Donor, The (16 page)

‘I promise! I’ll go to that place down the Gorbals. You don’t even need to make an appointment.’ She’d let go of my hand. Scrunched-up-crying-face suddenly became excited-’cause-I’ll-be-off-my-head-soon face.

I pulled my hands from hers and got my purse from the hall table. There was nothing in it. No surprise, really, as no one in our house had an income. Pocket money had stopped along with the rentals in Spain. But Dad always kept emergency money in the filing cabinet under E. Retard. I went back into his office and opened the cabinet.

Was that my diary on his desk? What the fudge! Putting that issue to the side for a moment, I retrieved a twenty-pound note from a small leather wallet in the filing cabinet, shut it, and handed it to my mother
figure
, who was now drooling at the door of the office.

‘So, you have got somewhere to stay?’

‘Aye. This hostel in Govanhill for now, but I’ll get a furnished flat from the council soon as the benefits are sorted.’

‘Let me know when you’re settled.’

‘Thank you, Georgie. I mean it. Thank you.’

There were no kisses or hugs. I closed the door and sighed.

*

What was my diary doing in Dad’s office? I went back in and lifted it from his desk. Had he read it? He better bloody not have. Kay’s was underneath it. What was he doing with our diaries? Both had been placed on top of a brown notebook. Without thinking, I opened the notebook and read the first line of the first page.

Typical Dad. Years ago, when he announced that he was going to make another attempt at a screenplay, he locked himself away in the office for weeks, finally appearing, triumphant, with a similar notebook. In it, he had made a very long list indicating how he was going to write the thing.

The plan had seventy-five points, each with around five sub-points. He read it to us in the living room, proud of himself for making it. Dickhead.

‘You should just write it,’ I remember saying when he’d finished reading.

He went back to his office in a huff, puncturing the list onto the metal spike he put all his defunct lists on. It was half full of lists, this spike. Dead lists.

So this was his plan now – to write useless notes about how he might save us.

Cynthia
. Okay, so – unusually – he had actually found her, but it hadn’t helped. What was next on his list of things to either not do or do badly?

Parents – useless pricks.

Buy one.

Oh my God, he’d printed out a picture of boys with scars, standing in line in their slums in the Philippines. How could he even think of this? It made me feel sick. Did he really believe we would agree to the idea? Even if it saved our lives? Well, okay, maybe. Probably.

His notes about how to raise the forty grand made me laugh. His parents! The stingy stuck-up pricks that they were.

The bank! What did he think they’d say? ‘Yes, here you go – O unemployed single parent – off and join the black-market organ trade.’

The next way to raise the cash was ‘Linda’. That must be why he went there tonight. Should I go over there and tell him to stop this nonsense? That I hated the idea of paying for a body part from some poor child? I felt sure that Kay would feel the same. Yes, I decided I should go over there and confront him about it.

But what was that – a blank page in the notebook followed by a missing one. He must have ripped one out. Why? I looked in the bin. It wasn’t there. Checked on the desk and floor – nup. Opened the drawer of his desk … Ah, look, there it was. A ripped, scrunched page. I sat down, straightened it out, pieced it together, and contemplated the headings: GEORGIE and KAY; PROS and CONS.

I was born unhappy and I stayed that way.

I have found it difficult to conform.

I am mean.

Selfish.

Horrible.

I have no hope.

No ambition.

No kindness.

I love no one bar a junkie who does not love me, she loves

my twenty quid.

I hate my father.

He hates me too.

I never knew.

Till now.

Do I want to kill him?

It’s very easy to get a gun.

I hate everything.

I want to die.

Thanks Dad, for writing the perfect note. He had a thing about notes, ever since she left, without leaving so much as a scribble. And this was a masterpiece: the screenplay he never started let alone finished.

Oh shut up Georgie and find that bottle.

You should cry Georgie, you should.

Ah, there it was, in the bag, along with what? Cigarettes.

The station.

Trains leave for Central at nine minutes past the hour.

Did Kay call my name as I left? I wasn’t sure. My ears had stopped hearing. Did it matter that I was barefoot? In just jeans and a T-shirt at ten to nine on a weekday?

My feet had stopped feeling.

One step then another and another. The train would come soon and I didn’t want to miss it. It was a further grand thing about our suburb, the train line, leaving at nine minutes past the hour every hour. The train line and the schools.

I didn’t care when young girls stared on the way back from Brownies.

Oh, that was another thing about our area, Brownies.

I didn’t care when a woman stared from her front door, waiting for the Tesco delivery man to empty the van and fill her kitchen.

A car may have tooted as I crossed the road to the station. May have even screeched a little. I had my bottle in my hand now. The walking was necessary.

Nothing could stop me.

I am mean.

Am I mean?

There were boys on the ramp, smoking boys. I walked past them, down to the platform. It was one minute past nine. A middle-aged man sat on the bench reading the business section of his paper. He was going out of town. Must have gone to the pub round the
corner
on the way back from work. Probably had a job in the city and went to important meetings that required dark grey suits and a knowledge of the business section of the
Herald
. When his train came, he would head
further
into suburban wilderness where there are no pubs.

I didn’t want him to see me. I walked to the other side of the platform, sat on the edge, and drank a
quarter
of my bottle.

I am selfish.

Am I selfish?

I suppose there is evidence. If Dad buys Doritos and I find them first, I eat them all.

The smoking boys on the ramp were laughing at me. Once I might have cared but I didn’t care about anyone any more.

Ah, I am all of the above.

The train came and went on the other platform, along with the businessman.

It was five minutes past nine.

I want to kill my father.

Do I want to kill my dad?

I wonder if he wrote it quickly, discovered it quickly, or did he agonise over it like the screenplay he never wrote a few years back?

I have found it hard to conform.

Have I?

I drank another quarter of my bottle.

I want to die.

Do I?

Four minutes until my train, my end, would arrive. Before that, two questions. I felt anxious to answer them in time.

Do I have nothing to live for?

What will it feel like, dying this way, compared to slowly merging with my Alfred?

I supposed it would feel scary for a moment, then very sore, sorer than anything you could imagine, then maybe you might hear something, a screeching of brakes, perhaps, or the smoking boys on the ramp screaming – no, yelling, because they’re boys. Or maybe the silence would arrive sooner, even sooner than the soreness. So really all you’d have is the scary part, and I was already fucking scared so another scary thing, big scary train, wouldn’t bother me. No, I concluded, this could be a good way to die compared to merging with my Alfred.

Georgie and Alfred:
They lived together. They died together. It was hard to tell them apart towards the end. Whose tube was that? Whose was that red stuff? Who was that sniggering?

But, hey, I’d only answered the easy question.

The first was the hardest.
Do I have nothing to live for?
‘Let me think,’ I said out loud. ‘What do people normally have to live for?’

If it’s happiness, I’m fucked.

If it’s money, I’m fucked.

If it’s procreation, I’m fucked.

If it’s hope …

If it’s loving …

Oh, okay, I see.

*

Something pinged, made me look around. The screen on the platform was flashing with a fresh message.
THE
9.09
TO GLASGOW CENTRAL HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO AN EVENT IN NEILSTON. ALL TRAINS CANCELLED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

Ha! The train was cancelled. I didn’t believe in
messages
from God, didn’t even believe in God, but the train was cancelled!

*

I have an incredible
staracity
, a word I made up to
define
my skill for doing what I do for hours each day. Stare. At bloody nothing. For ages.

I was walking along the train tracks. What had
happened
in Neilston to cancel my train? An
event
. Big word, event. Either a meteor had struck it or there’d been a jumper. Something death-related, anyway. When I died, would my father tell people he’d had an event? ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your event,’ they might write on white cards embossed with smug silver barely coating the secret message: ‘Thank God it’s you who had the event. We have not had one. Go, us!’

In the Neilston case I supposed someone down the road had asked himself:
What do people normally live for?
and he had worse answers than me. I had scored one and a half out of five – some hope, a strong desire for loving. He might have got one, or none, which meant he had no choice but to jump – or gently lower himself down and stand – in front of the train that was
obviously
not destined for me. I passed the test. Well, that was something.

I was walking along the train tracks. I had consumed one whole bottle of vodka. My feet were bare. I wanted to find the right place to stare. I was looking forward to it. People who don’t have good staracity don’t know what they’re missing. When I stare, I turn what’s in front of me into something altogether different. Not better, necessarily. Sometimes much worse. But that can be an excellent thing, returning to reality and
finding
it’s an improvement on the mass murder in your stare, that everything in the real world is actually less bloody. It’s the best thing to do at times like these.

Had there ever been times like these? Had
someone
else found the mother she craved more than her mother craved heroin – only to be sliced open to no avail? Had anyone else been hit twice by Will Marion, who slaps faces fucking hard and who loves my sister more than he loves me?

He was going to let me go.

He was going to save Kay.

He was going to let me go.

He’d never made one decision, my father, not one, in his whole life, and this is the one.

*

I reached the perfect place, up the platform, over the bridge; the skateboard park. Large and green, this park. Ominous, maybe even without the knowledge that a woman had been killed here not so long ago, dragged from the sidewalk and inside to be raped and strangled and turned into posters and yellow plastic police strips. Sitting on the half pipe, I wondered if being raped and strangled would be worse than my situation in any case?

Dad. I loved you, mostly. Like a scab to pick at, eat even, if no one’s watching. Scabs are nice. I like a lot about them. But I despise them too. War scars. I fell off that chute. I couldn’t ride that bike.

I despised you for the wrong reason. It wasn’t your fault she left. It wasn’t your fault and I blamed you for it. I wish now it was the right reason. Such a nice simple reason – you made her go. You never stopped her. Now I yearn for that anger. Where is anger when I need it?

Where are tears when I need them?

What has happened to my staracity?

I’m supposed to go to dialysis again tomorrow.

Fuck you, Dad.

Fuck you, Alfred.

I’m not going.

If Kay wasn’t sleeping she was flicking from one news channel to another. Afghanistan, flick. Cocaine-taking politician, flick. Pile up on the M8. STOP. Watching the footage of the M8, she’d ask herself, as he touched her phone, if this might be her kidney.

How old is the person?
she’d say to the television, and if the reporter didn’t answer, she’d switch to another channel to see if more information was available. If there was none, she’d say a little prayer that went like this:

Please, oh please God, let that be mine.

She felt bad that she didn’t say ‘or Georgie’s’.

For the last few days she’d flicked through her
waking
hours – news, news and the occasional ad that interested her:

‘Three people die every day waiting for a kidney … Please register as a donor now.’

Please register now, she’d say. I am the weak dying guy in the chair on that ad. I’m waiting for the flesh that you won’t need.

Apart from the ad, it was the news.

There was a drowning in the Clyde. Could be hers.

A murder in Pollok. Would that one do?

A fire in Edinburgh. Too damaged?

The morning after Georgie ran off – ignoring her plea to ‘Stay, don’t go, I think I’m going crazy!’ (Did Georgie even hear? It was unlike her to leave her sister in distress) – Kay turned on the news, got out of bed, showered, dressed, and walked to the train station. There’d been a death at Neilston. A man of
twenty-four
had jumped in front of the train to Glasgow Central. His name was John Bain.
John Bain
, she asked herself as she walked towards the station,
have you got my kidney?

She knew it was silly before she arrived at Neilston. The body would be well gone. Everything would be back to normal. But she couldn’t help herself. She needed to see first hand the kind of incident that she longed for.

The body was gone. The trains were running on schedule. John Bain had either been too squished, donated to someone else or had failed to register as a donor.

Kay didn’t want to go home. Like looking very hard in the direction a bus was supposed to come from – any time soon, any time soon, relax your neck and you’ll miss it – she felt she should crook her neck for her kidney.

She went into town, wandered around until she found a hospital and followed signs to the Accident and Emergency Department. The waiting area was typically depressing. Plastic chairs were filled with the coughing, the bleeding, the moaning, the
head-holding
, the almost-puking, the drunk and the
drug-addled
. Pale children played with broken bits of sticky toys. Paramedics wheeled trolleys through double doors. Receptionists noted walking wounded details through thick glass:

‘Mrs Malloy … chest pains, you say? Go to room 5!’

‘Mr Thomas … when did the rash appear? Where is it? On the groin area? Take a seat.’

‘Miss Carroll … ring stuck on your finger? We’ll call your name.’

‘Mr King … you’re looking unsteady. Car accident? Mr King? Mr King? Nurse!’

And so on.

Kay watched intently. The man leaning over the cardboard puke container – was he dying? Should I ask him? The teenager lying unconscious on the trolley in the corridor. Could I have hers? The middle-aged woman with chest pains being taken in for a scan. Ask her, ask her, before the second attack. Have you
registered
? Would you please consider me?

If she waited long enough, Kay thought, maybe hers would arrive.