I’m not anybody, he said.
She looked at his face. He had crooked teeth and unshaven cheeks and he looked nothing like Dad as she used to think every man would. He had a lovely ugly face and lovely ugly hands and lovely ugly hair and he was lovely ugly all. She looked at his eyes and pressed gentle on the button of her jeans. His eyes were bright. Milky. Wide open. Emerald green.
He stood and flushed the end of his smoke away in the toilet and he looked at her and then he turned away and went out of the bathroom. She stood up and turned the shower off and then she was left standing in the after-soak and the air chilled the water that clung to her clothes. She wiped her face. Outside the gulls chanted like drunken men. Inside Dorothy told her to follow the man with the yellow hair. Get up. Go out. Look at him. Follow. Follow. Follow the.
She pulled herself out of the bath and steadied herself on the sink. Her legs were strong and weak at the same time and on the floor next to the bath there were ribbons of toilet roll and an empty cardboard tube and underneath the paper was a damp patch that smelled like eggs and vinegar and sour fruit. She held the hem of her nightie to her nose and went out of the door and into the hallway where he was standing with his hand on the handle of the front door and all the broken locks pushed in a pile next to his boots. He turned around and looked at her.
Don’t go. Please. Don’t leave me alone.
Someone will come.
Nobody will come.
I’ll phone somebody.
I don’t know them.
You don’t know me.
I know you better than I know anyone else.
She stepped towards him and felt the moths come up through her legs. He cracked the door open a little more and the fresh air came in and the walls and floorboards shook and the roses began spreading into veins that ran down the sides of the wall further and further as they talked. She could hear the noises of the outside howling and chiming and she could feel the heat of the lights as they lay down and stood up again and shone blue and green and grew frantic in the burning night. The man combed the straw hair out of his eyes with his fingers and looked into the other room where Dad lay even deader than he had been before. He wiped his eyes even though he had not been crying.
That’s my Dad.
I know.
Did you know him?
I only met him once or twice. I tried to help him.
Nobody could help him. What’s your name?
My name is Lucky.
Why are you called Lucky?
You ask a lot of questions.
And never get any answers.
She picked the wallpaper off the walls and Lucky stood next to the door and he began to close it a little and open it again as though he was trying to work the stale air out. He was so much different to Dad. He thought with his hands that came up and went down and flicked out in front of him and pulled the sadness from the room. His eyes were. It would be no bad thing to never see the face of another man. He picked his lovely ugly hands and looked at his boots and looked at the dead man and back at her again.
I think I’ll die if you leave, she said. I think I’m dead soon anyway. I can’t do much. I can’t read and I can’t remember a lot of things because my mind is full of. I can’t do much. I’ve never been out there. I think I need that. I think I need to go out and smell the air and look at something different and see all the new things that happen without me knowing. I want that before I die. I don’t want all these old things and I don’t want to look at these old stacks of nothing, those magazines from nineteen ninety whenever. I’m dying and now I want what I’ve never had. I just want to be alive at the same time as everyone else.
Do you know what food poisoning is?
No.
You’re not dying.
In my mind I died already.
You don’t have to die just because your Dad is gone.
I will though.
Do you have any other family?
No. Can’t you see how alone I really am?
Mercy.
He came inside and closed the door and brought both hands to the top of his head and the silver wave on his wrists flashed in the light that spat through the half-tangerine glass above his head. He lit another cigarette and rolled his hand into the air and gestured with his finger. When she didn’t move he spoke.
That means go on. Get dressed. Get some things together. You’re coming with me and that means you’re not coming back. Be quick now.
She flung herself over the piles and shoved the door to her bedroom open with her shoulder. She took some clothes off her floor and changed into new jeans that she’d picked holes in and new socks and another one of Dad’s band tee shirts that came low to her thighs. She opened the door to check he was still waiting. He was standing by the frame of the living room door where the door had gone missing when she had slept too long and Dad had been bored. Lucky had his hand on the frame and he was watching the still body smothered in coats and jackets and a blanket she had soaked in washing up liquid to hide the smell. He held his hand to his mouth. Trying to stop the noises that came small and crooked and too quiet through the cracks in his fingers. He wiped his eyes and didn’t look at her when he told her to hurry up.
She went into the kitchen and took a black bag from underneath the sink and filled it full of clothes she found in the washing basket and food and her toothbrush and toothpaste and a couple of paper dolls and anything she could think of. She went into the living room and held her hand over her nose and she took Plastic Jesus off the Hi-Fi and then she took the mad bird from the mantel and then she rewound her video and closed Dorothy in the box and she shoved it all into the bag. She stood next to Lucky who was watching Dad like TV. He took the black bag away from her and threw it over his left shoulder and then he spun her gently back into the room.
You’ll want to say goodbye, he said.
I want to go now.
You’ll want to say goodbye, Sweetheart.
I just want to go.
She looked at the lump in the corner and the sun came in through the boards and the slatted light fell onto the figure and chopped him into eight or nine parts. Dad stayed still and comfortable. He was gone. She took Lucky’s hand and held it tight. He was a full head taller than her but she could still hear the sound of him swallowing away his grief. She went to Dad and put her hand on the first coat and smelled the bitter death and lemons from the washing up liquid. She bent down and closed her eyes and kissed him where his knees pushed the coat out. Her stomach twisted and the moths rose up to flutter against the back of her eyes and there was nothing to say and nothing more to do. Sometimes men die because they’re too tired to do anything different and sometimes they die because the hangman has already set them a place for dinner and sometimes they die to set down stones for their daughters. She was in grief and lonely in that grief and grateful and ashamed that the little death was the thing that sent her on. She kissed him where his face should’ve been. Sometimes men die because they think too much on what will be and wear away the edges of what is. Sometimes wizards are just old men who hide behind big curtains. Sometimes. And that’s all there is.
She bent down and whispered close to the coats. You’ll only ever be mine, Dad. Think on that. Even when I go out there and find out who I am without you you’ll still only ever have one daughter and that’s me. I’ll only ever have you. There’s no one else. Bad. Good. You just were. You were. You were. You were.
She didn’t cry. Lucky wiped his eyes and held out his hand for her to take and she took it and held onto it as tightly as she could. He was a little silver fish and. His fingers were steady and the little pulse in his wrist quickened when she looked at him and said.
Did you know my Dad?
He looked at her strange. His whole body seemed to step back to comprehend her while his feet had not moved an inch. His lip twitched and his head tilted to the side and his eyes locked on hers. It made her feel like. She scratched the inside of her arm and look
ed at her feet and then up again. It made her feel like a bad little dog. He gave her the doglook once more.
I told you no.
I know you did.
15
Now in Technicolor
SHE WAS ALWAYS in the last hour before her father’s death.
The smell and the shape of him and the thought of the needle and the black cobwebs that filled up his head kept her with him and thinking on those minutes before and minutes after. Pain was with him. Always. Misery. Upset. Numb thoughts ripened by the bitter fix. Trembling. Sorrow. His boyhood bloomed in the roses on his arms and so did thoughts of the hangman who came at last while he was dressed in his funeral suit. She wondered if he saw it coming. She thought on him gasping his last for light and life and breath and then realizing that there was no more for him. Old men always shout for their mothers before they die and she knew that he was no different. She spat her grief into a bucket at the edge of her bed. He would always be dead and she would always be the one who was left. There was no changing him now, and going through the door was the only way to cut the line that ran like liquorice between father and daughter and then to grandmother and so on, tying her up in beautiful promises that burned as soon as she exited the bloody and slick throat of birthing. Leaving was the only way to kick time on, as only she and Dad and the mad bird knew.
He opened the door.
It was easy.
She stepped over the lip of wood with her eyes closed and her hand holding his and he was standing so close that their hips touched and she was breathing so hard she felt like she wasn’t walking at all but falling a long way down. She opened her eyes. They were standing at the end of a long white hallway with long lights pinned to the ceiling flickering between dark and light like the world was deciding whether or not to wake. At first she couldn’t see anything else. The lights were too bright. The flickering got behind her eyes and scratched at the cords that sent pictures into her head where everything was white and she felt as though she was drowning in a glass of milk. She was dizzy. Her nose itched with all the different smells. Chemicals. Petrol. Sugar. Grass. Dog fur. Piss. She held onto him and he held onto her and she could hear the noises she had heard all her life echoing in waves from the tiles underneath her boots. A little broken window on the far end of the hallway blazed with lights and noises and burning specks of orange set in rows on the high black shoulders of the world. He said everything is fine. Everything is okay. Everything is. She rubbed the cutting lights out of her eyes and let the grassy steaming air fill her chest.
We have to go.
Where are we going?
Further.
Is there more?
There’s outside.
I’m more outside than I’ve ever been.
He held her hand and he walked with her underneath the tubular lights. Somewhere outside a dog howled and it was so much closer than before. The cold air soothed the itches on her skin. The lights swelled and then settled enough for her to focus. She looked at the other brass numbered doors set two by two down the length of the hall.
Nobody lives there, Lucky said. You and your Dad were the only people living in this whole tower. Everyone else moved away. It’s too damn old and the rooms are too damn small and the stairways are too narrow and the walls have to work to hold it all up. It’s a miracle that something didn’t hit you on the head while you were in there. I saw the cracks in the ceiling.
There were cracks everywhere.
Her eyes became accustomed to the light and she could see better the hallway and the inky scratches and rude pictures drawn in reds and greens and purples and blacks all over the paint. The lovely rude art followed them as they walked. She reached out through the window and touched the cold on the other side that was threaded with all the tangled light of those other lives. They turned the corner and went into another hallway where lying on the ground halfway along was a face she recognized from years she couldn’t take back.
She looked at the face. It was part of a stack of plastic headless dolls and yellowed newspapers and broken lamps with tilted shades and she dug through and pulled at the little ear and brought up the black velvet nose and dusty chewed face and missing right eye. It was the brown stuffed dog that Dad had brought home one day to fatten up and sew and take back out into the world again. She named it Gravy. The ears smelled of old potato peels and damp wood and the fur came out in her hands when she let it down again on the top of the pile.
What a mess, Dorothy.
What did you say?
Nothing.
There were mountains and leaning towers of junk piled high and wide along the corridors of the many halls that wound around her little haunted museum. They were made up of things that she and Dad had worked to fix and change. There were cabinet doors in dark oak with painted flowers and bird boxes that hung on chains and rocking horses and satellite dishes and mirrors with rusted frames and filthy backs and planted among everything in rows that leaned crooked towards the walls and windows were street signs set like headstones.
She pointed but she couldn’t read them. Down the next corridor the wind was cold and fierce and it drove her hair back wild and whipping in tufts that flicked behind her. She held his hand. Paper balls and cigarette packets rolled around her feet and plastic bags went floating up like jellyfish. Electricity fizzed and cracked in the tubular lights and the walls creaked and she picked up the mended pieces of her past and looked at them awhile before letting them drop out of her hands again. She closed her eyes and listened and turned around the next corridor and went through two heavy doors and into the next hall where she saw the source of all that lovely chiming.
Beer bottles. Cans. She walked through and watched the bottles and cans rolling around in the wind that whipped through the last door at the end of the last hall where the storm was heavy and the rain got in between the two handles that were held together by electric tape. The smell of yeast and sour fruit gave way to the smell of the petrol and stone and dirt and weather. The bottles hit the walls and chimed over and over and.
I want to go, she said.
Then we’ll go.
She slipped her hand into his pocket and he touched her on the shoulder and drew her to him and moved through the hall with his hand out and the wind blowing them both back. Next to her, she realized, was a large hole in the wall that smelled of.
What’s wrong?
That.
The chute?
I hate it.
It’s just a place to throw rubbish.
I hate it all the same.
He led her to the door on the other side of the hall and the smell followed them even though they were far along. It was bad. It smelled of fish and eggs and everything rotted into glue and it reminded her of those lovely dead fish and lovely dead Dad and how the two were the same now. Her mother got into her head and. He took her to the door and slipped the electric tape from one side and pushed against the long metal arm and went through. They went down a staircase that went on and on and her ankles ached and her muscles burned. The final door had another thick bar across it and a blurred window and a big red sign with a word that was lit and burning above them.
What does it say? she said.
Can’t you read it?
I can’t read anything. What does it say?
Exit.
*
She felt the cold air on her forehead. She stepped on a concrete path and the texture was strange underneath her boots. It was harder than wood. Flat. It didn’t rot like wood and it didn’t tear like carpet and it gave way to patches of grass. She could smell the sea in the air along with dirt and vinegar and cooked meat and petrol and chemicals. She could see life and she could hear it too. Her eyes were open. They were wide. Ablaze with everything that there had never been before.
Outside the door there was a path and beside the path was a wall and behind the wall were flowers that had closed themselves to the cold and dark and down in the grass were the voices of insects. The path l
ed to the pavement that cut across the top. Behind that was a large paved space and in the middle of the space was a car that stood alone between two white lines that had been painted there.
The car was yellow.
Beyond the immediate everything was the rest of the world and it was made of high buildings and black hills. There were concrete walls, fences, stone steps, rubbish bins, bags, signs with fat red writing, blue and red flashing lights, grey pillars, red bricks, rainbow writing painted on the walls, swearing children playing behind crumpled cars, neon shop signs like magic spells. Children. Children. There were windows and behind the glass were people. Everywhere. She held his hand tight. Tried to think. Tried not to. The cold air didn’t rest. Somewhere behind her was a dead father and in front of her was everything else. All the world. Painted. They walked down the path and over a steep banking still slippery from yesterday’s rain and she looked so hard and fast that the world washed into a fizz of spinning electricity. She lifted her head up.
He stopped next to her. What are you looking at?
I’ve never seen it before.
What?
The sky.
It was everywhere. It wasn’t like the background in films or the edges of the pages in children’s books. It was something else. It was fluid. Organic. Clouds towered over the tops of buildings and leaned but never toppled. The stars flashed soundless and unafraid. The black night was alive with shapes and colours she didn’t recognize. The moon looked through a gap between two towers. He pulled her along while she looked. There were sirens and fat whistles behind them. He pulled her quicker.
Come on, he said.
I need to smoke.
Do you?
Yes.
So do I.
They walked across the hard grey space with the white painted lines and when they got to the yellow car he took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one for her and lit one for him. They smoked. He opened the car door with a key that he kept in his back pocket and it blipped and flashed its lights and he opened the driver door and got in and closed the door again. He leaned over and pushed the door open on her side and she got in and sat down and looked through the window. Inside the car the air was petrol fumes and leather and the salt in his skin and the cherry scented piece of card that dangled from the mirror.
The Insomnia Museum Page 6