Mr. November
This is nothing like it was in my room, in my best clothes. Sharply creased, pressed and ironed into my uniform.
It had been decided that I was going away, because Something Wasn’t Right about me. Because out of sight meant out of mind. Out of the way, more likely. Out of your harm’s way, even more accurately.
I should have been pleased, because being gone from that place meant dislodging its poisonous atmosphere from my mind too. Yet I wanted to stay. So much. I ached to stay. Yearned. Not only to protect - some ridiculous heartfelt notion which informed a precocious youngster that he could be on constant watchful guard, that he could be responsible for everyone and everything under the sun. No, not only that. I wanted to stay because I wanted to remain constantly within your vision, haunting you, taunting you with your guilt. Being the living embodiment, day in and day out, of what you did, what you were doing, what you continued to do.
This is nothing like it was in my room, in my bedclothes. Nights frequently found me foetal, whispering those unintelligible German lullabies learnt from a mother’s tongue into the mattress like a mantra. The words themselves didn’t matter. They were merely phonetic reassurance: a charm to lure sleep into my clutches, a spell to weave which I was always certain would one day spirit me away from the world that habitually collapsed outside my pulled covers. Nothing could happen if I kept my magic verse alive, or so I believed.
Innocence is a hushed sound when it lives and breathes. You only hear it when it dies, sometime between bedtime and dawn.
Mr. November can still reduce me to nameless, faceless, frozen. I wish he didn’t have that power. I only need the merest inkling that he’s breathing the same polluted air - in the same vicinity, maybe on the other side of that wall and the next wall and the next - and I will be sucked down, doubled up, ripped ragged. Dragged, kicking and screaming, back to my room. Under, slip under. Sing, whisper and hush. Soon be morning.
All the evidence should tell me otherwise. Grow up, be sensible, behave like an adult. You’re old enough and ugly enough to know better. Pull yourself together. And I know, and I know. But still.
His voice, once so strong and with an edge that could prompt sickness and fear if I felt even distant traces of his anger begin its noxious escape from his chest, is now a shadow of its former self. Exhausted and monosyllabic when I was forced to listen to it on the other end of a distant telephone line, with barely enough enthusiasm mustered to discuss that most harmless and inoffensive of topics: the weather. His hair is an undistinguished shade of grey, his beard scruffy and unkempt. The eyes that formerly fired with rage have burned out, clouded over, misted and aged. What could I possibly have to fear from him? Nothing, most probably. Absolutely nothing. Only echoes.
I gaze at the one recent photograph I possess that offers even the slightest clue as to how the past two decades might have written their trials and tribulations into his flesh and bone. His face is half turned away from the camera. He is smiling, thin-lipped, at his blond, blue-eyed grandson who sits, sucking a lollipop, on his knee. I can’t stop the shiver that runs through me as I note once again those eerie familial traits. Sins of the father? Sins of the father’s father?
It’s all in the eyes, narrowed towards me. In an instant, I want to reach into the snapshot and drag the boy out of that freeze frame moment, shake some sense into him and explain all the dangers. The signs to watch out for. The inflexions to listen for. The black moods to run from, and run, and keep running.
This old man - I can say it now, because that’s what he is - wants to offer all the reassurances he can, albeit grudgingly. Peace offerings and olive branches. He’ll build bridges from his door to mine, if i will do the decent thing and agree to telling him where I live. I can hear him. If only he would summon up the nerve, he would utter these very words: “I won’t fuck us over, I’m Mr. November. I’m Mr. November, I won’t fuck us over”.
Does he want to make amends before he dies? Does he want to wipe his slate clean? Does he want to leave a clear conscience? Does he want us to have fond memories and tearful recollections? Cruelly, I hope he does. Cruelly, I hope his wishes are never granted.
Except I can’t be that cruel. All I can do is ignore the telephone’s insistent electronic tones and delete yet another tired message before it’s even reached my ears.
Mr. July will never be convinced, because he doesn’t forgive and forget. Mrs. January wants nothing to do with you, and will most likely dance on your grave if you are lowered into the earth before her. Miss May goes her own sweetly disastrous way, and I can only hope and pray that Master October sees the truth before he’s too much older.
Come November, I won’t be lighting any candles for you.