Slam (23 page)

“Not a mother's, that's for sure. I mean, obviously. But not a father's either. A bloke's.”

I suddenly thought about Roof and Alicia and me, all arguing like this one day. Maybe it was all a mess that just went on forever. Maybe Alicia would always be angry with me about my cold, so that even if we agreed—like my mum and dad agreed now—she wouldn't ever agree that we agreed.

“Anyway,” she said, “you're only here because you've got a cold.”

“I know.”

“So it's nothing to do with what your dad was on about.”

“I know.”

“So.”

“Yeah.”

On the night I went home with a cold, I went straight into my room to talk to Tony Hawk. I'd taken the poster with me, of course.

“I just have a bit of a cold,” I told him. “So I've come home for a few days.”

“I knew that even though I still loved Cindy, we lived in two separate worlds that were not uniting,” said Tony. “In September of 1994 we split up. Unfortunately it took this event to make us realize the importance of parenthood.”

I looked at him. Fair enough, he'd seen right through the cold straightaway. But I really didn't need him telling me about the importance of parenthood. What else was there in my life, apart from Roof? I went to college about once a bloody month, I never had time to go skating, and all I ever talked about was the baby. I was disappointed in him. He wasn't making me think at all.

“It was never an ugly separation,” he said. “We were both dedicated to creating the best possible life for Riley.”

“Thanks for nothing,” I said.

But the thing about TH is, there's always more to what he says than you can see.

There's loads of
stuff about teenagers having babies on the Internet. I mean, there's loads of stuff about everything on the Internet, isn't there? That's the great thing about it. Whatever your problem is, it's on there somewhere, and it makes you feel less alone. If your arms have suddenly turned green, and you want to talk to other people your age who've got green arms, you can find the right website. If I decided I could only have sex with Swedish maths teachers, I'm sure I could find a website for Swedish maths teachers who only wanted to have sex with English eighteen-year-olds. So it wasn't really surprising that you could find all the information you wanted about teenagers and pregnancy, if you think about it. Having a kid when you're a teenager isn't like having green arms. There are more of us than there are of them.

 

Most of the stuff I found was just kids like me complaining. I couldn't blame them, really, because we had a lot to complain about. They complained because they had nowhere to live, no money, no work, no way of getting work without paying someone more than they could ever earn to look after their kids. I didn't feel lucky very often, but I felt lucky when I read this stuff. Our parents would never chuck us out.

And then I found this little book full of facts that the prime minister had written some of. Most of them were pointless—for example, it said that most teenagers got pregnant by accident, DER!!!!!!! And some of them were funny—like, one in ten teenagers couldn't remember if they'd had sex the night before or not, which is pretty incredible if you think about it. I think this meant that one in ten teenagers had got so blasted the night before that they didn't know what had gone on. I don't think it meant they were just forgetful, like when you can't remember whether you packed your games kit. I wanted to run and tell Mum about this one. You know, “Mum, I know I shouldn't have done it. But at least I remembered I'd done it the next day!”

I learned that Britain had the worst teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, which by the way means we have the highest. It took me a while to realize that. For a moment I thought they might mean it the other way, that our teen pregnancy rates were low and the prime minister wanted us to do better. And I learned that after fifteen years or so, eighty percent of teenage fathers lose touch with their kids completely. Eighty percent! Eight out of ten! Four out of five! That meant that in fifteen years' time, the chances were that I wouldn't have anything to do with Roof. I wasn't having that.

 

I was angry when I left the house, and I was still angry when I got to Alicia's. I knocked on her door way too hard, and Andrea and Rob were angry with me even before they let me in. I probably shouldn't have gone, but it was already about nine or so, and she was asleep by ten, so I didn't have time to calm myself down. The way I looked at things, it wasn't going to be me who stopped seeing Roof. The only way I was going to lose touch with him was if Alicia stopped me from seeing him and moved away and didn't tell me where she'd gone. So it was all going to be her fault.

“What on earth is all the racket about?” said Andrea when she came to the door.

“I need to see Alicia,” I said.

“She's in the bath,” said Andrea. “And we've only just got Roof off to sleep.”

I didn't know whether I was allowed to see Alicia in the bath anymore. On the day Roof was born, Andrea more or less made me go into the bathroom. Since then, I'd lived with her and then moved out again, although we hadn't actually split up, or even talked about splitting up, even though I think we both knew what was going to happen. So what did all that mean? Was it OK to see Alicia naked or what? This was the sort of thing the prime minister should be writing about on the Internet. Never mind whether you could remember whether you'd done it the night before or not. The night before was over. It was too late for the night before. We wanted to know about all the nights after, the nights when you wanted to talk to a naked girlfriend or ex-girlfriend and you didn't know whether there should be a door in the way or not.

“So what shall I do?” I said to Andrea.

“Go and knock on the door,” she said.

It was, I had to admit, a pretty sensible answer. I went upstairs and knocked on the door.

“I'll be out in a second,” said Alicia.

“It's me.”

“What are you doing here? Is your cold better?”

“No,” I said. Except I was quick enough to make it sound more like “Doe,” to show I was still blocked up. “I need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

I didn't want to talk about not knowing Roof in fifteen years' time through a bathroom door.

“Can you come out? Or can I come in?”

“Oh, bloody hell.”

I heard her get out of the bath, and then the door opened. She was wearing a dressing gown.

“I thought I was going to get ten minutes to myself.”

“Sorry.”

“What is it?”

“You want to talk in here?”

“Roof's asleep in our room. My room. Mum and Dad are downstairs.”

“You can get back in the bath if you want.”

“Oh, what, so you can have a good look?”

I'd only been here two minutes and she was really getting on my nerves. I didn't want to look at anything. I wanted to talk about whether I was going to lose touch with my son. I asked her whether she wanted to get back in the bath because I felt bad about interrupting it.

“I've got better things to look at than you,” I said. I don't know why I chose those particular words. I think I may even have got it wrong, and missed out some words, like, “do than.” “I've got better things to do than look at you,” I might have meant. I was angry with her, and she was sounding cocky. It was my way of saying, you know, You're not all that.

And then I said, “People.” I said “people” because Alicia isn't a thing.

“What does that mean?”

“What I said.”

I didn't think she could have taken it another way, you see.

“So you're already seeing someone else? Sleeping with another girl?”

I didn't say anything straightaway. I couldn't understand how she'd got from there to here.

“What are you talking about?”

“You little shit. ‘Oh, I've got a cold.' You liar. Get out. I hate you.”

“Where did you get that from?” We were both shouting now.

“You've got better people to look at? Well go and bloody look at them.”

“No, I—”

She wouldn't let me speak. She just started pushing me out of the door, and then Andrea came running up the stairs.

“What the hell is going on here?”

“Sam came round to tell me he was going out with someone else.”

“Charming,” said Andrea.

“You can forget all about seeing Roof,” said Alicia. “I'm not letting you near him.”

I couldn't believe it. It was all completely insane. Half an hour ago I'd been worried about losing touch with Roof in fifteen years' time, and I'd come round to talk to Alicia about it, and I'd lost touch with him straightaway, on the first day of the fifteen years. I felt like strangling her, but I just turned around and started to walk away.

“Sam,” said Andrea. “Stay here. Alicia. I don't care what Sam has done. You are never to make threats like that unless something extremely serious has happened.”

“And you don't think that's serious?” said Alicia.

“No,” said Andrea. “I don't.”

 

It all got sorted out. Alicia got dressed, and Andrea made us both a cup of tea, and we sat down at the kitchen table and talked. That makes it sound more intelligent than it really was. They let me speak, and I was finally allowed to tell them that I wasn't going out with anyone else, and I didn't want to go out with anyone else, and all that stuff about better people to look at came from nowhere and meant nothing. And then I explained that I'd come round angry because of what the prime minister had said in his report or whatever it was, that I was going to lose touch with Roof and I didn't want to.

“So it was sort of ironic that Alicia tried to stop you seeing him tonight,” Andrea said. And Alicia sort of laughed, but I didn't.

“How does it happen?” I said. “How do all those dads lose touch with their kids?”

“Things get hard,” said Andrea.

I couldn't imagine how hard things would have to get before I stopped seeing Roof. It felt like I couldn't stop seeing him, like it wouldn't be physically possible. It would be like not seeing my own feet.

“What things?”

“How many of those fights do you think you could have before you gave up on Roof? Fights like the one you had tonight?”

“Hundreds,” I said. “Hundreds and hundreds.”

“OK,” she said. “Say you have two of those a week for the next ten years. That's a thousand. And you've still got five years to go before you get to fifteen years. Do you see what I mean? People give up. They can't face it. They get tired. One day, you might hate Alicia's new boyfriend. You might have to move to another part of the country for work. Or abroad. And when you come home to visit, you might get depressed that Roof doesn't really recognize you…. There are loads of reasons.”

Alicia and I didn't say anything.

“Thanks, Mum,” Alicia said after a while.

 

Like I said, there's nothing you can do about the real future, the one you can't get whizzed into. You have to sit around and wait for it. Fifteen years! I couldn't wait fifteen years! In fifteen years' time I'd be a year older than David Beckham is now, one year younger than Robbie Williams, six years younger than Jennifer Aniston. In fifteen years' time, Roof might make the same sort of mistake that I made and my mum made, and become a dad, and I'd be a grandfather.

The thing was, though, I had no choice but to wait. There wouldn't be any point in hurrying it up, would there? How would that work? I couldn't cram fifteen years of knowing Roof into two or three, could I? It wouldn't help. I still wouldn't necessarily know him in fifteen actual years.

I hate time. It never does what you want it to.

I asked to see Roof before I went home. He was fast asleep, hands up near his mouth, and he was making his little snoring noises. The three of us watched him for a while. Hold it there, I thought. Everybody stay like this. We'd have no problem getting through the fifteen years if we could just stay here, saying nothing, watching a kid grow up.

I'm telling you
all this as if it's a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. And it is a story, I suppose, because everyone's life is a story, isn't it? But it's not the sort of story that has an end. It doesn't have an end yet, anyway. I'm eighteen, and so is Alicia, and Roof is nearly two, and my sister is one, and even my mum and dad aren't old yet. It's going to be the middle of the story for a long time, as far as the eye can see, and I suppose there are lots of twists and turns to come. You may have a few questions, though, and I'll try to answer them.

Mum's baby Emily was born in the same hospital as Roof, but in the room next door. Mark was there, of course, and I took Roof in on the bus a couple of hours later.

“Here's Grandma,” I said when we went in. “And here's your auntie.” Mum was used to being Grandma by then, but not so many people get called Grandma while they're breastfeeding a baby. And not many people get called Auntie when they're two hours old.

“Bloody hell,” said Mark. “What a mess.” He was laughing, but Mum wasn't having it.

“Why is it a mess?” she said.

“She's been alive for five minutes, and she's got a nephew who's older than her, and two half-brothers with different mothers, and a mum who's a grandmother, and God knows what else.”

“What else?”

“Well. Nothing else. But that's a lot.”

“It's just a family, isn't it?”

“A family where everyone's the wrong age.”

“Oh, don't be so stuffy. There's no such thing as a right age.”

“I suppose not,” said Mark. He was agreeing with her because she was happy, and because there was no point in talking about all that in a hospital room just after a baby had been born. But there is such a thing as a right age, isn't there? And sixteen isn't it, even if you try to make the best of it when it's happened. Mum had been telling me that ever since I was born, pretty much. We'd had babies at the wrong age, with the wrong people. Mark had got it wrong the first time, and so had Mum, and who knew whether they'd got it right this time? They hadn't been together that long. However much Alicia and I loved Roof, it was stupid to pretend that he'd been a good idea, and it was stupid to pretend we were going to be together when we were thirty or even when we were nineteen.

What I couldn't work out was whether it mattered that we'd all chosen the wrong people to have kids with. Because it all depended on how we all turned out, didn't it? If I got through all this and went to university and became the best graphic designer the world had ever seen, and I was an OK father to Roof, then I'd be glad that Mum and Dad were my parents. If I'd had some other mum or dad, then everything would have been different. It might have been my dad that passed on the graphic design gene, even though he can't draw to save his life. We learned about recessive genes in biology, so his graphic design gene might have been like that.

There must be loads of famous people whose mum and dad should never have got together. Well, would they have been famous if they hadn't? Prince William, say? OK, bad example, because if he'd had the same dad, he'd still be Prince William. Prince Something, anyway. The William might have been Diana's idea. And he might not want to be a prince. Here's one: Christina Aguilera. She's written songs about how her dad was abusive and all that. But she wouldn't be Christina Aguilera without him, would she? And she wouldn't have been able to write those songs if her dad had been nice.

It's all very confusing.

Yes, there was. It's clever, the future. It's clever the way TH does it, anyway. When I get to those bits in my life, the bits I've visited before, then pretty much the same things happen that happened first time around, except for different reasons, and with different feelings. On that day, for example, Alicia did call me because she had a cold, and I did have to take Roof to the doctor's. But I did know his name when we got there, so nobody could say that I'd learned nothing in all that time, ha ha.

He didn't have his injections, though, so that part was true. What happened was, he started crying in the waiting room when I told him it wasn't going to hurt. I think he worked out that as I never normally told him that something wasn't going to hurt, then something was going to hurt, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. And I thought, She can take him. I don't want to deal with this.

I think I can remember Ms. Miller telling us in Religious Studies once that some people believe you have to live your life over and over again, like a level on a computer game, until you get it right. Well, whatever religion that is, I think I might believe in it. I might actually be a Hindu or a Buddhist or something, without really knowing it. I've lived through that day at the doctor's twice now, and I've got it wrong both times, except I'm getting better at it, very slowly. The first time I got it completely wrong, really, because I didn't even know Roof's proper name. And the second time I knew his name and I knew how to look after him properly, but I was still not good enough to make him go through with it. I'm not going to get a third shot at it, probably, because it's not in the future anymore. It's in the past. And TH hasn't whizzed me back anywhere yet. He's only whizzed me forward. So on the way home, I was thinking about whether I'd ever have another kid, when I was older. And maybe I'd have to take him or even her to the doctor's for his or even her injections, and this time I'd do it all perfectly—get the kid's name right, tell him or even her that it wasn't going to hurt and that he could cry all he wanted, he still had to have it done. That would be the perfect day. Then I could move on, and stop having to live my life over and over again.

Oh, one other thing. I didn't take him to the toy shop to waste time afterwards, so I saved myself £9.99 on that helicopter thing. I do learn. It's just that I learn very slowly.

Do you still talk to Tony Hawk? And does he still talk back?

You'll see.

College OK?

Fine, thanks. I mean, I can do the work. And the teachers are understanding and all that. I'm not sure I can get everything done, though, not in the time I have. You know I told you about my mum, and my grandad, and how they slipped off the first step? Well, I got halfway up the staircase. I can't see a way of getting up much further than that, though. And I may have to come down again unless I can find a way of staying here.

Maybe Roof will get further up. That's the thing in our family. You know that if you mess up, there'll be another kid along in a minute who might do better.

And what about you and Alicia?

I knew you'd ask me about that.

A while ago—it was just after Alicia got rid of her cold—we had sex again, for the first time since Roof was born. I can't really remember how it happened, or why. It was a Sunday night, and we'd spent the day with Roof, together, the three of us, because we'd decided that he liked having both of his parents around. We usually took it in turns at weekends. I'd go round to Alicia's and take Roof out, or bring him back to mine so that he could spend time with his baby aunt. I'm not sure he was that bothered. I think we just felt guilty about something. Probably we felt guilty about making him live in a sixteen-year-old girl's bedroom, and about how he was stuck with a mother and a father who didn't have much of a clue. Being in the same park or the same zoo together was something we could do. It was hard, but it was hard in the way that holding your breath for five minutes is hard, not in the way that maths exams are hard. In other words, any idiot can at least have a go at it.

We took him to Finsbury Park, which has been done up since I was a kid, so you don't sit there thinking that it was only four or five years ago that you were swinging on those monkey bars. Andrea and Robert had given Alicia twenty quid, so we had lunch in the café, and Roof had chips and ice cream, and about four goes on those machines full of bouncy balls in see-through plastic eggs. We didn't talk about anything. I mean, we didn't talk about life and all that. We talked about bouncy balls, and ducks, and boats, and swings, and boys who had Thomas the Tank Engine scooters. And when Roof was on the swings or playing in the sand, then one of us had a sit down on the benches.

My mum once asked me what Alicia and I talked about when we looked after Roof together, and I told her that we didn't talk about anything, that I kept out of the way. Mum thought that was a sign of maturity, but the truth was, I was scared of her. If she wanted a fight, she didn't care where we were, so I found it was safer to sit on a bench and watch her pushing Roof on a swing than it was to stand next to her. If you did that, then you could suddenly find yourself in the middle of a playground being called all the names under the sun while a small crowd gathered to watch. I'm not saying it wasn't my fault, half the time. It was. I forgot arrangements, equipment, food and drink. I made stupid jokes about things she didn't want me joking about, like her weight. I was joking because I'd started to think of her as a sister, or a mother (mine, not Roof's), or a friend I used to go to school with or something. She wasn't laughing at these jokes because that wasn't how she thought of me.

The day we went to Finsbury Park was nice, really. No fights, Roof was happy, the sun shone. We kept it going. I went back to Alicia's to help her with Roof's tea and bedtime, and then Andrea asked me if I wanted to stay for dinner. And after dinner we went into Alicia's room so that I could see Roof asleep before I went home, and she put her arm around me, and one thing led to another, and we ended up going into her brother's bedroom. The funny thing was, we still didn't have any condoms. She had to go and pinch them from her parents again.

It had been a long time since I'd done anything like that. I'd kept myself to myself, if you know what I mean. Up until that night, I hadn't wanted to sleep with Alicia, because I didn't want her to think we were together. But I couldn't sleep with anyone else, could I? That would have been the fight to end all fights, if she found out. And I was still scared. What if I got someone else pregnant? That would be the end of me. I'd just be walking one endless circle from child to child, with the occasional visit to college, for the rest of my life.

So I slept with Alicia, and what happened? She thought we were together. We lay there on her brother's bed afterwards, and she said, “So what do you think?”

And I said, “About what?”

I swear I'm not leaving anything out. “So what do you think?” were her first words on the subject.

“About giving things another go?” she said.

“When were we talking about that?”

“Just now.”

When I say I'm not leaving anything out, I'm telling the truth. But I'm telling the truth as far as I can remember it, which I suppose is a different thing, isn't it? We had sex, and then we were quiet for a little while, and then she said, “So what do you think?” Did she say it when we were having sex? Or when we were being quiet? Did I fall asleep for a little while? I've got no idea.

“Oh,” I said, because I was surprised.

“Is that all you can say? ‘Oh'?”

“No. Course not.”

“So what else can you say?”

“Isn't it a bit soon?”

I meant, Isn't it a bit soon after the sex? Not, you know, Isn't it a bit soon after I moved out? I knew that the moving out had happened a long time before. I wasn't that out of touch.

Alicia laughed.

“Yeah,” she said. “Right. How old do you want Roof to be before you make up your mind? Fifteen? Is that a good age?”

And then I realized that I hadn't missed anything. I hadn't missed anything little, anyway. I'd just missed the whole thing, that's all, everything that had been going on in the last few months. She thought I'd been trying to make my mind up ever since my cold, and I thought I had.

“You wanted me to go when I did, though, didn't you?”

“Yeah. But things have changed since then, haven't they? It's all settled down. It was difficult when Roof was a baby. But we've got it all worked out now, haven't we?”

“Have we?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Well,” I said, “that's good, then, isn't it?”

“Is that a yes, then?”

A lot of the last couple of years has seemed like a dream. Things happened too slowly, or too quickly, and half the time I couldn't believe they were happening anyway. Sex with Alicia, Roof, Mum getting pregnant…Getting whizzed into the future seemed as real as any of it.

If I had to say when it was that I woke up, I'd say it was then, when the door to Rich's bedroom opened and Alicia's mother came into the room.

She screamed. She screamed because the room was dark, and she wasn't expecting to see anybody. And she screamed because the people in there had no clothes on.

“Out,” she said, when she'd finished screaming. “Out. Dressed. Downstairs in two minutes.”

“What's the big deal?” said Alicia, but she said it in a quivery voice, so I knew she wasn't being as brave as she sounded. “We've had a baby together.”

“I'm going to tell you what the big deal is when you're downstairs.” And she slammed the door hard as she went out.

We got dressed without speaking. It was weird. We totally felt as though we were in trouble, and I felt much younger than I was when we found out Alicia was pregnant. We were nearly eighteen, our son was asleep next door, and we were about to get yelled at for having sex together. One thing I can tell you, something I learned from those couple of years, is this. Age isn't like a fixed thing. You can tell yourself that you're seventeen or fifteen or whatever, and that might be true, according to your birth certificate. But birth-certificate truth is only a part of it. You slide around, in my experience. You can be seventeen and fifteen and nine and a hundred all on the same day. Having sex with the mother of my son after a long time without any made me feel about twenty-five, I'd say. And then I went from twenty-five to nine in two seconds, a new world record. I didn't have a clue why I felt nine years old when I'd been caught in bed with a girl. Sex is supposed to make you feel older, not younger. Unless you're old, I suppose. Then it might work the other way around. See what I mean about the sliding around?