Domestics
by Steve Finbow
She laughs like an ex-girlfriend of mine and some of her mannerisms are like those of my mother – the twitch of her mouth to show displeasure, the wrinkle of her nose to show disdain – but these are not the reasons I despise her. Think of all the things. And I do. I think of them a lot. Sitting here at the breakfast table buttering toast burnt at the edges, and she walks into the kitchen looking stunted and weepy; her green silk dressing gown cinched at the waist with a length of frayed pink ribbon, the tumbleweed of hair, the hands jittery as kittens in a plastic bag. It’s all afterwards and beginnings, afterwords and prefaces. Little has much substance and we talk around it as if it doesn’t exist, just buts and ifs and maybes. Even here, I am unable to name the thing. What it is. She reaches for a cup of lukewarm coffee and grasps it with tobacco-stained fingers, the nails bitten down and bloodied, the tattered quick tender to its own touch. She has bony knuckles. Skinny fingers. Big hands. She holds the cup in both and sips the coffee; she looks over the rim at me. She takes another sip, fixing me with narrowed eyes. Eyes I once fell in love with; the detail of them – their shifts and hues, their tides and wonder. Now I see them as her one mistake – they cannot hide her from herself. I can feel communication coming on. Feel it, smell it, taste it. Come on. Let’s get it over with. Our chats are long-gone, bye-byes, farewells. This is raw. This is spectacle. This is the slow sticking of the bayonet, the snagging of the net, the tilt and thrust of the trident – up to the hilt, into the core, amongst the essentials.
‘Did I wake you?’
Yeah, and then you put me to sleep again and then I died and went to hell.
‘No,’ I say.
‘I had another one of those dreams.’
I know you did, you psychotic bitch. Moaning and screaming, flinging the bed covers around like a Yeti in a tent.
‘Did you?’ I say.
‘Yeah. In the dream, I was…’
That sentence does it for me. I don’t know about you but when somebody says to me, ‘I had the weirdest dream…’ ‘I had a strange dream last…’ ‘Last night, I dreamt that…’ I close my ears. I close my mind. I’m not interested. Other people’s unconscious minds are about as interesting as cottage cheese – cottage cheese without the chives, without the cigars, without the fairground horses, the gee-gees, the gewgaws, the nearly stroked and naked fronds. I know what she dreamt about. It happens every night. It’s happened every night for the last three months. And the production must be costly, through the roof, up in space. The thrashing around’s pretty melodramatic but you want to hear the vocals. Actually, you don’t. At first, I thought she was being gang raped by the Nephilim. But I found out when I woke her, it was a race far less mythic – she’d started having these porno dreams about film stars and rock singers. And it was doing her in. They were doing her in. She was done in. And it was doing me in.
‘You look tired,’ I say.
‘I look knackered you mean.’
Yeah, you look knackered, rough as a dog, haggard as a hound. Course I’m gonna say that.
‘Well, I wouldn’t say that.’
‘It’s driving me mad,’ she says. ‘It feels like I haven’t slept in weeks. I sweat so much, the sheets are sodden.’
‘I know,’ I say.
And it was driving me mad. Most nights, I’ve been woken at about three, and I’ve slipped downstairs to the sofa; the sofa’s leather and it feels like I’m sleeping in an old catcher’s mitt. I can still hear her squeals and squawks, her pants and rants, coming from upstairs. God knows what the kids think. I know what the neighbours think.
‘Give her a good seeing to last night,’ says Dick.
‘On good form, mate,’ says Dingbang.
‘Phwoooarr!’ says Odongo.
‘Wish I had your stamina,’ says Deepesh.
So do I, mate. So do I. What can I say? I can’t hold my hands up and say, ‘It wasn’t me, DickDingbangOdongoDeepesh me old mates. It was Johnny, it was Brad, it was Justin, it was Robbie.’
The skin beneath her eyes is as dark as the shadows beneath a pulpit, like the skin of a moribund lizard, like the peel of a rotten orange.
Standoff in the kitchen – she’s by the fridge, right hand on her hip like she has the Invisible Man in a headlock; I’m behind the chair, leaning on the back of it as if I’m posing for an all-star kitchen team photograph. We’re like two aged gunfighters – we’ve seen it all, killed a few in our time, and, right now, we can’t be arsed with it. Trouble is, our reputations are on the line. Who’s going to be first to the draw? Her? Me?
I twitch first and say, ‘Want a cup of tea?’
She looks at the floor and looks up again.
‘Yes, please.’
Then she says, as if I’ve tied them to their beds, gagged them and put pillowcases over their heads,
‘Better get the kids up.’
‘What, you’d better or I’d better?’ I say, regretting it instantly.
‘You.’
‘Me?’
‘You.’
This could go on forever so I stomp upstairs and leave hanging in the air this startling departing witticism,
‘You can get your own fucking tea, then.’
Sometimes I surpass myself.
The kids. What can I say? Where do I start? Let’s try Josie’s room.
I knock on the door and open it an inch or two – any more and she’d have my balls for pompoms, all purple and furry.
‘Josie, darling. It’s time to get up.’
I can smell cheap perfume, something mildly sweet but rotting, like pheasant chewing gum, and deodorant – at once piney and chocolatey, and, if I’m not mistaken – and I do know this smell quite well – vodka.
‘Josie, it’s Daddy, sweetie. Mummy says it’s time to get up.’
Yes! Bitch! I hear a rustle and heave of duvet and as if she’s swallowed the head of one of her cuddly toys,
‘Innaminneth. Alligh? Ukkov.’
‘Sorry, sweetheart?’
Like mother, mmm?
‘Innaminneth, Dudd.’
‘OK, but not too long.’
Kenny’s room has a plaque that reads ‘Enter At Your Peril’. Yeah, right. ‘Enter with your Persil’ more like. You don’t scare me, Kenny. Now, Josie, on the other hand scares the shit out of me. You’re nobody, son. Nada. No mates. No girlfriends.
‘Oi! Get out of bed, you lazy little shit!’ I say.
He spins around like a crocodile in a death roll.
‘What were you doing?’
‘Nothing, Dad.’
‘You’ll go blind.’
‘That’s a fairy story.’
‘You’re a fairy story,’ I say and put my hands on my knees to laugh.
Bad move. Smells like teen spirit? Smells like teen corpses. Socks with the adhesive qualities of the feet of Amazonian tree frogs, trainers that are a million years ahead of anything the Japanese are developing in artificial intelligence – I’m sure I saw an Adidas skulk, weigh up the odds of escape, and then camouflage itself in a pile of reanimated t-shirts, whilst sending messages to its ever-multiplying cohorts.
‘And clean this room up while you’re at it,’ I say.
‘While I’m at what, Dad?’
Very funny. Takes after me in that department.
‘I don’t care if you clean it up with one hand and your pants around your ankle. Just clean it. Right?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
Ponce.
‘OK, now it’s your turn, woman,’ I mutter as I leave Kenny’s room.
‘What’s that, Dad?’
‘Shut it,’ I say.
You’re wondering about the names, right? Josie’s named after Josephine. I’m a big fan of Napoleon. I even have a tattoo of a bee on my right bicep. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you it’s a fat wasp. And, Kenny? Kenny’s named after Kenny Rogers – you make the connection – If Wishes Were Horses, Ticket To Nowhere, I Was the Loser, Dream On, Homemade Lies, If I Could Change Your Mind, Hurry Up Love. You got it?
I return to the kitchen and she’s sitting in my chair reading my morning paper. I want to slap her. Not to show I’m in control. Not to calm her down – I can see she’s hysterical. I don’t want to shake her. Like in the movies. I don’t particularly want to hurt her. I want to slap her. To hear it. The slap. Hear its report. Slap. Hear it ricochet around the kitchen. Slap. See it pinging off the kettle’s spastic mirror. Slap. Slap. But I couldn’t do it. Slap. Not now. Not yet. Anyway.