I know that soon I will have to come out. I’ll apologize to Alfie, help him tidy the lounge and then do his puzzle with him, avoiding any parts of the monster. I will cook the tea, salmon because it’s Jemma’s favourite. I’ll ask her how her presentation is going and be supportive when she responds. I will. Just not yet. I’m not ready yet.
* * *
I’m on the home straight. Alfie is bathed, his pyjamas are on, his story has been read. There’s a feeling in my chest and it’s best described as elation.
‘Can you put my lava lamp on please, Daddy?’
I switch it on.
‘And my pebble light.’
‘I know, buddy.’
‘Don’t forget to turn them off when I’ve fallen asleep.’
Alfie never stops and he notices every infraction. Just being with him exhausts me. What it must be like living in his head twenty-four hours a day, I dread to think.
‘I won’t.’
‘And don’t move my Lego figures off the windowsill.’
‘I’m not that crazy, Alfie.’
As soon as I say it, I wish I hadn’t, because I know it’ll spark another long tirade of questions. Alfie doesn’t do well with turns of phrase.
‘What?’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘What do you mean you’re not crazy?’
‘Don’t worry, little man. I was being silly. I won’t touch your Lego figures, I promise.’
‘Perhaps I should move them. I think I’ll put them in my box.’
Alfie starts to get up.
‘It’s fine.’ I sit beside him. ‘No one will touch them.’
‘But …’
‘Alfie, you’re tired. Leave them.’ I rest my hand on his tummy.
Alfie lies quietly for a minute, but his eyes are darting back and forth so I know there are more questions to come. I’m not over the finish line just yet.
‘Daddy, “bloody” is a naughty word, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. I just got cross.’
‘My teacher told me.’
A wave of panic rushes over me. ‘What do you mean, your teacher told you?’
Alfie’s cheeks flush. ‘I said it to another boy.’
‘What?’ I don’t mean to shout it but, despite my earlier lapse, we are not that family.
‘I thought it was something you said when you wanted someone to do something. To show them you meant it. I told him it was time to tidy up and that he needed to put the balls away in the shed. He didn’t listen, even though I told him lots of times, so I said, “Put the bloody balls away,” and he ran off saying, “I’m telling.”’
I want to put my little boy in a cocoon and never let him break out.
‘So what did the teacher say to you?’
‘She said, “Did you say the b-word?” so I said, “What b-word? Bloody or balls?” and she got really cross and told me to stop being so cheeky and that it was not OK to use that language.’
‘Oh, Alfie.’ I run my hand through my son’s hair. I can just picture him, all big brown eyes and serious expression, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, completely unaware of what he was doing wrong. ‘Why didn’t they talk to me about this?’
‘It was the day Mummy got me, so they talked to her.’
I nod slowly, careful not to show Alfie the volcano of irritation bubbling inside me.
‘Well, you know now not to use that word, OK? And Daddy will try his very best not to use it too.’
‘I wasn’t being naughty.’
‘I know you weren’t.’ I kiss him on the forehead. ‘Now get some sleep.’
‘I’m just going to put my Lego figures in my box.’
I know it will take longer to argue than to just let him do it. ‘OK. Quick.’
‘I will be, Daddy. By the time you count to ten, I’ll be back in bed.’
‘Night-night, little man. Love you.’
‘Love you too.’
I adopt my nightly position, sitting at the end of his bed with my laptop on my knee, the voice of the health visitor tapping away on the inside of my skull. They need to learn to settle themselves. Let them cry it out. Except Alfie doesn’t cry it out. He didn’t when we tried it at four months, when he was waking every hour and a half and Jemma had begun to look like she belonged in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, or at a year, when it really was time for him to be sleeping on his own, or at age three, when he moved into a ‘big boy’ bed. If you left him to cry it out, he would wail until we were drawing a pension. So, eventually, we gave up and one of us, usually me, sits with him each night until he falls asleep, the resentment slowly eating into my bones.
‘Daddy …’
‘Go to sleep.’
‘But, Daddy, it’s important.’
‘No, it’s not. Go to sleep.’
‘In the morning, can I watch Spider-Man before school?’
‘Only if you go to sleep.’
‘I’m thirsty.’
Having root canal work would be more pleasurable than this. I get up and pass him a drink.
‘Now sleep.’
‘I don’t know how.’
‘Just close your eyes. Think about something nice.’
‘But that keeps me awake.’
‘So don’t think of anything at all.’
‘My eyes won’t close.’
I reach over and gently push his eyelids closed. ‘There. Now if you say another word, I’m going.’
‘But, Daddy …’
I get up to leave the room.
‘OK, I’ll try my best to go to sleep.’
It doesn’t matter how much we’ve tried to exhaust him during the day, getting Alfie to sleep is always a complete nightmare. We’ve tried everything. When he was a baby, we went through what I now call the ‘white noise’ period of our lives, existing to a soundtrack of an untuned radio. After that, we tried child mediation CDs, but Alfie got so swept up in the ‘relaxing’ adventures it woke him up even more. Audiobooks failed for the same reason. Whale song just prompted a load of questions – what are the whales singing and where did they learn the songs from anyway, because CD players don’t work under the water? We even bought a book that had hundreds of five-star Amazon reviews saying it was a miracle cure for insomniac children, but I read it night after night (and it was long and tedious) and, every time, I’d keep glancing over at Alfie excitedly to see if it had worked and, every time, we’d reach the last page with him bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
I sit back down and open up Facebook on my laptop. It tells me that my best friend from university has just posted thirty-three photographs of his latest trip to Venezuela. I click on the down arrow at the top of his post and choose ‘unfollow Martin’, feeling a deep sense of satisfaction as the arty shots of him drinking Polar with the locals disappear into the digital abyss.
After several more attempts to initiate conversation (what if a monster climbs up the wall and through the window? How is it fair that teachers get cake at playtime and I only get fruit? Is it true that if you hold your breath and touch a stinging nettle it doesn’t hurt?), Alfie finally falls asleep and I go downstairs to the lounge. Jemma is sitting with her laptop on her knees, occasionally glancing up to survey the television. Her shoulder-length blonde hair is pushed off her face with a hairband and she has no make-up on. When you draw a face in art class and are given the correct proportions to follow, that’s Jemma’s face. Completely symmetrical. Everything in the right place. Although these days it’s usually shrouded in whatever negative emotion she is feeling towards me, her face is still unequivocally beautiful.
I lie down on the other sofa. Jemma doesn’t look up. I don’t expect her to. Most of our evenings are spent in silence like this, with only the murmurings of the television in the background. There was a time when our house was filled with noise. Not the kind of discordant noise the days are filled with now. But the noise of laughter, glasses being chinked, animated conversation. At first, I found the whole dinner
-party thing a bit pretentious. I was more of a ‘beer in a cosy pub after a surf’ kind of guy. But over time I got used to it. I even started to enjoy it. I still had to tune out sometimes, when some of the blokes Jemma worked with started spouting self-important drivel about their latest super deal or which fancy car they were going to add to their collection. But in many ways I enjoyed being part of the ‘in’ crowd. I never had been at school. I didn’t play football or rugby. I preferred to sit in the corner and read rather than working out in the school gym. I was a latecomer when it came to girls – always ‘the friend’ rather than the hot bloke whose name they doodled on their exercise books despite the fact he treated them like crap. So when Jemma came up to me in the university bar, I thought maybe it was a wind-up. But it turned out, for some reason, that I was exactly what she was looking for.
But then Alfie came and the dinner parties were whittled down, and all our conversations became about how to ‘mend’ Alfie. And then, when we realized those conversations were fruitless and that anything we did have to say to each other was neither entirely pleasant nor productive, we just stopped saying very much at all.
But I can’t let this one lie. ‘Why didn’t you tell me Alfie had sworn at school?’
Jemma stares intently at something on her screen. ‘Oh, it was nothing.’
‘I’d rather decide myself which of my son’s actions are important and which aren’t, thank you very much.’
She looks up at me, contempt filling her eyes. ‘Give it a rest, Jake. You don’t tell me every single time the teacher wants to talk to you about something.’
Because you don’t care.
‘I tell you the important stuff, and him getting into trouble for swearing is pretty bloody important.’
Jemma raises her eyebrows. ‘I wonder where he gets it from.’
‘Oh, fuck you.’
She smirks and I want to put my fist through the wall.
‘You want to know why I didn’t tell you? Because I didn’t want a repeat of what happened last time, especially not with a teacher.’
I don’t want to bite. I really don’t want to. But it’s like she actively seeks to provoke me, so that she can sit on her high horse and say, ‘See, told you you’re too angry.’
‘How dare you? I stuck up for my son. Our son. You do remember he’s our son, don’t you?’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Jake. Just because you’re the stay-at-home dad doesn’t mean I love him any less than you or that he is any less mine.’
I take a deep breath. She doesn’t get it. It’s not about her decision to work. I support that. It’s that she’s not ‘present’ even when she’s with us.
‘Look, can you just tell me next time something happens at school? It’s important that I know.’
‘Fine.’ Jemma resumes her typing and I know that’s the signal that the conversation is over.
There is so much more to say, but I haven’t got the energy. On my way to our bedroom, I peer into Alfie’s room. He has tossed the cover off and is lying like a starfish in the middle of the bed. His pyjama top has risen up and his little outie belly button is poking out. He looks so young. So innocent. It’s amazing how insanely in love with your child you feel when they’re asleep. I stroke his hair – golden and straight, just like his mummy’s – then gently kiss his forehead, careful not to wake him up.
Emily
Every day at work I find myself staring at the clock on the end wall of the café. It has this aggravatingly loud tick that repeatedly shouts ‘THE SECONDS OF YOUR LIFE ARE TICKING BY, THE SECONDS OF YOUR LIFE ARE TICKING BY.’ Obviously it doesn’t actually shout that. I’m not sure there’s a place in the market for a verbally abusive cuckoo clock, but that’s what I hear as it tick-tocks through my day.
The café is quiet today, which is the last thing I need when my period’s gone AWOL and I am definitely not in a position to be celebrating that news with the purchase of a cute little pair of booties from Baby Gap. To distract myself, I take the latest batch of brownies out and retrieve my trusty ruler from my bag. I get a bemused look from one of the smattering of customers but there’s nothing worse than the person you’re with getting a bigger brownie than you.
Sitting in the corner of the room, there’s a teenage lad, his face covered in acne. He has long hair, dyed black, greasy, and he wears it swept across his face like a shield. He alternates between taking a bite of his panini and tapping away on his phone. A few tables across from him, there’s a group of jocks. Every now and again, they look up at him and laugh and he tries his best to pretend he doesn’t notice them, but it’s obvious he does.
Two of the jocks begin whispering to each other and then one of them, his idiot status highlighted by his backward-facing cap, screws up the wrapper from his sandwich and launches it at the poor long-haired boy, hitting him right in the face. It leaks remnants of salad all over his black Slipknot top. The other lads start creasing themselves and slapping the big shot on the back in congratulation.
I put down my ruler and go to collect the empties on the tables next to them. There’s a half-drunk mug of hot chocolate so I pick it up and – I can’t resist – as I walk past the lad in the cap, I tilt it towards him and the shit-coloured liquid falls on to the crotch of his jeans with a satisfying splash.
‘Ah, fuck’s sake.’ He slides his chair back and starts scrubbing his jeans with a napkin. ‘Watch where you’re going, will you?’
I give him an overly apologetic look and speak in my sweetest beauty pageant voice. ‘Sorry. It was an accident.’
I’m not a confrontational person. I just can’t bear injustice. There are too many people in this world who feel they can waltz around treating others like dirt and no one ever calls them out on it. The long-haired boy looks over at me, a quiet gratitude spreading across his chapped lips, and I give him a conspiratorial nod of the head, then return to the counter.
I bob down to check how much milk we have left in the fridge and when I pop back up there’s someone waiting to be served. My chest suddenly feels tight, like an elephant’s just trampled on top of me. It’s Alex. Trust it to be today that I finally bump into him.
He’s looking up at the menu on the wall and hasn’t noticed me yet. I wish he looked like crap, but he’s effortlessly cool in black jeans and a lumberjack shirt, his hair glistening and bouncy like he’s just walked out of a bloody Head & Shoulders advert. Why oh why did I shave my head?
As his eyes meet mine, his head jolts back in surprise. ‘Shit, I’m sorry. I thought you still worked in the pub.’
‘No, it didn’t work out.’
‘Oh, right. Sorry.’
I wipe the counter even though it’s already clean. ‘Nice to know you’re avoiding me, though.’
Alex shakes his head. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I just didn’t think you’d want to see me.’
I don’t. And I do. And it’s a horrible confliction.
‘So, how are you?’ he continues, glossing over my lack of response. ‘Things going OK?’
Yep, couldn’t be better. Other than the fact I’m possibly carrying your illegitimate and unwanted baby, everything is fine and dandy.
‘I’m good. So, do you want a coffee?’
Alex looks at me like coffee is a newfangled product he’s never heard of. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re stood at the counter of a café, Alex. I figure you came here for coffee?’
‘Oh, right. Yeah. A cappuccino, thanks, to take away.’
While I’m making his drink, he says something, but the machine’s so loud I can’t make it out.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I’m sorry how everything turned out.’
How it turned out? Like it happened to us, two automated beings with no say in our actions. I should’ve known better from the start. I did know better, but I’m ashamed to say it didn’t stop me. I was taking a night course at the local college. Creative photography. He was the tutor. Charming, talented, marri
ed. I’d love to say he’d lied about the last bit, but he didn’t. I knew that after shagging me in the darkroom he went home to his wife and nine-year-old daughter. It’s a poor attempt at absolution, but I was drinking a lot – a somewhat inaccurate use of the past tense considering my Chardonnay-and-Mars-Bar breakfast. It just happened. And then, like rolling down a hill, you suddenly gather momentum and can’t stop. He fed me the usual rubbish – he wasn’t in love with his wife any more, he’d fallen head over heels for me, he just needed time. Stupidly, I believed him. He made me feel special, beautiful, like I was the only girl in the world worth losing everything for.
It went on for a few months. Until one night, unbelievably after we’d had sex, we were putting our clothes back on and I could see it, even in the dark, written all over his face.
‘Look, Em, I really …’
I grabbed my bag and headed straight out the door. Because I knew what he was going to say and I didn’t want to hear it. It’s always the same. No one ever sticks around for long. That was the last time we had spoken.
I hand over his coffee, wishing it was hot enough to scald him. ‘It was for the best.’
The relief is palpable in the way his features relax. Behind him, a group of teenage girls move towards the counter, giggling and chatting about some boy they’ve just bumped into. I want to slap them and tell them to get a grip.
‘Well, I suppose I better let you get back to work.’
I nod and he gives me this look. I can’t quite place the emotion on his face, but I’m pretty sure it’s sympathy. He goes to walk away but then turns back.
‘I like the hair, by the way. Very Sinead O’Connor.’ He smiles, the exact same cheeky smile that made me fall for the cheating bastard in the first place.
Clearly needing a slap around the face myself, I force myself not to smile back. ‘You’re showing your age there.’
He laughs and I can tell he thinks he’s got off scot-free, but then I guess he has.
* * *
Back at my flat, I put my work clothes away in the wardrobe, grab my joggers and hoody and then locate the packet in the bottom of my bag. I read the instructions carefully. It says I can either piss in a pot or wee directly on to the stick, being careful not to go above the blue line. I’m not sure how you wee with that much precision without a penis so I go for the first option, still managing to get some on my fingers as I aim for the glass.
Saturdays at Noon Page 3
