Chapter 3
Three
“On, keep going on, on, on, keep going on.”
—“The Road to Paradise,” The Wooden Horse, Act One
Photos of the new cast alongside the cast remaining in their roles were posted across all the social media channels along
with a press release sent to various outlets and theatre bloggers. Jonah told himself not to look, to keep his eyes off the
comments and reposts, but the temptation to self-sabotage overwhelmed him. He couldn’t resist the torment. The first thing
to truly irk him was Dexter’s headshot; he looked at least five years younger than Jonah, and for a man who just turned thirty
the year before and was absolutely having a sort of inner quarter-life crisis, a youthful, blemish-free face was the last
thing he wanted to see. He stared at Dexter’s features for a while, a frown on his face that would no doubt give him wrinkles,
so fuck Dexter Ellis for ruining his skin.
He eventually tore his eyes away from Dexter’s face and allowed himself to dive into the comment section. A dangerous mission,
one he rarely undertook, but he needed to see the scathing words condemning him even further now that Dexter was going to
claim his throne. However, the condemnations never came. While some of the comments held sad goodbyes for some of the old
cast, most expressed excitement at the revelation of the fresh faces and surprise at who they would be playing.
Dexter Ellis had been called back to the city of Troy not as an alternate for Achilles, but as Hector, just as Bastien said.
The Trojan prince. Son of Priam and Hecuba.
Killed by Achilles. Which really was rather fabulous, as Jonah couldn’t wait to stab him every night, no matter how violent it sounded.
So, despite looking for words of hate within the hundreds of replies to the posts, Jonah couldn’t find any. There were a few
remarks about how the casting announcement overshadowed the Olivier wins, and how the timing seemed a little off, which he
agreed with, but overall, the negativity he expected to see simply didn’t materialize. Which meant the emotional breakdown
simmering at the edge of Jonah’s aura couldn’t be blamed on Dexter Ellis. No. The inevitable breakdown came from Edward’s
nail clippers neatly tucked away in the cupboard in the bathroom.
As a child, Jonah never imagined cradling clippers in his palm while wailing on his bathroom floor; it simply wasn’t a future
he hoped for, and certainly not one he ever thought might play out. He also didn’t imagine eating a block of cheese for breakfast.
Reality, however, proved both scenarios could be real and also happen on the same Godforsaken day. It only took a week for
the breakdown to happen, Jonah’s mind consumed with performances Tuesday to Saturday, not giving him time to actually sit
and contemplate the fact he was miserably single. Again. But as the sun rose on Sunday, the nail clippers came out to play
and the cheese offered a comforting hug from the confines of the fridge. He imagined Omari standing before him, his six-foot-five
frame taking up most of the kitchen, brow creased with concern. Mucus. Cheese gives you mucus, Jonah. Think of the mucus, for God’s sake.
He contemplated calling Edward, begging him to dump the other guy and take him back.
He missed having to explain over and over to him the difference between a swing and an understudy, because no, Edward, a swing learns multiple roles, an understudy covers principal roles, but he never remembered.
He missed Edward’s voice and the way he always burned toast in the mornings without fail.
He missed his weird-smelling banana shampoo and the way he folded his underwear when they undressed for bed.
And he missed the way he kissed him, his lips pressed against his with an intense heat reminiscent of scorching summer days spent back home in Cornwall.
Why couldn’t he stop thinking about him and his stupidly handsome face?
Tears fell down Jonah’s cheeks in steady streams as he pushed the last piece of cheese into his mouth, ignoring how sick he felt and the apparition of Omari chiming on about stupid mucus, and let out a muffled cry as he tried to remember the last night they spent together.
He hadn’t considered what “meeting someone else” really meant until that moment. Questions buzzed through his brain, too many
to consider all at once, but the main one burning at the forefront of his mind was: Did Edward cheat on him? Jonah looked
at the empty cheese packaging on the kitchen countertop, then over at Edward’s key on the table. The country was going through
a cost-of-living crisis, and he just consumed an entire block of cheese over a man who couldn’t even be faithful to him. He
wiped his sleeve across his eyes, then tapped his fingers over his cheeks to lure himself back to reality. Fuck.
His phone vibrated from within his pocket, and he pulled it out to see his mum’s face sparkling across the screen. A quick
glance at the clock, ten-thirty, told him it wasn’t her usual calling time, and his finger hovered over the answer button
until the ringing stopped. She would hear the tears in his voice. She’d be able to sense his heartbreak even from hundreds
of miles away. When he first moved to London, when the salty spray of the sea still clung to his clothes and grains of sand
could be found nestled in the creases of his palms, he called home every week. His parents hung onto his stories of London
as if he had ventured out of a black-and-white photo and returned with a far-fetched adventure drenched in Technicolor.
The first time they visited, when he performed as Anthony in an off–West End production of Sweeney Todd, they looked at the small theatre in awe.
They waited for him at the stage door, clutching their programs with a buzz of excitement, and insisted he sign them despite the deep-red flush on his cheeks and cooing from his castmates.
His parents, fiercely loyal and immensely proud, were on the other end of the phone when his first boyfriend in London, Rhys, dumped him by text right as he was about to go onstage.
His mum helped him nurse the heartache from her settee at home and made him believe she sat beside him in his dressing room, her voice soothing, like the sea.
They welcomed him home during his holidays and they walked along the shoreline as the wind kissed their cheeks, his mum’s arm linked with his as his dad skimmed stones across the waves and told folktales he remembered from his childhood.
His phone lit up again and his mother’s face smiled at him from the screen, her curly hair framing her round face perfectly.
She’d lost weight since he took the photo of her. The last time he saw her he couldn’t help but notice how drawn her face
appeared, cheekbones prominent, wrinkles more severe. Something stirred in the pit of his stomach as a strange sense of unease
bloomed in his chest. He answered the call and pressed the phone to his ear, immediately hearing stuttered breaths gasping
for air.
“Mum?”
“Jonah, darling,” she whispered, voice so far away, frail, tiny. “I hope I’m not bothering you.”
The crumpled cheese packaging glanced up at him from the countertop. “No, not at all. What’s up?”
“You’ve been crying,” she said, her breath catching in her chest. “Darling, what’s wrong?”
“It’s just hay fever.” He wiped his sleeve over his eyes again. “Are you okay? You . . . you sound out of breath.”
She didn’t answer right away, and Jonah could almost hear the cogs turning in her head as she thought of the best way to reply.
“It’s been a little bit of a shoddy morning, love.”
“Why?” He knew the answer.
“He had another terrible night last night.”
“Did you call the nurse?”
“I didn’t want to bother her.”
Jonah took a deep breath. “Mum, it’s why they’re there, if you need help you have to call them. What happened?”
“He fell out of bed. I kept telling him not to get up, but you know he won’t listen. He isn’t strong enough to walk these
days, but up he gets and then he falls. He doesn’t let me help him, he just gets angry. He scares me a little.”
Silence hung between them. The conversation one they repeated monthly, the words the same, the advice the same, the outcome always the same.
Sometimes Jonah wanted to scream at her, her reluctance to do anything to help herself a constant source of anxiety.
Yet, he also knew he viewed the situation from a distance, an impartial spectator with advice but no physical help.
In reality, he knew full well that if he were back home in St. Ives nothing would change.
She would still refuse help and would only push him away if he so much as offered to make her a cup of tea.
But he wanted to help, he needed to help; his mother’s world crumbled more by the second.
The day Jonah’s father looked at him down on the beach with zero recognition behind his eyes would live on in his memory forever.
Jonah reached for him and the taller man stepped back, bewildered, frightened. He’d never seen his father appear vulnerable
before, and he couldn’t help but think he shouldn’t have seen him in such a way; he always saw his dad as invincible, a steady
presence who never faltered. Yet there he stood, his eyes searching Jonah for answers he simply couldn’t find. His father
turned from him and ran, feet pounding the stones along the edge of the beach, and he shouted at strangers dotted along the
coastline who sat on beach towels and dined on crab sandwiches. He begged them for help, to get him away from the strange
man chasing after him, the strange man he simply couldn’t believe was his son. The child he once cradled in his arms and sang
to sleep. Jonah remembered the awful sinking feeling he experienced in the moment, like treading quicksand, drowning in it,
suffocating.
“Where is he now?” Jonah asked.
“Well, the nurse came in for her usual shift at nine, and she helped him back into the bed. He’s asleep, I think, or looking
at that damn butterfly book again.”
“He hadn’t hurt himself?”
“He has bruises on his arms and an enormous mark on his right leg, but I’m not sure if he did that in the fall or before.
He was so angry, Jonah, screaming like a banshee.”
“Mum, if you need me to come home and help sort things for—”
“Actually,” she mumbled. “I think it’s time for him to go somewhere where they can look after him. You know my heart breaks at the idea of it, but I don’t know what else to do. And that isn’t me asking you to come home, you hear? You stay where you are, my little star.”
He couldn’t help but imagine his mum alone in the winding house on the edge of the cliff in St. Ives. The many staircases
and tall ceilings, far too high even for her elaborate extendable feather duster. Shadows loomed in the hallways there, even
on the brightest of days, and he swallowed down the fear they might consume her and he would return to find his childhood
home empty, with only a line of shoes at the doorway signifying the family who once lived there.
“I can take some time off to help you.”
“Jonah Penrose, don’t you dare.” He could hear his old mother in the tone she used, the fiery woman who once told their neighbor
to kick rocks when he complained about her many chickens roaming in the garden. “I will call once I’ve got everything set
up for him. Then next time you visit, you can go see him. Dad wouldn’t want you worrying over him, you know that.”
“It’s more you I’m worried about, Mum.”
He heard a tremble as she breathed. “Well, love, we can’t be having you worrying about little old me, can we?” There were
tears clouding her eyes, he could tell. Even from his home on Castle Road, he could see the tears gathering against the high
tide in Cornwall. If he were there, he would pull her into his arms and she could cry into his shoulder, something she only
did once before, back when his dad received his diagnosis, the day Alzheimer’s moved into their home without invitation. A
collection of heavy rain clouds found their way to their house and hung themselves in the sky just above the chimney to pour
misery into the foundations of the bricks. His dad, the man who hugged him so incredibly tightly and kissed his forehead the
day he told him he was gay and said he loved him more than anything in the world, would be lost, and all he could do was cling
onto the memories he left and hope small parts of him remained behind the darkening of his mind.
“I love you, Mum.”
“I love you, too, sausage.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m all right. I’ve got a couple of friends coming over tonight to keep me company once Dad’s in bed. Might pop open a bottle
of wine, it will be good to relax.”
“You’ll call me if you need me?”
“Of course, love.”
Dexter Ellis suddenly didn’t seem like such a looming threat. Edward leaving him for another man didn’t either. They said
their goodbyes, and Jonah placed the empty cheese packet into the bin then picked up the key he gave to Edward months ago,
the one Edward dropped off when he picked up his things, the key he no longer needed now that he didn’t want Jonah in his
life. Jonah turned it in his palm and let his fingers run along the cool metal ridges. Tears threatened to fall again, but
he blinked them back and stuffed the key into the designated kitchen junk drawer and silently vowed not to think about Edward
Wordsworth ever again.