Six months after we met a casual affair was brought to its senses by an unbroken blue line running through the window of a pregnancy test kit. Much solemn talking ensued, once more the old weighing of things against each other only this time between two minds equally adroit at seeing both sides of any story without ever necessarily reaching a decision. Finally however we did rent a semi D in one of the new estates on the city’s outskirts and settled down to bringing up a child between us. After three years however we had to face up to the fact that we were hopelessly out of love with each other. With the leaking away of all physical desire, our relationship bottomed out to a colourless haunting of each other, a leaching away of all feeling from our togetherness. We woke up to the conclusion that, were it not for the child between us, we would long ago have gone our separate ways. Some time in Jamie’s third year we sat down and tallied up the cost of our lives together. All things considered it hadn’t been too expensive. One beloved child and the enrichment of sense and soul he had brought to us more than offset any regrets for dreams we had set aside on his account. Speaking for myself it was the kind of balance sheet I could live with. We talked into the night, mapping out the details of an amicable separation, the terms of which would come into effect three years down the road when, we blithely reasoned, Jamie would be more of an age to cope with the trauma. We gave each other the love-you-but-not-in-love-with-you speech, agreed on the you-deserve-better postscript, and then sat there ashamed of ourselves, quietly appalled that in our early thirties and after three years and a child together this was the best we could do by way of a row. How could we have felt so little? Then, in a rush of gratitude toward each other, we made love for the first time in months. The following morning, embarrassed by these faltering intimacies, we renewed the vows of the night before.
When the three years were up we sat Jamie down between us and told him that his family would now be divided between two houses. His reaction was muted, no hysterics or anxious pleading, no face down pummelling of pillows. He walked into his room, pulled the door behind him, and was not seen or heard of for the rest of that day. He came out later that evening and asked for something to eat, his face flushed, his whole being pulsing in a haze of anxiety.
A couple of weeks after that he began wetting the bed.
Lately he’s got this idea, more accurately an obsession. How this idea has taken hold of him I cannot properly say but Martha dates it to the time of our breakup, the weeks and months after I moved out of our semi D and into a two-bedroomed flat in the city centre. Martha speculates that it’s all part of the break-up trauma, a childlike but nonetheless canny ploy with which to win treats and privileges off both of us. I listen to Martha because she is smarter than me and more attuned to the nuances of our child. Also, with her background in game programming, she is always likely to see chains of cause and effect. But just this once I have a feeling she’s wrong. Jamie’s conviction runs deeper than the circumstances of our breakup; it seems to come from the very depths of him, stirring something bleak in his young soul, putting him in the way of words and ideas completely out of scale with his age.
Another example: one day he stepped into the kitchen draped in one of my old T-shirts and wearing a baseball cap back to front. His hands barely poked beyond the cuffs of the short sleeves and the baseball cap threatened to fall down over his eyes. It was a flashback to my grunge past, to a time at the beginning of the caring decade when, paradoxically, serial killers were valorised by a section of my generation as great countercultural heroes, heroic transgressors. The image leaped out in red ink, Michael Rooker in the title role, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
“The box.”
“I thought I told you.”
“Yeah, yeah—look at this.” He held up a newspaper and tapped a headline in the middle of the page. Playgrounds designed by SAS, it read.
“Tell me what it says. Sit into the table, this spaghetti is done.”
He pulled out a chair and sat in, spreading the paper out in front of him. “It says that children have become bored with swings and slides, too girly they think, no thrills in them, no danger. They were lying deserted all over Britain. Then someone had the idea of bringing in SAS instructors to design these assault courses and now kids can’t get enough of them.”
I laid the plate on the table and handed him the fork and spoon. “Eat up. Those playgrounds will be closed down in a year. Injuries and litigations, they’ll be lucky to stay open a year.”
Jamie shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. One broken elbow and a concussion—that’s the injury list for a year in one of those playgrounds.” He folded up the newspaper, took off his cap, and fell to eating. “What do you make of that, what does it mean?”
“Not with your mouth full.” I handed him a napkin and he drew it across his mouth, streaking an orange blur halfway to his ears. “What would I know, kids are daft. Who knows what goes on in their heads?”
“That’s true, look at me.”
“Look at you indeed. Do you want to stay the night?”
“Yes.”
“Finish your spaghetti and then call your mam.”
“I already have.”
A couple of weeks after we split up Martha told me that Jamie had begun wetting the bed. Martha took him aside and asked him about it. If fear and disappointment come only in man-size dimensions so too does embarrassment. He bolted from the kitchen and slammed the door on his bedroom. Martha bought a rubber sheet and told me not to mention it to him. A week later he brought the subject up himself.
“I need something,” he said. “I’ll come straight out with it.”
“Yes.”
“No beating around the bush or anything.”
“I’m all ears.”
“A request.”
“Which is?”
“You won’t like it.”
“Jamie!”
“A beating.”
“A what?”
“A beating.”
He was framed in the doorway, a little study in misery. Once more he was the child wrestling with outsize miseries which threatened to engulf him.
“What have you done Jamie? Whatever it is it can’t be that bad.”
“It’s not what I’ve done, it’s what I’m going to do.”
“And what exactly are you going to do that warrants a beating.”
He pulled the chair out from the table and sat in. This is his way of late whenever he has something big to get off his chest. It seems to give him confidence, putting him in a position of strength insofar as a child is ever in such a position. But just then he looked hesitant, teetering on the threshold of a great disclosure but unsure of how to begin.
“What is it you are going to do?” I persisted.
“I come from a broken home,” he began.
“No Jamie, you come from a home divided between two houses, you spend an equal time with each of us. Whoever you want.”
He shook his head, the flaw in the argument too obvious even to him. It was at times like this I had the feeling Jamie was streaking ahead of me, gaining on truths and ideas which by right I should have been handing down to him.