I remember a story my mother told me about my uncle, set back in the time when they were children, living in a suburb with a mother and a father of their own, like in the creased pages of the picture books on the back shelf of the classroom. ‘A suburb was like a village,’ she said, ‘but with spidering roads through it that took people in and out of the nearby city, like blood to a heart.’
Cities are pumps, in my head. They beat with vibrant life, but nobody can stop flowing around its complex chambers and ventricles. There must always be movement or there is death. I imagine they must all be as still and brittle as skeletons now – those great cities of the past.
My mother said Uncle Ted ran away to the city. She never told me why; she made it sound like a whim, but I wonder now what kind of pressure could have made him move inwards to that heart. She said he came back three months later, thinner and older. Time had moved in a different way for him in the city. It speeds and slows depending on where you are, and who you are with.
This morning, time has stopped.
Why is Uncle Ted in this house? Usually I would ask the questions that come to me: Are you living here? Where is Thomas going to live? I want to speak of the importance of Thomas, of the need to protect him, cherish him. And I also want to ask – why must my Bee wait outside, on the other side of the door, while his Beauty stands here in this room, behind him?
But I say nothing. Because this room, this table, the way the chairs are set and the look on Ted’s face, make it impossible to speak.
I’m wrong. Time has not stopped. It has reversed. My uncle is a man and I am a boy again, and everything about this room makes me feel it.
He says, ‘It was made clear to you to speak only of the rules. To make the rules plain for all.’
Uncle Ted flicks his fingers from his stick. Am I meant to speak? Is this time that is allotted to me? All the reasons I had in my head for what I did have vanished. I am a dandelion clock. One breath from Ted and I am scattered.
‘Dandelion,’ I say.
‘What?’
‘Thoughts fly if you breathe too hard. The rules are a shout, but the story is a sigh. This way they do not scatter. They keep their shape, and only bend in the breeze.’
‘Is that right?’ says Ted.
This is not what I wanted to say. I wanted to make it clear that I have very little power over the story. It must come out as it does. I have been unfaithful to my gift by suggesting that it is under my control. If it can be controlled by me, then I can be controlled by others. I know my uncle is too clever to miss this. I can see from the way he cocks his head that he has not.
‘You know this business of stories better than me,’ he says. ‘I never had much use for them. Perhaps you’re right. But I’m sure you realise how much relies on you in this difficult time.’
I nod. He places manacles on me, weighing me down with responsibilities he usurped, and all I do is nod. My cowardice shames me, and yet, even as I berate myself, I hear in my head the sound of his stick on flesh and I cringe away from that memory.
‘Let me tell you what’s happening, Nate,’ he says. ‘For your own good. A council has been formed. William, Eamon, Ben and I will steer our Group through this, keep violence under control and help make a new way to live. You brought the Beauty among us and I don’t blame you. Nobody blames you. But you must understand that there are those among us who want to tread them back down into the mushrooms they sprang from.
‘So we must find a way to control ourselves and the Beauty. And when you remake the past and take potshots at the future in your stories, you play with a delicate balance. You could tip us into chaos. Now, I know that isn’t your intention, and that is why we’ve had this talk privately. Next time you tell a story and I don’t like the meaning, you’ll be up in front of the Council and there will be punishment.’
‘So the Council agrees with you about this?’ I ask. Council. That’s a word that belongs in books of civic duty and from a world we wanted no part in. I can’t believe William would sit on a council, let alone use the word. This is a temporary peace at best, no matter what Ted might want.
He says, ‘They do.’
I say, ‘You are a judge now?’ He frowns at me, and the familiar expression frees my tongue. I am no slave of his. ‘You need a curly wig. You need a black flapping robe, like a crow. You are more than one man?’
‘We have to be more than men now, Nate, and you have only yourself to thank for that responsibility. Did you really think this way would be better? Fucking plants that bear the shape of the dead; this is what you bring us to. And then you ask us to be happy about it. Well, I’ll try to make it stick, for the sake of your mother. She was just like you. She didn’t understand about consequences. It was always my duty to keep her safe and now I’ll keep you safe too, whether you like it or not.’
I walk up to the long table; I feel it under my hands, so smooth, this new mark of power. I wish for the strength to take it up, to break it with a sudden snap as clean as the breaking of bone.
I say, ‘She didn’t understand because you were always there to do it for her, is that it? Did you bring her here because you saw the cities out there and found them lacking? And now you want to do the same for us all – protect us from what could be terrible and beautiful and all the things in between, the things that live on and live on. But maybe we want to live on with the Beauty. Maybe we don’t want your protection.’
Uncle Ted smiles at me. He is not in the least angry.
‘Nate,’ he says. ‘You’re not more than a man after all. You’re less than one. You always will be. It’s not about what people want. It’s about what they need to survive. For us all to survive. You’re all so weak that you’ll pine away if the Beauty leave, so I’ll find a way to make this sorry remains of life work. And in return you’ll do as you’re told and be grateful for it. You’ll start by telling a story of the past tonight and you won’t meddle with it: Tell the story of how the Group started. And you won’t mention this conversation, or the Beauty.’
‘I don’t–’
He walks around the table and puts an arm around my shoulder, holding tightly, steering me to the door. ‘Enough.’
I want to say more. I want to. I want to. But his words are strong. Want has nothing to do with it. If I am to be a man I must give up on want. I must be more.
It comes to me that maybe I don’t want to be a man.
On the other side of the door, Bee is waiting with Doctor Ben and his Bella. Ben wears an expression that makes me forget my thoughts.
‘How is he?’ says Uncle Ted.
‘He’s up and about,’ says Ben. ‘In the kitchen, of course. He said he had to make soup for lunch.’
‘You’re sure it’s a tumour?’ he asks Ben.
Ben nods.
Time, that slippery fish, has shot past my guard once more and my hands are empty, clutching at meaning. ‘Thomas?’ I ask.
‘It’s bad news,’ says Doctor Ben. Ted’s grip on my shoulder tightens. It is painful. ‘A fast-growing cancer of the bowel.’
I say, ‘No.’
‘He collapsed late last night, after your story. Thomas says there’s no pain. But it’s eating up his strength. Still, you can’t stop him cooking.’
I wrestle free of Uncle Ted’s grip; in his eyes I see surprise at my sudden strength. I say, ‘You didn’t tell me.’
Ted says, ‘You’ve just been told now.’
‘He’s my friend,’ I say. Doesn’t Ted even understand the word?
‘Go see him,’ says Ben. He stands aside and I walk past to Bee, who stands waiting for me without concern. I don’t hear it, but I know it’s following me down the hall to the kitchen where I find Thomas chopping an onion with a speed that amazes me. The noise of the knife is like a woodpecker, white flakes of onion flying up from the blade.