The Not So Perfect Life of Mo Lawrence

by Catherine Robertson

  Whereas I’ve always moved to the beat set by someone else, he thought. This filled him with such despondency that he sat down on the floor next to Rosie’s playmat and poked listlessly at her Tickle Me Elmo until Harry, who’d finally mastered his track, asked if they could go to the playground.

  On leaving the kitchen, Benedict had half closed the door behind him. He supposed that he should go in and tell Michelle he was taking her children for a walk, but through the gap in the door he could hear her talking, her voice still rattly with tears, and Patrick’s gentle murmurs in reply.

  They’re busy, Benedict decided, and left them to it. And I’m an even bigger wimp, he thought, with an extra stab of self-loathing.

  When he, Rosie and Harry returned an hour later, the kitchen door was wide open. Patrick was sitting back, reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. Michelle was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘She’s in the shower,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Hey, buster.’ Patrick set down his coffee cup and held out an arm to Harry, who was cautiously advancing on him. Delighted, Harry scrambled up and sat heavily on Patrick’s lap.

  ‘Oof,’ said Patrick. ‘If I had to carry you round all day, I’d never need the gym.’

  Benedict settled Rosie in her highchair and busied himself with the preparation of snacks and drinks for the children. He was trying to ignore a niggling sense of resentment at the effortless way Patrick had made himself at home, both here and at Aishe’s house. Despite Gulliver’s sullen responses today, it was clear Patrick was someone the boy admired and respected. I’m someone he likes, thought Benedict. But I’m not sure I’m someone he respects. Likewise Michelle. If she respected me, I’d be the one she spilled her guts to, not Patrick. To her, I’m a nice boy, Benedict decided, but not — as Aishe made crystal clear — a man. Patrick is a man, Benedict thought with a sinking heart, and it’s not just his physique that makes him one.

  ‘There’s coffee left in the pot,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Right.’ Benedict thought his answer sounded a bit short and amended it. ‘Thanks.’

  He poured himself a cup and, after a brief hesitation, sat down at the table opposite Patrick. Benedict lifted his cup to drink from it and, with a strong sensation of déjà vu, lowered it to find Patrick staring intently at him.

  ‘Hardy,’ said Patrick. ‘No relation to Reg Hardy?’

  Instinct warned Benedict to proceed cautiously. ‘How do you know Reg Hardy?’

  ‘He offered me one of his commercial properties,’ said Patrick. ‘Few years back now. I declined. Not sure that was entirely wise, but seems I still have all my body parts.’

  He appraised Benedict. ‘You look a bit like him. So, are you a relation?’

  There was a short pause. ‘He’s my father.’

  Patrick’s eyebrows rose. Then his expression changed from surprise to something Benedict couldn’t quite identify. It looked almost like pity, but with a hint of embarrassment. He also seemed to be searching for words.

  ‘You said … is,’ said Patrick finally.

  Benedict frowned, puzzlement making him irritated. ‘Yes. Reg Hardy’s my father. What’s your point?’

  ‘Shit …’

  Patrick exhaled the word rather than spoke it. He glanced at Harry on his lap, who was eating his way, one by one, through a pile of goldfish crackers. There wasn’t a simple way to shift him, so Patrick didn’t try.

  Patrick looked across at Benedict, and this time his expression was unmistakable.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘There’s no easy way to say this. Reg Hardy died of cancer. His funeral was last month.’

  Benedict’s only coherent thought was that it was extraordinary how one can have such a physical reaction to a piece of information. It was like he’d been plugged in to a source of extreme cold, which raced through his veins and chilled him so thoroughly that he could no longer feel his arms, his hands or anything below his waist. His chest felt constricted, crushed inwards, so that breathing was a struggle. His face felt pinched and numb and out of his control, and for one horrific moment, Benedict sensed his mouth opening out into a square, like Harry’s did just before he was about to cry. With a Herculean effort of will, he sucked in enough air to forestall the humiliating possibility of tears. But he held them off only just, as years of pent-up anger and fear and resentment roared upwards to his heart, where they collided in jangled discord with a higher, keening note of pure grief.

  Patrick said gently, ‘Son, how did you not know? It was in all the papers. All over the internet.’

  ‘I don’t buy the papers,’ Benedict managed to reply. ‘And I’ve never had a computer, not even a laptop.’ He uttered a short laugh. ‘Too much of a liability at airports.’

  ‘You must have had access at Gulliver’s?’

  Benedict shook his head. ‘Only looked up study material. And music. And — nonsense …’

  ‘And no one got in touch? None of your family?’

  Abruptly, Benedict shoved back his chair and stood. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I must—’

  ‘Yeah, go on,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ll take care of this lot.’

  His frown was concerned, kind. It was more than Benedict could bear. He left the kitchen and the house without another word.

  Michelle walked in five minutes later, towelling her hair. She saw Rosie in the highchair and Harry on Patrick’s lap.

  ‘Benedict in the boy’s room?’ she said.

  Then she saw Patrick’s face.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, sinking down onto a chair. ‘Because I really need to know that my problems are nowhere near as bad as they might be.’

  33

  ‘Aishe’s invited me to Gulliver’s concert tomorrow night.’

  Chad looked across the dinner table at his wife with cautious optimism. It was the first time in three days she’d used a tone of voice that could be described as neutral. Up till now, everything addressed to him had tended to seesaw wildly between accusatory sobs and cold threats.

  ‘Gulliver?’

  ‘Her teenage son. I use him for babysitting.’ Michelle stabbed her fork into a piece of chicken. ‘But then you’d know that if you’d been around.’

  Chad’s tiny bubble of optimism went ‘plip’. He laid his own fork on his plate.

  ‘Mitch, are we ever going to be able to talk about this?’

  ‘What’s to talk about?’ said Michelle. ‘You’ve told me how it’s going to be.’

  Chad tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Chatted to him as well on your spiritual journey?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Pity,’ said Michelle. ‘He could give you some great tips about manning up to your responsibilities.’

  ‘Look, Mitch,’ said Chad. ‘I have a right to make a request. Everyone does. And that’s all it is. A request.’

  ‘If it were a request, I’d have the right to say no,’ said Michelle. ‘But I’ve said no and look where that got me.’

  ‘But why the flat out no?’ said Chad.

  ‘Because I won’t like it.’

  ‘How do you know you won’t like it? How do you know till you try?’

  ‘I’m not a toddler you’re encouraging to eat broccoli,’ said Michelle. ‘I’m a grown woman and I know my own mind.’

  ‘And I know mine,’ said Chad quietly.

  ‘That,’ said Michelle, jabbing her fork at him for emphasis, ‘is another thing about which you are entirely wrong.’

  ‘Why are you so dead set against the idea?’ said Patrick. ‘A lot of people might jump at the chance to travel round the world for a year.’

  Patrick and Michelle were in the café, leaving Benedict at home with Harry and Rosie.

  ‘Because it’s bullshit!’ said Michelle. ‘It’s not a well-considered plan. It’s a big, fat, pointlesss cop-out that will ruin our lives.’

  ‘Aren’t you being a little dramatic?’

  Michelle glared at him. ‘How would Clare react if you sug
gested a year-long globe-trot?’

  ‘She’d say Tom’s too young. Among other things.’

  ‘Exactly!’ said Michelle. ‘She knows it’d be a freaking pain in the arse toting a toddler on tour. And I’ve got a toddler and a baby.’

  Michelle tipped a sachet of sugar into her coffee, hesitated, and then, scowling, tipped in another.

  ‘And that’s not the only way he intends to disrupt our lives,’ she said. ‘He wants to fund this fiasco by selling the house in Charlotte. It’s insane. It will set us back years financially.’

  She stirred her coffee so vigorously it slopped over the sides. ‘So we’ll be broke and homeless, and for what? The children are too young to get any benefit. I won’t enjoy it. So what the hell is the point, except to give Chad yet another way to delude himself that you don’t have to be an adult if you shut your eyes, put your hands over your ears and sing la-la-la!’

  ‘You think Chad’s running away?’ said Patrick.

  ‘Yes!’ Michelle said. ‘That’s precisely what he’s doing! Don’t ask me why — I can’t even begin to fathom what’s going on in his head! It’s like some time during this year, his mind suddenly got its first clear look at his life and its attendant responsibilities — and it curled up into the foetal position, while his feet took to the hills.’

  ‘And you don’t think it might be because he’s played it safe all his life — and now he craves a bit of adventure?’ said Patrick.

  ‘He can take up freaking bungy-jumping!’ said Michelle. ‘Or free diving! Or that weird French palaver where they leap across buildings! My point is that he does not have to involve us!’

  ‘Maybe he wants to experience it with you?’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ said Michelle. ‘You’re not helping.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever wanted to see Marrakech?’ Patrick was trying not to smile. ‘Or the caves in Azerbaijan?’

  ‘Are there caves in Azerbaijan?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Patrick. ‘I really should look that up …’

  ‘Hola!’

  Angel, Malcolm and Ron had stationed themselves at the next table. Ron, Michelle noted, was looking even more like an anxious owl. Angel and Malcolm looked their usual selves — as if they had just become privy to some highly amusing information about her. Which they probably had, Michelle thought.

  Caught between Patrick’s enquiring glance and Angel’s suggestive Groucho Marx eyebrow-jiggling one, Michelle had little choice but to introduce them.

  ‘And he is not my lover,’ she made a point of adding. ‘They don’t do that sort of thing in England.’

  ‘We get a lot of English here,’ said Angel. ‘They like the climate. Is less sweaty than in Benidorm.’

  ‘Also there are fewer Germans here,’ said Malcolm, ‘so the pool deckchairs are not so hard to come by.’

  ‘Spanish residential market’s taken a real dive lately,’ said Ron. He shook his head. ‘Thank God I stuck with US commercial. Though, I don’t know about Oakland any more. I’m thinking Emeryville’s a better bet. They’ve got Ikea. Maybe I should shift from Oakland? Whaddya think?’

  ‘Patrick’s buying a winery in Napa,’ said Michelle, with a certain amount of malice.

  ‘You in property?’ Ron’s eyes grew big behind his glasses.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m getting out,’ said Patrick, straight faced.

  ‘You’re getting out?’ Ron was leaning so far across the table that he was almost horizontal. ‘Why? Is the market bad? Which market are you in? And if you’re out, what are you getting into?’

  Patrick decided to answer the last question only. ‘Marriage guidance.’

  ‘Ignore him,’ said Michelle. ‘He’s fibbing.’

  ‘Fibbing?’ said Ron. ‘Why’s he fibbing? What the hell’s fibbing anyway?’

  ‘You must forgive our friend, Ron,’ said Angel to Patrick. ‘He lack the benefit of good British phlegm.’

  ‘What do I want with phlegm?’ said Ron. ‘I got enough trouble with hives.’

  ‘And in answer to your unspoken question,’ Malcolm said to Patrick, ‘yes, it’s always like this.’

  ‘This is about the time Malcolm tells a joke,’ said Michelle. ‘I’m not saying that’s a good thing.’

  ‘I learned a pretty good joke on the plane,’ said Patrick. ‘Scotsman told it to me.’

  ‘There’s a joke in itself,’ said Malcolm. ‘Add a rabbi and you’ll bring the house down.’

  ‘It’s not exactly polite,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Is OK,’ said Angel. ‘I cover Ron’s ears.’

  ‘You won’t. I need a good laugh,’ said Ron. ‘I talked to my share broker earlier.’

  Michelle poked Patrick in the arm. ‘Well, go on!’

  ‘All right,’ said Patrick. ‘Guy walks into a bar with an octopus. Says, “This octopus can master any musical instrument you care to give it. In fact, I’m prepared to pay fifty bucks to anyone who finds an instrument it can’t play.” A guy walks up with a guitar. Octopus plays it like Clapton. Another guy gives it a trumpet. Plays it like Dizzy Gillespie. Then a Scotsman walks up with bagpipes. The octopus picks up the instrument, turns it over and looks confused. “Och!” says the Scotsman. “You cannae play it, can ye?” “Play it?” says the octopus. “Soon as I work out how to get its pajamas off, I intend to screw it!”’

  ‘Oh God.’ Michelle drew both palms down the side of her face. ‘That’s worse than the joke about the twins. Never thought I’d see the day.’

  ‘Señor,’ said Angel, spreading wide his arms. ‘No matter how far you roam, you will always be welcome back to our comunidad — our little community.’

  Then his face fell, as Michelle suddenly burst into tears.

  Benedict had done two things immediately upon learning about his father. First, he’d gone to the library and searched on the internet for everything he could find. He couldn’t understand why Aishe had seen nothing about his father’s death when she’d done her search, and came to the conclusion that if she’d carried it out only a few days later, she would have. One of God’s better jokes, he thought.

  There was an obituary. It stated that Reginald Colin Hardy had been diagnosed with prostate cancer over a year earlier. But it seems he had told no one and had refused treatment. Even his wife had not known how ill he was until he had to be hospitalised. He had died three weeks later.

  Of course, thought Benedict. He would have been convinced he would beat it, that he would win. How could it be otherwise? To his father, the idea of defeat would have been ludicrous. His behaviour made perfect sense.

  The second thing Benedict did was to look up a current phone number for his mother. He found it, along with a current address, which he was surprised to see wasn’t the one he had last lived at. He looked it up on the satellite map and found that his mother now lived in a small bungalow in the respectable but hardly affluent suburb of Hillingdon. Benedict could not speculate as to why that might be.

  That had been on Monday. It was now Thursday, and Benedict was no nearer to being able to pick up a phone and dial his mother’s number. London was eight hours ahead, and he knew his mother did not think it was civilised to phone after seven o’clock in the evening. That meant the latest he could call was eleven in the morning. Benedict was very aware — because he had been glancing at his watch compulsively for the last two hours — that it was now five minutes to.

  Michelle was with Patrick at the café. Rosie was happy enough in her playpen. Harry was in front of Thomas the Tank Engine. Benedict had an international calling card in his pocket that was warm from being constantly fetched and then replaced.

  It was two minutes to eleven. Benedict grabbed the calling card and dialled the numbers.

  The ringtone sounded fuzzy, distorted in Benedict’s ears by the pounding of his heartbeat. There was a click and Benedict heard his mother say, ‘Hello?’

  The silence prompted her to repeat herself, this time with a wary impatience. Benedict found his voice.

 
‘Mother, it’s — it’s me.’

  This time, the silence was all on the other end.

  Benedict tightened his grip on the receiver. He was dismayed to find that the tears that had threatened to humiliate him earlier in the week were again making themselves felt. They were being prompted not only by grief, but also by a sense of hopelessness, waste, regret and, worst of all, a profound sense of failure. The gap signified by his mother’s silence seemed vast — impassable — and for the first time Benedict felt the full, acute pain of the cost of the past ten years. He had survived. He was intact bodily. But right now, that seemed nowhere near worth it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he managed to say. ‘I don’t … I can’t …’

  ‘He lost everything, you know. Chasing you.’

  Benedict thought his mother’s voice sounded cool, but not bitter. But I may be clutching at straws, he thought, desperate for even the most gossamer-thin thread of kindness.

  ‘He took his eye off the ball,’ his mother went on. ‘Let others run his business affairs. That was a mistake. Lost it all.’

  ‘There wasn’t anything on the internet about him losing his fortune,’ said Benedict.

  He was surprised to hear his mother laugh. ‘What’s built by stealth can be dismantled the same way,’ she said. ‘Especially if you’re not as alert as you should be.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Benedict said. ‘For money, I mean.’ Not that I am in any position to help, he thought.

  ‘I manage,’ his mother said. ‘I never took anything for granted, even in his heyday. Always knew there was a risk it could all come crashing down. In a way I’m glad he was ill when it did. Meant I could hide the worst from him.’ Then she said, ‘Why did you do it, Benedict? Why did you run?’

  The answer Benedict held firmly in his head, that he’d been convinced was true since he was ten years old, began to flicker a little, like an ageing neon light. But there was evidence for it, he thought, events that I did not imagine, no matter what Aishe might think. And besides, what other reason could there be?