Man and Boy

by Tony Parsons

  “Houston is an oil town,” she said. “When oil prices are high, life is sweet. And when oil prices fall through the floor, we tighten our belts. But for better or worse, for richer or poorer, Houston is always an oil town.”

  The way she told it, her parents never came off their honeymoon. Even when they had four teenage daughters, they would still hold hands in public and give each other a single flower and leave love notes in lunch boxes.

  “When I was twelve, it embarrassed me,” Cyd said. “Now I love it that they were that much in love. I know what you’re thinking—maybe they were never really like that and I just like to remember them that way. Maybe they got on each other’s nerves and snapped at each other. But I know what I saw. They were mad about each other. They chose right.”

  Then one Sunday she was with her friends in the Dairy Queen at the Galleria shopping mall when her oldest sister came to find her to tell her that their father had died of a heart attack.

  “My mom didn’t grow old overnight,” Cyd said. “It wasn’t like that at all. She just sort of retreated into the past.

  “Maybe she figured that the best was over. She still went to work. She still cooked our meals. But now she watched a lot of old movies. And some of her video collection must have rubbed off on me. Because when I met the guy I came to England for, I thought he was Rhett Butler.”

  I am never comfortable when the conversation turns to someone’s old partners. All those hopes that came to nothing, all those wounds that haven’t healed, all the bitterness and disappointment of seeing your love get left out for the dustbin men—it seems to take the shine off the whole evening. And she could feel it too. She changed the subject, veering away from her sad story by playing chirpy tourist guide.

  “Did you know that ‘Houston’ was the first word spoken on the moon?” she said. “That’s a fact. Neil Armstrong said to Mission Control—Houston, Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.”

  “Until I met you, I never really thought about Houston,” I said. “It’s not one of those American cities you can see in your head.”

  “It’s not like here,” she said. “If it’s got a second coat of paint, it’s an antique. We have these drinking joints by the side of the road called ice houses where all the women look like they just stepped out of a Hank Williams song. But if you’re young you go to the Yucatan Liquor Store on a Saturday night where the girls try to look like Pamela Anderson and the boys can’t help looking like Meatloaf.”

  “It sounds a bit like Essex,” I said. “So where did you meet this English guy?”

  “At the Yucatan Liquor Store. On a Saturday night. He asked me if I wanted a drink and I said no. Then he asked me if I wanted to dance and I said yes. He was working in Houston as a dispatch rider. That’s what he does. He delivers stuff on a motorbike. Sort of a glamorous postman. Naturally, I was impressed.”

  “And he didn’t turn out to be Rhett Butler after all?”

  “Well, you know,” she said. “Not even Clark Gable turned out to be Rhett Butler, did he?”

  “But you came to London with him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you stay over there? Did they kick him out?”

  “Oh, no. We were married. He had his Green Card. Did you know a Green Card is really pink?”

  I shook my head.

  “It surprised us too. We had to go through those interviews with immigration officials who make sure you’re really in love. We showed them our wedding album and it wasn’t a problem. We could have stayed there forever.” She thought about it. “I think he felt like he should be doing more with his life. America can make you feel like a bit of a failure. So we came here.”

  “And what went wrong?”

  “Everything.” She looked at me. “He was into the bamboo. Do you know what that means?”

  I shook my head. “Is it some drug thing?”

  “No. Well, in a way. It means he liked Asian girls. And still does. And always will.”

  “Asian girls?”

  “You know—Korean girls. Chinese. Japanese. Philippinas. He wasn’t that fussy—which is a bit insulting to Asian women, as they can look as different to each other as a Swede and a Turk. But he genuinely didn’t care, as long as they were Asian. The night we met, he was at the Yucatan with a little Vietnamese girl. We have a lot of Vietnamese in Houston.”

  “Asian? You mean Orientals.”

  “You can’t say Orientals anymore. It’s considered insulting—like Negro or stewardess. You have to say African-American and flight attendant. And Asian instead of Oriental.”

  “To me, Asian sounds like Indian.”

  “Sorry, mister. That’s what you have to say.”

  “What did he like about them?”

  “Maybe he liked the fact that they didn’t look like him. That they looked like something completely different. I can understand that. Heterosexuality—it’s all about being attracted to someone that doesn’t look like you, isn’t it?”

  “So if he liked Asian girls—if this guy who wasn’t Rhett Butler was into the bamboo—why did he like you?”

  “Search me. I think I was an aberration. A working holiday. I don’t know.”

  She brushed her black bell of hair from her forehead and stared at me with those wide-set brown eyes. Now that she mentioned it, I could see how someone who was into the bamboo could fall for her. In a certain light.

  “We were together for two years,” she said. “One year back home and another year over here. Then he reverted to type. Or I found out that he had reverted to type. With a Malaysian student who he met in a park. He showed her London—and a few other things. He wasn’t a bad guy. He’s still not a bad guy. I just chose wrong. What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, what happened to your marriage?”

  I tried to figure out what had happened to Gina and me. I knew that it had something to do with getting older and taking something for granted and feeling that life was slipping away. James Stewart could have explained it to me.

  “I don’t really know what happened,” I said. “I lost my moorings there for a while.”

  “Oh, I see,” Cyd said. “You mean you fancied a quick fuck?”

  “It was more than that,” I said. “Although that was a part of it. But I just—I don’t know how to explain. I sort of let the light go out.”

  She stared at me for a moment and then she nodded.

  “Let’s go and look at the lights,” she said.

  It was dark now. On the other side of the river you could see the illuminations running all the way along the embankment like a string of pearls. In the morning you would be looking across at gray office blocks and another traffic jam and the city scuttling to pay the rent. But tonight it was beautiful.

  “Looks like Christmas,” she said, taking my arm.

  It did. And it felt like Christmas too.

  “I’m going to take a chance on you,” she told me.

  twenty-one

  When the chain-smoking babysitter realized that we weren’t going to steal her away forever, Peggy was finally allowed to come home with Pat for a couple of hours.

  “Look what I’ve got,” she told me, producing a little man made of molded plastic. He was looking very pleased with himself inside white satin trousers, a spangly silver waistcoat, and what looked like a purple tuxedo.

  “Disco Ken,” she said. “Barbie’s friend. Going to the disco.”

  It was strange watching them play together. Pat wanted to blow up the Death Star. Peggy wanted to hang drapes in the Millennium Falcon.

  Excited to the point of hysteria at having his friend in his very own living room—although noticeably unimpressed by Disco Ken—Pat bounced off the furniture, waving his light saber above his head and shouting, “I’ll never join you on the Dark Side!”

 
Peggy considered him with her solemn dark eyes and then began moving little Star Wars figures around the Millennium Falcon—heavily Scotch-taped on one side after crash landing into a radiator—as though they were having tea and buttered scones at the Ritz.

  Nature or nurture? I knew that Pat had never been encouraged to play violent games—in fact his never-ending blood baths often drove me up the wall.

  Not quite five years old, he was actually a gentle, loving little boy who was too sweet for the rough and tumble of the playground. There had been some bullying because he didn’t have a mother waiting for him at the school gates, and neither of us had yet worked out a way to deal with it. Peggy was completely different. At five and a half, she was a strong, confident little girl whom nothing seemed to faze or frighten. I never saw any fear in those serious brown eyes.

  Pat wasn’t built for hunting and gathering and Peggy wasn’t made for making jam and jumpers. Yet give them a box of Star Wars toys, and suddenly they were responding to their gender stereotypes. Peggy just wasn’t interested in games of death and destruction. And that’s all that Pat was interested in.

  It didn’t stop them from enjoying each other’s company. Pat hung onto the back of the sofa, grinning with love and admiration as Peggy shoved little figures of Princess Leia and Han Solo and Luke Skywalker around gray plastic spaceships that had clocked up a lot of miles in hyperspace.

  “Where’s your mom?” Peggy asked him.

  “She’s far away,” Pat said. “Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s at work. Bianca picks me up from school, but she’s not allowed to smoke in the flat. It makes her grumpy.”

  There didn’t seem to be a man anywhere near Peggy’s life, but that was hardly worth commenting on these days. I wondered who he was—probably some jerk who fucked off the moment he was asked to buy some diapers.

  The doorbell rang. It was one of those young men who are out of work, but not yet out of hope. I admire that spirit, and I always try to support them by buying some chamois leather or rubbish sacks. But this one didn’t have the usual bag full of household goods.

  “Really sorry to disturb you,” he said. “I’m Eamon. Eamon Fish.”

  At first it didn’t register. Living in the city you get so used to complete strangers knocking on your door that it comes as a shock when someone who has actually touched your life rings the bell.

  But of course—this was Eamon Fish, the young comedian who would probably be doing beer commercials and sleeping with weather girls by this time next year. Or next month. Or next week. The same Eamon Fish whose show I was asked to produce and turned down because of fish finger cooking duties.

  I didn’t know what to do with him. I didn’t know why he was here. I was expecting some down-at-heel young man who was going to sell me chamois leather. And here was some down-at-heel young man who would soon be getting drunk at the Met Bar.

  “What can I do for you?” I said.

  “What’s that?” he said, frowning and cocking his head toward me.

  “What do you want?”

  “Can we talk? It would mean a lot to me.”

  I let him in. We went into the living room where Peggy and Pat were sitting surrounded by an avalanche of toys. Pat still had his light saber in his hand.

  “Wow,” Eamon said. “A light saber! Traditional weapon of the Jedi Knights! Can I have a look?”

  A slow smile spreading across his face, Pat stood up and handed the young stranger his light saber.

  “Good fellow you are,” Eamon said.

  He swept the light saber back and forth, making a buzzing sound that made Pat’s smile grow even wider.

  “I haven’t held one of these for years,” Eamon said. “But you never forget, do you?” He grinned at Pat. “I come from a little town called Kilcarney. And when I was growing up, I felt a lot like Luke Skywalker felt growing up on Tatooine. You know Tatooine?”

  “Luke’s home planet,” Pat said. “With the two suns.”

  “What’s that?” Eamon said. “Luke’s home planet, you say? Well, that’s right. And he felt cut off from the rest of the galaxy, didn’t he? Luke felt a long way from the action, stuck out there under the two suns of old Tatooine. And when I was growing up in sleepy old Kilcarney, I also dreamed of escaping and having lots of adventures in faraway places that I could hardly imagine.” He handed Pat his light saber. “And that’s exactly what I did.”

  “Yes,” said Peggy. “But what happened between then and now?”

  “What’s that you say?”

  Was he completely deaf?

  “I said—what happened between leaving your home planet and today?” Peggy shouted.

  “Well, that’s what I want to talk to your daddy about,” Eamon said.

  “He’s not my daddy,” Peggy said. “My daddy’s got a motorbike.”

  “The boy’s mine,” I said, indicating Pat. He was still staring at Eamon with profound approval for his light saber technique.

  “He’s got it,” Eamon said, smiling with what seemed like real warmth. “Around the chin, I mean. He’s got it. He’s a handsome lad, all right.”

  “Come into the kitchen,” I told him. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

  “Coffee, you say? Top man.”

  While I put the kettle on, he sat at the kitchen table poking his ears with an index finger and muttering to himself.

  “Bad day?” I said.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  I put a cup of coffee down in front of him and put my face very close to his. He had those black Irish good looks and a long-term scruffiness, like a Kennedy who has just spent the summer sleeping in a doorway. And he seemed to be as deaf as a post.

  “I said—what’s wrong with your hearing?”

  “Ah that,” he said. “Let me explain about the ears thing. There’s a posh place down in the West End where they fit hearing aids. But they also fit ear pieces—for television presenters. So their producers and directors can talk into their lugholes while they’re presenting a program. You might know the place.”

  I knew it well. I remembered when Marty had been down there to get fitted for his ear pieces. That’s when we knew we were really leaving radio. That’s when it all started to seem real.

  “I just came from there,” Eamon said. “Left in a bit of a hurry, as it happens. What the hearing man does when he is measuring you up, he pours some stuff like warm wax into your ears. Then you have to wait for a while until it sets. And then they know what size ears you have. For your ear pieces, that is.”

  “I understand.”

  “Except with me, he never got quite that far. He had just poured the hot wax into my ears and we were waiting for it to set when I thought—what the fuck am I doing here?” Eamon shook his head. Flakes of dried wax flew out. “What makes me think that I can present a television show? What makes anyone think that I can present a television show? I’m a comedian. I do stand-up. Some people like it. But so what? Why does that mean I will be able to present a TV show?”

  “So you were being fitted for your ear pieces and you got stage fright.”

  “Before I got anywhere near a stage,” he said. “I don’t know if you could dignify it with the term stage fright. I suppose a bollock-shriveling panic attack is probably more what it was. Anyway, I ran out of there with the wax still sloshing about in my ears. It seems to have set quite well.”

  I gave him a tissue and some cotton buds and watched him scrape the hardened wax out of his ears. They always measure them for two ear pieces, one in either ear, although nobody ever uses more than one. Now I saw that it was just a ploy to stop you running away.

  “I really wanted you to produce the show,” he said. “I need—what do they call it?—an enabler. Someone to show me the way. Same as you showed Marty Mann the way when he left his radio show. I was disappointed when they said y
ou weren’t going to do it.”

  “It’s nothing to do with you,” I said. “I’m looking after my son. Alone. I can’t go back to work full-time. I need to be around for him.”

  “But I notice he’s wearing a uniform. Isn’t the little feller at school now?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So he’s out of the house for most of the day?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “So—forgive me asking—what do you do all day, Harry?”

  What did I do all day? I got Pat up, got him dressed, and got him off to school. I shopped and cleaned. I was waiting for him at the school gates in the afternoon when he came out. Then I made sandwiches, read to him, and got him ready for bed. What did I do all day?

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Don’t you miss it? Work, I mean?”

  “Sure I miss it. I used to have quality time with my son—meaning I saw him for five minutes at the start and at the end of each day. Now I have quantity time instead. I didn’t choose that change. That’s just the way it worked out. But that’s why I can’t produce the show for you.”

  “But you could be the executive producer, couldn’t you? You could come in a few times a week just to oversee the show? You could tell me what I need to do to stop looking like a complete idiot? You could help me play to my strengths, couldn’t you?”

  “Well,” I said. “Maybe.”

  I had never even considered the possibility that there was a compromise between working full-time and not working at all. It had never crossed my mind.

  “Look, I admire what you’re doing with your boy,” Eamon said. “Believe me, you would go down a storm with the mothers of Kilcarney. But I need you. I’m here for really selfish reasons. I’m shitting colored lights about presenting this show. That’s why I’m dropping bits of hardened wax all over your kitchen floor. And I know you can get me through it without total humiliation. It might even be good.”

  I thought about the long mornings and endless afternoons when Pat wasn’t around. And I thought about my most recent meeting with the bank manager, who was impressed by efforts to look after my son and less impressed by my expanding overdraft.