Rockoholic (14 page)

I chuck all the wet river stuff, his and mine, in the wash, even the eBay shirt, which is supposed to be dry-clean only but I don’t seem to care. I find the moon rock when I’m emptying my pockets. The moon rock that brought me closer to Jackson. That got me out of the mosh pit. That took me backstage . . .

In the kitchen, I balance Mac’s sodden high-top Nikes on the radiator in the vain hope they might dry out and be good as new.

Mum’s left the bacon sandwiches on the counter so I take them out to Jackson. He doesn’t say a word, just scarfs down three, one by one, all the while rubbing the key around his neck. He crashes back onto my cushions and falls asleep. I feel his forehead. He feels hot, so I unplug the little heater and remove his hoodie. I go back into the house and put together a little box of entertainment for when he wakes up — some Stephen King books, a spiral-bound notepad and pencil case, a travel chess set, and three new tennis balls from Halley’s gym bag.

Reality check — ugh. What . . . the . . . hell . . . have . . . I . . . done? What am I going to do when Mum gets home? When
Halley
gets home? I need to think up a plan quickly. I look at the clock — 9:20
A.M
. I’m due in at work at ten. Hmmm, doubtful. But I’ve just had two days off, one for the concert that I’d booked ages ago, and one for the funeral.

I change into a clean work shirt and jeans and lace up my Etnies, and I go back down to the garage to check on Jackson, see if he needs anything before I go. The smell hits me the second I open the garage door. He’s being sick. There’s sick everywhere. And he’s covered in it.

“Blaaaaaaaaaaaggghhhhhh. Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.”
Cough, cough, cough.
“Awwww. Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.” This is how it goes. Several times. Followed by dry retching. I just stand in the doorway and watch.

And then it begins. . . .

“What the hell was in those sandwiches?” he shouts, still coughing. I stare at him, not knowing how the hell he’s gone from peaceful, angelic sleeping man to violently puking maniac in twenty minutes. “What kinda,” he shudders, “bacon?”
Cough, cough.
“Blaaaaaaaaagh.”

“I don’t know, it was just bacon,” I reply.

“Pig bacon?”

“No, yak bacon. Of course pig bacon.”

His eyes are almost out on stalks with the effort of all the retching. “It was old.”

“No it wasn’t. My mum’s really careful about expiration dates.” And then I think, maybe Mum’s cooked the vegetarian bacon instead. If you’re not a vegetarian, you’d really hate that stuff.

“Look at me! You’ve poisoned me!” he spits, peeling my grandad’s now sicky black long sleeve shirt off his body and stuffing it into a ball. He then throws it at me and my clean work shirt becomes spattered with flecks of semi-digested sandwich. He’s been sick on the picnic blanket, too. He peels down the new sweatpants and once again he’s standing before me, bollock-naked, and I don’t know where to look. He exhales, spits on the carpet, then plonks himself back down on the cushions, covering his lap with an old Argos catalog. He points at me like his finger is a wand and he’s about to turn me into a rat. “If you’re trying to kill me, it won’t work. I got an immunity to poison. A stalker tried it once.”

“I’m not trying to poison you!” I cry. “Don’t you think it might have something to do with all the vodka and pills and river water you’ve swallowed in the past twenty-four hours?”

He gives me this haughty look and I know he’s run out of argument. He makes a face like he has a really bad taste in his mouth. “Get my blackberries and water. Bottled, not tap shit.”

“I’ll just go and drop my bucket in our alpine well, shall I?” I snap. “I don’t have any blackberries and we don’t drink bottled water. Mum thinks it’s a waste of money. And I haven’t got time to clean all this up now. I have to go to work.”

“Go to work, then.” He starts flicking through the catalog, the garden hose section, pretending it really interests him.

“I’ll get you some more of my grandad’s clothes,” I say warily, wondering what the hell he’s going to come out with next.

“No, I want my own clothes.”

“You can’t have your own clothes. They’re all on your tour bus.”

“Go and get them, then.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can. If you can hustle me out of a gig unnoticed, you can go and get my clothes.”

“I told you, we’re not in Cardiff anymore. We’re nowhere near.”

“Nothing in England is more than twenty minutes away, wherever you are.”

“Where did you hear that?” I scoff. My eyes automatically flash toward his lap, and back to his face, trying to glue them there. “And Cardiff’s in Wales, anyway. It’s a whole other country.”

“Well, you gotta get to an airport, then. Fly to Wales and get my stuff.”

“No, you can’t fly there from here. We could drive but . . .”

“So where’s your car?”

“It wasn’t my car. It was Mac’s car.”

“It was Mac’s car,”
he whines, mocking my voice. “Go get Mac’s car, then.”

“I can’t. We’ve had a row.”

“Whatever,” he says, finally admitting defeat. “Go and buy me some clothes, then. I don’t want some old dude’s threads.” He leans back against the wall.

“Don’t talk about my grandad like that. Anyway, Mum’s only kept stuff he never wore.” He looks at me and sighs. “There’s a Kingsbury’s in town. I’ll go there and get something if you like.”

“A what?” he says.

“Kingsbury’s. It’s a supermarket.”

“No.
CLOTHES!
” he shouts. “I’m not wearing supermarket shit. If I’ve lost all my clothes, that’s
your
fault, so you have to replace them. Gucci suits, D&G shirts, real leather pants . . .”

“Leather pants? Oh, trousers, right. I don’t know. And I don’t think you’ll get Gucci around here. Mac’s got Gucci sunglasses but he ordered them online. There’s a man down at the covered market on Wednesdays that sells Moochi. He says it’s a designer. . . .”

“What the hell’s Moochi? That ain’t no designer
I
ever heard of.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know any designers.”

“Jesus Christ,” he sighs and his eyes roam across to a pile of puke. “You better clean that before it starts to stink up the place. And get some flowers in here or something ’cause it’ll linger, I know what vomit’s like. You do know where to get fresh flowers, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I say in a meek voice. And then he starts counting off on his fingers all the other things he wants me to get.

“My blackberries. Cigarettes. Marlboros, not Lights. A skinny no-whip caramel macchiato with one Sweet’N Low and a dash of protein fiber powder. And get me a fresh fruit platter, will you? And God help you if there’s bruises. I don’t do mushy fruit.” He flicks to the jewelry section of the Argos catalog.

I stand there transfixed on his mouth. “I don’t have a clue what you just said.”

“Coffee, goddamn it! If I’m gonna have to live in this armpit for the foreseeable then I’m gonna need a shit heap of coffee.”

“There’s a tea room on the High Street but I’ve got to go to work. I can brew you some instant?”

He looks like someone’s just opened their rib cage in front of him. “Instant? I ain’t drinking instant coffee. Why not just pour frigging anthrax down my throat?”

“Why are you being like this?” I say before I have time to think about why I ask it.

“What?” he says innocently, and then continues with his list of requirements. “Real coffee. Italian. I’ll need access to wireless Internet, too. And a soft-headed toothbrush. I wanna brush my teeth.”

He flaps his hand to shoo me out of the room.

I quickly change my top again for an old Slipknot T-shirt, shoving anything pukey in the basket for the second wash of the day, and all the while I’m trying to remember what he’s told me to get. Cigarettes. I’ve forgotten everything else.

As I’m walking into town, yawning my head inside out, I’m racking my brain trying to remember what he’s said. Fruit, no bananas? Caramel something-or-other with fruit and fiber? Blackberries. With every step I want to turn back and ask him, but I know he’ll probably bite my head off. This isn’t any Jackson I know. But he wants to stay with
me
. Of all the fans in the world, he’s in
my
garage. I need to do whatever it takes to make him happy.

The shops are just opening when I reach the town center. I can’t remember the caramel thing, so I get him a bunch of freesias and a selection of fruit (including blackberries) from the grocer’s, a toothbrush from Boots, and I can’t remember what cigarettes he wants but the news-agent won’t sell me them anyway cos I’m underage. So I nip next door to the thrift shop and ask if they’ve got anything even remotely Gucci. The woman looks at me for a long time.

“No worries,” I say, “I’ll just have a look through the racks.” And I’m checking all the labels but there’s nothing Gucci or Dolce & Gabbana. There are a couple of fairly new T-shirts without labels in them, some jeans with a hole in the right knee, and a black hoodie, so I get them. I’m not sure about his shoe size but I’m guessing if he finds my DMs OK then he must be fine with a seven. Every pair the shop has looks like a lawn mower’s gone over it so I decide I’ll raid my wardrobe when I get home instead.

I’m pleased with my little haul when I get back. It feels good to look after someone else for a change. To be responsible for someone’s welfare, even if that someone does talk to me like I’m a dog turd. I don’t look after anyone, except when I’m at the day care, but that’s my job. I’m paid to do that. But I’m not being paid for this and it turns out I’m quite good at it.

Jackson’s obviously been rummaging through the boxes. He’s thumbing through a cookbook when I get back, still half-naked except now he’s wearing a pair of Grandad’s Christmas tree boxer shorts so I no longer have to worry about my eyes darting to his crotch as he turns to Jamie Oliver’s sausage hot pot recipe. He stands up and roots through the shopping bags in my hands. He pulls out the T-shirts one by one, flinging them over his shoulder.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” he sings. He takes the toothbrush and studies the writing. “Medium head, wrong!” He takes out the fruit, piece by piece, and flings it hard at the wall. He upturns the basket of blackberries on the carpet in front of me and flings each of the apples against the wall behind me. “Bruised. Bruised. Bruised. And what do you call these?”

He rips the freesias apart. They lie at my feet. I stare at them until water clouds my eyes.

“Where’s my coffee? My smokes?”

“I didn’t get them,” I whisper.

“What?” he says, leaning in with his hand behind his ear.

“I didn’t get them. I forgot what you said.” I start blubbing. “I’m underage. They wouldn’t sell me any cigarettes.” It’s out of the blue, I didn’t think I was going to, but I’m proper bawling it and I’m looking at him, but his face is just the same. Hard and sarcastic. I thought I was going to make him happy.

“Get me a coffee, right now. I don’t care what kind. Black. Lukewarm.”

I walk out of the garage like a robot, but one that’s bawling its eyes out, make it to the back door, make it to the kettle, flick the kettle on, and put my hand in front of my face. I stand before the window and cry, sob, shriek. I’m so tired. But I can’t sleep until I know he’s happy, until he’s cared for. That’s my job now. It’s like at work. I have to make sure the kids are OK before I can think about myself. I look at the clock. It’s well gone ten so I’m completely late for work. There’s no point going in now. I’ll say I was ill or something. I take a red mug from the mug tree and search through the back of the cupboard for the French press coffee maker my mum got one Christmas but never uses. I find a packet of coffee, too.
Sell by January 2009
. I scoop one spoonful into the press and wait for the kettle to boil. It clicks. I pour. I wait. I plunge. I pour it in the mug halfway, adding some cold tap water. I stick my little finger in. More cold water. Still too hot. More cold water. Just right. My finger throbbing red, I take it out to Jackson.

He’s lying on the cushions with one hand reaching out for the mug, idly flicking through the Jamie Oliver book. I test the coffee to be triple sure it’s the right temperature, then put the mug in his hand.

“Stir,” he says, not even looking up at me. I take the spoon from the mug and stir it.

“NO!”
he screams. “Counterclockwise, you idiot! I can’t drink that now.”

And that is it. That’s all I can take. I rip the mug out of his hand, pin him back to the cushions with my knees on his chest, and pour it straight into his mouth. He struggles, gargles, gasps, coughs, splutters. The coffee splashes all over his chest and neck and the cookbook.

“There,” I say, panting, dropping the mug onto the carpet. “Did the world end? No. Did you die? Just because something is
stirred
in a different direction does
not
mean you can’t drink it!” I push him away from me and get to my feet, facing the door. My heart is punch-bagging it in my chest. I hate him. I hate him for being such a crushing disappointment. But what was I expecting? Perfection, I guess. And this is anything but. “Why are you like this?” I cry.

“Like what?” he spits.

“An arsehole. A complete . . . arsehole!” He’s rolling around on the cushions, coughing. I’m shaking. “I dedicated my life to you.”

He holds up a finger pointed to the ceiling. “That . . . is not my problem.”

“No. It’s my problem.” I walk to the door and open it. “Go on, get out. If you’re going to act like this, you can just go. This isn’t what I thought it was going to be.”

He wipes over his wet face with his forearm. “What did you think this was going to be? You thought you could keep me like your very own rock-star-in-a-box, someone to pet, someone to take for little walks and read stories to?” He rubs the key between his finger and thumb like it’s a comforter.

“Just get out!” I shout.

He still doesn’t move. So I march over to him, seize his arm, and pull him through the door. He struggles and rears back like a defiant cow scared of going in the slaughterhouse truck. His bare feet scrape the carpet.