Saturdays at Noon

by Marks, Rachel

  ‘She’s very pretty.’

  I nod, my eyes drawn to the photograph, Jemma looking up at me, her eyes brimming with love, my hand on her face. I never quite worked out why she loved me so much. I remember the day I proposed, standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon on our extensive tour of America’s west coast, terrified that she would say no. My heart was beating so fast I was sure I was about to end up as a newspaper headline: ‘Man dies during histrionic proposal’. I got down on one knee, pulled out the Tesco carrier bag I’d used to disguise the ring box and held it out to her. She laughed, ‘That’s a dramatic way to hand me my sandwiches,’ before I removed the little red box from the bag and asked her properly. When she said yes, it was relief I felt first and then euphoria, as she kissed me and everyone around us cheered and whooped in the unashamed way the Americans do best.

  I suddenly realize that Emily and I have been standing in silence and, for once, am glad to hear Alfie bounding down the stairs ready to dominate all conversation.

  He runs up to Emily and holds the cannon from his Jokerland Lego set right up to her face. ‘Look, this is just a tiny part of it. Come upstairs and see the rest.’ He looks down at Emily’s biker boots. ‘You have to take your shoes off, though.’

  ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry,’ I say, with a wave of the hand.

  ‘But you always say we have to take our shoes off.’

  ‘But Emily is a guest.’

  It dawns on me that, other than family, we haven’t had many visitors to the house since having Alfie.

  ‘It’s fine.’ Emily removes her boots. She’s wearing odd socks, one of them pink with luminous yellow stars and the other sporting a Christmas pudding with a smiley face. If someone had asked me what kind of socks she wore underneath her boots, I definitely would not have predicted those.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea? Coffee? A glass of wine?’

  ‘Coffee, thanks.’

  ‘OK, I’ll just get you one. Alfie, be gentle with our guest.’

  Alfie’s clearly not listening. He tugs at Emily’s sleeve and starts pulling her up the stairs.

  ‘Alfie.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine,’ Emily says. ‘Come on, Alfie. I’m super-excited about seeing the rest of Jokerland.’

  I’m glad of the breather. After the swathe of negativity I’ve had so far from Emily, her being here feels like a test I’m desperate to ace. I’m determined to prove her wrong, to show her I am a good dad and decent husband – even though, as my son spends most of his time hating me and my wife is currently hundreds of miles away, both are debatable.

  I take up two coffees and a hot chocolate for Alfie (piled high with marshmallows in the deluded hope that sugary treats will make up for Jemma’s absence). He and Emily are on the floor playing with Lego. She looks different; her face is relaxed and childlike as they take turns to send a figure through the Joker’s mouth, down the slide and into the pot of pretend gunge. As each figure lands, they both chuckle and send down another one until the pot is overflowing.

  ‘Empty it. Let’s do it again.’ Alfie grabs the pot and shakes the figures out on to the floor.

  I put the drinks on Alfie’s desk. When Emily notices me, her face changes entirely, as if she has quickly pulled down a mask.

  ‘I’ll put the drinks here. Clumsy-pants, make sure you don’t knock them over.’

  ‘It’s your turn, Emily.’ Alfie prods her arm and hands her a figure.

  Emily sends it down the slide, but not with the same gusto as she did before.

  ‘I’ll leave you guys to it.’

  I take my coffee to my room and sit on the bed listening to Emily and Alfie giggling. It’s nice to hear him laugh. It reminds me how happy it makes me when he’s not enraged or obsessing about something or trying to manipulate me.

  When I open my laptop, there’s an email from Jemma.

  Here safe x

  I picture her and Laura in Paris, having a champagne toast to Jemma’s freedom on the deck of the Eiffel Tower. I type a reply, delete it and then type it again.

  Come home x

  I can’t stop thinking about something my mum said, while I sat on the edge of her bed after she’d got so sick that she could no longer get up without being supported. I don’t mind what you do with your life, Jake. Just promise me you’ll be two things. Promise me you’ll be kind. And promise me you’ll be loyal. I nodded, shredded to pieces at the thought of a time when she’d no longer be there, but determined never to disappoint her. I just hope Jemma will eventually feel the same way. For better or worse, isn’t that what we promised each other?

  ‘No.’ Alfie’s voice is raised. ‘We have to put them down in the right order. It’s Spider-Girl next, not Magneto.’

  Great. This is all I need. It had been going so well. Too well. I should’ve known it was only a matter of time before Alfie resumed his typically humiliating behaviour.

  I walk across the hallway and stand at Alfie’s door. ‘It doesn’t really matter which order the figures go down in, does it?’

  Emily holds up her hands. ‘It was my mistake, sorry. I didn’t realize.’

  ‘It does matter, Daddy. They go in a line like this.’ He points to his figures carefully organized in a row, ready for their turn on the slide. ‘Emily was doing it wrong.’

  Emily sips her coffee, hiding behind her mug.

  ‘Excuse us a minute.’ I pick Alfie up. He yelps and resists, but I manage to carry him across the landing to my room and put him on the bed.

  ‘You do not speak to visitors like that, Alfie. Do you understand? It’s rude.’

  Alfie turns his face away. ‘She was doing it wrong.’

  ‘No, she was being kind and playing with you and you’re just making a fuss about the stupid order.’

  ‘You can’t say “stupid”.’

  It’s one of Jemma’s rules – you have to say silly instead. Stupid rule.

  ‘Go back in and apologize to Emily and then it’ll be time for bath and bed.’

  Alfie climbs down off the mattress and goes back to his room and, for a minute, I think he’s taken on board what I’ve said and is going to apologize. But then there’s a crash and I know he’s thrown some of his Lego across the room. Please, God, don’t let it be the Batmobile. That thing is a nightmare to build.

  I peer into his room. It’s the fucking Batmobile.

  ‘Right, it can stay like that. I’m not wasting any more of my time building Lego sets for you to smash them up when you don’t get your own way.’

  Alfie scrambles on to his bed, builds a wall across the corner with his pillows, climbs over and hides in his makeshift den.

  I turn to Emily. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been a hard day.’ Unlike all the others. They’re a walk in the park. ‘Feel free to go. I need to get him bathed in a minute, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, OK. I’ll just say bye to him.’

  I take the hint and go downstairs. It’s about ten minutes before Emily appears in the doorway to the lounge.

  ‘Thank you for the coffee. I’ll see you on Saturday.’

  I struggle to push myself up off the sofa. Since Jemma left, it feels like I’m three stone heavier and twenty years older. ‘Look, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to make you feel awkward or anything. It’s just he needs to learn he can’t get away with that sort of behaviour.’

  Emily shrugs like a teenager who’s been asked if they had a good day at school. ‘I didn’t feel awkward.’

  There’s a subtle but definite emphasis on the ‘I’. Meaning what, that I should?

  ‘Well, that’s good then. I needn’t have worried.’

  I’m not sure whether Emily picks up on the hostility in my voice or not. She’s always so po-faced when she’s around me, it’s hard to tell.

  ‘Oh, just so you know, he’s fixing the Lego. I told him I wouldn’t tell you, so act surprised when you go up.’

  Great. Now I feel like even more of an arsehole.

  ‘OK, I will. Thanks for
coming. It will have made his day.’

  ‘No problem.’ Emily looks down, her demeanour still petulant.

  ‘See you Saturday.’

  She leaves and I feel my whole body relax. When I get to Alfie’s door, I stand there and watch. He’s putting the finishing touches to the front of the Batmobile. He’s got the instruction booklet out of the box and is studying it carefully so that he gets every piece just right. It makes my chest hurt. Most six-year-olds would’ve just thrown it back together any old which way, hoping it was roughly like the original model. In fact, that’s exactly what I would’ve done. But Alfie’s got it perfect – like mother, like son.

  All of a sudden, I wish Jemma was still here. Because even though we’d be arguing over whose turn it was to do the bath and whose life is harder, at least I wouldn’t be standing here alone with my son, not knowing what the hell I’m doing.

  ‘Look, Daddy, I’ve mended it.’

  It always amazes me how quickly children forget about arguments and move on. Jemma and I would’ve thrashed something like this out for at least three days.

  ‘I can see, little man. Thank you.’ I kneel down beside Alfie, close enough so that our bodies touch. ‘I’m sorry that I shouted at you. Daddy was just cross because you shouldn’t have thrown the Lego. That was naughty, do you realize that?’

  ‘Yeah, but you hurt me and pushed me on your bed when I was playing with Emily.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I just told you not to be rude to her.’

  ‘I wasn’t. Emily didn’t mind. We were fine once I told her. I just didn’t want her to do it wrong.’

  There’s such torture in his voice that I wonder whether the root cause of all this is really Jemma leaving, but maybe I’m just projecting my own feelings on to him. Either way, I’m failing. My son’s just lost his mum and I’m screaming at him.

  ‘Look, Alfie, let’s just forget about it. I promise I’ll try not to get so cross and you promise not to break your things. Deal?’

  ‘We’ll try our best?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They say at school you can only try your best and, as long as you are trying your best, then that’s good enough.’

  I smile, remembering all the mantras we had in teaching. Assembly upon assembly on bloody values. As if you can teach that stuff with a sparkly PowerPoint and a well-chosen story.

  ‘This school malarkey is making you very clever.’

  Alfie stops, a Lego brick held in mid-air. ‘What does “malarkey” mean?’

  ‘I don’t actually know. Just being at school, that’s what I mean.’

  I watch as the answer filters through his ears, into his brain, pauses at his is-this-a-good-enough-response cortex and then, luckily, passes through.

  ‘I like Emily.’ Alfie puts the final brick on his model and carefully places it back up on his Lego display shelf.

  I don’t want to cause another argument now things are finally settled down, but I know I need to prepare Alfie for the likelihood that he won’t be seeing Emily again. ‘I’m not sure she’s going to want to come over again, little man.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m just not sure she really wants to be Daddy’s friend. Not everyone wants to be friends with everyone, do they?’

  ‘But she’s my friend. Not yours.’

  I marvel at his innocence. It’s at times like this I don’t understand why I find it so hard to get along with him. It’s like there are two boys, one who I utterly adore and the other who drives me to the very cusp of my sanity.

  ‘Please can she come over again?’

  ‘We’ll see. Now let’s get you into your pyjamas.’

  ‘Not we’ll see, say yes.’

  ‘Alfie. Pyjamas.’

  ‘Not until you say yes.’

  I’d rather sit through a One Direction concert than have Emily over again, but I don’t want to argue with him tonight.

  ‘OK, yes.’

  ‘You’re just saying yes because you want me to go to bed, aren’t you?’

  I laugh and kiss Alfie’s head. ‘No. I promise she can come over again.’

  Trust my son to want to see the one person in the world who can’t stand me.

  Alfie

  ‘Hurry up, Alfie.’

  I walk to the car. One, two, three, four, five, six. There are six stepping stones and I have to count each one and not step on the cracks or I have to go back to the start. Covering my hand with my sleeve, I tug on the handle of the car door. It keeps slipping and I can’t get it open.

  Daddy leans over and opens the door from inside and he’s got that cross face which means I’m not going to get a snack after tea today.

  ‘Just get in the car.’

  I step in, making sure I avoid standing on the ledge. Finally, I’m in. It no longer feels hard to breathe, like when I’ve got a cold and Mummy puts that smelly stuff on my pillow.

  ‘Put your seat belt on, then.’

  I want to say I can’t. That it’s really hard to put your seat belt on when your hand is covered up, but I know he’ll tell me to stop being weird and I don’t like it when he says that. It makes me feel funny deep in my tummy. A bit like when I eat too much cake at a birthday party and it hurts. So I use just two fingers and, after a few attempts, I manage to get my seat belt done up.

  I hold my hand out in front of me with the fingers spread so that they don’t touch. Some days I don’t mind touching things. I don’t even notice. But other days, my brain says if I touch things I have to say it out loud or I have to wash my hands. I can’t say it out loud because Daddy will get cross and say, ‘What are you on about, Alfie?’ and when I say, ‘I have to say it,’ he’ll say, ‘Stop being silly,’ but I’m not. When I’m silly, it’s fun. I like being silly, but I don’t like it when I have my funny hand days.

  When I get into class, I’ll tell Mrs Young that I need the toilet so I can wash my hands and she’ll say, ‘Why didn’t you go before you came to school, Alfie?’ and I’ll say that I did but I just had a big drink at breakfast. Usually, she’ll say, ‘What are we going to do with you?’ and smile and I know that means I’m allowed to go. But when lots of the other children are asking her questions or Archie is swinging his book bag around his head or throwing pencils across the room, she’ll wave her hands and tell me to ‘just sit down’ and I’ll have to hold my hand out until she lets me go and the other children will say, ‘Alfie’s trying to touch me,’ and I’ll cry because I’m not.

  When we get there, Daddy says, ‘We’re late,’ which means we’ll go straight in. We’re late most days and it makes Daddy cross. He says it’s because I won’t get ready. I don’t like getting ready. I don’t like it when Daddy tells me to do things because I want to choose what to do myself. Some days it doesn’t make me feel so cross and I do try to put my clothes on, but I end up getting muddled and put things on in the wrong order, and I always lose my socks. Daddy says I have a cotton-wool brain but I’m not sure what a cotton-wool brain is. I think he means my brain forgets everything, but I’m not sure if I forget or if I just remember something different. It doesn’t really make sense that he says I forget everything, because if I did, then I wouldn’t remember all my Lego figures or the stories we listen to in the car. I can remember every single word of those in the right order and Daddy says I must be a genius, like Superman. I like it when he says that.

  I climb out the car, swinging my legs a bit to get them over the ledge, and then kick the door closed.

  ‘Do not kick my car,’ Daddy shouts. He doesn’t understand that I have to use my feet because it’s a funny hand day.

  Daddy holds my hood and pulls me along the pavement. I like the path to school because it’s tarmac, it’s got no cracks so it makes walking much quicker, but Daddy still thinks I’m too slow. If I run, though, he tells me not to go off ahead so I’m not sure what he wants me to do.

  I arrive just in time to join the end of the line. When we get into the classroom, I’m happy because Archie is ta
ken off with Miss Smith so Mrs Young is smiling and she lets me go to the toilet straight away.

  I cover my hand with my sleeve and just about manage to turn the tap on. It’s not easy because it’s my wrong hand. It’s not the one I hold my pencil in. It’s the one that if I hold up my fingers like Mrs Young showed us it makes a capital L, which stands for ‘left’. I wash my right hand and the feeling in my tummy like I might be sick goes away. I put on some more soap and wash it again. Bit more soap, then wash it again. First the front, then the back. I dry it with a paper towel and then put both hands in my pockets where they’re safe.

  I walk back into the classroom and Mrs Young looks at me.

  ‘Take your hands out of your pockets, Alfie. There’s a good boy.’

  I don’t do it straight away and her face begins to change to a cross face and I don’t want to be sent to Mr Frampton so I do what she told me to. When I sit on the carpet, I keep my hands in my lap because I think they’ll be OK there now I’ve washed them.

  After register, Miss Smith asks me to read to her. I don’t like reading out loud because the words jump about or the pictures get in the way and Miss Smith makes me go back to the start and try again. Today she asks if I’m OK and I say yes but she asks me again, so I’m not sure if yes is the right answer or not. She says if I ever want to talk to her about Mummy, then I can, but I’m not sure why I’d want to talk to Miss Smith about Mummy or what to say about her. I know Daddy told Mrs Young that Mummy is living in French at the moment because I heard him in the playground. She had a sad face but I’m not sure why, because when I asked Daddy, he said French is a lovely place to live.

  Miss Smith has a sad face now too and puts her hand on my shoulder. I don’t really like it because it feels hot and sticky but I don’t want to get in trouble so I let her put it there. She asks if I have spoken to Mummy on the computer yet and I tell her no but I am going to tonight and she says, ‘Good.’ I don’t really think it’s good because Mummy’s voice sounds funny on the computer, like a robot, and it keeps jumping like when CDs and DVDs get scratched because I don’t put them back in their box. When Mummy’s voice jumps, I can’t understand what she’s saying and she doesn’t hear me and I have to keep saying the same things again, which is annoying. I want her to bring me back the little bottles so I can keep my magic spells in them, but Daddy says she isn’t staying in a hotel so I won’t get them this time. Luckily, when I told Emily, she said she had lots of them at home and would bring them over. I hope Emily can come over tonight. Daddy will probably say no but I’m going to send her a message myself because she’s my friend, not Daddy’s, and I want to see her so that’s that.