A Fine Man

A Fine Man

I didn’t watch them take his body away; Jonathan could take care of the formalities.  Sitting on the leather sofa, I held my glass up to the light.  The whiskey inside seemed translucent.  Dark outlines of the ice bobbed inside, clinking against the glass.

    Jonathan came back into the room, jingling his car keys.  I kept looking at the glass.

    “It’s sorted,” said Jonathan. “Emma?”

    “Show Daddy how much you love him,” I said.

    I downed half the whiskey.  My throat burned.  It tasted of him; it smelled and tasted of his mouth when he first came to my bedroom, when I was fourteen years old.

    It had been ten years since I last sat in this lounge.  Nothing was different; the same dusty, unread books; the same chintzy horses in their cabinet; the same record player, an antique even back then. 

    Taking my whiskey, I went upstairs and into my old bedroom, taking in the bare white walls, the single bed, and the tattered dolls; all remnants of someone else’s life.  Everything was how I remembered it.  Even the mirror was still smashed.

    The remaining shards of glass reflected the room, my face, and the bed behind me.  Images flooded into my head; memories of the alcohol on his breath, of his body pressed against mine, the weight suffocating me, that stench of Old Spice and body odour.

    “Show Daddy how much you love him.”

    How many times did he visit?  I couldn’t remember.  Too many times, all after the cancer took hold of Mum.  After she became old and bald and skinny overnight, a walking corpse with nothing left to give. 

    He used her against me, insisted on her frailty. “It could finish her.  How could you carry on, knowing how you killed your mother?”

    Mum knew, though.  My bloodied sheets must have given it away. The next morning, at breakfast, she couldn’t even look at me.  We both sat there, silent, while he drank his coffee and read out the headlines.  She knew and she said nothing.  I hated her for that.

    That’s why I missed her funeral.  Why I hadn’t been back here in so long.  I stared at the shards.  It was like looking at myself in a hall of mirrors, except they didn’t make me fat or thin. They made me fourteen again.  Small.  Scared.  I rolled up my sleeve, exposing the scars on my wrist.

    The door behind me creaked open.

    “Are you okay?” asked Jonathan.

    “I broke this mirror the day I ran away.”

    “I know.  Are you okay?”

    “He’d made some joke about my hair, about how he loved getting lost in it.”

    “Emma-”

    “That’s why I cut it off.  I found some scissors and started hacking at it.  It was a mess.  So I smashed the glass, to destroy what was in it.”

    “Emma, come on.  Come away.”

    I winced at his gentle touch, but I let him lead me out, back downstairs.  He sat me down and took the whiskey glass from me.  His phone rang.

    “Look, I’ve got to get this.  Sit here and I’ll make you a coffee.  Okay?”

    I nodded and he went into the kitchen.

    The door bell rang while I sat there.  I ignored at first but it kept insisting with short, impatient blasts.  Jonathan was still on the phone; I heard his muffled voice through the open door.  I pushed myself from the chair and went to answer it.

    “Mrs Givens,” I said.

    “Hello, Emma.”  She went to shake my hand, got halfway, and thought better of it.  “It’s been a long time.”

    “Yes.”

    We stood facing each other.  She looked old; her hair showed grey at the roots, and she seemed to have shrunk over the years.  Standing on the step, her head barely reached my chest. Her eyes didn’t bother to meet mine.  They seemed to be looking over my shoulder, into the house. 

    “I just popped by to see if there was anything I could do.” 

    “Not right now.”

    “I see.  I was with him, you know.  When he died.”

    Leaning against the doorway, I watched as she fumbled with her handbag, waiting for her to get to the point.  She took out a cigarette and lit it.  The smoke made me cough.

    “I’m to sort out the funeral,” she said.

    “So I’m told.”

    “Will you be there?”

    An old collie trotted through the neighbour’s front door and into the garden.  It yawned and stretched out on the grass to watch us, ears pricked.  I watched it over her shoulder.

    “That wouldn’t be a good idea,” I said.

    She nodded and dropped her cigarette, grinding it into the step with her heel.  “I thought as much.  After all, you didn’t go to your mother’s either.”

    “I had my reasons.”

    “Your fairy stories, anyway.”

    The dog grew bored.  It stood up, stretched, and went back into the house.  A bus went by, full of school kids.

    “They almost destroyed your father, you know.”

    “I hear you were round pretty quick to comfort him.  And they weren’t fairy stories.”

    “Even your own mother called you a liar.  Your father was a fine man.  He needed you!”

    “Why, when he had you?  Did you at least let him bury Mum first?”

    Her body shook. “I gave him the support he needed!”

    Jonathan’s voice interrupted us from the lounge, calling to say that my coffee was ready.  I shouted an answer over my shoulder and started to shut the door.

    “That’s the photographer you ran off to, then,” she said.  “I hear you’ve caused him as much grief as you did your father.”

She glanced pointedly at my wrists.  My breath caught as I followed her gaze.  I put my hands in my pockets, away from view.

    “The difference is, he doesn’t deserve it,” I said.

    “He’ll see through you eventually.  You’ll learn what it’s like for a loved one to leave you.”

    “Go home, Mrs Givens.”

    “I hear you’re a counsellor now.  Talk about the blind leading the blind.  Could you cope without him?”

    My whole body trembled as the door slammed shut. Willing the tears to stay away, I told myself she was wrong, trying to hurt me, that I was better than her, desperately trying to make myself believe it.

    Her voice came through the wood panels: “He was a fine man!  Everyone thought so but you!”

    I turned my back on her and walked away.

    “Who was it?” asked Jonathan.  He was sitting in my father’s old chair, drinking his coffee.  Mine sat on the table in front of him.  I picked it up and walked to the window.

    Seeing the concern on his face, I shrugged and tried to smile. “A friendly neighbour.”

    Resting my head against the glass, I gazed out at the old neighbourhood where the boys across the street used to play out during summer evenings, calling up for me to join them.  It was overcast outside.  Grey, scudding clouds hid the afternoon sun.

    My finger traced the outlines of the scars on my wrist.  I remembered the night I cut them, the sight of the bloodied razor in my hand and the life pumping painfully from me, turning the sink red.  I remembered the panic on Jonathan’s face, how he desperately staunched the blood with his best towels, all the while talking to me, begging me to live, to survive.

    Was Mrs Givens right?  Would I be too much for Jonathan?  Was my baggage too much for someone else to live with?

    He came up behind me now.  His hands gripped my shoulders.

    “I know why Mum never spoke against Dad,” I said.  “She knew she was dying.  She couldn’t cope.”

    “That’s not an excuse.”

    “He was all she had left when I ran away.  And she couldn’t face life alone. I understand, because I’m the same.”  I looked again at my wrist, angling it for him to see.  “I could never cope alone either.  I’m not strong enough.”

    Jonathan turned me round to face him.  Taking hold of my wrist, he lifted it to his mouth, tenderly kissing scarred skin.  It tingled under his lips.

    “You’re not alone.”

    “But-”

    “Emma.  You’re not alone.  I’m here.”

    Wrapping his arms around me, Jonathan held my body close to his.  Together we looked through our reflection in the window, out over my old neighbourhood and towards the horizon.  We stayed that way for a while before sitting down with our drinks.

    I sipped at my coffee.  It was strong and warm, and it washed away the final traces of my father’s whiskey.

    “Let’s go home,” I said.