If This Is Home Read online

  ‘How long now?’ Bethany asked.

  ‘Five days,’ Mark said. ‘Four once we get to midnight.’

  ‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘You dream about something for so long, and then …’

  ‘Don’t you ever worry?’ he said. ‘You know, that you’ll be disappointed?’

  She kissed him just below the ear.

  ‘Sometimes. But then I think, hey, it’s New York fucking City.’

  They laughed and talked for the hundredth time about what they’d do, what they’d see; how they’d find a way to never come back, to never return. They kissed, fooled around a little more, then looked at the clock. He would have to leave soon. The thought made her lightheaded.

  *

  Bethany is eighteen years old and this memory already feels like nostalgia. She has lived in the town all her life. She talks at length to anyone who will listen about why this place is the worst of all worlds, a penitentiary – she uses the American deliberately – for those with a lack of imagination. She can trace it back, this desire to escape, to idly listening to her father’s record collection: Simon & Garfunkel first, then Dylan. She listened to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan over and over, the album sleeve in her hand, wishing she was the woman on Dylan’s arm. As a lonely fourteen-year-old, her greatest friend, or so she liked to think, was the idea of New York City: neon-lit, coffee-scented, like a far-away lover with whom she had scant contact.

  Downstairs the phone rings but she does not move to answer it. It will be Mark, she suspects. It keeps ringing while she dries her hair with a towel, then it stops. Wearing a bathrobe she pads across the narrow hallway and into her bedroom, trailing an ellipsis of water behind her.

  Her room is cluttered with things: records and cassettes, books and shucked clothes. The wardrobe door is half off its hinges and more clothes spill out of the gap. On the wall there’s a Ramones poster that Mark bought for her. She puts on the Velvet Underground and sits at her desk. She picks up a book then sets it back down.

  There is a knock on the door, a pause, and then her father walks into her room. He is dressed in a salmon-pink polo shirt and grey slacks. He is red-faced from the wine at dinner.

  ‘We’re back,’ he says, though there’s only been him for some years. ‘Everything okay?’ he says.

  ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘Just had a bath.’

  He scratches at his stubble as she applies moisturizer to her face.

  ‘How was dinner?’ she says.

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ he says. ‘Saw lover boy there.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t say anything. He looked busy. I do like him, though, that Mark. He’s a good egg.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t say that,’ she says, shuddering. ‘It makes you sound like an old man.’

  Her father sits down on his daughter’s bed. The sheets smell freshly laundered and he wonders at how he has managed to raise a child that changes her own bedclothes without having been told.

  ‘I don’t know how you listen to this,’ he says pointing toward the hi-fi. ‘It’s like nails scraping on a blackboard. Proper slit your wrists stuff.’

  ‘You always say that,’ she says, her face oily with the cream. ‘Don’t you ever get bored of saying the same things over and over again?’

  ‘I wish I had the time to be bored,’ he says. ‘Being bored is a luxury only afforded to the young.’

  ‘You always say that, too,’ she says.

  ‘Well, I’m nothing if not predictable.’

  Bethany shakes her head. ‘And that.’

  He stands and puts a hand in his pocket, feels the money there, the sharp edge of another business card. He puts his hands on Bethany’s shoulders. They look at each other in the mirror. As the track changes there is a crackle from the vinyl.

  ‘Would you like a glass of wine, love?’ he says. ‘I’m going to have one. We could watch telly for a bit. Or a video or something.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Dad,’ she says, looking at the clock on her dresser. ‘It’s after twelve and I’ve got to be up early for this bloody carnival that I’m only doing because—’

  ‘I know, love, I know,’ he says calmly, and begins to massage her shoulders. ‘But I just wanted to know what’s new with you. We don’t get to speak so much these days.’

  She could tell him, but doesn’t.

  ‘Well, I’m up the duff,’ she says. ‘And I still owe my dealer for the last of the skag.’

  He laughs and kisses her on the top of her head. ‘And you say I’m predictable.’

  He looks over to the easy chair where a ballgown billows under cellophane wrapping. The dress is white with pastel-pink and blue petticoats. He can’t recall the last time he saw her wear anything that wasn’t black or grey, and can’t quite imagine her frame clad in this puffball of fabric. He picks it up and feels the softness of the material. It reminds him of the satin slips that her mother wore in bed, of how he would stroke her as she slept.

  ‘I do appreciate it,’ he says. ‘I really do.’

  ‘You’d better,’ she says with a smile. ‘I still can’t quite believe you talked me into it.’

  She was not talked into it. It was the last thing she could do for him, the last thing that will pass between them before she leaves. He’ll cope, she thinks. He can cope with anything.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says putting down the dress. ‘What time do you want waking?’

  ‘Seven,’ she says. ‘With a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Done.’ He kisses her again on the top of her head, squeezes her shoulders one last time.

  ‘Night then,’ he says.

  ‘Night,’ she says, as he leaves the room.

  ‘And stop smoking in the bathroom,’ he shouts as he walks down the stairs. ‘It stinks like a bloody ashtray up here.’

  *

  Bethany Wilder looks out of the window, out onto the rooftops and chimney stacks. There isn’t much to see from here: the Town Hall’s clock tower, the spire of a church, in the distance the brown brick and long windows of the factory where she’s worked since finishing her A-levels. She puts her last cigarette to her lips and thinks of Daniel. She imagines how it will feel to be under him, his unfamiliar body, his unknown breath in her ear.

  Earlier that night, she and Daniel had found themselves alone in the back room of the Queen’s. They were waiting for people to get back from the bar. Mark was at work. For a moment the two of them sat in silence, smoking and listening to the soft rattle of other people’s conversations.

  ‘So, I hear you’re going to be carnival queen tomorrow,’ he said eventually. She nodded and sucked on her cigarette, noticing for the first time the lines on his forehead, the creases at the corner of his eyes. He had a strong accent which made him sound a little slow. But she liked how deep his voice was, how thick.

  ‘I’m only doing it as a favour for my dad,’ she said. ‘Last-minute standin. The real queen got in a fight on Thursday at the Fox and apparently the Rotarians take a dim view of carnival queens beating the shit out of people.’

  Daniel laughed and toyed with his Zippo.

  ‘Any road, I bet you’ll look a right picture up there,’ he said.

  ‘Judging by the photos of last year’s queen, I’ll probably look like a whore,’ she replied, enjoying the slight look of surprise on his face.

  ‘That girl were a right boot, though, love,’ he said. ‘Captain fucked her once. Said she needed to put make-up on with a trowel just to get rid of all the zits.’ He checked his watch and stubbed out his Embassy, then lit another.

  ‘Are you going to the carnival?’ she asked. ‘I’m hoping no one I know’ll be there.’

  He shook his head and blew a couple of smoke rings.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. I never make it up in time for the procession.’ He’d leant into her then. ‘But we always go, me and Captain and that. Drinks in town first, few cans at the fair and then …’ He laughed and leant in even closer, as though to confe
ss.

  ‘Then what?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I can’t say,’ he said, his face behind a wash of smoke. ‘Can’t be seen to be corrupting the carnival queen, can I?’

  She took a long drag on her cigarette.

  ‘I don’t need much corrupting,’ she said as she blew out the smoke. ‘Well, maybe a little …’

  She looked around for a moment and then told him to meet her on Saturday. To pick her up in his van at the far end of Greenliffe Field, close to where they were building the new community theatre.

  *

  Now, with the window open and the cigarette in her mouth, she realizes that this is the right thing to do. She will sleep with Daniel and then she and Mark will make good their escape. Fucking Daniel will mean neither of them can ever come back.

  For a moment she considers phoning Mark and telling him that she loves him; instead she flicks the cigarette across the roofing tiles and watches it skitter into the guttering. Leaving the window ajar, she gets into bed. She is dressed in one of Mark’s old T-shirts. She turns out the bedside light and thinks of America: of America and New York City.

  THREE

  You won’t know what you’re missing. There is only a finite number of ten-note progressions, and how Edith had managed to settle on a jingle for an obscure 1980s commercial for Batchelor’s Super Noodles it was impossible to say. But that’s clearly what it was. The words were lodged on repeat in my head. You won’t know what you’re missing. And with it a memory of my father. I saw the same scene, over and over, the tune playing softly in the background. I could not recall the last time I had thought of him.

  My father takes the bowl of water from the microwave. He still keeps it inside because he’s afraid one of us will accidentally turn it on. He puts the bowl of water on the side and places two potatoes wrapped in paper towels on the glass wheel. He turns the dial and watches the potatoes spin slowly around. He opens a can of McEwan’s Export and pours it into a pewter tankard.

  ‘Good day?’ he says.

  ‘Not bad,’ I say. ‘You?’

  ‘I’m nadgered,’ he says.

  He sips his beer as the potatoes spin. I think about the baked potatoes we used to enjoy when Mum was around. They bear no relation to the grey-green shells he takes from the microwave.

  ‘Good television tonight,’ he says, sitting in his armchair. He is wearing a cardigan which makes him look older than his years and he needs a new pair of slippers.

  ‘Yes, Hill Street Blues,’ I say.

  I turn back to the grey blush of the television. It is a Ferguson set with a wooden exterior. It is on its last legs. We watch the adverts in silence. The last one is for Batchelor’s Super Noodles. Packets of noodles dance. Pigtails twirl. A bow tie spins around a boy’s neck. And on the soundtrack, a group of female voices sing: ‘You won’t know what you’re missing.’

  ‘How’s that Bethany of yours?’ he says.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, ‘Bethany’s fine.’

  It was a nothing recollection, but it was clear and precise. There were no smudges, no fuzzy edges to it. As it spooled, I examined it, looking for faults. There were none; the joins were invisible. How’s that Bethany of yours?

  *

  There is no first-kiss moment for a friendship, no expectation that eventually you will cohabit, commit or marry. It does not seek recognition or status: instead it exists in an uneasy space between the private and the public. True friendship is the one relationship you do not analyse, pick apart or scrutinize. Until I met O’Neil I had never quite experienced it; without him, I don’t know how I would have lived.

  It was O’Neil who fixed me up with a job; O’Neil who found us an apartment; O’Neil who set me up with my fake papers. It was O’Neil who made it possible for me to leave Mark Wilkinson behind. To become Josef Novak.

  We met in a mid-town bar one afternoon, soon after I’d arrived in New York. I was eighteen and he was wearing a suit that didn’t fit properly. His tie was slouched and crooked, his hair wiry and long, his shoes surprisingly burnished. He fed the jukebox with quarters, putting on old country songs and rockabilly as well as some fading heavy-metal bands. He ordered a burger which he ate while nodding his head and dropping ketchup and mustard close to the pages of the book he was reading.

  How we got to talking, I don’t remember: I was pretty drunk by then. He asked me about England and I told him that all I’d ever wanted to do was leave.

  ‘How long you been in the city?’ he asked.

  ‘Four, maybe five days. I’m not sure. Jet lag, you know?’

  ‘What have you seen? All the usual tourist shit, I imagine.’

  ‘I went to CBGBs last night. Went down to the Brooklyn Bridge and to Grand Central. Mostly I’ve just been walking, though.’

  ‘Best way, man. Best way.’

  He went back to his beer and ordered another one, and one for me.

  ‘I got canned today,’ he said and held his bottle up and chinked it against mine. ‘Was there two years. Cutbacks or some such shit.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be. They’re all fucking assholes. Glad to be shot of ’em. Especially Reilly. He always fucking hated me, the fucking louse. Hey, bud, get me two whiskies here, please.’

  The bartender poured the shots and he passed one to me.

  ‘Let’s get fucked and hate the world,’ he said.

  We wandered from bar to bar, me in O’Neil’s wake, him telling stories about every street we walked along, and every drinking place we entered. There was the street corner where Simone Garvin – an old girlfriend who’d stayed a friend – had passed out from taking too much coke and he’d had to revive her; the block where his father had been having his hair cut for over five decades; the last bar he’d drunk in with another ex-girlfriend who was now an air steward for United. ‘You ever see a place like this?’ he’d say every time we walked into another smoky room or underground space. ‘No,’ I’d say. ‘Nothing like this at all.’

  When the bars shut we took a taxi to his apartment; a small two-bedroom place he shared with a guy called Bill who was out of town on a training course. We drank whisky until the sun came up, taking it in turns to select records to play. At about five we threw open the windows and looked down from the ninth floor onto the street below, the grey pavements empty save for a man in oversized headphones walking a butch dog and drinking from a Styrofoam cup. O’Neil slumped down into the sofa and I joined him. He poured me another drink and lit a cigarette.

  ‘So what’s the story?’ he said eventually. ‘There’s a story, I know. I can smell people’s stories like cheap cologne.’

  ‘There’s no story,’ I said. ‘Why does there have to be a story?’

  ‘I don’t believe that for one moment. Not one moment.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Spill,’ he said.

  ‘I said I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me. I know already. Honestly. It’s like it’s written on your face in Magic Marker.’

  This was a technique I would later recognize as the least sophisticated in O’Neil’s arsenal; but at the time I was vulnerable to it. He said that people were essentially simple creatures. They were happy. They were sad. They were horny. They were disappointed. He said that’s how clairvoyants and mystics worked: all they did was identify which of the humours you were dominated by and then hit you with what sounded like facts.

  ‘You’re here to escape, to run away from something,’ he said, standing up. ‘Something bad. Something traumatic. This ain’t a row with mommy and daddy. This is something deep and bad. Kinda thing that changes your life.’

  I took one of the cigarettes and lit it. He was smiling slightly as he got up to switch the record.

  ‘I told you I don’t want to talk about it.’

  O’Neil just shrugged and smiled.

  ‘You’ll tell me eventually,’ he said. ‘You can bet on it.’

 
‘Maybe, but not tonight,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what all the girls say,’ he said.

  *

  The first place O’Neil and I lived together was a small apartment in Fort Greene. We worked all week on the phones and would go out most nights. The weekend was for sleeping. On Sundays we sat on the brown corduroy sofa with the curtains drawn, watching videos. One of us would go and buy beer and the other would order pizza. O’Neil used to follow the same routine with his elder brother, Jay, years before.

  When O’Neil was about sixteen Jay and his father had a huge fight. Jay took the beating of his life, then took his rucksack and moved out of the family home. The family never spoke of Jay again. O’Neil and Jay were close though, so it wasn’t long before he was pretending to go to baseball practice but instead rode the subway to see his brother. That was all I knew about Jay; except that he’d died somehow, and that O’Neil’s father had never really recovered.

  One afternoon, in between Heathers and Big Trouble in Little China, we watched Somewhere in Time – a time-travel romance starring Christopher Reeve as a theatre director who falls in love with the portrait of a long-dead Jane Seymour. It was a handsome film, all stuffy elegance and furtive glances. And though we were bloated from the pizza and the beer, we both sat rapt as Reeve hypnotized himself back to 1912 and into Jane’s initially standoffish arms.

  As a method of time travel, however, self-hypnosis proves to be a flimsy vehicle. Early in the movie, Reeve is standing in an Edwardian drawing room and takes a coin from the pocket of his starched trousers. He holds it in his fingers, then flicks it up in the air. It glints in the light and settles on the back of his right hand. When he looks down he sees the face of John F. Kennedy, and the illusion is shattered. Reeve’s eyes open, and he is seventy years away from the woman he loves. His expression is one of aching, crushing loss.

  That same night, O’Neil snoring in the next room, I tried the same thing. I lay with my hands on my chest, closed my eyes and tried to picture Bethany in Brooklyn, in Manhattan, eating at the Empire Diner, undressing in my bedroom. But she wouldn’t come. I must have tried it for a week before I gave up.