The Bed Book of Short Stories

Lena My Lovely

129 Lena My Lovely Rosemund Handler When I was a boy I would often have vivid dreams of falling: down steps, off my bike, tripping and rolling under a moving car. Always, the visible parts were my head and neck; the rest of me had been somehow painlessly removed. In these dreams, in which I was both actor and spectator, I had no trunk, no legs or feet, but that did not stop me from repeatedly urging myself to stand. Nothing would happen. My head lay on the ground like a ball at rest, anxious blue eyes staring up at a shadowy sky. Was I waiting to be kicked or to be carried away? Who was I waiting for? In the dreams nobody came. I was never picked up, never rescued. When I woke up my face was wet with tears, the pillow damp. Sometimes, when the intensity of my heart’s panicky pounding frightened me, I padded across and climbed into my brother’s bed. Phil was two years older than me and big for his age. His bed was wide, with a coir mattress that dipped in the middle so that I slid down against his back. His warmth slowed my breathing and I would fall asleep. There is one day I recall with piercing clarity, as if a light in a far corner of my mind never got switched off. Phil and I were in the long passageway of our home, throwing a ball to each other – one of the activities our mother had given up trying to prevent – when the doorbell rang. We never let anything get between us and our game, not even the unusual event of a doorbell ringing in the afternoon, so my mother, who had become adept at ducking when caught in our crossfire, dodged the ball and opened the front door herself. The strangers’ voices at the door were slow and clear. I remember the word alcohol rang in my ear with the authority of the school bell. It could have been written in the sky by one of those planes that advertise a product you cannot live without. 130 The ball bounced dolefully on the floor behind me. My mother thanked the two policemen and closed the door without turning around. By this time Phil and I were standing behind her, close together. When she finally turned to us I thought she would be crying, but she wasn’t. Pink splotches had mushroomed across her face and neck. You heard. Phil and I nodded in unison. Go upstairs to your room, she ordered quietly. In the bedroom we shared we sat on Phil’s bed side by side and said nothing. I wished he would touch my hand or put his arm around me as he sometimes did when I messed up in our ball game, but he didn’t. My throat was dry, my eyes even drier. I sneaked a look at Phil. He was gazing thoughtfully at the carpet, not a tear in sight. I wondered if there was something wrong with us. The death brought to our door by the policemen was not that of a stranger, but our own father’s. Yet neither of us was crying. Our mother’s bedroom door remained closed to us. The silence behind it was dark and heavy. * * * My mother had worked hard to conceal my father’s drinking. I’m not sure what the neighbours thought, but Phil and I understood without exchanging a word that my father’s mother and his two sisters knew, yet never allowed themselves to know, that their son and brother was a drunk. Sodden with drink my father was unreachable, exuding a foggy breath of spirits that percolated the house and seemed to stain it the colour of brandy. I stayed away as much as I could, which, after school finished for the day, wasn’t much. When he was sober it was worse, because then he seemed unfamiliar, a grey-faced, hard-eyed stranger, and it was almost a relief when he crossed rapidly from tight-lipped sobriety to loud, discursive drunkenness. His dirty collar and askew tie, his open mouth flecked with tobacco like bits of seaweed disgusted me, but didn’t make me afraid. Drunk he was oddly predictable and his talkativeness made me feel less alienated. He loved talking about sport, especially rugby, and was well-informed, though he never once came to ROSEMUND HANDLER [18.216.83.240...