by Joey Comeau
“Martin?”
He jumped and turned to find his mother standing in the doorway.
“Martin, honey, are you okay? Are you having nightmares again?” she said.
He smiled and stepped away from the window.
“No, I’m just looking at the boats,” he said. “Do people ever live on boats?”
But his mother didn’t seem to hear him. Her smile was gone, and she was serious in the way she could only get when she was drinking.
“You don’t have to be scared,” she said. “Especially not in your own house. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know,” Martin said. He was still holding the dust cloth in his hand. He placed it on the dresser.
“I would do anything to protect you, Martin,” she said. “I would kill someone to protect you. So don’t you worry.” She reached out and pulled her son into a hug, and he hugged her back. “It’s way past your bedtime,” she said.
“I would protect you, too,” Martin said.
“I know you would. I tell you what. If anyone ever hurts me, I’ll tell you. And you tell me if anyone hurts you, okay? We aren’t allowed to have secrets from each other.” She squeezed his arm. “Even if he says he’s a friend of mine. You tell me,” she said.
“I promise,” he told her.
“Where did you go?” someone yelled from the hallway. The door opened and it was his mother’s friend, Carol, with her hair all fancy and curly.
“We kicked him out,” Carol said. “Who the fuck does he think he is, treating you like that? I’ve half a mind to slap the smile right off his head.” She had glitter on her face, and a glass of white wine in her hand. “Oh, oh sorry!” she said, noticing Martin. “Hi Martin!”
He waved at her politely.
“I promise,” he said to his mother, and she squeezed him.
“Good.” She said. “Now, I should get back to the party. Give me a kiss.”
He kissed her on the cheek, and then she was gone, closing the door behind her.
Martin waited awhile, and then turned the knob slowly and quietly, pulling the door open so he could hear. Out in the kitchen, everyone was laughing again and glasses were clinking.
After a while, Martin snuck back down the hallway to peek into the kitchen. Up on the table, his mother cleared her throat to quiet the room. When that didn’t work, she stomped her boot. Martin pulled back from the doorway instinctively, like the loud noise had exposed him. But nobody was looking. Everyone’s eyes were on his mother, and their voices quieted down. She gave a small curtsy. She took a drink from the bottle of wine, an empty glass in her other hand, then she raised both over the whole room.
“To the Royal fucking Bank of Canada,” she said, “and their kindhearted vat-grown employees, for being so understanding of the plight of a young single mother. God bless their tiny little hearts and may none of them be out sick or on vacation when I go down there to burn their building to the ground.”
Everyone laughed. She was like a rock star up on stage in front of her fans. She was wearing a white t-shirt with the sleeves torn off. Across the front there was a black drawing of a crow, clinging to a branch that ran around to her back, out of sight. It was one of her favourite t-shirts. The tail end of her snake tattoo came winding down along the skin of her arm from her shoulder.
“No wait!” she said. “This is a celebration. Fuck the banks. I got the job! I am gonna help make people feel sick to their stomachs! I’m contributing to society! Little kids hiding behind couches, that will be my legacy! Turn the music up,” his mother yelled. “Turn it up!” She stomped her boot on the table. “Let’s see how those shit dicks downstairs like it for once.”
Everyone sang and laughed at the same time, and someone turned the music up. Martin’s mother took another drink. She stomped again. She stomped her boot one more time, and the table broke under her weight. Crack.
Martin’s heart closed for that half second while his mother’s eyes were white and her arms were thrown up in the air. He lost track of the wine. He lost track of her friends. All Martin could see was the startled look on her face.
She landed on the broken table and slid to the side, rolling when she hit the floor. Martin held his breath. She sat stunned on the floor, and he held his breath for as long as she wasn’t moving.
Everyone seemed to be waiting. The music had gone quiet, and the whole room was frozen with her.
Then she smiled and came alive.
“Fucking bullshit!” She scrambled to wipe up the red wine with the bottom of her shirt and with the tablecloth. “Fucking dog garbage,” she said. She was ruining her shirt and the tablecloth, and she was laughing.
She wasn’t hurt. Martin couldn’t help it, he laughed, too. It was a cheap table they’d bought at a yard sale to replace the last one. Next time they were going to have to buy something that could support her weight.
“Dog garbage” was something she said all the time. Martin had started saying it, too. Not on purpose, but he caught himself saying it every once in a while. When people spend all their time together, they start to talk the same.
“Your shirt is filthy,” said Tom, one of his mother’s friends—the skinny one. “I advise you to take it off immediately.”
Laughter. They were all crowded around, and Martin couldn’t see.
After a second, Tom said, “That’s what I’m talking about!”
Martin went to the sink, and tore a square of the paper towel off the roll. He carefully folded it twice into perfect quarters. He tore another square off and folded it twice. This would be good to start. Then he could come back for more. She had to clean that wine up properly. If she took too long, the wine would have more time to stain.
“If you don’t mind my saying so,” Tom said, “You have spectacular tits.”
Martin elbowed through the group of them all crowded around his mother. She was in her bra now, shirt in hand. The whole room got quiet when Martin pushed through to give her the paper towel.
“Shit,” his mother said.
“Well, this is awkward,” Tom said.
Martin could feel everyone looking at him, but he didn’t care. If she didn’t get that shirt dealt with, it would stain. The wine would stain the floor, too. It always had to be red wine for some reason.
Tom laughed nervously, but Martin ignored him and crouched beside his mother. He offered her the folded paper towels.
“It’s red wine,” Martin said.
It was a stupid thing to say. She knew it was red wine.
Martin waited longer this time, trying to hear through the door, afraid to open it. All he could hear were murmurs from the kitchen and occasional laughter. His cheek and ear were pressed against the cool surface of the door. When the phone rang, he gave in to temptation. He was too curious. Who would be calling this late? So he opened his door. He didn’t leave his room though. He just sat on the floor in his doorway and listened.
“That was my sister,” his mother was saying in the kitchen. “They won’t take him.”
“Why the fuck not?” It was Tom again.
“They’re going away themselves,” his mother said. “Fuck me. And I can’t afford to have someone babysit him for weeks at a time.”
“Can’t he stay by himself?” Tom said.
“Jesus Christ, no, he can’t stay by himself. He’s eleven years old,” she said. “He needs someone to take care of him. I don’t know what to do. The producer needs to know for sure by the end of the week. If I don’t find something soon, I’ll have to say no. I’ll have to turn the job down. Fuck it. I knew what I was getting into when I had a kid at eighteen. I knew I’d have to give up opportunities.”
“Lord almighty, is this a crying party all of a sudden?” Carol said. “You’ve been so excited all night. Have some more wine and turn that frown upside down. Of course you’re going to figure this nonsense out. But this sounds li
ke a problem for sober Elizabeth. Let her handle it tomorrow.”
“Sometimes things just don’t work out,” his mother said.
“Blah blah blah,” Carol said. “You have to drink through this. Have. Some. More. Fucking. Wine.”
In the kitchen, Martin’s mother laughed. “Don’t mind if I do,” she said.
CHAPTER THREE
Martin woke in the dark, certain that there was a man in the bedroom with him. He covered his mouth to keep from making any noise and listened. There were quiet sounds from the street coming through the window, but what else? Was there someone breathing? A man could be standing in the corner there, just smiling. Any second he could whisper Martin’s name, his lips pulling back slowly, his hairy fingers slick with sweat. Martin was going to scream and kick and thrash. He could feel it. He closed his eyes and pulled the comforter tighter. Nobody was there. It was just the dream again. Nobody was there. He squeezed the blanket to protect himself and listened.
He could hear his mother snoring in her bedroom down the hall. Maybe it had been that sound that woke him. She was loud enough. Every snore started quietly and got louder and louder.
But then he heard the clink of glass on glass. It had come from the kitchen.
Someone was in the apartment.
Martin wanted to stay in his bed. He wanted to pull the blankets up over his eyes and count to ten over and over again until he fell asleep, like it was just a dream and all he had to do was calm down. But he couldn’t. He had heard something. Someone was there. Maybe a burglar. What if they were dangerous? What if they went looking in his mother’s room and tried to hurt her. He couldn’t just pretend there was nobody there.
He lifted the blanket as slowly as he could, holding the edge between his finger and thumb. It made a quiet sliding sound, and Martin gritted his teeth. His mother snored, and when it was at its loudest, Martin pulled the blanket back quickly. Then he waited for her to snore again and rolled out of bed and onto the floor. He reached out for his glasses and unfolded them.
There was no man in the corner of his room. Martin stood perfectly still in the quiet between his mother’s snores, listening.
Nothing.
She snored again, and this time Martin made it across his carpet to the doorway. His door was open just far enough for him to see down the hall. There was no light on in the kitchen, and no movement. He should go back to bed. Everything was okay. There was no dangerous man waiting in their kitchen. There was no home invasion. But Martin didn’t go back to bed. He waited for the next snore and he slowly pulled the door open wider, terrified that it would squeak. He had never heard the door squeak, but now, in the dark, he felt certain that it would. But it opened smoothly and quietly, its bottom brushing over the carpet.
Martin looked down the hall again. If he was right, and nobody was there, then at least he would have peace of mind. That was better than going to bed and being wrong.
On the next snore, he made it halfway down the hall. The floor wasn’t carpeted here, so he had to move slower to stay quiet. His bare feet slapped a bit on the tiles, but the snore covered it. The second snore got him to the doorway, and he held his breath and crouched down low.
It could be anything in there. Maybe it wasn’t a burglar. Maybe it wasn’t human at all. What if it was an animal of some kind? A big dog thing, or something worse. What if it was a ghost? Just a little child standing in the middle of the room, with black, black eyes. Martin shivered and tried to get ahold of himself. What would a ghost be doing in their kitchen?
Waiting for me, Martin thought.
Back down the hall, his mother’s snoring was louder now. She coughed and muttered something in her sleep. Let’s get this over with, Martin thought. He leaned slowly out, bit by bit, so that he could see the whole of the kitchen.
There was no one there. No ghost. No drooling animal or masked man. Just a broken kitchen table that was kneeling over in the broken glass. The wooden legs jutted out from underneath it in crazy directions so that the table looked like a baby horse trying to stand up for the first time. Someone—probably one of his mother’s friends—had tried to clean up the glass. They’d swept some of it into a pile against the kitchen wall, but even in the dark Martin could see glimmers of other glass scattered all over. A half-assed job.
Well, there was no sense leaving it until morning. Martin went to the hall closet and took the broom out. He cleared a path to the garbage can, so it was safe to walk in his socks, and he got to work.
In the morning he woke up from a much nicer dream. He was planting rose bushes in his grandmother’s garden, standing in between the aisles of warm, dark earth. Martin dug a small hole in the dirt and planted a dark green bush with wide leaves that was also a lost kitten. She meowed.
It seemed perfectly normal. One of the bushes was actually a lost kitten. She was so small that her eyes had barely opened and her paws looked enormous on her tiny legs. She clamoured across the soft dirt, slipping and stumbling. Her fur was short and it stuck out in tufts like a mother cat had been tonguing her clean just moments earlier. Above them, the sun was so bright it was almost invisible in the sky. She meowed again.
Meow. Meow. Meow.
And then Martin was awake and the meowing sound was his mother’s alarm in the other room. The window was open and it was cool in his room. The alarm kept going. All his blankets were on the floor.
Martin was up and out of the bed before he was really awake. He stood there for a second. The alarm still seemed to be a kitten meowing. He picked his glasses up off the dresser and dressed for the day. The boats down on the northwest arm all looked quiet. There was no promise of adventure to them in the sunshine. His clothes from last night still needed to be folded and put away. His pyjamas, too. But the alarm kept going and for a second he was torn. Should he deal with his mother or fold his clothes?
His clothes were crumpled on the floor. They had to be folded. The worst that could happen with the alarm was his mother would wake up on her own. That wasn’t very likely. So he folded them quickly, but carefully, and tucked the clothes into the dirty laundry hamper. Then he hurried down the hall to the kitchen.
The table was still broken, but the glass was all gone. He took a quick look anyway, in the light, checking for shards he might’ve missed. Then he got down the box of teabags and a mug. He made his mother tea. No cream. No sugar. The cup rattled on the saucer as he carried it to her room. The more he tried to hold it still, the more it rattled.
She was sprawled asleep on the bed, naked and facedown in the pillow. Martin turned the alarm off and set her tea on the nightstand. She had a much darker room than he did and the shades were always drawn in the mornings. It took his eyes a second to adjust to the dim light. There were shelves and shelves of books against the wall and books stacked on the floor beside them. Martin looked around for anything he could clean up before he woke her. Her clothes were strewn and there was a pile of her special effects books on the end of the bed, by her ankles. Martin folded her clothes and placed them in the hamper. He stacked the books on her dresser beside a broken tube of lipstick.
The lipstick was broken because she had used it to write on her dresser mirror. In big sprawling red letters, his mother had written, “Get your fucking shit together!” and when he first saw it, Martin thought it was directed at him. But it wasn’t, and to clean it he would need the spray bottle of glass cleaner from the kitchen. He would have to do it later. Right now he had to wake her up for work.
It seemed mean to wake her up, though. She looked so peaceful in her sleep, with a little half-smile on her face. Martin sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. His mother’s snake tattoo curled all over the skin on her back, jet-black with twists of green. The eyes were looking right at him.
“Hello,” he whispered to it, and the snake twisted a little as Martin’s mother shifted in her sleep. He kissed the tips of his fingers and reached out and touc
hed them to the snake’s nose. “Hello, good morning,” Martin whispered. The snake’s name was Sicily, like the place. When Martin touched his fingers to Sicily, he could hear the snake slithering in his head, like a slow rasp.
He liked this part of the day, just sitting with Sicily in the morning, before his mother woke up. It was calm. The sun was out there, but it couldn’t get into the room until they let it. The world hadn’t started yet.
Martin poked his mother in the back, and she groaned and rolled over a bit, but she didn’t wake up. So he shook her shoulder, careful where to grip, not squeezing Sicily. His mother grunted. She opened her eyes and stared at Martin for a second before she realized what was happening. She groaned and put her hand over her face and eyes.
“Oh god,” she said.
Martin looked down at his hands while she sat up and wrapped herself in a blanket. Part of Sicily’s tail went around the front of his mother’s body, where you weren’t supposed to look. Martin picked up her tea from the dresser and held it out.
“Black,” he said.
“Thanks.”
It always took her a minute to wake up, and for a while she just sat on the edge of the bed, sipping the tea. But today it seemed to take even longer. She didn’t smile and say, “Was I a total idiot last night or what?” the way she always did. Instead, she stared at the words on the mirror, and she drank her tea quietly.
