Lisa Owens - Not Working

“Only if I get to choose what we watch.”

“Done!” he says, rolling off me, triumphant.

I get up to draw the curtains on what’s left of the day, and like outlaws lying low in a scuzzy motel, we crawl back under the covers to watch Sister Act, followed by Sister Act 2.

Behind the bus stop, one of the local eccentrics hammers on the shuttered door of a closed-up shop with an actual hammer. As always, he wears his silver lamé suit: a relic of a future that never came to pass (or — to be absolutely fair to him — a future that hasn’t happened yet ).

“It’s the only way,” he explains, shouting above the terrific noise of his own making. “It’s the only way they’ll answer me, you see.”

I spend the morning planning an elaborate meal for Luke, composed of recipes from five different websites.

At the meat counter, I take a ticket and wait for my number to appear on the digital screen. I’m about to step forward when I feel a tug on my elbow.

“May I go next?” says a small, anxious woman in a beige raincoat and thick glasses, which magnify her eyes adorably. She shows me with shaking hands a screwed-up ticket saying, “47.” The screen is displaying 79. “I must have missed mine.”

“Know the feeling,” I say, stepping to one side as she places her order for a single lamb’s heart.

—

“So, what have you been up to today?” Luke asks through a mouthful of Slow-cooked Pulled Pork and Super Zingy Slaw, breaking off a chunk of the Best Jalapeño Cornbread to mop up what’s left of the sauce from the Mac ’n’ Cheese With All the Bells ’n’ Whistles.

On the table, my mobile twitches like something in its final throes. “DAD” is lighting up the screen and I already know what this is about: my mother is suddenly dead, or dying, or waiting for tests to confirm she is dying; or he is dying, or has found a lump that he is sure is nothing, but is having checked out just to be safe.

“Dad, what’s up?”

“Nothing’s ‘up’—just giving you a call to see how you are.”

“I’m good,” I say. “No news my end. And yourself? And Mum? You’re both okay?”

“Fine,” he says. (He doesn’t say, “Mustn’t grumble,” his erstwhile stock response, which vanished from his vocab when, between flats years ago, I briefly moved back home, and said one evening in the fluorescent kitchen gloom, “Ugh! It’s insufferable, that phrase!” with a spiteful passion neither one of us saw coming, or quite comprehended; and he, turning red, drew his mouth downward and blinked in a sort of sad, surprised defeat.) “And Luke?” he asks. “He all right?”

“Luke’s good,” I say. “Working hard as always.”

“Yes, well…” The implication hangs: a cable loose in the wind. Yes, well, someone has to. “I’m going to be in London tomorrow,” he says suddenly.

“Oh? How come?”

“A meeting.”

“With who? For work?”

“Yes.”

“Right,” I say. “So…you were calling to…ask if I would like to meet up?”

“Would you?” says Dad.

“I would. Would you?”

“I would…if you would.”

“I would.”

“Good.”

We’re watching a documentary about the Missing Persons Bureau.

“On average, a missing persons report is filed in the UK every two minutes,” the voice-over explains. “Only a very small fraction of these cases ever make the headlines.” On the screen, a police officer calmly inputs vital statistics into a database.

“I wonder if I’d make the news,” I say to Luke. “You definitely would: ‘Promising Brain Surgeon Vanishes.’ They’d love that. Hey, that reminds me. Will you do me a favor?” I dab his leg with my foot. “If I ever disappear, please could you tell them to put me down as ‘medium build’? I’d take ‘slim’ or ‘slight,’ obviously, but understand if that might be a push.”

“Medium,” he says. “I’ll try and remember.”

“I should pick out some photos just in case,” I say. “They have to be flattering yet true to life. I don’t think I trust you not to unearth some red-eyed double-chinned horror.” I prod my stomach mournfully. “I can’t imagine anything worse than being described as ‘heavyset’ on the ten o’clock news.”

“What about ‘heavyset’ and ‘unemployed’?” asks Luke, going right for the jugular.

The same, single article—“How to Find Your Dream Job”—advises me to: burn all my plans, tear up the rulebook, shop around, try on different hats, count my blessings (and gifts), be kind to myself (yet realistic), listen to my dreams, follow my heart (ditto the path less traveled), move the goalposts, change gears, consider my options, watch out for signs, test the water with a toe before diving in headfirst, take the economic pulse, listen to my elders, ignore all advice.

I see him before he sees me, hoving into view on the escalator and frowning vaguely into his wallet. Buffeted by end-of-day commuters, he looks totally conspicuous, and causes a small commotion at the barriers by inserting the wrong ticket into the machine.

“Dad,” I call, waving when finally he is freed. He looks everywhere except at me, so at last I stride forward to take his elbow.

“There you are,” he says, a little cross. I hook an arm round his neck, and he pats my shoulder in a manner that might be reciprocal, or to signal Time Up on the hug.

“Lead the way,” he says, pushing me gently, irksomely into the evening rain.

—

In the restaurant — a reasonably priced chain disguised as an authentic trattoria — we study our paper-menu placemats in silence. I look at him every so often and realize with a small jolt that his hair has turned completely gray. I wonder if this is a recent development, or if it’s that memory has been supplying the old hue from habit. He’s reading with the same absorbed but skeptical expression he wears for the Sunday papers.

“What’ll you have?” I ask.

“Artichokes: now, are they the long green things?” he says.

“That’s asparagus. Artichokes are sort of beige and bulbous.” A brisk nod, as though I have passed his test. “That’s right. And zucchini is…rocket?”

I laugh. “Courgette.”

“Is that funny?”

“No, it’s just I think I understand why you were confused. Americans call rocket ‘arugula’ and courgettes ‘zucchini.’ Maybe that’s where the mixup came from.”

“So why doesn’t it say ‘courgette’ on the menu? We’re not in America.”

“ ‘Zucchini’ is Italian for ‘courgette’—this is supposed to be an Italian restaurant,” I point out, and Dad shakes his head and tuts, as if this confirms a long-held suspicion about the state of the world. A waiter appears, a young skinny guy, fully mustachioed and sprightly of air.

“Are we ready to order?”

“I don’t know about you, ” says Dad to the waiter, “but I think we are. Claire, go ahead.”

I order salad and risotto and, though I told myself firmly I wouldn’t drink tonight — glancing at my father to confirm he wants in — a bottle of the house red.

“So did you have the thing looked at? The problematic growth?” asks Dad once the waiter’s gone, and there’s a kick in my chest: have I some kind of mole or tumor I’ve forgotten about? Am I not only dying but also losing my mind?

“The…?”

“The weed? Coming out of your wall.”