Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

She went to the sink and came back with a damp cloth. ‘I’m running the place now, you know,’ she said. ‘It’s going very well.’ She lifted his cup and wiped the base, then she wiped the wood surface underneath.

‘That’s great.’ He couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice. She was folding the cloth. Once, twice, three times. If she folded it much more, he thought, it might disappear altogether.

‘Did you come here to insult me, Jed?’ she said. ‘Is that why you came? Or was there something you wanted?’

A plane went overhead, almost scraping the tiles off the roof. Cups nodded on their red plastic hooks. When the noise had died away, it seemed as if another layer had been stripped from the silence.

‘You must have a reason,’ she said, ‘after all these years.’

‘It’s nothing to do with all these years,’ he said.

‘You were always so calculating. You never did anything without a reason.’

‘How come I need a reason?’ he said. ‘I’ve been away. I was away for a long time. I couldn’t’ve come to see you even if I’d wanted to.’ He thought of the phone-call he’d made from that booth on the highway. Six years ago. Henry, is that you?

She came and sat down. ‘You got into trouble again, I suppose.’

‘I went and lived in a town called Adam’s Creek,’ he said. ‘The name was a joke. There wasn’t any creek, never had been.’ He turned his cup on its base. ‘There wasn’t even an Adam.’

‘Adam’s Creek?’ she said. ‘I never heard of it.’

‘It’s in the middle of nowhere.’ He told her about the Commercial Hotel and THE WORLD OF 45 FLAVOURS. But he looked at her once and her chin was propped on the flat of her hand as if it was about to be served by a waiter and she was looking out of the window. She wasn’t listening, he could tell, so he just stopped. She looked back at him and sighed, a sigh that didn’t seem to have anything to do with him.

‘I think I’ll go and lie down,’ he said. ‘I’m really tired.’

She took his empty cup, put it in the sink with hers. ‘You can use your old room.’

He stood up, stretched.

‘Do you want me to wake you?’ she said.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to sleep for an hour.’

At the top of the stairs he stood by the window and looked out. This neighbourhood where he’d grown up, it was another world to him now, a world he had to search his blood for. This house was his home, that woman in the kitchen was his mother. He knew it, but it was a long time since he’d felt it. The feeling had gone, only the facts remained.

When he opened the door to his old room he found himself nodding. It was exactly what he might have expected. There were two twin beds. There was a lamp with a white shade. There were small bowls of dried flowers. It was immaculate, anonymous; neutral as a motel room. There was nothing to suggest that he had ever slept there, not a trace of his presence. There wasn’t even the ghost of a radio.

He took his jacket and his sandals off, and lay down on his side with his knees drawn up to his chest. He closed his eyes. Listened to the planes go over. That long slow rumble. His ribs vibrating gently. And he rose up over the rooftops of Sweetwater and beyond Mario’s handkerchief factory, beyond the river, he could see the tall white buildings of the city clustered tight as skittles, he could see Death Row and the slim black shape of the Paradise Corporation, like the shadow of a building, and the factory and the river vanished, and there was golden wood where they had been, a corridor of polished golden wood with gutters on either side, and he looked down at his hand and saw he was holding a huge black ball, and he took three steps forwards and swung his arm and let the ball go, and that long slow rumble in the sky, that was the sound of the ball rolling down the corridor of golden wood, rolling towards the cluster of tall buildings, plane after plane, and always that black ball rolling until at last he saw it slowly smash into the buildings, he saw the buildings stagger, topple over, every one of them, and there was no city any more, there was only a game that he had won, and the planes going over, they were the applause, a standing ovation, and he was turning away from that corridor of golden wood, one hand raised, a kind of hero now.

When he woke, it was almost dark. He could hear music downstairs, dance music. He had no idea where he was. Propped on one elbow, he saw a jacket and a pair of sandals that some stranger must’ve left behind.

And then he remembered; it all came back together slowly, like an explosion played in reverse. That music downstairs, that would be his mother’s radio. She always tuned in to Latin stations at night. She used to cook to the rhythms of the tango and the rumba, she’d snap her fingers, tilt her hips, and he’d be watching, embarrassed, through a jungle of fingers. This was no motel, this was his old bedroom, this was home, and as for that stranger with the jacket and the sandals, that stranger was him.

One of his knees had seized up. He eased both legs on to the floor and sat still. Then he buckled his sandals, wincing as the straps bit into his heels. He limped downstairs and into the kitchen. His mother was perched at the breakfast bar with a drink and a cigarette.

‘What’s that?’ he asked her.

‘Scotch and soda. You want one?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t drink.’

‘Did you sleep well?’

‘I woke up,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t know where I was.’

‘That’s not surprising when you think how long it’s been.’

‘I heard the radio, and I remembered how you used to cook with that music on, and then I knew.’

She smiled. ‘I still do.’ She folded her cigarette up in the ashtray. She’d smoked less than half of it. ‘Talking of that, are you staying for dinner?’

‘I need to stay the night.’ He watched her face. ‘Don’t worry, it’s only tonight. Then I’ll be gone.’

‘Need to?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Need to.’

She took another cigarette out of her pack and looked at it as if she thought she might learn something from it. They were exactly the kind of cigarettes he would’ve imagined she smoked. Extra slim, extra mild. 100s. A delicate garland of flowers encircling the cigarette just below the filter.

‘You never told me anything, did you?’ she said.

‘You don’t want to know,’ he said, ‘you really don’t.’

‘That’s not giving me much say, is it?’

‘You lost the right to that a long time ago.’

This time she stubbed her cigarette out as if it was alive and she wanted it dead. ‘You’ll never forgive me, will you, for throwing your stupid radios away.’

‘I’m not talking about radios,’ he said. ‘I’m talking about you pretending I didn’t belong to you, you being ashamed. You still feel guilty about it. If you didn’t feel guilty, you’d already’ve thrown me out. But you haven’t and you won’t,’ and he looked at her, ‘because you’re guilty.’

She banged her glass down so hard it cracked. And she held on to it, the skin stretched tight between each knuckle. ‘Stop telling me what I feel and what I don’t feel, for Christ’s sake. What do you know about what I feel? You don’t know a thing.’ She let go of the glass, looked down at her hand. She’d gashed the mound at the base of her thumb. Blood slid along the fine grooves on the inside of her wrist.

She stood at the sink and ran cold water on to the wound. ‘I’m making hamburgers for dinner,’ she announced suddenly, without turning round.

She dabbed at her cut with a piece of paper towel. He couldn’t remember seeing her bleeding before, or hurt, not ever. Dealing with this damage to herself, she seemed tentative and clumsy. There was a despair about her, a kind of fatalism, as if she might at any moment throw in the paper towel and sit down on a chair and simply bleed. He stood up and fetched the first-aid kit from the cupboard. He placed it on the draining-board beside her.