Lolito

by Ben Brooks

  ‘No,’ I say, pulling the duvet over my mouth. ‘It wasn’t that. They’re making it up. This doesn’t make sense. She didn’t do anything.’

  ‘She touched you.’

  ‘Mum, please stop.’ This is the most embarrassing thing to have happened during the whole time that I’ve existed. I don’t know how it happened. They won’t let me think. I think, maybe it was the Internet police, or guilt, or Macy’s husband. I don’t think it was guilt. I’m not entirely sure the Internet police exist.

  ‘She did.’

  I force my head up and point my eyes at the tallest police officer. ‘What are you talking about? I touched her too. Why can’t people touch each other?’

  ‘You poor thing,’ Mum says. She sits down on the bed next to me and tries to pull me in to her. I push her away. Dad’s standing behind the policemen, with his hands behind his back, looking at a stain on the ceiling. I want him to understand. I want him to explain that this is a misunderstanding and ask them all to please leave. I don’t know what’s happening in his head but I don’t want him to think I’m smaller than he already does. Nothing appears in his eyes. He leaves the room and walks downstairs.

  ‘Stop,’ I say. ‘This is fucked.’

  ‘Language, Etgar.’

  ‘But it is. It’s so fucked that you think Uncle Michael marrying a woman he bought off the Internet is fine, but if I meet a woman who stops me feeling alone then the police come around because she’s old.’ The police officers look at each other, and one sighs, and the other bites his lip. ‘She’s not even really old.’

  ‘Your Uncle Michael did not buy Alena. And that woman took advantage of you. You probably don’t understand yet.’

  ‘Yes he did and yes I do.’ I’m shouting. I stand up. I should throw something, for effect. In the film version of right now, this would be the part with the murder. This would be the part where I break down and punch inanimate objects until I fall unconscious, blood running out of my knuckles. ‘He’s paying for a woman to live with him because he’s old and pathetic and lonely. I’m trying not to be. This is stupid.’

  ‘Don’t talk about your uncle like that.’

  ‘Don’t talk about Macy like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like she did something wrong.’ I run out of the room, knocking the police officers’ shoulders and tripping slightly on the stairs. Dad’s on the sofa, watching a blank TV. He doesn’t move when I pass him. I hope he heard. I hope he doesn’t think that I’m the type of child to be unwittingly groomed and used by a paedophile. I hope he realises that I have decided to start shouting.

  It’s warmer outside. I go to the field. A couple with two Golden Retrievers are hurling Frisbees through the sky and four boys are smoking by the oak tree. I locate the gap in the hedges where Amundsen and I hid from rain and I fit myself in and sit down on the bank of mud. It’s unstable from days of rain. I pull my t-shirt up over my face and gently trace laps of Alaska.

  I picture a sequence of time-lapse photos on a nighttime motorway, with me unmoving between the streams of headlights. I picture a car swerving dumbly into me and my bleeding body being knocked into a ditch. I picture Macy being led away from her house. I picture the tree house and I imagine its windows made dark with metal bars.

  ‘Oh dear,’ a voice says. ‘Someone looks underneath the weather.’ I feel the weight of a small dog settle in my lap. ‘Are you okay? Should I give you advice? I suppose that’s what old people are for. Good evening.’

  ‘Um. Hi.’ I wipe a length of snot from my nose and take my head out of my t-shirt.

  Mabel’s pulling a leaf apart in her hands. ‘So,’ she says. ‘What sort of advice would you like?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘To hell with it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To hell with it!’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘It’s not too good, is it? I expected I might say something more insightful, to be totally honest with you, Etgar.’ Mushroom rears up and drops his paws on my knees. He licks the gap between my thumb and index finger.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘And nap.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take naps.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Is that useful?’

  ‘Not really. Also yes, in general, but not now.’

  ‘The pen is mightier than swords.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Let sleeping dogs do what sleeping dogs want to do.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s one.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m beginning to think there isn’t any particularly useful advice anywhere in me.’

  ‘What would you do if you really liked someone but the police put the someone in jail?’

  She drops the leaf and bites her lower lip. Her eyelids droop slightly. Mushroom does a whine. ‘Be very angry,’ she says. I nod. I don’t know how to be angry but I think it will happen, grandly and in one step, like reaching the moon. I say goodbye. I go home and try not to look at Mum. I leave with the police officers.

  40

  We’re sitting in a row on the sofa, watching a programme about assisted suicide and passing a bowl of stale cornflakes between us. There was nothing else in the cupboards and no one wanted to go outside. It’s eight and the sky is starting to roll down. Mum tried to talk with me about Macy, but her mouth didn’t make the right words, and she sounded like a deaf person, so we turned on the TV and watched the first thing that appeared.

  A silver-haired talking head says that death is a right, and it should be available to everyone, instead of only people rich enough to fly to Switzerland. There are shots of the room where it happens. It’s small and painted impersonal colours.

  Dad nods. ‘Would you kill me if I asked?’ he says.

  ‘I’d shoot you in the face,’ I say. ‘If you asked.’

  ‘Where would you get a firearm?’

  ‘I’d just do it with a catapult and a rock.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Mum says. She stands up and goes to the window, pressing her face and hands against the glass.

  ‘And if I wasn’t of sound mind?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be able to tell probably. I’d do it anyway.’ Mum turns and tells Dad off again, saying that he shouldn’t be saying things like that. Turning back, she freezes. A bright, sudden flash fills the room, blanking everything out for a quarter of a second. Mum snaps the curtains closed. ‘Oh my Jesus wept,’ she says. ‘Pete, there’s a man outside our house.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘I don’t know what man. How do I know what man?

  He took a photo.’

  ‘A journalist,’ I say.

  She plants her hands on her hips. ‘How do they know our address?’

  ‘What? Why would I tell them?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s hard to tell with you sometimes.’ ‘Is it?’

  ‘Pete, do something.’ She does an if you don’t move now, I am going to throw something look to him and taps her foot three times against the carpet.

  Dad nods and forces himself up from the sofa. He steps into the pair of mudstruck wellington boots waiting at the door, calls Amundsen and goes outside. I don’t know what Dad expects of Amundsen. He’s not a threatening mammal and will likely lick the enemy. He will roll over, offer up his belly and make sounds like a sleepy toddler.

  Mum opens the curtain partway and watches him walk down the garden path, towards a thin man with no neck and a skull-sized camera lens. He’s dragging Amundsen by the collar.

  ‘Get down,’ Mum says. ‘Get away. He’ll see you.’

  ‘But I want to watch.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Put these on,’ she says, passing me Dad’s oversized tortoiseshell reading glasses from the arm of the chair. ‘So he doesn’t recognise you.’ I put the glasses on, not feeling particularly disguised, and now being partially blind. I didn’t know Dad’s eyes were so broken. The world has become a sequence of patch
es and blotches.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the dad blur says. ‘I’ve got a dog.’ He points at Amundsen, who lies down in the flowerbed and rolls over, crushing a row of limp petunias.

  ‘My petunias,’ Mum says.

  Amundsen nibbles at soil. The journalist blur lifts his camera and another flash happens and the dad blur jerks forward. Both blurs fall to the ground. I take off the glasses. Dad and the journalist are wrestling like excited dogs. Dad is sitting on the journalist’s face, tugging the camera from his hands. The journalist is slapping Dad around the back of his head and flailing and pedalling the air. Amundsen is watching quietly, like a child in an aquarium.

  I have never seen Dad fight and I expected it to be more impressive. I’m not disappointed, just surprised. I expected hard, swinging punches, and spit, and knuckles webbed with teeth. I think, maybe the reason he’s sad that I’m scared isn’t because he doesn’t understand it.

  ‘Help,’ he shouts. ‘Help me.’ The journalist has started biting.

  ‘Etgar, no,’ Mum says.

  ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  I put on trainers and run out. The camera falls from of the journalist’s hands after I apply pressure to his wrists with my thumbs, the way the book says to. Dad climbs off and straightens himself. We face the journalist.

  ‘That’s mine,’ he says. I slide out the memory card and put it in my mouth.

  ‘Here.’ I hand the camera back.

  ‘Don’t come again,’ Dad says.

  ‘We have a dog,’ I say.

  The journalist looks deflated and unsure. He doesn’t say anything. He hangs the camera on his neck and walks quickly back to his car. Dad puts a hand on each of my shoulders. He does an I’m not going to say anything look, but it’s calm and pleased, like a just-elected president.

  Inside, Mum is walking in tight circles. ‘What are we going to do?’ she says. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘It isn’t okay. What’s okay? What the fuck are we going to do?’

  ‘Calm down,’ Dad says. ‘What we’re going to do is make more tea.’

  ‘And stop swearing,’ I say.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mum says. ‘I’m sorry to both of you. I just don’t know what to do.’

  ‘I think we should do Countdown,’ I say. ‘Should I get paper?’

  ‘Get paper. I don’t know. Let’s do Countdown.’ The phone starts to ring. Mum kneels down and unplugs it. She also unplugs the electric doorbell, turns off her computer and, inexplicably, takes her red beret off the coat stand and places it on her head. Dad puts three teabags into three mugs and adds water.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I prod Mum’s knee with my right hand. It is supposed to look sympathetic, but I can’t commit, and it looks random and unnatural.

  ‘I know,’ Mum says.

  Mum wins the first numbers round. Dad wins every letters round. He could be in dictionary corner if he wanted to. He also gets the Countdown conundrum within two seconds of it appearing on the screen. The Countdown conundrum is this:

  P U L L A M A I D

  ‘I don’t like the new one,’ Dad says. He points at Rachel Riley. Rachel Riley smiles broadly and waves goodbye. ‘She’s too young. What happened to Carol?’ ‘She moved,’ I say. ‘To Loose Women. She’s the head one sometimes and Andrea is the head one other times.’

  ‘Do you watch a lot of Loose Women?’

  ‘Pete.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just don’t.’ Mum gathers our mugs and carries them through to the kitchen. She turns on the tap. Dad flicks through channels, settling on a period drama in which three women are drinking tea in the grounds of a large country house. Mum comes back to announce that she’s ready for bed. I think she may be severely disappointed in me. There’s a chance that she will have another child, to raise closely and carefully, until he’s a well-liked politician or a private dentist.

  ‘Night,’ she says.

  ‘Night,’ Dad says.

  ‘Night,’ I say.

  We watch the period drama in silence. Macy’s sitting in my head, on the floor of a damp prison cell, about to be stabbed repeatedly with ersatz knives. She’s blaming me for pulling her life apart like wet toilet paper. She’s missing her children and her belly is making dial-up sounds.

  ‘Dad?’ I say.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you believe me that it wasn’t her fault?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Is there something we can do? She can’t go to prison because of me. She didn’t do anything. We both did something. Not something wrong.’

  He turns the TV off. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he says. ‘We can try and think of a plan.’

  41

  I’m in bed, eating Cookies &Cream Häagen-Dazs and singing to Blink-182. It’s two in the morning and my plan is to keep eating until I go into sudden cardiac arrest and am rendered comatose. When I wake up, Macy will be free and Antarctica will be gone.

  My phone rings. It’s Aslam.

  ‘This is so fucked up,’ he says. ‘Dad’s going nuts. A journalist tried to interview me about you. Why didn’t you answer your phone?’

  ‘They wanted to interview you?’

  ‘Yeah, but I said no. So they interviewed Hannah Reid.’

  ‘Who?’ I push my spoon into the tub and dig out another curl of ice cream. I wonder what the fatal dose of ice cream is and if I would be able to achieve it.

  ‘The girl we went to her party. The one with Aaron Mathews. Where he punched you.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Wait, I’m making a cigarette.’ I hear muffled fumbling and the click of a safety lighter. He inhales. ‘She said she was your best friend. She said that you were totally heartbroken and hadn’t stopped crying since it all started.’

  ‘She’s making me sound gay.’

  ‘Really fucking gay, man. We need to do something. If you want, I can agree to the interview and tell them that you’ve gone around punching everyone in the face.’ I think, this is almost true. I don’t know if he’s being passive-aggressive. ‘Punching who?’

  ‘Just random people.’

  ‘Don’t tell them that.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine. Will you tell me what happened? I kind of don’t understand. There was just all that stuff in the papers.

  I’m holding one now.’

  ‘It’s boring.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘It’s boring. I don’t know. Last week, when I was being weird because of Alice, I started talking to a woman on the Internet.’

  I hear the crack of a newspaper being straightened. ‘And you sent her porns of yourself.’

  ‘I did not send her porns of myself.’

  ‘That’s what it says here.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell you?’

  ‘Fine. Yes.’

  ‘We started talking and I liked her a lot. She was like funny and stuff, and she made sense to me or something. She was fit too.’

  ‘Yeah, she looks okay. Solid seven.’

  ‘Then she told me she was going to London for a business trip, and I’d told her I lived there, so she wanted to meet. I used the money Nan left me to book a hotel and I got a train there.’

  ‘Yeah, for two nights of . . . what’s debauchery?’

  ‘I’m going to stop if you keep reading that.’ The word debauchery hangs in my head. I wonder if I’m debauched or if Macy is. I definitely don’t feel debauched. I feel lost and quietly panicked.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘So we stayed in a hotel for two nights, and it was good, and I felt better and I didn’t want to go. But I had to go because my parents were getting back. And Macy went home. But her husband was waiting for her at home with the police. She left without saying anything, left her children and stuff, and her husband found pictures of me, and our chats.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Yeah.’

 
‘Really fuck.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s going to happen now?’

  ‘We go to court. She could go to prison.’

  ‘For that? Why?’

  ‘As a paedophile.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘That can’t happen.’

  ‘It’s the law.’

  ‘So is “don’t smoke weed”.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You got groomed by a paedo.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  I hear computer keys being tapped. I imagine his recent search history goes; Etgar Allison, Etgar Allison raped, watch Wonder Showzen online. ‘The papers are all on her side, I think. Or the comments on the Daily Mail site were.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Guess not. What are you doing? Do you want a beer?’

  ‘I’m eating ice cream and watching films. Really this time. Also there might still be a photographer outside our house. Can we go on Friday?’

  ‘Okay. I can’t believe everyone cares so much.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘And I can’t believe you fucked a head teacher.’

  ‘She wasn’t our head teacher.’

  ‘Yeah, but still.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I hope it gets better.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Bye, mate.’

  ‘Bye.’ I push my face into the near-empty ice cream tub and lick the bottom. Amundsen nudges open the door. He waits at the foot of the bed until I ask him up and he lies next to me and we climb under the duvet. I think to myself, see you in the morning.

  42

  We eat pizza for breakfast because there still isn’t any other food in the house. I’m in Dad’s funeral suit and Dad’s in a blue work shirt. Mum’s in her dressing gown. I pull pieces of pepperoni off my pizza and sip Nesquik tea. Mum sighs, fingers her fringe and pushes her plate away.

  ‘You two should brush your teeth,’ she says.

  ‘Okay.’

  Standing side by side in the bathroom mirror, foaming at our mouths, we look smaller than I thought we would look. It doesn’t feel like there are butterflies in my stomach, it feels like there is vomit in it. I need to keep Macy out of prison. I can’t be her dick tattoo.