Shining On Page 4

  Mum said she really wanted to stay, but they had to split up, so she gave him the choice and he chose to stay on at the family home. She said it made more sense because he was the one who was going to be spending more time at home, so he was better able to look after us. Gill said he should have stayed away while Mum was moving her stuff out, but instead of doing that he went into the back garden straight after breakfast. He spent the whole day there, digging this trench. Mum was popping in and out with boxes.

  You know what? She made me and Gill help. Well, she tried, anyway. Gill just said no and went into town. I did a couple of boxes, and then I went into my room and sat by the window watching Dad dig his trench. He just worked and worked. Gradually he went deeper into the ground.

  About lunchtime I opened the window and shouted out at the top of my voice so everyone could hear, “Why don't you do something? Why don't you stop her?” I saw him lift his head up and stare at me, but then he just went back on with his spade. By late afternoon you could just see his head poking out of the top, bobbing up and down as he dug.

  Mum went about teatime. She said she'd see us tomorrow at her new place for tea.

  “It's just up the road, we can see each other whenever we want,” she said. Then she drove off to Nigel. Later, Gill came home and we went out to the garden to see Dad. He stood at the bottom of this trench. It was amazing; it was so deep. I hung around by the shed while she put her hand out to him.

  “Coming in, Dad?” she said.

  “Has she gone?”

  “She's gone.”

  He ignored her hand and pulled himself up a ladder he had down at one end of the trench. He was all streaked with mud. He looked hopeless. Pathetic. I'd have liked to push him back in the bloody trench and fill the earth in on top of him, he was so useless. Me and Gill stood there looking at him.

  “Right. Coped with that pretty well, then, didn't I?” Gill snorted and suddenly all three of us started laughing. He coped! At the bottom of a trench, I mean. Then he put his arms around our backs and we sort of led him back into the house. He looked shattered. Me and Gill made him some tea and then we all watched telly for a while be-fore we went to bed.

  Anne Fine

  How did I tell them? How does anybody tell them? It was a mixture of chance, and being up to here with the sheer awfulness of them not having a clue. (I'm not kidding. I don't think it had even crossed their minds.) I was a wreck from walking through our back door every day after school, practically expecting to see their pale, shocked faces raised to mine. Sooner or later, one of life's meddlers was going to take a swing at them with the old wet sock of truth, and come out with a helpful little “I really thought it was time someone told you.” After all, most of my friends knew. And after Mr. Heffer had soft-soled his way up behind me at the newsstand while I was flicking through something pretty dubious, I was pretty sure all the staff at school were in on it (and half the dinner ladies, if that strange rumor about Mr. Heffer has any truth to it). I even reckoned Mr. Faroy, the grocer, had guessed, and I'm not sure he even knows quite what we're talking about. So that just left them, really. Mum and Dad.

  Like everyone else, though, I kept putting it off. Not just from cowardice, but from not being sure quite what was driving me towards the dread day of reckoning. I wouldn't be surprised if axe murderers have the same problem. They escape undetected from the scene of the crime, and then each knock, each phone ring, causes such a rush of stomach-clenching fear that in the end they realize one day soon they're going to walk into some police station—any police station—and give themselves up, just to be able to stretch out on their hard prison bed, and breathe in peace. Not the best reason for confessing, perhaps. But good enough. And better than some of the others, like wanting to stop your parents making their tired old jokes about gay presenters on the telly, or simply upset them out of childish spite.

  And I certainly didn't want to upset mine. I'm very fond of them, I really am. (Go on. Have a good laugh. I'll wait till you're ready.) I think they're both softies, if you want to know. And I'm the light of Mum's life. Even at my age, they're still checking on me all the time. “All right, are you, son?” “Good day at school, sweetheart?” That sort of thing. Not that I'm actually looking for chances to whinge about that animal Parker hurling my sandwiches into the art room clay bin, or Lucy Prescott stalking me down corridors. But, if I wanted to, I could.

  But I couldn't tell them this. Each time I geared myself up, I'd get some horror-show vision in my head of how they might take it. You only need half an ear hanging off one side of your head to know how some parents react. Flora knows someone whose mum wailed on for weeks about it all being her fault, then threw herself under a bus. That's something nice for Flora's friend to think about all her life. George has a neighbor whose son was banished. Banished! It sounds medieval, but it happened only last year. And I've just read a novel where the father got drunk and cut the little circle of his son's face out of every single family photo-graph, and dropped the whole lot down the toilet. The poor boy pads along to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and finds a little whirlpool of his own unflushed faces staring up at him. Maybe the author made that story up. I certainly hope so.

  And then there's Mick. We met on holiday last summer and mooched around together quite a bit. When his dad won the accumulator at the races, and Mick clapped him on the back, he made a flinchy little face and moved away. I bet a heap Mick wishes he'd kept his trap shut.

  So you can see why I kept putting it off. But we couldn't go on forever. I was sick of not being able to do the simplest things, like keep a proper diary, or snap at Grandpa when he makes remarks about the guys who live together on the corner, or leave the books I'm reading lying about.

  And that's how I told them. With a book. Not quite the way you'd imagine, but it worked. Mum and I were in Readerama a few weeks ago, and she was desperate not to let me out of sight because I was carrying most of the shopping. (She didn't trust me not to put it down. Mum's of the view that trailing half a step behind every single shopper in town is a villain just waiting to pounce on their Price-worthy bags, and make off down some dark alley.) “Have you got all the bags? You're supposed to have six,” she says to me every two minutes, and I've known her to have breakdowns just from my slipping one half-empty bag in-side another without sending her warning letters in triplicate first. She drives me mad. And she has the nerve to claim she feels the same about me when we're in town to-gether. But I still get dragged along, as unpaid porter, when-ever Dad's not available. It's my brute strength she's after, not my advice on broccoli versus sweet corn, or red versus green for the new lavatory brush holder or, as on this par-ticular morning, which cookery book to buy for Aunty Sarah's birthday.

  “Just take the cheapest,” I said. “It's not as if she ever gets round to actually cooking anything out of them, after all. She just flicks through them and then does chicken and chips.”

  “What if she has it already?”

  “Give her the receipt. Then she can bring it back and choose another. That way, she gets to be the one whose arms stretch down to the floor.”

  Mum took the hint. “All right,” she said unwillingly. “You can put down the shopping. But don't move away from it. Stay where you are.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Browse,” said my mother. “That's what people do in bookshops. Have a little browse.”

  I browsed. I browsed a step or so to the left (Health Matters). I browsed a step or so to the right (Feminism). I browsed forward a couple of steps (Family and Society), and back a few steps (Cars and Mechanical). And all the time I swear to God I never let a soul get between me and the shopping bags.

  Then I got uppity. I browsed a little further away, past Holiday Guides, and round the back of Stamp Collecting. I ended up opposite Food and Drink and, copping a major glower from Mum, who was still choosing which of the eight million cookery books on display Aunty Sarah wouldn't change first, I doubled back th
rough Computers.

  Fetching up back at Health Matters, where I'd begun.

  That's when I saw it. Telling Your Parents: A Teenager's Guide to Coming Out in the Family. You'd think the fairies might have put it there for me. I didn't do what you'd expect—slip it out and have a quick read while she was busy comparing Feasts of Malaysia with You and Your Wok, then creep back a few days later to read the rest. No. I sim-ply took it off the shelf and tucked it under my arm. Then I dribbled the shopping bags one by one over to Mum at Gluttons' Corner, and stood there growing a beard down to my feet until she'd chosen.

  “Right!” she said finally. “I think this one's nice. She can't complain about this one.”

  She waited for me to point out that Aunty Sarah can complain about anything. But I had bigger fish to fry.

  I trailed her to the pay desk.

  “Here,” she said, taking out her credit card and putting Winter Cookery: A Casserole Lover's Collection down on the counter.

  “Here,” I said, laying Telling Your Parents: A Teenager's Guide to Coming Out in the Family straight down on top of it.

  “What's that?”

  “A book.”

  “What book?” she said, playing for time as if she couldn't read.

  “This book,” I said to her firmly. “This book here.”

  “Take it away, Gregory!” Her voice had shot up in the stratosphere. She was positively squeaking. And the poor girl at the pay desk didn't know where to look. (Would I have done it if it had been a bloke on duty that morning? Don't ask. I'll never know.)

  “I mean it, Gregory!” Her hand shot out. The book went sailing off the desk onto the floor. “I'm not buying that for you!”

  I felt so sorry for her. But still I picked it up again and put it down on top of Winter Cookery.

  “No, Gregory! No!” She swiped it off again.

  I picked it up. “Come on, Mum.”

  Snatching it from me, she hurled it on the table to the side of the till. “No! No!”

  “Yes, Mum,” I said, picking it up a third time.

  “Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, God, Gregory!” She reached for the book, but this time the salesgirl dived forward at the same time, maybe to pitch in on my side, maybe to save the book from yet another battering. When their hands met, the book slid off again on to the floor, falling open at a section called “Telling the Grandparents.”

  “Oh, God!” she wailed. “I can't believe this is happening!” And I knew from the way it came out that the first of a thousand battles was over. Mum at least believed me.

  I've never felt so dreadful in my life. I wanted to say “I'm sorry,” but I was worried she'd misunderstand, and get me wrong about the way I feel. So I said nothing. I just stood there like a giant lump, watching my own mum crumple, thanks to me.

  Staff training at Readerama must be brilliant. Not only can the sales force read upside down, but they know what to do at sticky moments. Glancing at the name on Mum's card, the girl said gently, “Mrs. Fisher, would you like to come through to the back and sit down for a moment? I could make you some coffee.”

  Good thing it was my mum I'd dumped the news flash on, and not my dad. He'd have dissolved into a puddle of tears and sat there for a week, weeping into his coffee cup. Mum's made of sterner stuff. She's kept her chin up through some moments of high embarrassment while raising me, and though this must have been about the worst, she still proved equal to the strain.

  “That's very nice of you,” she said, pulling her coat straight and clutching her handbag closer. “Most kind and thoughtful. But I'll be all right.”

  The girl gave me a look, and pointed to one of those little stool things they use for getting to the upper shelves. I fetched it over. “At least sit down,” she said to Mum. “Just for a moment.”

  “Just while you ring up the books, then,” Mum said, collapsing.

  “Books,” not “book.” Did you notice? I did. So did the girl.

  “It won't take a moment,” she said. But then she made a point of taking her time, sliding the card through the machine the wrong way once or twice, and rooting under-neath the counter for a different-sized bag, to give my mum a few moments. She even came out from behind the pay desk with the slip, and brought it over for Mum to sign. Mum's hand was shaking, but the signature looked close enough to the one on the card.

  “There,” said the girl, managing to make it sound like “There, there …” and making me vow to never in my life buy any book in any shop on the planet but Readerama.

  Mum raised her head. “Well, Gregory. We can't stay here all day. Better get home.”

  And tell your dad, she might as well have added. But I wasn't quite so worried about that. Dad has a flaming temper, but in the end he always buys Mum's line on every-thing. He wasn't going to like it. Well, who would? Like anyone else, he'd like his son to grow up and marry and have a couple of kids, and not be different in any way. Not be-cause the only thing he cares about is my being “normal,” but more because he's quite sure that being different— especially this way—is going to make absolutely everything in my life a whole lot more difficult for me. Once he's con-vinced this is the only way I'm going to be, he'll get a grip. I'm sure he'll want me happy more than he'll want me straight. I'm lucky there. Some people want you straight a whole lot more than they want you happy.

  The bus ride home was pretty quiet (if you don't count Mum saying, “Gregory, have you got all the bags?” two dozen times). Once or twice, she touched my hand, as if she were about to say something. But it was not till we were walking into our own street that she came out with it.

  “Let's not say anything about all this just for the moment.”

  I gave her a suspicious look. What was she thinking? I wasn't old enough to know my mind? That this was some-thing I was trying on, like some new style, or haircut? Did she think I was temporarily unhinged? Under someone's spell? Totally mistaken?

  “Just for the moment,” she repeated. “Just till we're sure.”

  No point in climbing out of a box if you're going to climb straight back in again. “I am sure, Mum. I've been sure for years now.”

  “Well, waiting a little longer before you tell your father won't hurt, then, will it?”

  “Mum,” I said, “give me one good reason not to tell him now.”

  She looked quite hunted. “You know how upset he's going to be, and we can't have him saying anything in front of Granny and Grandpa.”

  Whoa, there! I stopped in my tracks. “And why not?”

  She stopped as well. “Gregory, you know perfectly well why not.”

  I put down the shopping, all six bags of it. “Mum, you can't pick and choose who I keep this secret from,” I told her. “It's too important. That has to be my decision.”

  “But what if your grandpa finds out?”

  “It's not a matter of him ‘finding out,’” I said. “Some-body has to tell him. Otherwise I'll be back exactly where I was before, having to watch myself all the time.”

  “Is that so terrible?”

  “Yes, it is!” I snapped. “And it won't stop there, either. Within a week or so, you and Dad will be trying to kid yourselves it was all just a horrible mistake. No, I'm sorry, Mum. I'm not going back and it isn't fair to ask me.”

  “Fair?” she snapped, striding off down the street again. “Fair? And what about what's fair on the rest of us? You'll give your grandpa a heart attack!”

  I'd got her there. “Oh, I don't think so,” I said, picking up everything and trailing after her. “Didn't he go ballistic when you told him that Ginny was pregnant by Wayne Poster? And Gran cried for weeks. They were so upset and furious, they didn't even go to the wedding. And now look at them! Gran spends her whole life tangled up in pink knitting wool, and Grandpa won't put the baby down. They're tough. They'll get over it.”

  Mum strode on furiously. “Don't kid yourself they're going to come to terms with this quite so easily!”

  “I don't see why not,” I said sullenly. “T
hey've got used to my terrible hair. And my terrible clothes. And my terrible music. And my terrible friends. And my—”

  “Gregory! This is a whole lot more important than any of those!”

  “Yes!” I yelled back. “It certainly is! And that's exactly why I can't go on pretending all the time—not at school, and on the team, and with girls, and at home, and at my Saturday jobs, and everywhere. There's got to be somewhere I can just be me.”

  Perhaps I'd got through to her. Or perhaps it was be-cause we'd practically reached our own gate. But, suddenly, she seemed to soften a little. “But surely waiting a little is only sensible. What if you change your mind?”

  If this had been school debate, I'd have come back at her pretty sharpish on that one, saying something like “I don't recall you ever saying that you put off marrying Dad in case you found out later that you were lesbian.” But this is my mum, don't forget. If I'd said that, she would have slapped me so hard I'd have gone reeling into Mr. Skelley's hedge. So I said nothing.

  She peered in my face. “Oh, Gregory. This is going to take a whole lot of getting used to, and I can tell you one thing. The worst isn't over.”

  “It is for me,” I told her quite truthfully.

  And what if I did mean the lying, the secrets, the wor-rying, the pretending? Give me a break! She thought I meant that telling her had been the hardest thing. And that was important to her, you could tell. Shocked and upset as she was, you could still see she took it as a compliment that she mattered most. She took it seriously, the same way she took my blotchy finger painting from nursery, and my cracked jewelry pot from primary school, and my split, wobbly stock cube dispenser from secondary school woodwork class. Her mouth even twitched a little, as if, if she didn't have to go in there and help me through Round Two with Dad, she might even have given me the tiniest of encouraging smiles.