The Life of Other People Chapter 3

Leroy thought of Delilah often. She had been the magical catalyst in his unreactive life. Not that he took to gun fights and gang wars after their brief encounter, but a shift did occur, as surely as the turning of a page. As a gaunt and anaemic moon becomes fuller and eventually reaches a glorious Camembert, Leroy grew into himself. He found himself constantly thanking Delilah, joyful that he had not become the boy who loved a girl with big, green eyes, but rather the boy who had features of his own to describe. His loneliness, as christened by Delilah, was a selling point, his awkward hair a unique detail, his eternal discomfort an insightful statement. He learned to wear his gracelessness with elegance, and although his neurotic nature occasionally led him to panic over whether becoming too comfortable might compromise his reputation, he felt he was expanding and inhaling, becoming something rounder and fuller with every breath of identity. 

That is not to say that Leroy leaped to self-actualisation in a single bound. He had, in fact, at twenty-one, come to accept that his mother had ruined him far too profoundly to ever achieve a higher recognition of self. Echoes of her combative parenting trailed along behind him, tugging on his sleeves and ensuring that therapy would never be completely off the table. Even in his tastefully grimy flat that reeked of seized freedom, there hung a family portrait above the fridge, framed in plasticky pinewood, so that his every fumbling for food forced him beneath the scrutiny of the loins of his fruit. The photograph was stiff and strange, as family pictures always are, with each member standing straight with their backs against a plain white wall. Twelve-year-old Leroy stood in front of his parents as each rested a heavy hand on his shoulders, and his vaguely alarmed expression made the picture more Judgement Day than Brady Bunch. The lipstick on Annette’s cereal-box smile was matched in colour by the ketchup stain on Ed’s woollen pullover.

Leroy usually avoided the photograph because it always made him feel like a teenager again. Sustained eye contact was enough to make his knees quiver and pimples spring up on his face like dandelions, so he went to the fridge with his eyes downturned. Guilt prevented him removing the portrait, and yet, guilt prevented him facing it.

He did look at it one grey Saturday, as he grimly heated Ramen noodles in the noisy and out-dated microwave that hummed like a tone-deaf churchgoer. It was his father’s birthday, and so – once again prompted by the gristly conscience that lived in the pit of his stomach – Leroy dragged his eyes to Ed’s face and thought of him. 

He and Annette lived in the same house they had always lived in, where she aggressively attempted to recreate the glowing, white-washed feeling that accompanies early parenthood, and that had previously filled the little semi-detached home. She redecorated at least once per annum, and every year more brightness was forced into the house: a whiter shade of beige on the walls, more furniture from the French Style section of Ikea, permanent air fresheners in the shapes of their sad and flattened prototypes (a pine tree eternally hung beneath the sink in the bathroom). The brighter the house became, the more Ed was marginalised, as if the very expensive lino on the kitchen counter had arrived in return for part of his presence. He slunk from room to room, barely leaving a dent in his favourite sofa, yet kindly telling Annette whenever he could that the house was “just like always, just like home”. That was the relationship they had: a complex mixture of unabashed gentleness in equal parts with rigorous systemisation, and the stoic acceptance that affection was not found in romance or fantasy but in the day-to-day.

Leroy removed the noodles precisely as they reached the perfect texture (his deftness well-defined from practise). He wondered whether or not to visit his father on his birthday, and cast his mind back to previous birthdays. While Annette denied her birthday as vehemently as a murder charge, Ed greeted his with quiet acceptance, as he did every other facet of his life. This day last year had consisted of a dry roast dinner at the Saldemando household, where silence was heartily served alongside the beef. This was due, in part, to the fact that Leroy had brought someone with him. That someone was Cherry Viles, a woman with blue hair. Leroy should have heard alarm bells when Annette, after greeting Cherry through clenched teeth, had dragged Leroy into the kitchen and hissed, “She’ll clash with the crockery!”

The rest of the day had consisted of more silence, and then cricket on the television. Ed had remained oblivious to the awfulness of the scene, and sat with a small contented smile, holding a beer in a mug that said “LIVERPOOL LADS FOREVER” on the side. After the cricket had ended, Leroy kissed his mother on his cheek and shook his father’s hand, and left the house. Cherry practically exploded from the front door and exclaimed, as she leaned agitatedly on the picket gate:

“Fuuuuck. Leroy, man, let’s go get a drink. I’ll pay. For anaesthesia if I have to.”   

Leroy decided to forego Ed’s birthday. He hadn’t heard from his parents in a long time, and there had been no invitation shoved under the door or popping up in ‘unread messages’. His mother had called the other day to ask about his sock size, but that was about it. He finished his noodles, called the family home and left a message on the overly perky answering machine.