<Message Deleted>
In which nothing of consequence is communicated.
Forty-seven seconds. His finger wouldn’t stop shaking beneath his shirt. Shivers, chattering teeth, chest contracting. Allen needed to zip that coat up, get some warmth. The zipper was fucked. Properly fucked. He yanked again, and the metal teeth bit into the fleece lining. His fingers—why were they so slippery? On the laptop, the cursor blinked after ‘Plan B.’ Gwen’s Instagram was open in another tab, a photo of her at some beach, shoulders freckled, looking away from the camera.
Forty-seven seconds. That’s what the notification said. Forty-seven seconds of his father’s nurse or his father’s voice or his father’s death rattle or—Allen gave up on the coat zipper. He went to the front door, grabbed a scarf hanging limply from a hook, and wrapped it around his neck and head. Then he sat at the kitchen table and placed the phone in front of him, black rectangle, screen dark. Next to him, the tap kept dripping. One drop every 47 seconds—coincidence? (He’d timed it with a stopwatch. Fucking plick sound. 77 times every hour, 1,838 times every day, 672 thousand times a year.) Allen picked up the phone at length. Three messages. No, wait—three? Three. Definitely three…
First message—old as fuck, from his boss... ‘Allen, where are you? It’s 10.30 already, and you’re not at the office, nor connected anywhere. This is unacceptable. I’m warning you that if—’ DELETE.
Message 2: ‘Hey, mon vieux, it’s Sébastien. Ça va ma pépouse? Call me back and we’ll catch up over beer, okay? Also there’s this girl at the dojo asking about you, the one with the—’ DELETE.
The third message was from Waterstones. His neck went hot. ‘Hello, it’s the bookshop. We’ve got the book you ordered. Please feel free to come pick it up.’ SAVE!
Plan B. Need to log back in, have a mission to complete. Failed this level with Gwen, no matter, defeat the Boss, that old harpy Mrs Crunchet... Wait. He scrolled down. More messages—spam, unknown numbers, international prefixes he didn’t recognise, like +62 or somesuch. Then, at the bottom, the notification still showed. The one he hadn’t played yet: Voicemail - St. Catherine’s Care Home (0:47) Allen’s finger hovered over it. The kitchen tap dripped. Once. Twice. Three times. What went wrong now? Had Dad suffered some attack? Was he dead? Was this right? These damn people at the nursing home, they just used to leave him that sort of message: Could you please call us back at your earliest convenience? It’s about your father. Earliest convenience! What does that fucking mean? Couldn’t they at least say what this was about? Yes, I know it was about Dad, of course, but be a bit more specific, maybe? It’s about your father. You just don’t know who my father really is, who he was at least. I know they want me to talk with him; his world has shrunken to a ridiculously small set of things and topics. He calls me because he wants to talk about his own problems. Always his problems. Never—When I talk to him, I get a physical reaction: my chest hurts, my whole body shivers to the point I need to put on a coat... Fuck it. Press play. Get it over with.
‘Mr Quork, this is Mary from St. Catherine’s—’
Mary—the fuck is she now? Stop. Rewind. Practice the response first. ‘OK, so I’ll—Hello Mary, this is Allan Qu—’ Wait, what was that? Press play again.
‘Good morning, Mr Quick, this is Mary from St Catherine’s. It’s about your father. You see, I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but we would need you to drop by at your earliest—”
Pause. ‘Yes, about my father. Is he—? I mean, what’s his condition?’ Fuck. Can’t ask if he’s dead. That’s wrong. Play.
‘—convenience, so ideally like today, this morning. We really need you to come, urgently.’
OK, so... ‘Hello, this is Allan Quark. Thank you for your message. I’m sorry I couldn’t pick up the phone earlier, I’ve had a busy morning, see. About that, I was wondering if we could talk this through over Zoom instead, maybe?’ Oh crap, wait, got to listen to that message again.
The phone screen tilted. For a second, Allen felt like he was looking down from a great height, the kitchen floor suddenly far below. And then that sensation—not quite nausea, not quite falling—his body remembering, the specific tilt of roof tiles under small feet— You gotta be careful when you play ball.
You gotta be careful when you play ball. You could lose it. Or lose an eye. Or slip and fall. But Dad, he didn’t care about his son breaking his neck. What really mattered, what was of the utmost importance, was that precious rubber ball, the cat used to nibble on. Poor cat, what would he do without his rubber ball!
I didn’t lose the ball, not really. I got the ball stuck on the roof of the house. But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part was Dad making me go up on the roof and fetch that rubber ball, because now it’s stuck, so get up there quick and get it, take the ladder, move it! Up, up, up, come on! The ladder shaking, Dad holding it with one hand, cigarette in the other, ash falling like snow. I can’t see the ball, Dad!—What? Are you trying to be funny? Are you trying to make fun of me? Get that ball already! Move! he kept shouting. Move now! More to the left. Can’t you see it? And I couldn’t see the ball from where I stood. Of course, if I could fly, I’d probably have seen that ball. But I couldn’t fly. Pity, really… Move, come on! he shouted, pissed off with his son. Get on that roof, quick! We haven’t got all day. And I get up there, cold wind blowing, stepping on these wet tiles, trying not to skid. He was infuriated, foaming at the corners of his lips, sweat beading on his bald head, cheeks flushed with anger. It was as if his very moustache was crackling with the sheer power of his nostrils, like an inbuilt heating machine making his facial hair crackle and fry up. I took a couple of steps to the left, cautiously. But couldn’t just go and get the ball, not yet. And I was standing on those red tiles, my feet twisted, legs trembling, afraid some tile would break under my weight, slide down, and I’d have fallen, crushed my head on the patio floor, skull open—that’s a rubber ball for you, Dad. All for a fucking rubber ball. Can’t you see the ball? he yelled. Are you pulling my leg? I still couldn’t fly and still hadn’t seen this phantom ball. Dad kept shouting. Who even knows what kicks in the butt and slaps on the face were intended and about to come? Dad had turned into a proper steaming ball of stupidity anyway! Meanwhile, I look around the roof. No, no, I couldn’t find that precious rubber ball. Open your eyes, damnit! His eyes were now spinning like marbles inside a flipper. And his rage wasn’t so much about me not seeing the ball, but about me pretending I couldn’t see it. That was the worst, because then he wouldn’t take it any other way—I wasn’t making an effort.
‘It’s Mary again, so about your father, I just wanted to say, I really—’
Allan wrapped himself in his scarf, covering his nose, wondering, Am I running a fever? Need to take my temperature.
‘It’s Mary, your father is furious with you now. He says you’re just a little piece of shit, and quite frankly, I couldn’t agree more. That spoiled little shit, he says. He’s a lazy boy, a loafer. He says, My son is against me, he’s trying to steal my money, my well-earned money, my dearest friend. But wait—I would never give my son the key to my bank account. He’s a slacker, an indolent sloth, I tell you. He wants to give my blood-won stuff out to his filthy girlfriend, that Gwen woman. He should be disinherited! Oh and another thing, mister Quirk—just know that I’m fed up with him too, your father. Fed up with bringing him these disgusting meals, this place. We’re all sick of both of you, frankly.
What the hell is she talking about? Allan took the phone from his ear and stared at the screen. The message was there. Unplayed. He’d never pressed play at all. Allen gazed at his dark reflection on the screen…
He never had a high opinion of me, of my school results or my job. And his attitude, always negative and anxious—except when he’d had something to drink. I hate seeing him get old, horribly old, losing his mind, his abilities, his bodily shape, seeing his wrinkled skin when he goes to bed, wrecked, withered, a living mummy, a zombie, incapable of thinking and speaking. Sometimes I wish he were dead! (I know I’ll regret thinking this when he’s actually dead, but that’s how I feel.) I’m imagining him dead already, and I’m even looking forward to it. And at the same time, that thought causes intense guilt and shame. How could I want my Dad to be dead? Am I a terrible person? And now he’s gonna be all moany about the fact that I haven’t paid him a visit for a while. Wants to spend Christmas with me. December, and he keeps calling, he keeps asking. He’s such a smooth talker, he’s always been a charlatan, a bullshitter like, I’m such a good father, I care about my son, I’ve always been there for you. But the truth is quite different. I would love to keep my cool, be fine, be indifferent. But no: he’s almost always on my mind. Can’t help it. And how I’m incapable of feeling pity towards him anymore, merely annoyance. This wretched attachment that makes me care and worry. And I just hate it. And I hate him for it… His finger pressed play. The tap dripped. His father’s voice.
Hello, Hello? Allen? Dr Sumit, this is an answering machine. I’m sure he’s not answering on purpose. You’ll see, he’s doing this on purpose, his own father. That spoiled little shit, this is outrageous!… [noises of phone being passed around, dropped, people talking, gabble, then beeeeeeep]
The tap dripped again. The phone screen showed: <Message deleted>
The screen switched off. In the dark mirror of his phone, his own face, wrapped in wool, like a frightened babushka.
Doorbell! Allen’s head snapped up.