Rocks in the Belly

by Jon Bauer

  ‘YOU SH-ut up, Robert.’ He always remembers to be quiet when he’s nasty.

  Once I’m dressed I eat some Krispies. I know Krispies are his favourite but he pretends to Mum that he likes vegetables and fruit and prefers water to lemonade.

  He comes back in. ‘Where’s your mum?’

  He always calls her that. Except once he called her Mum and everyone got the beetroots.

  I shrug.

  ‘I’ll go see,’ he says. ‘It’s not like her not to be up yet.’

  Like he’s the expert.

  I put more sugar on my breakfast and listen to him moving through the house, then thundering down the stairs. He comes in all pale.

  ‘She won’t wake up!’ He picks up the phone and dials emergency.

  You get in big trouble for that. I know.

  ‘Maybe she’s tired, Robot.’

  ‘She could be DYING!’

  ‘Alright shouty pants,’ I say to him, but my heart’s going. He’s crying a bit.

  ‘Ambulance please. Yes.’

  I move my sugary milk away. Even looking at it makes me want to throw up. I push back my chair and it makes a big farty noise.

  ‘Pardon?’ Robert says into the phone, wiping his eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. Then he turns to me ‘Quick, they want us to check she’s breathing!’

  Being inside an ambulance should be exciting. Robert is holding Mum’s hand but she isn’t holding his. The ambulance man is taking her temperature and the tubes and oxygen things and packets of needles all wobble with the road movement. The driver plays the sirens for little bursts sometimes, probably when we go through junctions. This means Mum might not be dying otherwise the sirens would be on all the time. Or they would be off because she’s dead.

  ‘Best phone your dad,’ the ambulance man said to Robert as they were putting her on the stretcher at home, and I just watched while Robert got to be the son.

  I’m the fostered one now.

  When we get to hospital Dad is already there and his face all red and puffy around his neck but he has the best hug for me. He hugs Robert too. Then we hold hands by Mum’s bed but she’s under this plastic thing like Michael Jackson because she might have a very tricky disease that makes your brain swell.

  Dad cries. A lot. I tell him it’ll be ok and try to make him laugh.

  When Auntie Deadly turns up she makes a fuss. I’m supposed to go to her house but Robert isn’t allowed anywhere without Social Services’ permission and Dad hasn’t got through to them yet. Which means Robert might get to stay with Dad and Mum at the hospital while I have to go home with Deadly.

  Now I’m crying and Dad is kissing me all over my face and his stubble tickles but I don’t laugh. Life’s so unfair. Auntie Deadly starts taking me away and telling me to be a big boy for once and Dad gives her a serve and I can see Mum frowning under her tent thing, even with her eyes shut she’s frowning.

  In the end Dad gives Auntie D the keys and tells her to take Robert and me to our own house.

  I hate leaving Mum and Dad, and most of all I don’t want Dad to catch the illness cos then I’ll lose them both and have to live with Auntie Deadly.

  It’s against the rules for Robert to be alone with Auntie D without her being checked out but Dad just hugs me when I tell him. Maybe they’ll take Robert away.

  When we get home I go straight upstairs into my lion’s den cos I’m stuck at home with my two greatest enemies.

  Dad phones later and I pick up the one upstairs to listen, my hand over the talking bit. He says Mum does have the meninsomething and Auntie Deadly says ‘Yipee, now we’ve all got it,’ and Dad tells her to keep us in and not to say anything if the social worker rings, and we’ll need hospital appointments too. No school. Then he says ‘Watch the little one, he’s still playing up about Robert but go easy on him.’

  It’s been two days and Dad’s at the hospital all the time and Robert in his room. He won’t eat. Today we had to go back in and a doctor explained to us about these enormous tablets we have to take just in case. Plus the symptoms to watch out for like a rash and not being able to get your chin onto your chest. I practise this a lot since he told me. It’s impossible to get your chin on your chest without making a stupid face.

  Auntie Deadly says we aren’t to watch TV during the day, and last night she cooked us soup that was so homemade my spoon wouldn’t sink into it. Plus I wasn’t allowed to leave the table till I’d eaten it all. I was sat there for hours. She had to keep reheating it, and after every mouthful I was like Alfie when he gets fur balls.

  Auntie Debbie says food is mostly about nutrition but Dad says food is mostly about eating things that hug your stomach.

  Yesterday she gave us BEETROOT SANDWICHES. Even Robert admitted he didn’t like beetroot. He still ate his, meanwhile I was stuffing it down my undies and just eating the purpley stained bread. I offered to smuggle some of Robot’s beetroot but he was too much of a good boy.

  Then I just shuffled to the toilet and flushed it all away. Simple. Three Lips Macavoy can’t be poisoned.

  Today Auntie D was by the washing machine though and called me over. She looked a bit like beetroot herself and asked me if everything was ‘you know, alright downstairs?’

  Next time I’m wearing my black ones.

  13

  The music has stopped now but I’ve not stopped drinking. The bar staff are gathered at the far end, relaxing in the quiet after the rush. Their own drinks loiter about them now that the owner has gone. They’re chatting but watching the postures of the few remaining customers and their drinks, monitoring home time.

  Most importantly, The Gambia just left the building and Sweater Girl is looking down at her drink, lonely now, exposed by her waiting.

  Here she comes, wandering uncertainly over, carrying her stool with her. She puts it down.

  ‘Hello,’ she says, all upbeat, then turns away for her bag, giving her face time to drain.

  ‘This is nice,’ I say once she’s sat. I give her a smile. She does her hair, looks at me, perhaps dipping her senses into her middle, measuring what I do to her insides. I order us drinks and there’s a silence while we wait for them to arrive, as if we can’t start until they do.

  I put it on my tab, hushing her lacklustre rummaging for her purse.

  ‘How was your Gambia lecture then?’ I say and she raises her eyes heavenwards and smiles.

  Our first in-joke.

  ‘Anyone would think she went for a year, not a short break,’ she says.

  ‘So it’s true then, The Gambia does give you the shits.’

  I smile again, introducing myself. Not my real name. I hate my real name.

  ‘Patricia,’ she says. ‘Good to meet you too’ — her hand coming out for a handshake but this time I don’t need to use one of my stock excuses to avoid the shake, I can just show her my cut knuckles and the plaster on my hand.

  ‘Had a fight with the hedge this morning,’ I say. ‘It’d been left too long. It was enormous.’

  She laughs more than the comment warrants, touching my arm as she does so.

  Mostly women have cool hands. Bad circulation. Especially if they’re on the pill, which I sincerely hope she is.

  Patricia, not a bad name, although I wouldn’t shorten it for love nor money.

  ‘Is that a hint of an accent I can hear in your voice?’ she says.

  ‘Not you as well. I live in Canada. Moved there about six years ago — I hate that I’m losing my accent.’

  ‘Wow, Canada.’ But I see something sink in her. Perhaps she’s disappointed that I don’t live here.

  ‘Yeah, I like it.’ Liar. ‘Civilised. Lots of space.’

  ‘You don’t miss your family? Is it a permanent thing?’

  ‘For me,’ I say, the elevator in my centre dropping at this ritualised conversation we’re having, ‘I just feel like I learn more about myself being away from where I grew up.’

  She swallows some drink. ‘I’ve spent time overseas too
. Asia mostly.’ She looks down at her hand on the glass of white, her eyes half focused. ‘It was different for me though. I was just running. Travel meant no ties, you know? No family, no old friends. A new past if I wanted. I went with that friend who just left,’ and she wrinkles her nose at me, a sort of a smile. ‘We used to play this stupid game, making up names and jobs to tell each new person we met. What was I …’ Her hand is out counting things off. ‘I was a dolphin trainer, that was a good one; a prosthetic-toe maker. Oh and my great-great-grandfather invented the question mark.’

  We laugh together at that for a second but it soon dries up, both of us staring into our drinks.

  ‘But in the end, travel’s often just distraction, isn’t it,’ she says, breaking the void. ‘Kind of cheating. Not that I’m saying this applies to you at all. Living overseas, that’s different. But when you travel you just come back to the same problems, plus debts.’

  I go to slug some drink but it’s empty. She looks at whatever’s happening to my face and says an anyway — forces her voice, posture and face to brighten but it soon goes out again. It’s not just me she’s depressing.

  ‘I live overseas because I feel good there, Patricia. I like my life in Canada — my career in the prison service.’ I signal the bar maid. ‘I don’t necessarily need to drill beneath that, you know? But if I did, I’d probably dig up what you just said, in a nutshell.’

  I don’t like lying to her but what choice do I have. My truth isn’t the type you’d want to take home and screw.

  The bar girl arrives and I drain all flirtation out of myself — flirting with Patricia by not showing any interest in this attractive bar maid.

  ‘Another?’ I say to Patrish who’s in some sort of inner funk, lost for a moment. She comes to and nods and the girl shuffles off with her bed floating in a shrinking cloud above her head.

  The drinks arrive and I let Patricia pay, the bar maid putting the change on the bar rather than in her outstretched hand, then walking back to her sulking spot at the far end. I reckon I’ve got about ten minutes before we get chucked out and it’s all over. Home alone.

  I sit forward, my hand landing on Patricia’s knee and moving a little in the landing, gliding up the corduroy grooves. And I’m sitting here drunk, my groin thumping at the risk I’ve just taken by reaching out and touching her.

  I could resist the utter stupidity of relying on a stranger to validate me, but I choose to go with my foolish simplicity. You can’t escape your blueprint, push a lever and you get a sweet. And however simple, a sweet is still a sweet. However enslaved — no lever, no sweet. Life’s too hard to not be pushing those levers. Why feel guilty for the simplicity of our design. I’ll deal with the guilt and discomfort afterwards. Right now I feel alive, I can tell by the hammering in my chest and the lump in my lap. Patricia looking down at my cut hand sitting there on her leg, me glaring at the top of her head. The bar staff waiting too probably — their conversation naturally pausing. We’re all wondering what she’ll do.

  She’s taking her bloody time.

  ‘Prison, huh?’ she says then moves an unsteady hand for her drink, does her hair, smiling. ‘Not as good as dolphin trainer. It’s not a bad one though.’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ I say. ‘It’s not exotic spending your time in a place bad people get sent to as a punishment.’

  ‘I would’ve believed you if you’d pretended you were a model instead,’ she says, making herself laugh, her gaze darting down to my lips.

  Bingo. I’m always amazed at how different I must look to other people versus what I see when I look in the mirror. No matter how often I get this reaction I’m always surprised by it, like finding money you didn’t know you had.

  ‘Did you go to school round here?’ she says.

  ‘I did,’ I say, experiencing myself through a kind of haze — all that alcohol and now endorphins in my bloodstream.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Ah, I went to lots. Bit of a rebel.’ She’s trying to rank me based on what school I went to and I don’t like it.

  ‘Wilson’s?’

  ‘For a bit, yes. Why?’

  She shrugs. ‘What you doing back, just a visit?’

  Her fingertip runs along the back of my hand, tracing a circle around the cuts on my knuckles, then she takes a hold of my hand and turns it over, her body jolting just a little at the faded patch of damaged skin on my palm like a layer of wax that’s melted then cooled. She looks up at me, then down again, a finger tracing the outline. She decides not to ask about it, just waits a polite amount of time before delicately depositing my hand back on my own leg, smiling. I console my scar with the beer glass — swallow a large thump of amber.

  ‘I’m here because my mum’s dying.’ I like hitting her with that after she’s just rejected my hand.

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘God, sorry.’

  ‘It’s ok. It wasn’t meant to be a conversation stopper.’ I feel like me and Patsy here are rumbling along the hard shoulder of the interaction highway.

  ‘Why, what’s she …’

  ‘Cancer.’ I tap myself on the forehead. ‘Brain.’

  ‘Oh, that’s awful.’ No shit. ‘How are you coping?’ she says. And on the ‘you’ she touches my arm.

  I told you she was one of those. But it’s just her way of getting through the world, nothing deeper than that. Push a lever.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do if …’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ I tell her, touching her leg again, higher up, using my good hand this time. ‘Everyone says how d’you cope, or I wouldn’t cope. But what would you do, curl up and die? If I was my mum I’d want to curl up and die. If I was her I wouldn’t cope.’

  Her eyes moisten and mine do too, the bastards.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, looking down again and taking my hand. I don’t want her sympathy but I leave my hand in hers. Whatever works for her. Anything but get left sitting in the sadness. Not today, thank you.

  ‘What about you — what do you do?’

  ‘I told you,’ she says, ‘dol —’

  ‘Dolphin trainer. Yeah yeah. Come on.’

  But it’s now, while I’m trying to get us off the interaction hard shoulder that the bar maid comes over and says it’s time for us to be shuffling along.

  ‘Oh,’ Patricia says, straightening. She looks at me and I’m thinking of what to say but the bar maid is still standing here watching. I turn to her and say thank you — i.e. bugger off. Which she does, then shares a joke with the others and I look back and Patricia is holding a pen and rifling for a piece of paper.

  No you don’t. ‘Why don’t we go somewhere else for a drink, Patricia?’

  She looks up from the innards of her bag and for a moment we’re stuck here while she’s doing this incredibly complex equation, probably involving things to do with her body image today and when she last showered and tomorrow’s plans and my looks and her stage in her cycle, plus all the crap in her subconscious and the bits of hers that mine taps into — that unseen wavelength which runs between people, how patterns happen.

  While that equation scribbles itself across the blackboard in her head I lean quickly towards her ear and tell her that I would really like to spend the night with her, not for sex, just because I think she’s lovely. That I want to make a huge fuss of her body. My words blowing across her ear, and I can smell what it’s like to be in close to her and I like it.

  I lean back and, I don’t know, maybe she sees the need I’m trying to hide. Maybe she sees the desperate part of me that’s subtly madly pressing that lever, because she rummages for paper again and says, pausing to touch me, that she would love that too but she’s going to have to take a raincheck.

  What the FUCK is a raincheck! If you could stab a word.

  Meanwhile she’s writing her number and I’m sat here glaring at the top of her head and the bar maid has the box for credit cards left behind the bar, and she’s grinning at me.

  Sweater Girl hands her number over,
clicking the button on her pen to retract the ballpoint while I’m doing my best to smile like it’s no biggie. Like I don’t want to run out of here so fast that I’ll leave the feeling part of me behind.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Where’s the comfort in a piece of paper? You can’t hug a phone number.

  ‘Cuthbertson or Teichmann. Or Wilkinson?’ the bar maid says, reading out the names on the last three credit cards left — Patricia looking at me, waiting to hear my surname.

  While they’re swiping my credit card I sit here looking at Patricia’s knees.

  ‘Give me a call,’ she says, ‘I’d really like that,’ and she leans in for my cheek but I turn and get her lips, giving the kiss everything I’ve got.

  I pull away and she looks down to hide her beetroot face — puts her pen in her bag and I hate it all, the sweet smell of stale beer coming off the bar, the people putting their coats on to go home together. I hate the bar staff and Mum and Robert — Robert’s parents.

  ‘I might just do that, Patricia.’

  I take the paper from her hand and stumble away, then come back and sign the bill. The bar maid giving me a look.

  I take my card from her, hug Patricia for a second, long enough for her to stop me if she’s changed her mind.

  Then I’m out the door and as soon as I’m far enough away I am running but I don’t outrun anything, all that happens is the alcohol in my stomach stops me, threatening to come out. I lean over for a few breaths then jog away from the disappointment, anger lighting up inside me.

  At least there’s power in anger.

  By the time I’m a few streets away I’m incandescent with it. I go over to a shop window and look at my reflection, trying to see what Patricia saw, whether I got away with saving some face back there.

  It’s a photographer’s shop window, pictures of smug grins and overly made-up women staring out from gilt frames.

  I look at her number then screw it up and chuck it on the ground, stamping on it over and over. Pick it up again, straighten it out — wipe it down, put it in my pocket.

  I peer in at the photographer’s place. Don Vincenzo’s it says above the big shop window. He’s probably just called Mark or Gary. His pathetic little suburban studio with these posed shots of weddings and families. A failed photographer.