Sean Happens 5

Mum sent Sean up to the Potter house to apologise. When she’d heard what happened, ‘I’m black mortified,’ she’d said.

She’d waved away the idea of The Spider visiting their home with lip-smacking relish. ‘I usually put a spider in a glass and put it outside,’ she explained.  

Dad seemed beaten down and went to his bed.

Sean no longer felt he could just walk into the Potter house. He rang the bell. Miss Dill answered with a hug. The brandy fumes from her breath felt like scorch marks on his cheeks. ‘We weren’t expecting you so soon,’ said Miss Dill. ‘I’m not properly dressed…I’m dressed like an old woman.’  

Her makeup had begun to crack and crumble from her forehead to her unpainted lips.

Sean laughed because he felt nervous and didn’t know how to answer. Miss Dill, he understood, was a man dressed as a woman. He’d heard other word for it: Poof! Faggot! Bum-Basher! Queer. But he’d always thought of Mr Martin and his sister as being ancient.  

Mr Martin came to collect both of them. Many of the rooms were candle-lit. The flickering tongues made the house seem ancient yet more homely. They went through to the library. Books still lay in unopened wooden crates. Mr Martin ran his fingertips along the shelves. A wistful expression on his face.

Miss Dill settled on a firm leather couch, her dress overflowing the constraints of her body like a giant tropical bird, shifting its legs. Mr Martin settled on a wing-back chair facing her, his arm around Sean’s back as he squeezed in beside him.

Miss Dill’s smile stretched too long and her hands searched for a drink on the table, which wasn’t there, which made her even more excitable than usual. ‘You see, my dear,’ she said, breathless, ‘under certain conditions I can be two places at once’.

Sean nodded. She did seem to be everywhere and you couldn’t help but look at her, which made it worse, because most folk, including his mum, had mocked her.

She tittered, ‘It often means that the simplest relationship quick dissolves into a ménage à trois, whether or not I’d like to, there’s often more of me that goes around. Some lovers are ready for that. Sadly, some remain to more tight-knit ideas about gang bangs and multiple orgasms.’

Mr Martin made harrumphing noises as he cleared his throat. ‘What Miss Dill means Sean is when you look in the mirror, you can see yourself, can’t you?’

Sean nodded, unwilling to commit to the strange direction the conversation was going, which made his face flush.

‘Well,’ said Mr Martin. ‘It’s quite simple. Sometimes the person in the mirror wanders away and does his own thing.’ He pulled a hipflask from his pocket and took a swig before passing it to Miss Dill. He was sweating. ‘When you’re a bit older, you’ll understand that particles in quantum mechanics can be in two places at once. Miss Dill has just scaled that up a bit.’

Miss Dill, in whatever drunken state she was in, failed to give back the hip flask. ‘You’re confusing our Gabriel with all that talk of superpositions, electrons and atoms.’

‘I am,’ admitted Mr Martin. ‘I often do that, without meaning to.’ He rambled on about Tibetan Buddhist masters and yogis and their “rainbow bodies” that could see and be in many places. He flung in some name, such as such as Rumi and Ibn Arabi that Sean hadn’t heard of. Saints such as Padre Pio that were able to be in many places at once and deliver the same sermon in many languages, but the same voice. Others that had been in heaven and hell.

Sean perked up a bit with that. ‘What’s hell like?’ he asked Miss Dill.

She giggled coquettishly. ‘You’ll find out when you’re old enough to drink. It’s hellish!’

Mr Martin cleared his throat, patting him on the back. ‘He’s already had a drink,’ he reminded her.

She tipped the empty flask to her lips and made a face. ‘Fiddlesticks.’

‘Remember,’ said Mr Martin, brightening, ‘when those two awful yobs tried to surprise us?’

‘Yeh,’ said Sean. ‘Sorry about that. They’re only my cousins cause of my dad.’

Mr Martin held up a hand. ‘Well, remember when Miss Dill stood behind the large oafish one with the stun-gun.’

‘They were both fat and oafish,’ shrieked Miss Dill.

‘Kinda,’ admitted Sean.

‘Well, do you remember her being in the house and out of the house?’

Sean took a deep breath, ‘Kinda,’ but his brain wouldn’t let him take the leap. He couldn’t really remember both, although he tried to.

The electricity came on and they blinked at each other, smiling. Mr Martin’s eye suddenly narrowed as he observed the dust and dirt scattered across the wooden flooring where cement had been trailed inside.

‘Let’s get a drink,’ cried Miss Dill. ‘Some champagne and caviar to celebrate.’

‘We have no caviar,’ said Mr Martin, holding a hand over his mouth as he yawned. ‘Besides, I’ll need to get this young man home.’

‘He can see himself home.’ Miss Dill ducked her head down and stared at me as if he was hiding something. Her dresses moving in sympathy, making a swishing noise as she stood up. ‘I’m sure there is caviar.’

‘There’s not,’ replied Mr Martin.

‘But we’ve already established, dear brother, there’s no facts. Only geometric possibilities moving through our bodies. I’m sure we can magic some up.’

‘Balderdash, but we do have some nice cheeses and some Ritz biscuits.’

‘I’m easily undone,’ cried Miss Dill.

Sean wandered away to use the toilet and to get a better look at the house. When he came back they were perched on high seats in the kitchen. He looked at them, with the light behind them as if they were two kids, in bright colours, playing at being an adult.

‘I need to get back,’ he said.

‘Back where?’ Miss Dill stared at him, wiping her cracked lipstick mouth as if she’d forgotten who he was. ‘Oh Gabriel, my child’ she said. ‘You have no home. Blow your horn and let that be your home.’