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Zog Zhour Oush
by Bruce Costello My father taught me to speak Martian while walking me to school. “Inkelsplunk finkeldork vort,” he’d say, and I’d reply “Oinkdok glingal gobwad,” or whatever. Martian talk came easily when I was five or six, and Dad seemed to understand what I meant. Maybe that’s why I’ve always turned to him when my life’s gone to crap. The English language lacks a lot of words. For instance, there’re no words to convey how I felt after I fell madly in love with a man who loved me more than I’d ever thought possible – until I turned into a drama queen and drove him away. It was a warm, humid day when I visited Dad in the camping ground where he lived. A leaden sky hung low overhead, and angry clouds were gathering. His patch was at the far end by some pines where permanent residents hung out in an assortment of caravans, mostly with solid annexes and tiny gardens with low picket fences. It felt the same to be with Dad as it did when I was a little girl. I just sat on the caravan steps and looked up at him. Looked and said nothing. His hair had turned white, his face was wrinkled and he’d grown a droopy moustache, but his eyes were still bright and attentive. “Flirglish fratol wethgen, Stella?” Dad asked. “Yokkmy blunkawog!” I replied and burst into tears. He put his arm around me. I reminded him I was thirty-five years old. My biological clock was ticking, and I was no nearer to settling down and making him a granddad than I’d ever been. I told him about Kevin, dark-haired and good-looking. “Kevin knew I loved nothing better than a hot bath whenever I got stressed, and often he’d just quietly go and run one for me, set out bubble bath and candles and fluff up a new towel from the laundry.” Dad nodded, smiling. “I’d lie there until my skin started to pucker and then I’d hear his footsteps, followed by a soft knock, and his face would appear around the door. I’d step out and he’d wrap me and gently start patting me dry all over. He was so warm, so loving! I felt like a new woman, sort of restored, but somehow it was all…” “Shhhh,” said Dad, and held me tighter. “My soul He doth restore again and me to walk doth make. Is that how he made you feel? And bored, too?” He was right on both counts. I looked at him wide-eyed. A Bible quotation from Dad? The man never ceased to amaze. He used to be a doctor but gave up. I was just eight at the time and didn’t get told much, but apparently a female patient died and there was a hell of a fuss, involving the Medical Council and the police. In the end, Dad was freed of any blame, but he’d found the whole thing so stressful, he sold his practice and got a job as a builder’s labourer. That was when my mother took off with her boyfriend. He grinned at me. “Flugwug wokklewinket?” “Bang on,” I replied, wiping my eyes. “Dirsy flurpnick thouk.” “Yekwa! Come inside, Stell. I reckon it’s going to start bucketing down soon. I’ll make you a coffee. And you can tell me more about Kevin.” The caravan was old but Dad had put his building skills to good use. He’d insulated the ceiling, upholstered the seats, varnished the wood-grain panels and fitted a heat pump. The kitchen area was a tribute to any man living on his own, spotlessly clean with gas cooker, a gleaming microwave, a tidy Formica bench, and plentiful cupboards. A small table folded back between two squabs and a rolled-up sleeping bag lay on a single bed. Books were crammed on a high shelf around the walls. I told Dad how I’d first met Kevin. He worked for a large pharmaceutical company and often came into the medical practice where I was a receptionist to talk to the doctors about some new drug, or to invite them to one of the wine and cheese functions that he organised and hosted. Usually, stable, successful men didn’t attract me. They just seemed boring. There was something different about Kevin. Even when he was exchanging small talk with me over the counter, while waiting on the doctors, there seemed to be some sort of intensity about his deep blue eyes. I don’t know what it was. It was as if he were looking right into me, actually caring about what he saw, and understanding. I remember once having this crazy impulse to ask him if he spoke Martian. I found Kevin waiting by my car after work one night to ask me out to dinner, and that’s how our relationship began. At the start, it was like a fairytale. I was happier than I’d ever been, and yet it felt strange and unfamiliar after all the conflict and tension I’d had with other men. A few months after we began living together, I started snapping at him, picking fights, making mountains out of molehills. At first I blamed it on PMT, until Kevin pointed out that didn’t square up with the calendar. Dad listened patiently for a long time, then shut his eyes and looked like he was about to nod off. Rain began to fall, softly at first, then beating loudly against the caravan roof as distant thunder rolled closer. “Dad!” I said, after a while, wondering if he was unwell. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?” “Not really,” he replied, looking at me keenly. “But I’ve been listening to what you haven’t been saying.” “What?” “You messed up your best relationship yet and aren’t telling me why.” “I got bored.” “I mean the real reason.” “I don’t know!” “You do,” he said. “We’ve talked about it in the past. Would you like another cup of coffee?” “Dad! You’re not being very helpful!” “I won’t always be around to help with your problems, Stella.” Dad was painting the tow bar on his caravan when I went back to visit a week later. He looked up and smiled, but when I got out of the car, there was an awkwardness between us. We went inside and sat across the table from each other. “Coffee?” he said. “No thanks. I had one not long ago.” He picked at a bit of paint on his fingernail and then looked me straight in the eye. “Stella, do you ever see your mother these days?” “Haven’t seen her for years. I don’t want to.” “Why’s that?” “Because of what she did. Isn’t that enough of a reason?” “Maybe. Maybe not.” “She abandoned us!” “That’s not entirely true, Stella. You were a kid. You felt abandoned and unloved by your mother…maybe that’s the key to this.” Dad sat back on his seat, placed his hands on the table, and stared at me. I gazed back at him, noticing how tired he looked. He spoke, slowly. “After the death of my patient when you were little, I got off the charges…but I shouldn’t have. I knew I’d made a major diagnostic error. They just couldn’t pin it down to simple cause and effect, given that the patient had other serious issues going on at the time. And I had a good lawyer. Your mother was very upset with me, understandably so. The fact that she was working as my practice nurse made it worse. Then somebody else came into her life, quite by chance.” He began to cough, cleared his throat noisily and continued. “It just happened. If she abandoned anyone, it was me, not you. It broke her heart to leave you behind, but she did it for your own good. We both agreed I’d be the better parent. She loved you, but simply wasn’t a motherly type. For all that, she kept in good contact with you and did her very best.” I nodded, slowly. Dad had tried to explain all this before, but I hadn’t been ready to take it in. Now I began remembering weekends and holidays with mum and her new husband and lots of fun. What a hard time I’d given them. And how patient they’d been with me. “I ran into your Aunty Hilary at the supermarket not long ago,” Dad continued, after a while. “She told me your mother had been really depressed since her husband died. He was a good man.” “Oh,” I said, fighting back tears. “Apparently your mum had started a great job as Head Nurse at Downtown Medical Centre, but she’d only been there for a month, when she had to go off on long term sick leave.” Dad blew his nose. “You know, shit happens and human beings can’t always make good things happen.” He paused, staring into an empty coffee cup. “Or at least, I should speak for myself. I can’t make good things happen.” He frowned and fell silent. “I’ve often thought I’d like to ring your mother and say hullo. But I can’t even bring myself to do that.” “Guess you and I are pretty much the same, Dad. I’ve wanted to ring Kevin and tell him how I feel, but I just can’t. He’s rung me a few times, but all I do is get angry with him.” “Zog zhor oush. The universe provides,” Dad said, patting my hand. “There’re plenty of good things out there. Maybe we just need to not stop them happening.” Kevin rang my flat a few days later and this time he got me at a weak moment. Now I’m not into psycho-babble, self-awareness and that sort of stuff, and I don’t read self-help books, but one thing I do know about myself is, I find it’s much easier to be angry than sad. When you’re angry, you’ve got some power, but when you’re sad, you’re vulnerable. I was sitting mindlessly in front of the TV, feeling miserable, worried about Dad because he’d looked so ill, and wondering how Mum was. When I heard Kevin’s voice, I burst into tears and couldn’t stop blubbering. He told me to cry as much as I wanted to and he’d wait till I was able to speak. When I finally managed to get some words out, I told him about Dad looking ill, and Mum being depressed. And I went on to say how I’d opened up to Dad about the two of us and how Dad seemed to think it was something to do with me and Mum. It all poured out. “If you got the idea your own mother didn’t love you,” Kevin said, when I eventually stopped talking, “you might’ve ended up thinking nobody else could. That might explain a few things, don’t you think?” His words had a familiar ring. “I’m coming around to see you,” he said. We talked all night, huddled together on the sofa. At six thirty, he kissed me lightly on the lips and went back to his flat. I didn’t see him again for a few days. He rang several times and we had some more deep conversations, but he said he was too tired to visit, being unusually busy with his job, having “some new contacts to follow up on and a longstanding dispute to resolve between some tricky customers.” He called around on Saturday morning. After a cuddle and a chat, we went in my car to meet Dad. When we pulled up at the caravan, Dad was standing outside sunning himself in shorts, showing his hairy chest. The tiredness had gone. “Good to see you again,” Dad said, giving Kevin a hug. “Thanks for everything.” “You two’ve met already?” Dad turned to me and said “Zog zhor oush,” then winked at Kevin and said, “The universe provides.” “It certainly does,” a familiar voice said as Mum stepped out of the caravan with open arms. “Zog zhor oush!” I shouted to Dad. “Yekwa!” he replied. “Yekwa!” |
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