On Love and Other Lies
Matthew Morgan
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by Matt Morgan
All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, sometimes happens in art.
Table of Contents
The Father, the Mother, the Son
He told me he’d seen this film once: a kid realises he’s gay and he’s in love with his teacher. It was set in one of those states in America where there are more churches than McDonald’s restaurants. Did he remember what the film was called? No, he said. He just remembered the film.
To set the scene, my first sentence was going to be: I sit at my desk, writing on my laptop. It’s not that anymore. That’s still where I am, but it seemed too... I don’t know, fake.
When he watched that film, he understood something. He got hard when the student kissed the teacher, and later he thought about the film, and what he’d done alone after, and realised that he was gay.
There’s something that just stops me from writing. I can’t stop writing in my head first, and then it all sounds like literature. Like how I think good writing is meant to sound. I only want to be honest. I think of Tristram Shandy, his failed attempt at recreating life through words. I only got a few chapters through it, back in college. By the time I stopped reading, he hadn’t gotten any further than his parents conceiving him. These days that would be all about his parents fucking, and it would be graphic, because nobody’s easily shocked anymore.
I told him I found out when I went to college. I’d had girlfriends, I was still a virgin, I ended up drunk and in somebody’s bed at a party and word got out pretty quickly that I was fucking Jason Dare. I went from virgin to slut in a night. I thought I was in love. He thought I was naive. Everyone else thought: Liar. Cock-tease. Fag.
The words don’t come today. Today, I just keep pressing backspace, like I can undo what’s blocked me. If only I could write life, instead of the other way around. Maybe that’s my problem. I’m trying to write the world as I wish it were. That’s how you wind up writing airport fiction. Maybe I’m not good enough for literary fiction. Maybe if I read more. Maybe if I got out more. If I had some kind of life outside of here, and him, I’d know about the world to write about it honestly.
He told his parents. His father cried. His mother didn’t say anything, until his father grabbed him and threw him out of their house, but even then, he told me, she sounded like she was pleading, ‘Be careful!’ out of concern for his father. Like the gay might rub off on him. My parents live out of the city. I only see them over holidays. I used to keep the peace by keeping quiet. If they didn’t know, we couldn’t fight.
He asks if I want coffee. He doesn’t move, I can see his leg, if I turn a bit, hanging out of the bed. He is protected by sheets. The question comes muffled through them, face concealed. I think he is trying to initiate conversation. He was the one who stopped it in the first place. I tell him no. I’m writing.
We drove up last night to them. They weren’t expecting us. Obviously they weren’t expecting him. He was floating between notions of romance, the expression of love, and the thrill of antipathy, expectations of drama playing out in his mind. He kissed my neck. More than usual. The drive took forever and no time at all.
Still no words written. I feel him behind me, his head out from his nest of sheets. I know he is watching me, just like he knows I won’t look back. It’s like dancing.
A look crossed Mum’s face as they came outside to greet us- I couldn’t interpret it. They heard us pull into the drive. Dad hung back, watching, while I hugged Mum. I said I’d brought my friend and we needed to talk with them. We approached the house and Dad, full of a past about to be rewritten, still said nothing. I saw myself through my father’s eyes. I saw my whole life until now seen differently by my father. He would think he should have seen signs. He should have done better, done something.
Backspace. I press it again, but there’s nothing to delete. I still can’t write. Maybe I should have coffee. Breakfast. Maybe I should talk to him. He’s getting out of bed. It feels inappropriate to catch sight of him naked. He pulls on yesterday’s boxers, he only has one sock on. Neither of us took much time getting into bed this morning.
Mum was chatting away, he smiled and talked back, they were instant friends. Dad watched me come toward the house. I passed him and felt a pressure on my back, I flinched, barely noticeable. Dad took his hand off of my shoulder. An awkward glance between two men. He gave me a smile as fleeting as my response, an almost nod.
He slides past me on his way to the kitchen. I give up the pretence of writing and wait for his touch. A cold hip pushes at the back of my head for a moment. Then he is out of the room. I think of my father.
Mum cried and smiled. The combination made me want to laugh. Like she was pulling faces at a child. Dad got up and came over to me and sat on the arm of the sofa. He put his arm over my shoulders and said okay. That was it. Okay. Acceptance. Mum said they’d guessed as much. They were happy I was finally myself. Nobody’s easily shocked anymore.
Maybe I should write all of this. Maybe I should write the bad parts of my love. That’s the truth. Right now, my love isn’t happy, or serendipitous, or worth hearing about really. His love is cold, withheld, in another room. I should call him in here. The words don’t come. I wonder if this happened in his film, the one with the teacher and student. Probably not. Maybe he’ll come to me, I won’t have to go to him. Maybe I should just keep trying to write. Maybe some people handle the truth better than others.
I pick up the phone and listen to the dial-tone, imagining it has an opinion- hang up, you’re wrong- before ignoring it and dialling. I hear three rings and then the click of acknowledgement.
‘Hello?’ he says.
‘Chris, it’s me. Do you have the paper?’
A heavy pause. ‘Which one, Nic?’
‘Local. Look at page three.’
‘Yeah, alright...’ I allow him time to follow my demand. I hear pages sliding over others, a sigh. ‘What am I looking for?’
‘You tell me. Does anyone look like me on that page?’
‘I don’t know... maybe this guy, David Homes?’
‘Thank you! Exactly.’
‘What’s this about?’
I say, ‘Nothing, thanks for your help,’ but he may have missed it because I am already hanging up.
I have decided this is going to be a project for me, so I move bits of notes and pens from my desk and lay the newspaper on it, open at page three. My laptop whirrs gently as it begins work, and I place it next to the article on my desk. Waiting for the computer to fire up, I absently sip what’s left of my breakfast coffee while reading the page again. The coffee is cold, but I don’t mind.
Adrenaline shivers through me with the caffeine fix. Finally the laptop catches up and I am able to open a blank document and create two lists. The first is headed David Homes, the second is Nicolas Clarke. No, that doesn’t feel right- I change the second heading to Me. I begin to list his attributes as I find them in the article.
I read the caption below his photo first, because it catches my eye: David Homes, up and coming. The first thing the paper tells me about him is that he is forty-four. I type his age into the column beneath his name, then move the cursor to my own column and type the same. We are the same age.
...journalist who started out in this paper... He used to write for the same paper that now publishes my weekly column. This goes into the list.
...’I keep in touch,’ Homes says of his ex-wife, Valerie. I too am divorced. We don’t keep in touch, we have no reason to, and I don’t think Kathryn would like to hear from me, but that’s not the point. We’re both divorced, even if he does claim to still speak with his ex-wife.
Homes has suffered with eczema for years. It’s not eczema, but I have adult acne. ‘Bacne’ Kathryn used to call it, in a voice she described as affectionate, but sounded like scorn. Dozens of the offensive sores, red spots up and down my spine, over my shoulders. I understand David’s affliction. It goes into the list as skin condition.
I pull out four more similarities and type them into the list, then move the paper to the floor, spread open on the right page. I start the internet. A search for David Homes brings up results for a house that has some architectural significance or something, a MySpace profile for a different David Homes, a literary journal, and several results which, as far as I can tell, have no relevance. I type journalist after his name and search again.
This time I score a direct hit: he has a blog. On his site I find several more photos of the man in question. He looks somewhat younger than his age, but he still looks like me, I’m sure of it. I skim his blog entries, every so often taking in a bit of information. He has won three- no, four- awards for his journalism. He recently went to New York for some business trip or something. I haven’t been to New York but- I check the dates- yes, I was on a business trip at the same time he was in New York for his. I was interviewing a couple in the next town for my column. David has a book being published next month- the reason he had an article about him in the paper. I haven’t actually finished anything, but I have always wanted to write a book. Several chapters in the drawer of my desk prove that.
My coffee is now far too cold and bitter to drink. My thoughts need gathering. I take my mug and its dregs of dark liquid to the kitchen and refill the kettle. What could these similarities mean? What is their significance?
Doppelganger.
The word erupts suddenly into my mind and I drop my mug in the sink, barely aware of the crash of food-stained dishes it creates, and rush back to my laptop. Another internet search, this time for doppelganger, finds exactly what I’m looking for. I click on a site and the information is laid out before me. In folklore, a doppelganger is a physical double of a living person. Not a twin, not in existence by any ordinary, natural means, but a tangible manifestation of- the next word lingers, frozen in my vision- evil.
I continue reading. Doppelgangers are considered harbingers of bad luck. They can be portents of ill health or danger. Wait, that’s only when someone else sees your doppelganger. What does it mean if you see your own? There it is. An omen of death. Fantastic.
I shake my head, sighing. David Homes would not approve. Doppelgangers, bad omens, these are the contents of ‘lowbrow’ fiction, not the literary fares written by his hand. The evil-twin plot is for us common folk. The problem is, Mr Homes, that there are ‘common folk’. If there is a demand for writing he may not consider worthy or intelligent enough, why deprive those asking for it? I pick up a pen from the edge of the desk just to toss it at his smug photo grinning from the screen.
The alarm clock in the bedroom announces eight o’clock- I was up inexplicably early today- and I accept that it’s time to work. I sneer at his photo one last time as I close the window with his blog in and then open the document I’ve been working on. In front of me is a title. I have been struggling to add an article to it. The words are there, in my head, all the time actually. When I shower, take a walk, drive to town, do the ‘real work’ for the column, I find myself continually drifting into the mix of potential phrases, possible angles, fresh ideas. Then I sit to write it, as I do now, and all I can think is, You haven’t paid the electricity yet. Or, How many days worth of groceries is this going to buy? That’s right, probably none. I struggle for a while- against the pull of bills, of being ‘sensible’, against my anger at the situation- and I close the writing I haven’t done to do the ‘real work’.
It happens again this morning. I sigh wearily and give up without a struggle. I’ll do it later this afternoon. Or tomorrow. I open the template for my column and look at the notes I’ve typed up from the interview with the couple in the next town. They’re being shunned by their neighbors for having sued the mayor for firing the husband when he revealed his status as an atheist. The overtly religious mayor and his town’s populace were unhappy with the couple. I feel the town needs to get out of its ass and leave them to their beliefs. I’ll have the first draft done in a few hours, it’s just a matter of writing up some quotes from the couple, taking a few sardonic shots at the mayor, maybe call him a fundamentalist, no one likes that these days, and that will be the piece. I’m losing faith in what I do.
Another sigh, I click the cursor at the first line, below the heading of the column- Everything Wrong With This Week- and begin writing.
~
David Homes had also risen early that morning, although it was expected; he felt anything after seven o’clock was a lie-in. He put on his housecoat and went into the kitchen, widening his eyes and twisting his head to rid his neck of kinks. He drew his hands down over both cheeks, grazing the stubble there, and then reached to the kettle and switched it on. The process of waking would not be complete until that first mouthful of Columbian blend.
When the coffee had been brewed at last he took his mug of it through to his office. It was a small box-room on the opposite end of the hall from the living room. He closed the door as always, not for himself but for Vanessa, who woke just hearing the tapping at the keyboard.
While waiting for his laptop to start up, he found the local paper that had been placed on the shelf yesterday. He’d not had a chance to look over it, but was eager now to take a few minutes to read his favorite section. He went as quickly as he could past page three, feeling a hint of the same embarrassment glimpsing his photo as he’d felt when he learned they were going to run an article on ‘his sudden rise to the top’. He held two deep-seated contentions with their phrase: first, the top of what? While there were undoubtedly trash pieces written by tabloids to make news out of nothing, those aside he felt uncomfortable with any perceived hierarchy of literature. Who was deciding it? The white, male, middle-class perhaps. Second, there was nothing sudden about his career, his recent ability to rely solely on the income of freelance work, his completion of his novel. He had been working at it for the better part of two decades.
David Homes left these thoughts aside as he took another sip of coffee, still searching for the segment he was after. He found it. It was a column he had first written for, years ago now, called Everything Wrong With This Week. When David Homes had been its writer, he had used it merely to rant about things that had pissed him off, traffic tickets, new films, over-pricing at the supermarket. The alleged humor was in how angry he could sound. This new guy, this Nicolas Clarke, was hilarious. More importantly, he had taken the column in a new direction. He still had the sarcastic tone, the biting quips, but he wrote about things that actually mattered. Three weeks ago he had written about the ‘piss-poor facilities for recycling’ in the town, and the following week the local recycling system was improved.
David Homes read this week’s column and drank his coffee. He laughed at several lines and thought about the author’s point. Then he closed the paper, folded it away, and turned to his computer, ready to work. He began typing.
~
I am stumbling into inebriation with the fury of a life-long alcoholic. I didn’t mean to get so drunk, but here I am, sat at this bar with this drink and swaying on my stool. I think this will be my last. For tonight. Then home. I will go to my home, alone, drunk. Go to bed. Wake up, rinse, repeat.
I haven’t thought about that Homes guy since this morning. I didn’t finish my work either. I should be doing it now. To hell with it, alcohol has made me beautifully indifferent. If only I can continue not to care when I wake up. If I don’t care then none of it matters, nothing matters. That would be easier.
David Homes. God, what a smug jerk. I’m David Homes. I’m successful. Everybody loves me. I keep in touch with my ex-wife. I’d keep in touch with mine too, if I were as close to celebrity as he is. Kathryn can’t have been as mad as she said she was. She can’t have meant those things she told me as I left her. Did I leave her? No, alright, more like she left me.
I’d make it right, if I could. I would say- I don’t know- sorry. I would apologise with all the sincerity I never really showed her. Forget David Homes. Look at me now, Kathryn. I’ve changed. I’m ready to admit I was wrong, sort of. I’m coming to make things right.
This is a good idea. I back my car away from the bar. Turn on the main road. Laugh as I slow for the police car- he passes, fooled that I’m not drunk. This road takes me to town, the dodgy side, then I can cut across to her place. One stop to make first. This is a good idea.
Some money is taken from my hand. He puts it away and hands me my treat. The same plastic baggie as last time, the same pinkish salt inside. I ask him to help me. He laughs. The baggie is opened, the powder spread, lines of lust and nihilism cut with a credit card. There’s not a lot of it there; I don’t need much. I kneel in front of it. Bend, breathe out, snort.
This is definitely a good idea.
I’ve never driven this fast.
She’ll see that I mean it.
Forget David Homes.
Look at me.
~
David Homes woke from a light nap that he had allowed to draw him from his work. As his eyes adjusted to the glare of the computer screen in the now darkened room, he wondered what had woken him.
There was something happening outside. He listened to the repeated banging while his consciousness caught up with him: that banging was not ordinary. It quickly connected within his mind to danger. He called out for Vanessa. She came into his office, prepared with her report before he’d asked.
‘It’s one of the neighbours. A guy is trying to get through their front door.’
‘Where are the police?’
‘I’ve called them. They should be here soon, but David, I think he might get in.’
‘Alright…’
David went to the front door. He found his shoes, slipped them on, then told Vanessa he would be back in a moment. He closed the door behind himself.
There was a man as Vanessa had said. He seemed drunk. He threw his fists at the battered door with no expression of pain or tiring. He yelled to someone inside, who yelled back, but David could not make out either voice enough to make sense of the argument. He approached and considered the empty lawn between him and the attacker. He saw nothing he could defend himself with.
The door opened. It seemed to take the man by surprise. He staggered back a step. Then as he lurched forward to enter the house, a larger man stepped outside and punched the first with the confidence of someone who had thrown a punch before. As the neighbour stood over the collapsed man, waiting for retaliation, two police cars howled down the street.
David looked back to his own home, to Vanessa watching from the downstairs window. By the time he turned back to the scene on his neighbour’s doorstep, the police were on top of the attacker.
‘You- David Homes!’
The handcuffed man called out to David as he struggled with the two officers. He looked amused and mortified, a contrary mix of emotions that resulted in a look of insanity.
‘I don’t believe this,’ he called out. ‘This is all you, isn’t it? You did this. A harbinger of… of this! You’re my-’
He was bundled into a police car and David Homes never heard his final word. It sounded like ‘double hanger’. David Homes took a moment in the cold air and patient silence that hung over the now empty scene. He had no idea what had just gone on. He imagined he would find out soon enough. For now, he just wanted to go back inside and see Vanessa. As he opened the door to his home and kicked off his shoes inside, she came to him.
‘What was he doing there?’
‘I don’t know… He seemed to know me though.’
‘He did? Did you recognise him?’
David brought the man’s face to the forefront of his memory. He gave it a moment’s thought and then let it go again. He was tired, he still had work to do, and while his heart went out to the man, the man’s problems were his own.
‘No,’ David Homes said. ‘He didn’t look familiar.’
He sat and wrote with a pen,
‘Dear’
and then he paused. He didn’t know how to address a girl- a woman- he didn’t know the name of. So he just continued,
‘Dear,
I’m not very good at writing letters. You’ll see. My sponsor said it might be a good idea. He said to write a letter to you but not to send it. It’s just for me, so I can write down my thoughts and feelings and what I would tell you if I could.
Yes, I’ve got a sponsor. Don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not like I deserve any credit for getting help. I had to, you see. Judge’s order. Because of that cop and that stupid morning. Because I hit him. Only once, but still.
I was living out of my car at the time. Did you know it’s illegal to sleep in your car? It is, it turns out. I had to leave the place I was at before, a little flat in town. I was drunk and I must have run the bath and I think I fell asleep or passed out. Either way, the next day downstairs was yelling about the water coming through their ceiling. My place was a mess. Landlord said I was trouble. I’m better moving on quickly than sticking around anywhere. I only do damage if I’m around, you know?
After that I moved about, stayed with some friends. But then I had to start sleeping in my car. I loved that car. I mean, that’s not why I slept in it, obviously. But it was a good car. Took me four tries to pass my test. I’ve never been a natural at anything.
It was around when I took my driving test the first time that I really started drinking. I mean, I didn’t have a limit. I’m not bragging or anything, just saying. I’d drink until I was drunk and then until I was all over the place and then I’d just keep drinking. And then again the next night. It was all fun then, of course. Drinking and that. Lots of girls. I’ve probably forgotten a few. Probably a few want to forget me. You would have thought I’d have changed or something when things started coming back on me, when I was getting in trouble. Given it up. I did the best I could but. My best never was much good.
So there I was. In the car and drinking, I’ll admit it. That’s the whole first step bit. Admit I have a problem and that. I was drinking because I was there in my car and I was wearing the same clothes I was wearing the day before and I had to sleep in them because it was cold out. This was February, when we had that snow. I was drinking because I knew I’d messed up, always do, but it hadn’t really gone like this before. I mean, I really didn’t know what was going on, what I was meant to do. And drinking’s the only thing I know to do when it all gets too much like that.
And this cop came out of nowhere, I didn’t even see him pull up or anything. He tapped on the window, looking in and that like I’d already done something wrong. Because I didn’t know about it being illegal to sleep in your car. All I really remember is what I was thinking but they went over the whole thing at court. In my head, I was sort of thinking that because he’s a cop, he’s going to help me, then he said do you know it’s illegal to sleep in your car? and I didn’t know that. Anyway, he wanted me to get out of the car and asked me what I was drinking and in my head I was worried all of a sudden. I thought I was in trouble and I would go to prison. And then I had a moment. An idea. You haven’t got to run away from anything in prison. They take you away from everything. Keep you there.
So I got out of the car and sort of hit him. Only once, like I said, but still. Next thing I was on the grass and he was on me and then court and that.
Look, I see it was wrong now. But that’s always been my trouble. I don’t see that what I’m doing is a mistake until after I’ve done it, until after it’s too late to fix it. I guess it turned out I was what needed to be fixed, and I couldn’t run away from myself. So the judge decided to see that something was finally done. About me.
Detoxing was horrible, bloody horrible. Never want to do that again. I’m not better, they tell me. Not yet, if ever, because detoxing doesn’t cure alcoholism. I’m not supposed to call it that though. It’s not alcoholism anymore. Alcohol dependency, that’s what he called it.
Strange I should write to you really. You’ve never even met me. Here I am telling you all of this stuff, this bad stuff about this horrible person I am. Not horrible, I guess. My sponsor, he keeps telling me not to be like that about myself. Not horrible then, but not very good. But because you won’t really get this letter, you won’t know about any of this anyway. You’d be glad. You don’t want to know me. I’ve met you of course. Just once. Doubt if you remember.
Look, I don’t really know what else to write now. I’m not very good at this. Let’s just leave it there.
Love, dad.
PS. I told you I wasn’t very good at writing letters.’
He stood and put down his pen. Yes, that’s what he would tell her if he could. Just not in so many words.
Anand Kallianpur, having removed plenty of brain tumours and held the offensive little cell clusters in his gloved hands, was certain of what he now felt on his bare testicle. A lump. His medical mind rationalised the situation- you are forty-eight years old, you run regularly, eat well, you need a little more green in your diet, you smoked for eight years, quit twenty years ago, there is no history of testicular cancer in the family, the lump is there and certainly new, you self-examine regularly, the lump is uncomfortable, that is not a good sign, tests need to be done, biopsy. His throat felt tight. His chest shuddered briefly as he allowed himself a deep exhalation, aware that he very suddenly felt alone. The shower continued to spray him down.
He turned off the stream of water and stepped out of the tub. His feet left wet imprints where he stood on the exposed wood flooring. Decisions hung before him as he stood naked, dripping. An unfamiliar sensation of panic was creeping in at the edges of thoughts about doctors and surgeries and removed testicles and canc- and he froze. He took a breath as he had before he’d performed yesterday’s endoscopic third ventriculostomy. He could do this; he would do this, his mind resolute.
With a study of his face in the clear stroke across the fogged up mirror, he established that he could leave shaving until tonight. He didn’t like the look of stubble, felt it to be far more an expression of character than he liked to allow in presentation of himself, but today was a day off from work. Today he was not a neurosurgeon, he was a patient.
Clothes were already, as always, laid out in his bedroom. They were spread on the bed as though the person wearing them had vanished from inside them, the suit trousers hanging over the edge of the mattress, above them the cream cotton shirt inside the brown blazer, and the tie- although not around the collar- in place where it would hang.
Anand sat next to his clothes, towelling off his sensibly cropped hair. His knee was acting up again. It ached above the patellar tendon, less than it had at first, but still enough to cause him to hiss for a moment and then carefully extend the leg, testing. It was an injury caused during racquetball with Ed. Anand had crashed to the panelled floor of the gymnasium from his leap, agony shot through his knee, but the jump had worked, he had connected the swing, and he had gloated at Ed while Ed helped him to hobble off of the court.
Racquetball was on the way out, as was running. He pushed himself harder than he should have. He stopped listening to his body when it began to tell him he was getting old. Once-satisfying sweats from a jog now started within minutes of taking to the track. His breath came in shorter bursts when tired, sometimes not at all, and he was forced to stand with his hands on his knees, head low as he struggled for breath, just like he used to watch his father do while Anand thought, That won’t be me.
Reaching for the trousers he paused and considered the appointment he would need to make. His doctor would of course want to examine the lump himself, so trousers that were easily slipped in and out of would be a benefit. He regarded the belt and its buckle and the trousers, tailored to fit well- today uncomfortably- in the crotch. He decided on a pair of loose-fitting jeans without a belt.
Ever organised and never wanting to be left in a position of having any part of his day unplanned, Anand needed to first arrange his appointment before he even got dressed. He got up and went to the telephone on the other side of the bed. He fondled the afflicted testicle as he dialled and waited for the receptionist to answer. The lump seemed larger, but Anand knew very well that his emotions were playing tricks on him. He cursed his human inability to remove his fear with the same surgical precision he detached it with when operating on a stranger. He felt things, of course, but that was adrenaline, excitement, the challenge. If he lost a patient, he felt disappointment, a banal sense of general sadness that a fellow human had died, and then he moved on to the next challenge.
‘Good morning, Dr West’s surgery.’
‘Good morning. I’d like to make an appointment for today if that’s possible.’
‘I should think so, I believe we’ve just had a cancellation...’ Papers were shuffled on the other end of the line. There were murmurs in the background. ‘Yes, you’re in luck.’
Am I, now?
‘How’s nine-forty for you?’
‘Yes, that’s fine.’
‘And the name, please?’
‘Anand Kallianpur.’
More papers were shuffled. ‘And how do you spell that, sir?’
Ordinarily Anand would have cycled to the doctor on his bike, his chosen form of transportation. He felt a quaint nostalgia at riding something that looked nothing like the trendy vehicles of green-thinking, modern cyclists. It looked like the bicycle he’d had as a teen in Goa. Besides, he couldn’t bear to drive if it could be helped; he was certain he could feel his muscles atrophying as he sat uselessly in a car that did his movement for him. His bike, however, had been rendered unfit for use- or rather, he had- due to his knee injury. Getting into a taxi was unnervingly foreign to Anand. He was a man of routine and precision, a man not accustomed to making allowances, even for the benefit of his own health.
‘Traffic’s terrible,’ said the driver, ‘but then, it’s expected, isn’t?’
He smiled at the driver, unable to garner the strength to take his turn at holding up a very weak start to small-talk. Anand eyed the rosary dangling from the tray of business cards stuck to the dash. The driver nodded at the string of beads.
‘Are you, uh...?’
‘What? Oh, I’m not, no.’
‘Not Catholic? Fair enough. Not to be forced on anyone, is it?’
Again, Anand smiled. He thought about his parents. He hoped their own sentiments toward faith had been enough when his father had died. They had both been pluralists, somewhat of a Hindu persuasion. They had believed in the unique and ineffable beauty of each faith, allowing their neighbours beliefs to enrich their own. It was a way of life Anand had once subscribed to, but was no longer tenable as a citizen of a Western country. It was all well and good if your neighbour was a Christian pacifist or a Muslim intellectual, but out here the media hid those thoughtful believers from Anand’s view; only the voices of extremists held influence.
‘I expect you’re, what, a Muslim? Not that I mind, obviously. Just curious.’
Anand looked across at the driver. ‘Why Muslim?’
The driver pretended to be watching the traffic. ‘Just... thought you would be. Might be. I don’t know.’
‘First and foremost, I’m a secularist. Personally, however, I like to be labelled a humanist, if I must be labelled something.’ His parents believed all religions to be equally important; Anand considered them equally unimportant.
‘Oh, right,’ said the driver.
The rest of the journey passed with no further conversation.
Anand was early. The surgery waiting room was empty and he didn’t know whether that made him more or less anxious. Would he have preferred to be reminded by the presence of other sick people that he wasn’t the only one with a problem? He considered whether this would make him feel isolated or included, reducing his situation to a problem to be rationalised, coldly and impersonally.
His hand slid into the pocket of his jeans, a movement he had not done in many years, because it was something he did when he was nervous. Anand was not prone to nerves. He would not allow himself to become intimidated by anything. His hand felt cramped in the tight space of the pocket, so he shoved his fingers further in, to find room inside to allow blood-flow. He felt the crease he caused in a slip of paper in the pocket as whatever it was wrinkled up. Anand pulled it out to view.
The paper was square, or had been before its length of time in the pocket and the desecration of Anand’s careless hand. It was creased all over, but folded deliberately across its middle. He read the five words he already knew were there:
I love you. Don’t forget.
He smiled to himself at the innocent humour: he’d forgotten the reminder. Then his smile dropped, his entire body at once feeling heavy, burdened. She was in his thoughts now, and he couldn’t push her out, so he moved to thinking about her in a different context. He thought about leaving her the note, that he still had plenty of time to do it. She would be home from her conference tonight, he would leave it, as originally planned in her coat, the one she wore to work every day now that it was colder. She would find it while walking, or later on a break, and smile, and at home they would share in the joke. She had a terrible memory, always losing letters and forgetting her PIN code. He would laugh when she forgot something new, she would feign hurt feelings, he would say, I love you. Don’t forget. She would smile.
She might lose him. The thought arrived, at last, held back no more by Anand’s stubborn denial. She might lose him. He couldn’t even begin to imagine life without her, but that was not what he faced. He knew she loved him, just as he loved her, and felt angry, hated himself, when he imagined leaving her. Dying.
Dying.
He had found a lump.
Cancer, maybe.
Dying, maybe.
He couldn’t rationalise anymore. He couldn’t see a reason to. In light of what he shared with his wife, what did reason matter? What would equations and rational thinking gain him?
Anand stood and took his phone out to the front of the surgery. He stood back from the street and its business, shiny vehicles rushing to their destinations. He pressed CALL on her number and held the phone to his ear, waiting. He breathed in.
Please leave your message after the tone.
‘Hi, Sweet, it’s me.
How’s the conference going?
I’m, ah-
Can’t wait to see you.
I love you.
Really, I love you.
Okay, well, bye. See you at home. Bye.’
Anand put his phone back in his pocket and returned to the waiting room, just as his name was being called over the speaker. He turned followed the hallway to the door with Dr West’s name on it. He knocked, waited for the invitation, and entered.
‘Mr Kallianpur, what can I do for you?’
‘I found a lump.’
The Father, the Mother, the Son
As the father fell down the stairs he reflected on the injustice of the scene: soaring backwards, the expectation of what was to come, the ungrateful boy who’d pushed him. The first blow came to his lower back. He recognised the sharp attack as the edge of a stair. Then the pain became tangled in itself, the father not aware of what cracked against what, just that he was breaking and it was the boy’s fault.
The boy’s hand had pressed against the father’s shirt, dark skin on cream cotton. The boy had said only one thing as he shoved: when the boy was angry he used a phrase, the only two words he’d remembered during the pretence of learning Persian: Khodeto Bokun. Go fuck yourself. The father had heard him say this before, once when the boy was storming out of the house, and the father had smiled in his incomprehension and thought, You can take the boy out of Iran...
They were not the ones who had taken the boy out of Iran. He had been brought to this country by his parents. Social services had removed him a month later and quickly allocated him to the father and his wife as foster parents. They had looked at their little brown baby and loved him in their own way, and silently passed the agreement between themselves to raise him lovingly as though he were their own white baby.
The father came to a stop at the foot of the stairs. His thoughts lay scrambled like his collapsed body. He could only gaze toward the hazy figure at the top of the stairs, the boy he’d liberated. The boy looked back and offered nothing.
The mother dropped to her knees at the side of her husband’s body. She reached a hand to his arm stuck underneath him, then jerked away. The first impulse to pull back was disgust at the horrible angle the broken forearm made. The second impulse was logic, the dictation to herself that to move him may only do him more harm. Better to leave him as he was. Call the ambulance. They would fix him, she would wait.
Blame began its game of finding fixture, and the mother allowed it. She accused, at first, herself. She was, in some unknowable way, to blame. Her absence must have had some bearing on the occurrence at the top of the stairs that led to her husband at the bottom of them. She could negotiate the tempers in her men, the father and the boy, and could calm the storms more often than she could not. Yes, it could have only been her fault.
The mother did not like the taste of guilt. It sat badly on her palate. The weight of it demanded shifting; she moved it from her shoulders and lay it on the broken figure of her husband before her. His temper had flared, he had- no, of course not. Of course not.
She turned her teary gaze to the boy. He was not her, he was not the father, he was the other. Blame him, she instructed herself. The boy looked through her. He didn’t see the hate in her stare anymore because now he was throwing his own glare at nothing, anything, everything.
The boy tried to tie the loose ends of many feelings into coherence. He barely understood himself. He could no longer feel the anger that had motivated his action, until he remembered the many moments leading to now: the mandates do as you’re told the control I know best the suppression what the hell do you know and the fear and the beatings and the suffering. The bastard had demanded it, bred it. He pushed the boy and the boy pushed back.
Christina knew what was about to happen and, with no hesitation, she was ready to allow it. Her underwear, a black piece of lace she would never wear if it had no audience, was caught on her heel; she squirmed her legs into the pants and jerked them up to her waist. He was struggling to do up his trousers.
She looked away from him, glancing only to satisfy herself that he had followed the expected routine: he tucked his shirt in first to get it out of the way, then he used a piece of tissue removed from a pocket (he seemed to always have some on him, somewhere) to wipe his cock, then zipped himself up. Wait, he would do it- there. He gave the end of his dick a brief squeeze through his trousers, shifting slightly, uncomfortably, as that last bit of semen that always came out bothered him. He was so familiar now.
Familiarity had broken the spell of attraction that had seen Christina through the first years of her marriage. There had been other things that had come along and replaced lust, that in many ways made its loss go almost unnoticed. Safety, understanding, compassion. These things had buoyed her fidelity until so recently. But eventually she had needed that passion again, a desire no longer sated by the husband who had become complacent. They never fucked anymore. They made love last week, but she wanted to fuck, to be ravished by a man whose carnal urges were satisfied by her beauty, aged as it was. She wanted the often tired woman to remember that she had been youthful once.
He was doing up his shirt now. He was too tall for the backseat, he had to duck his head. ‘I thought I had a lump yesterday,’ he told her. He was straight about it, about all things. Irony seemed to be unlearned yet.
‘A lump on your...?’
He nodded.
‘You’re too young for testicular cancer.’
‘I’m not that young.’
He was right, she knew it, knew he was of course old enough to have cancer of the balls or anywhere else. That wasn’t really her point.
‘Anyway,’ he turned himself to sit properly in the seat as if they might be about to drive off somewhere, ‘it wasn’t a lump. I checked again, nothing there. I was worrying about nothing.’
This man’s name was Calvin. There was something young about his name even. He looked nothing like her husband. Her husband was Indian, for a start. This man was an intern at the hospital where she and her husband both worked. They were in separate departments, so her husband probably wasn’t even aware of this man’s existence, even without the gap seniority wedged between the two men. There had indeed been a conference, but it had ended last night. She had been with this man since then. Calvin had fucked her at the hotel, then again back at his flat today, and of course just moments ago in the back of his ridiculous car. The suspension had creaked under their movement.
‘I’d better get off then.’
Christina checked herself in the rear-view mirror, pulling a lock of hair behind an ear. It would need dying again, it was revealing the onset of grey at her roots. She smoothed her dress down to her shins and stepped out of the car. Calvin watched her like it hurt to see her leave, though Christina suspected his affections were less sincere than he let on. He was likely motivated into this relationship more by ambition; his performance-assessments at the hospital were completed by her after all. It wasn’t cynicism but experience that led her to doubt his feelings. She reminded herself that she was using him too. He was a glorified dildo, a face in the mirror to answer back, ‘You,’ when she asked who was the most beautiful of them all.
Calvin climbed between the seats to the front and started the engine. She blew him a kiss as she walked away, with coquettish intention, but felt embarrassed by accidentally reminding herself of a mother and son.
She heard the car pull away. He drove in the opposite direction and she did not turn to see him leave. She always wanted to be the one to walk away. She was on the corner of her street, the street she once called ‘ours’, but would no longer. Everything would change tonight, she had already decided. It was dark now, he would have no reason to be out. She would not let any time pass, no delays, she would go right in and come right out with it.
Wondering why he hadn’t called her all day, she removed her phone from her coat. She rolled her eyes at herself as the blank screen reminded her that, of course, she had forgotten to turn her phone on. She almost heard her husband’s words, that familiar, mock-scornful tone, but something protected her from them. Protected in what sense she was not sure- could those words upset her in some way, dissuade her perhaps? She told herself no, she would not be put off, certainly not by a single romantic memory. That was all their love was anymore- a memory.
The phone beeped as she brought it to life.
She knew it was possible to fake being in love; she’d been doing it for long enough. But was it possible, she wondered, to fake being loved? Could that explain her continued ability to feel loved by this intelligent, perceptive man who must have known? He must have seen it in a look she cast without first dressing up, or words she said, or some other tic that only a lover would notice. He must have known and she must have been fooling herself that he didn’t, that he continued to love her.
Christina looked up from her phone. She unlatched the gate that kept the pavement from her yard. She went through and closed it behind her, then made her way up the path. She was in no rush. Her eyes had adjusted to the brilliant glare from the phone and so her feet and their placing were a guess in the darkness around. She walked thoughtfully. The symbol for an answer-phone message appeared on her screen.
The lights were off downstairs. There was a glow at the edge of the curtained bedroom window upstairs that gave him away; he was reading in bed. It was still early but he’d probably turned in for an evening with his book as soon as the sun had gone down. She knew him so well.
Christina dialled the answer-phone and waited for it to connect. She had one new message. It was from her husband, message received today. Christina breathed in. The message played:
‘Hi, Sweet, it’s me.
How’s the conference going?
I’m, ah-
Can’t wait to see you.
I love you.
Really, I love you.
Okay, well, bye. See you at home. Bye.’
The stink of the usual rose as Christina went through the front door. It called on a freshened sense of anger in her, a tensing impatience that worsened with every memorised movement around a hallway table, the umbrella basket, the stool next to the front-room doorway. The house down here was dark. She moved by familiarity.
She stood for a moment in the doorway to the kitchen and observed the contours she could just make out in the darkness. This would be her last time, she swore to herself she would only return here when she had forgotten it, when the ordinary was an adventure again. It would not happen, she harboured no illusions of an about-turn in her routine way of life here, but she was at peace with the idea of not returning here at all then.
As Christina turned from the kitchen to make her way upstairs, something fluttered next to her face. She paused and the fight-flight reflex battled itself for a moment before her eyes made out with enough clarity that it was just a bit of paper. A bit of paper tacked to the door. She removed it carefully, with an uneasy yet excited expectation about it.
Christina turned on the lamp near the stove to examine the paper by its light. The scrap in her hand was square and on one side she saw handwriting. The note was creased all over, but folded deliberately across its middle. She read the five words on it, already knowing what they were:
I love you. Don’t forget.
Christina left the note to find its way to the floor, fallen from her hand as she returned as quickly as she could from the way she’d come in. She heard what may have been her husband coming to the top of the stairs, but she had already pulled the front door closed behind her. The final time. She saw her sister collecting clothes and items that belonged to Christina, feeling bad for the husband left behind but, in duty to her sister, showing no compassion to him, coldly gathering things and then taking them away. These things would happen later. For now, she escaped.
She would not be able to face him. His note had revealed how he would take her rejection and that he would fight for her, he would make it hard for her to leave. She already felt her confidence crumbling into regret. A fundamental spark of rebellion urged her to get out now before it was too late.
Christina reached the road outside of the garden. For a moment she felt lost; in fact, she was lost, if only for that moment. Her phone came out of the pocket again and she lingered in indecision over which number to call. She was surprised to discover that she did not want Calvin. She did not even want his comfort, his presence even only for reassurance. He had become the thing to flee, part of the problem, proportionately as familiar and dull as her husband had become. She dialled for a taxi. A weary sounding man answered and she supplied where she needed picking up from.
‘Will the taxi be here soon?’
‘Uh... Yeah, should be. Allow for traffic of course, this time of day.’
‘Great. Thank you.’
‘And where are you going?’
Christina stumbled at the question.
‘Where do you want dropping off? Where are you going?’
Christina had no idea.
What good is a single, childless woman over thirty-five? What’s the use of me? It’s like a question of philosophy or something. I was thinking about it this morning in bed. It was quiet outside, nothing to keep me busy. I was just in bed, thinking.
This morning I was fighting myself to get up. Because I didn’t have to be at work or nothing. Still, I was lying there and I wanted to sleep but, you know. I couldn’t get up either.
Then it was like he knew or something, the way most men in my experience do know but they just don’t come anyway, even though they know. They know. Anyway, he did come, he came and knocked on my door. I needed that.
I was only in my dressing gown when I opened the door for him. He looked real quick at the gown but just smiled nicely. He said,
‘Morning.’
I said, ‘It’s early for you.’
‘I’ve been up since... maybe an hour. A lot to do today.’
I was wondering what he was actually here for, but I didn’t really mind. He’s always been nice, even when. You know. He should have taken his side, if he was going to take one. But he watched him pack up and leave, didn’t say nothing, then he waited a bit, a few days, and invited me for tea. A cup of tea, not food. We had food the next week. Haven’t had anything since.
‘Do you want to see something?’
‘Now?’
‘Or in a bit. If you want.’
I didn’t have to tell him okay. He knew when he turned around that I’d be following him. In my dressing gown. Like I say, men know.
For some reason I wanted to laugh when he got it out. I knew he wouldn’t like that, he’d think there was something wrong with it. It wasn’t that, it’s just I felt silly on my knees like he was going to knight me or something. I don’t know, I don’t think they knight women. Anyway.
I sucked him off in his cellar. I didn’t know why we’d gone down there at first. It was like a pointless trip just to get out the way. I found out after that he did have something to show me, it wasn’t his thing, but it was down there in the cellar. He just wanted a blowjob first. He didn’t ask, I just knew. Women know things too.
It didn’t exactly take long. He was the only one besides my ex-husband that I’d done it to. He was easily pleased though, because at one point I was looking at something behind him and then I realised I hadn’t been paying attention. I wasn’t moving my head like you’re supposed to, I was just kneeling and sucking, and he was still moaning like an idiot. Then he finished and I got up again.
He didn’t ask me what I thought about it, I just said it anyway. It was a painting in a big frame. It was against a box that looked like it was worn to paper. He was saying something about hosepipes and he kicked a lawnmower like it was broken. I was looking at the painting and he turned around and saw.
‘That’s what I wanted to show you.’
‘It’s beautiful. I don’t know why though. I don’t know things like that.’
‘I’ll keep the frame,’ he said. ‘I can use it again.’
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