Page 31 of Watching You
‘I’m busy,’ he muttered. ‘Got to go look after Dad.’
‘You’ll go when I say you can go, son. Come in and sit wi’ me. You never come in my room any more.’
‘Not now. Later. I’ve washing to do.’
‘Look at me, Karl,’ his mother insisted.
His head turned of its own accord, in spite of Karl willing it not to.
There she was, craning her neck to peer at him, her skin so dry and flaky there was a haze around her in the sunlight. Adifferent woman might have appeared as an angel. Not his ma, though. She was all demands and instructions.
‘Ignore her. She can be a bully, but she doesn’t really mean it. That’s just the way her own folks were with her,’ Karl’s father had once whispered to him when his mother had told him he’d amount to nothing if he didn’t step up and do more of the household chores. He was seven years old at the time.
Somehow his feet had carried him to the doorway of his mother’s bedroom. He stood, head down, fighting the urge to stare at her disintegrating face.
‘Have you done what I told you yet?’ she asked. ‘You haven’t, have you?’ He knew without looking that she was pointing at him with her gnarled right hand, the nails too long, the tips of her fingers the sepia shades of an old photo.
‘I’m trying, Ma. I watch her. I’m just waiting for the right time. And now she’s got some policeman living with her, so it’s hard.’ He gave a defeated shrug and shoved his shaking hands deep into his pockets. ‘And she hurt me before. I nearly died.’
‘Oh, it’s hard,’ his ma mocked, her voice reedy and whining. ‘It’s hard and I can’t do it. I nearly died. I’m too scared. I’m too weak.’ She screwed up her face and more of her skin fell in dusty rivulets to the carpet.
‘I’m trying,’ he said. ‘I can’t take risks. What’ll happen to Dad if I get caught?’
‘You won’t get caught if you’re clever and careful, but I suppose that’s too much to ask.’ His mother rose from the bed as if pulled by invisible puppet strings. He heard her knees pop as she straightened and did his best not to let her see the tears forming in his eyes. ‘Lazy boy. Stupid boy. Careless boy.’
‘Please don’t tell me off, Ma,’ he whimpered. ‘I’m doing my best.’
‘You’re doing your best for your father,’ she hissed. ‘Alwaysloved him, didn’t you? Clung to him. Asked for him when you were hurt or scared, you pathetic little shit!’
‘I loved you both,’ he cried. The tears were impossible to hide now, and he knew it would only make her worse, but there was no way of stopping them.
He could hear her feet scraping across the carpet and knew there’d be a trail of ash for him to clear up later.
‘Are you scared now, cry baby? You should be. Do you know what I’ll do if you don’t put that bitch Beth Waterfall down like the dog she is? I’ll creep into your bed while you’re fast asleep and—’
He screamed and bolted before she could reach out and touch him, tripping over his feet, stumbling, hitting the floor with one knee but getting straight up and clambering like some giant spider missing a leg or two, not even caring if he fell down the stairs. He just had to get away from her. From it.
He made it into the safety of the former dining room, threw himself down at his father’s side and pulled one of his dad’s arms over his neck, burying his face into the old man’s chest.
‘She’s coming,’ Karl sobbed. ‘She hates me. Nothing I do is ever good enough. I did everything to Molly that she asked, but even that wasn’t enough.’
His father said nothing.
Karl cried until his eyes were raw.
‘You won’t let her hurt me, will you? I’ll sleep down here with you from now on. The chair is all I need. It’ll be nice and cosy with the two of us. And I won’t have to worry about you as much. She can’t get down the stairs yet. We’re safe here.’
He pulled his father’s arm a little tighter over himself.
‘And when Beth Waterfall is gone, Ma will go away too. She promised she will.’
His father groaned then let out a long, rattling sigh.
‘You and me, Dad, like we always were. We were the best team.’ Karl forced himself to sit up. ‘I never knew how much she hated us being together all the time.’
Overhead there was nothing but silence from his mother’s bedroom. He hoped that meant she was done for the day. He’d have to run upstairs later and grab his toothbrush and a change of clothes for the morning, but she almost never called to him in the evening.
That had been her special time. His father would come home from work at 5 o’clock, his mother would put tea for them both on the table, then she’d disappear up to her room with a bottle of something cheap but strong and a pack of twenty cigarettes. They’d hear her television go on, she’d pull the curtains closed, and the next time they’d see her would be the following morning. It was an arrangement no one ever complained about.
