Rocks in the Belly (14 page)

‘Thanks.'

Where's the comfort in a piece of paper? You can't hug a phone number.

‘Cuthbertson or Teichmann. Or Wilkinson?' the bar maid says, reading out the names on the last three credit cards left — Patricia looking at me, waiting to hear my surname.

While they're swiping my credit card I sit here looking at Patricia's knees.

‘Give me a call,' she says, ‘I'd really like that,' and she leans in for my cheek but I turn and get her lips, giving the kiss everything I've got.

I pull away and she looks down to hide her beetroot face — puts her pen in her bag and I hate it all, the sweet smell of stale beer coming off the bar, the people putting their coats on to go home together. I hate the bar staff and Mum and Robert — Robert's parents.

‘I might just do that, Patricia.'

I take the paper from her hand and stumble away, then come back and sign the bill. The bar maid giving me a look.

I take my card from her, hug Patricia for a second, long enough
for her to stop me if she's changed her mind.

Then I'm out the door and as soon as I'm far enough away I am running but I don't outrun anything, all that happens is the alcohol in my stomach stops me, threatening to come out. I lean over for a few breaths then jog away from the disappointment, anger lighting up inside me.

At least there's power in anger.

By the time I'm a few streets away I'm incandescent with it. I go over to a shop window and look at my reflection, trying to see what Patricia saw, whether I got away with saving some face back there.

It's a photographer's shop window, pictures of smug grins and overly made-up women staring out from gilt frames.

I look at her number then screw it up and chuck it on the ground, stamping on it over and over. Pick it up again, straighten it out — wipe it down, put it in my pocket.

I peer in at the photographer's place.
Don Vincenzo's
it says above the big shop window. He's probably just called Mark or Gary. His pathetic little suburban studio with these posed shots of weddings and families. A failed photographer.

Like the day we all went to one of those studios and Robert came and the photographer guy made me feel tiny by using a puppet on me to get a smile. I was eight and he used a puppet on me in front of Robert and all I could think was What is Robert doing in our family shot? The photographer with a puppet in my face but treating Robert like an adult.

I search the ground for something, anything, my hand settling on an empty bottle of beer in the gutter. I step back with it then let the bottle fly and the photographer's window stops reflecting me but striates into sparkly lines and shapes and spider webs glinting orange with the streetlight — broken bottle fragments tinkling onto the pavement, the window hanging on.

I pick up the intact bottleneck and wander up to an untarnished bit of window, some blonde smiling at me from a big picture. My eyes adjust and there's my reflection. I bring the sharp bottleneck up near my face, touch it against the skin just under my eye, daring myself. Thinking back to those bar staff laughing at Patricia rejecting me.

I push and feel the sharpest shard puncture my skin and it brings that release. I pull it out, watch a tiny tear of blood ooze.

I bet this photographer has real images hidden away somewhere — proper art of his that means everything to him. He has this enormous shop window but all he can summon the courage to commit to are these cheesy images of bland everyday people. Trying for extraordinary but it's all just extra ordinary. Which must be why he can't call himself by his real Gary or Paul name. He has to be Don Vincenzo to make up for the real him he's afraid to be.

I pace up and down the shop front like a bear in a zoo. At the corner is a chunk of brick, a corresponding gap in the masonry. I toss the brick up and catch it, wandering out away from the window, into the road — weighing the rock fragment in my hand.

Then there's that blissful release of anger, the window making an enormous noise — I cover my face, the shattering and tinkling taking an eternity to subside.

A laugh escapes me but I'm squirming at all the noise I've made in the night, a little urgent sound starting up from an alarm console on the wall.

I lurch into the shop, this photographer to blame for everything, my shoes crunching on all the broken glass, the beeping alarm eating me. I rip the blonde off her stand and stamp through her face. Then start gathering up as many pictures as I can, lifting them from easels and off the walls. I'm laughing, stuffing the useless booty up my top and holding others under my arms, collecting as many of
them as I can and singing a drunk song, the alarm's warning tone changing pitch suddenly. I can smell the fragrance he has in here, this pot-pourri photographer coward.

The alarm starts wailing and I want to cover my ears, staggering out through the window again with my swag of fake happy families — losing my footing on the glass. The bottle fragments out here too with my fingerprints on them and a strobing blue light spinning around the neighbourhood from the alarm box.

I'm running away with my arms wrapped around childhoods and families and couples. I'm running but giggling, the alarm quietening the further away I get, the anger subsiding in me now. A picture slipping to the concrete and I rush back for it, crouching to gather it up like my arms are full of washing and I've dropped a sock.

I can hear a siren somewhere but can't run anymore. I take the back streets until I reach our hill, crossing over at the point where the pavement drops down. The way I did all those years ago with Robert in the garden. Mum was sick then too, but she was on the mend. She was on her way home from hospital. That time she'd live. Not like now.

I go in through our gate, stumbling a little and the hedge catches me, tickling my face. I make it indoors, pictures slipping lower in my arms, making me hunch over, nursing them up the corridor and into the lounge.

I drop them and turn on the light, my back leant now against the wall, alcohol and exercise overwhelming me for a second. No sign of Mum, just crumbs on the couch. The stolen pictures looking out of place in our ordinary lounge. The faces larger than life and made-up and airbrushed, sitting in front of that pointless, oily background. Fake happy faces and fake happy families.

I take out my phone, rifling through my wallet for the nurse's card, sweat seeping quickly out of me. I dial and a recorded message tells me that if this number is unavailable to call an alternative
number. Her South African accent reads it out and I can see the woman. I ache at the thought of her, then there's the beep.

‘Hey, hi. I just, nothing urgent really … Probably shouldn't be calling even …' I'm walking through the house in search of alcohol as I talk, the light already on in the kitchen ‘… bad because it's an emergency number and all but this
is
sort of an emergency, of sorts and —' I stop though because all over the family table are pictures of Robert. Robert in the garden; Robert gazing at the sky; Robert at the photographer's studio, his clothes matching mine; Robert looking up from a book. And that broken Robert in his orange jumpsuit on that day of all days, long after what happened to him. The day we sent him up.

I hang up the phone, standing here looking at them all facing me. It wasn't some nostalgia of hers that got those pictures out. She's Miss Forgetful unless it suits her. No, this is no accident. She obviously wants to play.

I can play.

Dad has come home from his virgil at the hospital today. It's the first time he's been home since Mum got ill. He's all spiky and smelly and tired but says Mum's going to be right as rain and out of the woods. And that it's a good job she's such a wuss otherwise they might not have found out about the illness so soon. If she were tougher she'd be dead.

Nothing happens in my stomach when he tells us Mum's ok. Robert cries and goes up to his room and shuts the door. Auntie Deadly is wiping her hands on a tea towel and she shakes her head and says, ‘That boy.'

She always calls him that.

Now that Dad is back Auntie D can go. Mum might even be home in a few days and Dad's with us mostly and sort of brighter himself. Plus he's a good cook and doesn't make me eat soups my spoon won't sink into.

I feel a bit sick though. I want Mum to live but I don't want those feelings to come back that happen to me when her and Robert are around.

Plus we can go see her today once Dad's had a power nap and a shower. He shouts upstairs to Robert that we're going to see
Mum and Robert starts woohooing and banging and crashing then thundering down.

I hate hospitals. They smell and are full of sick and stains and germs. Plus people with needles sitting in their veins, the blood going by. They put that sharp metal right in there, inside you, and you're supposed to just lie there with it rusting.

When we pull into the car park it's full and the hospital has a chimney poking up and I can't stop staring at it.

Dad sends us ahead while he tries to park the effing car. Robert and me are walking the corridors on our way to her ward.

‘Slow down, Robert, she's not dying.'

He looks like it's Christmas Eve.

Her ward is called Nightingale and we follow the signs and I almost want to hold Robert's hand but I concentrate on turning my shoes on the lino so it makes that squeak. Probably cos a hospital is squeaky clean.

I try not to breathe too much so I don't catch things.

We get to the ward and there's Mum looking butter colour. Somebody in a bed next to her is under the covers with teeth in a glass beside her, and at the end of the ward is a TV up high out of reach and showing a golf ball in the air. You see the golfer looking at it flying, his hand saluting his forehead, his club still over his shoulder. Then he bends down and picks up something and the ball is still in the air sort of ahead of the picture then a bit behind then right in it and the clouds are rushing by and when the ball lands it barely bounces or moves. The crowd claps and the golfer tries not to look pleased.

Mum says Hi Hello Hey and kisses Robert's forehead a lot and holds out a hand to me and there's a clear plastic line running from it and a needle in her and she's holding it out to me. I stand still and turn my shoe and it squeaks. I feel like I'm inflatable and somebody's letting my air out.

‘I'm not catching anymore,' she says.

I nod and smile at her. My body wants me to breathe. Meanwhile Robert is staring, giving her that look he gives her.

‘You ok?' she says to me. ‘You're quite pale yourself.'

She feels my forehead and gazes down at the floor cos that helps her measure my temperature better. I wipe her germs off with my sleeve after.

Even though it's the afternoon Mum looks like she does when she's just got up. I think she probably smells the way Dad does when he's just got up too. He smells a lot of sleep in the mornings, sort of a brown muddy smell. I try not to hug him till he's had a shower.

‘What about you, Sonny Jim?' she says.

I shrug. I don't like being nice to her in front of Robert. I take some quick breaths through my nose then hold on again.

‘Have you missed Mum? Did I give you a bit of a scare, getting ill like this? What's up with you, you look like you're pushing out a poo!'

Robert laughs his pants off then sits on her bed and she looks at him a second but her searchlights are on me again and a lady is crying behind some curtains next to us. Mum shrugs about it and whispers ‘What can you do. I preferred it when I was catching and got to have my own room. Can't remember such peace and quiet. Except your dad snoring in the chair next to me.'

Robert's playing with the hand of hers that's got the line coming out, looking at her palm like he loves it.

‘Don't keep squeaking your shoe on the lino, love,' she says. ‘It's going right through me.'

‘Can I go and watch the TV?'

‘Golf? You want to watch golf rather than visit your mum? I haven't seen you in ages. Mum's been
very ill
.'

I shrug and get the beetroots.

‘Go on then,' she says. ‘Go on, if you must. You'll keep me company won't you, Robert.'

He hugs her, almost yanking out the needle. Maybe he'll snap it off inside her and it'll rush along the bloodstream and stab her in the heart. If he hurts her he's dead.

I go over to the TV meanwhile trying not to notice the beds with all these women looking like they're rubber puppets without a hand inside them. One of them is smiling at me and waving me over. I hold my breath harder and concentrate on the telly which is looking at a golf man looking at a ball and the hole. There's a man next to him with golf clubs, holding an umbrella over the golfer like he's the king of somewhere.

Robert is talking very fast and moving his arms and sitting on her bed with his shoes on the ground and his socks showing and Mum's mouth is smiling and moving a tiny bit while he talks.

Dad comes in and there are noisy kisses all round, he looks for me and waves me closer as if it's picnic time. He sits next to Mum on the bed and they all look like an advert for something you should want.

Then the golfer misses the hole. He misses it. The hole is empty and the ball is nearby and I don't know why but it makes me sort of sad. Like the golf hole is unhappy. Then the scary old lady whispers ‘Hey, sonny' and waves me over to her again. I stay very still looking up at the TV, my neck really having to bend and the angle makes the tears get hidden in my hair.

Mum is coming home soon and I'm getting scareder and scareder. Feelings are nasty. I wipe my eyes without anyone seeing me, then breathe out some of the wobbles.

‘Hey, Mr Ballesteros, come here!' Dad says.

I go slowly over and while they're chatting I'm thinking about how many people might be dying in the world right now. How many are taking a poo. Or sneezing out germs. How many animals are dying right now? Animals have to die alone. Nobody holds an animal's hand.