Glass Feet Stoned

It was just after 8pm when I arrived at Mervyn’s office. He was just leaving. He pulled the door closed, wine-coloured briefcase in hand, and then rotated his head to the right as I approached, as if he’d picked up a warning in the air I’d be coming. Black suit, red tie, polished black shoes, looking smart, a man you could trust. He smiled a genuine smile but I could see worry behind it.

“Princess, still don’t know how to return people’s phone calls.”

“You haven’t been honest with me Mervyn.”

He stood still for a moment, gathering himself. As he blew air through his lips his chest rose and fell like a balloon beginning to deflate.

“Okay, let’s go to mine where we can talk.”

“No.”

“Come on it’s me; you telling me you can’t come to my house now?”

We walked to a Caribbean restaurant a couple of streets down. All the way I said nothing, waiting. He brought out his chequered handkerchief to pat his forehead.

Other than a couple at the bar area the restaurant was virtually empty and smelled of spices. It had wooden floors, dim lights and colourful paintings. Reggae music played low and soft like a lover’s stroke. You could see out onto the street from where we sat. Mervyn’s gaze loitered a little too long on the outside scene. He may have sensed what was coming, maybe not the exact nature of it, but he knew I meant business. Neither of us wanted to eat. He ordered vodka, I ordered water.

Tell me what happened.

He supressed an agitated sigh.

You know what your mother was like Joy.

No, tell me.

She was vicious that evening, she said things, accused me.

Of what?

Of seeing another woman.

Were you?

No, I’m a man who flirts a lot; I can’t help it I’m wired that way. Why did you keep it from me?

Your mother thought it best you didn’t know about us.

And this had been going on for?

Years.

Even while your wife was alive?

Yes.

I stayed absolutely still for a minute because I needed to.

So?

I went out, took a walk around to cool off man, I came back the basement door was open and there she was. It was so strange to see her dead, I swear I never touched her; I loved her. You saw the medical examiner’s report.

You left her there.

I don’t know where my head was at. I panicked. To find her like that, it was a shock, too much.

He looked me dead in the eye then. I wanted to tell you.

No, no, no, no, no. I stopped him. All at once I felt faint and sick. He was showing who he really was to me. The way he’d always been there, in the background and his boys, always there too. How could I not have seen it? I realised the night I found my mother dead I never called the ambulance. Mervyn had. After the screaming dial tone and the voice that replaced it zapped down the line and his trembling fingers hung up the receiver, he hit the ground, running away from us, my mother reduced to a dirty dead secret. I’ll never ask by how much time I missed him.

I left him there at the cliff edge, to untangle the knot stretching back many years.

Then there she was, wearing the purple scarf from Mervyn’s. Why in death was my mother Queen becoming real again? My glass feet broke repeatedly on the pavement. Heartbeats were gunshots fired in my chest. She was high up above, a fevered angel sleepwalking on the wings of planes.