Ostrich: A Novel Read online

  It was as though the future I had glimpsed into had already happened.

  And that’s when I understood what Miss Farthingdale had meant. (She was right: It was obvious.) We don’t have a future in English because there’s no such thing. It was just like she’d said. We liked to imagine we could reach out and touch it, hold it in our hands (and taste it in our spit), because that’s what let us believe we were in control, but we never could be, because that could never happen. Because the future dies at our touch. Which would explain why I couldn’t not fall off my bike that day. Because when I lifted my vision and saw myself flying improbably through the air, it wasn’t the future I was looking at.

  “I am noticing the Asian woman at the wheel of the Vauxhall Cortina,” says Dad, flicking on the indicator (back in car (on road on the way to hospital (in the present tense))). “And I am preparing for the worst.”

  But he can’t commentate on the future any more than a dog can catch raindrops.

  He is predicting the present.

  Chapter Ten

  The indicator ticks like a metronome, which makes me think of David Driscoll and Mum’s fictional piano lessons as Dad slides across the broken line and slots in behind the Cortina. The time is 4:21:48, which means two things:

  1) In 1.091 seconds the hands of my watch will be perfectly aligned (except my watch is digital, so it doesn’t have any hands).

  2) We’re going to be late for my appointment with Mr. Fitzpatrick.

  “We’re going to be late for my appointment with Mr. Fitzpatrick,” I tell Dad, extending my arm to show him my Casio SGW100 (which is the exact one the deep-sea divers use).

  The two lanes of traffic merge into one like a deck of cards being shuffled.

  “Coast,” replies Dad, without looking at me.

  I answer (correctly) without thinking (because I don’t have to), “Concentration Observation Anticipation Space Time.” Then I repeat myself, making sure to change the wording because if you repeat something furbatim (which means the exact same way), it means you’re lying. “We are running behind schedule for my consultation with Señor Fitzpatrick.”

  “Don’t you worry about Mr. Fitzpatrick,” says Dad, straightening up the wheel. “Ever asked an American when World War Two started? They’re not so hot on timekeeping.” The indicator clicks off. “Poor Old Walter,” he adds, thoughtfully. “Dies Every Ruddy Year.”

  I turn to look out the window and mindlessly list all the things you should check before a long drive: “Petrol Oil Water Damage Electrics Rubber You.”

  (It turns out I knew exactly what Mnemonics were all along, even before I googled them. I just didn’t know they had a name. (To help me remember it, I have invented one of my own: Memory Never Escapes Me Officer Now I Construct Sentences.))

  “Correct,” says Dad. “But you should come first.”

  From our new position, my view of the roadside is unobstructed. Frost-glazed sports fields stretch out to our left, the markings vague and sort of implied, trampled underfoot by another ruddy year of touchline dribbles and parents’ pride. The goals are naked. Stripped of their nets, they have no backs or fronts, which robs them of their purpose. We pass sixteen of these sad arches (which makes a total of eight pitches (which is roughly the surface area of four small intestines)) and each one of them seems somehow more listless (which is when you have nothing left To Do). All the while Dad concentrates on the road ahead, being careful to leave a gap of exactly two chevrons between us and the Asian woman in front, which makes me think of Mum again (because now we are much greater than the Cortina (just like Mum’s ears are much greater than her eyes)).

  I asked Dad once why they didn’t make the distance between two chevrons twice as long, because that way you’d have to keep only one chevron apart.

  “They were like that when we found them,” he said, and laughed.

  (I sometimes wonder if civilization had to start again from scratch how much stuff we’d reinvent. I realize that the odds of life existing in the first place are about 1 in a googolplex squared (which is a number so big you couldn’t write it in your entire lifetime), but I just can’t imagine that wax fruit could happen twice.)

  The blanket of frost on the fields reminds me I’m cold, so I tug my sleeves down over my knuckles, clamp my hands between my thighs, and watch my breath cloud in front of my mouth like a wandering thought bubble. To my surprise, there’s a question in it: Can my soul be given away?

  I don’t know who’s asking, but my best guess is the goalposts. I watch them slide away in the vanity mirror and say the question over to myself. Can my soul be given away? I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere before. The words are familiar yet strange. (I both recognize them and don’t at the same time, like the taste of toothpaste in the afternoon.) The harder I look and the farther away the goalposts fall the more sense it makes. Maybe a soul is like a net. It’s the thing that stops other things from passing straight through you without you noticing them.

  The Asian brake lights blush two chevrons toward tomorrow, which brings me out of my daydream. Dad shifts down through the gears and repeats himself: “Can My Soul Be Given Away?”

  Forthwith I know where I’ve heard it before. I respond automatically. “Course Mirror Signal Brake Gear Accelerate.”

  “Okay, then,” says Dad, flicking the indicator back on with a smile. “I think you’re ready.”

  And the next thing I know we’re in car off-road.

  “What about my appointment?” I protest, as we rumble down the footpath at a perfect right angle to where we’re supposed to be going.

  “There are more important things in life than perfect attendance,” says Dad (and then immediately lists none) as the foliage forms a Guard of Honor above our heads. At first the wind rustling through the leaves reminds me of applause, as though we’re a visiting sports team being clapped on to the pitch, but with the end of the tunnel just a pinprick in the leaves, the lane tapers and the roof starts to collapse. Dad grinds down on the accelerator, and I breathe in deep as though me and the car are one. “Hold on tight!” he exclaims, as branches drum on the windscreen and the hedgerow pins back the wing mirrors like a plastic surgeon performing an Otterplasty (which is the proper name for cosmetic ear surgery (which is what Beckie Frogley had after David Driscoll invented the term Blowjob Handles)). We speed ahead through the raking thorns and the canopy falls like dusk, dressing the entire car in black (except for my watch, which is glow-in-the-dark). Dad karate chops on the headlights. They peer forward into the dark, peeling back the night until they trip on something ahead in the path. It’s a fallen log. Half sunk into the mulch of mud and fallen leaves, it lies in wait like a Sleeping Policeman.

  “In for a penny, in for a pound!!” double-exclaims Dad. “Hold on to your ____”

  But I don’t hear what I’m supposed to hold on to because I’m holding on to my head. My fingers lock behind the occipital bone, my elbows point to my toes, and my wrists plug my ears.

  (My pulse sounds like the sea.)

  (“There are lots of people in an operating theater,” explains Mr. Fitzpatrick before the operation. “But I am The Captain of the Ship.” (So what does that make me? I wonder.))

  We hit the ramp at what must be at least 150 kilometers an hour, causing Dad to say a four-letter word, into which he manages to squeeze about twenty vowels. We are suspended in midair for five and a quarter seconds by my count (five Mississippis and a Yangtze (which, ironically, is longer)) during which time I can feel my sphincter tighten and the tunnel walls contract around us like a womb so that it sort of makes perfect sense that when the T explodes from Dad’s lips, the fart thumps into my seat, and the ground slaps open my eyes I find we’ve been birthed into a field.

  “What the eff are you thinking?” I ask Dad in italics, once we’ve skidded to a halt (and I’ve checked my head like you’re supposed to check cartons of eggs in the supermarket before you buy them).

  “Now,” he says, jerking up the handbr
ake, turning off the engine, and handing me the key, “I’m thinking that if you’re old enough to drive a car you’re old enough to swear like a fucking grown-up.” And then he makes us switch positions.

  (If I were to describe what happens next in my French Oral exam the outcome would be one of the following:

  1) I would fail for incorrect vocab, which would mean I definitely wouldn’t get the scholarship for my new school.

  2) I would have to see the school counselor, who would ask me if everything was “cool beans” at home and make me point to a color on a Dulux color chart that he calls his Happiness Graph.

  3) I would be taken into care.)

  “Well?” says Dad, gesturing out across the land from the passenger seat as though he owns everything our headlights can see and one day it will all be mine. The field is bordered on one side by a guard of assiduous black trees, silhouetted against the sinking sun, and on the other by the hum of distant traffic. Even in the rising dark I can see that winter, like old age, has flecked the grass white, which makes my dad look like a young man in comparison, which is appropriate, because he’s grinning childishly. (I wonder if this is his idea of a joke. (After all, a car crossing a field is almost the opposite of the chicken crossing the road which means they have nearly everything in common.))

  “Charlie Blithely Accepted Handouts,” Dad continues, pointing out the clutch, brake, accelerator, and handbrake respectively, all of which I know already, but not from this angle. “Right. What are we waiting for?”

  I select an answer from a brimming quiver. “My seventeenth birthday.”

  “Why?” He sighs. “You know how to drive, don’t you?”

  “Maybe in theory,” I concede. “But there’s a difference between theory and practice.”

  “See,” says Dad, tapping his nose, “I have a theory that there isn’t.”

  Turning the key in the ignition is (doubly) illegal because people with epilepsy aren’t allowed to drive cars unless they can prove that they’ve been seizure-free for a year (and children aren’t allowed to drive cars unless they can prove that they’re adults). The engine catching makes me a criminal, so I make a mental note of it in case I ever embark on a life of crime and I need to pinpoint the moment it all went wrong (for example, when I’m tattooing my autobiography on to the face of my screaming cell mate in maximum-security prison or if I ever have to give a careers talk as a criminal cum reformed criminal slash bestselling author).

  My first three attempts at pulling away I fall short of the biting point, rushing up on the clutch and causing the car to stall violently, which means actually I have to turn the key in the ignition four times in total. (To make sure I don’t confuse any of these later turns with the decisive one that set me off on my path to delinquency, I do them with my eyes shut.) The fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth time I overcompensate like the secretly gay homophobic bully in the 18, plunging too deep on the accelerator so the car squeals with impotent fury, and the seventh time I brake instead (which is a tautology, because we’re already stationary (which is already as slow as you can go)).

  The ninth time is the charm. When he thinks I’m not looking, Dad sinks his foot into the passenger-side pedals and the clutch ghosts out from under me. In response I pump the accelerator and the car wheezes and strains against its leash. And then when Dad takes my hand in his and presses my thumb to the handbrake (just like the policeman will when he takes my prints), we lurch forward, tearing free from an umbilical vine.

  “Fuck,” I remark.

  “Fuck,” he concurs.

  “What if I have an accident?” I inquire.

  “Then propose and get a job,” he opines. “But for now just remember to keep your hands on the outside of the steering wheel, because it’s significantly harder to hitchhike with two broken thumbs. Now, put your left foot down and your left hand on the gear stick.”

  I put my left foot down and my left hand on the gear stick.

  “Paper covers rock,” says Dad, putting his hand on top of mine and jiggling the stick back into second gear.

  In second gear the car feels a lot less skittish, and after a few minutes learning how to steer (you must never cross your hands, which Dad explains by asking whether I’ve seen Ghostbusters (yes (sleepover)) and whether I know what happens if you cross the streams (yes (every molecule in your body explodes at the speed of light))) I’m almost starting to enjoy myself. Driving isn’t really so different from riding the bumper cars on Brighton Pier, which I used to do with Mum when I was a kid.

  When I feel like I’ve got the hang of it, I ask where we’re going.

  “Where do you want to go?” Dad answers, unhelpfully.

  “Where do you want me to go?” I answer, less helpfully.

  “Where do you want me to want you to go?” I expect him to say, taking the joke too far, like he always does. But instead he puts on his serious voice, which is his normal voice but slower. “Seriously,” he starts (unnecessarily), “if you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?”

  However, before I can answer he tells me not to now but to think about it (which I really don’t have to, because it’s an easy question). So instead I ask him why he never took me on the bumper cars. At first he doesn’t answer, so I start to repeat myself in case he hasn’t heard, but before I’m through he interrupts me.

  “I heard you,” he says. “I was thinking about it. I guess if I’m honest I probably thought it was a bit of a busman’s holiday. I’m sorry. That’s not a very good reason. Did you want me to go with you?”

  I tell him I would probably have liked that, yes, because Mum never wanted to hit anything (which I knew would be the case before we even started, because she insisted I call them dodgems), and then, so he doesn’t think there’s any hard feelings, I ask where he wants me to want him to want me to go.

  Again, though, Dad doesn’t answer for a really long time. Not until we bounce over a hump, the headlights lift, and the full beam strikes the base of a rusty protuberance sprouting through the frozen earth.

  “I want you to score a goal,” he says slowly, pointing into the distance at the ghostly scaffold.

  By my estimate we’re twenty meters from goal when all of a sudden Dad appears to lose his mind.

  (“I don’t think we should tell your mother about this,” he says at forty meters.

  “About what?” I ask at thirty.

  “This,” he says, pinning me back against my seat with his right arm and with his left spinning the wheel toward him.)

  The passenger-side door takes the brunt of the impact, so Dad has to climb across the gear stick to join me in the penalty box, where we survey the damage in silence. The boot has popped open and won’t close properly, but it’s definitely the goal that’s come off worse in the collision. At the point where the car thudded into its post, the soulless skeleton is painfully misshapen.

  “Well,” says Dad proudly, tying the boot shut with his shoelace. “Now we’ve done bumper cars together.”

  And then he gives me a stick of chewing gum, which I’m not allowed.

  Chapter Eleven

  I open the door into a blinding flash of white.

  “Smile!” says the voice behind the camera.

  Both of them (the voice and the camera) belong to Mum, whose new hobby is photography. Ever since I got discharged from the hospital after the operation she takes my picture at least a dozen times a day. She’s even turned the utility room into a darkroom, in which she spends about two hours every night and from which I’m barred in case I accidentally overexpose any of her pictures (even though most of them are of me anyway).

  I used to hate having my photo taken, which is why there are no pictures of us all as a family from when I was a kid. Every time Mum tried to take my picture I would start crying, or, when I got a bit older, do something deliberate to sabotage the composition, like making my eyes racist. Which is why if you looked through the photo albums that Mum gave up keeping around the time I turne
d seven you wouldn’t even know I existed. (You’d just think that my parents were two grown-ups who enjoyed spending a disproportionately large amount of their free time at petting zoos.) The one good picture Mum and Dad do have of me from when I was young is a portrait taken against our front door on my first day of school, which now sits on top of the TV. The idea, apparently, was to document this milestone with a picture of me dressed from head to toe in my smart new uniform. At the time Mum’s ambitions apparently stretched to a whole series, one picture to be taken each year on the first day of Winter term, each one charting in stages my growing into (and eventually growing out of) this uniform, with the glass panels of our front door behind my head acting as a measuring stick. The pictures would then be lined up on the mantelpiece like a sort of human staircase, providing a convenient visual aid for any distant relatives who wanted to remark how much I’d grown since I’d last seen them (i.e., “Last time I saw you, you were only four panels tall!”). The reason, so the story goes, that the only remaining evidence of this project is the single mischievous mug shot on top of the TV is that I was so against the idea of having my photo taken every year on the first day of term that I poked my penis through the flies of my new school trousers.

  Now that I’m grown up, though, I don’t mind Mum taking my picture so much. In fact, I have devised a game to amuse myself while she does so. As soon as she tells me to “Smile!” I pretend I’ve just heard a really hilarious joke or seen someone I don’t like getting hurt. This way, when she takes the picture, she catches me in what looks like a moment of wild hysteria. The point of the game is to trick my older self into thinking I was a deliriously happy twelve-year-old and remembering my childhood more fondly. This time, though, I don’t smile because I don’t want her to see the wad of gum pouched in my cheek.