Milosz (26 page)

‘He's not a freak.
We're
the freaks.'

‘Oh, shut up, Milo. Listen I … I don't know what she'll say, if she does call, or if she'll even let me see him. But legally she can't stop me. The thing is, I can't move. Could you bring him here? If I give you cab fare and a letter, and whatever they need to grant permission, will you pick him up? I'm only asking because you keep hanging around.'

As a coaster and avoider, Milo's first instinct is to bolt. ‘Shouldn't we wait and see if she calls?'

Christopher looks at him with the same how-could-I-possibly-have-thought-you-were-anything-but-a-piece-of-shit expression so commonly used by Gus. ‘I forgot. You want to fuck my wife.'

‘Unreal,' the sports fan says.

‘Vera?' He knocks again. ‘Vera, Pablo says you haven't eaten since breakfast. How about a spot of cheese with some sherry?' Pablo and Gus are below stuffing tacos with whatever they can scrounge in the fridge. Gus became very excited when he discovered a cabbage, ‘
Kapusta!
' he said and began slicing it thin and tossing it into the tacos along with leftover animal parts and grated cheese. Milo has never seen Gus eat a taco. Gus distrusts foreign food.

When Vera doesn't answer, Milo gently pushes the door open. A pile of darned socks, some of them Milo's, sits on the dresser. She has fallen asleep in the chair, Annie's chair, by the window. At Vera's feet lie her glasses and the wedding photo of Milo's parents. He sets both back on the dresser. He has avoided this room because the decor that Gus described as candy dish is oppressive. Did the floral wallpaper offer Annie solace or amplify her loneliness? The rest of the house, ruled by Gus, remained beige and brown, although he allowed her to paint the bathroom Citrus Zest Yellow. Milo remembers his mother's excitement as she dipped her brush and began transforming the dull walls that had stood passively while she hemorrhaged babies. All would be better from now on, Milo felt. She died three weeks later, without finishing the baseboards. Gus painted them in the same demented yellow.

What were her true feelings as she lay day in and day out on the marshmallow bed? When the ambulance and fire trucks arrived it was all very thrilling until they took her away on a stretcher and Mrs. C. started mashing parsnips. When she let Milo stay up to watch
TV
, he knew something was wrong. Halfway through
Hill Street Blues
, Gus came home, turned off the
TV
and sat Milo down at the dining room table. ‘I'm very sorry, son,' he said. ‘Your mother has passed.'

‘Passed where?'

‘She is no longer with us.'

‘Where did she go?'

‘She's dead, son. She had a heart attack.'

Milo knew about heart attacks, had seen them on
TV
. Men clutched their chests and fell to their knees. Women didn't have heart attacks. And anyway, his mother was sleeping.

‘Are you sure?' he asked.

‘I'm sure.'

‘Because she could just be sleeping. She sleeps a lot. You don't know because you're at work.' He wanted his father to say, ‘You're right, son, she's probably just sleeping.' He wanted today to be like yesterday and the day before that.

‘She's dead, son, and I need you to be a big boy about it.' He patted Milo's shoulder.

Vera wakes abruptly. ‘What's all this then?'

‘Hi, Vera, I just wanted to make sure you're all right.'

‘Why wouldn't I be?'

‘Well, you've stayed in your room all day.'

‘Have I? Heavens.'

‘Why don't you come downstairs and have a bite with us?'

‘Is Wally back from the office?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Awfully busy, that accounting business, isn't it? Have you seen my cardy?'

‘You're sitting on it.'

‘So I am.' She pulls the cardigan from under her. Milo helps her put it on.

‘Would you like me to bring you up a tray?' he asks. ‘Pablo and Gus are making tacos.'

‘You have to be patient with him, Milo. Alfie and Zikie would get into the blackest of moods. Lost in their own worlds, they were.'

‘Fortunately I don't think Gus remembers anything about the war. He seems pretty happy, all things considered.'

‘He's just not letting on, just like Zikie.'

He hands her her glasses. ‘Thank you for darning my socks.'

‘It's no trouble, I enjoy it.' She takes the wedding picture from the dresser. ‘Did you forget about this? You told me you didn't have any photos.'

‘Yeah, well, I never come in here.' He can't admit he didn't show it to her because having his mother judged, alive or dead, by strangers has always made him flinch and, occasionally, punch walls.

‘What a looker she was,' Vera says. ‘And what a kind, intelligent face. Thoughtful. Do you miss her?'

‘I didn't really know her. I was only six.'

‘She'd be very proud of you.'

‘Why?'

‘You're an actor, acting in a movie. Very impressive.'

Vera picks up her mending and starts checking a pair of Wallace's socks. ‘Have
you
ever hired a prostitute?'

‘No, but people do it all the time.'

‘Where's your girlfriend that Pablo mentioned?'

‘I don't know. She's changed her number.'

‘You could find her, if you set your mind to it. Youngsters give up so easily these days. If we lot had quit at the first sign of trouble, where would you be?'


Milo picks up Annie's burgundy and gold hand mirror. When she wasn't sad she would hold it at the back of her head to check her hair in the dresser mirror. Milo loved lying on the marshmallow bed and watching her do her hair and makeup. If he stayed very still she would forget about him and not tell him to stop mooning and go play.

‘What do you think of my mother's decor?'

‘A bit of a chocolate box, isn't it?' She's fastened the cardigan's buttons off-centre but he doesn't have the heart to tell her.

‘Wouldn't it be great,' he says, ‘if someone was proud of us for who we are, not what we do?'

‘Actions speak louder than words, Milo. My nephew, Gilly, was always trying to impress his mum, talking about the poor Africans and how he wanted to dig them wells. He was always down the pub fundraising for his wells, and she always believed him because she loved him. The poor sod was living off the well money. Broke her heart when Ettie found out.'

Maybe now is the time to come clean about Wallace's line of work. Maybe it's none of the avoider's business.

‘But Gilly wouldn't have made up all that stuff about wells in Africa,' Milo says, ‘if his mother had been proud of him for who he was.'

‘What's to be proud of? A grown boy sitting around watching telly?'

‘He wasn't always a grown boy watching telly. Once he was a little boy doing little-boy things. Did Ettie love him for who he was then?'

Vera fingers her cardy buttons. ‘He was an odd little boy, always wore his knickers under his pyjamas. Drove Ettie round the bend because then he'd forget to put clean ones on in the morning.'

‘Why was he wearing his knickers under his pyjamas?'

‘He said if he was kidnapped, he wanted to have his knickers on.'

‘Why did he think he might be kidnapped?'

‘Haven't the foggiest.'

Would it be hard to be proud of a son who wore his knickers under his pyjamas for fear of being kidnapped? Or who coloured outside the lines, or who pissed himself rather than brave the bathroom where he might find a bloodied fetus in the toilet bowl?

Maybe it's better that Gus has forgotten about the boy who looks like a beaver.

•••

Pablo holds up an apple. ‘You know what this is, Milo? Yaboowco.'

Gus nods, smiling his doltish smile. ‘
Jabłko
.'

‘In English,' Pablo says. ‘Come on, Gussy, say it in English.'

‘Ap-pehl.'

‘See, he's totally learning English.'

‘Two words don't equal totally.' Milo shoves a taco in his mouth even though he isn't hungry.

‘He's trying though, Milo, that's the important thing.'

‘Is it? I thought love was the important thing.' Grated cheese falls from his taco onto the floor. Gus grabs the dishrag and wipes it up.

‘He really likes apples. He's eaten, like, four. We've got to get some more.'

‘We?'

Gus starts doing dishes, a task he always left to Milo once Mrs. Cauldershot was no longer on the scene. During a garbage run, he found an old dishwasher that he insisted he would fix but never did.

‘You should see what Gussy did to the deck, you wouldn't believe it. It's like he's a carpenter or something.'

Milo taps Gus's shoulder, startling him. ‘You don't need to do those. Pablo can do them.'

‘No prah-blum,' Gus says.

‘See, I taught him that too. Way to go, Gussy, no problem.'

Milo takes the dishrag from Gus and hands it to Pablo.

‘Why do
I
have to do them?'

‘Because you're the martyr.'

‘But he likes doing them.'

‘How do you know, do you speak Polish?'

Gus, backing away from Milo, fills the kettle and puts it on the stove. ‘
Nie przejmuj się,napij się kawy
.'

‘Would you quit that?' Milo says, more loudly than he'd intended. ‘Nobody speaks Polski around here.'

‘He's just trying to communicate, Milo.'

‘Oh, so he can't figure out that none of us know what the fuck he's talking about? How stupid are you, old man?'

‘
Nie rozumiem
.'

‘Here we go again. Fucking mind games. Shut up, all right, just shut up.'

Gus cowers by the stove. Milo has never seen him cower. Terrorizing his father sparks electricity in Milo's fibres. Pablo pushes him into the living room.

‘Are you crazy, man? What do you think you're doing? You're scaring him. He don't know what you're saying.'

‘How do you know? How do you know he isn't stringing us along so he doesn't have to take responsibility for his shit-can life? Why do you think he took off in the first place?'

‘He didn't take off, Milo. He got hit on the head or had a stroke or ­something.'

‘So he says.'

‘He don't say nothing. He don't speak English.'

Admittedly there is the so-called proof in the
CT
scan, but scientists are the first to admit that we know very little about the brain and understand a fraction of its capacity. So what if his hippocampus and medial temporal lobe look a bit funny?

‘You don't know my father. This is bullshit, total bullshit.' Milo storms out as his father used to do, leaving Milo alone in the creaking house. Gus wouldn't return for hours and Milo, fearing that something had happened to him, would become increasingly agitated and convinced that his father had been hit by a truck and that he, consequently, would have to go into foster care. He knew a boy called Ernie Batty in foster care who loathed his foster mother but would stop at nothing to please her, so fearful was he of being sent to yet another foster home. Ernie massaged Mrs. Vanelli's fat shoulders and scaly feet and acted happy when she gave him a used train set for his birthday.

When Gus returned, Milo would act suitably repentant, although he'd have forgotten what he was supposed to be repentant for. Father and son would go to bed wordlessly and in the morning Milo would rush off to school, practising avoidance. In the evening he would try even harder to be helpful and respectful.

‘Fuck that noise,' Milo says to the night air. He hears footsteps behind him and whirls around expecting to see Pablo, but it's Tawny.

‘You told me to drop by if I came to the Big Smoke.'

‘Did I?'

‘Did you find your father?'

‘I did, and he's still an asshole.' He walks fast, forcing Tawny to trot beside him. He stops and faces her. ‘What can I do you for?'

‘Why are you angry at
me
?'

‘Am I?'

‘You shouldn't answer questions with questions.'

‘Why not?'

‘It means you're hollow, like a dead tree.'

‘Maybe I am,' Milo says. ‘What's that got to do with the price of cheese?' He shouldn't be venting at this poor child.

‘Elvis says you spend too much time being angry.'

‘He does, does he?'

‘A lot of white-asses are like that.'