Body of Water (5 page)

"You know what I mean."

"You have a great physique. I didn't believe you when you said you didn't swim because you're built like a swimmer. Your school shirt was always too tight across the chest and shoulders."

Shaun's hand moved to my pendant. "What is this made of? It's heavy."

"It's iron."

"Shouldn't it be rusty?"

"It used to irritate my skin so Ruth, I mean Mum, lacquered it."

He dropped it back onto my skin, followed by a kiss. "That's a shame."

"Why?"

"If it rusted, it would be the same colour as my hair."

A door slammed downstairs followed by the sound of footsteps racing upwards.

"Fuck, it's Beth." Shaun leapt to his feet, threw my clothes at me, and pulled on his own jogging bottoms.

As he dove for the television, three things happened at once: the door swung open; the television screen lit up; and Shaun pulled up his trousers.

"Phew," Beth said, holding her nose. "It smells like boys in here."

She marched to the window and threw it open.

"The sleep-over was appalling. Can you believe that we had to have lights out at ten?" She plonked herself on the bed next to me. "I bet you two have been having fun all night."

The rest of the day was excruciating. Beth followed us everywhere and I had to restrain Shaun on more than one occasion when she drove herself between us.

"She's just a kid," I said. "Count yourself lucky that she doesn't know what's really going on. Besides, not being able to get my hands on you makes me want to get my hands on you even more."

"I want you so much," Shaun moaned. "I can't stand it."

"Then tonight will be amazing."

But after a sleepless night before, we both fell asleep after Beth insisted on watching a Disney movie.

Bleary-eyed, I woke to find them both asleep, Shaun curled up next to me, his arm across Beth, and his hand resting on my thigh.

I lifted his arm off me and got up. Edging around Beth, I nudged Shaun's shoulder. He took some time to wake up but when he did, I put my finger to my lips and beckoned him upstairs.

Before his bedroom door was shut his mouth was on mine. We struggled with our clothes and then Shaun flung himself onto the bed.

And then my heart stopped as I realised that someone was in the room with us.

"GET THE HELL AWAY FROM MY SON!"

A hand grabbed my shoulder and flung me across the room. I cowered in the corner while a man advanced towards me, swearing loudly. I heard Shaun and Beth shouting for the man, their father, to stop but my clothes were hurled at me along with more abuse. Their mother stood in silence. My confusion froze me in place. It was the early hours of Sunday morning. What were their parents doing home? Hadn't Shaun said they were in Milan for the weekend?

"Daddy," screamed Beth. "Stop!"

"Beth, go to your room. No arguments, young lady. Bed. Now."

Leven nodded to her before she turned and left. Once her father heard her bedroom door close he rounded on me.

"If I was a fighting man, you'd be laid out on that floor. Your parents would be disgusted to know what you are."

"My parents love me and they'd be disgusted with you, not me."

"Then they're fools. They took scum like you into their home, showered you with love and affection and how do you repay them? You perform criminal acts, behave outrageously, and seduce my," he struggled with the words. "My son!"

"Dad-" Shaun began.

"You disgust me," his father continued. "You both disgust me."

Shaun tried to intervene but his father swatted him aside. Pure hatred filled me when I saw Shaun fall to the floor, his nose bloody.

The tirade of abuse continued as he dragged me down the stairs to the front door, finally pinning me to the wall by my throat.

"If I ever see you in this house again, or suspect that you have tried to contact my son, I will tell your parents what a disgusting, foul pervert they have brought into their home. No wonder your real parents got rid of you."

As he let me go, his hand caught in the cord that held my pendant around my neck. Angry, he yanked it away from me and the cord snapped.

The hatred spilled from me and I felt a throbbing in my temples. I raised my hand and pointed at him. "If you ever hurt me, or Shaun, again I will kill you."

He moved towards me, his face burning with rage, but suddenly stopped, clutching at his head. As he screamed with pain his wife ran to him but Shaun lay naked on the floor, looking as afraid as his father.

Amidst the chaos I pulled on my jeans and t-shirt, stuffing my socks and underwear into my pockets. I stole one more moment to look for my pendant but I couldn't see it.

I opened the front door and ran across the street, the screaming still ringing in my ears until I slammed my own front door shut behind me.

Thankfully neither Mum nor Alex were home. I slid down the wall, tears burning my cheeks. What the hell just happened? Had I killed him?

I climbed the stairs to my room but left the light off so I could watch Shaun's house. I didn't see any movement. I waited for half an hour but no one arrived or left. Surely if he was hurt they would have called an ambulance?

As I watched, it started to rain and the wind picked up, carrying detritus from the park at the end of the street past the window. I looked up at a sky so polluted with light that the clouds were clearly visible. They moved serenely compared to the tops of the trees whipping in the air, shaken like I had been shaken by Shaun's father.

My thoughts turned to Mum and Alex. I was sure they would find out I was gay sooner or later. I didn't want to keep it a secret from them but I wanted to tell them when I was ready. But would I ever be ready?

I closed the curtains and crawled into bed. Using my phone's screen as a light I made a list of all the positive things that telling them would bring and then another of all the negative things. It took a long time to complete the lists because every sound in the street broke my concentration. My shoulders were tense and my legs started to cramp.

The list of negatives was longer.

I made a list of all the positive things that would come out of not telling them but they all seemed selfish. The list of negative things of not telling them wasn't as long as the other negative list but it weighed more heavily on my mind.

Concluding that I should do the right thing, I decided to tell them one by one, starting with Mum. I was sure she'd take the news best and then we could tell Alex together. I hoped he would be as understanding. I just had to pick the right time.

A few months later I saw Beth briefly as she scurried from the house to the car. I froze, as did she, and then she gave me a short, secretive wave before I noticed her father's expression, angry then petrified, through the car window.

During that time my moods became erratic. I'd lose my temper over the slightest thing and it would take all my powers of concentration to calm down.

By the time my seventeenth birthday arrived I still hadn't seen Shaun.

"Happy birthday, darling," Mum cooed as she placed the most magnificent cake I'd ever seen in front of me.

My eyes filled with tears.

"Darling, whatever's the matter?"

I screwed up my eyes and shook my head before letting it fall into my hands, my shoulders heaving with sobs. "Mum, I'm... Shaun and I... Well, his dad found us..."

"I take it you weren't playing a board game, then?"

"No."

"Good-o," she said, her smile neutral. No, not neutral. Restrained.

"I was expecting more than that."

"I love you?" She hugged me which made me cry.

"Don't you hate me?"

"Why should I?"

"Shaun's dad went mad. He kicked me out of their house and he called me terrible things."

"He is a horrible man, darling. Alex hasn't got a good thing to say about him. How is Shaun?"

"I don't know. I haven't heard from him. It's been nearly a year. I'm not allowed to see him or even call him."

She sat down beside me and held my hand. "I'm sure this will all blow over. Gerald, Shaun's father, is a very traditional man. He's a few years older than Alex and values were different then. At least one good thing has come out of this; Alex owes me fifty pounds."

"Why?"

Her mischievous grin blossomed. "I bet him you'd come out before we finished eating your birthday cake."

My mouth dropped open in horror. "How could you bet on something like that? It's sick."

Mum's expression hardened. For someone so cheerful this was a clear sign that she was as close to angry as she ever got. When Mum sighed, ordinary women would be screaming. "Would you rather I was packing your bags?" She held my face in her hands and wiped my tears away with her thumbs. "You are the most amazing thing that has ever happened to us. I wouldn't give you up for anything."

"But I've done such terrible things."

"I know, but this isn't one of them."

"I'm broken."

"You're not broken, darling. You're a bit chipped around the edges but you're not broken."

"What did I do to deserve you?"

Her smile was infectious. "Something wonderful, I expect. Now, come and open all these cards. Oh, here's Alex."

I balled my fists and steeled myself for what was about to come. With Mum by my side I was sure Alex would be okay but I took nothing for granted.

The door swung open and warm air swept into the room as Mum ran to meet Alex. Low whispers preceded a loud groan. Had she told him?

Alex stepped into the room and looked me up and down, a look of mild disgust on his face.

"It's true then? You're one of them?"

I gulped for air and nodded. Clearly Alex wasn't so keen on the idea of his foster son being gay.

Alex sighed and threw his coat and briefcase onto a chair.

"You've really disappointed me, Lev."

I nodded again, and shifted my weight uncomfortably, scared that Alex might go for me the way Gerald had. If he did I didn't want to hurt him too.

"I'm disappointed for two reasons. Number one, you've lost me fifty quid. Number two, because you've blown my news out of the water."

Mum looked as confused as me as he reached inside his suit jacket and tossed some papers at me.

I looked down at the papers in my lap but Mum reached them first, snatching them away from me.

She read quickly, her face a flurry of emotion. She dropped heavily into a chair.

"The adoption," she croaked, losing her composure. "It's granted. It's granted!"

She began to tremble, looking from Alex to me, and from me to Alex. Then she jumped to her feet, grabbed my hand and hauled me up as she launched herself at Alex.

"Oh, my boys. My boys! We're a proper family at last!"

But our family would be ripped apart in exactly one year.

The topaz days we enjoyed for the next ten months turned obsidian.

Two months before my eighteenth birthday Mum fell ill. What had initially been diagnosed as Irritable Bowel Syndrome was, in fact, Cancer. A month later the correct diagnosis was made but by then it was too late.

As her pain increased so did the doses of morphine pumped into her failing body. She cried out often; incoherent phrases or, more distressing, obscenities. Swearing in our house was usually led by me, occasionally Dad, but never Mum.

On the eve of my birthday Dad called me out of a university open day and asked me to come home. When I barged through the front door I found him alone, polluted with worry.

"She has hours." It was all he could manage before what little light remained in his eyes collapsed in on itself.

We discussed what to do, agreeing to respect her wishes and keep her at home. She belonged with us. She deserved more than to die in some sterile, unfamiliar hospital bed. She should be at home, surrounded by the happy memories that we had created together. We held vigils at her bedside. I took the first, starting that evening.

I sat beside her bed and held her hand in mine as she slept. The woman sleeping in the bed was a pale imitation of the vital mother I loved so much. This time last year I had come out to her and she had made it a special thing. This time last year she had baked a cake; now she could barely open her eyes.

The thickness in my throat connected with the dull pain in my chest. Neither of us moved; my breath as shallow as hers.

As midnight passed, and my birthday began, Mum squeezed my hand and took her last breath. I was sure that she had held on by sheer force of will so she could welcome it with me. It would be the sort of thing that she'd do, I was sure of that. I'd have more birthdays but she, she was gone, and the slow decay of my heart began.

I stayed with her for another ten minutes, stroking her hand and witnessing her passing, before going to rouse Dad. But once I'd left her room I couldn't go back; she had been my mum before, now she was a body.

I went to my room when the doctor and funeral directors arrived, not wanting to remember anything but the peaceful look on her face. After so many days of seeing her face twisted in agony, she had seemed peaceful at last. I had no desire to see her body in a bag on a trolley, being manoeuvred downstairs and loaded into a vehicle by men she'd never known.

As they drove away, Dad knocked on my door and stepped in. He had changed from his robe into a shirt and jeans but the shirt was inside out and he was struggling with the buttons. His hands shook so much that I doubted he'd have been able to do them up anyway.

"She's gone," he mumbled.

I helped him put his shirt on properly. A private man, I rarely saw him undressed but now, even in the low lamplight in the room, my breath caught when I saw how much weight he'd lost. His gaunt face was nothing compared to the painful angles of his ribs and shoulder blades. He'd been working his usual long hours and sitting up with Mum most nights. I wondered how he'd done that before remembering that I'd laid awake night after night myself.

"She's gone," he repeated.

A cold sweat varnished my skin, and I sat down on my bed, suddenly unsteady. I could only nod.