Slam (22 page)

I sort of shrugged, which must have looked to her as if I didn't know.

“He's three weeks old. So unless I've just had an eleven-month pregnancy, he can't be Jason's, can he? Unless you think I was sleeping with him and you at the same time. Is that what you believe?”

I shrugged again. Every shrug was making things worse for myself, but the trouble was, I was still angry about Jason, and the fight, and the things he'd said, and I didn't want to back down. Even though it was now obvious to me that I'd got everything wrong, it was as if I couldn't change direction. My steering had gone. That thing with the months should have done the trick, really, but it didn't.

“So when would I have been sleeping with him? Before breakfast? Because I was seeing you every afternoon and evening.”

One more shrug.

“Anyway,” said Alicia, “if that's how little you trust me, then everything's pointless, isn't it? That's the thing that gets me the most.”

That would have been a good place to say sorry too, but I didn't.

“I think you want everything to be pointless.”

“What does that mean?”

“Gets you off the hook, doesn't it?”

“What does that mean?”

I understood everything, really. But asking what things meant all the time gave me something to say.

“I know you don't want to be here. So what you want is for me to tell you to go home to your mummy. I'm surprised you even bothered fighting Jason. You probably wanted to kiss him.”

“I'm not bloody—”

“OH, FOR GOD'S SAKE!” she shouted.
“I know you're not gay!”

“Are you all right in there?” said Andrea's voice outside the door.

“GO AWAY! I'm not talking about your gayness, you fool. God. I so knew you were going to say that. Pathetic. You probably wanted to kiss him because if he was the father, you didn't need to be here anymore.”

Oh. That was pretty much exactly what I thought. I didn't explain that I only kicked Jason bloody Gerson, or did a midair stamp on his balls, because he was coming for me, not because he said he was Roof's dad.

“That's not true,” I said. “I'm glad Roof's my kid.”

I didn't know what was true and what wasn't. It was all so complicated. Every time I looked at our beautiful baby, I was amazed that I'd had anything to do with him. So yes, I was glad Roof was my kid. But when Jason bloody Gerson said those things, I did want to kiss him, in a not-gay way. So no, I wasn't glad Roof was my kid. I'd never really had arguments like this before, arguments I couldn't understand properly, arguments where both sides were right and wrong all at the same time. It was like I'd suddenly woken up to find myself on TH's skateboard at the top of one of those huge vert ramps. How did I get up here? you'd think. I haven't been trained for this! Get me down! We went from arguing about which film we wanted to see to arguing about what our lives meant in about ten seconds.

“You think it's only your life that's been fucked up, don't you? You think I wasn't really going to have a life, so it doesn't matter one way or the other if I've got a baby,” she said.

“I know you were going to have a life. You told me you were. You told me you were going to be a model.”

When you kick someone in the balls, or do a sort of midair stamp, there's a moment when you think, What did I do that for? Well, I felt exactly the same at that moment. What did I say that for? I knew why she'd told me she wanted to be a model. She'd said it because she wanted to find out if I fancied her. Plus, that was a long time ago, when we were just getting to know each other, and trying to be nice to each other. We'd said all kinds of rubbish then. You should never drag stuff out of a nice conversation and chuck it back in the middle of a nasty one. Instead of one good memory and one bad memory, you're left with two shitty ones. When I remember how pleased I was when I worked out what Alicia was saying when she told me that…Well, that's the trouble, isn't it? I don't want to remember anymore.

I didn't mean anything by it. Or rather, I knew it was a bad thing to say, and I said it to hurt, but it was only after it had come out of my mouth that I started to think about why it was nasty. And as Alicia was lying there crying, I came up with a few reasons.

• It sounded like I was taking the piss. It sounded like I thought she was never pretty enough to be a model.
  
• It sounded like I thought she was thick, because that's all she could come up with when we were talking about what we wanted to do.
  
• It sounded like I was laughing at her for being all podgy and greasy now, and not like a model in any way.
  

“It's funny, isn't it?” she said when she could speak again. “My mum and dad think you've messed me up, and dragged me down, and all that. And I've tried to stick up for you. And you and your mum think I've messed you up and dragged you down. And I know I wasn't ever going to be, you know, a rocket scientist or a great writer or any of the things my parents think I can do. But I was going to be something. I don't mean something incredible. Just something. And what chance do you think I've got now? Look at me. So you had a fight at college. Big deal. At least you went to college today. Where have I been? The kitchen and back. So stop it, OK? Stop it with how I've messed up your life. You've got half a chance. What chance have I got?”

It was the most she'd said to me for weeks. Months, probably.

 

After much too long, I calmed down, and I said sorry a lot, and we hugged, and we even kissed a bit. We hadn't done anything like that for ages. That was the first fight, though. It made it much easier to have all the others.

 

Alicia and Roof went to sleep, and I took my skateboard out for a little while, and when I came back, my mum was there, sitting at the kitchen table with Roof on her lap.

“Here's Dadda,” she said. “Alicia let me in, but she's gone for a walk. I made her go out. I thought she was looking a bit peaky. And there's no one else here.”

“Just the three of us, then,” I said. “That's nice.”

“How was college?”

“Yeah, good,” I said.

“Alicia told me about your bit of trouble.”

“Oh,” I said. “That. It was nothing.”

She looked at me. “Sure?”

“Yeah. Honest.”

And I was being honest. That really was nothing.

A couple of
days after the fight at college and the fight with Alicia, my dad called and offered to take me out for something to eat. He'd called me on the day Roof was born, but he still hadn't bothered to come over and see the baby or anything. He reckoned he had a lot on at work.

“You can bring the baby if you want,” he said.

“To the restaurant?”

“Son,” he said. “You know me. I've learned almost nothing from anything I've ever done, so I can't pass much on in the way of advice or anything. But one thing I remember from when we had you is that if you're a young dad, it's easier to get served in pubs and that.”

“Why wouldn't anyone serve you in a pub?”

“Not me, you pillock. You. You're underage. But if you've got a baby with you, nobody asks you anything.”

I didn't bother telling him that I could get a drink in a restaurant anyway if an adult was with me. Mum was always making me drink a glass of wine with my dinner, in order to teach me about responsible drinking. If he only had one piece of advice for me, it would break his heart to find out it was useless.

 

I waited until nobody was around, and then I got Tony Hawk out from under the bed and stuck him on the wall with the old bits of Blu-Tack that were still on the back. He curled up a bit, but he stayed up long enough for me to tell him that my dad was coming round.

“It came naturally for my dad to do everything to help his kids, but he outdid himself when he started the National Skateboard Association (NSA),” said Tony.

Tony didn't often make jokes when we were talking, but this was a good one. I mean, it's not a joke in the book. His dad really did start the NSA, just because his son was a skater. But it was a joke in this conversation. My dad wouldn't have started a fire if I was cold.

“Yeah, well,” I said. “My dad's not like that. My dad…” I didn't know where to begin, really. I was embarrassed to say that my dad hated people from Europe and all that.

“For Frank and Nancy Hawk—thank you for the undying support,” said Tony. That's what it says right at the beginning of
Hawk—Occupation: Skateboarder.
And TH's dad died, so the “undying support” bit shows how much he still thinks of him.

“If I wrote a book, I wouldn't mention my dad, even if it was an autobiography,” I said. “I'd say, ‘I was born with just a mum.'”

“I was an accident; my mom was forty-three years old and my dad forty-five when I popped out,” said Tony.

He knows I was an accident too. He also knows that my mum and dad were sort of the opposite of his.

“My dad won't be forty-five until I'm…” I added it up on my fingers. “Twenty-eight!”

“Since my parents were fairly old when I came around, they'd outgrown the strict mom-and-pop rearing and slipped into the grandparent mentality,” said Tony.

“My dad's not even old enough to be a dad, let alone a grandad,” I said.

“We spread his ashes in the ocean, but I kept some for later,” said Tony. “My brother and I recently sprinkled the rest throughout the Home Depot.”

Tony's dad died of cancer. It's the saddest part of his book. But I couldn't understand why he was telling me that when we were supposed to be talking about how useless mine was.

“I'm sorry,” I said. And I didn't know what else to say, so I took the poster off the wall, rolled it up, and put it back under the bed.

 

So Dad came round, said hello to Alicia, told everyone who would listen that the baby looked exactly like me, and then we put Roof in his basket and took him to the Italian restaurant on Highbury Park. There was a booth at the back with a long leather seat, and we put the basket down there, out of the way. Lots of people came over to look at him.

“They probably think we're a couple of poofs who've adopted him,” said my dad. This was his way of saying that we looked the same age, even though we didn't, and we still don't.

He ordered two beers, and winked at me.

“Well,” he said when they came. “I'm drinking a beer with my son and his son. My son and my grandson. Bloody hell.”

“How does that feel?” I said, for the sake of something to say.

“Not as bad as I thought it would,” he said. “Probably because I'm not even thirty-five.” He looked over to the next table, where two girls were eating pizzas and laughing. I knew why my dad was looking.

“Have you seen those two?” he said. “I wouldn't climb over either of them to get to you.”

If you were visiting Earth from another planet, you wouldn't have a clue what my dad was talking about half the time, even if you'd learned the language. You'd catch on pretty quickly, though. He was either saying he was skint, or that he'd seen someone he fancied, or he was saying rude things about Europeans. He had a million expressions for either, and almost no words for anything else.

“Oh,” he said. “That's my other piece of advice. There's nothing better than a baby for pulling.”

“Right,” I said. “Thanks.”

Neither of the girls seemed the slightest bit interested in us, or in Roof.

“I know what you're thinking,” he said. “You're thinking, Silly old tosser, what do I want to know that for? I've got a girlfriend. But it will come in handy. One day.”

“Roof might not be a baby by then,” I said.

He laughed. “You reckon?”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don't get me wrong. She's a lovely girl, Alicia. And her family seem very nice, and all that. But…”

“But what?” He was really pissing me off.

“You haven't got a cat in hell's chance, have you?”

I banged my beer glass down on the table, because I was annoyed with him, and one of the women—the one I'd pick, with big brown eyes and long, wavy dark hair—turned round to see what was going on.

“What is the point of taking me out to tell me all this?” I said. “It's hard enough as it is.”

“It's not just hard, son,” he said. “It's impossible.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, I'm just guessing. I haven't got a clue about any of this really. Der.”

“Yeah, but how do you know about me and Alicia? We're different people.”

“Doesn't matter who you are. You can't sit in one room with a baby without doing each other's heads in.”

I didn't say anything to that. The day of the fight, we'd started to do each other's heads in.

“Me and your mother, we ended up like brother and sister. And not even in a good way either. There was no incest or anything like that.”

I made a face. His jokes were horrible, most of the time. Incest, gay adoption, he didn't care.

“Sorry. But you know what I mean. We were just watching this thing. You. And going, you know, Is he breathing? Has he pooed? Does he need changing? That's all we ever said. We never looked at each other. When you're older, it's OK, because there was usually a time before all that, and you can see a time after. But when you're sixteen…I'd only known your mum five minutes. It was mental.”

“Where did you live?” I'd never asked either of them before. I knew we hadn't been in our house forever, but I'd never been interested in what had gone on before I could remember anything. Now that time seemed worth knowing about.

“With her mum. Your gran. We probably killed her off. All the crying.”

“Mum was saying the other day I was a good baby. Like Roof.”

“Oh, you were as good as gold. No, it was her that was doing all the crying. We got married when we found out about you, so it was different. More pressure, sort of thing. And your gran's place was tiny. Do you remember it?”

I nodded. She died when I was four.

“But, you know. It wasn't so different really. A room's a room, isn't it? All I'm saying is that nobody is expecting you to stick at it. Stick at being a dad, or you'll have me to answer to….” I tried not to laugh at my useless dad telling me to be a good dad or else. “But the other thing…Don't let it kill you. Relationships don't last five minutes anyway at your age. When you've got a kid as well, that should cut it down to three minutes. Don't try and make it last the rest of your life if you can't even see how you're going to get through till tea time.”

My dad is probably the least sensible adult I know. He's probably the least sensible
person
I know, apart from Rabbit, who doesn't really count as a person. So how come he was the only one who said anything that made any sense in that entire year? Suddenly I understood why TH had told me that story about his dad's ashes. He was trying to get me to treat my own dad as if he were a proper dad, someone who might have something interesting to say to me, someone who might actually be useful. If TH had tried to do that on any other day of my life, it would have been a complete waste of time. But then, that's why TH is a genius, isn't it?

On the other hand, maybe if my dad hadn't said all that, Alicia and I wouldn't have had an argument when we got home. She wanted to know where we'd put Roof in the car, and I said we'd put his basket on the backseat and driven really slowly, and she went nuts. She said things about my dad, which normally I wouldn't have minded, but because he'd been helpful, I stuck up for him. And sticking up for him meant saying a load of things about Alicia's mum and dad that I probably shouldn't have gone into.

I don't think my dad had anything to do with the fight we had a couple of days later, though. That was about me sitting on the remote control and not moving, so the channels just changed all the time. I can't remember why I did that. It was probably because I could see it was driving her mad. And my dad definitely didn't have anything to do with the fight we had the day after that, which was about a T-shirt that had been on the floor in the bedroom for about a week. That one was all my fault. The T-shirt part of it was, anyway. It was Alicia's T-shirt, but I'd borrowed it, and I was the one who'd chucked it on the floor when I took it off. But because it was her shirt, I just left it there. I wasn't thinking, Oh, that's not my shirt. And I wasn't thinking, Oh, I'm not picking it up, even though I've been wearing it, because that's not my shirt. I just didn't see it, because it wasn't mine, in the same way that you never see shops that aren't interesting, dry cleaners and estate agents and so on. It didn't register. In my opinion, though, it didn't need to end up the way it did, with every single item of clothing in the room being thrown on the floor and trampled on.

Everything was getting out of hand. It was like a teacher losing control of a class. It was all right for a while, and then one thing happened, and another, and then things started happening every day, because there was nothing to stop them happening. They were easy.

 

When I went back home, it wasn't anything to do with the fights. That's what we told ourselves, anyway. I went down with a heavy cold, and I was coughing and sneezing half the night, and I kept waking Alicia up when she needed all the sleep she could get. And she wasn't happy about me picking Roof up and passing my germs on to him either, even though her mum said it was good for his immune system.

“I'll sleep on the sofa in the living room if you want,” I said.

“You don't have to do that.”

“I'll be fine.”

“Wouldn't you prefer a bed? What about sleeping in Rich's room?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That might work.” I know I wasn't sounding very enthusiastic. “It's next door, though, isn't it?”

“Oh. You mean I'd still hear you.”

“Probably.”

We both pretended to think hard. Was anyone going to be brave enough?

“You could always go back to your old room,” said Alicia. And she laughed, just to show what a mad idea it was.

I laughed too, and then pretended that I'd seen something she hadn't.

“It wouldn't kill us for one night,” I said.

“I see what you mean.”

“Just till I've stopped coughing half the night.”

“You sure you don't mind?”

“I think it makes sense.”

I left that day, and I never went back. Whenever I go round to see Roof, her family always ask me how my cold's coming along. Even now, after all this time. Do you remember when I got whizzed into the future that second time? When I took Roof for his injections? And Alicia said, “I've actually got a cold,” and laughed? That was what she was laughing at.

The first night back was sad. I couldn't get to sleep, because it was too quiet in my bedroom. I needed Roof's breathing noises. And it didn't seem right, him not being there, which meant that my own bedroom, the bedroom I'd slept in just about every night of my life, didn't seem right either. I was home, and I wanted to be home. But home was somewhere else now too, and I couldn't be in both of the places at once. I was with my mum, but I couldn't be with my son. That makes you feel weird. It's felt weird ever since.

 

“Did your father say something to you when you went out for a pizza?” my mum said when I'd been home a couple of nights.

“Like what?”

“I don't know,” she said. “It just seems like a bit of a coincidence. You go out with him and then suddenly you're back home.”

“We had a talk.”

“Oh, gawd,” she said.

“What?”

“I don't want you listening to him.”

“He was all right. He said I didn't have to live there if I didn't want to.”

“He would say that, wouldn't he? Look at his track record.”

“But that's exactly what you said.”

She was quiet for a bit.

“I was saying it from a mother's point of view, though.”

I looked at her to see if she was joking, but she wasn't.

“What point of view was he saying it from?”