A Little Rain (22 page)

I still think Rob is dead but an edgy sense of
unreality has crept up on me like I’m in some sort of living nightmare with
every second that passes.  I feel maybe I haven’t woken up from my drug-induced
sleep and none of this is real.  Maybe I imagine this.  Then I see something, folded
up just near the foot of the coffee table, looking out of place like it is not
supposed to be there.  Maybe it fell out of Rob’s pocket.  I pick it up,
feeling the dry soft paper, and flatten out the pale yellow A4 sheet that
smells of glue.  It had been screwed into a ball and then flattened out and
folded up again.  I feel like I’m on quicksand.  I feel horrible sinking
despair.  Something has changed.  An uninvited harbinger has placed this in my
palm.  I start to read from the very top.

Dated two weeks ago, addressed
Mr Roberto Carlos
Roman
.  It must be serious.  I never read anything with his full name on it
for as long as I can remember.  In fact, I think I almost forgot what his
middle name was.  I read on.

EVICTION
NOTICE

You
are hereby given an eviction notice and notice to vacate the above premises on
or before Thursday, 16
^th
November, 2000...
  I skim forward.  ...
e
xcessive damage, noise and
deterioration to the property caused by the tenant and those residing in the
premises...

I don’t read it all.  It’s too long and wordy.  I can’t
take it all in, but I get the gist.  We’re being thrown out of this place in
two days time.  Two more sleeps.  I’m convinced now more than ever he has gone
and done himself in.  This is his secret.  It makes sense now.  He has taken my
pills.  He is dead.  Mum lied.  I sit with my notepad and blue chewed pen and
write.

“Shock”

Get out.  Leave this place.

Leave a chill, an ache

A spine tingle.

A deep dark hole carved in your soul

Frail, delicate, so severe

In disbelief, you do not hear

Emotion shock, so single.

I want my mum but I want Rob more than anything.  I
want to go there right now but feel like I cannot move at all, stuck to the
sofa with superglue.  The pain in my foot though has been surpassed my
something more almighty.  I feel like I have fallen down a manhole and
someone’s shut the cover.  I have been run over by a bus and there is no-one to
pick me up.  An atomic bomb has gone off inside me.  I am forty thousand specks
of dust.  I hear the cab beep twice outside.  I don’t move.  I don’t think I
can.

I hear the car horn again, this time louder and for
longer, like a ship’s foghorn in the night.  I know it is not going to wait
forever.  I have to move.  With a crutch handle in each hand, I force myself to
stand on my good leg, feeling like a felled tree that is now upstanding and
about as stable.  I take a little money in my pocket from the coffee table. 
That’s all.  I can only just about bring myself.  I swing forward to the door
and open it to the misty dark ahead.  Headlights shine on in front of me. 
Thankfully I do not recognise the driver of the black estate car that reminds
me of a hearse.  I am like the dead body in the back just missing my coffin.  I
raise a crutch to the driver, a signal why I am slower than a snail.  As I
carefully close the door behind me, I realise there may not be many more
opportunities like this, of me leaving this place.  I just stand there staring
at the door, looking at it in a different way.  The solid wood, the peeling
paint, duck egg blue.  Letter box with knocker, Yale lock slightly wonky.  Splash
stains and marks of origin unknown.  Tiny little dents, long line scratches, fingerprints
and paint drips dried into little beads.  The cab beeps again.

The door is closed and I swing towards the car,
slowly, carefully.  I open the door, crutch still in hand and swing myself and
the sticks onto the back seat.  The grey cushion beneath me feels damp and
cold.  Inside it smells oppressively of a tree-shaped air freshener dangling
from the rear view mirror, only just masking the slight but unmistakable whiff
of weed.  The driver does not say hello or even smile, or get out to help me close
the door or anything.  There is no music playing.  The radio is off.  We sit in
awkward silence the whole way.  I appreciate the quiet.  Music would annoy me,
especially some fizzy pop drivel.

I pass the driver a five pound note so crumpled it
feels like a tissue.  He takes it greedily with his dirty hand, which I’m
thankful does not touch mine.  Now he gets out of the car, opens the door and
helps me with my crutches.  I am able to move again.

It’s a long slow process getting up the stairs to
mum’s flat.  I take one green slimy step at a time, enduring the smell of stale
piss the whole way.  I try not to breathe at all.  It takes longer than the
entire cab journey did to get to her front door.  I bang on the glass of the yellow
wooden doorframe, criss-cross protection bars blocking my view in.  The perfectly
painted door is opened.  I see him as he stands there tall by the low kitchen
table, his hand resting on the bottle green cloth.  I don’t know whether to
scream or laugh or hug or hit him.  I feel like I could actually murder him
with my crutch.  Bash him over the head with it until he’s not standing up anymore. 
I say, “Rob?” and he looks at me coldly, but I sense the startings of immense
warmth in my tummy and heat rushes to my cheeks.  Then I feel dizzy as I feel
the blood fall away from my face and then it all goes black.

I do not hit my head when I fall.  I just slide down
onto the floor.  Now my hip hurts too and is throbbing slightly.  As I come
round I find myself lying flat out and uncomfortable on the ancient Parker
Knoll.  Mum perches on the mahogany coffee table next to me, pushing the lace
table centre, like an oversize snowflake out of place.  This irritates me.  “Are
you ok?” she says, and I really don’t know how to answer.  I’m now recovering
from a serious case of mega shock.  With this brain-smash overload no wonder I
blacked out and now my foot is hurting again too.  My head feels like it might
blow up, let alone can it now answer the question, “
Am I ok
?”

Rob brings in two cups of tea in plain white cups with
saucers, no frogs.  I hope maybe one is for me.  He places them on the table,
with a gentle clunk.  I glare at him.  “I thought you were dead.  Dead!  But
you’re not, you’re still here.  You’re here now.  I thought you’d gone.  I mean
like gone, forever...  I thought you’d gone and done yourself in with my
pills.”

“What?” says Rob, looking at me like I have a golf
ball-sized spot on my forehead.  Mum’s face looks worried, well her eyes do,
what I can see, most of the lower part is covered by her hand.  “What?!”  Rob says
again, like he may be about to grab me and shake me.  He then shakes his head from
side to side and gets up and walks towards the kitchen sink.  He leans on the
black worktop as the tap drips slowly, a constant unrelenting rhythm of
annoyance.  He stares blankly at the artificial blue hyacinths in the square
glass vase on the windowsill.

“Hang on a minute...  No, wait!”  I say, as Rob walks
back into the living room.  They both look expectant.  “So, you’re not going to
kill yourself?”

“NO!”  Rob bellows with ferocity that makes the teacups
on the table shudder.  “What the hell makes you think that?”  I pause as something
new stirs in me, aggravation.

I say quickly, “Well, this weekend, all that’s
happened, and what with my pills when I couldn’t find them.  I thought you took
them, and of course I was worried what with you not seeing Ruby.  Oh, and now I
find out that you are being thrown out of the flat on top of everything...”  I
trail off into the silence of the drips, distant in the background.

“How do you know about that?”  He says quickly, looking
confused, head tilted, squinting at me.

“Err...  I read your eviction note.   I have it with
me.”

“Really?  Oh...  Err, I must’ve...”  He pats at his back
pockets.  “I was going to tell you, just the landlord, he wants me out.  I
think he wants to move back in or whatever...  But anyway, I want to get out of
there quick now.  I’ve had enough of it all to be honest.”

“When are you moving?”

“I knew it was coming.”

“When?”

“Day after tomorrow.  I am going as soon as I can.  Like
I say, really now I can’t wait to just get the hell out of there.  Anyway, I
think the break’ll do me good.  It’s time for a change.”

“What?  Where are you going to go?”

“Well, I want to get away from here.  I’ve had enough.”

“What?  Where?  Are you going to tell me?  Y’know, I
live with you too.  I need to know what’s happening.”

“You know Ella, you know what I think you need to do, is
start thinking about your own life…  Whoa!” he says grasping my wrists quickly,
stopping me from hitting him.  “Listen,” he says softly but urgently, holding
on tight.  “I’m really sorry that you found that eviction letter.  Show me.  Where
is it?”  He lets one wrist go free so I can pull it from my pocket.  He then
takes it from my hand, walks in to the kitchen and starts to burn it over a
flame he lights on the elderly gas cooker.  He then he places the blackening
note in the kitchen sink.  I can smell the burning paper.  Mum watches on
silently.  “I’m sorry you had to find it.”  He says, shaking his head.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”  I ask, fire burning inside
me. “Still, seriously, what are we going to do?  Where are we going to live?”

After a very, very long pause he speaks, “That’s why
I’m here.”

“What?  Oh great… we can’t all squash in here with
mum...”

“No… no...”  He shakes his head again.  “You and I
both know we can’t stay here.”

“Then why are you here?”  He is silent again, maybe to
choose his words, or else he’s contemplating whether or not he should tell me
at all. “Why?!” I almost shout, knowing now that I am not going to like the
answer whatever it is.

“I’m going to see Dad.  I’m going to go and live with
him.”

This is new.  A sudden unexpected, unimaginable,
complete surprise and it hits me like a cold red house brick thrown bang in my face.
 A pit has opened up beneath me and I feel myself falling through the earth
towards the edges of eternity.  “What?”  I manage to say, grasping blindly at
the sides of the hole.

“It’s ok.  He’s got the space there so I’m going to go
and stay with him for a bit.”

“And you think he will be ok with that?  He hasn’t
been part of our lives for what?  Twenty years?  Are you crazy?”  I feel so mad
that I have now managed to climb out of the hole and I am about to go and
karate kick him in the face and knock his head off.

“Not crazy, desperate maybe.  I don’t really have a
choice.”

“What?  Of course you have a choice.  What am I going
to do?”  I get another sinking feeling, slippery quicksand time again.  “I’m
sorry for everything.”

“What?  What are you sorry for?”  Rob says.

“I’m sorry.  I think this is my fault.  If it wasn’t
for me and what happened with Benny, he wouldn’t have come here and wrecked the
flat.  I feel like it’s my fault you’re going.  I don’t want you to go.”  He
gets up, rubbing his face with his hands and walks out of the room completely,
closing the door behind him.

“Well…” I say to mum and she looks at me silently, “Have
you already talked about this with Rob then?  Have you told him where to find our
dad?”  It hurts inside even to say these last two words, I almost couldn’t say
them at all.  They don’t exist to me.  It makes me wonder how much more this
must be hurting mum.  I go over to her and give her a hug.  She does not move
her arms but puts her chin on my shoulder.  I can feel her trembling under the
soft folds of her cream sweater beneath my fingertips.  I know she is crying
inside but she barely makes a sound.  “Oh mum,” I say slowly, “I thought Rob
was dead.  I was shocked but just so happy to see him when I walked in.  I was
furious, yeah, but so happy.  I mean, I read his eviction letter.  I really
thought he was dead.  I thought he’d gone forever, but now I’ve walked into
this.  Surely you’re not going to let him go?  You’re going to stop him, right?”

“Oh, I’m not going to stop him,” she murmurs, clearly
unhappy in voice.

“Oh mum,” I say, grasping her hand.  “He can’t do this
to us.  I don’t want him to go.  What am I going to do?”

“There is something, one other thing, he wants...” she
says, but trails off.  Her voice is black, a picture of sadness, like a sparrow
with a broken wing.

“What?”  I say and she is silent for a while more.
“Please tell me what?”  I feel inside like I want to burst.  At the same time I
desperately try to keep hold of the parts of myself, before they escape away
forever, like little helium balloons.

“He’s going to go there and see him now.  He wants you
to go with him.”

She puts her arms around me and stops me from falling
down on to the floor again, as the blood drains from my head for the second
time today.  I don’t pass out this time.  I lean on her heavily, the falling
tree against her stick-like frame.  I just about stay conscious as the blood
surges around my ears as well, and my heart thumps in my chest bomp bomp.  I
have never met my father.  I watch my hands and arms shaking.  I cannot stop them. 
I unpick myself away from her delicate body and go and take the packet of
cigarettes from my bag.  I continue to tremble as I try in vain to light one. 
I can’t even make my lighter work.  My thumb gets hot and starts to hurt.  I
give up.  Instead I light up using the flame on the cooker.  Mum looks at me through
pink eyes.  I can smell gas.  “Sorry to smoke in your kitchen,” I say, “but my
dead brother is alive and I might be about to meet my might as well be dead father
too.  It’s a bit of a shock to the system.  I know you can’t be feeling great
either and I’m…” my voice shakes, like I’m standing on spin dryer.