Nicola Barker - Wide Open

“You really think I could be his sister? Is that possible?”

Jim shrugged. He was confused. He stared into her small, bright face and tried to see some trace of Ronny in it. Connie was still reeling. “His sister. God! His half-sister .”

She pushed a cushion and Jim’s blanket aside and sat down on the sofa just along from him. She turned to face him. “So you know Ronny well?”

Jim was trying to work out how he felt. He felt like a cat-owner who’d just discovered that his cat had been adopted as a stray. In short, he was jealous. Bereft. Here was someone to take Ronny away. To steal him. To rescue him. To save him.

“The point is…” Connie drew up her knees, “I saw him yesterday on the beach and there was something…” she looked at Jim, almost apologetically, “missing.”

“His hair,” Jim said quickly, “he cut it off.”

“No.” Connie smiled. “I don’t mean that. I mean…more…” she paused, “and then there’s his wrists. All scarred and everything.”

Jim felt a sudden rush of dislike for this girl. She was a prig. She had no true understanding of anything. He said shortly, “Ronny’s had a difficult time of it. He’s been very unhappy.”

While Jim spoke, though, he realized that he wasn’t actually thinking of Ronny at all, but of himself. He was immediately appalled by this sudden, clean, harsh apprehension of his own self-pity. Was it transparent? He chewed on his lips to stop them from grimacing.

“The point is…” Connie inspected her hands, “my dad died and he left Ronny some money in his will.”

Jim touched his cheek with his left hand, then remembered and snatched his fingers away. Connie watched him, intrigued.

“And in some respects he really looks like he could do with it.”

“No,” Jim shook his head, “I don’t think Ronny’s very bothered about material things.”

He couldn’t breathe properly His nose was running again.

“I know,” Connie nodded at this. She looked very far away one moment and too, too close the next. “Apparently when he was a child he used to break things.”

“Did he?”

Jim struggled to focus.

“Yes…you know…uh…”

Connie was staring at Jim and thinking something inexplicable. “I saw a black rabbit on my way down here today.”

“A black rabbit?”

He tried to swallow. His mouth felt dry.

“Ronny asked me if I’d seen one and I said I hadn’t but then I did see one. It was so strange. It really stood out. You’d think they’d be fair game, really, for all the bigger birds and the farmers.”

Connie’s eyes were prickling. She rubbed them for a second and then found herself yawning. Jim was perspiring. And not just on his face, on his head too, the back of his neck.

“You look terrible, Jim.”

Connie had used his name. Jim glanced over his shoulder, as if someone else was in the room. Jim. Poor Jim. Things had been such a struggle for him. He suddenly felt so sorry for this Jim person. Poor Jim who felt so wretched.

He closed his eyes.

“Could I get you some water or anything?”

Connie stood up. Jim shook his head. He wanted her to go. But she went into the kitchen anyway and found a glass and filled it. When she returned to the living room Jim was curled up on the sofa, half-covered in the blanket, his pillow on the floor.

She picked up the pillow. “Lift your head.”

He opened his eyes and lifted his head. His eyes were full of a kind of fury. He moved automatically. She pushed the pillow under him. It felt damp. She saw that it was marked by grey stains. It was an old pillow.

“You can relax now.”

Jim lowered his head, very slowly. She adjusted his blanket. He remained stiff.

“I’ve put some water on the floor next to the sofa,” Connie said. “Can I do anything else for you?”

“No.”

His voice was hard. His eyes were closed. He was so strange-looking. Like a hedgehog, she told herself, without bristles. He was sweating. His nose was running. She put her hand into her pocket and pulled out a paper tissue. She unfolded it, sat down on the floor, leaned her shoulder against the sofa’s arm, then tentatively reached out to dry his forehead. He did nothing. She dabbed the tissue under his nose. He didn’t move, but his eyes were squeezed up tight, as if he couldn’t bear her touching him.

“I’m an optician,” she said, eventually, like this would give him confidence, like it was something medical, some kind of sister qualification. She thought he was asleep, his breathing was so deep and so rhythmical. She was dazed by it. Stupefied.

But he was not asleep. “I’m colour blind,” he said coldly, without opening his eyes. Colour blind, Connie thought, then her chin touched her breast-bone and she stopped thinking.

Her armpit, her nose, her knees, her in-grown toenail.

Her eyes, her nape, her arse, her knuckles.

Her breasts, her stretch-marks, her anus, her clitoris.

And each time the camera clicked she smiled and said to herself: This is me. It’s true. It’s real. I’m here. I’m it.

Her navel, her waist, her moles, her calluses.

Her fillings, her rumblings, her lapses, her laughter.

These things. Her life.

Telling, containing, revealing, relaying.

A click — a flash — a shutter.

Daughter — wife — mother — lover.

Yes.

And the rest.

♦

Ronny staggered back to the prefab carrying the three bags. He supported two with his left hand, and the third he held gnashed between his teeth. It was heavy though- The weight of it snagged his bottom lip and splayed it out, purple-whitely, on to his chin.

It wasn’t much of a distance, but by the time he’d arrived there he was struggling, he was puffed and spent and listing. He placed the bags down, very gently, and then stood in the prefab’s open doorway, silently opening his mouth and stretching his jaw — like a child recovering from his first dental extraction — waggling his chin from left to right so as to return the feeling back to it.

Inside the prefab he saw something he had not expected. Connie, leaning against the sofa, her head tipped forward, her eyes closed. A stiff, blonde flower, its petals folded. And next to her, Jim, waxy pale, corpse-like, his eyes closed too, his breathing laboured.

Ronny paused in the doorway, gaping and smiling, but uneasy, as if faltering at the entrance to a hallowed place, an ancient tomb; somewhere sacred and complete and inaccessible. He took one step backwards, another, then a third, until he was out of the doorway’s grey shade and back bathing in the light outside. He stared up into the bleary sun until he was dizzy, as if he wanted to burn the quiet scene he’d just witnessed clean out of his eyes.

Then he bent over and picked up the three bags. He used both hands. He carried them, blinking away a white-red spot in the centre of his vision, banging them clumsily up against his legs, to the back of the prefab, where he deposited mem in a line along the back wall. He threw himself down next to them. His chest felt so empty but so heavy. He put his hands to his face.

“What’s happening? Who am I?”

He spoke out loud, but not loudly.

He stared at his fingers as if they might tell him. But they didn’t. He pursed his lips. He scowled. He pushed the tip of his tongue against his bottom row of teeth. He blew. He blew. No noise emerged, just a kind of panting. He tried harder. No sound. No sound.

He stopped trying. Instead, he plunged his hands into the closest black bag and pulled out some shells, put them down on to the ground, took off one of his shoes and banged at them with its heel. The shells shattered. He searched out the sharpest fragment, rolled up his trouser leg and applied the shell, forcefully, to his shin.