Slam (18 page)

“What does everyone else call him?”

“We all call him Roof.”

“What's his name?”

“I think I'd better come back tomorrow,” I said.

“Yeah,” said the woman. “When you've got to know him a bit better. Spend a little quality time with him. Have a father-son bonding session. Ask him his name, stuff like that.”

On the way to the park, I asked Roof his name.

“Rufus,” he said.

Rufus. Of course it was. I wish I'd asked him on the way there, instead of on the way out. He didn't seem surprised that I'd asked. He just seemed pleased that he got the answer right. I suppose kids are always being asked stuff they already know.

I couldn't wait to find out how I'd ended up agreeing to call my kid Rufus. I still had my heart set on Bucky.

“Rufus,” I said. “If Mummy asks whether the injection hurt, just tell her you were a brave boy, OK?”

“I was a brave boy,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

He still hasn't had that jab.

 

The reason Roof didn't like swings at the moment was that he'd been hit on the head by one last time I took him to the park. I let him run in front of one, from the sound of it, and it had clonked him right on the nose. He told me all this as we were walking through the park gates. I felt terrible. He was such a beautiful little boy, and you'd think I could take better care of him than that.

I suppose that ever since I'd found out Alicia was pregnant, I'd only really worried about myself. I'd worried about how it was going to mess up my life, and what my mum and dad were going to say to me, and all that sort of thing. But I'd already had to stop Roof from running into the road, and I'd seen all those sick kids at the Health Center. And now I'd found out that he'd half knocked himself out in the park. I wasn't old enough for all this worry, I didn't reckon. But then, who was? My mum worried all the time, and she was old enough. Being old enough didn't help. Maybe most people didn't have babies when they were my age because then there'd be one small part of their lives when they could worry about other things, like jobs and girlfriends and football results.

We played in the sandpit for a little while, and then he went down the slide a few times, and then he had a ride on one of those wooden horses that have a big spring coming out of the bottom of them so you can wobble around. I could remember sitting on them when I was a kid. I was pretty sure I could remember sitting on this one. I hadn't been in this playground for about five years, but I didn't think anything had changed since I used to play in it.

 

I had twenty quid in my pocket. Roof had his ice cream, so then I had nineteen quid, and then we walked all the way from Clissold Park to Upper Street, just for something to do. And then he wanted to go in this toy shop, and I thought, Well, we can just look, can't we? And then he wanted this helicopter thing that was £9.99, and I told him he couldn't have it, and he just threw himself down on the floor and screamed and started banging his head. So then I had nine quid left. And then we walked past the cinema, and they were showing this kids' film called
Dressing Salad.
From the poster, it looked like a kind of Wallace and Gromit rip-off about vegetables. So of course, he wanted see it, and when I looked, the first performance was just starting. And I thought, Well, it's a good way of killing a couple of hours. It cost £8.50 for the two of us, so I had fifty pence left.

We walked into the cinema, and up on the screen there was this giant talking tomato trying to run away from a bottle of mayonnaise and a saltshaker.

“I don't like it, Dadda,” Roof said.

“Don't be silly. Sit down.”

“I DON'T LIKE IT!” he yelled. There were only about four people in there, but they all turned round.

“Let's just—”

The giant tomato ran straight at the camera shouting, and this time Roof just screamed. I grabbed him and we went out into the foyer. I'd spent twenty quid in about twenty minutes.

“Can I have some popcorn, Dadda?” Roof said.

 

I took him back to Alicia's. She'd got dressed while we were out, and she looked better, although she still didn't look good.

“That was all you could manage?” she said.

“He wasn't feeling well. After the jab and everything.”

“How did it go?” she said.

“How did it go, Roof?” I asked him.

He looked at me. He didn't have a clue what I was talking about. He'd forgotten what we rehearsed.

“At the doctor's?”

“They had a fire engine,” he said.

“Were you brave?” I said.

He looked at me again. You could tell he was trying to remember something, but he had no idea what it was.

“I was a brave fireman,” he said.

“Oh, well,” said Alicia. “He doesn't seem too upset by it all.”

“No,” I said. “He was good.”

“Do you want lunch with us? Or have you got to get off?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You know.”

I was hoping she did, because I didn't.

“I'll see you soon, Roof.”

It was true, sort of. If I got whizzed back to the present when I went to bed that night, which is what happened last time, then I'd see him in a few weeks, when he was born. That made me feel weird. I wanted to hug him, and say something about looking forward to meeting him, but if I did that, then maybe Alicia would guess that I didn't really belong in the future, which of course wasn't the future for her. That would have been a hard thing to guess, but she'd still have thought that there was something not quite right about me telling my kid that I was looking forward to meeting him.

He blew me a kiss, and Alicia and I laughed, and I walked backwards down the path so that I could look at him for a bit longer.

I went home, and nobody was in, and I lay on my bed and looked at the ceiling and felt stupid. Who wouldn't want to visit the future and see what everyone was up to? But here I was, in the future, and I couldn't think of anything to do. The trouble was, it wasn't really the
future
future. If anyone ever asked me what the future was like, I could only tell them that I had a baby sister and a two-year-old kid, which wouldn't be the most amazing news anyone had ever heard.

 

I don't know how long I was lying there thinking, but after a little while Mum came in with Emily and a load of shopping, and I helped her put it away while Emily sat in her little rocking chair thing and watched us.

I suddenly needed to know something. Actually, I needed to know a lot of things, like what was I supposed to do all day. But what I ended up asking was this.

“Mum. How am I doing?”

“All right,” she said. “You haven't dropped anything, anyway.”

“No, no. Not with the putting away. How am I doing in, like, life?”

“What do you want? Marks out of ten?”

“If you like.”

“Seven.”

“Right. Thanks.”

Seven sounded all right. But it didn't really tell me what I needed to know.

“You pleased with that?” she said. “Too high? Too low?”

“It sounds about right,” I said.

“Yeah, I thought so.”

“Where would you say I lost the three points?”

“What are you asking me, Sam? What's this all about?”

What was it all about? What I wanted to know, I suppose, was whether the future was worth waiting for, or whether it was going to be a lot of trouble. There wasn't anything I could do about it one way or the other, but it would be useful to find out whether Rubbish was right. Had I screwed everything up?

“Do you think things will turn out OK?” I said. I didn't know what things I was talking about, or what OK meant. But it was a start.

“Why? What sort of trouble are you in?”

“No, no, it's nothing like that. As far as I know. I just mean, with Roof and all that. College. I dunno.”

“I think you're doing as well as can be expected,” said Mum. “That's why I gave you seven.”

“As well as can be expected”? What did that mean?

And I suddenly saw that even in the future, you still wanted to know what was going to happen. So as far as I could work out, TH hadn't helped me at all.

Later on I went down to The Bowl with my board, and nobody seemed too surprised, so I obviously hadn't given up skating. And I told Mum and Mark I didn't want to eat with them, even though I was starving, because I couldn't really talk to them about yesterday or today or tomorrow. I messed around in my room, played on my Xbox, listened to music, and went to bed. And when I woke up, I didn't have Hawk cargo pants or a Hawk burning T-shirt anymore, so I knew I was back in my own time.

So you know
everything. There's nothing more for me to say. I don't know whether you thought I was making up that stuff about the future, or whether you thought I'd lost it, but it doesn't really matter now, does it? We had a baby called Rufus, in real life. So there you are. End of story.

 

So now you're probably thinking, If this is the end of the story, why doesn't he shut up so that I can get on with something else? The truth is that when I said that you knew everything…it's sort of true, in terms of the facts. I mean, there are a few dots to join up. But we had a baby, Mum had a baby, Alicia and I lived together in her bedroom and then stopped living together. It's just that there comes a point where the facts don't matter anymore, and even though you know everything, you know nothing, because you don't know what anything felt like. That's the thing about stories, isn't it? You can tell someone the facts in ten seconds, if you want to, but the facts are nothing. Here are the facts you need for
The Terminator:
in the future, supercomputer robots want to control the earth and destroy the human race. The only hope we have in the year 2029 is the leader of the resistance. So the robots send Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is the Terminator, back in time to kill the leader of the resistance before he has even been born. That's pretty much it. Also, a member of the resistance travels back in time to protect the mother of the future leader. That's why there's so much fighting. So you've got defenceless mother of future leader plus resistance fighter against Arnold the Terminator. Did you enjoy those facts? No. Of course you didn't, because you felt nothing, so you didn't care. I'm not saying that the story of Alicia and Roof and me is as good as
The Terminator.
I'm just saying that if you stick to the facts, then the whole point of a story has disappeared. So here's the rest of it.

 

One thing you should know is that I had a bad slam, down at The Bowl. I never hurt myself down there, because it's only for messing about in, The Bowl. If I was going to hurt myself, you'd think it would be down at Grind City, where there's proper skating, by proper skaters, and not round the corner from my house, where you go for five minutes before your tea.

It wasn't really my fault, although I suppose I would say that, wouldn't I? I'm not even sure if it was officially a slam. What happened was this. The only way you can make skating at The Bowl even a tiny bit interesting is if you approach it from the side and do an air, or something even flasher if you feel up to it, over the three steps and straight into The Bowl. The Bowl needs to be empty, obviously, but even if it's dark you can see and hear anyone in there from a long way off. Or rather, you can see and hear them as long as they're not sleeping in the middle of The Bowl, using their board as a pillow. That was what Rabbit was doing, although I didn't know that until I was midair and about to land on his gut. Is that a slam? If someone's asleep like that?

Nobody in the world could have stayed on the deck in that sort of situation, so I wasn't blaming my skills. I was blaming Rabbit, though, and I did blame him, when the breath returned to my body, and the pain shooting up and down my wrist had eased off a bit.

“What the fuck are you doing, Rabbit?”

“What am I doing?” he said. “Me? What about you?”

“I was skating, Rabbit. In The Bowl. That's what it's for. Who goes to sleep in the middle of a concrete bowl? Where people skate?”

Rabbit laughed.

“It's not funny. I might have broken my wrist.”

“No. Yeah. Sorry. I was laughing because you thought I was asleep.”

“What were you doing then?”

“I was just dozing.”

“What's the bloody difference?”

“I hadn't actually gone to bed there. That would be weird.”

I just walked away. You need to be in the right mood to talk to Rabbit, and I wasn't in the right mood.

 

My mum ended up taking me to get my wrist X-rayed, just in case. We had to wait ages, just to be told that there wasn't really anything wrong with it, apart from it hurting like hell.

“I don't think you can do this anymore,” said Mum while we were waiting. I didn't know what she was talking about. Do what? Wait in hospitals? Go places with her?

I looked at her, to show that I didn't understand her.

“Skating,” she said. “I'm not sure you can skate anymore. Not for the time being, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because for the next two years, your life is going to be pushing and carrying. And Alicia won't thank you if you break a limb and you can't do anything.”

“It was just Rabbit being stupid,” I said.

“Yeah, like we've never been in casualty before.”

It's true there have been one or two broken bits and pieces, fingers and toes. Nothing that would stop me being able to cart a baby around.

“I'm not going to pack it in.”

“You're being irresponsible.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “I never asked to have a kid.”

My mum didn't say anything. She could have said a lot, but she didn't. And I kept skating, and I didn't have any more falls. But that was only because I was lucky. And because Rabbit didn't use The Bowl to kip in after that.

 

Mark moved in not long before I moved out. Can a person be the opposite of another person? If he can, then Mark is the opposite of Dad, in every way, apart from they're both English guys of the same height and color, with similar tastes in women. You know what I'm saying. They were opposite in every other way. Mark liked Europe, for example, and the people that lived there. And sometimes he turned the TV off and opened a book. And he read a newspaper with words in it. I liked him. I liked him enough, anyway. And I'm glad he was around for Mum. She was going to be a thirty-two-year-old grandmother—a
pregnant
thirty-two-year-old grandmother—which was a step backwards for her. And Mark was a step forwards. So she'd end up exactly where she was before, which is better than it could have been.

Mum got round to telling me she was pregnant, eventually. She told me not so long after she knew, but quite a long time after I knew. Sometimes I wish I could have said, “Look, don't worry about it. I think I got whizzed into the future, so I know everything already.” That's how I felt when Mum was trying to get up the courage to tell me about her baby.

To be honest, I think I would have worked it out even if I hadn't been whizzed, because she and Mark were so useless at hiding it all. It began right before I moved out, and Mum stopped drinking her glass of wine with dinner. I wouldn't have known that a lot of women don't drink alcohol when they're pregnant, especially in the first few weeks, if it hadn't been for Alicia. But I did know, and Mum knew I knew, so she poured herself a glass of wine every night and didn't touch it, as if that would somehow fool me. The thing was, it was my job to clear away the supper things, so for about five evenings on the trot, I picked up her full glass of wine off the table and said, “Mum, do you want this?” And she'd go, “No, thanks, I don't really fancy it. Mark, do you want it?” And he'd say, “If I must,” and sip it while he was watching TV. It was all mad. If I hadn't cottoned on, I would have said something—you know, “Mum, why do you pour yourself a glass of wine every night and not drink it?” And she would have probably started drinking water with dinner. But because I knew what it was about, I didn't say anything.

And then one morning, Mark offered me and Mum a lift, because he had to take the car in to work, and he was going to drive past my school and her work. And we were late, because she was in the bathroom being sick. I could hear her being sick, and Mark could hear her being sick. And because he knew why, and I knew why, nobody said anything. Does that make sense? He didn't say anything because he didn't want to be the one to tell me. And I didn't want to say anything because I wasn't supposed to know.

I looked at Mark, and he looked at me, and we might as well have been listening to a dog barking, or a DJ on the radio, anything that you hear all the time and never feel the need to say anything about. And then there was this really loud heave, and I made a face without meaning to, and Mark noticed, and he said, “Your mum's not feeling so well.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

“Are you OK?” Mark said when she came out.

And she gave him a shut-up look, and said, “I couldn't find my phone.”

And Mark said, “I just told Sam you weren't feeling very well.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because you were throwing up so loud that the walls were shaking,” I said.

“We'd better have a chat,” she said.

“I can't now,” said Mark. “I really have to go to this meeting.”

“I know,” said Mum. “Have a good day.” She kissed him on the cheek.

“Call me later,” he said. “Let me know, you know…”

“I'll be fine,” I said when he'd gone. “Whatever you want to tell me, I won't be bothered.”

And then suddenly I had this terrible thought. Supposing that I was wrong, and the future was wrong, and Mum was about to tell me that she had some terrible illness? Cancer or something? I'd just told her I wouldn't be bothered.

“I mean, if it's good news I won't be bothered,” I said. “If it's bad news, I'll be bothered.” And then that sounded stupid, because everyone's bothered by bad news, and people are usually pleased if it's good news.

“If it's good news I'll be pleased or not bothered,” I said. “And if it's bad news I'll be bothered.”

My dad used to say that if you were in a hole you should stop digging. It was one of his favorite expressions. It meant that if you were in a mess, you shouldn't make it any worse. He was always saying it to himself. “If you're in a hole, Dave, stop digging.” I stopped digging.

“Have you guessed?” said Mum.

“I hope so.”

“What does that mean?”

“If I'm wrong, then there's something really wrong with you.”

“No, there's nothing wrong with me.”

“Right then,” I said. “So I've guessed.”

“You guessed before,” she said.

“Yeah. I guessed wrong that time.”

“But why did you keep guessing I was pregnant? I never thought I'd have another kid.”

“Man's intuition,” I said.

“Men don't have any intuition,” she said.

“This one does,” I said.

It wasn't really true, if you thought about it logically, and left the future out of it. I'd been completely wrong the first time, and the second time I'd watched her not drinking her wine and listened to her throwing up in the bathroom. You didn't need much intuition for that.

“Are you really not bothered?” she said.

“Really,” I said. “I mean, it's all good. They'll be friends, won't they?”

“I hope so. They'll be the same age, anyway.”

“What will they be to each other?”

“I was working this out,” she said. “My baby will be your baby's aunt or uncle. And my grandchild will be a few months older than my child. I'm four months, and Alicia's eight.”

“Mad, isn't it?” I said.

“Must happen a lot,” Mum said. “I just didn't think it would happen to us.”

“How do you feel about it?” I said.

“Yeah. Good. I mean, at first I didn't think I'd want to keep it. But then I don't know…This is the time, isn't it?”

“For you, maybe.”

And I laughed, to show I was joking.

Suddenly, my mum wasn't my mum anymore. We were friends who'd got themselves into the same stupid place in the same year. It was a weird time in my life, really, if you threw the trips to the future in there as well. Nothing was fixed properly. Things could happen whenever they wanted to, instead of whenever they were supposed to, like in some science fiction movie. We can all laugh about it now, but…Actually, that's not true. We can only laugh about it on a really, really good day.

 

I worked out that there were two futures. There's the one I got whizzed to. And then there's the
real
future, the one you have to wait to see, the one you can't visit, the one you can only get to by living all the days in between…It had become less important. It had nearly disappeared, in fact. One bit of it had, anyway. Before Alicia got pregnant, I used to spend a lot of time thinking about what was going to happen to me. Who doesn't? But then I stopped. It felt like, I don't know…Last year, some kids at a school down the road went on some climbing holiday in Scotland, and it all went wrong. They'd stayed out too late, and the teacher wasn't an experienced enough climber, and it got dark and they were stuck on this ledge, and they had to be rescued. So how many of those kids on the ledge that night were thinking, Shall I do English literature or French for A-level? Do I want to be a photographer or a Web designer? I'll bet none of them. That night, their future was, you know, a bath, a toasted sandwich, a hot drink. A phone call home. Well, having a pregnant girlfriend when you're still at school is like that all the time. Alicia and I were on a ledge, sort of, and we were thinking about Roof coming (but we didn't call him Roof then), and sometimes about the first week of his life, but not much more, not much further than that. We hadn't given up hope. It was just a different kind of hope, for different sorts of things. We hoped that everything would somehow sort of maybe turn out not too bad.

But the thing was, we still had to do something about the future, because that's how you spend half your time when you're sixteen, isn't it? People—schools and colleges and teachers and parents—want to know what you're planning to do, what you want, and you can't tell them that what you want is for everything to be OK. You can't get any qualifications for that.