To Be Someone (6 page)

RUBY’S TOES

“T
OBY,” I SAID, NEXT TIME HE CAME IN. “DO YOU FEEL SORRY FOR
me?”

Toby looked surprised. “Of course,” he replied.

“Well, I don’t want your damn pity.” I looked away from him. I had the distinct feeling that he was rolling his eyes. At least he had two to roll.

“You
feel sorry for yourself, don’t you?” he said. “I don’t see why everyone else shouldn’t, too. If you don’t want me to visit you anymore, just say so.”

We sat in huffy silence for a minute. Then he spoke again. “Ruby said good-bye to all her toes this morning, individually, before they went into her socks.”

I was determined not to smile. What difference was that going to make to me? Perhaps it would be better for him not to come again. I had masses of work to do on my manuscript, and Mum’s visits were more than enough distraction.

“Listen, Helena. I know what you mean. I get that, too, you know. That look in people’s eyes when they talk to me—’Oh, that poor, poor man, wife in a coma and a toddler to look after.’ It’s the same sort of thing, and it’s a nightmare. But you’ve got to keep remembering that they do care, most of them, and are genuinely horrified that you’re having to face something so awful.”

My lip trembled. “But what happens when I leave here and go home? Then it’s just going to be weeks of photographers trying to stick lenses in my face, jumping out at me from behind bushes, that kind of thing. The whole country is going to pity me. I don’t think I can stand that.”

Toby reached over and picked up my hand. “You’re strong, Helena. You’ve got through so much. You can get over this, too. ‘Over This,’ right?”

I groaned. “Over This” was the title of the song I’d written for Sam when she was first ill with leukemia. It later became a huge hit for Blue Idea.

“You asked me about that song in your interview, didn’t you?”

Toby laughed. “Yeah. I was terrified you were going to break down and cry, or punch me, or something, but you were strong then, too. I was really pleased it went so well. Best interview I ever did, actually.”

“Really?” I realized that he was stroking my hand in a—well, a
caressing
sort of way. The more I concentrated, the more sexual it felt, as he rubbed tiny circles and sweeping streaks up the inside of my thumb, and began to feel the little web of skin between each of my fingers. To my amazement, I felt like I was getting pink in all kinds of places.

The door swung open and my mother appeared, hidden behind a large box and a bulging bag of fruit from Waitrose.

“I’ve brought in your juicer, Helena. Vitamin C is terribly good for the healing process, you know, and you don’t get enough. That tiddly little glass of orange they give you at breakfast is just—oh!”

She nearly dropped the juicer when she saw Toby and me. I snatched my hand away immediately, but it was too late.

“Hello!”
said Mum, in a very Leslie Phillips voice, delight written all over her face. She strode purposely toward Toby, in a manner not unlike a charging rhinoceros, and he shrank back slightly.

“Eve Nicholls, Helena’s mother. And you are?”

Toby stood up manfully and shook her outstretched hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Nicholls, I’m Toby Middleton.”

“Well, I must say, Helena’s kept you very quiet. Have you only just heard about her accident? Not that it matters now, anyway, does it? The main thing is that you’re here. So, when did you two meet?”

I moaned. This day was getting worse by the minute. “Mum, Toby’s not my boyfriend. We met here, the other week, although we knew each other a bit from ages ago. His wife’s in Intensive Care in a coma.”

Mum opted to cover up her embarrassment with censure. “Oh, my Lord! So you’re the guy whose poor, poor wife is unconscious! How dreadful for her. Well, we mustn’t keep you, I’m sure she’ll be wondering where you are. They do say that people in comas understand a lot more than we give them credit for, don’t they?”

Toby looked at his watch. “Actually, I came a little early to have a chat with Helena, so Kate won’t be missing me yet, but I suppose I’d better be getting on. Very nice to meet you, Mrs. Nicholls. I hope we meet again. Bye, Helena. See you tomorrow.”

I waved feebly, wondering how soon I could get Mum booked on a flight back to Freehold. Really, enough was enough. Even though her visits were now down to an hour or two each day, her presence seemed to hover around me constantly, like a sort of knitting ectoplasm. It had been quite nice having her there at the beginning, but now she was bored rigid and worried about Dad at home on his own, and I just wanted to get on with my manuscript. We had spent more time together since the accident than in the last fifteen years put together, and the strain was beginning to tell on us both.

Mum began to unpack the juice extractor. “It’s too bad,” she said thoughtfully. “He seemed so nice, but there he was, taking advantage of you in your vulnerable state, and practically cheating on his poor comatose wife. Men! You watch yourself with that one, Helena.”

Blondie
SUNDAY GIRL

M
Y FATHER WAS “SOMETHING IMPORTANT IN COMPUTERS
,
” according to my mother, although she, like most other people in 1980, had only the haziest notion of what computers actually did. The company he worked for in Salisbury was owned by a giant U.S. corporation, the top dogs of which had decided to reward him with a huge promotion and a sub-company of his own to run—in Freehold, New Jersey. America.

“I’ll have to talk it over with the family,” he’d said when he got the news. “It’s a very big step.”

He broke it to my mother at dinner that night, as she was ladling out the macaroni and cheese.

“No,” Mum said, “absolutely not.” She slammed the plate down in front of him, and a yellow curl of macaroni detached itself, sliding onto his lap.

I looked up, surprised. I hadn’t even been listening to what he’d said, since I was planning in my head what to wear to Melanie Welling’s fourteenth birthday party the following night. Melanie was a friend of ours from school, and her uncle was, allegedly, a member of Madness. Even more thrillingly, the word on the lacrosse field was that said uncle would be at the party.

“What?” I said, wondering if Mum would let me wear her Marks & Spencer pale blue eye shadow. It had this really nice iridescence to it.…

Dad repeated his news while scraping the macaroni off his trouser leg with his knife.

“NO!” I screamed, all thoughts of makeup and pop stars instantly flying out of the window.

“You don’t know what this means to me,” he pleaded.

Mum sat down, very suddenly. “Well, I know what it means to me, George. It means good-bye to all my friends, good-bye to my nice house, good-bye to Salisbury.… ”

I couldn’t say anything further; terror had seized my throat and was holding it closed. I stared hard at the steaming bowl of peas in the center of the table. Macaroni and cheese and peas was my favorite meal, but I was not hungry anymore.

“Eve, Helena, listen. We’ll have an even nicer house, and you’ll make new friends. And we’ll have so much more money, I’m sure we’ll be able to afford regular visits back here.”

“Forget it, I like this house, these friends. I’m sorry, George.…”

And so the debate continued, pleas and retorts, back and forth from one to another. I followed them with my eyes, rooting silently and fearfully for my mother, as if they were playing a tennis match on whose outcome my life depended. The steam from the untouched peas gradually dwindled down to nothing, and they took on a dull glazed appearance. They looked as shocked as I felt.

Eventually my mother’s defenses began to crumble. “I do know how hard you’ve worked for this, George, really I do. How long did you say it would it be for? ”

With absolute horror, I watched her edge into capitulation.

“Five years firm, then contract renewable by mutual agreement.”

“Weeell, I suppose now is as good a time as any, before Helena starts her O-level courses. And it would be lovely to have a big comfortable house. How much more money did you say you’d get? ”

I could almost see the dollar signs in my mother’s eyes. It was as good as over. I pushed away my chair and stormed out of the room.

Two weeks later our house was on the market. I was enrolled by telephone in a totally foreign “high” school, whatever that meant. Our airline tickets were purchased. We were leaving in three weeks’ time. Sam and I had not been out of each other’s sight for more than a couple of hours since the bombshell dropped. We hated the world.

There were three moving men, all dressed in identical royal blue boilersuits with their company logo on the breast pocket:
Shipley’s Ships Safely
. Huge sheets of off-white paper lay around everywhere, and the sound of scrunching and heavy breathing hung in the air as the men wrapped, packed, lifted, carried.

Sam and I drifted despondently from room to room; as soon as the men had cleared enough space, we sat down back-to-back in the middle of the carpet, and remained there until that room had been emptied around us. And so on to the next room. I had to do this, otherwise I wouldn’t have believed that we were actually leaving. Up to this point I had not. It had been like a bad dream and I had closed my ears to all talk of real estate, junior and senior high schools, Social Security numbers, work visas. This was what made it real, seeing our possessions wrapped up and carried away, and much as I hated it, part of me realized it was important to accept it.

At first the moving men took our presence as a sign that we were interested in them, and tried to engage us in friendly banter. When they were met with stony silences or abrupt monosyllables, they soon began to mutter about us being in the way. There was a young, jovial Irish one with huge ears, who glanced surreptitiously at Sam’s legs more often than he probably should have done; a balding, middle-aged, barrel-chested one who sighed deeply every time he lifted up a box; and an officious gray-haired one with a clipboard, who was obviously the boss. When they went outside for a tea break with their thermos flasks and Dunhill Extras, Sam picked up the clipboard and inspected the list attached to it: an inventory of the Nicholls.

56—Coffee table (SITTING ROOM)

57—Box—assorted ornaments and vase (S. ROOM)

58—Sofa (DITTO)

59—Radio (DITTO)

Peering at this over her shoulder, I lifted the chewed stub of pencil that was dangling from the board by a grubby piece of frayed string, and with a couple of deft pencil strokes I changed the 57 to a 52, the 59 to a 69, and inserted an H between the S and the I of SITTING ROOM. Before the men came back, we hastily returned the clipboard to its resting place on top of a crate, sniggering guiltily.

I had been more rebellious of late, with Sam my willing partner, although we hadn’t gotten into any serious trouble. My parents were not behaving rationally by taking me away from my home, this place I’d lived my whole life, so why should I?

But even though she seemed to be veering toward a Fattypuff period of lethargy and depression, my mother had been remarkably understanding about our little protestations. She didn’t even say “Serves you right” when we stole Dad’s razor from the bathroom and I shaved off the bit of hair in front of my left ear. It grew back as a frighteningly bristly sideburn, and I was deeply traumatized. All the same, I felt grateful that she’d never discovered us behind the garage, spluttering and coughing over a bent and creased-up Marlboro cigarette, which we’d finagled from the floor of the Prince of Wales one afternoon.

On moving day, however, Mum gave up trying to get us out from under the men’s feet. She was too distracted, stage-managing Dad in getting everything finalized: the gas turned off, the fridge defrosted, the curtains unhooked.

So we sat, watched more boxes go, stayed in the empty space for a while, moved to the next room, sat again. It was so strange seeing all the rooms with no furniture or pictures, like catching a shameful glimpse of somebody’s father naked. Walls loomed down on us, blank and shabby-looking, darker squares where paintings had hung.

Once all the rooms were empty, we sat side by side on the stairs.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go round to Melanie’s house for a bit?” Sam said. “Bridget and Jo were going over this afternoon to look at the program from The Specials concert Mel went to with her brother.”

“No thanks,” I said crossly. “I’ve already said good-bye to them. This is hard enough as it is.”

“Funny how Melanie’s uncle turned out not to be in Madness at all, wasn’t it?” said Sam.

“Mmm. Not much of a surprise, though. She’s such a fibber. Good fun, but …”

I paused, thinking of my other school friends, the ones who Sam would now inevitably get much closer to. I found I didn’t wish to talk about them anymore.

“Don’t forget about me, will you?” I said abruptly.

My father came down the hallway, carrying golf clubs. “Not getting in the way, I hope, are you, girls? Helena, don’t you have things to do?”

“No. My case is all packed. We’re not in the way.”

“Jolly good, jolly good. Almost time for lunch,” he muttered absently. “Now, where did I put my nine iron? ”

Sam patted my shoulder, waiting till Dad had gone before answering me. “Don’t be daft. How could I possibly forget my best friend? ”

We sat in silence again, both of us choked.

“Are you still all right about me keeping the Hel-Sam box?” Sam asked eventually.

“S’pose so. It’s a good thing there isn’t much in there yet. You’ll need the space to keep all my letters.”

“But where are you going to put
my
letters to
you?
” Sam wailed, and she suddenly burst into tears. I couldn’t comfort her.

Mum called us down for lunch: cheese and pickle sandwiches, Marks & Spencer pork pies, a six-pack of crisps, and orange squash. We had to eat in the garden off paper plates because everything from the kitchen and dining room had been packed up, so Sam and I lolled on a hairy tartan travel rug, sniffling and flicking ants off each other’s thighs, while my parents sat on sherbet-striped picnic chairs.

Mum and Dad had linked fingers with each other across the red plastic arms of their chairs and were eating with their free outside hands. Emotions were beginning to run high all round.

“Oh, George,” said my mother, surveying her rosebushes, “I’ll miss this garden so much.”

There was a quiver in her voice, so she took a hasty slurp of squash out of a plastic cup to hide it.

“Our new house will have a lovely garden, too, you’ll see. We might even be able to afford someone to come in and mow the lawn,” said Dad soothingly, squeezing her hand.

“They don’t call them gardens in America. They call them yards,” Sam mused thickly.

I was irritated. “Well, that’s ridiculous! How can a yard have grass and flowers and stuff? A yard is concrete!”

“Don’t yell at me. It’s not my fault. I’m just telling you,” Sam snapped back.

“I wasn’t yelling. I just don’t think it makes sense.”

“Girls! Simmer down.” My mother had recovered her composure. “If you’ve finished your lunch, throw your plates and cups in the outside bin.”

“Can I go over and say good-bye to the Grants, please?”

“Yes, dear, if you’ve packed. We have to leave in about an hour, so don’t be long.”

An hour! I couldn’t bear it. I trailed miserably down the garden path behind Sam, who was neatly rolling up her paper plate and stuffing it into her cup. I looked around the garden, at the wiry grass creeping up between the paving stones, the apple tree, the little pond. I knew I would miss it as much as my mother would. A sparrow hopped across the lawn in front of me. Did they have sparrows in America? I wondered, already nostalgic.

Sam turned round when she reached the gate. “Come on, hurry up, Augenbrau,” she said. “I’ve got a present for you.”

“Here,” she said, once we were in her bedroom above the pub. She thrust an album at me: Blondie,
Parallel Lines
.

I took it, speechless for a moment. “Sam—not your Blondie record! That’s your favorite!”

“I want you to have it,” she said bravely. “I want you to have something of mine that I really, really like, because that makes it a better present.”

“Thanks,” I said, thinking fast. “I’ve got something for you, too.”

I undid the seed pearl necklace Mum and Dad had given me for my twelfth birthday and put it around Sam’s neck.

“This is for you because it looks like the one Debbie Harry is wearing on the record sleeve. If you put it on with your mum’s white petticoat, those high-heeled slippers of hers, and a little bandage tied round the middle of your arm, you’ll look the spit of her. Well, at least you would if you had blond hair.”

Sam was touched and awestruck, by both the gift and the comparison. We were both desperate to have eyes as incredible and cheekbones as pointy as Debbie’s.

“Really? Your necklace? Didn’t your parents give you that?”

“Yes,” I said nobly. “But, like you said, it’s the more personal things that make the best presents. Just don’t wear it when you come and stay with me in America. Have we got time to listen to the record once more?”

I went over to the stereo and plopped the album onto the turntable. Sam’s record player was the coolest I’d ever seen: It played both sides of an LP without you having to get up and turn it over manually. Its needle was on an arm that, when side A finished, skimmed across the surface of the vinyl, turned a laborious and creaky 180-degree angle, and played the B side, upside down.

So we closed an era with
Parallel Lines
, summoning up the emotional reserves to dance around Sam’s bedroom for one last time, in a New-Wave, imaginary-microphone kind of rite of passage. But we were just going through the motions. It wasn’t any fun.

“Do you really think I look like Blondie?” asked Sam as we pouted halfheartedly in front of the mirror to “Sunday Girl.”

“I’ve told you before, Sam, Blondie’s the band, not the singer. And yes, you could pass as her little sister.”

I sighed. Much as I, too, wanted to look like Debbie, I knew that in reality I bore a closer resemblance to Velma from Scooby Doo. I wasn’t at all sure if I even possessed cheekbones. Sam picked up on my train of thought.