The Most Dense Star

The rise and fall of the knocker on the aluminium letter box has the softness of someone holding their breath, before breathing again. Sometimes the wind does that. The heavy entry door bangs open, shaking the walls, dust drifting lazily down catching the unseeing electrical light on each landing, and the wind rushes playfully in and chaps letterboxes all the way up the three flights of stairs in our tenement block. My head’s cocked to the side. I figure it’s somebody for Gary, or even his girlfriend Sandra. During the day when their kids are at school, when they’re not shouting at each other or making love they play music to me through the walls. Sometimes one of his friends scuttles up the stairs like a vertically inclined and denim-suited cockroach and chaps my door by mistake. It’s an easy mistake to make. Although the previous tenant had scratched 2/2 through to the undercoat of the dull green paint on the door, a modest orange penumbra, all but the postman would need to trace the pattern out with their fingers. Neither Gary nor me have our names on the door. We’re fussy that way. My legs sprawl out in front of the gas fire that has a red sticker on it saying it’s condemned. I take no blame for that. I’m sitting on a fusty green couch. It’s a comfortable two-seater. I like it because of the natural light. There’s a window behind it in my studio flat. I pile up books, face down to keep the pages open, and newspapers find a space on the arm of the couch. There’s a seat for me and one seat for my books, which seems fair, but they’re always tumbling over to my side of the couch and bullying me into picking them up. I’ve no sense about these things. I’ve got a Tortora and Grabowski, The Principles of Anatomy and Physiology sitting on my glass topped desk, wedged open at Chapter 2, ‘The Chemical Level of Organisation.’ My older brother, Stephen, had stolen it for me when he found out I’d be doing a course in Mental Handicap Nursing. It was his way of helping out and saying he was proud of me. But he was also showing off, telling me how he’d walked into Waterstones with a piece of silver paper and came out with the swag. It’s a beautiful book. It would have taken a seventh century Irish monk a lifetime to write and illustrate it. I can’t read it because I’m meant to. I’ve already failed one exam. I’ll get kicked out. I’m not a monk. It’s a few weeks after New Year. We drew with the Huns at Ibrox, but my body is still on holiday and I’m sure they’ll win the league. Fuck them.

The carpet has that shiny tonsured look by the bed-settee. There are rat runs into the kitchen for tea and out into the hall for the bathroom. I hurdle up to answer the door, figuring I’ll save time by going to the bathroom afterwards.

I pull open the front door. It doesn’t open very far. There’s a practically empty wardrobe behind it with all my good clothes in it, but I already know that’s the way of protons, neutrons and electrons -- and the universe is full of black holes. I look out.

Our Jo is standing on the top landing, near where Gary chains three push-bikes to the railings. His door slinks open. Our Jo with her round silver framed specs, shoulder length hair, crumpled coat, grey skirt and sensible shoes is obviously not up to steal his bikes. His door shushes shut. It doesn’t take a scientist to know that Our Jo is in the wrong place as the wrong time.

I’m clenching my stomach muscles and holding my breath. Our Jo’s neck ducks down a bit as she leans forward to peer at me through her glasses. I open the door to let her in. She dances around me and makes her way into the living room, but she doesn’t sit down. I already know, but try to buy some time by following her though into the big room and acting normal.

‘You want tea?’ I look through to the kitchen, play with a smile.

She purses her lips and shakes her head that she doesn’t.

‘Is it mum?' There’s a crackle in my voice. ‘She’s not been well.’ I’m preparing, driving nails into myself, with every word.

Our Jo clutches at her fingers. ‘No.’

I say matter-of-factly. ‘Da’ then.’

‘No.’ There’s tears in her eyes. ‘Stephen.’

I look at her face and try to work out the answers. He’d been on the drink and off the drink. Separated from his girlfriend. Back with his girlfriend. He’d been a pain in the arse over the New Year, back in Dalmuir, claiming he was ‘aff it for good.’ Then, ‘just pints, nae halfs.’ It never worked out that way. That was like asking a cloud not to rain. I'm breathing hard. ‘Whit happened?

‘Car accident.’

Our Jo moves forward and I give her a brotherly hug. She’s crying and can’t see my face. My jaws clench to keep in the anger. I think he’s probably done it on purpose to spite everybody. I can’t imagine what mum will be going through.

Our Jo’s dinky little car is parked outside. It’s only a five minute drive. I look out of the window and try to feel something, but I’m struck dumb as a fridge freezer and feel nothing. We pass Our Lady of Loreto, then our pub, The Horse and Barge, facing up across the road from each other, trying to catch the same old souls. We pass the Scout hall, then St Stephen’s church. We can see that from the back garden of mum’s house. I know Stephen will be buried there.

Mum meets us at the door. She’s crying as I knew she would. I fling my arms around her and make cooing noises. She strokes my face like a blind person. ‘Ah Jack.’ Her love spills out into words too heavy to hold.

‘Where’s Da?’ I ask my sister.

She whispers. ‘In his room.’

‘Best place for him,’ I reply.

Mum clings onto my hand as we go into the living room. We’ve company. Hughie and Ann from across the street are sitting on the chunky couch behind the door. He gets up from his cushioned seat beside his wife

‘I’m very sorry.’ Hughie shakes my hand.

I’m hesitant. Ann catches something of my nervousness, half rises and then sits down again and nods as if we’re being introduced for the first time. Phyllis, my other sister, has the coveted seat near the window and pointed at the TV. We’re adults now and she gives it up without a fight, her eyes red-rimmed. She passes me to go into the kitchen which is off the living room and another room for my mum to cry in. Our Jo is already through there with her.

Canon Broderick is in his uniform black sitting in Da’s chair near the fire. It was also Stephen’s chair, where he brooded and chain smoked away all those long years of our adolescence, with a fixed-faced determination. Canon Broderick says ‘Well Jack.’ He smiles, but he’s not got a face suited to smiling. He’s got a pallor suited to priesting and face suited to funerals. I nod in reply. He looks away. One eye looks slightly different, as if it’s made of dark glass, but I know it isn’t. ‘It’s a terrible thing,’ he offers.

‘A car accident.’ I move across and sit at the seat near the window.

Canon Broderick is taken aback. He leans forward. ‘No. Not a car accident.’

Our Jo pops her head in from the kitchen. ‘You want tea?’ She asks me. Then she does her hostess and asks Canon Broderick and Hughie and Anne.

I’m glad when Hughie gets up. He soft spoken, apologetic. 'We’ll just go.' Ann gets up and stands next to him. She nips into the kitchen to let my mum know they’re leaving. Mum appears at the kitchen door, clutching a handful of toilet roll, for her nose, for her eyes. All of her is leaking.

‘If you need anything…’ Hughie says standing at the living room door.

Our Jo sees them out. Phyllis comes flouncing back into the living room and flings herself on the couch in the seats they’ve vacated.

I turn round to ask her. ‘Does Bod know?’ He’s the youngest, in Falkirk with his girlfriend and kids, and lives miles away.

‘Brian is away to tell him.’ Phyllis says.

I’m a bit confused, becuase Bod's first name is Bryan. Then I'm relieved I don’t need to do it, because it's Jo's husband Brian she means. ‘Whit happened to Stephen then? I thought it was a car accident.’ There’s a nip in my eyes and in my voice now.

‘Kinda,’ she says. ‘He’d been to The Horse and Barge…didn’t want to drive all the way to Easterhouse, or get done for sleeping in his car again. So he drove up to the house he’d been allocated in Parkhall, backed into the garage…the engine was still running in the morning. He was trying to keep warm.’

I crumple and cry. I’ve been keeping it in for too long.

Later I get the keys for Stephen’s new house and his new life. Parkhall is all trees and grass and big gardens. He’d have liked that. I walk up to the garage his car is still parked in. It’s tight, very tight. I couldn’t park a car in that small a garage in daylight. He did it in the dark, going backwards. Two bits of wood cross over and are dislodged at the front of the garage facing the house. Carbon monoxide would have escaped through there. But if the garage door was shut over…I put my hand on the roof of the car. ‘You’re a stupid bastard,’ I tell my brother. Not that he needs telling.