by Neil Rowland
Her eyes lift with a brief smile. Black, dilated, agleam with stimulation.
“Kind of.”
“Don’t mind me.”
“Where you come from?” she insists.
“Me? Where? From London,” I reply. The Doctor Marten’s on the other foot, much to my discomfort.
“So what were you doing there, then? Up in London.”
“Not a lot. Talking to a client.”
“For real?”
“Why not?”
I gaze around our musty living room without pleasure. My dressing gown is threadbare, a gift from Christmases past; my eyes red rimmed over the steaming milk. My silvery blonde hair is flying from my scalp. I look a sight.
“Which client?” she probes.
“You interested?” I object. Then considering as her gaze holds me. “Just some company, Angie. Some medical company, matter of fact.”
“So they made you travel all the way up there?”
“It isn’t so far,” I assure her.
“You haven’t been that well,” she reminds me. She returns her eyes to the page, but is listening for a reply. You can feel the emotional vibe between us.
Angela connects trips to London with the heart hospital; with Zorro leaving his mark across my chest. She’s a sensitive girl, neurotically attuned to nuance, I might say. She’s able to receive any ionospheric change triggered by casual remarks. Certainly there’s no simple remedy for my dysmorphic condition. Not even head to toes plastic surgery would transform me back. So should I try to smuggle the truth past my daughter?
“Don’t want to worry you with my problems,” I say.
“You’re joking aren’t you, Dad?” She looks up at me again, although I’m practically in darkness.
“You’re already crowded out with problems.”
“You think I’m too young and naïve to get my head around them?”
“You’re not interested in my work. Why should you be?” I add.
I try to avoid the critical truths with my cup of hot milk and brandy. I didn’t mention the brandy before, but you always add it afterwards.
“What are you saying?” Angela protests. “I’ve always been interested in your work.”
“Are you sure?” I say. “Never heard you express it.”
“You hardly ever invite me to the factory,” she says. “I can’t remember when you last asked me to fly kites. As for your hot air balloons, I’ve never had a ride in one... not in my whole bloody life.”
“Right.” I shrug my shoulders. Sometimes kids can cramp your style.
“I’ve never been up in one!”
I descend stiffly into a Rhino-hide leather armchair, which has also seen better days. If you ran a finger around this room the dust ball might turn into an avalanche down the hill. My friends offered to redecorate and to repair, but I haven’t taken up the offer. You don’t see kids with a pot of paint these days, except maybe under the subway.
Angela is cosy in the armchair; sitting within an arc of reading light, with the darkness surrounding and me in the further half shadows. It doesn’t look as if negative or evil forces can reach her there. She’s intellectually at peace. I don’t envy that quality as much as crave it - our youthful ideals. It stirs recollections of our university days, when Elizabeth and I fell in love and began the adventure of life together; although we’d known each other at primary school.
But I’d be living on my nerves in future, not on my intellect. I’d be lingering, waiting for another letter from the hospital, telling me, informing me, of god knew what. Not meeting friends at the café to share plans and enthusiasms.
Everything that I most enjoyed and valued was in danger; since my life is in danger. Maybe that process began some time ago, without me noticing. I’d reached a landmark crossroads in my life, like seminal blues-player Robert Johnson: But the paths are wearing out to vanishing point.
I study my daughter as she sits reading, pausing, breathing; so youthful, so healthy, so intoxicated with possibility. I am lulled by the contemplative atmosphere she has created, as she turns pages and repositions. I’ll never plug my psyche back into the optimism again. I’m brimming with love, despair and confusion towards her. My future has been imperilled by a technical fault; meaning that the movie of my life could stop at any point. My cares cling to me as the outside cold was trapped in my overcoat. What can all this mean to her?
“Are all the pubs and clubs trying to save on electricity tonight?” I remark.
“You’re bloody annoying, all of a sudden... aren’t you!”
“Tonight I couldn’t have the energy to re-read my own will.”
She darts her eyes up at me. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
I stare back, startled at my indiscretion. Why is it hard to be entirely honest, even if the truth is an SF horror?
“Ah, nothing, just came from the top of my head...”
“What a thing to say?” she tells me.
“Yes. Bloody ridiculous, if you ask me. Can you forgive me? It’s been a terrible day, to be straight up. Business, that is. I must be going bananas. Gaga.”
Such adolescent jocularity fails to impress, but she subsides to quiet again and jumps back into the book.
I’m disgusted at my blabbermouth. I cut myself disgusted expressions as a warning. Maybe my brain is still working. Hopefully there’s no obstruction in the artery leading to my head. So why did I face my daughter in this evasive way? They’d already been through the original trauma of my heart complaint and visit to hospital, not to mention the upheavals in their family life. Did I want to put them through anymore? They’d seen me as a total physical wreck, but not as a kind of laughing stock on a short fuse.
I don’t want to cast this bizarre shadow of their lives. People say that time is a healer, but that depends on the wounds. My best mate suggested that I open my heart to my kids, as well as to everybody. Don’t hide the truth from them, allow them to sympathise and give strength. But if I don’t have a better explanation, I may as well nail my tongue to the roof of my mouth. Better if family and friends think my heart could stop by itself, than asking them to image some Californian toggle trying to top itself, from the beach hut of my right ventricle. Even Dylan couldn’t put that into a rhyming couplet.
How can I keep these secrets, bizarre and isolating, while trying to be the good guy and a decent father? Should I be forced to share my secrets and my new view on the universe? At some moment I will need to tell them the exact truth, like a murderer bragging to his mate in the pub.
“You look a tiny bit disgusting, to be totally honest with you, Dad.”
“How do I look disgusting?” I reply. But she’s become used to my new image.
“You look like that jar of lemon curd... that we left in the fridge for six months.”
“Thanks love.
“You’re welcome.”
It’s here that my eyes focus on a bracelet. She has a new gold bracelet, with a type of yin yang whirly design. I look at this heavy thing glinting in the lamplight from her arm, trying to explain where it came from. Has she broken into her savings account?
“Where did your new bracelet come from?” I wonder.
She snatches at the metal, disconcerted; but did she think I could miss it?
“Oh, this! Do you like it?” She fondles and admires.
“So who’s buying you expensive jewellery these days?”
She holds it up, blushing, chestnut brown eyes flashing. “I bought this all by myself. Why should anybody have bought this for me?”
My suspicions are aroused like a detective finger-searching a murder scene. “That didn’t just drop out of a tree. Can you afford to buy yourself something like that?”
She extended her delicate arm to offer a closer look.
>
“Isn’t it totally lush?”
I reach out and grasp her tiny wrist to see. How could anything be more beautiful? “Is that your name engraved there?” I ask, straining my eyes.
“Did you forget my name?” she rebukes.
“Somebody bought this for you. Some guy.”
“No.” She makes a juggle with dryly-ironical laughter. “Which guy is gonna buy me something like this, eh? I wouldn’t let ‘em anyway. I bought this with my own money,” she insists. Well, it makes a contrast to her ragged jeans and crumpled shirt.
“We don’t have bottomless funds,” I warn.
She laughs at this information. “Do you think I stole it, then? Is that what you’re telling me?”
I am staring at her with a perplexed helpless expression.
Her dark eyes smoulder at me, although she evades contact. She makes repeated efforts to tuck a section of straight dark hair behind an elfin ear.
“I’m happy that you take some pride in your name, Angela,” I say.
“I’m earning money these days, Dad. I can buy myself a little bracelet can’t I? Is that more than I deserve? to treat myself?”
“Do you earn enough to buy these kind of treats?”
“It’s a high tipping place,” she assures me.
“What kind of people are tipping you there?”
“Then sometimes you get talking to guys.”
“Here we are.”
“You get to know them, and they ask you to do little jobs for them.”
“Oh really, Angie? What kind of little jobs you referring to? What kind of guys are you getting talking to?” This was ringing alarm bells even before her mother got hold of it.
“Well, you know, all kind of people come into the café. He doesn’t mind us talking to them, when we’re quiet. Do you know what I’m saying? They’ll ask you to do jobs for them. I don’t mind if they keep back a few queenies. It’s only fair.”
“So aren’t you meant to be serving tea and sponge cake?” I wonder.
“You’re well behind it, Dad. Nothing too radical.”
“I guess you need to save for the future now.”
“Of course I do, Dad, straight up.”
“That might be for university. That’s what we passionately hope for, your mother and I. We’re not putting any pressure on you. But you haven’t been drawing on that special university account, have you?” I said, horrified.
“Why should I want to do that? Even if I wanted to go to uni?”
I expel breath in relief. “We’ve all worked too hard over the years... for you to go and blow that fund.”
“Don’t sweat about it, Dad,” she advises. She makes a big demonstration of finding her place in the book.
“So who’s your big infatuation?” I speculate.
She’s exasperated. “What are you talking about now? Leave me alone, will you?”
“Aren’t you going to share his name?”
“Would I? When you talk about your own infatuation,” she argues.
“I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment.”
“Do you think I was born yesterday?” she answers. “Not even that pushy cow? You know that nasty snob who works for the music company? The one you took on holiday but came back by yourself?”
“Especially not,” I assure her.
“You don’t give yourself any peace. Not even at your age.”
“What’s that supposed to mean. At my age? I’m in charge of my own destiny. I’m the only guy around here who can deal with it,” I explain.
“Obviously you’ve had a bad day. You should go to bed. Tuck yourself up.”
“Look who’s telling me to go to bed,” I repost.
“Don’t forget to take all your tablets,” she reminds me, more gently.
“Don’t worry, I know the medicine I’m expected to take.”
“Better do as you’re told, Dad,” she warns.
I take another survey of the chiaroscuro living room. “Anyway, where’s your brother this evening? He in bed already?” I wonder.
“Luke’s around Jahinder’s place,” she informs me, as if his absence after midnight is unremarkable. This is definitely out of our routine.
“What’s he doing there at this time of night?”
“Working on another computer programme.”
“Right, so who said that was acceptable?”
“What’s the big problem?” She gives the book another shake of impatience.
“I’d just like to see Luke from time to time, that’s all.”
“Bloody hell Dad, you must have taken a knock to the head,” she tells me.
“We’ve always been a close family. We’re all fond of each other,” I insist.
She laughs dryly and deeply. “Right.”
I have to touch base, to make sure the kids are happy: to ensure they are more real than me. Possibly my sentimental mood alerts her to changed circumstances. They should be getting used to change as a permanent principle. But my loose talk has made her suspicious about my health battle.
If you check out of life early, there’s some comfort in the idea of continuity. That’s it: the idea of leaving behind people who loved me is important. The thought that however low Liz and I have become in each other’s estimation (or anyway I in hers) we’ve still given a lot back to the world. Life is divisible by life. We’ve got something to show.
Or maybe it was just getting too late.
Chapter 7
How can I influence my daughter, if she doesn’t trust me? How can I share her dreams if she has no ideas about the future? Aren’t I the type of open-minded, tolerant and progressive father that any girl would envy? Any contemporary girl, trying to find herself in this mad violent world, would be thrilled to get me as a parent. Why isn’t she able to open up about all her problems? What’s a father for?
Angela’s on some risky trip of her own. I don’t know which direction she’s heading in, but I know she has set off on the journey. At least medical drugs have known effects or side-effects. When you have treatment at the hospital for your troubles, there are results and conclusions. In relationships we have to make our own conclusions. In life other people often leave us to find our own; to join together the blanks.
Lately I speculate if I have the persuasive or - I must face this - the physical powers to bring her back. Elizabeth insists that Angela is determined to ruin her future, as hastily as a bride throwing her bouquet. Angie’s mixed up with a set of bad characters, keeping unsociable hours and habits; although they seem to think it’s very sociable; intimately flirting with future cancers and psychological problems. Although I take Liz’s criticisms of my parenting in bad part, I can’t deny that my ex-wife (and still present person) is justified in worrying. I can’t entirely dismiss her concerns as an expression of her new go-get identity, even if I’ve voiced that phrase a number of times. Liz reads our daughter’s life-style like an anonymous warning letter. You can’t say there’s nothing to it.
I like to think that Angie’s too smart to put her life through the scrap-yard shredder. She raves around the clock, but she hasn’t switched off the lights. She’s following her own logic, I argue, which will find an answer. How may I convince Liz? She says that we have to intervene as parents, to stop and correct, to change Angela’s life for the better. That’s always been her line on parenthood, saying that I am too laid-back and easy going: or I used to be. To me that’s like saying I’m too good looking; which is something I never heard Lizzie say. When she’s at the top of a rage she will accuse me of being a negligent and terrible father. Which hurts; which has some impact. No use denying it.
So we don’t enjoy how Angie spends her leisure hours. The girl is neither the champion sports woman or domestic goddess her mother thought abo
ut. We don’t approve of her boyfriends, who make Nirvana look like a boy band. She’s in no hurry to hammer together a confession box to apologise to us. Whatever my ex-wife and living breathing woman tells me, I’m not going to put my big feet or mouth where it isn’t appreciated. Even though such vows haven’t always restrained me.
Sometimes you can grow so sick with worry that it knocks you out like traffic fumes.
After the appointment in London I was too shattered to remain awake. Instead of waiting for family to come together, I dropped into that uneasy kind of sleep. I was soaked in sweat, restaging the interview with the consultant, thinking back on Wickham’s dreadful prognosis. I could hear my own heart thumping into the mattress like an argumentative talking drum; like those stocked in towers at an African shop in town.
I tried to dismiss the idea of a faulty coronary valve; a flaw in the artery. How could a cracked piece of plastic be allowed to dominate my life? my future and my fears? I could beat this. The body can fight back against such ridiculous intrusion, as to fight an invasive scouting group. There was no reason to hold the pillows down over my own face; I wasn’t about to surrender my life.
I wasn’t able to play strenuous sports like squash or tennis again. But nothing stopped me from taking up comparatively gentler activities, like sex or, to get real, other interests. Therefore I investigated what evening classes were on offer in the city. Of course there was nothing like sex; unless you mean anonymous disease clinics. At the local leisure centre, there was bowling and line dancing I noticed; assuming I would have any time away from friends, girlfriends and family. I would even try to get out some nights, take up a gentler art for the mind and body. Again this didn’t include sex, although I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Fair play, the Shin Ga Do class was definitely off limits, the Taekwondo Academy a complete impossibility: despite adverts relating the therapeutic benefits of smashing crockery or even bricks; the satisfaction of jumping reverse side kicks, and such manoeuvres. For me there’s no obvious advantage to flying through the air screaming with a foot raised. So in the end I settled for a weekly yoga class. This would be as good as spiritual sex.
