Ted

Ted

I can’t always tell, but this time I’m pretty sure I am about to do something important. I am going to find a friend. I go away more and more, these days. Who will look after Lauren and Olivia if I don’t come back, one day? I’m only one person, and it’s not enough.

Mommy took me to the forest three times. The last time she sent me back alone. Yes, I still feel her under the dark canopy of leaves. She is in the scatter of light across the forest floor. And yes sometimes she’s in the cupboard under the sink. But really, I have been on my own since that day.

I tell myself that this is for Lauren and Olivia, and that’s true. But also it’s because I don’t want to be alone any more.

I pick a time when Lauren isn’t around. If she knew what I was doing – well, that wouldn’t be good. I take the padlock off the cupboard in the living room where I keep the laptop. The screen is a square of ghostly light in the dark room, like a door to the dead.

Finding a site is easy. There are hundreds of them. But what comes next? I scroll through. Faces race by, eyes and names and ages, little snatches of existence. I think hard about what I need, about what would be best for Lauren. Women are more nurturing than men, they say. So, a woman, I guess. But it has to be a very special woman who will understand our situation. A couple of them seem nice. This one, thirty-eight, likes surfing. Her eyes are chips of blue, as blue as the water behind her, and kind. Her skin is a little weathered by the sun and the sea. Her hair is the colour of butter, her teeth even and white. She has a happy smile. She looks like she cares about other people. The next one is all the colours of the forest. Brown, green, black. Her clothes are beautiful and cling to her. She works in PR. Her lipstick is like a slick of red oil.

I took the mirrors down some years ago because they upset Lauren. But I don’t need a mirror to know how I look. Her words stung me. Big, fat. My belly is a rubber sack. It hangs like it has been strapped there. I’m getting bigger all the time. I can’t keep track of it. I knock things over, I bounce off doorways. I’m not used to how much space I take up in the world. I don’t go out much so my skin is pale. Lauren has this new habit of pulling my hair out by the handful and there are shiny pale patches of skull among the brown. I don’t keep razors or scissors in the house and my beard spills down over my chest. For some reason it’s a different colour and texture to the hair on my head; red and thick. It looks like a fake beard, like something an actor would wear to play a pirate. My hands and face are covered with scratches, my fingernails bitten to the quick. I haven’t had the courage to look at my toenails in some time. The rest of me – well, I try not to think about that at all. There’s a smell on me these days, like mushrooms, earthy. My body is turning on me.

I scroll down. Somewhere in here there must be a friend. The women look out from the screen, skin glowing, eyes bright. They have fun interests and perky jokes on their profiles. I try to think of a way to describe myself. Single dad, I type. Loves the outdoors. Obeys the gods in the white trees … No. Who am I kidding?

Last week I went to the 7-Eleven for more beer. I felt faint so I sat down on the step outside the store, just for a second. Maybe it was old habit. But I was also just tired. I’m always tired. When I opened my eyes, a guy was putting down quarters by my feet. I gave a growl like a bear and he jumped and ran away. I kept the quarters. I can’t imagine being in a room with these women.

I’m about to shut down the laptop when I hear something stir. The hair on the back of my neck stands up slowly. I don’t close the computer, because I don’t want to be alone in the dark. I have the sensation of eyes moving across my skull. The furniture lies quiet in unfamiliar shadow, in the screen’s faint blue light. I can’t shrug the feeling that it’s watching me.

I have a twist in my belly. Where am I exactly? I get up quietly to look. The ugly blue rug is there, check. On the mantel the ballerina lies as if dead in the ruins of the music box. So I know where I am. But who else is here?

‘Lauren?’ My voice is a whisper. ‘Is that you?’ Silence follows. Stupid, I know she isn’t here. ‘Olivia?’ But no, it wouldn’t be.

Mommy’s hand is cool on my neck, her voice soft in my ear. You have to move them, she says. Don’t let anyone find out what you are.

‘I don’t want to,’ I say to her. Even to myself I sound whiny like Lauren. ‘It makes me scared and sad. Don’t make me.’

Mommy’s skirts rustle, her perfume fades. She is not gone, though – never that. Maybe she is spending a while in one of the memories that lie around the house, in drifts as deep as snow. Maybe she is curled up in the cupboard beneath the sink, where we keep the gallon jug of vinegar. I hate it when I find her there, grinning in the dark, blue organza floating around her face.

The fresh can is so cold it almost sticks to my palm. The hiss and crack as it opens is loud, comforting in the silent house. I keep scrolling down, down, through women’s faces but Mommy’s voice is singing through my head and it’s no good. I go to find the shovel. It’s time to go to the glade.

I’m back. Recording this, in case I forget how I hurt my arm. Sometimes I can’t remember stuff and then I get scared.

I woke up to a hum. There was something walking on my lips. The morning was filled with clouds of flies, fresh-hatched. It was like a dream but I was awake. Early summer sun shone in the webs of orb spiders stretched between the trees. It made me think of that poem.‘“Come into my web,” said the spider to the fly.’ You are supposed to sympathise with the fly, I think. But no one likes flies, really.

My arm was twisted at a bad angle. I think I fell. There was iron on my tongue. I must have bit down hard on it while I was out. I spat out the blood at the foot of a mountain ash. An offering to the birds, who were calling in the trees overhead. Blood for blood. They won’t come to the garden since the murder. Birds tell one another about those things.

I got back home somehow. It was so good to hear the locks clicking into place. Safety.

My memory came back slowly. I had been trying to move the gods. They have laid in their resting place for a year or so now. They really shouldn’t stay in one place more than a couple months – after that, they start drawing people to them. So I was on my way to dig them up. But the forest has its own ideas, especially at night. I should have remembered that. The ground shrugged, the roots turned under my feet. Or maybe I was too drunk. Anyway I fell. The last thing I recall is the crunching sound my shoulder made as it met the earth.

My face is scratched and my arm has black flowers all over it. It won’t straighten. I made a sling out of an old T-shirt. I don’t think it’s broken. Getting hurt makes the body and brain weird, even if you don’t feel the pain. My thoughts are everywhere right now.

When I went downstairs earlier Olivia couldn’t leave me alone. Curious I guess. She licked my face. She has a real taste for blood, that cat.