Chapter Fourteen - Michael Keaton's Eyebrows

It took one afternoon for Frank’s mum to fall in love.

Frank knew himself that this was entirely possible. He had himself once experienced that phenomena of love at first sight.

When people asked him what this felt like, he said there were no great ways to describe it, maybe in books there were, but he hadn’t read the right books to quote these passages, and so all he could think of was that being in love was like having a really expressive face, like being Michael Keaton and all of a sudden having these dancing eyebrows that awake to convey the kind of emotions that the more well used parts of the body find hard to communicate.

‘He’s sleeping in my bed’ Irene said.

‘I almost found him on my doorstep, like the postman sent him to me, but it wasn’t quite that convenient, but not far from it. I met him on my way to buy some hand-cream. My hands are still dry - I think I like the reminder of it’

‘When will we meet him?’ Frank asked.

‘When he wakes up’ His mum replied.

‘I like letting him sleep in, when he can, sleep is a brilliant treat when you’ve sought to earn it. I like it better than I did. It helps to have someone with me. It’s nice to reach out in the night and feel the warm flesh of someone good next to me’

When Frank was younger, and when his mum was really struggling with ME, he would climb into bed next to her and hold her. She would never ask him to do this, but she always hoped that he would, and Frank understood this because he knew the importance of the things unsaid. The things unsaid are the ones that take hold of you without direction; they merge into the very fabric of our impulses, and find us doing things without a second thought.

‘I remember when you’d climb into bed and hold me’ Irene said to Frank.

‘Your nose would find a place on my neck like a nest it had made, and your warm breath would ever so slightly tickle me. Sometimes you held my hand and I would thank you for it, but you didn’t hear me because I said it so quietly, or maybe I didn’t even say it at all. My eyes would be wet and yours would be too, and I liked how we never got used to our tears; they always meant something, that something should change’

Frank’s mum had tears in her eyes as she looked at her son, who was what a vision in white could look like, there stood in white gym gear. Frank was her greatest achievement in life, and there was no sorrow in that accolade; her tears were all of pride.

Chapter Thirteen - Tipp-Ex

‘I made you a cake but I dropped it on the floor’ Irene told her son.

‘It’s alright mum! The sandwiches are fine’ Frank said.

‘I bit my nails down too much and now they sting like vinegar in wounds!’ said Irene.

‘I do that too!’ exclaimed Lorrie. ‘I do it and I hate it and yet I do it again and again’

Irene and Lorrie show each other their scrappy little nails. They compare them. There isn’t much in it.

‘Who’s are worse?’ Lorrie asks Frank.

Frank looks at the spread out digits ahead of him.

Lorrie’s have bits of Tipp-Ex on them.

‘Why do your’s have Tipp-Ex on them? Frank asks her.

‘Because I temped in an office where I got so bored that I decided to coat my nails in Tipp-Ex. I Tipp-Exed the phone too, and the letters that spelt out my name on the computer keyboard that I used, I Tipp-Exed out the letters and drew smiley faces with fangs protruding from them instead. I don’t know why. I find that when I’m bored I often do things that I don’t really understand why it is I do them, but I guess it has something to do with being in a situation that makes you feel bored in the first place, because really it should be hard to feel bored, y’know, when there’s so much to learn about’

‘I get bored of myself’ Irene said.

‘That’s the truest sort of boredom’ Lorrie replied.

‘I get bored of what my body can’t cope with’ said Irene.

‘And then I get bored of the things it can cope with’

‘I got so bored of eating once that I gave it up for a while, and after a few days I got bored with that too, and then I ate lots to stop being bored of not eating, but then I bored of solids and so I only ate soup, and then I bored of soup and only ate squirty cream, and then eventually I go so bored of how erratic my diet was that I came round full circle and started to eat normally again’

‘I was bored of your dad too’ Irene said to her son

‘When he left me, I was bored of him as the man for me to love, and as the man who should have stimulated my senses, but I wasn’t yet bored of him as the man I could call my husband - that, I was scared of losing, I was scared of not being in a boring marriage, because at least it was a marriage, regardless of its description, but then sometimes you understand why it’s good to feel so bored sometimes, because that feeling should make you find what it is that makes you feel less so, what rids you completely of it, and today I did just that, I expelled boredom from my life'

'How?' Frank asked his mum.

'I fell in love' She smiled.

Chapter Twelve - Jigsaw

Kyle lost the knees of his jeans to paving driveways. He wore knee protectors and boots with steel toe-caps. He had sound-proof ear-muffs, but he didn't call them ear-muffs. He wore high-vis too, when it took his fancy, which should have been always, but instead, was sometimes, like the sight of a rainbow.

He was sleeping in Frank's mum's bed, in the after-thought of sex. His shoulders were large and avoided the quilt. He wasn't a staple of the bedroom, but he fitted in just fine.

Kyle had met Frank's mum Irene whilst finding her looking for a long time at his company's sign, positioned at the bottom of her neighbour's driveway, where it was Kyle was undertaking some work on elaborate cornerstones.
Irene had two curly bits of blonde hair resting on the apples of her cheeks as she looked at the sign which advertised all a man called Kyle Hicks could do - in a professional capacity, and in her counselling sessions Irene had been set a challenge by her counsellor, Marta, to approach someone new before their next session, to meet a man and ask him out for a drink.
Marta set these challenges with the expectation that they'd be dodged.
Marta was a pessimistic counsellor; a trait that meant her clients often stayed with her, for years.

Kyle looked at Irene, and Irene looked at his sign, aware that he was watching her. Irene tried to look as though she was looking right through the sign, but that didn't work, as she was hunched over and undoubtedly only looking at a sign which detailed the various types of paving a man called Kyle Hicks could do.

'It really isn't all that interesting' Kyle said to Irene.

'I seem to find it interesting though, don't I' Irene replied.

'You do. I don't know why, but you do' Kyle said.

Irene had stopped looking at the sign and instead put her gaze on Kyle.

'I was headed to the shop to buy some handcream' Irene said to Kyle.

'And you're not now?' He asked her.

'No, I'm not now' Irene smiled, and with Marta's voice in her head she asked Kyle over for tea.

'Do you like jigsaws?' Irene asked Kyle, as they drank tea together in her living room,
'Only with what you do for a living, it seems like you might'

'I don't know if I do' Kyle replied.

'That's a shame' Irene replied.

'Why?' Kyle asked.

'Because you'd be really good at them'
'Jigsaws'

Kyle's knees protruded from the denim around them. Irene's hair lay in her eyes. Mugs of tea gave their hands something to hold, and they needed them - things to be held.

Behind the netted window, the afternoon diminished. Mugs were substituted with the like of a knee.
And it was all very delicate, as they moved into place; like a jigsaw creating a bigger picture, they made sense together - Irene and Kyle.

Chapter Eleven - Madonna Smile

A red brick semi was home to Frank and his mum. All the curtains had netting on them. Some of the panes were broke. And the gate to the front garden was gone. Lorrie imagined Frank’s mum upstairs in bed like the sickly boy from The Secret Garden, scared of the light and of the outside world, but the front door was open and so she couldn’t be that scared Lorrie thought, and as she looked down at her feet, in the house where Frank grew up, she saw the word ‘Welcome’ covered in mud.

‘Will your mum mind me being here?’ Lorrie asked Frank.

‘She’ll be happy you’ve come’ Frank replied.

‘You make it sound like she already knows me’ Lorrie said.

‘She’ll know you’re a friend of mine and that’ll mean that she’ll like you’ said Frank.

Frank’s mum was in the kitchen, leaning against the worktop. She wore a knit top of canary yellow and had two lots of earrings in each year. She looked young Lorrie thought, and pretty. Her hair was dark blonde and she didn’t so much say hello to Lorrie as catch her by the shoulders and push her down into a chair by the dinner table.

‘Frank!’ His mum exclaimed, embracing him after pushing Lorrie down into a chair.

Frank hadn’t been home for more than two weeks. That wasn’t unusual. You could travel around in a car and camp and stay in b&b’s and hostels and still spend less than you would by staying put and looking forward only to the weekends, and sometimes Frank decided to do exactly that. He escaped.

‘You look good Frank!’ His mum beamed. ‘You look fit and healthy!’

‘I am mum. I’m good. I’m running still’ Frank told his mum.

‘And you look well for it! And you’re doing well out of it!’ Said his mother looking across at Lorrie as she did, with a wide smile on her face that paid great attention to the gap between her front teeth, something which looked good on an attractive woman, and Lorrie thought Frank’s mother was very much that, and not at all how she expected her to be.

‘This is Lorrie mum’ Said Frank

Lorrie and Frank’s mum said hello to each other in that late way people do when it’s clear they’ve already eyed each other up and decided they’ve already been acquainted. They had that kind of chemistry that comes about when there’s a great mutual appreciation laboured between two people, and in their instance, this was Frank.

‘She’s beautiful Frank’ His mum said, referring to Lorrie.

‘She’s beautiful Frank’ Thought Lorrie, referring to Frank’s mum, but never saying a word, not until they’d gone. 'She has a smile like Madonna'

There was a loaf in the bread bin and some ham in the fridge. Sandwiches were made and ate, tea was drank. There were walking aids dotted about the house, and handles for lifting out of the bath. There were photos of Frank on the wall by the stairs. There were letters unopened. Ten pounds stuck to the fridge with a magnet. A drawer filled only with plastic bags.

There was also a man asleep in a floral quilted double bed.

He smelt of construction. He breathed out dust.

Chapter Ten - PAM

‘I remember Auntie Pam as a dalmatian’ Frank told Lorrie
'A definite dog' He continued.

‘She always had this dalmatian look fur coat on and she’d bring round Feast lollies for me and my dad to eat, but not for me mum, because the first time Auntie Pam brought Feast lollies round my mum didn’t want one, and that was that, the assumption was made that she'd never want one, and so my dad got two Feasts that day, he was beaming, and he went on about the day he got two Feast lollies for years after it, ridiculing my mum for not liking them, even though she did like them, it’s just that she didn’t want one that day - but my dad didn’t listen, and looking back, I think you could mark the Feast lolly incident as the day my parents' marriage fell apart’

‘I stopped eating Feast lollies when my dad left. I didn’t even like using the word feast because of him. I stopped having non ice-lolly feasts too, but I don’t think I ever really had those sorts of feasts anyway, and I’d hide the selection of the ice-cream man from my mum if we were ever out, she didn’t need to see the image of a Feast with a bite taken out of it, it would’ve reminded her of dad too much - he had a memorable bite - so we’d get Zoom lollies instead, always, that was our usual’

‘It was harder to hide dalmatians from my mum. Sometimes when she thought she saw one, and when she did see one, I’d tell her it was a skunk instead, or a piece of interior design caught on the wind. She liked Pepe Le Pew and Changing Rooms, so at least I thought, these were good false thoughts I was filling her head with. I’d check the TV Guide to make sure we weren’t gonna find ourselves in front of the box with 101 Dalmatians about to come on, and I’d keep up to date with fashion trends, looking at the latest copy of Bella, and what the 3am Girls had to say, all so I could protect my mum from any dalmatian trends set to be unleashed on us’

‘It was hard looking after mum, but I never resented it, I wanted to do it. I’d still go to school and I’d do alright, I was your slightly above average student if that’s how you mark intelligence. I don’t see it that way, most of my education at that age wasn’t examined and awarded upon'
'I’d brush my mum’s hair for her and watch films with her that I’d rented from the library. She liked sad movies best. This Sporting Life was one of her favourites, I think she found comfort in the loneliness of others, not that it made her feel good, but just that it made her feel less of a victim and more a part of something that was sad, but still, it was a part of something’

‘I wanted to protect my mum from everything, but one day when I was in the kitchen making tea with her, as she sat in her wheelchair by the oven folding freshly washed tea-towels, I saw her face drop, and the neatly folded tea-towels flew into the air like unruly fireworks bought from one of those dodgy pop-up shops that only sell fireworks'
'My mum was pointing at me, frantically, but turning her head away from me as she did. She couldn’t look at me, that was clear, and she was shouting at me to, ‘GET RID OF HER’ I stood there, filled with sadness. I tried to approach her, but when I did she kicked me and told me to ‘FUCK OFF’ I turned around, confused, looking I don’t know what for, when I caught my reflection in the glass of the cabinet where it was the fancy glasses were kept, and there in my reflection was the name PAM spelt out, clear as day; a yellow font of PAM spelt out in harsh capital letters that begged to be seen'
'I hadn’t been careful enough, I held in my hand a can of SPAM that I’d been planning to make fritters with for tea, I was holding it in my right hand, covering the S with the width of my fingers, and there I was to blame for bringing PAM back into our home again. Big meaty PAM. A feast of PAM. The kind of PAM that wouldn’t go away, not even when we had fish fingers for tea’

Chapter Nine - 'The Cobra'

Frank and Lorrie had been driving for a while. It didn’t seem to matter where they were driving to.
They both had their reasons for wanting to carry on as they were, as abstract thoughts shaped in human form, or just humans thinking abstractly.

Frank and Lorrie weren’t so special as to be considered otherworldly, they had all the documentation and memories that said they were products of 1980s England, and problems of the very same place, only moved on to the second decade of the millennium, which I guess we should call the ‘teens’ only we find it hard to, because it doesn’t sound right recycling the name of the decade when it was that the First World War broke out.

In all his apparent distraction Frank had as a matter of fact been driving in the direction of his other home, the one he wasn’t driving in, the one where his mother lived, because it was her house, but their home.

Frank’s mother was a bad cook and her name was Irene. She suffered from ME and when at its worst she had lived practically in one room because of it. Frank’s dad was called Stewart and Frank hated him. Frank didn’t want to hate his dad, but sometimes you have no choice but to do just that, and when his dad left his mum Frank was glad, he just wished he could've given his dad back the genes he’d passed on to him, too.

Before Frank’s dad left his mum, Frank’s dad would call Irene ‘The Cobra’ because sometimes she’d be so ill that she had no energy to even stand upright, and so she’d have to crawl her way to the bathroom because of it. Sometimes Frank’s dad would even stand there and watch her whilst she’d be using all her strength to push herself along the carpet, and he wouldn’t help her, he wouldn’t even ask, and Frank’s mum would get burns from the carpet, and be crying along her way, not because of the physical pain, that was something she’d learned to cope with, but she’d be crying because her existence wasn’t that of a woman any more, but more that of an insect, a ladybird at best.

On the day Frank’s dad left the family home, he took all of Irene’s best clothes and jewellery with him, and said that as these things had been bought with his money it was only right he should take them back. He even said he had a certain woman in mind who could breathe some life back into them.

The woman was closer than anyone thought, and a twelve year old Frank looked on as his father drove away from the family home, with a woman he’d been told all his life to call his, 'Auntie Pam'

Chapter Eight - Barry Lyndon

Frank hoped Lorrie now lived in a place where there were only windows on a ground floor level, and Lorrie said he shouldn’t worry, she now lived in a basement, but not, at least not consciously, because she ever thought she’d jump out of a window again. Lorrie’s reason was much more simple as to why she lived in a basement, the flat was cheaper, and that was that.

‘I have parts of windows in my flat, the bottom parts, but I can’t open them, the flat above me can, but not me, and so I get this odd climate that doesn’t reflect the outside world at all sometimes. I think I like that about it. It’s as though I have travelled not just downstairs to come home, but have taken a journey to somewhere beyond. I enjoy that feeling. I like the way the light streaks in, missing so much of my flat and illuminating this one spot where I like to sit and read. It makes the order of my furniture look strange because I’ve put this one chair in the middle of my living room floor where it is that the light falls. I keep books under this chair; that’s where my collection’s kept. I like natural light so when it comes in sparse it feels all the more valuable, and I know to feel happy for its presence. I remember reading about that movie, Barry Lyndon - I adore that movie. I remember reading an interview where the interviewer asked Kubrick why it was he used only natural lighting, and Kubrick said ‘Because it’s the way we see things’ and I loved that, because I really want to take things in, and really see them, and connect with them, and when I watched that movie I couldn’t take my eyes away from this man transforming before my eyes, even when I wanted to, I couldn’t, the composition of the scenes as ruled by the light led my eye to where it said to go. And so it is I can understand when people say they see a light calling to them, when they’re near death – a guiding light I guess it is. I don’t think I could refuse it, not because of faith, I want to have that, but it doesn’t stick; I just don’t think when it came down to it that I could beat a light of so much intensity and purpose - I think such a light would make me keel over with awe’

‘Does this mean you’re not scared of death?’ Frank asked

‘Of course I’m scared of death. If anything I’m more scared, well, at least based on your opinion of how scared I am. These people who say they’ve seen the bright light of what comes after this life have beaten it, just before it accepted them completely, they managed to refuse to let it completely take them, but I’m scared, so scared, because I know if I see such a brilliant light I’d be too curious and awe struck to not take that step; and maybe it’s guiding us to something wonderful, or maybe to nothing at all, but once I see that light, I know I’m never coming back, no second chances, no brilliant recovery, just gone, a thing like silence’