It’s About Love

I take my change and feel Marc’s name crawling up my throat. I know she’s been counting days too, walking around under the same cloud of my big brother. Handsome?

I swallow, then look back at Donna. “You’re not old.”

Donna leans forward on the bar, her thin arms pushing her boobs forward. I try not to stare.

“Just the bitter I need to work on then.”

And then she’s gone, down the bar to serve an old man.

She called you handsome.

And I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I feel warm, and I’m wondering if this is how Marc felt every time he was with her.

Some old timer leans over the bar and stares at Donna’s body. I feel my muscles tensing as I look at his cracked blotchy face. Then he’s looking back at me, staring with cloudy eyes and he nods the nod, the one that lets me know that just like everyone else in here, he respects what Marc did.

Assault Occasioning Actual Bodily Harm.

It sounded like something from an ITV courtroom drama.

ABH, with greater harm and higher culpability.

One year and six months.

I remember I had to look at Dad to see whether that was better or worse than they’d expected. Dad’s face didn’t move. Mum was already crying. I was wearing my funeral suit, my eyes trying to find somewhere to settle that didn’t feel wrong.

The room was four different shades of beige and the wooden gate that separated Marc from everyone else was so low it didn’t make any sense. The magistrate gave a little speech about Marc’s disregard for another human life. How Craig Miller could’ve died and how, by driving round looking for Craig, unashamedly asking people where he was, Marc had demonstrated a premeditated intent to cause harm. Nothing about Craig’s history of terrorising people since I could remember.

The charge, combined with Marc’s record of minor charges for affray and violent conduct, led the magistrate to extend the sentence to twenty months.

Mum wailed, like twenty months was so much worse than eighteen. Dad’s face still didn’t move. I stared at Marc, standing firm in his white T-shirt, his chin up, like he was posing for a photograph, and I wanted to shout at the judge. To explain. Make it better.

But I didn’t. I just stood there, next to Dad, watching my older brother as the magistrate spoke.

The hammer banged. Dad held Mum as she cried and reached out towards the stand. Marc sighed and shook his head. “It’s OK, Mum. I’ll be all right.”

Then he looked at me, as the two officers led him away, and he smiled.

Marc Henry. The convicted hero. Wrong to the law, but right to anyone from round our way who knew Craig Miller, the nastiest piece of work around. Marc Henry. Local superstar. Guardian angel. Completely oblivious to the dead space he was about to leave behind.

“She is so fit!”

Tommy’s voice is almost angry as he speaks, the smoke flowing out of his mouth like exhaust fumes. We’re standing outside the pub. He shakes his head. “I swear down, your brother, man. Lucky bastard.”

I cut him a look.

“What? I’m just saying, prison or no prison, Donna’s amazing. I’d … man, I don’t even know what I’d do.”

“Shut up, Tom.”

He’s right though. Donna would look sexy dressed as a chicken, and Marc was lucky to be with her. I rub my arms and feel my biceps tighten. Tommy takes another drag of his cigarette and the pair of us watch a wide smoke ring float up in front of us.

“Will you have a party? I mean, when he comes out?” he says, and I see a shot of me, wearing a shiny party hat, limp party blower hanging from my mouth, staring out.

“He’ll probably be even more hench, eh?” says Tommy, holding his thin arms in front of himself like a gorilla. I shrug. “No idea.”

“Course he will.” Tommy grabs my shoulders. “He’ll get a shock when he sees you though, eh? People’s champion.” He shakes me back and forth, like I just won a title fight. I shrug him off and then a car moves past and I recognise the driver.

“Noah?”

I watch the car drive past the chippy and turn up Barns Road.

“Who’s Noah?” Tommy’s squinting at me, and I’m not sure if it really was him, or if I just thought it was.

“Who’s Noah, Luke?”

“In the car. I thought I saw someone, from college.”

“Round here?”

“I dunno, probably wasn’t him. He’s a teacher.” I feel myself shiver from the cold as I try to picture Noah standing at the front of the class, but all I see is Leia, pointing her gun fingers.

Tommy snorts and spits a greeny. “No teachers round here, Lukey.”

I stare along the empty road and try to imagine where Leia is right now, what she’s doing.

“What’s your favourite film, Tom?” I turn to him. His shoulders are up by his ears, trying to hide from the cold.

“Dunno,” he says. “Don’t really have a favourite.”

“I know it depends on the mood and that, but if you had to say one, like now, what would you pick?”

And I watch him think, picturing shelves of DVDs stretching out either side of him, like Neo choosing weapons in The Matrix.

“Die Hard II.”

“What?”

“Die Hard II. Die Harder.” He’s smiling proudly.

I frown. “Die Hard II? That’s your favourite film?”

Tommy nods. “Right now, yeah.”

“What about the first one?”

Tommy lifts his hand like he was expecting me to ask.

“Number two is the same but with aeroplanes, so it’s better. The bit when he lights up the runway with the petrol from the plane and it blows up … that is so sick!”

I picture the scene, Bruce Willis lying bloodied on the snowy runway, throwing his lighter and watching the trail of flames jump up into the air, making the plane full of bad guys explode.

So many of our favourite things are passed down. It’s the younger brother template. The first Die Hard films were made years before we were even born, but through older brothers and our dads, we’ve taken them on as our own. We have that in common.

Tommy mimes flicking a cigarette – “Yippee Kayaaaay!” – then pulls open the door. Noise from inside spills out over us and, just for a second, I get the feeling we’re being watched.

Dad was actually on TV.

He never went to drama school or anything. He was in town with Uncle Chris and some agent spotted him. He was training to be a mechanic.

I know the story well.

Straight away, the agent got him a walk-on part in a science fiction series called Babylon 5. He told Dad it would be his big break. They flew him to California to film it and everything.

‘Big Alien Pilot’ was his character. His scene happened in the space station bar. He starts a fight with one of the main characters and gets beaten up, even though he’s twice the size of the other guy. We used to sit around as a family and watch it on video, Dad doing live commentary from the sofa. I reckon I’ve seen it a hundred times.

When you’re seven and you watch your dad on TV in blue skin make-up, a pair of prosthetic horns and a leather waistcoat, looking bigger than everyone else, it’s pretty cool. That’s my dad! type thing.

Then, as you get older and you start paying more attention to the ‘what if’ expression on your dad’s face as he watches, and you can feel your big brother and your mum doing the same, the magic kind of wears off.

Dad said they wanted him to come back as a different alien and get beaten up again and it turned out that would be all he’d ever get to do. The agent told him he could make a good living playing ‘the heavy’, but that nobody wrote decent parts for big men. Dad said he didn’t want to spend his life pretending to be monsters and bodyguards, so he came back, and finished training as a mechanic.

A year later, a nineteen-year-old student nurse having trouble with her first car came into the garage where Dad worked. Dad started checking it over and noticed that the girl wouldn’t stop staring at him. He tried to ignore it and went under the car. As he lay on his back, he realised that the girl was lying down on the floor next to the back wheel, just so she could see him.

Turned out she was a huge Babylon 5 fan and knew every scene from every episode. She also had a thing for big men.

Less than a year later, a giant and a pregnant nurse were married, and a month after that, Marc was born.

By the time I arrived Marc was nearly four. Four years of being the only child and then a baby shows up, crying and needing help with everything.

Mum always used to tell people that Marc’s first word was ‘ball’ and that mine was ‘Dad’. Kinda messed up that there are moments that end up defining your character before you even have a choice.

Marc’s face.

Blank expression, but he’s blinking. His hair’s shaved. Mouth closed. Thick neck. Strong jaw. His Adam’s apple moves as he swallows. Skin is perfectly smooth.

Then there’s something on his left cheek, a dot underneath his left eye. It’s red. And it’s turning into a line.

Like someone is drawing it. Like he’s being cut with an invisible scalpel.

The cut grows, curving up towards his eye, splitting skin. But there’s no blood. Just a clean red line. His expression shows no sign of pain.

His left eye closes as the cut crosses over it on to his forehead. It reaches half way up and then stops.

His fingertips dig under the skin at the bottom of the line and he pulls.

The skin comes away from his face, like wrapping paper, but there’s no blood, just more skin underneath that’s a shade lighter and it’s someone else’s eyes. It’s a younger face. Skin perfectly smooth.

It’s my face.

It’s me.

I’m walking through the graveyard before the hill up to college, reading the epitaphs of strangers on the mossy gravestones.

Most of them seem to be for kids and there’s something really creepy about seeing a name carved into stone above two dates only three or four years apart.

Noah asked us to watch a film we like and choose a scene to use in the lesson and I realise that I’m excited.

As I step out of the graveyard on to the pavement, I see Leia across the road, starting up the hill. I think about calling out to her, but it doesn’t feel right, then the blond kid from film studies comes up from the underpass steps behind her.

I hang back, pretending to check my phone, and watch him catch Leia up. I stay on this side of the road and keep a good distance as they walk together, and I want to know what they’re saying. The blond kid is talking and gesturing, using his hands like he’s pitching an idea. He’s probably chatting her up. I hate him.

Everyone sits in the same seats.

I’m staring at the blond kid as Noah starts saying how he believes the best way to learn is to actually do stuff instead of just talking about it, and how, by Christmas, he wants us all to have our own draft scripts. A sheet of A4 paper goes round the class for us to all write our personal email addresses on. He wants them so he can send us links to check out. A couple of people look at each other wondering whether that’s even allowed. They gave us individual college emails in the first week, but everyone still writes their real one down for him.

Leia’s wearing a big grey sports sweater. The kind that looks like a hand-me-down, and that you can only wear if you have that ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks’ air. The sides of it are hugging her chest and I’m absolutely not stealing looks whenever I get chance.

We’re supposed to write a description of the scene we chose from our film and hand it in at the end of the lesson. Noah says it’s a good way for him to get to know us – that he wants to get to know us through our choices. I look at him and try to figure out if it was him I saw in the car on Saturday night.

It could’ve been.

The room is bubbling.

It’s not like at school, where the teacher would be telling people to shut up every two minutes. People are chatting and moving around and nobody else seems to be surprised by it, so I try not to be. The blond kid keeps looking over at Leia and I can feel myself staring at him like a guard dog or something, and I know I’m being stupid, but I can’t help it. I want him to see my face.

I’m writing about the scene in Reservoir Dogs where Tim Roth is practising his monologue so he’s got an anecdote about something criminal and nobody else in the crew will suspect that he’s an undercover cop.

I’m writing how I like that we see him practise. How I like it when we get to see the little things that happen before or after the action.

How I think most people don’t really consider what happens before they show up at a party, or what someone who isn’t the ‘hero’ is thinking in the moment, and even though I don’t like a lot of Tarantino movies, Reservoir Dogs would probably be in my top ten films ever. I’m writing all this stuff and it feels brilliant.

“Not saying much today are you, Mr Jedi?” Leia doesn’t look up from her page as she speaks.

I can’t see what she’s writing about and I want to ask, but the blond kid watching us is making me angry.

“Let me guess,” she says. “Another love story?”

“No.” And the word comes out of my mouth much colder than I meant it to.

“All right, easy Skywalker.” She’s looking at me now and I read the word RUSHMORE at the top of her page.

“My name’s Luke,” I snap, and I look at her without blinking. Leia looks a bit surprised and she’s about to say something back when the blond kid is standing in front of our desk.

“How’s it going?” He’s looking at just her. His voice sounds like he’s completely relaxed, like the lesson is happening in his house and we’re just guests.

Leia says, “Fine. Simeon, have you met Luke?”

Simeon?

Simeon looks at me, then back at Leia.

“You always find the interesting looking ones, don’t you?”

What did he say? I feel my face turning away from them and I go over the last word I wrote with my pen. He already knows her. Leia puts her pen down. “He’s the strong silent type.” And the fact that they clearly know each other and are talking about me is making my skin crawl.

Simeon holds out his hand.

“Good to meet you, Luke. I’m the platonic ex.” What?

“What?”

I look up at Simeon. His skin is perfect. Platonic ex?

“Yeah, me and Leia go way back.” He smiles his Marks & Spencer smile.

I feel completely awkward, like I’m the new cast member on some teen sitcom that’s been running for years and my eyes are darting round the room, checking if people are watching. Nobody is. Leia turns in her seat. “Ignore him, Skywalker. He likes to cause trouble.”

Take his hand. Let him know.

I shake Simeon’s hand, trying not to squeeze too tight and be that pathetic guy who has to demonstrate his masculinity, but firm enough to let him know I’m choosing not to.

Our hands part and Simeon leans forward, trying to read my writing. My arm instinctively curls round my paper, covering it up. Simeon smirks. “All right Scorsese, I wasn’t trying to steal your ideas.” Him and Leia are smiling and I know it’s uncalled for, but I just want to punch him in the face. He wouldn’t be able to stop me and it would pop the awkward bubble he’s got me in. One punch and he’d be out.

“Anyway, we still up for the Electric later?”

Leia says, “Yeah,” then looks at me. “You up for it? They’re showing Ghostbusters One and Two. Classics.”

And it’s horrible. All of it, the staring, the nickname, his face, the fact that they’re cinema buddies, her smiling.

“No,” I say. “I’m busy.”

Leia’s face straightens, but she doesn’t seem that bothered.

Then people start packing up for the end of the lesson and I’m so glad I get to leave, I think I actually smile.

I buy a jacket potato from the refectory and take it all the way down the hill to the graveyard to get away. I sit on a bench dedicated to a man called Harold who used to clean the graves. A couple of crows are fighting over what looks like a chicken bone in front of a dirty white marble stone slumped at an angle.

I’m telling myself I have no real reason to be angry, that I knew a lot of people would already know each other and be all confident and that. But him? Her ex? Mr Squeaky Clean ‘I’m a young Brad Pitt’ Simeon?

Forget her. Keep to yourself. You’re not like this lot.

I dig a crater into the tuna with my white plastic fork. She said he likes to cause trouble. Maybe he was just saying it to wind her up, test me out.

She didn’t deny it though, did she?

She didn’t. How long did they go out for? Why are they still friends? Is that the kind of boy she likes?

I’m digging into yellow potato now. If he’s her type, then …

Digging with my fork.

They’re just a bunch of rich kids, they’re not like you, forget them.

But she seemed cool. Still digging.

Did she stare?

The fork hits the bottom of the box.

Did she stare?

I’m still pressing.

The fork snaps.

Yes. She stared.

I get off my second bus early and walk round to Dad’s place.

I use the key he cut for me and, as I climb the dark stairs, I remember the afternoon I helped him move in. A year and a half ago. I remember watching his big body almost get wedged between the walls as he climbed up to the small attic studio flat. It’d been coming for a while; Marc getting sent down was just the rock that tipped the scales.

I come here sometimes when Dad’s at work. Mostly I just watch a film and then leave. The whole place is the size of our living room.

The only window is the skylight and in the afternoon it shines a rectangular spotlight on to the floor where the white lino of the kitchen corner meets the mud-brown carpet. It’s like a rubbish fairytale:

The Giant Who Lived in the Box Attic.

The sofa bed’s still folded out and the sheets are strewn. There’s an extra-large pizza box on the floor by the TV and empty lager cans on the draining board. I open the skylight to try and let out the man smell and start to tidy up. I stuff all the rubbish into a bin bag. I scrub the two plates and mug that have clearly been there for a few days. I fold the thin mattress of the bed back into a sofa and I use the dustpan and brush to sweep the carpet underneath. It feels like setting up a board game.

When I’m done, I sit on the sofa and look round the room. I always imagine this place is mine. My own flat, away from everyone. Just a toilet, sink, fridge, sofa, TV and enough DVDs to get lost in.

Simeon. The platonic ex. Forget them.

On the tiny chest of drawers in the corner to my left there’s a photograph of all four of us at Frankie & Benny’s. Dad got the waiter to take it. Him and Mum are in the middle, with Marc and me on the outsides. I take it from the drawers and hold it in my lap.

It’s Marc’s fifteenth birthday, so I’m eleven, fresh-faced, smooth skin, my hair longer and parted at the side. I remember Mum burning her mouth on her calzone and sucking an ice cube, Dad doing the ice-cream sundae challenge and winning a T-shirt.

I touch my face in the picture, feeling the smooth hard glass. Then it catches the light and I see my reflection. My face now, superimposed over our family. Breathe.

The afternoon quiet of the room. Just me on a fold-up sofa, in a shady attic, holding the past in my lap. Somewhere now, in a house probably twenty times bigger than this place, Leia is getting ready to go to the cinema with her platonic ex and his perfect skin.

I leave the photo on the sofa and lower down into press-up position, but on my clenched fists, like Marc used to do them. My weight presses down through my knuckles into the floor as I start and the pain is good. One, two. I turn my head to the side and my eyes run along the spines of the DVDs against the skirting board. Three.

Guilt is the worst. Four. Burn me with angry, choke me with sad, anything but guilt. Five, six. Guilt lives in your skin, like lead. Seven. Sitting there, heavy. Eight. And poisonous. Nine. Telling you not to forget. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

I see Ghostbusters, the white letters against black, and I stop. I can feel the muscles across my back pulled taut as I stay there, suspended, my knuckles raw from the friction and the pressure, and I see Leia, giggling as she hands the usher her ticket, Simeon smiling next to her as he wraps his tanned arm round her shoulders. I stare at the DVD.

“Come on, sleepy.” Dad’s voice wakes me up. I feel the pain in my neck as I sit up from resting on the sharp arm of the sofa bed. The light is on and through the skylight I can see a rectangle of black sky.

“Your mum was worried. Since when do you come on a Monday?”

I shrug. Dad nods. “I’ll drop you back.” His hands are smeared with oil as he ejects the Ghostbusters DVD and files it back into the row on the carpet.

I look at my phone and see four missed calls from Mum. It’s half ten. She’ll already be at the hospital. Dad hands me a twenty pound note. “Here, for cleaning up the place.”

He smiles. I take the money. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Come on, I wanna get to the chippy before it shuts.” He rubs his barrel stomach as I pull on my trainers and follow him out the door.

EXT. – NIGHT

An old black Vauxhall Astra drives along the night-time road, reflected streetlights rolling over its bonnet.

“So it’s going all right, then?”

He’s watching the road as he drives and I’m thinking, every conversation feels easier in the car. Staring forward and talking should be standard procedure.

“Yeah,” I say, “It’s fine.”

“Not too much homework?”

“We’ve only just started really. It’ll be fine, Dad.”

We’re behind the same bus that I catch home from town.

Dad glances my way. “And what about girls?”

I think about Leia and Simeon and my legs tighten. “No.”

Dad shrugs his boulder shoulders and I notice he’s not wearing his seatbelt again. “What? I’m just asking. New pond, new fish, strapping young shark like yourself. You’ll make a killing.”

I shake my head. “What the hell does that even mean? Sharks? In a pond?”

And he’s laughing. “I dunno. It’s an analogy.”

Now I’m laughing. “Oh, it’s an analogy, is it, Joseph? And since when do you make analogies?”

“Well, when your boy goes off to college and starts mingling with college types, you need to step your game up, don’t ya?”

He grips the steering wheel dramatically, pretending like he’s trying to control a spiralling jet fighter, and waits for my reply. I just look at him, then blow a raspberry with my tongue. “There’s your analogy, old man.”

And we laugh together as we turn on to the high road.

Our laughter fades out as we drive down ours and he pulls up outside the house. You can see the hall light is on through the glass top of the front door, but we both know the house is empty.

“You wanna cup of tea or something?” I say. Dad looks at the house.

“Better not, wouldn’t want to get too comfy, eh?”

I unbuckle my seatbelt. “OK. Enjoy your chips then.”

“Luke,” he says and I sense something coming. He turns to me, his chunky hands in his lap. “We can talk. I mean, if you want to.”

It’s not what I was expecting. I know how hard it is for him to bring it up. I’ve thought about it lots of times. All his size and strength didn’t count for anything when they sent his son down, and I know he would’ve done the same thing as Marc if he’d found out first. I know he doesn’t speak about it to anyone. I know not speaking about it drove the nails into the coffin of him and Mum.