Page 13 of Maybe (Mis-shapes #1)

EZRA

“Who was that man, Daddy?”

An excellent, insightful question, and one I hoped he’d forgotten to ask.

Since Isaac stormed off, Jonty and I had discussed the colour of the paint on an estate agent’s front door (an interesting greeny-blue), why frogspawn wasn’t toad spawn (clumpy not stringy), why the stickers on apples should be edible (Jonty ate them anyhow), and the relative merits of Faizan’s mum's lamb samosas compared to her vegetable bhajis.

I hesitated to describe Isaac as an uncle, even though the idea warmed me. A few ‘uncles’ had traipsed through Carly's house until she settled with Dave, her current bloke. Given that my own early childhood had been built on a house of cards, I went with the truth.

“He’s my brother,” I said, as we turned the corner into our street.

Now none of his friends lurked, Jonty held my hand. “Is he a nice brother? Did he used to play football with you?” Disappointingly for Jonty, Carly’s child with Dave was of the female variety and far more interested in trampolining than football.

“I’m afraid we didn’t play much football, no,” I replied. “He’s a few years younger than me. Sometimes we practised guitar together, though.”

Play Wonderwall, Ezra. Show me that last chord again. Look! I’ve learned the first three.

I squeezed Jonty’s hand, and he squeezed back. “But he is quite a nice brother, when he’s not saying stupid things. I’m going to see him more. Did you take your blue puffer at lunch time?”

“Yes. And the brown one.”

“Good boy. Do you want the blue one again now before we climb the stairs? The lift’s packed up again.”

“No, I’m fine.”

He was not fine. Our flat was on the fourth floor of an old six-storey block and blanketed in illegal tinderbox cladding that the council had promised to replace years ago.

Not too many flights of stairs, but he still wheezed like an accordion by the time we reached the halfway mark, not helped by him insisting on reciting his lines for his upcoming school play.

Wordlessly, I handed him a blue inhaler. At home, we did it properly, using the spacer like the nurse had shown us. “You okay?” I fiddled with the key longer than necessary so he could get his breath back.

“Yeah.” He coughed a couple of times. “Can we have pizza for tea?”

Jonty had yet to meet a problem pizza couldn’t fix. “On Friday,” I promised. “Shepherd’s pie tonight.”

Whenever I knuckled down and had an honest conversation with Carly about boundaries, she rolled her eyes at me, then turned her attention back to whatever she was doing.

On this occasion, it was putting the finishing touches to a shepherd’s pie in my tiny kitchen.

With her felt-tipped pens spread across the breakfast bar, Freya, Jonty’s younger half-sister, was covering a sheet of paper in gold and silver stars.

“You’ve been avoiding me.” Carly dolloped mashed potato on to a layer of meat, then made tramlines in it with a fork. “And Jonty says you’ve been acting weird.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

My son threw me an angelic smile, his arms already squeezed around his mum’s rapidly expanding, seventh-months-pregnant waist. “I just met Daddy’s brother. He came with Daddy to the swings.”

“That’s nice, sweetheart.” Over the top of his head, Carly gave me a shrewd onceover. “Why don’t you go and change out of your uniform before Freya gets glitter all over it?” She used her no-messing voice. “Were you given any homework?”

“Just my reading. And practising my lines.”

“Dinner won’t be ready for another forty minutes. Take Freya with you—she’s got spellings to write out.”

No subtlety, my Carly. While the kids skipped off, I emptied out Jonty’s lunchbox.

“Dave at work?” I asked, more as a stalling tactic than a genuine question. Her and Freya had been coming over to ours for dinner when her partner was on night shifts for the last couple of years.

“Yeah. So, the swings?”

“Jonty hung around with Faizan for a bit. Coming back, he was wheezy on the stairs. I’m going to get onto the landlord again. A letter from the GP surgery might help, too.”

“Maybe.”

A fond smile on her lips, Carly tilted her head at me. “Anything else you want to discuss?”

“Nope.”

Hoisting myself up onto the only bit of worktop not covered with utensils, food, kids’ lunchboxes and letters from school, I made the most of seventy-five seconds of silence before she prodded my bruises in earnest. “When were you going to tell me your dad had died? Mum spotted it in the paper.”

The shepherd’s pie disappeared into the oven. From the bedroom, Jonty regaled Freya with his play lines. He’d been cast as a Viking, a great excuse to be shouty and boisterous. It sounded like he was leaping from the bed; the family living below us would be delighted.

I stared down at the floor. “I don’t know. When I’d got my head around it, I guess?”

Several months had passed. The numbness hadn’t.

It shared a cold, damp space with the various other shit that man had flung my way.

Such as you just aren’t trying hard enough, Ezra .

You’ll never amount to anything, Ezra, playing that guitar forever .

And, of course, hidden amongst his casual cruelty, the grandaddy of them all: a conversation with Janice behind the closed study door, accidentally overheard in the hazy days after my mum’s death.

A memory so drenched in pain that, even now, fifteen years later and safe in my kitchen with my best friend and my kid happily playing in the room next door, it still pricked my soul with shards of glass.

Looks like we’re stuck with him, Janice . His mother’s cousin doesn’t want him; she’s enough children of her own. I’ve explored the legal angles with the solicitor. I should never have agreed to adopt him—she bloody talked me into it.

That fucking study with its sombre furniture, his bragging photos lining the walls, the heavy textbooks, the fucking hideous glass case full of very rare, very dead moths.

And me, a devasted, grieving boy, slumped on the carpet outside, eavesdropping whilst grenade after grenade exploded on my head.

Discovering after thirteen years that my dad didn’t want me.

He’d never wanted me. And my mum wasn’t ever coming back.

A sick certainty I was unwanted, unloved, unlovable.

And then Isaac, solemn little Isaac, with his scared blue eyes and his chunky legs and his hideous school uniform, came to sit on the floor beside me.

My own little wonderwall. Saying nothing, but holding my hand and offering me a crumpled-up wad of tissues.

Then coaxing me back to my room and helping me into bed.

It was no wonder every bitter thought I’d ever had about him always had an I love you curled up inside it.

“Go on then,” Carly said, taking in my drawn features. “For the love of God, don’t tell me you’ve gone back to them. You’re well away, Ezra.”

I studied my feet, an admission in itself. Perhaps my wanker of a non-father had been right all along. Perhaps I was unteachable and stupid. Because, despite having the same lesson over and over, I never seemed to learn.

Quickly, I filled her in on my trip to the solicitor's. And then, seeing as she sensed I was hiding something, stared at my feet some more and summarised how I livened up the memorial service.

“I wanted some cash, so I could get me and Jonty out of this shithole. With some left over for you and Freya too, because there’s plenty floating around.”

She leaned against the closed oven door. “That’s all you were after?”

Carly knew me too well. While my brain had now learned to assimilate my adoption as a basic fact about myself, back then it fucked me up as much, if not more, than losing my beloved mum.

I’d contemplate it for hours, examine it and process it, then re contemplate, reprocess, re-examine.

Like I’d suddenly found out and couldn’t quite believe I only had one kidney, or a sixth toe.

And an avaricious, embittered part of me ached for some payback.

“Isaac offered some of the money immediately,” I added. “His offer still stands.”

It would always stand. But so, unfortunately, would my stupid pride.

“I bumped into him today. I… I dunno, Carly. Seeing him was so…” I tailed off.

I didn’t know how it had made me feel. Bewildered was a good start.

Back in the days when the longest part of my morning routine had been finding the will to live, that non-father and his perfect little family made me believe I was very hard to love.

Except for Isaac. That intense, nerdy kid, with his clumsy fingers picking out chords—he’d made it seem easy.

But how to explain in the time it took a shepherd’s pie to cook through?

The best I could offer Carly was, “It drags a lot of shit up, you know?” I shook my head with a rueful smile.

“I thought that.... he’s still my brother and we used to get along.

Not that it matters now. I fucked things up with him again. ”

Later, after the kids went to bed, we fell asleep in each other's arms, watching TV. Carly left with a sleeping Freya at some point; I woke under a blanket to the sound of a door closing. Then slept again, wild, fitful dreams, spiralling down into a nightmare but never reaching, pulled out of it every time by a picture of Isaac. Driving his shitty car, drinking his shitty water. Smiling at my son’s antics on the swing.

When I stirred at five a.m., to Jonty hacking in the next room, one thing struck me like never before. What do you really want from them, Ezra? Carly had asked as we’d drifted off to sleep.

My brother back in my life , I’d thought, but not said aloud. I want Isaac.