10.
Joel
We’re gathered in the fug of Dad’s steamed-up kitchen, preparing Sunday lunch. My niece Amber is thundering through the house in a dinosaur costume, which, due to its impressive tail, has reduced her spatial awareness to approximately zero.
“Well, it’s getting ridiculous, if you ask me,” Dad’s saying to Doug, like I’m nowhere to be seen.
“Nobody did ask you,” I point out.
Doug kicked off today’s Morgan family spat by asking if I’d managed to find a job yet. When I didn’t reply, he simply carried on talking to Dad about it, as if I’d got up and left the room.
“Unemployment’s at the root of all your problems, I’m sure.” Dad peers at me over the rim of his glasses, carrot and peeler in hand. “The sooner you go back, the better.”
Not another quicksand of a conversation about how I couldn’t carry on. About how bad I felt at the surgery that final morning. (They don’t know the extent of it: that I’d been drinking heavily again, was hungover and incompetent, sleep-deprived and sad.) The time to go had come.
It visits me like voltage sometimes, how much I miss it. Like when I’m walking my pack of dogs in the park. Or if I pass a cat, sprawled out and sun-drunk on a garden wall. If I smell disinfectant (synonymous, always, with long hours at the surgery). Or when I spend time with Kieran, laughing the way we used to.
“They’re not holding my job open, Dad. I left.”
He tuts. “What a waste of a degree.”
It’s not his words that slice me open so much as his disdain. Fortunately, a six-year-old stegosaurus is approaching at speed. “Uncle—Joel—you’re—it!” Amber squeals, ramming the spikes of her spine against my shins.
I beam at her, delighted. “It’s as if you knew.”
“Bad luck,” jeers Doug, from over by the sink, slow-witted as a snail.
“Back in a minute. Just got to deal with a dinosaur.” I wipe my hands on a tea towel, hurtle into the fray with my best Mesozoic-era roar.
•••
Later, Tamsin comes and leans against the fridge while I’m washing up.
Her husband Neil’s on drying. He doesn’t really do chitchat, but he’s amenable and thoughtful in a way that makes me happy he married my sister.
“Heard Dad giving you a hard time earlier,” she says, nibbling a fingernail.
“Nothing new there.”
“He doesn’t mean it, you know.”
Three years my junior, my sister’s almost a whole foot shorter than me. Like Doug, she’s red-haired, though she has a vast glossy shock of it that strangers frequently approach her to rave about. (I’d wager this doesn’t happen too often to Doug and his buzz cut.)
She seems tired today, distracted. More like me than herself.
“Thanks for being nice,” I say, “but he absolutely does.”
“He just worries.” (Subtext:We all do.)
“Points for the dinosaur costume, by the way.”
Tamsin rolls her eyes but smiles. “She wore it for a party last week and now it’s her new favorite thing. Still, it livened up our trip to the shops yesterday. We like to be a bit eccentric in this family, don’t we?”
Well, yes, we do.“True.”
“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask. What was with theTo Letsign outside your place a few weeks back? You’re not moving, are you?”
Steve and Hayley left last night, and I couldn’t think of a good way to apologize for having been such a lousy friend and neighbor. So I lay low for the evening. Failed to answer the final knock on my door.
