Max Porter - Grief is the Thing with Feathers

Come and look at this, Crow said. Your Dad seems to be dead!

We crept in and the room smelt of rotting mouse and there were ashtrays in the duvet and bottles on the floor. Dad was spread-eagled like a broken toy and his mouth was slack grey and collapsed like a failed Yorkshire pudding.

Dad are you dead?

Dad, are you dead?

A long whining fart answered and Dad kicked out.

Course he’s not dead, you boob, said my brother.

I never said he was dead, I said.

Whoops, said Crow.

I’m not dead, said Dad.

Dear Crow,

Today I drew a picture I am really proud of. It’s a picture of you, sitting on a chair, with a hand-puppet of Ted. Opposite you is Ted, sitting on a chair, with a hand-puppet of you. The likeness is superb!

Ted’s hand-puppet Crow has a speech bubble. The Crow puppet is saying ‘TED, YOU STINK OF A BUTCHER’S SHOP.’

I think you’d love it.

Dad told us stories and the stories changed when Dad changed.

I remember a story about a rat catcher. The rat catcher nailed the tails of dead rats to the headboard of his bed, one, two, three, four, five. The rat catcher killed the king of the rats and everyone knows a king rat can’t be killed unless you boil its heart. As the rat catcher slept the rat king’s tail unpinned itself from the headboard and went along the line plaiting the tails of his dead fellows to make a noose and they throttled the rat catcher. Rat catcher, rat, said Dad, what do you make of that?

Dad told us stories and the stories changed when Dad changed.

I remember a story about a Japanese writer who fell on his own sword and it was so sharp it cut through blood and came out clean from his back.

I remember a story about an Irish warrior who killed his son by mistake but when he realised he didn’t mind that much because it served the son right.

There is an area of the kitchen work surface where I lean while the boys eat Weetabix. It is a little way along from the area of the kitchen work surface where my wife used to lean.

IT IS VERY HEAVY, THERE’S NO WAY TO SAY HOW LONG IT WILL GO ON BUT WE HAVE GREAT FEAR FOR PEOPLE CAUGHT IN THE CITY.

The boys hear the news. They need to know. I tell them a lot about war.

Loss and pain in the world is unimaginable but I want them to try.

Notes towards my voice-driven literary memoir, if I may:

I loved waiting, mid-afternoon, alone in their home, for them to come back from school. I acknowledge that I could have been accused of showing symptoms related to unfulfilled maternal fantasies, but I am a crow and we can do many things in the dark, even play at Mommy. I just pecked about, looking at this, looking at that. Lifting up the occasional sock or jigsaw piece. I used to do little squitty shits in places I knew he’d never clean.

The first thing I would hear would be the high interlinking descants and trills of chatter, sing-song and cheerfulness. The boys. There might be a thump as they smashed against the front door, then a breath-catching wait for Dad to catch up. He would open the door and with a click the flat would be full of noise, Shoes Off, Bags Down Please, Don’t leave it there, I said Don’t, leave it there, come on, ship chop chip shop up the stairs.

There is a beautiful lazy swagger to tired little men, they roll and flump and crash down in the interlude before beginning to scavenge for food or entertainment, and I was always filled with uncharacteristic optimism and good cheer watching them slouch unselfconsciously back into their roost. And sugar! On the evenings when he gave them treats, or they climbed up to the cupboard and plundered — crow-like — their father’s stash. If you haven’t observed human children after serious quantities of sugar, you must. It raises and deranges them, hilariously, for an hour or so, and then they slump.

It is uncannily like blood-drunk fox cubs.

We collected the postman’s dropped elastic bands. We thought we would build a giant ball. We gave up.

We made bases, camps, dens, shelters, forts, bunkers, castles, pill-boxes, tunnels and nests.

We watched London and London offered us possible mothers in jeans and striped T-shirts and Ray-Bans, so we spotted them and liked the nasty insensitive self-harm of it. We were blasé with a babysitter who said, ‘How can you laugh about it, it’s so sad?’

We balanced on the back of the sofa and dive-bombed onto the carpet and Dad shouted You think that doesn’t damage your knees but it does and when you are my age you will have serious knee problems OK, and I will not push you round in a cart like sad beggars and if you think I’m lying you should have seen your grandmother’s knees, ruined, like an aerial shot of a battlefield, she could hardly kneel, from childhood disrespect of her joints, ballet, mostly, but sofa jumping too, and they chopped her knees up, this is before laser surgery, and if you don’t believe me you can

We stopped listening and kept on leaping.

After the advent of laser surgery but before puberty, before self-consciousness, before secondary school, before money, time or gender got their teeth in. Before language was a trap, when it was a maze. Before Dad was a man in the last thirty years of his life. Really, on reflection, the best possible time to lose a mum.

‘I’ll tell you this for free,’ said Crow.

‘Hmm.’ (I am trying to work, trying to entertain the notion of Crow a bit less since I read a book about psychotic delusions.)

‘If your wife is a ghost, then she is not wailing in the cupboards and corners of this house, she is not mooching about bemoaning the loss of her motherhood or the bitter pain of watching you boys live without her.’

‘No?’

‘No. Trust me, I know a bit about ghosts.’

‘Go on.’

‘She’ll be way back, before you. She’ll be in the golden days of her childhood. Ghosts do not haunt, they regress. Just as when you need to go to sleep you think of trees or lawns, you are taking instant symbolic refuge in a ready-made iconography of early safety and satisfaction. That exact place is where ghosts go.’

I look at Crow. Tonight he is Polyphemus and has only one eye, a polished patent eight-ball.

‘Go on then. Tell me.’

‘Really?’

‘Please.’

‘I’m not a performing monkey.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It’s more like a scent, or a synaesthetic memory, but it is something like this …’

He sits still. His neck ceases jutting, his beak refrains from jabbing. For the first time since his arrival he stops suggesting constant readiness for violence with his posture.

He sits as still as I have ever seen an un-stuffed animal sit. Dead still.

‘Right … p p p, yes, ooh hold on, paradiddle parasaurolophus watch with mother spies and weddings hang on, ignore that, here we go …

Playdates! Red Cross building, parquet floor, plimsolls. Brownies. Angel biscuits.

Fig Rolls. Dance-offs. Fig Rolls. Patchwork for Beginners. Invisible ink.

Chase, I mean, tag, catch, you know. Rope swings. Her dad’s massive hands.

Rock pools (Yorkshire?). Crabbing, nets, sardines, hiding, waiting.

Counting (abacus? beads?).

Trampolines/aniseed sweets/painted eggs.

Pencil sharpenings? Magic Faraway, Robert the … something, Robert the Rose Horse?’

We sit in silence and I realise I am grinning. I recognise some of it. I believe him. I absolutely blissfully believe him and it feels very familiar.

‘Thank you Crow.’

‘All part of the service.’

‘Really. Thank you, Crow.’