Short Story - My Boy James

As I pull up to my mother's house to drop her off after our shopping trip my little red Golf slams to a shuddering halt that lets me know it is, once again, not planning on restarting anytime soon. 

"Fuck!" 

Unladylike a word this may be but, if it's any consolation to my staunchly middle class parent, I do say it with the crisp enunciation she drummed into me.

"Sarah!" It's no consolation it turns out. "I don't know what's happened but, as you're not bleeding or unconscious, I can't imagine it deserved that response," she returns as she climbs gingerly out of the car.

Every day is fairly exhausting but today, Friday, has been particularly taxing. The normal stress of my single working mother life has been complicated by this breakdown which immediately throws my carefully regimented day into chaos. 

"For heaven's sakes," my Mother throws at me. "What a Drama Queen. You're wasted in Human Resources Sarah, you ought to have been on the stage." It's a pretty cheap shot seeing as my childhood dream to flee to London and be an Actress on the West End stage was somewhat scuppered by the arrival of my son James and the subsequent departure of his father, Tim. But then again that was a while ago now, and she's pretty old, so perhaps she's forgotten. Or assumed I've got over it. Which I suppose I have. I'm mostly just getting annoyed with her because I'm already riled up over the car and worried about James. 

"Take my car. I'll wait here for the AA man. And relax," she orders me. I jump into her car and drive off. I already have the keys, it's mostly only me who uses it anyway - when mine's conking out like now. She doesn't want to admit it but she can't really drive very easily any more - a combination of watery eyes and arthritic knees. Let's face it, she's old. But that's one more thing I'm not willing to think about. So long as she's chirpy and getting around, albeit with my help, I don't see why we should dwell on it. It's life right?

My worries race away as soon as I see James' face and I smile as his hands, sticky from PVA glue, grasp at my face as he greets me with the kind of wild abandon expected from kidnapped journalists being reunited with their families after a decade's separation rather than a two hour break while I went to Sainsbury's and he hung out making art. I don't care. You tell me what feeling could possibly be sweeter than knowing you have the total adoration of your child and I will almost certainly instantly dismiss whatever you come up with. I'd happily give birth all over again, without painkillers, just to experience this wonder in my life. It's a bit of a cop out to say that I suppose since, no doubt, my baby bearing days are over, but I do mean it. I'm trying to say goodbye to his teachers, trying to organise times for tomorrow, checking everything was okay today and all the while he is trying to get my attention: clinging, grabbing, kissing, giggling, "Mum, MUM, MUM-MING!" me. 

"James!" I bark sharply. Perhaps a little too sharply because his beautiful -mucky, but beautiful- face crumples. Luckily, years of practise have prepared my automatic response. A kiss on the cheek, a reassuringly firm stroke on the back and a plastic bottle of the appealingly bright coloured Fruit Shoot drink emerging quickly from the Sainsbury's bag and finding it's way into his grasp. Everything's fine. As he sucks on the bottle I finish my conversation and then we make our way back to the car. "This is Granny's car," he tells me, surprised. 

"Yup," I confirm. "My car broke down." 

His eyes widen and the arm holding the juice bottle drops to the side. He studies me seriously. "Are you okay? Did you get hurt?" 

"No, no," I reassure him quickly. "Everything was fine. It didn't crash."

"No crash?" he demands to be told again.

"No crash." 

"Okay." Calmed, and assured that I'm in one piece, he gets into the front passenger seat and wiggles around to get himself comfortable in the unfamiliar chair. I click his seatbelt in and take the opportunity to straighten the collar of his polo shirt. I set off back to my mother's house, hoping against hope the AA man has arrived. James has recovered from the shock of my supposed near destruction and is bursting to tell me about his day, literally dribbling with excitement, as he and his Fruit Shoot war for control of his mouth. "Mum?"

"Yes?"

"It was good today."

"Was it? Good." 

"It was Art."

"Yup." 

"I made you a pot."

"A pot?"

"Yes! It's in my bag. It is brown and it is little. Do you like it?" 

I laugh. He's silent. I realise he thinks I'm laughing at him. "I haven't seen it yet silly! But I'm sure I'll love it." 

"I wrote Mum on it in red paint. And a strawberry - I drew it. You like strawberries." I smile. James' memory is still pretty much linked to whatever happened the day before. Hence why last night's strawberries are currently taking centre stage in his rendition of the most loved aspects of my life. I used to feel queasy listening to people listing how great their kid's foibles were but now I realise I'm probably the biggest culprit of them all. James can tell me he sat on a Ladybird and the sky is made out of poo and I still gaze at him like he's Einstein.

We arrive at my Mother's house and I'm relieved to see the AA man is there. Once I meet him I'm less thrilled. He turns out to be an impatient, patronising, ever so slightly misogynistic soul - "Looks like those tyres are wearing a bit thin. Not got a hubby to sort out all this sort of stuff for you Love? Imagine it's a bit of a dirty job for a bird like you to handle?" - and I'm grateful Mum is entertaining James inside so he doesn't witness me trying to beat down my ever-rising hackles.

Finally we're on the way home, James having sloppily administered several loving kisses onto Mum's face while she giggled like a schoolgirl, and soon we're sitting down to a dinner of "SAUSAGES!" His roar is deafening. I think it's fair to say that he's delighted with the sausages. I smile but my mind is elsewhere. It's getting late, I still have to sort out a lot of paperwork, James has a hospital appointment due that I need to chase up and...

..."It's my birthday tomorrow," he informs me. Ah, his birthday. The one date he never forgets. He knows the date, the day, the hour, the minute he was born and he loves the fact that for one day everything can be about him, a celebration of him, without having to censor himself or his wants. James' birthdays are always an Event. Yes, with a capital E. 

"That's correct," I confirm. 

"And I'm having a party." 

"Yes. Tomorrow afternoon. William is coming."

"And Daniel. And Gemma."

"Yes."

"And we can have cake?"

"Yup. Pirate themed remember?"

"Yes! And I have an eyepatch!"

Pirates of the Carribbean didn't come out too long ago. It's the current fad. He and his friends all fancy themselves the next Captain Jack. The birthday party confirmed and dinner finished we attempt the washing up but James' attempts to help ends abruptly with two broken glasses, a smashed plate and an extraordinarily loud screaming fit. The explanation that, thanks to the delay caused by the car breaking down, we don't have time for tonight's movie, goes down equally well. By the time we've struggled through a bath, pyjamas and an episode of Scooby Doo we're both exhausted and, not for the first time, I catch myself thinking about getting some help. I could even get someone to stay with him one night a week while I go out, I catch myself thinking. Mum's not really up to it anymore but maybe...James laughs at Scooby and Shaggy and I stop myself guiltily. I don't need to go out. What for? To find a man? I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror across the room and laugh bitterly at myself. Who'd want me now? I feel a tightness on my shoulders and I realise I laughed out loud. Or perhaps snorted would be a better word. James is hugging me to him with his right arm and staring at me quizzically. I smile brightly and give him a little hug. Reassured he turns back to the TV. 

When I tuck him in to bed he holds me to him and solemnly reminds me not to forget it's his birthday tomorrow. I promise and walk to the door. Finger on the switch I turn to blow him a kiss before I click the light off and he's gazing at me with his big, soft brown eyes and a huge smile. "I love you Mum". 

"I love you too son." Tears pricking my eyes I spin round, turn off the light and go back downstairs where I sit, revelling in the quiet, at my desk. Slowly I pull out all the paperwork and bend over the various forms and lists. Somewhere in the next two hours I pull out the final preparation sheet for the party. Clearly James has found it already. He's printed in large, unsteady letters along the top, 'DEAR MUM. DON'T FORGET MY BIRTHDAY!!! LOVE JAMES'. Yeah Sarah, I tell myself. Don't forget. Tomorrow it's your son's birthday! I'll throw him the pirate party of his dreams. He deserves it. It's a big one. Tomorrow my son will be thirty. 

Short Story - 'Surprise'

I’ve always arranged surprise parties. I never understand people who don’t enjoy them. I love the fact it means you care enough about someone to want to express your love and pride for them. I get a thrill from crossing my fingers that everyone’s gonna keep the secret, I take the challenge of making sure that each individual contribution to the food, drinks, decoration or entertainment melds together seemlessly very seriously and I adore the moment it hits the party recipient that all these people who mean the world to them are right there in the room without having to have lifted a finger to get them there. My party organising was the bane of Martin’s life. Nice, sweet, sturdy Martin who lived life with his face in a book and his hand clasped around his daily organiser. I think he was just as shocked as his family and friends were that he’d fallen in love with the kookiest, most excitable girl at university.  But, like in every aspect of our lives, he knew how to humour me, to play along and, always, to be my rock. The prep for this party was squashed in between treatments, panics and painful paperwork. Yet it was perfect in every way. 

The cake was chosen because it was a replica of our wedding cake. The deep chocolate sponge I loved made up the base of the cake and the top was the light vanilla sponge that Martin, the purist that he was, always found superior to any of today’s fancy flavours. Squashed in between them was the heavy fruit cake that we both hated but, since it’s the traditional choice for a wedding cake, superstitiously agreed we should include. You know. Just to be sure. 

Martin’s surprise party was a bittersweet affair. A heady mix of love and loss and an oddly cordial acceptance of failure. I suppose there’s no other way to put it really. It was a goodbye. The chance for everyone who knew and loved Martin - I was never surprised by how many people that described - to see him, touch him, kiss him and breathe in the very essence of him one last time. And for him to do the same. 

The music was a strange little band that had been playing in the dingy pub where we had our first date at university. I doubt any of the guests at the party enjoyed the music. In fact I’m not sure either of us ever had either. We’d talked through their set, lost ourselves in our first kiss and then snuck out, away from the racket, to smoke. Later I’d bought their album at a student union gig for Martin’s Valentine’s Day gift. A jokey one really, but he’d put it on, lowered the lights and kissed me. Recreated that first night. Then he looked at me and said, “Gemma, I love you”. For the first time. Suddenly that music meant something, regardless of how terrible it sounded. 

If it seems weird to you that a party was the way this was done, well, I don’t blame you. I think most people believe that when you’re dying, it’s the time for you to be closed off from the rest of the world to be with your family. It’s supposed to be a time of shock, of pain, of grief, of heartache. All very serious. But when your husband has been dying, right in front of your eyes, for years and years? When your wife has become your carer - doing all the things for you that you one day expected her to do for your children? When you’ve spent so many horrendous years swinging between joy, hope and misery, spending most of it in a limbo land where you have absolutely no control so you’re stuck just watching the years pass and, along with them, steadily losing ground on all the plans you once made so carefully and lovingly together? Well, you’re done with being serious. You’ve earned a party. I think our friends and family just wanted to see us together one last time, relaxing into each other like we used to. 

The weeks leading up to the party was the sickest I’d seen Martin. I’d stopped getting shocked at his bald head, his steroid bloated frame and his slurring voice. I was so busy looking after him, in what must have become a rather over-efficient matronly type of way ,that I’d blocked out the difference between what I wanted my husband to look like and the awful reality. But now even I was noticing the difference. His breathing was more and more laboured, his nose bleeds frequent and, though he didn’t say anything, I could see his eyes glaze over each time he was racked with pain. For the first time he started asking me to leave the room while he talked to his family on the phone. I thought he didn’t feel I was strong enough to handle too many goodbyes. 

On the day of the party I picked Martin up from the hospital and was driving towards his parents’ house when he suddenly said, “Turn left”.

“What?” I asked. 

“Turn left here.”

A little chill ran through me. “That’s not the way to your Mum’s house Martin.” 

“Thank you Einstein.” I stared at him and he weakly forced a throaty little chuckle. 

“I’m not quite off my rocker yet darling. Turn left. Please.” 

“We’ll be late for dinner at your parents”, I murmured. But I was already turning left. I never could say no to him. 

“They’ll understand”. 

I drove down the road until I came to the town hall. I slowed down as I caught sight of fifty, sixty, maybe more people filling the car park until we finally came to a standstill at the entrance. I turned to my left and looked at Martin. He was gazing back at me with the broadest grin I’d seen on him for months and his whole face with glowing with pleasure. 

Everyone and everything was there. My parents, his parents, our nieces and nephews, best friends, the cake, the terrible music. Each guest received copies of the book we were reading in the English class we met in and, rather embarrassingly, a copy of the first poem I wrote for Martin. We ate an eccentric looking buffet that was a gastronomic history of our relationship eating habits stretching from university stir fries to my ‘grown-up’ Nigella-esque meal attempts via plenty of chinese takeaways, emergency pizzas and broke beans on toast. We sat and told stories. About Martin, about our parents, about us...everyone had an anecdote. Kids scrambled to press kisses on Martin’s cheeks and a sombre-faced ten year old nephew reassured me he’d look after me after Uncle Martin had gone to hang out with God. Grown men laughed while brusquely wiping away tears and women clucked and cleaned busily, stopping only to lay a gentle hand on one of us or to press champagne into our hands. Later that evening we all sat close, huddled under blankets, and used the hall’s projector to watch home movies, laughing at the sight of a five year old Martin running through his garden stark naked. At midnight he squeezed my hand lightly and, smiling, whispered, “Surprise darling”.