Where the Moon Isn't (7 page)

These are the things we learnt.

My illness and I.

‘Billions of years ago exploding stars sent atoms hurtling through space and we’ve been recycling them on Earth ever since. Except for the occasional comet, meteor, some interstellar dust, we’ve used exactly the same atoms over and over since the Earth was formed. We eat them, we drink them, we breathe them, we are made of them. At this precise moment each of us is exchanging our atoms with everyone else, and not just with each other, but with other animals, trees, fungi, moulds—’

Mr Philips glanced at the clock, it was nearly break time, and already people had started to pack away their books and begin conversations.

‘Quiet please. We’re nearly done. So what do you have in common with Einstein? One. Are you made out of similar kinds of atoms? Yes, I suppose, and aside from the most minute variations all humans are made of the same basic ingredients, Oxygen (sixty-five per cent), Carbon (eighteen per cent), Hydrogen (ten per cent) etc. So number two is also correct, but what about number three? Is there any part of the world’s greatest ever physicist sitting amongst us now?’

He looked around the room, pausing for effect. ‘Sadly, not enough it seems. For those who are interested, the answer is yes, and not just one or two atoms, but probably many many many atoms that were once part of Einstein, are currently, for a while at least, part of you. Right now. And not just Einstein, but Julius Caesar, Hitler, the cavemen, dinosaurs—’

The bell rang, cutting his list short.

I added someone else though.

Jacob rushed into the classroom, grabbed his bag, and left, ignoring Mr Philips’ request for him to stay. I don’t know why it was this day I decided to follow him. Perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps it was another day.

Maybe I waited in the rain, hidden beside the bike sheds – which aren’t really sheds, but more like a cage – and after he ran through the gates, gasping at air, I ran after him. It wasn’t so far; a few streets onto the estate with the small bungalows and little squares of perfectly kept green lawn.

It was just a thing to do, I suppose – to see where he lived. Probably I’d turn around and head back as soon as he went inside.

‘Jacob!’

Except I didn’t head back.

I called out.

More and more these days I only knew what I was going to do as I actually did it. He was inside the porch. ‘Jacob!’ My voice was lost in the wind. He closed the door, and I stood on the front grass for a while, catching my breath.

The rain fell harder. I pulled up my hood and moved around the side of the bungalow. It was small, like a Doll’s House. I don’t mean it wasn’t nice, that isn’t what I’m saying. Anyway, not everything has to mean something.

I carefully stepped over a few empty plant pots and a garden gnome holding a fishing rod. This wasn’t sneaking. You couldn’t say I was sneaking, because I had tried to get his attention.

I had called out his name.

I think.

Around the back I arrived at the single large window, with its slatted blinds. I crouched down low, gripping the wet ledge with my fingers.

The electric wheelchair was the first thing I saw, but she wasn’t in it. She was in bed, and now Jacob was beside her, leaning over her, attaching clips to a kind of metal crane. He stood back, holding a remote control. Slowly, she started to lift away from her mattress, hoisted in a huge sling. Jacob’s movements were precise, efficient. Holding the top of the crane with both hands he swivelled her away from the bed, pulled away dirty sheets, put fresh ones in their place. I stopped watching him, because I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The way he’d turned her, she was suspended facing the window, facing me, with her bloated arms flopped to her sides, her dull eyes fixed straight ahead.

It’s dark, night-time, the air tastes of salt, and Simon is bleating, begging me not to dig it up, telling me he’s frightened. I lift the doll, she is dirty, sodden. Her arms flop at her sides. I hold her in the air. The rain falls, and Simon is backing away, clutching his chest. She wants to play with you, Simon. She wants to play chase.

I ran, skidding around the side of the bungalow, tumbling over a stone pot, back on my feet, over the lawn – afraid to look back – across the road, through the gates, into school, with trillions of atoms colliding inside me, only atoms, trillions of atoms, and many, many, many of Simon’s atoms. Somewhere in the playground I crumpled. And threw up.

Perhaps we had Geography that same day. Or maybe we didn’t. Maybe it was another day.

The teacher put on a video, about the weather and the climate. Do you remember the difference? The lights were off to help us see the screen better, so I don’t think Jacob noticed me reach into his pencil case and take out the set of compasses. I’ve already said what happened next. Sorry, Jacob.

the watching stair

‘My God, listen to yourself. You sound like your father. So that’s the answer, is it? You’re going to what, Richard? Knock some sense into him?’

‘You think I won’t?’

‘What will that teach him exactly?’

‘That he can’t bloody—’

‘Go on.’

‘Christ, Susan. We can’t do nothing.’

‘I’m not suggesting that.’

They were sitting in the glow of the standing lamp, holding hands, still holding hands even as they fought over what to do about a son like me. Mum’s head resting on Dad’s shoulder, a second bottle of wine nearly drunk.

‘Then what exactly?’

‘He knows what he did was wrong—’

‘That doesn’t cut it.’

‘We’re going to the school—’

‘Yes, because we’ve been summoned.’

‘No, because we offered. He’s a teenage boy. They go through phases. Didn’t you?’

‘Not that phase. Not the phase of assaulting people.’

‘It wasn’t—’

‘Now you listen to yourself
.
This isn’t normal, it isn’t part of growing up. And do you know what hurts the most?’

‘You’re disappointed, I know. So am I—’

‘No, that isn’t it. I was disappointed when he swore at your mother. I was disappointed when his school marks dropped and he didn’t seem to care. I was disappointed when we caught him smoking, and again when we caught him smoking pot. I’d be hard pushed to recall a day this last year when I haven’t been disappointed in the boy for something. But this?’

‘Let’s not do this now.’

‘I’m ashamed.’

Simon used to stay up half an hour later than me, because he was the eldest. I’d brush my teeth and be tucked into bed, but when I was certain Mum had gone downstairs, I would follow.

On the fourth stair from the top, with your forehead pressed against the banisters, you can spy through a glass panel over the living-room door and see most of the sofa, half the coffee table, and a corner of the fireplace. I would watch until the darkness of the hall closed around the glow from the living room, and the softness of their voices blended with the sound of my own breathing, so that sometimes I wouldn’t even feel myself being lifted, or hear Mum calling me her little rascal. I’d simply wake up the next morning, in the warm comfort of my own bed.

One night Simon was practising his reading. It wasn’t so long before that this had been a shared ritual, the two of us taking turns to read aloud from the same book.

‘It’s my page, Matthew. Not yours.’

‘I’m only trying to help.’

‘I can do it by myself.’

He couldn’t. Not so well. So he practised with Mum after I went to bed, and I’d watch her patiently teach him the same words night after night; she couldn’t have loved him more. Dad would be relegated to the far end of the sofa where I couldn’t see him properly, only his legs stretched out in front, and a socked foot resting on the coffee table.

That’s how it was as Simon read his picture book of The Lion King. Nanny Noo bought it for him from a charity shop and it became his favourite because when it gets to the part where Pumbaa and Timon start talking about Hakuna Matata, Dad would try to sing it. It was so funny because he didn’t know the words properly, and he’d always get partway through, then find himself doing that King of the Swingers song – which isn’t even from The Lion King. I guess you had to be there, but it was really funny.

Except this night, as I sat on the watching stair, they didn’t get that far, because when Simba’s dad died in the buffalo stampede, Simon went quiet.

‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’

‘What if Daddy dies?’

I couldn’t see Dad properly. It was hard to hear him too. But you get to know the sort of answer someone might give. What my dad would have done was make his funny face with his eyes all wide, and say something like, ‘Blimey, sunshine. D’you know something your old pa doesn’t?’

Usually that would be enough to make everything okay, but this time it wasn’t, because Simon said it again. ‘What if you die? What if— What if you both die?’

If he got himself wound up he’d struggle to get his breath, and that made things worse. Before I was born there was a time when he couldn’t breathe for so long that his skin turned blue. That’s what Mum told me, anyway. And even as she explained how he’d had a small operation, so it should never happen again, even as she told me that, she looked afraid.

‘Who would— What would—’

He was clutching at his chest. I must have looked like a superhero, bursting through the door – my dressing gown billowing like a cape. It was probably the shock that startled him out of it, and I’m not sure he even heard what I said, but what I said was, ‘I’ll look after you Simon. I’ll always look after you.’

We read the rest of the story as a family. And when it got to Hakuna Matata, we all sang King of the Swingers. I’ve never seen my parents look so proud.

Dad gulped back the last of his wine, and went to refill his glass. Mum placed her hand over his.

‘We’re tired. Let’s go to bed.’

‘I’m ashamed of my own son.’

‘Please, don’t.’

‘Well I am. And not for the first time.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You know exactly what it means, don’t pretend that you weren’t too.’

‘Don’t you dare. How— You’re drunk.’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes. You are. He’s our little boy for Christ’s sake.’

Dad slunk to the end of the sofa, and all I could see was his socked foot resting on the coffee table.

a cloud of smoke

Jacob fastened the clips on his side, and watched me fasten the clips on mine. ‘It goes in the third notch,’ he said.

I knew that already.

He liked to be sure.

When she was secure I took the remote control and pressed the ↑ button, jerking the mechanical arm into life, lifting her slowly into the air. ‘It’s so kind of you to help,’ Mrs Greening said.

This was a good day for her, some days she didn’t talk. I think Jacob preferred it when she didn’t talk.

He emptied her bag of piss into a plastic jug, whilst I put fresh sheets on the bed and fluffed her pillows.

‘I think I’ll go in the chair today,’ she said.

Jacob positioned the electric wheelchair, and supported her neck and head as I pressed the ↓ button. In the kitchen the microwave went
ping
, and he said, ‘I’ll go.’ Then he disappeared to collect her tea.

‘Do you know where your tray is?’

‘Over there, on the bedside table.’ She pointed, but even that was difficult for her. She had better days and worse days. On the really bad days, she found it hard to do almost anything.

I attached the tea-tray into the slot on the front of her chair, and she asked, ‘Are you as good to your mother?’

‘What? My mum isn’t—’

We went quiet then, and time stretched out, endlessly.

She had a nice long neck but a crooked nose. I couldn’t decide if she was prettier than Mum.

I don’t suppose it matters.

‘I mean—’

‘Here you go, Ma.’ Jacob came back through, placing her food onto the tray. ‘Careful, it’s hot.’

He’d seen me. Of course he’d seen me. Peeking through the window, watching him, looking at his mum, then running away. What difference does it make? Aren’t we all desperate to spill our secrets?

I was suspended for two weeks. Mum and Dad and me were on one side of the desk, and the Deputy Head was on the other, saying, ‘We cannot accept behaviour of this kind in our school, indeed in our society.’

My parents nodded.

I assume.

I was staring at my hands, too ashamed to look at anyone. Mum said how truly sorry I was, that I’d arrived home as white as a ghost, and the Deputy Head said she didn’t doubt it, how her impression, indeed the impression of her staff, was of a quiet, reflective student.

I clenched my fists, digging little crescents into my palms with my fingernails. I could feel her staring at me, trying to read my thoughts. Perhaps there was something going on at home they should know about? Anything that might be troubling me?

My parents shook their heads.

I assume.

It doesn’t matter because when I arrived back at school, and took my seat for morning registration, his grinning face appeared next to me. Jacob Greening wasn’t the sort to hold grudges.

‘Fuck it. Didn’t hurt, anyway.’