Kit de Waal - My Name Is Leon

Maureen comes and stands behind them. Leon can feel all the words she’s keeping inside that she wants to say and all the things she feels about his mom. She only lets a few of them come out.

“You’ve got a lovely son in Leon, you know. He’s as good as gold and he misses you.”

Carol looks up and down the street and fidgets with her handbag like she needs another cigarette. She keeps squeezing Leon’s hand but she looks the other way and he knows she’s trying to speak with her fingers, telling Maureen to shut up and telling Leon that she’s got good memories of when they were all together and that she still loves him and why did they have to take Jake away? Maureen speaks a bit louder.

“My house is always open to you if you want to visit him.”

Carol steps out onto the garden path.

“Alan’s looking after me, Leon, you’re not to worry.”

The sports car stops outside and, before she walks away, Carol puts their foreheads together and kisses him. Leon tears away, upstairs into his bedroom, takes the photograph of Jake quick as he can and runs after her.

“Mom! Wait!”

“You’re a little angel,” she says.

She holds the photograph against her heart and walks slowly away. Leon stands on the street and watches her get into the car. She says something to the man and he laughs, then the sports car turns the corner and is gone. Leon stands on the concrete step in Maureen’s house at the curve of the avenue looking at the empty space where his mom was. He feels a dark star of pain in his throat and the last warmth of her touch on his fingers. When Leon goes inside, he turns the television on and sits on the sofa. Maureen tells him off for having the volume too loud.

“You’re a good boy, Leon. A bloody good kid considering. You don’t deserve this. I know it’s not her fault, but Jesus Christ Almighty. It’s not a fair world, I can tell you. And that photo was for you, not her.”

She tries to give him a hug but he’s very angry with Maureen for not liking his mother and not believing she’s really ill. Leon saw with his own eyes how she fell apart when she saw Jake. And he knows what his mother knows. That someone else is holding Jake and kissing him. Someone else is looking into the perfect blue of his perfect eyes. Someone else is smelling him and touching the soft skin on the back of his hand.

Late that night, when Leon lies on his bed, he misses the photograph of Jake and he has to close his eyes to remember it. He holds on to Big Red Bear and thinks about all the things he didn’t say to his mom. How long will it be for her to get better? When is she coming back for him? What happened to the rest of his toys at the old house? Will she come back? Where is she? Where is Jake? What will he get for his birthday? What is wrong with her? Why doesn’t she come back?

Then he says, under his breath, so Maureen won’t hear, all the bad words he has stored up all day since his mother came and took the photograph and drove away without him.

It’s the middle of the night when the ambulance comes. Maureen wakes him up, calling and calling and calling. Leon springs out of bed, turns the light on, and runs into her room. Her face is like cold porridge and her hair is wet, stuck to her head. She’s half sitting up and she has an old man’s voice.

“Nine-nine-nine,” she says. “Nine-nine-nine now.”

He stands by the front door like the operator tells him to and he’s glad, because he doesn’t want to see Maureen when she sounds like a dying man in the middle of the night. He wants to pee so badly his leg starts moving all on its own. The ambulance comes with the flashing lights and he lets them in, shows them the way to Maureen’s bedroom. While they go in, he runs to the bathroom and does the longest pee of his life. He waits downstairs in his pajamas and they tell him he’s a good boy and that he’s done a brave thing and Leon decides he might be an ambulance man when he grows up. They sit him in the back of the ambulance and put a mask on Maureen’s face. One of them speaks into a walkie-talkie; it crackles and hisses and Leon wishes he had one. Maureen holds her hand out for him but he’s scared to touch her in case she dies. This might be the time that there’s no one to look after him.

At the hospital, a woman police officer asks him all about Carol and Jake. He tries very hard not to cry. But when she gives him a little hug, it’s like spilling a glass of soda, everything comes out in a rush and he can’t stop the tears and the noise that comes out of his heart. The policewoman takes him into a room on his own and gives him a tissue. She tells him that Maureen isn’t going to die.

“She’s not going to die, Leon, sweetheart, but she can’t talk, and right at this minute, you can’t see her. That doesn’t mean anything bad, you not seeing her. It means doctors and nurses are looking after her while I look after you.”

“Yes,” says Leon.

“And when she’s better, they’ll let you know because you’re the brave one who saved her life. Now isn’t that something to smile about, eh? You’ll be able to tell everyone at school all about it, won’t you? You’ll be a hero. You are a hero. A brave hero and a clever boy. There it is, a little smile. It’s the smallest smile I’ve ever seen. Is there another one in there? A bigger one? That’s it, that’s the one I was looking for.”

Then everything gets a bit better because the policewoman takes him to the café and buys him a jelly doughnut and a hot chocolate. Someone else gives him a comic book and then he sits in the Panda car and presses the buttons that make the light come on. The policewoman shows him her walkie-talkie and lets him say, “Come in, come in,” but no one answers. She says she’s going to tell everyone at the police station how brave he’s been. The policewoman is a bit like the nurse at the hospital when Jake was born: when she says something you believe her. They sit in a waiting room with a black-and-white film on the TV. There are four gangsters in an old-fashioned car chasing a man who’s hanging off the back of a truck. The car is skidding all over the road and just when the gangsters are having a shoot-out, Sylvia bursts into the room. She crouches down by his chair and squeezes his arms.

“You saved her life, love. Good boy, good boy. Thank you.”

She kisses him and he can smell her cigarettes and her special old lady smell that’s worse than Maureen’s. The stink makes him want to push her away. But she holds his hand and shakes it.

“You’re a proper little man, you are.”

Later on, the emergency social worker comes and soon there’s a huddle of them standing together in the corner of the room. A doctor, the nice policewoman, the social worker, and Sylvia, all talking about him with their arms folded. One by one they look at him and shake their heads and even when he tries really hard he can only hear a few words.

“… bronchial pneumonia with complications…”

“… weeks rather than days…”

“… appropriately accommodated… police checked…”

And Sylvia keeps saying, “I could, I could. I’m only part-time at the supermarket. I could. He’s a good lad. He’s saved her bloody life, he has. She always said he was a good kid, Mo did. I’ll have him. Yes, I will. Bless him.”

The social worker starts writing on some paper and says, “Short term, we’re talking short term.”

They all come toward him at the same time.

The social worker kneels down until her face is a few inches from Leon’s. She has glasses that make her eyes look massive like she’s an alien.

“Right,” she says, “you’re going back home to Maureen’s, to your own bed with Sylvia and she will look after you tonight. She’s been a registered carer before, so we’re quite happy she knows what to do. You like Sylvia, don’t you? Good, good. You’ve been very grown up, Leon, and everyone is really proud of you. Maureen will be in the hospital for a little while and tomorrow we will work out what will happen to you long term. Obviously we will try to keep you at home. I think you’ve had a pretty rough time lately and we don’t want to add to that, do we?”