Songs For Your Mother

man with a shaved head, baggy jeans, leather jacket and big boots, walks up the pathway with a bag in either hand and a bag under each arm. He puts the bags down beside Luke. He then looks to me, nods, and starts to walk down the path as if this were all perfectly standard and that delivering children and their possessions to random houses in North London on Saturday mornings was something that happened all the time. It’s like I ordered the kid on Amazon Prime and he came with a free Transformer toy and an entire wardrobe.
‘That’s weird, Luke; it looks like that man is dropping you off. Do you know who you’re coming to see?’ I ask.
‘Mommy said I was going to stay with my daddy.’
The needle on my weirdness radar is now banging the edge of the dial hard. It’s making all kinds of whirring noises, and the red light is definitely flashing. Something is seriously wrong here. I’m envisioning a scenario where police officers are questioning me. I can see them asking me about my motives and how I first came into contact with Child L. I imagine telling them that all I did was open the door and find him standing there. Somehow, they will not believe me. They will want the full story even as I explain to them that this is the full story, and that my only objective on this Saturday morning was to take an unenthusiastic Rachel to breakfast. What I really don’t need right now is random children.
What I do need are answers, and quickly. This whole child thing is escalating ridiculously fast. First, there was a child and a pile of bags, and the child is still here, and there still appears to be no parent in sight.
‘Did she? Hmmm, the thing is I know the woman who lives in the downstairs flat and the one upstairs, and they definitely don’t have kids.’
I walk out of the house calling out after the guy with the shaved head. The path is wet and scattered with early September leaves, and although I have no shoes or socks, I don’t care. A black London taxi is parked a short way along. I can see the man grabbing yet more bags. A blonde woman is standing next to the cab. The big guy, who I am guessing is the taxi driver, puts the last couple of bags by the woman’s feet. The two of them are smiling and laughing. The man walks around to the driver’s side and gets in and sits there.
It’s only then that the woman turns around and, although she is ten metres or so away from me, I would recognise her anywhere. Luke is definitely no tiny Mormon. I might be standing barefoot on a damp pavement in North London, but it makes no difference. I’m rushing at speed back to a bar in Santa Cruz almost six years ago. She’s barely changed, her blonde hair is tied up, and she is dressed for the season in jeans and a small black jacket. She stands there looking at me and she doesn’t smile, and she doesn’t look at all pleased to see me. In fact, if I were to sum up her expression, I would say she looks pissed off. I am seriously confused here, and it’s still early, it’s Saturday, and I want it all to stop.
‘Josie,’ I say shrugging and offering my hands out.
‘Break-Up Guy,’ she says.
I remember when she said that in the bar where I met her and, more importantly, Lauren. It was funny back then, the three of us joked about it. From the look on her face, it isn’t that funny anymore. I ask her the immediate and unsettling question.
‘What are you and your child doing here?’
‘He isn’t mine,’ Josie says.
As soon as Josie says this, I know that the child is Lauren’s and, after that, I don’t understand anything that’s going on here. Josie walks towards me, still unsmiling and puts her bags down. She takes a package from one of the bags and turns it over, showing it to me. It’s a large padded envelope, and it has Johnny Clarke written on it. This is even more unsettling because that’s my name. Worse still, it has my address on it as well. This is all so strange that I don’t even know where to start. This whole scenario appears to be hurtling at a terrifying rate toward a mind-blowing conclusion. To quote another Luke, ‘I have a very bad feeling about this’, and I don’t like where this is heading. That is the conclusion I’ve reached. This shit is leading somewhere, and I’m not going to like it. The envelope is another sign of escalation. First the child and the bags, then the big man with a shaved head and Josie, and now a big brown envelope with my name on it, which Josie offers to me.
‘This is for you. You should take it,’ Josie says.
I make no effort to take the envelope. This strikes me an entirely sensible approach given how fast this situation is moving.
‘Says who?’ I ask.
This is, I know, a stupid thing to say, and I wish I hadn’t said it, as I know the answer to this question. I don’t want to speak the name although it’s too late. The syllables have already formed in my head. The name is falling in an unfamiliar fashion from my lips. It might have been a long time since I said her name aloud, but she’s often been on my mind. I’ve contemplated everything that was lost and what might have been many times.
‘Who do you think?’ Josie says contemptuously.
‘Lauren,’ I say.
Josie nods at me. ‘Yeah, you’re not quite as dumb as you look, are you?’
And there’s something flat and sad about the way she says this that tells me she doesn’t like this situation at all, which makes two of us, although I suspect for different reasons.