Dr. Yes (21 page)

    'Yes.'

    'Have
you taken a painkiller?'

    I
gave her another look. I had been addicted to Nurofen, Anadin, generic
paracetamol, Night Nurse, Sleepeaze, co-codamol, Kapake and Vicks since 1992.
My senses are so dulled that if I was caught in a flood, I would be able to cut
off my own arms for use as paddles without flinching, although I wouldn't be
able to hold them.

    'What
do you think it means?' Alison asked.

    'What
what means?'

    'Presuming
for the moment that they were sent by Dr Yes, what do you think it means?'

    'I'm
not sure we can presume. I have a lot of enemies, and not just in retail. But
if
it's Dr Yeschenkov, and if we're thinking that he hired Buddy Wailer to
whack Augustine, then he must either think we're not worth the whack treatment,
or Buddy Wailer isn't available right now. Which is probably good either way.
Rolo will go back and report that I've been dealt with; that takes the
spotlight off for a little bit, gives us time to manoeuvre.'

    'And
how are we going to manoeuvre? Bearing in mind that I'm with child and if I'd
been in the shop they would probably have beaten me as well?'

    'We
just have to be careful.'

    'Careful
would be leaving it alone.'

    I
nodded. She nodded.

    'But
we won't do that,' said Alison.

    'Probably
not.'

    I went
home via the Sunny D. I gave Mother a stern talking-to. She pretended not to
hear. But when I casually mentioned that I'd forgotten her illicit supply of
vodka, her head snapped round like a demon.

    'Gotcha,'
I said.

    'You
are an evil child,' she said. 'I like you least of all my children.'

    'I'm
an only child, Mother.'

    'That's
what you think. What child would lock his own mother up in a prison like this?'

    'It's
for your own protection, Mother. And if you behave like
that
again, they
will
throw you out.'

    'Then
I'll come home.'

    'No
you won't. You're living here, and you will conform, or I will stop bringing
you your drink.'

    'You're
as bad as they are. Nazis.'

    Despite
her numerous complaints about the regime at Sunny D, it was clear they were
doing
something
right. Previously she would have said
Nathis.
Since her stroke Mother had had some trouble talking clearly, but she'd been
undergoing speech therapy in her new home and her diction was definitely
improving. Where before
Youfthinweakthwistedfudheadth
would have left
most listeners baffled, it was now clear for her fellow patients and caring
support staff to hear that she was referring to her son as a 'fucking
weak-wristed fudd-head'.

    She
referred to her lady-bits as her
fudd.
I'm not sure why. She just always
had. She wasn't the least bit sheepish about it either. As a child I clearly
remember her screaming at me one Sunday afternoon, 'You look like a slapped
fudd, you pathetic little cretin!' Needless to say, her membership of the
Plymouth Brethren was swiftly revoked.

    Now
she was staring at me.

    'Well?'
she snapped.

    'Well
what?'

    'What
happened to your beak?'

    'I
told you, Mother, what I do is dangerous, that's why you're safer here.'

    'Yeah.
Being poisoned and screamed at. Who did it?'

    'It's
a long story. Don't worry about it.'

    'I do
worry about it. You're my son.' She nodded to herself. She didn't meet my eyes.
She stared off into the distance. 'Such a disappointment.'

    To
fill the awkward silence that followed, I decided to tell her about the case.
She closed her eyes as I spoke. I wasn't sure if she was treating it as a
goodnight story and was slowly drifting off, until I came to the end, with Rolo
and Spider-web in the shop, and her eyes snapped open. 'Is that it?' she
barked.

    'That's
it.'

    'I
don't understand.'

    'Well,
it's complicated.'

    'No,
I don't understand why you don't just go straight to the horse's mouth instead
of dilly-dallying with the support staff. Why don't you just go up to this Dr
Yeswhatever and ask him about it?'

    'Because
. . . because he's an important man. People wait months and months for an
appointment with him.'

    'He's
only an important man to people who want him to operate on them. When he's at
the garage, getting petrol, he is not an important man, he is just a man who
wants petrol for his car. Take him out of his environment and he is no longer
an important man, but a shit, like all men.'

    For the
first time in a long, long time, I smiled at her. 'You know something, Mother,
you may have a point.'

    'Of
course I have a point. I'm your mother, you should listen to me more often. And
stop smiling, it makes you look like an imbecile.'

    'Yes,
Mother,' I said.

    I
hadn't been home for ten minutes when the phone rang. It was the manager from
the Sunny Delight saying that Mother had done it again and she would have to go.
I told her she had a wrong number. She said she recognised my voice and I said
that was impossible. I hung up. The phone rang again and I picked it up and
said, 'It's still not me.' I clearly hadn't thought it through properly, but
fortunately it wasn't the Sunny D, but Alison.

    'My
hormones are up the left,' she said. 'I have a craving.'

    'You're
pregnant, not disabled. If you want something to eat, go down to the shop.'

    'I
was talking about sex.'

    'I'm
on my way.'

    'Don't
bother if ...'

    I
didn't hear the rest. I had dropped the phone and grabbed my keys.

    When
Alison let me into her apartment, the first thing she said was, 'Craving's
gone.'

    We
were in bed. It was after midnight. She wanted to be held. I wasn't in the
holding business. She huffed.

    She said,
'You pay more attention to your mother than you do to me.'

    I
said, 'Well, my mother talks sense.'

    This
did not help.

    She
said, 'I'm not some kind of sex machine.'

    I
said, 'It appears not.'

    She
elbowed me in the stomach. She almost dislodged my gastric band.

    It
was darkish. The curtains were open, street lamps providing a faint glow. It
was unsettling. Alison maintained a bizarre ambition to make it as a comic-book
artist, but had yet to win any professional commissions. She had a Facebook
page to promote her work that had so far attracted seven members, of whom I
wasn't one. This lack of an outlet for her debatable talents meant that she
inflicted them not only on herself but on her occasional guests by hanging
completed pages and panels unframed on the walls. All her characters and
creatures had horrible bug eyes. If she had a style, or a theme, it was a
bug-eyed style, or theme. And now they were all looking at me, plotting. With
my glasses, with lenses stronger than the Hubble telescope, making my eyes look
so big, I wondered if that was what had first attracted her to me.

    'No,'
she said.

    'I
said that out loud, didn't I?'

    'You
did.'

    'I'll
have to stop that.'

    'It's
quite endearing. I'd hang on to it. Do you think absence makes the heart grow
fonder?'

    'No.
Why do you ask?'

    'You
and your mother, getting on well.'

    'I
wouldn't go that far. She's still a nightmare, just with occasional outbursts
of clarity.'

    'You
can't just abandon her there.'

    'Yes
I can. At least until they reconsider. They should learn to deal with their
problems, not be handing out ultimatums.'

    'You
think she has a point, about confronting Dr Yes?'

    'I
don't know about confronting, but certainly getting closer to him. As you know,
I prefer to examine the evidence and draw my conclusions; I'm not big on
interaction

    'Or
holding.'

    '. .
. but sometimes there's no escaping it. I think we should stay clear of Pearl,
she

    'Scares
you . . .'

    '. .
. is too much of a player . . .'

    '. .
. scares you . . .'

    '. .
. and tackle Dr Yes outside of his natural environment. Let's build up a
picture of him based on our own observations, not from Augustine's ramblings or
what we've picked up on the internet. Let's see if he doesn't somehow give
himself away.'

    'Staking
him out? Following him? Doing this how? Me with my job and you with the shop.'

    'I
can do nights.'

    'Lurker
extraordinaire.'

    'He's
going to be in the clinic most of the day, but we still need to watch him, see
if he pops out, or what he does on his time off.'

    'I'll
do my share, but it won't be enough. We need Jeff.'

    'Jeff
ran off, calling me a mentalist.'

    'I
thought he paper-cutted himself?'

    'He
did, but I shouted at him and he didn't take it well.'

    'Did
you fire him again?'

    'Nope.
Though I don't believe he'll be back.'

    'He
has a nerve, after everything you've done for him.'

    'Stood
by him through thick and thin.'

    'He
owes you big time. You took him back when he sold you down the river.'

    
'The
Case of the Cock-headed Man.'

    'You
let him use the phone for all that Amnesty International wank.'

    'Exactly.'

    'You
didn't say a word when he tried it on with me.'

    'He
tried it on with you?'

    'Yes!
Remember we all got pizza and you said you were allergic to it and went to bed.
We rented out
Hotel Rwanda
and I started to cry and he tried to comfort
me by fondling my breast.'

    'You
never told me that.'

    She
was silent for a little bit. Then she said: 'I thought you were dealing with it
rather too well. Forget about it. He was drunk.'

    'And
you let him?'

    'No,
I removed his hand and poked him in the throat with a fork.'

    'He
said that was a love bite.'

    'He
would.'

    We
were silent for another bit. Then I said, 'You have to be a weirdo to eat pizza
with a fork.'

    She
said, 'You have to be a weirdo to pretend to be allergic to it to get out of
paying for it.'

    We
lay quietly, assailed only by bug eyes.

    After
a bit I said, 'I have cravings too.'

    She
didn't respond. Her breathing became light, regular. After ten minutes of it, I
put my hand on her breast.

    'Weirdo,'
she said.

    A
Belfast dawn, with a shepherd's-warning sky.

    I was
staring out of the window, thinking about the good old days when I could spend
the night standing in the bushes in Alison's garden watching her watching TV or
getting changed for bed. It is such a joy to watch somebody sleep peacefully
through their slightly steamy window, like love in soft focus, and to not have
to listen to her alternately snoring and farting her way towards daybreak.