Mat Johnson - Drop

If the pre-Margaret chores were quick (get vitamin C, cod oil, and ginseng from Boots, renew the subscription to the Voice , mop kitchen floor) I could make my disappearance before six having taken care of things. If the chores took too long it was just ‘Do what you can do, I’ll take over when she gets here. Wake me when you hear her keys in the door.’

‘Are you going to wipe his arse, too?’ Fi asked me. I was late. Only a little, but she had been waiting for me down by the ticket machines in Brixton tube station and that short homeless brother with the busted lip and the lobotomy scar had yelled at her. We had opera tickets for the Royal Albert: I’d never gone and she was excited she was going to show me.

‘You know it’s not like that. He takes care of me also,’ I told her, going down the escalator.

‘David takes care of himself.’

‘David pays my rent, he pays my bills, everything. He got me here. That’s how he takes care of me. He’s my boy. Without David I would have nothing.’ And without David, I would be nothing. Lady, you don’t know it, but without him propping me up, you wouldn’t even be standing next to me.

‘That man will suck as long as you let him, and then when there’s nothing more he will fly off like a bloated bat. By then you will be too weak to even swat him down.’ Fionna stared forwards while she said this, as if she were watching this unfold. For a second she wasn’t a beautiful woman, someone who looked just the way beauty was supposed to. For a moment Fionna was just a skinny little black girl, hair straightened, lipstick done, trying to look cute in a dress she had no hips to be wearing. She could be from Nicetown maybe, East Mount Airy or Ogontz.

‘Fi, really, don’t worry. David is cool. Just because he needs me doesn’t mean he’s using me.’

‘Chris, who am I? I’m the one who loves you, the one who will always be here for you. I am the woman holding your hand.’ Fionna’s hand was a light thing, impossibly soft, even at the palm. The thin veins on top could barely be traced without looking. Later, when we got to the show, I held it during the entire performance, letting my hand explore hers as she led me through the sound.

The opera was a story about an old guy who married a young chick and then she cheated on him, and they all suffered, but that didn’t matter; I was a Phillystine and didn’t care about that silliness. What mattered was that we sat close enough that you could see the spittle shooting out of the actors’ mouths, that the voices of these performers were so strong, their sense of the emotion so complete, that when they sang I could feel their sound upon me, vibrating the hairs in my nose, as loud as when you’re waiting for the sub at Fairmont Avenue and the express roars by. What mattered was that here was a plain old Philly boy, costumed in a suit and actually enjoying the sounds of this world. The only one under these ornate ceilings who knew what malt liquor tasted like, what to do when someone starts shooting up a party or how to open a Krimpet without letting the icing stick to its plastic bag.

Chris Jones, the American, for once so proud to play the part of the Philadelphia Negro, the apron on and the coals going, cooking on the Fourth. It wouldn’t be like home, no walking down to the Art Museum in the crowd’s stream, everybody staring to the sky, the small balls of white fire streaking up until they exploded and fell casually down, paper burnt and still on fire drifting back into the crowd as we’d giggle and push each other out the way. When it was over, the pedestrian mass rushing off the Parkway in the newly established darkness. Me and my moms heading back to Suburban Station to catch the Chestnut Hill West, or if she had a boyfriend at the time, walking towards his car and waiting in the traffic until we escaped the side streets and got on West River Drive, joining the chained slalom to Germantown.

So that’s what I wanted: to give a bit of what was me to the people I was now loving. To be like, Check this, instead of always taking. To show David what my life tasted like: lemonade with the seeds floating at the top of the pitcher amidst clouds of pulp, and real burgers, huge ones, with chunks of onion and reeking of garlic, and big beef ribs, and chicken (greasy bump-covered legs or the smooth pink divinity of cleaned chicken breast). And everything covered in barbecue sauce, layered in it, cream rust that bit you pretty behind the tongue and on the roof of your mouth, the meat painted in its burgundy glory and then cooked hard and repeated until the sauce was a skin in itself, chewy and salty and the red-black of Satan’s deck chairs. I couldn’t cook, but damn, I could burn some flesh, out on the little deck staring over Brockwell Park.

Fi cooked the rest: greens, potato salad, mashed potato, sweet potato with marshmallow, corn bread, pancakes (I explained they were for breakfast but she said we could have them with jam for dessert), corn, broccoli, carrots steamed and cut, the cauliflower brains of the Green Man. It was a feast Americana, planned for months in post-coital discussion sessions and during Coldharbor Lane pub crawls as David himself made suggestions.

At three the doorbell rang. Margaret stood there, smiling, her hair tucked behind her ears, holding a bag whose weight was shifted from one hand to the other as she leaned forward to hug me.

‘David’s just gone to park the car,’ and then a kiss, on one cheek and then the next. Margaret offered Fionna a hand, but Fi called, ‘Hi! No!’ pausing briefly at the sink to smile. So much food and nobody had even died. The bloodshot cartoon eyes of deviled eggs, bulbous baked apples pouring over with their own beige pulp and dusted with cinnamon sand, sourdough muffins shaped like volcanic islands.

‘David is going to be completely enamored.’ Margaret faced the bounty and held out her arms as if she intended to hug it all. Instead she hugged Fionna, who looked so toyish in the older woman’s arms.

Margaret lit her cigarette on the stove pilot, the blue turning its white tip a haggard gray. Standing, she took a few drags, then stared at her fag, snug in the crotch of fingers. When she saw me looking at her Margaret laughed, reached into her Marks and Spencer’s bag and handed me a large white container. ‘A gift.’ Within it was my childhood obsession, just the way it used to look behind the glass display case in Melrose Diner.

‘Lemon meringue, right?’ So right, nearly the size of a hubcap, those full whipped waves frozen in chaotic turbulence, the white valleys and baked brown peaks.

‘David found the recipe for me.’ I was kissing the taut cheek of a smile. ‘Well then, I’m glad David was right; he said you might like it. It’s rather sweet, isn’t it?’ It is what sweetness is, and such a day it was to be.

So rare to see them together, these women, especially with the fat boy not here to pull the attention away. Margaret looked younger when David wasn’t in the room; maybe it was just because she wasn’t frowning. When Margaret went upstairs, Fi squeezed my hand with her wet, cooling one, leaving me rubbing the soap between my fingers as she squeaked away on rubber sandals. ‘So I can serve?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, in just a second. David should be at the door in just a minute.’

So an hour and a half later I said it, because I knew Margaret was uncomfortably, thinking it and worse, as his wife, claiming it: the absence that was now becoming clear.

‘David probably nipped down to the shops. The off-licence is my guess. We could use some more beer. And I forgot to get the ice cream.’ No, I didn’t. Actually, I didn’t care for ice cream: the ice made my teeth hurt. And the pantry looked like Stop ’n’ Go. The food was getting cold and Fi, of course, was getting a bit chilly herself.