Once Bright Eyes
Takeaway menus always remind me of you. I picked loads up
today, they were strewn all over the porch floor, matted with rain and mould
and crumpled after being walked over by people too stubborn to pick them up.
You wouldn’t have left them there though, no, and maybe that’s part of the
reason why I eventually moved them. For some reason, when it came to menus you were
miserly. You stashed them deep away in a draw or in your cupboard, regardless
of how many duplicates you had or how out of date they were, you convinced
yourself you needed them, cramming the coloured cards tight on top of each
other, until eventually the drawer would jam and you were forced to move them
to somewhere else. On nights when you refused to cook you used to flick through
them all, saying things like, ‘Oh I might get that,’ or ‘Mmm that sounds nice,’
even though we knew in the end, after the eons it took for you to decide, you
would always pick the same place and the same thing. You’d ring up for
delivery, that was always your job, everyone’s orders written in a corner of
that’s days copy of the metro. For some reason you’d develop a painful stutter
every time you spoke over the phone, something Jonny and I would joke about and
Mum would roll her eyes over with that hidden look of disappointment that
wasn’t really hidden at all.
By the time the food arrived
you wouldn’t want it anymore, and while the rest of us would sit downstairs and
eat together you would stay in bed. The food would go straight into the fridge
where it would be left for a week without being touched until Nan found it.
She’d pull it out while pulling her faces, you know the ones I mean, she’d make
her usual comments about you and chuck the food away, to which you would come
stomping down the stairs claiming you were just about to eat it and then sulk
off back to bed. You loathed things being thrown away; you were a hoarder
through and through. You used to keep this stack of weird comics in the corner
of your room. I remember the yellow pages, torn, worn, the covers sun stained
from the passing summers, a tower of musk that shook every time a window was
open or someone shut the door to hard. There was nowhere sensible to put them
and no matter how hard mum tried the eye sore could not be tamed. She used to
look at those comics like she looked at you.
Eventually though she
finally got you out long enough to decorate, even if you made it hard for her.
I went in there the other day; I was both pleased and heartbroken to see there was
nothing of you there anymore. There’s no
more mark on the wall paper above the bed, the faded scar which you left there
from hours of constantly resting your head in the exact same spot. There are no
more bottles that jangle from under the bed every time someone steps on that
one ridiculously creaky floorboard by the chest of drawers, even though,
despite everything, I expect one or two will be back soon. There’s always been
a clinking of bottles, not just in your room but darted about the house, in
cracks and holes that you thought no one knew about, on top of the kitchen
cupboards, in the back of the wardrobes, hidden amongst the board games and
dolls in our Toy box, or sometimes just left in plain sight, chucked into the
corner of the room or still grasped in your hand as you slept on in the sofa in
an unmoving slumber. We got them all out once, me and mum, we picked up every
sticky and sickly bottle we could find until in the end we had enough to build
our own glass castle. We decorated the outside with the cans that we found
behind the shoe rack and left it for you to admire when you got home. You
weren’t impressed though, you didn’t even notice. You just walked pass and went
straight to bed. You weren’t always in bed - though I find it hard to remember
now. There were times you would take us out, take us to normal places like
normal families did on Sunday afternoons.
You took us to a farm once, it was cold, late November, and
no one else was there. You were wearing denim on denim, your usual fashion
disaster choice, holding Jonny under one arm, laughing at him while he screamed
after getting chased around a muddy puddle by a giant gnarly chicken. I was so
young the memories aren’t even memories anymore, more like frozen pictures in
my brain, moments snapped and fossilised in the derelict corners of my mind. I
don’t look at them often, but when I do it shocks me as to how much has
changed. You’re no longer chubby. My Daddy was always chubby, maybe even a
little more than just chubby. The buttons on your favourite denim shirt would
struggle and heave under your ever expanding belly, a beer belly Mum called it.
It was jolly looking and shook when you laughed just like Father Christmas. You
used to keep your hair shaved, so that it didn’t look so ridiculous when the
sides grew in and the top stayed bare, it suited your whole hoop earring look
that you had going on. Proper hard nut weren’t you.
That’s not you anymore, it hasn’t been for years. The beer
belly is long gone; instead your stomach is round with swelling, almost
pregnant like. You look kind of like those poor kids on the sponsor adverts.
You hoop earring is gone, I can’t remember the last time you had that in,
you’ve grown a beard out too, me and Jonny have dubbed you the balding Jesus.
Sometimes you’d take
us on these walks, ones that I loved. We’d start at Nana’s house, we’d leave
the car and go to the park then onwards to the canal and over the old train
bridge. Sometimes you’d put me on your shoulders and I’d wobble over the metal
grating that boarded the bridge, waving and screaming frantically at the tracks
underneath. Some days the train drivers would beep and we would cheer and on
days they didn’t you would jeer at them with your fair share of bad language.
On the way back you would stop by at this shop that sold ‘nearly everything you
could ever need’. We’d get armfuls of sweets and lucky bags and pick up fish
and chips from the chippy next door then all sit down on the old carpeted sofa
at Nana’s and watch old folks tele while you sat napping in the armchair in the
corner.
I remember this one time, it had grown dark outside. The
lampposts had flickered on and you had still not woken up. We never stayed this
late at Nana’s, we were always home to see Mum get in from work. I tried to
shake your shoulder, gently whispering to you to please wake up. The whispering
turned to pleading but you wouldn’t wake, instead you stayed limp and heavy,
breathing deep and loud. Nana told me to let you sleep; apparently you had been
working hard and needed to rest. I told her she was wrong. I don’t know what
lies you fed her, or how she didn’t see you for what you were, but that day you
left me there, alone, with no one but a three year old and a senile old woman
for company. I wish I could say that was the only time it happened. I rang mum
in tears, despite Nana telling me I wasn’t allowed to bother her, she came over
and got us straight away, leaving you behind in the armchair. You never even
noticed we’d gone.
Do you remember Watership
Down? Of course you would, we watched it every Sunday for years. We were
never allowed to pick what we wanted to watch, and you would always pick the
same, that bloody copy of Watership Down
recorded onto a battered old video tape from the tele. Every week we’d watch
those same old adverts, you’d never fast forward them for us, like the one with
the people eating skips and magically melting the lampposts and the one with
the baby in the high chair with the adult hands, doing actions to Take That’s
‘Back for Good.’ We’d put it on after Mum and Nan went to Bingo in the
evenings, after Mum would make you promise the things she knew you wouldn’t
keep, after I’d sat at the window for an hour crying for her to come back.
You’d tuck us up into bed and sit down with us. You knew every word off by
heart, we all did, even Jonny. For the first ten minutes you’d stay, but after
the creation of the hare and Frith’s promise you would leave us and stroll down
to the shop. Not that we minded back then, not when we knew that your return
held the promise of sweets and fizzy drinks. You weren’t ever gone for very
long, you didn’t need to be, you were always back in time to sing Bright Eyes
to us even though your own eyes would be starting to glaze. Mum always shouted
at you when she got in. I begged her not to.
She would look at me with those eyes, eyes the same as mine, she’d sigh
but stop and give up and go to bed. For
a while I hated how she spoke to you, there were so many nights when we would
all go to bed with ringing in our ears. It wasn’t her fault though, I know that
now. A few times you went to stay at Nana’s for a few days, you’d sleep in that
tiny box room upstairs, the one with the bills and old papers that covered the
threadbare carpet, the one where the bed sheets hadn’t been changed since you’d
slept in them as a teenager. At least I bet they hadn’t, Nana couldn’t change
them with her broken hip and God knows you wouldn’t do it.
We used to love playing upstairs in Nana’s house. Probably
because we weren’t allowed up there very often. I remember Mum’s wedding dress in the wardrobe
and the smell of long forgotten moth balls and a doll whose face had been
attacked by a cheap biro pen. There was this cabinet that belonged to Nana, filled
with fancy plates and figurines, a window into another little world, where
little white china girls danced with fancy umbrellas and boys in rags would
hold cheat cards under the table, their bone china faces showing nothing but
false innocence. They were meant for me you know, Nana always said they were.
Not that I got them. I didn’t get anything. You seemed to forget about the
promises, or maybe you just didn’t care. Just like Nana’s ring, I wonder if
it’s still there all these years after, sitting in an office safe in a care
home somewhere, deep in an envelope with your name on it. There are many things you should have done,
which you haven’t, like looking after Uncle Karl after his accident, he doesn’t
know you anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I really do either.
You only remember the
things you want to, like the fact Nana left you the house, which you sold as
soon as you could. No more running up and down the spiral staircase, or playing
in the over grown garden, and that little cabinet of magic ended up in some
dank skip along with everything Nana ever owned. You promised you would use the
money to buy another house, one that we could live in, a place our family could
finally call our own, no more living in Nan and Granddad’s little house, no
more sharing a room with Jonny, so small there wasn’t even enough room for two
beds. No more of Mum being ashamed that she still lived with her parents, that
her husband had yet to provide for her. Seems
like that was another promise you forgot all about.
Do you remember when you put ketchup on my toothbrush? You
always deny that you did it, but I could never forget. I must have been about six;
you put it on my Barbie toothbrush, telling me it was special toothpaste. You
waited and watched until I put it in my mouth and sniggered when I spat it out
and burst into tears. You were like an evil child, not a father. You had a sick
sense of humour and laughed at everything inappropriate. You laughed at us when
we had chicken pox, and when Jonny got angry and pulled a clump of hair right
out of my scalp. I had a bald patch for months after, you thought it was
hysterical. You walked out onto the landing to where I was screaming, clutching
my head on the top of the stairs. You walked up to Jonny and saw the tangled
mess knotted about his fingers and you laughed. Jonny laughed too and I sat
alone, humiliated. Eventually you picked me up and calmed me down, but not
before you took the tattered lock of hair from Jonny and put it in that little
blue wooden jewellery box. You know the one. The one that had the remains of
our baby teeth and Granddad Ted’s strapless watch. I don’t know why you kept it, it was there
for years, right up until Mum chucked it out with all the other shit you had
been collecting.
It’s a shame that now when I think back it’s hard to find the
good things, sometimes I even wonder if there are any. Deep down though I know,
there must have been something about you, something that you did that made you
my favourite. For years we only ever shouted at each other but I hope you know
now it was only because I was trying to save you, trying to make you
understand. I never loved you any less and now, even though I can’t think of
any other thing I could have done to help, I still blame myself. I know with
every part of me that you deserve to be where you are now, it was a long time
coming, but I would still do anything to swap places with you. I’m scared that
I’ll only be able to remember you like this, a pile of yellowed skin and
brittle bones, I’m scared that you won’t know that I forgive you, for
everything, the ripped up paintings, the name calling, the smashed up toys and
for every time I was embarrassed because of you. I’m scared that you won’t
forgive me for all the times I put you down, told you to leave or that you were
better off dead. I know you were less than what we deserved, that after
everything, you would still go back and do it all again. But that’s life isn’t
it. It’s not about receiving what we deserve it’s about accepting what we get.
It’s a lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way, and one I wish you had before it
was too late.
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