by Skuse, C. J.
When I am sure the coast, or at least the garage, is clear, I straighten up and walk over to him. “It’s all right,” I say, without too much compassion. “You’ll be safe in here. I need to take your clothes off,” I say, starting to wrestle him out of Mac’s T-shirt, but he’s gripping on to it like his hands are claws, shivering and juddering.
“Need . . . m-m-m-my black-b-b-b-berriesssss.” I can hear his teeth clattering again. He’s gripping on tighter to himself so I can’t get him out of the rest of the clothes.
“Jackson!” I shout and his shivering lessens and his grip releases a bit so I can start peeling the T-shirt off him, and then the freezing, soaking cold pajama pants, and, yet again, his soaking wet underpants. He grips on to me as I change him. I root around in a box labeled “Clothes” and find an old checkered shirt that I put straight on him. A spider crawls out of his sleeve and it isn’t until I see it on his wrist that I realize Jackson’s hands are clinging on to me.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he keeps saying, and he’s really sobbing.
“It’s OK,” I say, choking down tears myself. “I’m the one who needs to be sorry. Don’t worry about that now. Let’s get you better, OK?”
I can’t find any pants but I remember seeing an old blue picnic blanket in one of the boxes so I start rooting through the one labeled “Holiday Gear.” I find it, shake out the dust, and wrap it around his lower half. He looks so fragile with the blanket wrapped around him. I rub my hands up and down his arms to generate some warmth. He keeps shrinking away from me, probably imagining I’m going to hug him or something. He keeps apologizing for the names he called me on the bridge.
“It’s OK, that wasn’t you. That wasn’t you. You’re not feeling yourself.”
“It wasn’t me, it’s not me. I don’t know w-what I’m . . .”
“It’s OK,” I say, rubbing his arms on both sides. “I’m going to look after you, OK? I’ll get you some dry pants from Grandad’s room. He’s got some he never wore, a couple of pairs that Mum got cheap — they’ve still got the tags on. And I’ll get you something to eat, all right? Are you hungry?”
He nods, his teeth still chattering violently. Mine are chattering, too.
“OK. I’ll get you something. It’s nice and warm in here. I’ll put the electric heater on as well,” I say as I see it in the corner of the room beside the drum kit. I unravel the cord and plug it into the wall socket and within seconds a little whir starts up and waves of warm air ripple out. I sit the heater directly in front of Jackson on the carpet.
“OK?” I say to him. He’s in a ball, shuddering under the shirt and blanket. He clutches the string around his neck and holds the key to his mouth. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
I creep through the door and lock it again behind me, turning the corner into the back garden. I part the leaves of the willow tree and see Mum in the kitchen window, washing dishes at the sink. She looks up and sees me and hurries to the back door. She comes out onto the patio and stops, drying her hands on a tea towel. She looks at my soaked and filthy clothes.
“Don’t ask me any questions, Mum, OK?” I tell her, my jaw juddering with the cold. “I had an argument with Mac and I fell in the river. I’m OK, but please d-d-don’t ask me anything else.”
I know there’s a million things she wants to ask, seeing as the last contact I had with her was a note saying I’d gone to Mac’s. But she just nods. “OK. As long as you’re all right,” she says, letting it hang in the air like a question, but not a question.
“I’m fine. Hungry, but fine.”
“I’ll make you some breakfast,” she says. “How was the . . . you’re soaked . . . where’s . . .” She stops herself.
“My stuff’s at the pub. I’ll get it later.”
In the kitchen, my sister, Halley, is at the breakfast bar and looks up from her bowl of cereal. She takes one glance at my wet, muddy clothes and returns to her cereal without saying one word.
Mum comes back in and places a sheet of foil over a raw chicken sitting in a tray on the stovetop. She takes it to the fridge. “You OK with a veggie burger for dinner if we’re having chicken?” she asks.
I nod slowly. Now that I know Jackson’s not actually a vegetarian, I’m wavering. “Unless you want a bit of chicken with us?” I nod more certainly. Mum smiles. “Why don’t you take a shower? I’ll make you some bacon sandwiches. How many rounds?”
“Five,” I say, knowing I couldn’t eat more than two, but thinking Jackson will probably want more. “I mean six,” I say and disappear through the door on the image of Mum’s face looking at me like she’s just been smacked in the mouth.
When Mum’s gone to work and Halley to school, I make up a bed for Jackson behind the stack of boxes in the garage using the three huge duck-feather cushions off my bed and our picnic blanket. I’m so tired I could flop down myself and go to sleep right then and there, but instead I set about changing him into some of my grandad’s unworn clothes — sweatpants, a long-sleeved black shirt, and a thick gray hoodie. I can’t believe that the only things of Grandad’s Mum didn’t throw out were the things he never used.
I chuck all the wet river stuff, his and mine, in the wash, even the eBay shirt, which is supposed to be dry-clean only but I don’t seem to care. I find the moon rock when I’m emptying my pockets. The moon rock that brought me closer to Jackson. That got me out of the mosh pit. That took me backstage . . .
In the kitchen, I balance Mac’s sodden high-top Nikes on the radiator in the vain hope they might dry out and be good as new.
Mum’s left the bacon sandwiches on the counter so I take them out to Jackson. He doesn’t say a word, just scarfs down three, one by one, all the while rubbing the key around his neck. He crashes back onto my cushions and falls asleep. I feel his forehead. He feels hot, so I unplug the little heater and remove his hoodie. I go back into the house and put together a little box of entertainment for when he wakes up — some Stephen King books, a spiral-bound notepad and pencil case, a travel chess set, and three new tennis balls from Halley’s gym bag.
Reality check — ugh. What . . . the . . . hell . . . have . . . I . . . done? What am I going to do when Mum gets home? When Halley gets home? I need to think up a plan quickly. I look at the clock — 9:20 A.M. I’m due in at work at ten. Hmmm, doubtful. But I’ve just had two days off, one for the concert that I’d booked ages ago, and one for the funeral.
I change into a clean work shirt and jeans and lace up my Etnies, and I go back down to the garage to check on Jackson, see if he needs anything before I go. The smell hits me the second I open the garage door. He’s being sick. There’s sick everywhere. And he’s covered in it.
“Blaaaaaaaaaaaggghhhhhh. Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.” Cough, cough, cough. “Awwww. Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.” This is how it goes. Several times. Followed by dry retching. I just stand in the doorway and watch.
And then it begins. . . .
“What the hell was in those sandwiches?” he shouts, still coughing. I stare at him, not knowing how the hell he’s gone from peaceful, angelic sleeping man to violently puking maniac in twenty minutes. “What kinda,” he shudders, “bacon?” Cough, cough. “Blaaaaaaaaagh.”
“I don’t know, it was just bacon,” I reply.
“Pig bacon?”
“No, yak bacon. Of course pig bacon.”
His eyes are almost out on stalks with the effort of all the retching. “It was old.”
“No it wasn’t. My mum’s really careful about expiration dates.” And then I think, maybe Mum’s cooked the vegetarian bacon instead. If you’re not a vegetarian, you’d really hate that stuff.
“Look at me! You’ve poisoned me!” he spits, peeling my grandad’s now sicky black long sleeve shirt off his body and stuffing it into a ball. He then throws it at me and my clean work shirt becomes spattered with flecks of semi-digested sandwich. He’s been sick on the picnic blanket, too. He peels down the new sweatpants and once again he’s standing
before me, bollock-naked, and I don’t know where to look. He exhales, spits on the carpet, then plonks himself back down on the cushions, covering his lap with an old Argos catalog. He points at me like his finger is a wand and he’s about to turn me into a rat. “If you’re trying to kill me, it won’t work. I got an immunity to poison. A stalker tried it once.”
“I’m not trying to poison you!” I cry. “Don’t you think it might have something to do with all the vodka and pills and river water you’ve swallowed in the past twenty-four hours?”
He gives me this haughty look and I know he’s run out of argument. He makes a face like he has a really bad taste in his mouth. “Get my blackberries and water. Bottled, not tap shit.”
“I’ll just go and drop my bucket in our alpine well, shall I?” I snap. “I don’t have any blackberries and we don’t drink bottled water. Mum thinks it’s a waste of money. And I haven’t got time to clean all this up now. I have to go to work.”
“Go to work, then.” He starts flicking through the catalog, the garden hose section, pretending it really interests him.
“I’ll get you some more of my grandad’s clothes,” I say warily, wondering what the hell he’s going to come out with next.
“No, I want my own clothes.”
“You can’t have your own clothes. They’re all on your tour bus.”
“Go and get them, then.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can. If you can hustle me out of a gig unnoticed, you can go and get my clothes.”
“I told you, we’re not in Cardiff anymore. We’re nowhere near.”
“Nothing in England is more than twenty minutes away, wherever you are.”
“Where did you hear that?” I scoff. My eyes automatically flash toward his lap, and back to his face, trying to glue them there. “And Cardiff’s in Wales, anyway. It’s a whole other country.”
“Well, you gotta get to an airport, then. Fly to Wales and get my stuff.”
“No, you can’t fly there from here. We could drive but . . .”
“So where’s your car?”
“It wasn’t my car. It was Mac’s car.”
“It was Mac’s car,” he whines, mocking my voice. “Go get Mac’s car, then.”
“I can’t. We’ve had a row.”
“Whatever,” he says, finally admitting defeat. “Go and buy me some clothes, then. I don’t want some old dude’s threads.” He leans back against the wall.
“Don’t talk about my grandad like that. Anyway, Mum’s only kept stuff he never wore.” He looks at me and sighs. “There’s a Kingsbury’s in town. I’ll go there and get something if you like.”
“A what?” he says.
“Kingsbury’s. It’s a supermarket.”
“No. CLOTHES!” he shouts. “I’m not wearing supermarket shit. If I’ve lost all my clothes, that’s your fault, so you have to replace them. Gucci suits, D&G shirts, real leather pants . . .”
“Leather pants? Oh, trousers, right. I don’t know. And I don’t think you’ll get Gucci around here. Mac’s got Gucci sunglasses but he ordered them online. There’s a man down at the covered market on Wednesdays that sells Moochi. He says it’s a designer. . . .”
“What the hell’s Moochi? That ain’t no designer I ever heard of.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know any designers.”
“Jesus Christ,” he sighs and his eyes roam across to a pile of puke. “You better clean that before it starts to stink up the place. And get some flowers in here or something ’cause it’ll linger, I know what vomit’s like. You do know where to get fresh flowers, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I say in a meek voice. And then he starts counting off on his fingers all the other things he wants me to get.
“My blackberries. Cigarettes. Marlboros, not Lights. A skinny no-whip caramel macchiato with one Sweet’N Low and a dash of protein fiber powder. And get me a fresh fruit platter, will you? And God help you if there’s bruises. I don’t do mushy fruit.” He flicks to the jewelry section of the Argos catalog.
I stand there transfixed on his mouth. “I don’t have a clue what you just said.”
“Coffee, goddamn it! If I’m gonna have to live in this armpit for the foreseeable then I’m gonna need a shit heap of coffee.”
“There’s a tea room on the High Street but I’ve got to go to work. I can brew you some instant?”
He looks like someone’s just opened their rib cage in front of him. “Instant? I ain’t drinking instant coffee. Why not just pour frigging anthrax down my throat?”
“Why are you being like this?” I say before I have time to think about why I ask it.
“What?” he says innocently, and then continues with his list of requirements. “Real coffee. Italian. I’ll need access to wireless Internet, too. And a soft-headed toothbrush. I wanna brush my teeth.”
He flaps his hand to shoo me out of the room.
I quickly change my top again for an old Slipknot T-shirt, shoving anything pukey in the basket for the second wash of the day, and all the while I’m trying to remember what he’s told me to get. Cigarettes. I’ve forgotten everything else.
As I’m walking into town, yawning my head inside out, I’m racking my brain trying to remember what he’s said. Fruit, no bananas? Caramel something-or-other with fruit and fiber? Blackberries. With every step I want to turn back and ask him, but I know he’ll probably bite my head off. This isn’t any Jackson I know. But he wants to stay with me. Of all the fans in the world, he’s in my garage. I need to do whatever it takes to make him happy.
The shops are just opening when I reach the town center. I can’t remember the caramel thing, so I get him a bunch of freesias and a selection of fruit (including blackberries) from the grocer’s, a toothbrush from Boots, and I can’t remember what cigarettes he wants but the news-agent won’t sell me them anyway cos I’m underage. So I nip next door to the thrift shop and ask if they’ve got anything even remotely Gucci. The woman looks at me for a long time.
“No worries,” I say, “I’ll just have a look through the racks.” And I’m checking all the labels but there’s nothing Gucci or Dolce & Gabbana. There are a couple of fairly new T-shirts without labels in them, some jeans with a hole in the right knee, and a black hoodie, so I get them. I’m not sure about his shoe size but I’m guessing if he finds my DMs OK then he must be fine with a seven. Every pair the shop has looks like a lawn mower’s gone over it so I decide I’ll raid my wardrobe when I get home instead.
I’m pleased with my little haul when I get back. It feels good to look after someone else for a change. To be responsible for someone’s welfare, even if that someone does talk to me like I’m a dog turd. I don’t look after anyone, except when I’m at the day care, but that’s my job. I’m paid to do that. But I’m not being paid for this and it turns out I’m quite good at it.
Jackson’s obviously been rummaging through the boxes. He’s thumbing through a cookbook when I get back, still half-naked except now he’s wearing a pair of Grandad’s Christmas tree boxer shorts so I no longer have to worry about my eyes darting to his crotch as he turns to Jamie Oliver’s sausage hot pot recipe. He stands up and roots through the shopping bags in my hands. He pulls out the T-shirts one by one, flinging them over his shoulder.
“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” he sings. He takes the toothbrush and studies the writing. “Medium head, wrong!” He takes out the fruit, piece by piece, and flings it hard at the wall. He upturns the basket of blackberries on the carpet in front of me and flings each of the apples against the wall behind me. “Bruised. Bruised. Bruised. And what do you call these?”
He rips the freesias apart. They lie at my feet. I stare at them until water clouds my eyes.
“Where’s my coffee? My smokes?”
“I didn’t get them,” I whisper.
“What?” he says, leaning in with his hand behind his ear.
“I didn’t get them. I forgot what you said.” I start blubbing. “I’m u
nderage. They wouldn’t sell me any cigarettes.” It’s out of the blue, I didn’t think I was going to, but I’m proper bawling it and I’m looking at him, but his face is just the same. Hard and sarcastic. I thought I was going to make him happy.
“Get me a coffee, right now. I don’t care what kind. Black. Lukewarm.”
I walk out of the garage like a robot, but one that’s bawling its eyes out, make it to the back door, make it to the kettle, flick the kettle on, and put my hand in front of my face. I stand before the window and cry, sob, shriek. I’m so tired. But I can’t sleep until I know he’s happy, until he’s cared for. That’s my job now. It’s like at work. I have to make sure the kids are OK before I can think about myself. I look at the clock. It’s well gone ten so I’m completely late for work. There’s no point going in now. I’ll say I was ill or something. I take a red mug from the mug tree and search through the back of the cupboard for the French press coffee maker my mum got one Christmas but never uses. I find a packet of coffee, too. Sell by January 2009. I scoop one spoonful into the press and wait for the kettle to boil. It clicks. I pour. I wait. I plunge. I pour it in the mug halfway, adding some cold tap water. I stick my little finger in. More cold water. Still too hot. More cold water. Just right. My finger throbbing red, I take it out to Jackson.
He’s lying on the cushions with one hand reaching out for the mug, idly flicking through the Jamie Oliver book. I test the coffee to be triple sure it’s the right temperature, then put the mug in his hand.
“Stir,” he says, not even looking up at me. I take the spoon from the mug and stir it.
“NO!” he screams. “Counterclockwise, you idiot! I can’t drink that now.”
And that is it. That’s all I can take. I rip the mug out of his hand, pin him back to the cushions with my knees on his chest, and pour it straight into his mouth. He struggles, gargles, gasps, coughs, splutters. The coffee splashes all over his chest and neck and the cookbook.