Rude Vile Pigs

RUDE VILE PIGS

Leo X. Robertson

Published by Cardboard Wall Empire

ISBN: 978-1-326-03145-9

Copyright © 2014 Leo X. Robertson

All rights reserved.

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To Sis, Rupert and the MOLD.

Cycle the First: Indifferenza

Kate

I had a nightmare about Kayleigh. When I woke up, she was screaming.

Jim

You’re supposed to feel relieved when you finally get divorced. Went to the pub with my mates soon after. We all said ‘Cheers!’ and toasted to the end of that bitch. Dan was the one to open his palm and reveal two golf balls and he returned them to me, symbolically. Hah. He was the one who Julia had to tell me to keep away from her when I used to invite him round to our dinner parties: he’d greet her at the door with a boozy kiss on the lips. Nice friends, Jim.

I woke up the next morning, and I’d left the window open all night. My clothes going up the stairs to my bedroom went socks, belt, jeans, shirt, t-shirt, watch, phone, keys. I was still in my pants. When I sat up, my head began to clear of blood and fill with throb. When I reached up to rub my eyes, my hand wouldn’t open.

George

‘Why d’you think I have any fucking idea where that whisky came from? With how much you get on at me about drinking, would it be any wonder if I started hiding it from you anyways? I don’t get any peace around here.’

‘Are you blaming me for how much you drink? You think I put this bottle in your hand?’

‘I’ve never seen it before.’

‘You’ve seen many of these before.’

‘I cannae believe you. You wouldn’t be pick pick (poke poke poke) picking away at me if you just stopped bloody working. If it makes you such a sour bitch every night, I don’t know why you bother. I’m the man here. So stop it. Just… live here. This is your house, this is your house!’

She just started greetin’. Yeah, well done love.

Jim

I took leave from work on account of my inability to do anything. I felt tired all the time, didn’t want to get out of bed. The whisky got closer and closer to the room. It started all the way in the cupboard, but then I was drinking so much it might as well have been with me in the living room while I watched TV, then the bottle and the TV came into the bedroom and none of us ever left. We didn’t quite live happily ever after.

George

If I ever thought she’d be earning more than me, I never woulda married her. She can try this whole doctor thing for a while but time is ticking down for her to man up, come home and be a mum. What makes her so special?

She wants me to talk about my feelings. Oh, you wanna hear this? Is that it?

I’m all on my own here.

Jim

Oh, they sleep in the same bed every night, that masterful pair of the angry whisper, never stirring Kayleigh in the room beside theirs. Kate seems like a big believer in never going to bed angry. But in order for that to work, you actually have to go to bed without being angry. She pretends to be calm in the evenings, as if, if she does so, it’s as good as happening. But she grinds her teeth in her sleep. Sounds like a little screech of a fork across a china plate. Makes it harder for me to get some rest!

I don’t think George notices. His emotional compass is all screwed up by giant electromagnetic waves of all-engulfing selfishness. But even for him, it can’t be long now.

Kate

Sent the kid who was meant to be shadowing me out the door this morning. Mr Weir came in so he could have his thirty minutes of surrogate granddaughtering, complaining about the practice, how cold it is in his house. He’s long since given up pretending he has a medical issue. Whatever Mr Weir’s problem is, it’s far too complicated and painfully common. Life in this city, maybe. Hah! Whatever it is, I’m the treatment. The shadowing kid looked too worried when a nineteen year-old girl came in and said she was crying all the time. In her file I double-clicked on #108305: Crying fits. It appeared on a list south of Alcoholism and north of Nairobi Sheep Disease. I asked her about her family history. The kid leaned off the edge of his chair. Was he really worried for her? What semester do they learn about depression, and low self-esteem, how it can sometimes lead to promiscuity? This one was leading, leading, leading. I couldn’t help her. Crying fits: Plenty more of them on the journey, hen! If she thinks seasonal affective disorder is something to cry about, I should have taken her along on a house visit to my patient with MS. She’s in a wheelchair. Sometimes I visit her when she has to go into respite, which gives her sister a break from caring for her. Maybe I could have taken the girl home and said ‘Have a look at my husband! Or would you rather see the picture of him in the attic?’ I could have told her take two of these and come back to me in twenty years, breastless and friendless. We’ll do a follow-up!

The student actually told me the other day that he was studying medicine because he wanted to help people. I laughed when I watched his face fall and I said ‘You know the General Medical Council don’t have this place bugged, right?’

Jim

My mum read me this story when I was a kid about two estranged twins. They were separated at birth: I think their mum ran away. They each had one hand that wouldn’t open, hadn’t opened their entire life until they were finally reunited, and their fingers uncurled. In each of their hands was one half of the same coin, broken by the mother and given to them before she… ran away? ‘Sorry kids, no mum. Have a coin I broke in half somehow. Good luck finding each other!’

George

I thought about Kate in that green dress of hers the other night. We laughed like drains over a bottle of wine and I was best dad ever in Kayleigh’s eyes because I gave her a cheeky Netflix school night and let her stay up late. I don’t know what my problem is. It’s for nights like that I do all I do. Me and Kate have had so many good times together that I forget sometimes, when I’m stuck in my study on some big commission and her consultations bloat into the early evening hours and when we finally see each other we look like shit and use the scrap of energy we have left to get Kayleigh to sleep.

Jim

I went too far last time. I came back to my house— my old house, I mean. Kate and George and Kayleigh’s house, I mean. I opened the door. The alarm beeped. The alarm! I’d completely forgotten, but… they hadn’t changed the code yet! Yes! I closed the door behind me. It was pretty clear to me then that I didn’t give a shit if they caught me. Don’t think they would call the police, though. That GP looked like a polite You need to leave, now kind of woman, the kind that would secretly enjoy it if she found me in her house, get all her middle class friends round for one too many cocktails, ‘girls’! (ie one) and tell them ‘…and then I told him You need to leave, now!’ (in a barkier more confident tone than she’d actually used upon discovering me) and they’d all say ‘Oh, that’s terrible!’ but really think it was pretty cool, and they’d say ‘Poor man!’

Fuck you, imaginary friends of my impression of Kate, whom I only met once, last month. I’m just fine, I’m fine! Transitions are always tough…

Kate

Did my student not realise I wanted to help people, too? Oh, beyond a catalogue of ailments, there’s nothing I can do to rid them of the chaos of their lives. Doctors make terrible parents. I know way too much. I could tell you a person whose life was ruined out of the blue from my daughter’s age and up. I am sure fucking Kayleigh up. Perhaps fucking her up is better than nothing, like George is doing: nothing.

Jim

So this was the reason for the clenched palm. I had to hear the best time of my life degrade beneath me as the lazy husband kills off the wife’s dream with the rhythm and certainty of Julia’s grandmother clock as it ticks, tocks, ticks, tocks. Still, cooked dinners! PTA meetings! Fatigue, lack of sex, etcetera! You’ve never had it better, George and Kate. Never better. Not for long, I reckon. But you can stay this snapshot of family in my head if I leave now, like when Julia sent my wee boy Jamie’s cat to go live with another family on a farm because she didn’t want its claws scratching the hardwood of the new house that I paid for for both of them— I can’t keep cycling that around and around and around in my head, anymore. Anyway, Kate and George: I bid you adieu.

George

I just need a break from the perfect family every now and then. Kate thinks just because she knows so many people that have died that I don’t know anything about life. Not everyone needs to feel sooooo bloody fulfilled in their job, honey. Not all of us are so self-involved that we go around trying to heal everyone and soaking up all the pain of their life’s woes. Some of us have enough of our own shit to deal with, love. I mean, Jesus…

Jim

See, I never told them there was an attic when I showed them around. I was sure they’d figure it out eventually. The attic door was pretty flush with the ceiling and it’d take them a while to notice. I’d planned one day to come back and live there. I mean, it was a mad thought I’d never act on. It was just an idea I could comfort myself with. Like, ‘If you have to sell this house but you’re sure you really can’t give it up yet, well, you could just live in the attic!’ Who wants to be honest with themselves a hundred percent of the time?

George

The house did smell like weed. Kate said it was the neighbour’s kid. Wonder if he’d sell me any. I’m a dad but I don’t magically want to give up every habit and settle down. I just pretend I want to and hope it happens along the way. So far, so no. I do love Kayleigh, though. Kate picks away at her, but she’s just a kid. When Kate was late back, Kayleigh asked me if she could skip in the house. I told her that’s fine with me, told her sometimes you just gotta be a kid and skip in the house if it pleases you. It was such a nice moment we had together and I’m sure she wanted me to watch but I felt the psychic draw of the unfinished work laid out in my study. I turned away from her and back to the work. As I closed the study door, I heard this loud bang then ran back down the stairs to the hallway and saw a big chunk taken out the piano and Kayleigh about to cry, doing that little manipulative baby pout thing she did, puffing out her cheeks to make them look all fat and cute. But you know, the five seconds we shared before the piano got chipped were pretty great— an almost worth it out of five.

Jim

I slammed my hand down on top of the piano. What did they do to the lacquer? There was a big chunk of it missing… I really liked that Jamie played the piano. I hoped Julia would buy him a new one. She sure as hell had the money to do so now. Did I really mess up that badly? Why did she let this new family keep everything, I mean everything that was in the house? The piano, the grandfather clock that she’d inherited from a relative of hers and had shipped from Peru? She really had to say Fuck it to everything we built together? Or rather, did she really have to say a Fuck you to me that big? Can’t believe this new family made memories on the stage where Julia and I played the part of happy husband and wife for two years, and before that, were a happy husband and wife. Making new memories as if none of ours had happened. I once took Jamie to his grade four piano exam and he played Für Elise. I listened to it a hundred times on this very piano, a Bluthner made of lacquered satinwood. Where’s the evidence of that? Part of that memory, chipped away. No fucking respect. Bought Jamie a Coke to calm his wee nerves, took him for a pizza when he passed. At least I remember.

Kate

When I paid the phone bill, I saw a call made from the house, in the middle of a Wednesday. Only George was here. It was an escort service. Didn’t have the strength to ask. Why call? Why not set it up with his email? I pay the phone: he must have wanted me to find out. My first thought was that it was my fault, that somehow, I’d put the phone in his hand that afternoon. I didn’t want to know. I just tried not to think about it.

Jim

It was happening again. Which of the ghosts was doing it? Julia, with her beautiful taste and all too personally crafted family home, rejecting the new happy ending? The house itself, cursed to break up every family that entered? Wish it was that one! Was it… me? Was I the ghost in the attic, haunting this new family, cursing them and dooming them to repeat the cycle of indifference?

‘I’m sick of that face.’ It was George, in the bedroom.

‘Excuse me?’ Kate, on the other side of the bed.

‘I’m sick of that judgmental, screw-eyed little wince that only I see when I want another whisky. I’m sick of it and I want you to say something.’

‘What would you have me say, George? Something new? I don’t have anything new to say.’

Silence.

George, don’t push her. She works so hard to keep you and Kayleigh happy. A GP and a mum! Throw your hobbies out the window. A trooper of a wife you’ve got there, mate. You’ve known for a long time you could support the family alone. You did the maths for your own satisfaction. But did you really never question why she still goes to work? No wonder she hates how much you drink, George, and the glugs, if I, a man who knows, may say so, are getting ever more frequent. Let’s have a chat about it, George: man to emasculee.

Kate

I knew it! The room where Kayleigh does her homework, leaning her legs off the very same armchair to write in the workbook on the coffee table! He’d stashed a half bottle of whisky, half-empty, down the side. Can’t even recognise the symptoms of my own family.

Jim

They had dinner all round the table like we used to have. I could hear them clanking plates and cutlery while I stared at the roof’s dusty beams, my back flat against the attic’s floor. I didn’t dare move. As I lay and listened to all the things Kayleigh