5. bad habits

He ran through the corridor, the bright red balloon floating behind him like the tail of a kite. His right arm was plastered; he couldn’t move it. But that didn’t matter at the moment. He wanted to show Daddy his balloon.

“Daddy!” he called out, still running, “Daddy, look what I have!”
Whoa! What you got there, big guy? That’s what Daddy would say. He just knew it.

He was angry with his mother at the moment, and he knew she was angry with him. But he didn’t know why she was mad at him. He didn’t do anything. Did he? It didn’t matter much to him now. He wiped his tears and put on a strong face for his dad to see. He was mad at Mum, so he’d run to Dad. It always worked. Of course, before, he also had... he shook his head.

Don’t think about her, he thought.

It would only bring about terrible memories.

He wanted to stitch up his relationship with his father; ever since that incident, they had been drifting further and further away from each other. He knew that if he apologised for his behaviour after it, his father would forgive him and take him to the park, or at least piggyback him downstairs to make and eat a sandwich. Or something of the sort.

His small feet swiftly climbed the stairs to his father’s study.

“Oomph,” he grunted when he tripped on a step, letting the balloon go and float up. Realising that he couldn’t reach it, he frowned.

Oh well, he thought, Daddy will get it for me. At this thought, he smiled. It’d been a while since his daddy helped him with something.

He got up and turned into the study. The light was off. He could hear his mother calling him from downstairs. He would get to her later; he wanted to talk to Daddy first.

He switched the light on, and saw his father sleeping on the desk. But why did it smell so... bad? Like smoke from a fire, except there was no fire. He shook his father’s shoulder, but he didn’t wake up.

“Daddy?” he poked his head under his face and prodded his cheek. The smell drifted up his nose. He coughed.
“Daddy, I can you get my balloon for me?” he shook his father again, harder this time, “Daddy, stop sleeping!”
He propped his left arm on the table and decided to wait for his father to wake up. His mother called him again. Getting impatient, he lifted his father’s head up, and screamed.

His father’s eyes were rolled back. There was blood running down the side of his head. And then he realised the revolver on the table. And then he couldn’t hear anything; he could only see his father’s rolled-back eyes, and could only smell that foul smoke invading his nostrils, setting them on fire.

He backed into the corner, his eyes scrunched tight, covering his ears with his tiny hands, and screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

-

“Well, well, well,” the man called Anthony straightened up and looked directly at me, familiar stark blue eyes piercing my mind, challenging me. I widened my eyes in shock. I was a murderer-to-be and I was caught! Mrs. Hayford turned around, saw my and Carol’s head poked around the corner, and shrieked, spilling the contents of her drink on the floor.
“Oh! Gomenasai...” she muttered, bending down to clean it up.
“What do we have here?” Anthony said, approaching us, ignoring Mrs. Hayford. I frowned; if he was any kind of gentleman he’d help her.
“Umm... Mr. Hayford?” Carol said uncertainly.
“Yes, that is what most people address me as,” he nodded, somewhat proud, “Who might you girls be, intruding the house?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Hayford! And... Mr. Hayford.” I squeaked. It felt slightly odd to be addressing Tommy’s father, “We—we were just delivering some goods, you know?”

I gasped. Mrs. Hayford didn’t know about the party. She wasn’t supposed to. If she found out that a party, with alcohol, with an invitation list of 900 people was being hosted in her very own house, she’d skin Tommy alive, after extracting his intestines and slicing them into thin pieces and eating them with a bowl of miso soup. Not to mention she’d put Justin through tremendous, unbearable torture for holding his party in her house.

So I added on hastily, “You know how this place is kind of my second home and all, right? I thought I should stock up a lot since my brother’s getting attacked by puberty and all, and he’s getting mood swings every five seconds like a girl on her period. Well, my point is that Carol was so kind as to help me get all the food here and no one was answering the door so I climbed through the back and I thought if I could open the front door—“
“Yes!” Mrs. Hayford clapped her hands and rubbing them together nervously, “You may... open the front door.”

Phew.

“Thanks!” I said in an unintentionally high-pitched voice, “Come on, Carol!”
“You know them?” I heard Anthony Hayford question Tommy’s mother as we swiftly left the room.
Carol, still dazed, came after me, “I didn’t know Tommy had a dad!”
“Neither did I!” I hissed, “I’m just lucky she wasn’t suspicious about us breaking in.”
“Yeah, lucky she was distracted by the spilt coffee or whatever she was drinking. Not to mention your superb excuse-slash-explanation. Did you rehearse it? Because it all came out in one breath. And wow Tommy’s dad is almost as hot as he is! I mean, yeah, you know. I’m not attracted to middle-aged men, but he’s like a George Clooney!” she raved.

I stared at her. She did not just hit on Tommy’s father.

She blinked and seemed to realise what she just said, “Yeah, let’s go open that door.”
“Shall we drag it to Tommy’s room? I mean, it is on the ground floor, and that way his mum won’t discover it. Probably. Hopefully. Maybe not.”
“I don’t care. As long as we don’t have to push it for too long,” she shrugged, and opened the door.
After we managed (somehow) to push that trolley another fifty metres, I slumped on Tommy’s bed, not caring if I crinkled his sheets or rearranged his pillows.

“Tommy owes us bigtime,” I groaned, my muscles deciding to ache now.
“Ugh! My nail chipped!” Carol said, disgusted, “I’m going to get a manicure tomorrow.”
“I’m sure me and the guys will enjoy watching you getting beautified.”

She sighed, mourning the loss of the corner of her nail.

“I don’t know what kind of guy keeps scented candles in his room,” Carol said, snooping around.
“He doesn’t like that,” I said, speaking for Tommy, “People looking at his stuff.”
“I know. But he isn’t here now, is he? Nail clippers, couple of CDs,” she continued digging out small treasures of his table, “Oh! I love that band!”
“Maybe you should stop,” I repeated myself, “Tommy doesn’t like people looking at his stuff.”
“And I like looking at people’s stuff. Things weigh each other out, Ash. Oh, look!” She held up the Yellow Pages I saw the other day, “He’s stalking someone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“He might be.”
“Changing the topic!” I paused, “Maybe we should explain ourselves to Mrs. Hayford? I mean, not that we haven’t already. It’s just we didn’t explain very well.”
She jumped up happily, “Yes! Let’s go see Tommy’s dad!”

I shook my head and left the room. Mr. and Mrs. Hayford were deep in conversation, their heads dangerously close. I had an urge to just clonk them both together and cause them great pain, because they were obviously dirty-talking Tommy.

“I mean, he never helps around the house, he always comes home so late! All he lets me do is worry!” Mrs. Hayford said, distressed.

I wanted to grab her by her hair and say to her that she was never available for him and doesn’t even have time to worry about anything but her precious convenience stores. Not to mention that her negligence was the cause of his absence from home. I loudly cleared my throat.

They both silenced, and snapped their attention to us.

“Sorry about our—”cough, “intrusion earlier. I mean, no one was answering the door.”
“We knocked,” Carol added, helpfully.
Mrs. Hayford nodded, “That’s quite alright. It was our fault for not answering.”
Mr. Hayford, however, was less understanding, “Do you regularly climb over people’s back fences if nobody’s home?” he demanded.
I flinched, “No, I—we—I’m just a—”
“They are very good friend of Tommy,” Mrs. Hayford hastily answered for me with her excellent grammar.
“I see,” Mr. Hayford said, obviously not convinced. I also wanted to grab him by the hair and tell him that he shouldn’t be judging us.

The awkward silence that followed tempted me further. I was greatly enticed, believe me.

“Yeah,” Carol said cautiously, “I think my mum wanted me to do something for her. See ya, Ash. Bye, Mrs. Hayford,” she bowed, “Mr. Hayford.”
Mrs. Hayford bowed, Mr. Hayford nodded. I didn’t know whether to be jealous, pissed, or understanding of the fact that she just left me. The situation was painfully awkward and I also wanted to concoct an ingenious excuse to get me out of it, but it would be too suspicious, especially after Carol just departed.

I contemplated the idea of asking Mrs. Hayford whether she knew Ella or not, but decided against it when I remembered Tommy’s reaction to the mention of her name and I didn’t want to risk Mrs. Hayford to break out into one of her unstoppable hysterics.

“So, Ashley,” Mrs. Hayford decided to shatter the silence, “I can’t help but notice that the food that you are stocking up on was all soft drink and chips?”
I laughed nervously, shifting my gaze to Mr. Hayford, who looked amused. He’d better not think I was a gluttonous pig, “You see... I... love potatoes, especially flavoured ones. I mean, you can’t find flavoured potatoes in the supermarket, they only come as chips. My mum used to make flavoured potatoes for, umm, lunch. Well, not lunch, but afternoon tea or something. Yeah, Daniel and I loved dipping them in Fanta and Coke.”
Mr. Hayford raised an eyebrow, “Really? That’s interesting, I‘ve never heard of flavoured potatoes. I’d like to try some.”

Crap.

“Ahh... well, you see, the recipe to make them was really complicated, couldn’t be memorised, and she lost it, so I don’t think we’ll ever be eating the real thing ever again,” I said, sighing sadly.
“Pity.”
“Yeah.”

Mrs. Hayford looked disbelieving. Tommy owed me his ass, I swear. His mum probably thought I was slightly deluded, or... retarded, as he would put it.

“I can leave,” I pointed hopefully to the front door, “If I interrupted something important.”
“No!” Mr. Hayford said immediately, shaking his head.

Damn.

“No, no, no,” Mrs. Hayford agreed.
“So you were talking about Tommy before?” I decided to pry.
“Yes, we were,” Mr. Hayford said icily, obviously unimpressed by my nosiness.
“That boy have such bad habits. He eats the cucumber straight from the fridge!” Mrs. Hayford exclaimed. I raised an eyebrow, “And he stay out so late every day, and he always flicking that infernal lighter of his on and off. Why does he even have it, anyway? He doesn’t smoke! Or does he? I don’t know because I don’t see him at all. Hell—” I flinched at the word, “He could even be doing marijuana!”
“Excuse me?” a cold voice demanded quietly. All heads turned towards the threshold. Mrs. Hayford’s face looked consumed by guilt. Tommy stood there, his face questioning.
“Tommy!” I said happily. I bounced to him and hissed quietly into his ear, “You didn’t tell me about your dad.”
He paled, “W—what?”

His breath seemed to have been cut short as he realised who Mr. Hayford was, a shocked and appalled look slowly etching itself on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but he was at a loss for words. His eyes, the empty, clueless blue, were wide and lost.

“Wha—what are you—who?” he attempted to muster some words. He started shaking, his stance weakening.
“You’ve gotten really handsome and... rather thin, I must say,” Mr. Hayford smiled and opened his arms, “Thomas—”
“Don’t,” Tommy seethed, tone completely changed, his words laced with malice, “Don’t call me that.”

The atmosphere between them oozed hate and anger. It seemed to drop below zero degrees, causing my hairs to stand on end and my skin to break out in goosebumps. Only Mr. Hayford attempted to stay and keep his voice composed.

Mr. Hayford fazed, “But Thomas, my boy—“
“Don’t think you can just come in here,” Tommy yelled angrily, pointing at the floor, “All welcome, and act all fatherly—” he spat the word, “thinking that you can replace him, because you can’t!”
“Tommy, that’s enough.” Mrs. Hayford warned him.
“Thomas—”
“Don’t call me that!” he shrieked, voice rising. I jumped at his tone.
“Tom,” Mr. Hayford corrected himself slowly, “I’m just here to—”
“I don’t want a father,” Tommy said, then dragged his icy blue orbs to meet with the other pair, “And I don’t need one, so you can go and fuck off.”

I cringed at his words but didn’t move away from him.

“Tommy!” Mrs. Hayford said, horrified, “You will mind your language when you are talking to your uncle!”

Uncle?

Mr. Hayford put a hand out, signalling that he was fine. He slowly walked to Tommy, “Tom, I’m not trying to replace your father, but you do realise that he’s not going to come back, right?”
“With all due respect, sir, I think this topic is upsetting him,” I said, folding my arms. I tried to look confident, but it was so painful. I’d never seen Tommy create an outburst of anger, and it hurt me that I couldn’t do anything about it.

His face—I had never seen it so shook up, so hurt. It was like he had been sawn in half, and was being stitched back together, slowly. The look on his face. I never thought I’d ever see it.

Tommy was going to cry.

“Yes, let’s stop,” Mrs. Hayford quickly agreed, oblivious to her son’s emotions, “Tommy, go to your room.”

I was still taking in the fact that Tommy was on the verge of tears when I realised that he was no longer beside me.