Ostrich: A Novel

by Matt Greene

  The minicab pulls up outside the Hollywood Bowl, where an ooze of older boys have gathered to spit, but to my relief Mum tells the driver to keep going until we’re in the overflow car park around the back of the shop fronts. We get out by a wheelie bin, and I stoop down to untie and retie a shoelace to give Mum a head start because I am embarrassed to be seen with her. However, the second the minicab peels away from the empty curb, she strides off in the direction we’ve just come from and orders me to wait there.

  For a while I count her absence in mountain ranges (Himalayas/Karakoram = 1 second, Atlas/Andes = 0.5, Alps = 0.25, Appalachians = 1.25) but then I get distracted thinking about the Karakoram range, which is the home of K2. Some people believe that K2 is the tallest mountain in the world, even taller than Mount Everest. However, this is true only if you measure from its base, which is thousands of feet underwater, which is exactly like measuring your penis from your bum hole forward. I think about what Mum said to Aunt Julie about life starting at the point of conception and try to imagine the circumstances of my beginnings. I zoom in to a biological level so as not to make myself nauseated and find myself in what looks like the Super Mario Land submarine level (Game Boy edition). The egg is the end of level boss, and every torpedo that her armor repels is another me that never existed, until eventually one pierces her shell and then I am. (Born into a bonus round.)

  I am sitting down on the pavement with my knees hunched around my ears in a(n appropriately) fetal position, when twenty meters to my right a fire door explodes open. The noise is summer blockbusters and gratuitous violence, and the smell is oversalted popcorn and molten cheese. A face pokes out and a hand beckons.

  They are both Mum’s.

  We take our seats in the front row just in time to see that the British Board of Film Classification has passed the following feature 18, only for persons of eighteen and over. Mum sinks into her seat and hands me a vat of pick-and-mix, which is the opposite of flossing. I look to her for an explanation, but her eyes are set on the blank screen, which looms infinitely above us like a starless night. Before I can calculate the marital/martial implications of what’s going on, the titles punch through the dark with such force that I immediately forget myself. I plunge a hand into the sweets and smile because I know that the next two hours of my life will be perfect.

  Which they are.

  The film is about a troubled Russian mystic who is tricked at the end of World War Two by Adolf Hitler’s top assassin into opening a portal to another dimension in order to recruit its most dangerous criminals for the fight against the encroaching Allied forces, and on the way out Mum and I agree that it’s the best we’ve ever seen. Outside, it is still daytime, which surprises me, and the gaggle of boys have gone. On the ground where they were standing is a puddle of mucus that could just as easily be ectoplasm. My teeth feel furry like candyfloss, and I haven’t got a care in the world, so when Mum offers me her hand on the way to the bus stop I don’t think twice about taking it.

  “I love you,” she remarks quietly on the top deck of the bus.

  I look around to check if anyone is in earshot, which they aren’t. “And vice versa,” I say.

  When we get back home, I head straight to my room to practice hesitating in French in front of the mirror as last-minute revision for my Oral (French for errrm is ooooh). However, I have barely had time to adjust my jaw when I’m interrupted by a sound through the floorboards. In the kitchen, someone is playing the cutlery drawer, badly, in 5/4 time. It’s Thursday night, which usually means takeaway, because Dad’s out teaching Ella, but when I go downstairs to investigate I find two onions on the chopping board. From the living room, I can hear the printer hiccupping. It wheezes to a stop, and Mum enters clutching a piece of paper, which she slaps down on the counter in front of me. It is a recipe for Nigel Slater’s Perfect Bolognese.

  “Lord knows what I’ve been making.” She laughs, pulling on her jacket. Then she tells me that she won’t be gone a minute and ruffles my hair.

  Then she leaves.

  Mum is true to her word. She is not gone a minute. Neither is she gone two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, or five minutes. After six minutes, I decide to start without her. The recipe calls for me to dice the onions, which sounds needlessly risky, so instead I opt to chop them. I am just about to make my first incision, the knife pointed away from me like an inverted moral compass, when I remember Chloe’s mum’s advice about how to stop yourself from crying, which I decide to take, even though it’s ironic coming from someone with depression.

  There is no room in the freezer. The top shelf is completely full of lasagnas and casseroles. Inside their frosted Tupperware, sealed away like classic action figures, these homemade ready-meals are busy not aging. Neighbors and friends of Mum and Dad’s brought them round while I was in the hospital before they knew I was going to get better, and now that I am the cold has unionized them in a single block of ice. (They are striking against Time.) The other shelves are no more accommodating, so in order to make room for the onions I employ the knife and saucepan as a hammer and chisel (respectively (obviously)). However, this proves hazardous, and after a couple of near misses (which should really be called near hits), I retire upstairs to look for Mum’s hairdryer. While I do this I wonder why people are always comparing onions to people. I consider all the ways in which they are similar:

  1) They both have layers.

  2) Most of these layers are pretty much identical, which means perhaps neither people nor onions are as mysterious as they can sometimes appear to be.

  3) Some of them are French.

  By the time I get back downstairs with the hairdryer in hand, the first bead of sweat has forced its way through the brow of the ice block. With the even application of warm air, it is soon followed by a deluge, which is a better word for flood. When the donations to the charity of me are free from their bonds, I can do what I want with them, which is what is meant by having liquid assets. First I stack them on the floor in towers depending on their size and shape, and then I do some Tetris with them to determine their optimum grouping, using my spatial awareness, which everyone says is excellent. Quickly, though, it becomes obvious that to make room for the onions I will have to reorganize the whole shelf, so I return to the freezer armed with my air gun. The space behind the ready-meals is partitioned off with a wall of inefficiently stacked hamburger packets, which date back as far as 2001 (before Dad developed diverticulosis). I tilt the hairdryer sideways, which is much cooler, and squeeze the trigger. After two or three minutes they immediately drop dead.

  Behind the meat curtain there is loads of space, all of it going to waste. The only thing in it is a white plastic bag, which I remove. The cold has contorted the bag into an irregular shape that gives no clues to its contents, so I open it. Inside is another irregular shape, which I pick up. The package inside the plastic bag is about the size of a fist and mummified beneath swathes of cling film. It seems to be leftovers of some kind (leftovers that never became washing up, on account of their suspension in time). Moreover, it intrigues me.

  I unwrap it at the kitchen table, where we do Christmas.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  By the time Mum returns I am barracuded in my room with the mattress pushed up against the door, feet first. She calls my name from the front door and again from the corridor, but once the kitchen door opens she doesn’t make a sound. Not while she surveys the rubble of ready-meals strewn across the lino or while she identifies the broken fragments of her hairdryer or sees the saucepan asleep on the back lawn on a bed of shattered glass. And especially not when she notices in the middle of the kitchen table a paw poking out from a cling-film chrysalis.

  Now she is outside my door. I can hear the phlegmy stabs of breath. She knows better than to try the handle. She knocks. Six times, because it’s a perfect number. Then time passes. Then she speaks.

  She tells me she loves me.

  She tells me she’s sorry.

 
She tells me I am the most important person in her life.

  That I am the best thing that ever happened to her.

  I am her world.

  If she could, she would die to protect me.

  There are no rooms behind these doors.

  Her conclusion is especially meaningless:

  “Loving someone means being prepared to do anything to protect them. Even if the only thing you can protect them from is the truth.”

  She doesn’t expect me to forgive her.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The next day my French Oral exam goes something like this:

  Take 1

  (Translation provided)

  MADAME BERGER: Good day, Marcel.

  ME: Good day, Madame.

  MADAME BERGER: Marcel, to begin with, can you tell me a little bit about your family? For example, do you have any brothers or sisters?

  ME: In that which concerns my family, I have one big brother. As a pastime, he likes to play football with me each Saturday and set the table for an hour most evenings. He has fifteen years and what is more a sister who calls herself Agnes.

  MADAME BERGER: Very good. Tell me a little more about Agnes. Describe her.

  ME: According to me, she has white skin and black hair. As a pastime, she likes to listen to awful music. She is quite pretty, but also sad.

  MADAME BERGER: Good. And your parents?

  ME: I have one father. He calls himself Jean-Pierre. He wears glasses and has brown eyes. As a career, he is captain of a ship.

  MADAME BERGER: Ah, yes? It is true?

  ME: Yes, it is true, in my opinion. I have decided to live with him.

  MADAME BERGER: Very interesting! And your mother? What does she do?

  ME: …

  MADAME BERGER: Would you like me to repeat the question?

  ME: I would prefer not to discuss my mother.

  MADAME BERGER: Pardon me?

  ME: Ask me something else. Perhaps you would like directions somewhere?

  MADAME BERGER: Please, Marcel, it is important that you answer that which I ask. Your mother. She is how?

  ME: I have nothing to say on the subject of my mother. Please let it drop. To find the Found Property Office, simply continue all straight.

  MADAME BERGER: Pardon?

  ME: Do not turn left at the library, because it does not exist.

  MADAME BERGER: Marcel, describe your mother, please.

  ME: Stop the tape, please. I want to start again.

  MADAME BERGER: I am sorry, but it is not possible. Do not worry! Everything goes well.

  ME: Stop the tape.

  MADAME BERGER: In French, okay?

  ME: Please, Miss, put your clothes back on.

  MADAME BERGER: (stopping the tape) Qu’est-ce que tu dit?!

  ME: I needed you to stop the tape. I’m sorry. I hope you understand.

  MADAME BERGER: What ees ze mattuh wizz you?!

  ME: Everything is cool beans and gravy. I just don’t want to talk about my mum.

  MADAME BERGER: Pourquoi pas?

  ME: … Because she’s dead.

  MADAME BERGER: (gasping) Mon dieu! I yam zo zorry.

  ME: Don’t be. I’m not. It was her own fault.

  MADAME BERGER: Ay deed not know.

  ME: She drank herself to death. Like her dad.

  (Madame Berger hugs me inappropriately. Her

  hair smells of smoke and cinnamon.)

  MADAME BERGER: We can holwizz do zis anuzer time.

  ME: No. I want to do it now.

  MADAME BERGER: Rilly?

  ME: Yes … As a dedication to her memory. She always had such a good one.

  Take 2

  MADAME BERGER: Good day, Marcel.

  ME: Good day, Madame.

  MADAME BERGER: Tell me, Marcel, do you have animals at home?

  ME: …

  MADAME BERGER: (stopping the tape and offering me a tissue, which I have not asked for and do not need) You has ol zee time in ze wold.

  ME: (using the tissue but only to avoid causing offense) Maybe we could talk about weekends.

  Take 3

  MADAME BERGER: Remenzer, eet iz best somesing irregulere. Hockay?

  (I nod)

  MADAME BERGER: (pressing Record) Good day, Marcel.

  ME: Good day, Madame. How does it go?

  MADAME BERGER: Errrm, it goes okay, thank you. And for you?

  ME: Very well. Thank you for asking. I like what you are evidentially wearing.

  MADAME BERGER: … Thank you.

  ME: Of nothing.

  MADAME BERGER: First of all, tell me, Marcel, what is it that you did last weekend?

  ME: If I remember correctly, I played football with my brother, Serge, who has fifteen years, which is not to mention a sister who calls herself Agnes, who is pretty, but also quite sad. Afterward, I read two novels.

  MADAME BERGER: Very good. Anything else, perhaps?

  ME: Let me think … But of course! I drove my dad’s car.

  MADAME BERGER: (stopping the tape) You droze your ded’s car?

  ME: (pressing Record) I know. It was extremely irregular. It was in field.

  MADAME BERGER: In a field?

  ME: No, not in a field.

  MADAME BERGER: Oh, good!

  ME: In field. Because we were late for an appointment. Afterward, I passed the Hoover for two hours in my bedroom like a good son, is it not?

  MADAME BERGER: … And what will you do next weekend, in the future?

  ME: The future does not exist. In this country, there exists only this moment here, which calls itself now.

  MADAME BERGER: …

  ME: Now, if you would excuse me, please, I have a funeral to organize.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Before David Driscoll’s party, Dad helps me bury Jaws 2 in the back garden in a shoebox he insulates with cotton wool for “no reason that comes to mind” when I ask him. The service is intimate, which means that no one comes. The broken kitchen window is patched shut with a quilt of cereal boxes. Besides Dad and me, the only mourners present are Tony the Tiger, Snap, Crackle, and Pop, the Honeymonster, and the monkey from the Coco Pops box (whose name I don’t know). Mum knows better than to show her face. She is giving wide birth to me. I am not a religious man, so instead of saying a prayer over the body, I read a formula that I got from the Internet:

  “Triangle x triangle p is greater than or equal to h with a line through it over two.”

  I don’t understand how exactly, but this has something to do with the Uncertainty Principle, which I find comforting, especially when I secure the lid on the box. However, when I toss the first handful of dirt down into the open grave, it plays a mini-drumroll on the roof of the coffin. Drums are hollow, which suggests that Jaws 2’s soul has left his body for good.

  While I am dressing for the party, Mum asks me whether I would like breakfast for dinner. She does this (sensibly) by sending Dad in her place, because I’ve made it known that I have nothing to say to her. He lurches into my bedroom with an overly jolly fence. It is all shoulders and knees, and it makes him look like the puppet that we both know he is. When I don’t answer, he slumps down in the beanbag like his strings have been cut and tells me to give it here, meaning my tie. I watch him wrestle the snake of fabric around his thick, collarless neck and loop and tug and jimmy like a retired magician trying to remember a trick he hasn’t performed in twenty years. When finally he’s done he looks overly pleased with himself (and a bit like Fred Flintstone (and, moreover, ridiculous)). However, when he wriggles his head down under it and makes me bow in front of him to receive the medal, the knot slips and the whole thing falls through his fingers like sand. “Oh, well,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe best we give them a sporting chance, anyway.” He means the girls at the party. “After all,” he adds, approving of my outfit with pursed lips, “they’re not painted on.” He means their eyes. “Is your friend Chloe going to be there?”

  “Are you having an affair?” I a
sk in response.

  “What?” asks Dad, even though my enunciation was perfect.

  “Answer the question,” I imperate. “Are you cheating on Mum?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t. Should I?”

  Dad hauls himself out of the beanbag and puts his hands on my shoulders, makes an h of us. He looks deep into my eyes in which he presumably sees the reflection of his own in which he sees the reflection of mine and so on, which is called Infinite Regression. This goes on forever.

  “I don’t need to cheat,” he says eventually. “I got Mum to marry me, didn’t I?”

  I nod. (Factually, this is uncontentious, if not obviously relevant.)

  “So I’ve already won.”

  On the way to the party, I riffle through Dad’s radio stations, partly to check for any changes and partly to try and get a rise out of him, which is getting harder to do every day. The presets have not changed. On AM1 and AM5 a serious-sounding man is chairing a phone-in debate about the England cricket team and whether or not it has a balanced batting lineup (“They ought to be balanced,” says Dad. “Their tail’s long enough”), while on AM2 and AM3 a slightly less serious-sounding man is reporting on the rising suicide rate amongst Scandinavian teens. On AM4 a third man is singing a song about jumping (“Might as well jump! Jump! Go ahead and jump! Jump!”). I toggle back and forth between AM4 and AM3 until the two things start to seem connected and Dad suggests we listen to something a bit more “you know.”

  Then he flicks over to FM. Something between a viola and a double bass saws through the space between us. The dial is preset to Classic FM. Dad doesn’t like songs without words, because it’s harder to tell if they’re happy or sad. (I agree with him.)

  “I didn’t know you liked classical music,” I say casually but not really, turning to look out my window.