Mothers

by Chris Power

  ‘Glass of water?’ Andy says.

  The man leans his head on a skinny fist and smiles.

  Andy goes inside and massages his closed eyes, wondering what to do. He puffs his cheeks and presses air through his lips. He pours a glass of water from a jug in the refrigerator and takes it out to the man, who politely accepts it but then leans forward and looks around worriedly. He motions for Andy to sit down. As soon as he does the old man grabs his wrist with unexpected force.

  ‘The tent’s a broken river,’ he says, shifting forward in his chair. His dressing gown flaps open and Andy can see his naked body deep inside it, further back, surely, than it should be: a thin white root supporting a tiny, creased pot belly. ‘Understand?’ the man says. ‘Joe!’ He looks more angry than confused. His grip on Andy’s wrist tightens. He starts humming again, a surprisingly resonant sound coming from the back of his throat. His breath is sour. It smells like clubs before they open. As he hums, tears fill the old man’s eyes.

  ‘Hey, calm down,’ Andy says, but the humming only grows louder. Andy looks around the porch and out onto the dark street, willing help to appear, but they are alone. The old man’s face darkens with blood as he hums more forcefully. His grip tightens again. Tears streak his face and Andy, beginning to panic, pulls his hand away more violently than he intends to. The man falls forward onto the porch and kneels there, sobbing. His slippers have fallen off and lie arrowed behind him. Andy bends over and lifts him up, moving him back to the chair. For a few moments the man’s scalp rests against Andy’s cheek. It smells of talc and, beneath that, a repellent mustiness. He weighs very little. Cradling him makes Andy think of holding Marcus, and Tim before him, of rocking them to sleep or soothing away an injury. The old man begins to softly snore as Andy leans him back in the chair, the wicker creaking.

  *

  Andy collects a hire car and drives to the bachelor party. He has no idea how these people heard of him, he has never played one outside New York or New Jersey before. He has overdone the paint stick, and works his mouth and eyes to see what kind of movement he can get. His face feels as if it’s going to crack open like an egg. From the rear-view mirror a singed, startled man stares back.

  ‘You have reached your destination,’ the satnav states. He is on a dark country road. His appearance is supposed to be a surprise, so he stays beside the car and calls Todd, the best man, to tell him he’s here. The house is old, a Spanish revival mansion screened from the road by banyans, their trunks smothered by Virginia creeper.

  Todd is tall, muscular, about thirty years old. He is wearing a polo shirt and khakis. His stride is so assertive that he is either extremely poised or extremely wasted. The latter, Andy decides.

  ‘Nice place,’ he says, holding out his hand.

  ‘It’s not mine,’ Todd says. He sounds agitated. He is smoking a cigarette with quick, urgent drags. He flicks it away into the dark half-finished and pulls a pack from his pocket. He points it at Andy like he’s changing channels.

  ‘No thanks,’ Andy says, retracting his unshaken hand. ‘I quit.’

  Todd laughs loudly, a sound like a child mimicking a machine gun.

  ‘Just wait till I start telling jokes!’ Andy says, but Todd doesn’t seem to hear. He pinches a cigarette from the pack and flicks his lighter. He sucks furiously, the lighter’s flame several inches below the cigarette’s tip. One eye screwed tightly shut, he stares at Andy with the other.

  ‘Things all good here, Todd?’ says Andy, beginning to dread an entire room of Todds. Todd has taken the cigarette out of his mouth and is holding it in the lighter flame. He ignores Andy as he stares at the jerking cone of fire. He is concentrating so hard Andy almost expects the metal of the lighter to bend, or the cigarette to erupt into a bouquet.

  ‘Dude!’ Todd says as if waking from a trance. He pockets the lighter and tosses the charred cigarette onto the lawn. ‘Let’s get inside. Mike’ll freak when he sees you. He fucking loves Johnny Kingdom.’

  ‘Good to hear,’ Andy says.

  Todd pauses. ‘What’s that accent?’

  ‘English.’

  ‘Weird,’ says Todd. He stares down the darkened road for a few seconds, stares hard as if he might see Europe at the end of it, then gives Andy a broad, insincere smile. ‘Come on inside.’

  Todd leads the way to the house. He lights another cigarette, the smoke shredding itself in the porch light. He pushes the door open and waves Andy into a large, terracotta-tiled hallway.

  ‘Is it the strippers?’ asks the man, as tall and solid as Todd, who emerges from a door on the right. Beyond it Andy hears loud dance music and shouting voices, all male.

  ‘How many people are here?’ Andy says.

  Todd looks at him, bewildered. He draws on his cigarette and says, ‘Twenty? Twenty. No, it’s not the strippers. It’s Johnny.’

  ‘Oh,’ says the other man. His cap reads ‘Marlins’ in black edged with turquoise. Beneath its curved bill his bloodshot eyes stay fixed on Andy as he lifts a red plastic cup to his mouth.

  Todd looks at nothing for a moment, his eyes empty, then he comes back to them. ‘Brian,’ he says, ‘take Johnny upstairs. You need to get dressed, right?’

  Andy nods.

  ‘How long you need?’

  ‘Twenty minutes?’

  ‘Great, perfect,’ Todd says. ‘Put him in the games room and give him whatever he needs.’ He taps his nose with his finger and smirks at Brian. Brian shrugs.

  They go up a broad tile staircase and down a hallway that runs the length of the house. Up here it is quiet. Only the muffled thump of music carries from below.

  ‘Good party?’ Andy asks Brian’s back.

  Brian shrugs. ‘S’OK,’ he says. He is round-shouldered, his muscle slackening into fat. He moves reluctantly, as if carrying out the last chore of a long day. He takes Andy all the way down the hall and through a door into a large bedroom with a king-size double bed, and a dressing table in front of a tall window. Andy can see a balcony through a pair of narrow glass doors. On the dressing table stands a lump of cocaine the size of a tennis ball. Around it lie little scars of powder, sharply outlined against the dark brown wood.

  Brian crosses the room. ‘Want to hit this?’ he says, bending down and herding smaller lines into something the length of a microphone.

  ‘That’s a lot of cocaine,’ Andy says.

  Brian considers the lump. ‘You should have seen it before,’ he says. He looks at Andy. His eyes slowly cross and uncross. He offers a rolled-up bill and Andy is tempted, in spite of what it does to him. The last time, at a party on Long Island before the kids were on the scene, he wrestled an old college friend of Sylvia’s and woke up under a bush.

  ‘Not when I’m working, thanks.’

  Brian shrugs and inhales the line in two wetly rippling snorts. He straightens and lets out a wolf howl, a thick vein in his neck pulsing. Andy lays his suit bag and holdall on the bed and starts unpacking.

  Brian leaves. Todd walks in with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a cigarette in the other, trailing a thin, reptilian boy behind him. Todd points at the boy and looks at Andy. ‘Martin,’ he says, ‘the groom’s little brother.’ Martin, who is perhaps eighteen, looks hunted, and sniffs powerfully as he approaches the dresser. Todd is shaving the lump with a credit card.

  ‘Bathroom?’ Andy asks, his outfit draped over his arm.

  ‘On the left,’ says Todd, his face low over the table as he dices the coke. As Andy crosses to the door, Martin looks at him with a strange intensity and slowly shakes his head.

  In the bathroom Andy changes his clothes, puts on his wig and concentrates on moving through the gateway between himself and Kingdom. Outside the door he hears people come and go, laughter, another of Brian’s wolf howls. He is sticking on his mole, inhaling the sweet sherry odour of the spirit gum, when someone bangs on the door. ‘Just a minute,’ Andy calls. Another powerful series of blows shakes the latch. He checks himself in the mirror: Johnny’s here. H
e opens the door. There is no one there. ‘Hello?’ he says, in Johnny’s voice. There is no reply. He walks into the bedroom and looks around. He looks at the coke, scarred and pitted like a meteor. A credit card and a rolled-up note lie beside it. The end of the note is flecked with blood. Two small lines sit at a slight angle to each other. He sees the old man’s slippers on the porch, their towelling worn at the toe and heel. He feels like curling up on the bed and sleeping, hiding from everything, but that’s Andy. Johnny wants to get down there and make those fuckers laugh. And Johnny would never let free blow go unsnorted. He touches his tie knot and stretches his neck. He takes a note from his wallet, rolls it and sniffs the powder, half up the left nostril and half up the right. He steps backwards and flops down on the bed. He stares at the ceiling and works his lips. They feel carbonated. A chill lump gathers at the top of his nostrils. His face goes numb, sweat springs from his fingertips, the bed sheet feels coarse and staticky against them. A fraction of the talent, the words chatter through his head, at a fraction of the price. He repeats the sentence to himself in a rhythm like the movement of a train. An old Mitch Hedberg line comes back to him: I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too. He died, of course. Of a drug overdose. ‘Motherfucker,’ Andy says aloud. His vocal cords pop. Speaking feels unusual, but good.

  Todd reappears and moves straight to the dresser. He leans down and, a moment later, rears up. ‘Time to go,’ he says, pressing his nostrils shut and blinking back tears. They walk along the hallway and back down the stairs. A big band fanfare struts from the stereo as Andy comes into the large, long living room. The furthest wall is open to the night, and it is so dark outside the house might be suspended in space. There are cheers and shouts, and a man so drunk that he moves like a marionette is pushed in front of Andy. ‘Mike?’ says Todd, beaming and clapping Andy on the shoulder. ‘Meet Johnny.’ Mike has a slash of cherry-red lipstick running from the midpoint of his lips to his left ear. Bruise-purple eye shadow has been smeared around his eyes, giving him a look of end-stage disease. The eyes themselves are almost entirely pupil. He is dressed in the same khakis and polo shirt outfit as nearly everyone else, which makes the make-up seem more obscene than fun. His lips are pulled back from his teeth in what might be an expression of happiness or horror.

  ‘Mike!’ says Andy, as Johnny, ‘it is an honour to perform for you tonight. Great crowd you got here. You look in their eyes, they could almost be human.’

  Todd sniggers but Mike says nothing, only bobs his head.

  ‘Anyway,’ Andy says, patting his shoulder, ‘let’s get this show on the road.’

  He stays at the top of the room while his audience gathers around the couches and armchairs that have been rearranged to face him. Martin, the reptile, is sitting next to Mike on a large couch, speaking urgently into his ear. Mike’s head lolls like his neck has been snapped. Standing behind the couch Andy sees an older pair who must be the fathers, scarlet with alcohol, one bald and the other with cropped silver hair. Everyone is sniffing energetically and smoking with intent, some cigarettes but mostly cigars. The clouded air smells burnt. Bottles and plastic cups crowd every surface.

  ‘I was with this girl,’ Andy says, shouting to quiet the room. ‘She loved me so much. “You’re like nothing else, Johnny, you get me so fuckin’ hot, Johnny.” She was the girl of my dreams this girl.’ He shrugs and shakes his head. ‘But then I woke up.’ They roar, all except Mike and Martin, who are both speaking now, their heads bent towards one another. Andy’s eyes keep flicking back to them. In any audience he has learned to tell where the pockets of resistance are. ‘My wife, she treats me like dirt,’ he says, working his way into the rhythm. ‘The other day I come home from work and some guy’s outside my house stark naked. I say, “Where’s your clothes?” He says, “Where’s your work ethic? You’re two hours early.”’

  At the end of each line, another convulsion. That simple, supple transaction Andy loves: words, then laughter. Time it right and the laughter starts generating its own energy, and it’s that you want to tap, the pure stuff. The lines are just the tools you need to get to it. He sniffs, and shudders as the taste of ammonia floods his mouth. He hears laughter, but doesn’t know what he just said. ‘I told my wife,’ he says, hoping he isn’t repeating himself, ‘I told her, “I’m seeing a psychiatrist. He says we should break up.” She said, “I’m seeing a truck driver. He says the same thing.”’ Andy leans on the laughter for a moment, taking the chance to regroup, and it’s then that the answer comes, like one of those perfect ad-libs that sometimes arrive as if beamed into him: the way out of Kingdom is through Kingdom. All this, the bachelor parties and retirement homes, Suzzy and Todd and the stink of clubs in the afternoon and dressing rooms stacked with cleaning supplies and being forty and other comics hating you, and Johnny looming over it all: this is the show Andy will write. He even knows the title: Leaving the Kingdom. He has no idea if it will be funny, but it will be his. His absorption in the idea is so complete that it takes him a few seconds to make sense of Mike launching himself from the couch and staggering towards him. He jabs his finger at Andy. ‘Whoa, fella!’ Andy says. ‘What’s wrong with this guy?’ He leans around Mike’s shoulder and mugs at the crowd, trying to keep the room on side.

  ‘You come here … come here,’ Mike is repeating, grinding the words out through his clenched jaw. His hand makes a staccato chopping motion.

  ‘Mike,’ says Andy quietly, speaking in his own voice as Mike sways in front of him, ‘buddy. Don’t be a prick.’ As he speaks, Andy feels Mike’s foot against his own. He can smell the booze on the younger man’s breath, and trace each vein in his bloodshot eyes. Surprising himself, he lifts his foot and brings his heel down hard on Mike’s toes.

  Mike howls and shoves his fist into the thick frills on Andy’s shirt. It isn’t a punch, more a heavy placing. Andy puts his hands up on Mike’s shoulders. People are around them, shouting. Mike launches his head towards Andy but his aim is off, his forehead only grazes Andy’s cheek. Andy falls backwards and clears a side table with his arm. He is on the floor and someone is asking if he’s OK. He lifts his hand to his face. ‘Fine,’ he nods, ‘I’m fine.’ Then Martin kicks him in the stomach, and as he curls up something slams hard into his head.

  Andy drifts away from the noise and motion. He can hear a whine, like a neighbour’s drill. He looks up. Todd has his arms around Mike. Brian is shoving Martin and pointing down at Andy. The fathers are standing above him. Andy can see powder at the edge of their nostrils, frost ringing a chain of black ponds. He looks at Mike in Todd’s arms, placid now, almost asleep. He sees his mole pressed into Mike’s forehead. Everything moves very slowly. Then Martin squirms past Brian and kicks Andy in the face and again in the stomach. Andy curls up. He feels dislocated from everything around him. He sees Martin fall to the floor, and then he feels himself being lifted and carried into the hallway. He is put in a chair and someone leans over him and says something. The door to the living room slams closed and he is alone.

  His vision spins; a terracotta whirlpool. Images of the last few minutes warp and scatter. He stands up slowly. The upstairs hallway seems longer and narrower than before. He goes into the bedroom and picks up his clothes, stuffing them into his holdall. He walks back down the hallway, faster now. He listens for someone coming upstairs but hears nothing except a buzzing that he thinks is in his head. He wipes his hand across his face and it comes away bloody. He walks downstairs, needing to lean on the wall. The living-room door is still closed; from beyond it he hears angry voices. He sees a pack of cigarettes on the hall table and snatches it on his way past. He walks out of the front door, down the driveway and back onto the dark road to his car. He starts the engine and speeds away. After a few miles he finds himself driving on a long, straight road with fields on either side. He pulls over into the yellow-white glare of a streetlight, the only light he can see. He grips the wheel tightly and tries to slow his breathing. A cry comes out of him but he swallows
it. He gulps air like he has been pulled from the ocean. He presses the dashboard lighter. His face is hot. His body shivers. His stomach is cramping. His left eye is swelling shut.

  His stomach flips, and he fumbles with the door handle and throws himself to his knees in the tall roadside grass. When he has finished throwing up, all he can hear is his ragged breath and, all around him, the loud, pulsing static of cicadas. The earth holds the day’s warmth. Grass tips press lightly against his face. He tears a hank of grass and wipes his mouth with it. He fights the urge to curl up and sleep. Instead he stands, pulls off his wig and throws it into the black field. Next is the jacket, its dark shape swallowed by the emptiness beyond the glare of the streetlight. He levers off his shoes and tosses them, overarm, in arcs down the road, then drops his trousers and stamps on the cuffs as he pulls out each leg. He gathers them into a ball and pulls his arm back to throw, pain gripping his stomach, when he feels his phone in the pocket. He takes it out and drops the trousers to the ground. He wants to tell Sylvia what has happened. He wants to tell her his idea. He wants to tell her everything. In shirt, underpants and socks, in the middle of the spotlit road, he calls home.

  EVA

  Joe had thought he would never hear from Eva again. The email arrives nine years after he saw her last, sent from a hospital in Sweden by a doctor called Järnfors. One of this doctor’s patients claims to be Joe’s wife. He knew Eva had returned to Sweden, but had stopped wasting time wondering where she was living or what she was doing. Now, again, he knows. She is in a hospital in a town called Borås, in the west of the country, not far from Gothenburg.

  Yes, Eva Dewar is my wife, Joe replies, uncertain how much the doctor already knows. We are separated, and have had very little contact with each other for the past decade. He includes his number, and the following day Dr Järnfors calls and tells him that Eva was admitted just over a month ago, ‘in a highly distressed state. Our evaluation at that time,’ she says, ‘was psychosis.’ Joe is distracted by the clarity of her voice. It is as if she is standing directly beside him in his kitchen, or somehow even closer than that: an inner voice, or an imagined one.