Bobby and May made friends, people who either didn’t notice what they were or didn’t care. Hands raised and waving through the chaos and empty glasses. Hey Bobby, May, over here, sit yourselves right down here. Place for the old butt. Jokes to be told, lips licked, lewd eyes rolled, skirt hems pulled firmly down then allowed to roll far up again. Glimpses of things that shouldn’t be seen. They were good at pretending to be grownups by now, almost better than the grownups themselves. For the purposes of the night, Bobby was out of town from a university in the city, studying whatever came into his head. May was deadly serious or laughing, saying My God you wouldn’t believe the crap I have to put up with at the office, the factory, the shop. Playing it to a tee. And I’m truly glad to be here and now with you all before it starts again in the morning.
Time broke in beery waves. The account at the Post Office that Bobby had been nurturing for some unspecified grownup need sunk to an all-time low. But it could have been worse—they were a popular couple, almost as much in demand as the unattached fat uncles when a few drinks had gone down. They hardly ever had to put in for a round.
The best part was when they came close to discovery. A neighbour who probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place, a family friend, a teacher. Then once it was Bobby’s brother Tony. Late, and he had his arms around a fat uncle, his face sheened with sweat. He was grinning and whispering wet lips close to his ear. There was a woman with them too, her hands straying quick and hard over both of their bodies. It wasn’t Marion.
“Let’s go,” Bobby said. There was a limit to how far you could take a risk. But May would have none of it. She stared straight at Tony through the swaying bodies, challenging him to notice.
For a moment his eyes were on them, his expression drifting back from lust. Bobby covered his hand with his mouth, feeling the grownup clothes and confidence dissolve around him, the schoolkid inside screaming to get out. Tony made to speak, but there was no chance of hearing. In another moment he vanished into the mass of the crowd.
Now the danger had passed, it was the best time of all; catching Tony out in a way that he could never explain. Laughter bursting inside them, they ran out into the sudden cool of the night. May held onto him and her lips were over his face, breathless and trembling from the sudden heightening of the risk. He held tight to her, swaying, not caring about the cars, the grownups stumbling by, pulling her close, feeling the taut rounded swell of her full breasts and belly that excited him so.
“Do you want to be like them?” she whispered. “Want to be a fool and a grownup?”
“Never.” He leaned back and shouted it at the stars. “Never!”
Arm in arm, they swayed down the pavement towards the bus stop. Incredibly, Tuesday was coming around again tomorrow; Doc Halstead would be pulling up the drive at home at about eleven, washing his hands one more time and saying How Are You My Man before taking best china coffee with Mum in the lounge, whispering things he could never quite hear. May’s eyes were eager, gleaming with the town lights, drinking it all in. More than him, she hated this world and loved it. Sometimes, when things were swirling, she reminded him of a true grownup. It all seemed far away from that evening in town after biology, leaning on the bridge alone after leaving Albee’s and gazing down at the river, May saying I won’t go through with it Bobby, I’m not just some kid acting funny. As though something as easy as fooling around with the bitter milk could make that much of a difference.
Doctor Halstead arrived next morning only minutes after Bobby had finished breakfast and dressed. In the spare bedroom, he spread out his rubber and steel. He dried his hands and held the big syringe up to the light before leaning down.
Bobby smeared the fresh bead of blood over the bruises on his forearm, then licked the salt off his fingertips.
Doctor Halstead was watching the readouts. The paper feed gave a burp and chattered out a thin strip like a supermarket receipt. The doc tore it off, looked at it for a moment and tutted before screwing it into a ball. He pressed a button that flattened the dials, pressed another to make them drift up again.
“Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.”
The printer chattered again. He tore it off. “You’ve still got some way to go.”
“How many weeks?”
“If I had a pound for every time I’ve been asked that question.”
“Don’t you know?”
He handed Bobby the printout. Faint figures and percentages. The machine needed a new ribbon.
“Us grownups don’t know everything. I know it seems that way.”
“Most of my friends have gone.” He didn’t want to mention May, although he guessed Mum had told him anyway. “How long can it go on for?”
“As long as it takes.”
“What if nothing happens?”
“Something always happens.”
He gave Bobby a smile.
Bobby and May went out again that night. A place they’d never tried before a few stops out of town with a spluttering neon sign, a shack motel at the back and a dusty parking area for the big container rigs. Inside was huge with bare boards and patches of lino, games machines lining the walls, too big to fill with anything but smoke and patches of yellowed silence on even the busiest of nights. Being a Wednesday, and the grownup’s pay packets being thin until the weekend, it was quiet. They sat alone in the smoggy space for most of the evening. They didn’t know anyone and for once it seemed that no one wanted to know them. Bobby kept thinking of the way Doctor Halstead had checked the readouts, checked them again. And he knew May had her own weekly test the following afternoon. It wasn’t going to be one of their better nights. May looked pale. She went out to the Ladies room far more often than their slow consumption of the cheap bottled beer would explain. Once, when she came back and leaned forward to tell him something, he realised that the rain had gone from her breath. He smelled vomit.
At about ten, a fat uncle crossed the room, taking a drunken detour around the chairs.
“Haven’t seen you two here before,” he said, his belly swaying above the table, close to their faces. “I’ve got a contract delivering groceries from here to the city and back. Every other day, I’m here.”
“We must have missed you.”
He squinted down at them, still swaying but now seeming less than drunk. For places like here, Bobby and May wore casual clothes. Bobby dressed the way Dad did for evenings at home in a open-collared striped shirt and trousers that looked as though they had started out as part of a work suit. May hadn’t put on much makeup, which she said she hated anyway. Bobby wondered if they were growing complacent, if this fat uncle hadn’t seen what all the other grownups had apparently failed to notice.
“Mind if I…” The uncle reached for a chair and turned it around, sat down with his legs wide and his arms and belly propped against the backrest. “Where are you from anyway?”
Bobby and May exchanged secret smiles. Now they were in their element, back in the territory of the university in the city, the office, the shop, the grownup places that had developed a life of their own through frequent re-telling.
It was pleasant to talk to an uncle on equal terms for a change, away from the pawings and twitterings of other grownups which usually surrounded them. Bobby felt he had a lot of questions to ask, but the biggest one was answered immediately by this uncle’s cautions but friendly manner, by the way he spoke of his job and the problems he was having trying to find a flat. In all the obvious ways, he was just like any other young grownup. He bought them a drink. It seemed polite to buy him one in return, then—what the hell—a chaser. Soon, they were laughing. People were watching, smiling but keeping their distance across the ranks of empty tables.
Bobby knew what was happening, but he was curious to see how far it would go. He saw a plump hand stray to May’s arm—still covered by a long-sleeved shirt to hide the bruises—then up to her shoulder. He saw the way she reacted by not doing anything.
“Will you show us?” May asked, looking at Bobby. “I think we’d like to see.”
The motel room was small. Someone had tried to do it up years before but the print had rubbed off the wallpaper by the door and above the green bed. The curtains had shrunk and Bobby could still see the car park and the lights of the road. A sliding door led to a toilet and the sound of a dripping tap.
The fat uncle sat down. The bed squealed. Bobby and May remained standing, but if the uncle saw their nervousness he didn’t comment. He seemed more relaxed now, easy with the drink and the certainty of what they were going to do. He unlaced his boots and peeled off his socks, twiddling his toes with a sigh that reminded Bobby of Dad at the end of a hard day. He was wearing a sweatshirt that had once said something. He pulled it off over his head with his hands on the waistband, the way a girl might do, threw it onto the rug beside his feet. He had a singlet on underneath. The hems were unravelling but he and it looked clean enough, and he smelt a lot better than Uncle Lew did at close quarters, like unbaked dough. He pulled the singlet off too. His breasts were much bigger than May’s. There was hardly any hair under his arms. Bobby stared at the bruised scar that began under his ribcage and vanished beneath the wide band of his jeans, slightly moist where it threatened to part.
“You’re going to stay dressed are you?” he said with a grin. He scratched himself and the springs squealed some more. “This Goddamn bed’s a problem.”
“We’d like to watch,” May said. “For now, if that’s okay with you.”
“That’s great by me. I’m not fussy…I mean…” he stood up and stepped out of his trousers and underpants in one movement. “Well, you know what I mean.”
Under the huge flap of his belly, Bobby couldn’t see much of what lay beneath. Just darkness and hair. Every night, he thought, a million times throughout the world, this is going on. Yet he couldn’t believe it, couldn’t even believe it about his parents with Uncle Lew although he’d seen them once on that hot afternoon.
“Tell you what,” the uncle said. “It’s been a long day. I think you’d both appreciate it if yours truly freshened up a bit.” He went over to Bobby, brushed the fine hairs at the back of his neck with soft fingers. “I won’t be a mo. You two sort yourselves out, eh?”
He waddled off into the toilet, slid the door shut behind him. They heard the toilet seat bang down, a sigh and the whisper of moving flesh. Then a prolonged fart. A pause. A splash. Then another.
May looked at Bobby. Her face reddened. She covered her mouth to block the laughter. Bobby’s chest heaved. He covered his mouth too. He couldn’t help it: the joke was incredibly strong. Signalling to Bobby, tears brimming in her eyes, May stooped to pick up the sweatshirt, the shoes, the singlet. Bobby gathered the jeans. There were more clothes heaped in a corner. They took those too, easing the door open as quietly as they could before the laugher rolled them over like a high wind.
They sprinted madly across the car park, down the road, into the night.
Next morning, the sky was drab. It seemed to Bobby like the start of the end of summer, the first of the grey veils that would eventually thicken to autumn. Downstairs, Mum was humming. He went first into the kitchen, not that he wanted to see her, but he needed to re-establish the charade of ignoring his nights away from the house. One day, he was sure it would break, she’d have a letter from the police, the doctor, the owner of some bar, a fact that couldn’t be ignored.
“It’s you,” she said. Uncharacteristically, she kissed him. He’d been taller than her for a year or two; she didn’t need to bend down but it still felt that way. “Do you want anything from the supermarket? I’m off in a few minutes.”
Bobby glanced at the list she kept on the wipe-clean plastic board above the cooker. Wash powd, loo pap, marg, lemon jce, wne vigr. He looked at her face, but it was clear and innocent.
“Aren’t you going to go into the dining room? See what’s waiting?”
“Waiting?”
“Your birthday, Bobby.” She gave him a laugh and a quick, stiff hug. “I asked you what you wanted weeks ago and you never said. So I hope you like it. I’ve kept the receipt—you boys are so difficult.”
“Yeah.” He hadn’t exactly forgotten, he’d simply been pushing the thing back in his mind, the way you do with exams and visits from the doctor, hoping that if you make yourself forget, then time the rest of the world will forget too.
He was seventeen and still a kid. It was at least one birthday too many. He opened the cards first, shaking each envelope carefully to see if there was any money. Some of them had pictures of archaic countryside and inappropriate verses, the sort that grownups gave to each other. One or two people had made the effort to find a child’s card, but there wasn’t much of a market for seventeen year olds. The most enterprising had combined sick-ons for 1 and 7. Bobby moved to the presents, using his toast knife to slit the tape, trying not to damage any of the wrapping paper, which Mum liked to iron and re-use. Although she hadn’t spoken, he was conscious that she was standing watching at the door. Fighting the sinking feeling of discovering books on subjects that didn’t interest him, accessories for hobbies he didn’t pursue, model cars for a collection he’d given up years ago, he tried to display excitement and surprise.
Mum and Dad’s present was a pair of binoculars, something he’d coveted when he was thirteen for reasons he couldn’t now remember. He gazed at the marmalade jar in close up, then through the window at the individual leaves of the nearest cherry tree in the garden.
“We thought you’d find them useful when you grew up too,” Mum said, putting her arms around him.
“It’s great,” he said. In truth, he liked the smell of the case—leather, oil and glass—more than the binoculars themselves. But he knew that wasn’t the point. And then he remembered why he’d so wanted a pair of binoculars—how he’d used to love looking up at the stars…
“Actually, I’ve lots of stuff to get at the supermarket, Bobby. Dad’s taking a half day and we’re going to have a party for you. Everyone’s coming. Isn’t that great?”
Bobby went with Mum to the supermarket. They drove into town past places he and May had visited at night. Even though the sky was clearing to sun, they looked flat and grey. Wandering the supermarket aisles, Mum insisted that Bobby choose whatever he want. He settled at random for iced fancies, pate, green-veined cheese. Tony came out from his office behind a window of silvered glass, a name badge of his lapel and his hair already starting to recede. He clapped Bobby’s shoulder with a biro-stained hand and said he’d never have believed it, Seventeen, my own little brother. They chatted awkwardly for a while in the chill drift of the frozen meats. Even though there was a longer queue, they chose Marion’s checkout. She was back working at the supermarket part time now that their kid had started infants. It wasn’t until Bobby saw her blandly cheerless face that he remembered that night with Tony and the other uncle in the bar. He wondered if she knew, if she cared.
There were cars in the drive at home and spilling along the cul-de-sac three that afternoon, little kids with names he couldn’t remember running on the lawn. The weather had turned bright and hot. Dad had fished out all the deckchairs as soon as he got home, the ordinary ones and the specials he kept for uncles. People kept coming up to Bobby and then running out of things to say. He couldn’t remember whether they’d given him cards or presents, what to thank them for. Uncle Lew was in a good mood, the facets of one of the best wine glasses trembling sparks across his rounded face.
“Well, Bobby,” he said, easing himself down in his special deckchair. He was starting to look old
, ugly. Too many years, too many happy events. He was nothing like the fresh fat uncle at the motel. “And what are you going to be when you grow up?”
Bobby shrugged. He grown sick of thinking up lies to please people. The canvas of Lew’s deckchair was wheezing and slightly torn. Bobby hoped that he’d stay a kid long enough to see him fall through.
“Well get yourself a nice girlfriend,” he said. “It means a lot to me that I’m uncle to your Momma and Poppa and to Tony and Marion too.” He sucked at his wine. “But that’s all down to you.”
Looking back up the lawn towards the house, Bobby saw May and her parents emerging into the sunlight from the open french widows. May looked drab and tired. Her belly was big, her ankles swollen.
She waddled over to them, sweat gleaming on her cheeks.
“Hello Bobby.” She leaned over to let Uncle Lew give her a hug. He put his lips to her ear. She wriggled and smiled before she pulled away.
“Hello May.”
She was wearing a cheap print, something that fell in folds like a tent.
“This whole party is a surprise, isn’t it? Your Mum insisted that I didn’t say anything when she told me last week. Here. Happy birthday.”
She gave him a package. He opened it. Five minutes later, he couldn’t remember what it contained.
Dad banged the trestle table and people gathered around on the lawn as he made a speech about how he could hardly believe the way the years had flown, saying the usual things that grownups always said about themselves when it was a child’s birthday. He raised his glass. A toast. Bobby. Everyone intoned his name. Bobby. The sun retreated towards the rooftops and the trees, filling the estate with evening, the weary smell of cooking. Those grownups who hadn’t been able to skip work arrived in their work clothes. Neighbours drifted in.
May came over to Bobby again, her face flushed with the drink and the sun.
Snodgrass and Other Illusions: The Best Short Stories of Ian R. MacLeod Page 38