My Friends

Chapter Forty-Seven

FORTY-SEVEN

It’s hard to tell a story, particularly when it doesn’t end happily for everyone. Ted dreams of the sound of a human head being struck with terrifying force, so loud that it must have been heard through the walls. In the dream all the hard men from the harbor stand in silence outside Joar’s house, with shock and shame in their eyes, and at the crossroads where Ted and his friends always promised “tomorrow” to each other, the sound of sirens echoes.

He wakes up with a slight jolt, sweaty and scared. He blinks against the light. Louisa is sitting on her bunk, wide-eyed as she gazes happily out through the train window, because now they’re close to the sea. She turns and notes that he’s awake, and asks at once:

“Are we there yet?”

“Soon.”

“How soon is soon?”

“Fairly soon.”

“You’d have been a really annoying dad,” she snorts.

“Thanks,” he smiles.

She hesitates before asking:

“Do you want to tell the end of the story now?”

He thinks for a long time before shaking his head.

“No. Not yet. But I can tell you a story about the time we stole a car, if you like?”

If she likes?

So as the train approaches the town that took his entire childhood, Ted tells her about the days when the artist painted the picture. How his friends sat beside him in Ted’s basement until they felt dizzy from the smells of the paint and turpentine and mineral spirits, or whatever all the jars and bottles contained. The artist tested different types of paint, different techniques, most of them in ways he had probably only guessed, because he had no teachers. One day he would go to a fancy art school and realize that he had already made up everything they taught there, only backward. His brain wasn’t normal, one day the world would be grateful for that.

Ted often went up and down the stairs in those days, fetching food from the kitchen, and one evening when he was warming up some lasagna for Ali he heard his big brother playing the piano. Then Ted fetched one of their dad’s beers for him, and realized that it was the very last one. When his big brother took it, and realized the same thing, he went and got two glasses. They drank a silent toast at the piano.

“Do you know what Dad’s favorite meal was?” Ted’s big brother asked when he smelled the lasagna.

“Lasagna?” Ted guessed.

“No, no, cold grilled cheese sandwiches. Like, grilled cheese sandwiches, but after they’ve been in the fridge overnight. That was the only thing Dad knew how to make when he met Mom. Cold grilled cheese sandwiches, and cheese puffs that have been in an open bag for three days and gone a little stale, and flat Coca-Cola… he loved that. I mean, can you believe what a waste it was that Mom got so good at cooking for that guy’s sake?”

Ted laughed.

“Tell me something else,” he asked.

His big brother grinned. He wasn’t even particularly drunk, but he still went on:

“When I was little, Dad and I used to hide behind the piano here and jump out and scare Mom.”

“Did she get angry?” Ted smiled.

“Are you kidding? She hated it when Dad scared her, so he did it all the time, the moron. One time he jumped out of the hall closet when she was holding a shoehorn, and she got so scared she smashed it into a mirror. She was furious, because now she was going to have seven years’ bad luck, she said, and Dad just went: ‘If I hadn’t ducked, you’d have knocked my TEETH out!’ and Mom went: ‘Well, that would only have been bad luck for YOU!’?”

When his big brother finished the story, Ted asked tentatively if he could hear it again. He giggled just as much the second time. That probably wasn’t a bad feeling at all, if you were a big brother who hadn’t felt like a good big brother for a very long time.

“Do you want to have kids?” Ted asked out of nowhere.

“Kids? Hell. I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t be a very good dad,” his big brother mumbled.

“Yes, you would,” Ted said confidently, and then his brother played a whole song because he had such a lump in his throat.

“You’d be a better dad, Ted. Dad always said you were the smart one in the family. No one knows where you get it from,” he said after a while.

“No, I’m an idiot,” Ted whispered.

“Don’t say that!” his brother retorted in a flash, suddenly upset in a way that was a big compliment.

“Sorry,” Ted said, without really knowing what he was apologizing for.

“When you were at preschool, one of the teachers said you were the smartest in the whole group. On the way home that day, Dad said you’d be the first person in the family to go to university,” his big brother said, unable to hide either his envy or his pride.

“I don’t even know how you go about going to university. That isn’t for people like us. It costs money! I’m not—” Ted protested, but he was interrupted by feet padding into the kitchen.

It was Ali, she had been sitting in the basement waiting for lasagna, and in the end hunger had got the better of caution. She looked horrified when she saw Ted’s big brother, and just snatched the lasagna out of the microwave and hurried back downstairs, like a mouse with a piece of cheese. Ted’s big brother looked at her, then at Ted, and said:

“I’m glad you’ve got good friends.”

“Me too,” Ted nodded.

“Are you going out with any of them?” his big brother asked, and Ted almost fell off the stool.

No one else would probably ever understand that this was the most loving and accepting thing his brother had ever said to Ted. That he didn’t just ask if Ted was going out with Ali, but if he was going out with any of them.

Ted shook his head. His brother played another song before asking:

“What do your friends think you should be when you get older?”

Ted rolled his beer glass carefully between his hands, making waves in the foam.

“Teacher,” he admitted.

His big brother nodded and said:

“If you go to university and become a teacher, I could imagine having kids. Because then my kids would have someone to look up to.”

Ted drank his beer and replied:

“You’re enough to look up to.”

That was the first time his big brother had ever been told that. That he was enough.

Life is long, but it moves at high speed, a single step here or there can be enough to ruin everything. A few months after that evening, Ted’s big brother would be on his way to a party with the Ox. He would never get there. Perhaps it was fate, perhaps coincidence, perhaps the big brother would just remember what his little brother had said, the bit about picking friends that are better than you. Perhaps knowing that you are enough for one person goes a long way. So, suddenly, he would ask the Ox to stop the car, get out and walk home again. The Ox would be furious, and would stand in the road yelling at him, but the big brother would never turn around. Later that night there would be trouble at the party, the Ox and a few of his other friends would assault another guy so badly that he almost died. They would all end up in prison. Not long after that, Ted’s big brother would meet a girl and fall in love. It’s a long life, but fast, one single step in the right direction can be enough.

Ted left his brother at the piano that evening after they had drunk the last of their dad’s beer, he went back down to the basement, stumbling over that one step that was just a bit higher than all the others. He didn’t lift his feet up when he walked either, that was something he had inherited. It made him proud.

His room was totally silent when he walked in. His heart sank straight down into his stomach then, because something must have happened, something must be terribly wrong. He stared at Ali and Joar, but they were staring at something else.

“What’s ha—” Ted gasped anxiously, but Joar interrupted him.

“He’s finished. He’s finished the painting.”

And there they were. Three teenagers on a pier by the sea, almost hidden in all the blue, so if the picture had been hanging on a white wall in an exclusive art auction, rich adults would have been able to walk right past without seeing them. But now they were alive forever: Joar, Ali, Ted.

“You have to sign the painting,” Ali whispered.

The artist hesitated. Then he painted small skulls and wrote a name that wasn’t his own in the bottom corner.

“What are you doing? You have to write your own name!” Ali insisted, but he shook his head shyly.

“If anyone sees the painting, I don’t want them to know who I am. I only want to be who I really am… with you.”

So right then, at the age of fourteen, he came up with his artist name: C. Jat . The initials of Christian, Joar, Ali, and Ted. They probably should have known then that he was much too fragile to become famous. But it was too late, the picture was far too beautiful not to carry him around the world.

“Why didn’t you paint yourself on there?” Ali asked.

“I did. I’m sort of like all this… everything around you,” the artist whispered.

“Damn alien,” Joar said, and then he said something altogether incredible: “I love you.”

“I love you and I believe in you,” the artist replied.

“I believe in you and I… I… the other stuff too,” Ali mumbled.

But Ted said nothing, because when he looked at that painting he couldn’t breathe. Twenty-five years later, he still can’t.

“It was Joar’s idea that we should steal a car,” he tells Louisa on the train now.

“What for?” she smiles expectantly.

“Because he was in a hurry to show us something before the summer came to an end,” Ted says, and his voice is both exultant and sad. Both happy and unhappy. Because it’s that sort of story, with that sort of ending.

So they stole the car. It wasn’t a great idea, it really wasn’t. Admittedly, it was Joar’s old man’s car that they stole, so it probably wasn’t exactly a real “theft,” because Joar had sat in that car thousands of times with his mom. In fact, the only thing missing on this particular occasion was her. Sure, Joar shouldn’t have been driving the car that day, because he was fifteen years old and had no driver’s license, but if we’re being strictly honest here, his mom didn’t have a driver’s license either, and she drove all the time.

The apartment was empty when Joar ran home, his mom had taken the bus to work and his old man had gotten a lift to the harbor with a workmate. It was almost his summer vacation now, so the old man was drunk every day, as if alcoholism was a sport and he was warming up for a big competition, and even he realized he couldn’t drive his car under those circumstances. Even so, Joar’s mom didn’t dare take the car, she was too scared of getting in an accident, not that she was worried about getting hurt, but she was worried about the car getting hurt. This close to her husband’s summer vacation, she couldn’t afford a single risk that would make him angry, the man could explode from the slightest cross-draft.

The car keys were always kept in a jar on the counter. Not that his old man ever put them there, but his mom always found where he’d left them and returned them to the jar, so that he wouldn’t be furious the following day when they weren’t there. Sometimes she had to look for hours, in his jackets and pants and under the bed, some nights she and Joar would walk around the lawn outside the house with flashlights. It was always his mom who found them, Joar never understood how, but she would just smile proudly and say: “Moms find everything, darling.”

So Joar took the keys and packed his best friends into the car and drove off without saying where they were going.

“Joar, I don’t think this is a good idea,” the artist felt obliged to point out from the back seat.

“Definitely not one of your best!” Ali agreed, looking anxiously at Joar, who could hardly reach the pedals as they reversed in the parking lot.

“You don’t even know what the idea is !” Joar said defensively.

“Does the idea involve you driving this car?” Ali asked.

“Yes, but—” Joar began.

“Then it’s a bad idea.”

Joar turned to Ted and the artist in the back seat as if they ought to be backing him up. Neither of them dared look him in the eye, but Ted plucked up the courage to mumble:

“I… think… maybe it’s better if we… don’t…”

“That’s what I’m saying! Maybe your worst idea ever, and you’ve had some really bad ideas!” Ali said.

She said this with a trace of fear in her voice, hearing that from her was like snow in August, wrong thing in the wrong place. It would be many years before Ted realized this wasn’t because she was scared for her own sake, or for Joar’s, she wasn’t worried about their future because she always thought what Joar did: that they didn’t have one. She was just worried because he was taking the artist and Ted with them.

“I’ve never had a bad fucking idea in my life,” Joar muttered, and in his defense he was saying this to Ali, the queen of bad ideas.

“YOU haven’t?” Ali howled.

“Name one!”

“That time you tried to have a barbecue indoors,” Ali replied instantly.

“And when we were at my neighbor’s birthday party when we were eight and you ate three helpings of spaghetti before you went on the trampoline,” the artist smiled from the back seat.

Joar looked annoyed, but maintained sulkily:

“Okay, maybe those weren’t exactly fucking perfect ideas.”

Then Ted dared to add:

“And do you remember that time I fell asleep in the cafeteria at school, and you tied the laces of my shoes together, and then you pinched my nose really hard to wake me up, but when you started to run away it turned out that you’d actually tied one of your shoes to one of mine!”

Then the artist laughed so hard that Joar turned around and roared:

“Quiet in the back! Or you’ll have to walk home!”

He would have been a good dad, Ted thought then. The artist stuck his tongue out. Joar reached back and tried to tickle him.

“Watch out!” Ali yelled.

“Watch out for what?” Joar shouted back.

“The road!”

“I’m supposed to be on the damn road!”

“But you have to LOOK at the road when you’re driving!”

“Make up your damn mind,” Joar sulked.

Ted looked at the cars passing them, cleared his throat nervously and asked:

“What do we do if we get stopped by the police?”

“We run,” Joar said, as if that were entirely obvious.

“From the police? They’ve got dogs,” Ali pointed out instructively.

There really aren’t letters big enough to convey the size of the letters Ted used at that point to exclaim: “DOGS???”

Joar rolled his eyes so hard that Ali had to grab the steering wheel to stop them from ending up in a ditch.

“Okay, okay, we don’t run. If the police turn up, we say you’ve got an inflamed appendix, Ted!” Joar said, pointing at a place on his stomach where his appendix definitely wasn’t.

“The appendix is… here,” Ted whispered, pointing to his own stomach, still upset about the imaginary dogs.

“I told you, you should be a teacher,” Ali smiled.

Then the car started to smell a little like someone had farted, and Ali said it definitely wasn’t her, which of course is something you say when it definitely was. They drove the rest of the way with the windows down and their heads sticking out of the windows like Labradors. Apart from Ted, who imagined he had his head sticking out of the window like, for instance, a small and entirely harmless cat.

“There!” Joar said suddenly, and stopped the car.

“What?” the others all wondered at the same time.

Joar pointed to a large white building.

“There!”

It was a museum. The friends didn’t get out of the car, but the artist moved to Ted’s side and looked out his window, so close to each other that Ted could hear his heartbeat. Joar’s voice became serious as he pointed and promised:

“Inside there is where your painting is going to hang when you win the competition. Everyone will admire it. Waiters will go round serving Champagne and those tiny sandwiches that rich people eat. And you’ll walk in and everyone will applaud.”

The artist whispered back:

“You’ll be there too, Joar.”

And Joar replied:

“Sure, sure, I’ll be there too.”

Ted falls silent on the train. He looks out the window and recognizes where they are. The outlines of the town, and of himself, are growing clearer and clearer. It is probably never easy for anyone to return to the place where they grew up, there’s no way to forget who you are there, no matter how hard you’ve tried to become someone else. But for Ted it’s impossible to come home now, he realizes, because home was the people.

He doesn’t tell Louisa that everyone inside the car that day knew deep down that Joar was lying when he promised that he would be in the museum when the artist won the competition. Joar was in a hurry to love, because he knew he wouldn’t have the chance much longer. July was over, the next day was August, and that was the start of his old man’s vacation. Ted doesn’t tell Louisa that on the day Joar stole the car, his friends had seen him shake his backpack from time to time, out of the corner of their eyes, to feel the weight of the knife at the bottom of it, checking that it was still there.

Instead Ted says:

“As we sat there looking at the museum, Ali said: ‘Okay. This wasn’t your worst idea.’ And then she held Joar’s hand, in that way people do when they belong to each other, as if it’s more natural to touch each other than not to. And Joar didn’t pull his hand away, he wasn’t embarrassed, and that was the first time I realized that they had kissed each other. And I remember sitting there in the back seat hoping that those two would get to grow old together.”

The train stops. Ted closes his eyes, fills his lungs, gets to his feet, and picks up his suitcase and the box containing the painting. Louisa follows him out onto the platform. They’ve arrived.