Page 18 of Maybe (Mis-shapes #1)

EZRA

Unable to drift off after Isaac’s call, I checked on Jonty, stealing a kiss. Turning away was hard; watching him sleep, marvelling he was somehow mine, was my favourite hobby. Spreadeagled on his tummy, his mouth slack and open, he was wheezing, but only very slightly. Not enough to disturb him.

Three times I’d contacted the landlord, complaining about the damp in the corners of all the rooms. My son had suffered mild asthma before we’d moved to this place, but, along with the heavy traffic trundling along our road day and night, it certainly didn’t help.

And now, every time it rained, water dripped through the skylight in the bathroom.

At the weekend, I’d scraped off something suspiciously fungus-like growing in the plasterwork.

Carly’s mum, who knew about these things, suggested I contact the council or Citizen’s Advice.

Or move away, but I didn’t have the funds, and Jonty’s school was close enough to walk.

Back in bed, I stared at the yellowed ceiling, listening to the tuneful gurgles of the plumbing.

The whole flat sounded like it was pissing.

I should have shared that observation with Isaac, made him laugh.

And then told him he was a stupid dick for going along with a dead man’s plans.

Isaac would give me the money to move, if I asked; he wouldn’t even demand to know what I wanted it for.

But I wasn’t ready to accept his tainted cash.

Not yet. Maybe never. I wasn’t prepared for the feelings it would arouse.

Of being in debt to our bastard father. Nothing was ever free.

Every penny I spent would be a subtle reminder of his sneering tone saying, ‘ I gave that to you .’

I was ready to have Isaac more in my life, though. Even if he was a knackered and stressed-out hot mess. Because he was a knackered and stressed-out hot mess. He needed me. He needed his big brother. Perhaps before I sorted me and Jonty out, I needed to straighten him out first.

Isaac appeared at the café a week later, alone.

Being me, I hadn’t called him again, nor sent any more pictures of Jonty.

I’d thought about him, though. A lot. A small part of me wanted to quiz him about the things I’d missed out on over the last decade while a much larger part of me didn’t want to know.

Most of me was still fucking livid that Henry Fitz-fucking-Henry had died before I’d a chance to encounter him again as an adult, not as a messed-up teenager.

To ask him why he did what he did, whether he regretted it.

For him to see how brilliant I was, and Jonty was, without any of his help.

And then maybe to break his nose.

Regardless, his legacy carried on without him just fine.

My brother, bone-tired, strained, and holding his shit together by the slimmest of threads, had a textbook open as he waited for me.

And was doing that oh-so-British manners thing by apologising for catching the eye of the waitress to order a drink, like it wasn’t her bleeding job.

“Another one, cheers, Deb,” I signalled to her as I made my way towards him. “I’m at the table with the walking dead over there.”

“Not your usual type, Ez,” she commented, giving Isaac a once over.

“He’s my brother.” Suddenly, I felt inordinately proud, despite him looking one percent human and 99 percent exhausted.

Not to mention dressed like he was preparing to sift through a waiting room full of patients.

“He’s a junior doctor.” He’s just run a team managing a fucking cot death and debriefed everyone afterward without breaking down. “He’s very good.”

Isaac's weary mouth smiled at me, briefly transforming his face into something beautiful.

His eyes crinkled too. They were a soft blue and, objectively, nothing exceptional.

Like the rest of him. His hair, for instance, was neither sleekly dark nor strikingly blond.

Merely an ordinary neat brown, exactly like Isaac was of a neat and ordinary height and weight.

He had something, though. I bet he had plenty of admirers if he only looked up from his textbooks from time to time.

“Sleeping better?” I asked.

“Some. Apart from, you know, the recurring nightmare of huge bloody emperor moths crawling inside my ears when I’m asleep and chewing on my brain.

” He grinned. “I’ve been on another exam revision course for the last couple of days, so I had a break from work.

I… I needed it. Thanks for listening the other night, and sorry for being so pathetic. ”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I mean, getting upset over stuff like that is so pathetic, Isaac. Pull yourself together. You should be ashamed.”

As we drank in peaceful silence, a warm glow suffused me. Perhaps this was what drew me to him, this comfortable feeling. I felt it a bit around Carly. Being with someone who knew me, really knew me.

“I haven’t been here for the last couple of days either,” I said. “Jonty was off school.”

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Just an asthma flare up. He had a cold, and it tends to exacerbate it, and he… well, you know. I’m teaching you to suck eggs.”

“It’s different when it’s your own.” He frowned as I withdrew a cigarette. “You probably should stop those if you want to help his chest.”

“Yeah.” I lit it, blowing the smoke away from him. “It’s the damp that does for him, mostly. I never smoke in the flat, though I’m thinking of stopping the fags anyway. I need to get myself some of those patches.”

“Good. Smoking won’t be doing your own lungs any favours either.”

Check us out having another civilised, ordinary conversation. “What was the course about?”

“Mostly physiology and anatomy.” He pulled a face. “The first part of the exam’s next week.”

“HFF-H would be very proud of you,” I said, because I couldn’t help myself.

He laughed. “I don’t need to ask what the second f stands for, do I?”

“Nah, but if he was here, he’d assume it meant fabulous.”

“I’m going to be anything but, next week. The pass rate is only something like twenty-five per cent of candidates.”

I flicked ash into the ashtray. Jonty was still hacking his guts up this morning, when I dropped him off at school. Perhaps I’d call into the pharmacy on the way home and grab some patches today. Every little helped. “And you don’t think you’ll be in that 25 percent?”

“Who knows?” Isaac shrugged. “Depends what questions come up. But I doubt it. I’ve… had a lot on.”

Deb brought our drinks over, and we chatted about Jonty some more and what the twins were up to in the US. He showed me a few photos of them on his phone, which was my cue to bore him silly with rolls and rolls of pictures of Jonty.

“Our parents have missed out,” he said, when I finally put them away. “I’ve missed out.”

“Yep. Carly’s folks dote on him, though. Feed him rubbish, too, but I can’t complain, really.”

Isaac smiled. Even his teeth were ordinary; the front two were a little crooked, overlapping slightly.

His smile still slayed me, though. Every time.

Looking back, it always had, even when we were kids.

I’d have done anything for him when he smiled like that.

“If anyone begged for a third choccie biscuit in our house, Dad would have sat them down and produced some gory pictures of coronary artery plaques. And then launched into an explanation of the histopathology of them.”

“Too right.” I took a deep intake of breath. “His death must have hit you hard.”

“It did,” Isaac admitted, and I liked him for saying so.

Lying to me would have been much easier.

“More than I thought it would. It’s… muddled.

In amongst the self-promotion and egocentricity was this clever, gifted doctor who worked damned hard and achieved some pretty amazing, admirable objectives.

But in his quest for all that, he didn’t ever pause to look left or right or backwards to pick up the casualties left in his wake.

You of course, your mum, me… and my mum, to an extent.

He ploughed forward, regardless.” Isaac gulped a swallow, his eyes dropping to the table. “And I hated him for that.”

He ground to a halt, thrown back into memories.

I waited, wanting him to continue. Finally, we were talking about it.

Conversing without fences, like we did as kids.

With words flowing naturally and honestly.

But with our eyes, too, the way we held each other’s open gaze.

The way we listened. The things we didn’t say, how I was cautiously coming back to him.

How I wanted a role in his life and him in mine.

“But you still want to emulate him?” I asked.

“No.” Isaac hesitated a fraction. “I mean, yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

I laughed. “Great, glad we’ve got that sorted then.”

“I mean–“ Isaac closed his eyes for a few seconds, trying to explain. “Of course I don’t want to be completely like him. But the career, yeah, I want to emulate that. Who wouldn’t?”

Me for one. And Isaac wasn’t totally convincing either.

“You sure about that?” I pushed. “Because don’t pursue it simply because everyone else thinks you should.”

“I’m not!” He sighed. “It’s hard, Ez. He… he had a lot of energy, didn’t he? I admired that. Like he was invincible. I think he thought he was too. His death came as a big shock to everyone.”

“Did it?”

I’d read the obituary online scrolling through my phone while waiting for Jonty to come out of school.

Which was an awful, second-hand way to find out about a parent’s death, even an estranged one.

I must have gone white as a sheet, as Faizan’s mum took Jonty back to their flat for an hour until I felt human again.

“The obituary didn’t go into detail about that part. Ran out of space.”