Twenty Questions

Twenty Questions

The obligation of visiting my father on a Sunday and him taking me in for the day always came to an end around seven. The return journey was often executed two hours later when my father finally decides to take me home on his own accord. I’d like to believe that he did this to spend more time with me whilst knowing that it was mostly to spite the dictation of my mother who had six days of custody.

 Each evening I would clock watch while admittedly being poor at telling the time from an analogue clock. I had mastered how stare with a mixture of worry and anguish though and that’s all I needed.

 I would be anxious to go home as soon as possible to not cause friction with my mother. I would be reluctant to go home too, dreading the knowledge that as the night continued to sift past decent timing; the vicarious rollocking for my father from mother would be unloaded onto myself. I remember constantly sitting on my hands while I waited to go.

 ‘I’m going for a bath,’ My Dad’s partner would say as if avoiding too much engagement with me during the day had garnered a need to wash.

 Fixated on the Television my dad would respond, ‘Yeah I’m going once I’ve finished this cup of tea’. He would then grasp the handle of his mug which he slung back until the last throat lump rippled past his stubbly gullet to his stomach. He’d then hand me the mug and ask for a cup of tea in my direction. I felt rather on edge. The hands on his clock looked fleeting.

-

In the car, my Father conveyed a look of utter indifference while firmly locking his eyes onto the road ahead – listening to whatever played at random from one song of his era to the next.

 It shocked me how contently he welcomed random tracks to fall in place after one another despite his catalogue ranging from different corners of the music spectrum in terms of genre and such. He was okay with this unpredictable shuffle, and I wanted to know how he was reframing from skipping at least one track in favour of another. But he didn’t.

 If I had hold of the aux-lead connecting to his radio I’d have been playing my own kind of music discovered through boredom by mindlessly watching the music channel with nothing better to do during the week. More often than not – after ten minutes into the car ride back to Brisk-Ford, I’d eventually pluck up the courage to ask my father if I could show him some of my songs that I thought he’d like, knowing fully well he definitely wouldn’t.

 I’d play a song with lyrics that lined perfectly parallel to my real emotions. I’d watch to see if he enjoyed something I had found on my own and maybe – just maybe – he’d like it enough to consider adding it to his own playlist. The idea of convincing someone older than myself to get into anything on my recommendation, especially my father, was a target I subconsciously found myself trying to achieve since day dot. Maybe because I liked to go against the tropes older generations hold when valuing practically everything over the “fodder” that came out after their own childhood, that my father could get into a mid-00’s indie band genuinely, or at least for the sake of making his son happy. Or, better yet making us feel like this mutual appreciation confirms that we are related and therefore less lonely as two individuals that understood each other.

 It’s an unfair dynamic, the whole Parent and child malarky. Not just for the obvious reasons of who’s in charge and all those Matilda speeches of “I’m big, you’re small” points, but I mean the soul that has allowed another soul to be part of the world they’re struggling through, that ultimately through the powers of a “passionate thirty seconds” my mother would refer to it as; we never fully get our parents in the same way they get us.

 When I was born, both my mother and father had already lived a good thirty years or so years beyond my first real breath and knew everything about me from my behaviours to my likes and dislikes. This always bothered me as I had to practically work them out on my own terms, hence my musical attempts at connecting with my father in his Needless seven-seater car.

 If the lyrics I admired could unlock something in his mind and allow him to just embrace me the way that I wanted but never knew how to pursue then I could’ve possibly been happy. I might have known about his past or what he sees in the future. Is he okay with the future that lies ahead of him? Or does he fear it so deeply he denies anything the present has to offer and results in seeking comfort within the tracks he adored as a boy, creating the same vibrations of youth he wished to retain. I really don’t know.

 I knew what was waiting for me when I arrived home. Twenty questions about what I had done that day with my father so my mother could tear the day to shreds either to turn me against him and his partner or so that she could make me see why she divorced him in the first place – ironically mirroring the same twenty questions I’d receive in the morning when I was picked from by father’s at the expense of my mother. No matter what connotation this integration was intended for, the breach of confidentiality beckoned masses of anxiety both parties would pull out of me and disregard at the satisfaction of criticizing the other’s parenting. I was fine living at home, and I was fine visiting my dad.

So, as my father ever so slightly turned up the volume of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me now” loud enough to hush the potential of anymore conversation but quiet enough to not be rude; I stared longingly out the window feeling profusely sick. I beamed across thousands of off-square fields of mud, crops, and pure grass in the night-time purple/blue pallet along the country lanes towards my home village.

 In the distance I could spy a cluster of speckled inviting lights of a neighbouring town.

 ‘I wonder if I were able to walk across these fields towards that town over there. If I walk now, would I get there by daylight? Or would be I be stranded in a field as morning comes and ploughed down by a farmer? Probably not, they’re just fields. I wonder if I’d ever get myself in a situation where I’d be able to say, “sod it! Let’s just walk as far as I can and see where I end up” …Would probably never happen though. What would I do once I turn up to this new and exciting place that I’d never stepped foot in before? Probably nothing. It would just be the same as any other town with its necessities of supermarkets and schools or whatever. I’m not going to come across some super cool shop with all my personal interests scattered and arranged in an order of my choosing. It will just be another place and would be a waste of my time to go there. In fact, what is that place over there? Actually, I don’t want to know. I like that I don’t know’.

 A subtle screech from the handbrake interrupts my daydream and suddenly the cold air from outside the car has already seeped into my personal space and I feel on the verge of bursting, popping into a pile of indistinguishable springs and bolts on the floor. I’m outside my Home.

 Routinely my Father turns to me with the internal car light on, overbearingly harsh for its size.

 ‘Right. See you next Sunday,’ he said with no expression, and I felt fuzzy and unsure. I was also sure he said “love ya” or something along those lines while I hopped out onto the pavement leading to the driveway.

 I walked slowly to the front door waiting to fish my key out only when facing the lock to prolong my trek across the void between two parents. It was like the first few moments of the morning where the only thing that feels relevant is piecing together the fact that you managed to go to sleep without realizing it. You stretch, feeling every fibre of warmth and relaxation on your first few seconds of the sun’s routine check on the world; you are alive on your own accord before responsibility and knowledge wakes up inside you too.

 The door was unlocked, and I walked in. the sound of my father’s wheels growing quieter as they distanced felt as if the weight of the journey was easing the pressure from my chest. Moments later as the warm air and light from a day I had missed in another location suddenly makes me too hot in compensation.

 Everything about my mother is completely folded neatly on the sofa. She is not impressed with my father. I am simply not impressed with anything.

 ‘Alright mum’.