Chapter 7
TAYLOR
I don’t know exactly what it was that alerted me to his presence.
A noise, probably. Or the prickly sensation of being watched.
Whatever it was, when I became aware of it I opened my eyes and saw the dark, unmistakable outline of someone looming over me.
I couldn’t make out features, but I could feel the strength of the glare.
‘Fuck off,’ I shouted. ‘I know karate!’
‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘It’s me, Ray.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’
‘It’s about time you woke up. Day’s half gone already.’
I rolled my head, squinted. There was a little bit of light seeping through from around the curtains, but not enough to indicate the sun was properly up yet. ‘What time is it?’
‘Late.’
‘That doesn’t answer my question.’
He grumbled, waved a hand irritably. ‘Noduiaguifsush.’
‘Sorry?’
He glared, enunciating this time. ‘Not… quite… six.’
‘Are you in pain?’
‘No.’
‘Is the house on fire?’
‘No.’
‘Are either of us in danger of imminent death?’
‘You mean more than usual?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
I rolled over, turning my back on him. ‘Then go away. It’s too early.’
I waited a few minutes. There was a distinct lack of sound behind me.
‘You haven’t moved, have you,’ I mumbled into my pillow.
‘I’ve been up for an hour,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘So get yourself something to eat.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know, toast.’
‘I don’t want toast.’
‘Cereal then.’
‘I don’t want cereal.’
I stifled a scream. ‘Then what do you want?’
‘Porridge.’
‘You really want porridge in this heat?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fine. Then have porridge.’
‘I will. When you get up and make it for me.’
‘Make it yourself.’
‘I can’t. My hip hurts if I stand on it for too long.’
‘You’re standing on it right now.’
‘And it’s hurting.’
‘I can’t believe you expect me to make porridge for you.’
‘Your mother does.’
‘My mother is more of a sucker than I am.’
‘She’s not a sucker. She’s generous, kind and caring. Whereas you…’
The light in the room had got a bit brighter. I could see him studying me and felt the childish urge to pull a face. ‘Why are you still in my room?’
‘Which one are you again?’
‘You know which one I am.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I’m Taylor.’
‘And where do you fit in?’
‘You know where I fit in, Ray. Stop trying to make me think you’re senile. I know you’re not.’
‘I’m an old man.’
‘Ancient,’ I agreed.
‘I don’t know how to work the oven.’
‘Because it’s complicated or because you’ve never bothered to learn?’
He shrugged. ‘A little bit of both.’
‘Fine.’ I tried not to feel too resentful, aware that as far as he was concerned, I’d had a full night’s sleep. ‘I’ll get up soon and make you porridge. Will that make you happy?’
‘I’ll be happy when you actually get up. You need to take me into town after breakfast too.’
‘Why?’
‘I have a doctor’s appointment. And I want to go to the grocery store.’
I sighed. ‘Fine.’
‘When are you going to get up?’
‘Soon. Now get out of my room.’
He shuffled off, banging his walker frame against the wall, then paused by the door. ‘Do you really?’
‘Do I really what?’
‘Know karate.’
‘Wake me up like that again and you’ll find out.’
He left, mumbles trailing behind him as he slowly shuffled his way down the hallway.
I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling, unable to shake the feeling that my life had taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Even though I knew this was only temporary, and that in a few weeks’ time I’d be back in my own sleek little house, for now, under this roof, in this bedroom, I felt…
wrong. I didn’t belong here. Not any more.
My room was exactly as I’d left it. Actually, that wasn’t true.
I left it in the state in which I lived in it.
Messy and cluttered and disorganized. My mother worked her magic and turned it into the room she had always dreamed of it being.
It still had my furniture and some of my belongings, but it was clean and tidy and like it was one of those staged photos you see when a real estate company is trying to sell a house.
The walls and roof were painted white, just like through the rest of the house, and the carpet was a kind of pale peach color that I’d always hated.
A large mirror hung on one wall, with a small, standing wardrobe in the space behind the door.
There was a black wing-back chair in the opposite corner where I used to dump all my dirty clothes, and the bed took up pretty much the rest of the room.
Except for my favorite part. A long window, almost the width of the room, looked out over the ocean, and in front of that, from wall to wall, was an inbuilt desk.
It had a painted white top, with beautiful brown wooden drawers below on each side, with a space for a chair so someone could sit in the middle.
My mother had added her own touches, a basket of dried hydrangea flowers in one corner, some seashells she’d no doubt collected from the shore.
Bleached white from sitting in the sun. There was a little wooden house, for no apparent reason, and one of the kitschy lobster ornaments she found so endearing and that I hated.
I used to spend hours at that desk, staring out at the ocean for inspiration for my art.
It all began in here. My sketches that, at first, were very much for my eyes only.
Rough and clumsily drawn, but every single one helped me hone my skills.
Sketching had broadened into painting, and now my large, ocean-inspired paintings were slowly becoming more sought after.
My Instagram page even had over two hundred thousand followers.
Unfortunately, art sales alone weren’t enough to pay the bills, so to help with that, I’d become a tattoo artist as well.
Now I was booked out months in advance. I specialized in colorful ocean themes. Waves, sunsets, sea creatures.
‘You took your time,’ Ray grumbled when I emerged into the kitchen twenty minutes later.
I paused, my hand on the fridge door, and stared at him.
He was just as cantankerous as I remembered.
Maybe even worse. He was an ex-fisherman, although according to him there was no such thing.
Once a fisherman, always a fisherman. It didn’t matter if he hadn’t stepped foot on the deck of a boat in over a decade, he said.
Salt water ran through his veins and he’d be longing for the thrill of the hunt, the smell of the nets and the feel of the bucking ocean beneath him until the day we planted him in the ground.
As far as I was concerned, my mother was a veritable saint for taking him in when it became obvious he couldn’t live on his own any more.
If it’d been left up to me, he’d be living in the Acadia Retirement Village.
But it wasn’t, and now here I was, tasked with babysitting a man whose dislike for me was matched only by my dislike for him.
‘If you’re going to complain,’ I informed him, ‘I’ll go and take a shower first. A nice long, leisurely shower.
My legs need a shave. So do my armpits.’
That shut him up.
I made porridge, something I hadn’t done since high school camp, with Ray supervising and offering suggestions.
‘You need to stir it more,’ he said. ‘Otherwise it’ll clump.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘I don’t like clumpy porridge.’
‘It’s not clumpy.’
‘How do you know it’s not when you’re not stirring it?’
‘I just do.’
He added a large knob of butter and four heaped teaspoons of sugar to his bowl of porridge and ate it with the gusto of someone who seemed to think it might be his last breakfast here on earth.
Considering he also added three teaspoons of sugar to his cup of tea, he might not have been too far wrong.
‘You know sugar is bad for you, right?’ I said, leaning against the bench with my fingers wrapped around a lifesaving mug of coffee.
‘Meh,’ he mumbled. ‘Lots of things are bad for you.’
‘Yes, but sugar is right up near the top of the list.’
‘The scientists used to say that about eggs, and animal fats. Now they tell you they’re healthy for you again. They can’t make up their minds.’
‘I don’t think they’re going to change their minds about sugar.’
‘Not in my lifetime, maybe. But eventually. Anyway, I don’t care. I like it.’
I watched him push his empty bowl across the bench top in my general direction. ‘Let me guess, you don’t know how to work the dishwasher.’
‘Technology and me,’ he said. ‘We don’t mix.’
‘You captained a lobster boat, Ray.’
‘That’s different.’
‘Different how?’
‘You start the boat, you turn the wheel to steer it. Easy. You learn how to drive a boat by feel. By touch. By instinct. Those contraptions have too many settings.’ He pointed a wobbly finger at the dishwasher, frowning as if it might suddenly come to life and launch at him.
‘It’s hardly rocket science. You stack the dishes inside and put the powder in this little space here.’ I rinsed the bowl, stacked it on the bottom shelf and demonstrated. ‘Then you push a button and ta-da. It cleans the dishes for you.’
He refused to watch, scratching at an age spot on the back of his hand instead. ‘I need you to get my newspaper.’
‘From where?’
‘Where do you think? The moon?’ His watery, bloodshot eyes glared up at me through the gray wiry strands of his bushy eyebrows. They were impressive, but also alarming, and hadn’t always been like that. Did eyebrows just start growing all out of control like that when you hit a certain age?
I drank my coffee and waited.
‘It’ll be in the letterbox,’ he said, caving. ‘Obviously.’
‘Do you always use sarcasm to get what you want instead of manners?’
He grunted. ‘Normally I’d get it myself, but…’ He trailed off.
‘But you’re supposed to be resting. I know.’
‘And you’re supposed to be helping.’
‘I just made you breakfast, didn’t I?’
‘It wasn’t as good as your mother’s.’
‘You should prepare yourself for the fact that nothing I make or do will be.’ I rinsed my mug and put it upside down on the top of the dishwasher, then closed the door and turned it on. ‘Fine. I’ll get your paper.’
‘Don’t rip it when you pull it out of the slot. The stupid boy jams it in too hard. No one takes any pride in their work any more.’
‘He’s probably twelve years old and paid a dollar an hour. If I was him, I’d throw it in a puddle.’
‘I remember when you and your brother put my cigarettes in a bucket of water once,’ he said darkly. ‘You still owe me five dollars.’
‘Ah, so you do remember who I am.’
He shrugged. ‘Eh. It comes and goes.’