by Tim Dowling
‘Why are you going on the radio, anyway?’ my wife says from under the covers.
‘To talk about marital bickering,’ I say. The duvet flaps down again.
‘I hope you’re not going to be horrible about me,’ she says. There is a pause.
‘I think that’s what they’re expecting,’ I say. ‘Horrible things about you.’
‘Please don’t be unkind,’ she says.
‘It’s out of my hands,’ I say.
That evening I head off to meet the oldest one, fresh from his day at the office, in order to go to a concert in the park. I stand in the designated spot outside the station and wait. After a few minutes I ring him.
‘I’m here,’ he says. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m here,’ I say. ‘Where are you?’
‘Ah, I see you,’ he says. I turn to find an enormous man bearing down on me, his long arms shooting from his sleeves.
‘Hey,’ he says, blotting out the sun as he approaches. He offers his customary greeting, slapping me lightly across both cheeks.
‘I used to have a belt just like that,’ I say.
I am accompanying the youngest one to his first day of secondary school. The school itself is brand new, and the train journey begins and ends at two recently opened stations. Everything about the morning feels freshly minted, untested and exciting, even for me.
A man in a suit approaches us on the platform.
‘Excuse me,’ he says, ‘do you make this journey regularly?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘This is my first day!’
It is, it transpires, his first day, too – he’s just started a new job. We’re all thrilled. But I realize it’s also my last day. The youngest one is determined to get home on his own, and hereafter he’ll be another commuter, coming back every evening with sloping shoulders and a loosened tie. After today, I think, none of my children needs me for anything, except money.
At the school gates he meets up with three friends from primary school. They form a tight circle and chat conspiratorially. I walk over and touch him on the head.
‘Sure you’re OK coming back on your own? Because I could—’
‘Yes,’ he says, dismissing me with a regal flick of his hand. As I stand on the platform waiting for the 8.54 to take me home, the sky turns heavy. I am bereft.
That afternoon, at about the time we’re expecting the youngest one to turn up, he rings.
‘Where are you?’ my wife asks him. There is a long pause, and then she says, ‘Are the police with you now?’
When I meet him off the train, he is wearing an oversize tracksuit and carrying his uniform in a bag. He tells me what happened: after school, he walked with his friend to a bus stop to see him off, only to turn round and realize he had no idea where he was in relation to his rehearsed route to the train station. At that moment, a tremendous downpour began and, after several attempts to retrace his steps, he found himself lost and soaking wet in an unfamiliar part of London. He asked someone for directions and was, he insists, within sight of his goal when the policeman picked him up and took him back to school.
‘That’s awful,’ I say, trying to conceal how oddly reassuring I find his misfortune.
‘Make sure Mum doesn’t tell anyone about this,’ he says.
‘I will,’ I say. ‘I can write about it, though, can’t I?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Of course not.’
‘Really?’
That night I go to a party where I meet another columnist. She wants to commiserate. She admits she is beginning to resent her weekly obligation to turn her life into copy, to reveal bits of herself to the public, to compromise her relationships by writing about friends and family. I attempt to drain the contents of my wine glass, but it’s already empty.
‘Yeah,’ I say, shrugging. ‘I’m mostly fine with all that. I just worry that not enough happens to me.’ She gives me a blank look that is at once uncomprehending and withering.
The next afternoon, the youngest one makes it home without incident. I find him watching television.
‘Hey,’ I say, sitting down. ‘How was it?’
‘Good,’ he says. He cranes his neck round me at the screen.
‘What if,’ I say, ‘I were to write about what happened yesterday in such a way that it couldn’t possibly upset you? Obviously I would let you read it first, and …’ I pause to take a breath, wondering if I can possibly expose my youngest son to the framework of shabby moral compromises that underpins my inner life and still get the answer I want. I don’t think it’s the kind of issue I can fix with a simple payment of £5. He’s too old for that now. I take another breath.
‘And I’d also give you ten quid to make it worth your while,’ I say.
He stares at me, narrowing his hard blue eyes. ‘Make it fifteen and you’ve got a deal,’ he says.
‘Nobody taught me to shave,’ I say to my wife. ‘I picked it up on the streets.’
‘This isn’t about you,’ she says. I just shrug, because I think it is a little bit about me, but I know better than to say so. I avoid the subject of the oldest one’s first shaving lesson for the next few days.
I’m not shying away from this particular rite of passage for complex emotional reasons. The truth is, I’ve never been very good at shaving. I cut myself a lot. Although largely self-taught, over the years I have actually had a few shaving lessons from hairdressers, for articles. I found the professional advice confusing, contradictory and heavily weighted in favour of certain proprietary products that happened to be sold in the establishment. To me, shaving is a question of luck: you try your best, and more often than not it doesn’t work out. Like life.
Also, I have a beard at the moment, the product of eight weeks of not shaving. I didn’t grow it on purpose, exactly, but I’m still pleased with it. I have found the point where sloth meets affectation, and I like it there.
On Saturday my wife comes back from the supermarket with a new razor for the boy. ‘He’s upstairs,’ she says, ‘waiting for you to teach him to shave.’
‘He’s still asleep, actually.’
‘Well, wake him up.’
‘Will I have to shave off my beard to teach him, do you think?’ I say.
‘Yes!’ the middle one shouts from the other room. I stroke my chin. I feel as if I’ve just finished writing a complex equation that covers the entire chalkboard, and now someone wants me to erase it in order to show them how to spell ‘CAT’.
It is nearly midday when I get the oldest one out of bed and in front of the bathroom mirror. He is irritable, uninterested and semi-conscious. Perfect, I think: we’re halfway there.
‘First,’ I say, ‘we fill the sink. The water must be very hot.’
‘Why must the water be hot?’ he asks.
‘Good question,’ I say. ‘Questions will be taken at the end. Next, we splash our faces liberally, like so.’
‘Getting water all over the mirror,’ says my wife, who, it transpires, has installed herself in a chair behind us, her embroidery on her lap.
‘Why is she here?’ the boy asks.
‘You think this is embarrassing?’ she says. ‘Try being taught how to put a tampon in.’
‘That’s unhelpful,’ I say.
‘Please go away,’ the boy says.
‘I’m just here for kicks,’ she says.
‘Then we take our razor,’ I say, holding up my own razor, ‘and apply the blade side to the face, using a downward motion.’ I demonstrate with the razor hovering over my cheek. He watches, and imitates.
‘How hard do you press?’ he says.
‘Not that hard,’ I say. ‘Let the weight of the razor sort of …’ I demonstrate the optimum pressure. When I look back in the mirror, I notice I have shaved a rectangular chunk out of my beard.
‘Uh-oh,’ I say. ‘Let me just …’ I shave a corresponding slot on the other side, but it doesn’t match. Before I know it, half my beard is gone. I have no option but to finish the job.
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��What next?’ the boy asks.
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘You’re done. You can apply one of the many proprietary aftershave products I’ve been obliged to purchase over the years, but if I were you I’d just pat my face dry with a hand towel.’
‘And then fold and replace the towel on the rail,’ my wife says. ‘Or, like your father, you could just throw it on the floor.’
‘Your choice,’ I say, cutting the end of my chin.
The youngest one wants me to drive him somewhere – a last-minute, Sunday evening arrangement. Normally I would refuse – in fact, I do at first – but there is something weirdly serious in his bearing.
The story he tells involves a troubled friend, some kind of dramatic run-in with parents, and a hastily arranged meeting of mates to confer. I don’t really get it, but I recall a few similar incidents from my own school years, and what I felt then is perfectly reflected in his face now: I must, however reluctantly, fulfil the obligations of being an adolescent. I suspect that if he were to ask his mother to drive him to a strange park at dusk on a school night to get involved in someone else’s melodrama, she would cloud up and rain all over his plan.
‘Yeah, OK,’ I say, levering myself off the sofa. ‘But if we’re going we’d better go now.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ he says.
‘You know where we’re going?’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘It’s right near school.’
School, unfortunately, is not very near home, and slightly off my patch. Once we reach a particular point, I am obliged to let him play navigator to my pilot, a partnership that has led to some stunningly unsuccessful excursions in the past.
‘I’m coming to an intersection,’ I say. ‘I need a decision from you.’
‘Go left,’ he says.
‘I can’t go left,’ I say.
‘Sorry, I meant right anyway.’
By the time we reach the park, the sun has long since set. The surrounding neighbourhood seems at once posher and rougher than ours, but I don’t know anything about it. I do not, however, like the look of the park. The silhouetted groups gathered round park benches seem posed in attitudes of menace.
‘Are you sure they’re even here?’ I say, peering into the gloom.
‘I’ll ring them,’ he says, swiping his phone with a finger. I begin to wish I hadn’t given this outing my imprimatur by agreeing to drive. What I should have said was: ask your mother.
‘If they don’t answer,’ I say, ‘I think we should probably head—’
‘Where are you guys?’ he says, into his phone. ‘Tesco?’
‘Tesco?’ I say. ‘What Tesco?’
‘No, up by the basketball courts,’ he says. ‘Which entrance?’ He opens the passenger door and stands up, looking over the car towards the park’s farthest corner.
‘So where are they?’ I say.
‘OK, yeah,’ he says. ‘I’m just heading your way right—’
The door slams. I realize that he has, in fact, set off.
I watch as he walks along the curved path, passing one silhouetted group after another, still gabbling away. I would very much like him to put his phone back in his pocket. I keep watching until he becomes almost indistinguishable, a dark blot interrupting the playground railings. As he reappears in a pool of lamp light, a much larger figure in a white hooded top looms up, heading in the opposite direction. At the point where they meet, the hooded figure stops, pauses for a beat, then turns and follows him, barely a step behind. Then they both round a corner and vanish behind the trunk of a tree.
I suddenly find myself out of the car and running. Two women sitting on the bench near the entrance turn their heads as I pass, because I am not running with a jogger’s gait, but like someone who is very late for something urgent. Once I am past them, I run even faster.
When I reach the tree, I find nothing. I spin round twice, scanning the horizon, but I appear to be completely alone. Finally I see two figures walking away from me, sharply outlined against the lights of the shops on the main road. One, gesticulating in the manner of a standup comic driven to distraction by one of life’s small absurdities, is unmistakably my son. The other is the person in the white hooded top, clearly the friend he was going to meet, a head and a half taller.
I take the long way round the playground so I don’t have to pass the women on the bench again. When I get back to the car, I sit behind the wheel for a while, quietly contemplating my shaking hands.
My wife likes to be involved in the lives of her children. I sometimes fear she is in too deep, but this is something I have learned from experience I shouldn’t say. I occasionally feel I ought to encourage her to emulate my more hands-off approach, but I don’t know how. The main problem with using a hands-off approach as an exemplar is that in practice it doesn’t look like anything.
Having spent an entire morning asking earnest questions while impersonating a sixth-former in an online student forum, my wife now wants to spend lunch talking about UCAS.
‘A lot of people haven’t had any offers yet,’ she says. ‘I said I already had one.’
‘Wait,’ the oldest says. ‘Are you pretending to be me?’
‘No, I have my own login details now,’ she says. ‘Anyway, it’s starting to get emotional. We’re all very disapproving of one boy for being so cocky.’
‘How do you know he isn’t his own mother pretending to be him?’ the oldest says.
‘I think it’s safe to assume,’ I say, ‘that the entire forum is made up of mothers pretending to be their children.’
‘I only ever went on there once, to find out a test answer,’ the boy says.
‘They’re all a bit cagey about test answers, aren’t they?’ my wife says.
‘You need to stop,’ he says.
My wife turns her attention to the middle one, who has only just risen after coming home late from a party.
‘Who was there?’ she asks him. ‘What was it like?’
‘It was OK,’ he says.
‘Not good enough,’ she says. ‘What was the worst thing that happened?’
The middle one turns to the oldest one. ‘And how was your party?’ he asks.
My wife poses questions that betray her unwholesome knowledge of the boys’ Facebook accounts, rattling off names and incidents I recognize from my own unwholesome knowledge.
‘If nothing else, this will teach you to log out after each session,’ I say to them. My wife’s continued probing meets with a deepening, unamused silence. I start to eat faster. There is a long, highly charged pause in the conversation.
‘So,’ she says finally, ‘was it a kissing party?’
‘Oh my God!’ shouts the middle one, dropping his fork. ‘What is wrong with you? Why are you like this?’
Amid further and more pointed recriminations, lunch comes to a premature end. The middle one finds himself tasked with clearing up as a punishment. For a time, the running of water, the slamming of plates and cutlery, and periodic huffs of indignation are the only sounds in the room. After some minutes, my wife turns in her chair towards the sink.
‘If at any time you’re prepared to apologize for telling me to go fuck myself,’ she says, ‘you can go and finish watching the football.’
‘Are you joking?’ he shouts. ‘No way! Why should I apologize to you? You’re the one who …’
He pauses to contemplate the bottom of an encrusted pan, and a smile steals across his face. ‘What I mean is, I’m really very sorry,’ he says, dropping the pan into the sink and running from the room. ‘Bye!’
‘You walked straight into that,’ says the oldest one, who is rooting through the fridge for more food.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ my wife says. ‘In a week’s time, you’ll be eighteen and I won’t be able to do that to you any more.’
‘Really?’ he says.
‘You’ll be an adult,’ she says.
The boy stops to consider the notion that after a random deadline set seven days hence, his p
arents will be required to stop ruining his life. He looks both doubtful and a little alarmed.
By Sunday evening my wife is finding us all a bit hard to live with. The children are draped across the sofas, feet up, heads lolling, staring into phone screens. Occasionally one of them shifts his gaze to watch a bit of Dragons’ Den through upside-down eyes. I’m sitting in what I imagine to be companionable silence, but I suspect my quiet presence is also starting to grate on my wife’s nerves.
‘Look at all of you,’ she says.
‘Shh,’ the middle one says. ‘We’re trying to watch this.’
‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ my wife says.
‘Take these to the kitchen,’ I tell the middle one, indicating an array of dirty plates, one of which is resting on my chest.
‘In a minute,’ he says.
‘I’m sick of these children,’ she says. The oldest one, slouched beside her with a laptop under his chin, snorts. ‘Actually,’ she adds, ‘it’s incredibly irritating sitting here with you playing that stupid game.’
‘You’re incredibly irritating,’ he says, rolling his eyes.
‘Why are you being so horrible?’ she shrieks.
‘You’re the one being horrible,’ he says.
‘Do you hear him?’ my wife says to me. I keep quiet, fearing my position will be unhelpfully neutral: I know what it is to be an exasperated parent, but I also remember what it’s like to be an adolescent boy whose mother is being maddening.
When Dragons’ Den is over, my wife shoos the children out and plucks a Sopranos DVD from the box set. We are slowly working our way through the saga, although she’s been secretly forging ahead when I’m out.
‘We’ve seen this one,’ she says, a minute in.
‘You mean, you’ve seen this one,’ I say. ‘Who are these people? Why are they being killed?’
‘Quiet,’ she says.
By this point Tony and Carmela Soprano have been separated for two, possibly three episodes. Their sixteen-year-old son, Anthony Jr, is not taking it well. His grades are suffering; his relationship with his mother is strained. In one especially poignant scene, mother and son eat supper together, alone in the family home.