a bloody office in here. I gotta take it slow or I’ll get the bends.

  Why would you make Colin get arrested.

  Adrian stares at Theo, a long time, then at Roger, who inhales from his cigarette. Adrian looks around the ballroom, at the men boxing equipment and thumbing hair out of their eyes, the people looking in from the halls, someone ducking out of the sun to collapse and sprawl on pillows, everyone really looking at Roger and Adrian, even if they aren’t, even if they smoke and talk and look out at the light through the smeared glass doors. Everything was a lie.

  Look. I’m a crap dad. I love you so hard there aren’t words for it, but I’m a selfish, weak bastard. I’m too much of a child to be a good parent. But I’m trying my damndest – and I have to play. I’d slit my mother’s throat for a good song – Adrian tilted his head to look down at Theo and frowned – come on, mate, let’s get some peace.

  Theo sees Gus’s wife, Roe, alone in England, her face. His grandmother. The most normal person he knows. Theo’s head swims in light and heat and feelings and even the air’s agitated and unhappy.

  In the sun Theo notices lines on his dad’s face, outside the shades, and on his cheeks and elsewhere, fine lines like old people have. Lines in all kinds of directions, like a map, with all the lines leading to the eyes and mouth, the eyes covered but the mouth there like a volcano or a mountain. Roads across a white desert. They walked, toward open space among the others, all the people.

  See, here’s the deal. Remember the trial, when we stayed in the hotel. I’m on probation and if I get popped again right now I could lose my visa and we couldn’t work in the US again. And I could go to jail. One of a bodyguard’s jobs is take a bullet to save the person he’s guarding. That’s what Colin’s doing.

  Isn’t Colin your friend.

  He is. And that’s what friends do for each other. He won’t really have much happen, except endure some rudeness, I’m sure. Beastly treatment from beasts, what can you expect. You lie down with dogs and you get up smelling like rotten meat.

  What do you do for him.

  I pay him good money.

  Adrian and Theo weave over the grass in a sea of sound. Theo tries hard to pay attention, but things are so slippery. Ideas and people.

  Roger said you’re hopeless.

  Adrian snorts: I suppose I am. I’m also hopeful, however, mate. Our ship will keep sailing, and we’ll pass through this little squall. You know, in New Guinea, kids your age are allowed complete freedom to come and go. Their parents just assume they’re smart enough to make decisions for themselves. And everybody has a hand in helping get them to that point, the whole village. That’s the way I feel mate, I want you to be free.

  Theo squints in the late sun, lower now. His hair’s in his eyes, white salt on his skin, which is dry and tight, like it’s too small. Maybe it’ll crack open and he’ll slip out and leave something that looks like a boy behind. But what will he be.

  There’s a siren from the front side of the house where the road is, quiet but getting louder. Christ: Adrian turns and goes back toward the house, where Roger is gesturing at him, flapping his arm saying come here. Roger puts and arm around Adrian’s neck and talks into his ear, and they sink into the dark.

  Theo runs around the side of the house, past the sunken pool with music floating up, and around the house’s side and there’s an ambulance and a police car, and a black car with a long antenna curling from the front up over the top to the back, like a grasshopper. Two men in light blue shirts and dark blue trousers and heavy black shoes, with sleeves rolled up, are hopping up the steps. One carries a red box like a fishing tackle box or a tool box. His arms are dark with hair. Two ODs, someone is saying, one of them or someone inside the open front doors who Theo can’t see.

  That black car sits, while one of the sound men carries equipment from the house toward the mobile recording unit, the RV, cables gone: untied, ready to cast off.

  Theo’s seen someone revived before, in Jamaica. He doesn’t want to see it now. He wants to bury Paz and go back to the water. He wants to be as far from the house as he can get without getting in trouble. But – who would notice. No one in this village.

  Theo feels the world, huge around him, but he’s inside something, another world, both slowly circling, and maybe there are openings between, but only when things line up and you have to jump, run, to make it through, to get to the new place. And maybe there’s another world outside of that one, but you can’t know until you get there. Cocoons.

  That black car’s wings open, and men bend and get out, in suits. Theo’s father has suits, closets of them, made by a man who comes and measures his father, a man who always carries a cigarette behind his ear and wears a tie and vest with rolled up shirt sleeves, a British man from Manhattan. Adrian only wears the suits when he goes to court – another world, and his father eels through and back out by camouflaging himself, he says. Colin says it’s like getting washed into the sewers, you just hold your breath and ride the flow and hope the cleaners can get the smell out of your posh togs.

  The men gesture at Theo – come here, they say with their hands. It’s the police from earlier. One calls over: Come here, son.

  Why.

  We want to talk to you. Make sure you’re okay.

  I’m fine.

  Well. We’ll let Child Protective Services see if that’s true.

  I’m not a child.

  Theo sees teeth – they’re laughing.

  Theo closes his eyes and runs, opening his eyes when he’s facing away and back around the big gray mountain of a house’s side. Theo thinks of his butterflies at the top, fluttering at the summit, like snow, or flower petals.

  He remembers in Jamaica, one night he woke to Adrian and Frieda screaming at each other and Frieda throwing things at Adrian, and Adrian calling her a daft cunt and Frieda waving a knife at Adrian, and people running between them and Theo in a hammock on the sleeping porch slipped down and out through the wooden door, which he liked the feel of, that door solid and warm, carved with leaves, someone on the island had made it as gift, and Theo rubbed his hand on it walking out into the stars and the wind – there’s always wind around, which he likes, something alive that shows up everywhere – and Theo laid himself out on the ground, the sandy bit of the garden between the big floppy cactuses and paddle-leafed green plants he didn’t know, just big and thick as hands, and he cried a little, he wasn’t sure why because it wasn’t like he
hadn’t heard Adrian and Frieda do that before, in fact he’d heard them doing about everything they could do together, but tonight he just felt small and he lay there, and over him two tall palms leaned together and swayed slowly in the wind, just a little because they were big trees, but like placid animals, creatures tall and looking down and up and around, at the humans and everything, and clacking together, making small noises as they touched, soft wooden sounds almost musical, but not chatty, just sounds every now and then, and the wind lifted their long leaves – fronds Theo knew they were called – and let them drop, like wind was curious and just wanted to feel, and then gently let the fronds fall back so they clicked a little, too, every now and then. And he just lay there, looking up at the tall dark beings above him, and he heard a voice, or voices, in his head. Okay. It’s okay, everything will be okay.

  Then the screen door slammed and he heard Frieda shuffling out calling his name, Theo baby, and she was crying. Weaving in the air, the trees looked down as she bent over Theo and said, I’m sorry baby. We’re just terrible for each other, aren’t we, my love.

  It’s okay, Theo said.

  Theo’s running for a shovel, in the gardener’s shed and he’s running past everything and pushing and straining at the door and in the fanned light he sees an old wood and iron shovel, which he grabs and it’s heavy and he runs back out the open door and he’s light-headed and a little nauseous, which happens from not eating but also other times.

  Paz lies under the bushes, and the catering lady’s not there but her assistant is, doing something on her knees. Theo’s running with the shovel and sees him, sees the man who fed the horse, and Theo feels hotter and he’s running toward the man, who’s turning to sit down on a bedspread, a pink spread with little pompoms on it, or knobs, or little bulbs, Theo doesn’t know what they’d be called, and the man is facing a group of people who are passing around a wine bottle and taking off shirts and Theo’s behind the man now and swinging the shovel and Theo sees faces across from him, and words coming out of them and the man leaning back on an arm and turning with a half smile to strain and look and Theo’s swinging the shovel and the flat of it hits the man on the back of the head and he’s face first into the grass and there’s yelling and jumping and the wine turned over and spilling on the spread, and it’s red wine, and Theo liftes the shovel again and is yelling and he’s holding the shovel like a sword, the blade down and he’s going to stab down and end the story and he can’t see and then he can and he yells sound because there aren’t any words and in the white is a small brown bird, on the lawn, watching, staring at him with its round cocked head, watching, and somebody else yells too and he drops the shovel and runs and he’s running across the lawn fast, and he’s over the dazzling terrace and the sparkle and heat and into the thick gloom of the ballroom like underwater, where it gets dark fast, except in places like Jamaica where Theo’s been swimming and the sand is so white it’s light and even hurts your eyes, but here the ocean’s dark as the house, it’s all dark, and Theo’s in and not thinking or thinking but trying not to – what’s wrong is everything, this place, he can’t breathe anymore, he’s in trouble, he doesn’t know, he’s running around and past people and up the back stairs that the servants used, the way narrower and plainer, and harder, no carpet, just yellow and brown wood and walls of yellow and he’s running up and up and his stomach hurts and he can’t breathe but he’s at the top of the house, the level below the attic and he runs the steps toward the last stairs up to his room and he opens the door and slams it and he’s in butterflies, the room’s blurry with them.

  It’s hot, and he’s so dizzy he sits, in the middle of the floor, or he collapses, wondering if the police will come for him now. He’ll be by himself, because his dad has Colin, and Theo’s got nobody between him and the world, just like a car with no brakes, he can’t stop. He can’t stop and he’s crying a little, listening to how quiet even an attic full of butterflies is, their wings barely there, and he breathes. He breathes. He hears whispers. It’s wings.

  Air flickers here, the room bright from both ends, windows closed at the house’s front but open at the far end from the room door, through which Theo has burst and stopped and torn cocoons hang from branches – pupa cases, plastic-looking, peeled and curled back, mostly, still a few like fruit, waiting to open. But Theo sits in the air, watching and thinking about where he can go. He can’t go any higher.

  How is Theo going to take care of Paz. He can’t go back now, they’ll be mad or arrest him. Or send him away. Where would he go. Maybe he could be in jail with Colin. Do police let you have a roommate. He sees white – it’s the page of a book in sun, he remembers from a school window – reading, reading about the world, in the quiet. His teacher laughing, like music. He needs to know about the worlds, one within another like an egg in a nest, or in hands. He wants to learn more. That’s the doors, between the worlds.

  Theo stands weird and sad, the air alive as if bright leaves fell up instead of down in fall, came alive and flew away. He’s walking now, and there’s a small one on the slanting wall. He reaches out to touch it and it flickers away: he sees on his finger dust, butterfly yellow dust. He licks it: a taste like nothing.

  They need to fly out: Theo tries to herd them out the rear window, over the back lawn, holding his hands in the air and shooing or trying to, but they curl and spin back and sideways and not forward, looping through the air or fluttering up and down. Some go out, some just keep stirring up the attic air. Theo wonders what they see, if they feel scared.

  Open the other window, windows: at the front, over the front door. But maybe they’ll see him. He doesn’t care – he moves over the smooth boards, from carpet to wood, and grabs the iron handles and cranks them, flapping open the windows but slowly: maybe no one will notice.

  Slowly he goes to the window ledge, one of the side panes; a triangle, a sail, and sits cross-legged, eyes just higher than the edge. Cars scattered all over, and the ambulance and police car sit close, ambulance doors open: Theo hears laughing. Shaking his head one of the attendants peels off gloves and one falls, a blue patch on the brown pea gravel. Theo moves closer, sees heads on the steps below. They look back into the house, and more heads come out – Colin with men in suits, Colin in a shirt and shoes. The men in suits laugh, too, pointing back into the house.

  What’s funny. Theo never knows.

  Birds look down on people. Theo’s above things. Everyone is just a head, carried around on feet and with hands to put things in its mouth. Everything is inside that head. Kids have less to carry around. But everyone wears that skull, everything cooped up in there. And how do you connect to someone else if everything’s inside there. Are words the only way.

  He’s above, watching. Things are smaller. The cars and people. Trees still big, but just standing, swaying a little. Theo wonders if he killed the man. The police were laughing. But they haven’t left yet: one stands outside the flapped-open rear of the car talking to Colin. Theo can’t hear words, only the talking, rising and falling. Butterflies drift around him like ash from fire, some flitting out the window. Theo decides to go down. There’s nowhere else to go.

  four.

  and hand in hand,

  on the edge of the sand,

  they danced

  by the light of the moon

  – Edward Lear

  Theo’s thumping down the stairs, and he’s left his door open so butterflies can ride everywhere – more ways to escape. He wants to help. Something’s wrong with him and he doesn’t know what it is. He floats on a big ocean, watching ships go by. No shore.

  Down the back stairs and toward Paz, out the ballroom, people staring at him. The guy he hit is in a chair, with a sweaty plastic bag of ice held to his head, in a circle of others. Now he’s frowning at Theo.

  What the hell, little man. You’re lucky you’re Adrian’s kid. Must be nice. I feel a lawsuit coming on, maybe.

  You killed my dog.

  What are you talking abo
ut.

  My dog died because you poisoned her like you tried to poison that horse.

  Look, I didn’t do anything to your dog. But there’s so much shit lying around here. It’s a good thing there aren’t any toddlers around. It sounds like your dog ate something it shouldn’t have. Tough titty in the city. Sorry, but you shouldn’t go around swinging shovels at people, unless they want you to, of course. That could be a cure for something: the guy laughed. Except for the headache and the hematoma, I think, like, that cleared up a lot of static for me. Like I’m tuned in better.

  I hate this place, Theo said.

  Nothing’s ever wrong, or bad. Blue skies forever, mate. Lawyers and money: Theo remembers Adrian’s voice. Pay ’em off, just pay ’em off and keep moving.

  He’s Adrian’s kid. He can do whatever the fuck he wants. Get away with anything. What happens when you don’t have a fence of lawyers or money, or a portable phone like the boys on the beach. Was he like them.

  Escape or die: the story. Not die die, but become somebody else. Maybe growing up is kind of dying. The old you, then different yous. Which one’s the one. A million yous, a new one every second. Pick one. Or no you. The story doesn’t die.

  What if the old you’s poisoned. What has he already swallowed. Theo’s face reddens.

  Theo walks toward the hedge angry and on the way picks up the shovel he dropped, still where he swung it. Theo hits his head with the heel of his other hand as he walks. It feels good and he keeps doing it. Hard, he does it hard, and now he’s talking, low, saying shit shit shit then fuck fuck fuck. Fuck. Then Paz. And he stops talking and hitting and he’s dizzy and he spins to get dizzier, dropping the shovel and whirling. Air and voices and something else – maybe ocean, maybe the roaring’s in Theo. His name means god, people tell him.

  What can he live without. What can he not live without. What to give up, if he has to. Does he know any of that. Everything’s free, everything’s floating and spinning, maybe Paz even, he’s trying to stand still and he can’t he’s falling over, tripping on the shovel and banging a shin and the pain is light, he can see it. He’s sprawling on the bristly grass, pony fur, horse hair, wiry and stiff. The big world shifts under him, still sliding even with his eyes closed, the spin continues. For a while he goes away, he’s just a feeling and everything’s bigger and brighter, and then it slows and slows and then locks. Theo can hear the click. He opens his eyes on his back. Way up high, gulls, almost too far to see.