Bright and Dangerous Objects Read online

  “Oh yes, that space,” he says. “I like space. I like trucks and stegosauruses and questions too.”

  “Questions?”

  “Yes.” He begins putting on his pyjama bottoms. “I’ve got a question for you. How big is a stegosaurus’s brain?”

  I perch on the end of his bed. “This big?” I ask, stretching my arms wide apart, doing the old grown-up trick of pretending I think something is much bigger than it really is. My outstretched arms almost touch the walls on each side of his room. It’s not much smaller in here than a saturation chamber, which would sleep six adults.

  “Dummy. It’s the size of a Ping-Pong ball!” Nike leaps onto the bed, giggling. I hope he’s not getting hyper.

  “Come on, pup,” I say. “Under the covers.” I prop him up with pillows and hand him his mug.

  Nike scrapes the wrinkled skin off the top of the cocoa with his finger. “I like eating the skin,” he says, sucking his fingertip, and then downing his entire drink in two goes. He grins and shows me his teeth, a brown scummy film smeared across them.

  “Okay, mister,” I say. “Story time.” I think back to the stories my dad used to tell me. They seem so complicated when I try and remember them now. I’m going to have to invent something from scratch.

  “This is a story about an astronaut,” I begin. “An astronaut who decides to live in outer space.”

  Nike wriggles under the covers and looks up at me expectantly.

  “The astronaut—who is called Rik—doesn’t have a wife or children. He’s always been too consumed by his work to have time for that sort of thing. One day, Rik tells NASA that he wants to go and live on the moon. He says that he might even like to start a colony there. Of course, NASA is very excited by the proposition. They tell Rik that he deserves to have dreams as big as this one. What’s more, they have the power to make his dreams come true.”

  The rocket hasn’t even left the launchpad yet, but Nike begins to snore. I slowly count down from ten to zero.

  16

  “So good of you to pop up and see your old man,” says my dad, for the hundredth time since I arrived. He turns to his carer. “Reveka, show Sol that thing you showed me last night.”

  Reveka gives my father a definite look. “It’s really not so great,” she says. “Just something my kid showed me.” Reveka has hunched shoulders, and a mouth that’s reluctant to smile. She’s probably very good for my father.

  My dad is a scoundrel and a womaniser. If his boasts are true, then roughly three-quarters of his carers have ended up in bed with him. Never refers to them as girlfriends, though. It’s easier to end a business relationship.

  “Go on,” my dad urges.

  “Whatever it is, I’d love to see it,” I say politely, wondering how much longer we all have to sit around the kitchen table before I get a cuppa. I know I should offer to make one myself, but even though I grew up in this house, I feel as if I’m a guest these days.

  It’s comforting to be here, in any case. This 1930s semidetached home still has the same kitchen cabinets that my mother installed. Her magnolia brushstrokes still adorn some of the walls. And although the house is close to a part of Bristol that has recently become a hipster haven, it’s thankfully positioned a good forty-minute walk away from the micropubs and coffee roasters. Here, the houses still flaunt grey pebbledash and uPVC front doors. They’re not decorated in the bright colours that Bristol is famous for. I’m not ready for my childhood to be hidden behind those colours just yet.

  “It’s a trick,” my dad tells me, and I realise I’ve been staring into space. “With fridge magnets. Go and fetch ’em, Reveka.” It’s good to see him happy. Takes years off him. Even though he’s still got all his own hair—a thick and lustrous brown— there was a period of time last year when I began to refer to him as “elderly.” I’m sure he was depressed, though he never admitted it. And I never built up the courage to ask him.

  Reveka sighs as she goes over to the fridge. She peels two flat magnets off the door and comes back to the table.

  My dad elbows me. “Wait till you see this. Hurry up, Reveka, doll.”

  It’s hard to get an idea of my dad’s good side if you spend only ten minutes in his company. Last night, though, while I was babysitting Nike, it hit me: my dad did a good job bringing me up. He protected me from the grief that crouched in the corners of our house. And he told stories that made me feel like I had the power to achieve great things.

  I was so keen to speak to him last night that I barely even stopped to hear Anouk tell me how her class had gone.

  “Lots of stretching,” she told me. “Very relaxing.”

  I got out my phone before I’d even left the house. The first thing I said when my dad answered was: “I miss you.” I don’t think I’ve ever told him that before.

  “Okay, so here’s a couple of magnets,” says Reveka. “As you can see, they’re just ordinary fridge magnets.”

  I humour her and take a good look. One has a picture of Prague on it. The other says “Fuck fibromyalgia.”

  Reveka turns them over, then places the shiny black sides together. “If you go like this, they move up and down really easily.” She slides them against each other in a vertical motion. “But if you go the other way, like this”—she slides them back and forth horizontally—“they get a bit stuck. Try it.”

  I take the magnets and rub them against one another as Reveka did. They keep catching, making a small clicking noise. “Eh?” says my dad. “How about that?”

  Reveka takes the magnets back to the fridge and reattaches them. “Fuck fibromyalgia” is upside down. “It’s not really a trick,” she says. “It’s just the way fridge magnets are made.”

  “Because of where the poles are,” says my dad, eyeing up Reveka’s behind. “They make ’em in strips. Good, innit?”

  My reaction is a noise somewhere between “mmm” and “oh.” “Moh.”

  “She’s good with tricks, is Reveka.” Dad gives Reveka a wink, and she rolls her eyes.

  I scrape back my chair. “Tea, anyone?”

  Reveka’s expression changes from amusement to horror. “Oh no, I forgot. I’ll make the drinks. Why don’t you two go and sit in the living room?”

  My dad stands with a groan, and I help him out into the hall. As soon as we’re clear of the doorway, he gives me a conspiratorial smile. “Come this way,” he whispers, opening the door to the garage. “Don’t tell Reveka I brought you in here, eh?”

  I shrug. “All right.”

  My dad has had to give up welding as a career, but the garage still looks like a haven of industry. In the centre of the room, a coatrack with hooks made of horseshoes is in midconstruction.

  “She encourages me to do it,” he says, gesturing towards the kitchen. “But she doesn’t like me coming in here when it’s cold. Given me a new lease of life though, it has, getting back into it.” He runs his fingers along one of the horseshoes on the coatrack. “Gets everywhere, this rust.”

  As well as suffering from fibromyalgia and having undergone spine fusion surgery, my dad’s also blind in one eye. The year before I was born, he was cutting a pipe and some slag flew in. You’d think he’d have learnt his lesson and worn goggles after that, but I recall him suffering from arc eye—sunburn of the retina—several times while I was growing up. He had to use artificial tears, which always struck me as ironic, because he used to cry so many real ones.

  Dad picks up a pink manila folder off his worktop and waves it in the air. “Anyway, this is why I’ve brought you in here. I was having a clear-out the other day and found this old thing in the filing cabinet. Some stuff I kept from your mum’s desk. Maybe you’d like to keep it? Sentimental value or whatever.”

  I take the folder. “Really? This was Mum’s? You don’t mind me keeping it?”

  Dad’s mouth contorts into a strange upside-down grin. “Nah. I won’t be around forever. You have it, kiddo. Probably total crap anyway.” I wonder why he always has to do that: cat-a
strophise, hyperbolise. Keepsakes are crap. Disappointments are disasters. He’s never ill, he’s utterly fucked.

  “Thanks, Dad.” I press the folder to my chest. “I’d love to have it.”

  “We’ll go and sit in the warm now, eh?” We trudge back into the house.

  Reveka is perched on one end of the sofa with three mugs lined up on the coffee table. She tuts. “You’ve been in the garage.”

  “You know, Rev, babe,” my dad says, “I think I’ll go and lie down for a bit.” He gives a melodramatic yawn.

  “Oh, right. Sure.” Reveka springs up out of her seat.

  “Reveka’s tucking me in, pup,” he explains, in an unfamiliar, childlike voice. “We’ll be out later on, in time for dinner. You’ll be all right, won’t you?”

  Before I have the chance to answer, he and Reveka are gone, leaving me with three undrunk cups of tea. I try to push the thought that maybe they’ve gone to have sex out of my mind.

  I take my drink upstairs, stopping briefly in the hallway to look at the old oak bookcase. Dad’s had this thing since before I was born. Barely a scratch on it. The books on the shelves aren’t in such good condition, though. Almost all of them were Mum’s. Organised alphabetically: Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke. Dad told me that Mum used to read them in the bath. As a girl, I would run my fingertips over the pages. Warped by the steam of my mother’s bathwater, they rippled like waves on the sea. Now that I’m older, I’ve thought about borrowing a couple of them—taking them to read while in saturation, perhaps— but I can’t bring myself to do it. I like them here, on the shelves. Dad’s shrine to Mum.

  I go into my room, which I still call my room, even though it’s used for the carers now—well, for the ones that don’t stay in Dad’s room with him, at any rate. I can’t remember which carer it was that redecorated, but it’s the only room in the house that’s completely changed since I lived here. Gone is the toothpaste-green paint I chose for the walls. The Dr. Pepper stain on the carpet in the corner. The Jacques Cousteau poster hanging over the radiator, and the NASA sticker on the skirting board. Now the walls are blue, with curtains and carpet to match.

  I sit on the bed (new mattress) and take a few mouthfuls of tea. It’s very weak. Not worth the wait.

  I put down the mug, then run my fingers over the folder in my lap. I wonder whether my mum bought it. Whether it came in a multicoloured pack, or if she chose pink specifically. Whether she always went for the manila folder style, or if she used ring binders. Most of all, I wonder what I’ll find inside. I almost don’t want to open it, though. It’s like unwrapping a present at Christmas. The anticipation is the best bit.

  I take out the first sheet of paper, marvelling at the fact that it’s at least thirty-four years old. How long does it take for paper to disintegrate? Should I be wearing white gloves? I hold the paper lightly between finger and thumb. It’s perforated down each side, with holes punched into the margins. I’d forgotten about this—what was it called? Something futuristic. Matrix paper?

  The words printed on the page are in a grey Courier New font. They are technical and wise. I don’t understand them at all.

  I pull out the next page and immediately feel as though I’ve hit the jackpot. It’s got handwriting on it. The writing is similar to mine, but a little softer, rounder. There are phrases scrawled in different directions across the page, all in blue ballpoint: “IBM compatible,” “replacing the complex commands of the operating system with plain English,” and “a simple ‘point and click’ technique.” Around the phrases are doodles. No pictures, just shapes. In one corner, there’s a tight honeycomb of hexagons, and in another, my mother has encased a small square inside several larger ones. What can I learn about her from these doodles? She liked shapes. A lot of people doodle faces or animals or the name of the person they love. Not my mum. Her doodles look like the inside of a computer.

  Next, I pull out a sheet of A4 paper. There’s handwriting on this one too. It’s spidery and off-kilter—written while drunk, maybe? Or did it erupt out in a moment of intellectual fervour? It looks like a flow chart. There are mysterious labels inside the boxes: “Dense Forest,” “Drive Bubble Entrance,” “Red Hall,” “Nesting Cage,” and “Melted Spot.” The lines between the boxes are labelled with letters: P, S, A, F, U, and D. Around the edge of the paper, my mum has written cryptic notes: “Put red rod in second red slot in repair room to fix air?” Looks like she was designing her own computer game. Maybe she was designing something for me to play? Here’s an example of her genius, in black ballpoint. I feel light-headed.

  As I reach into the folder to see what’s next, my phone beeps in my pocket. I take it out and look at the screen. Fertile day, my app tells me. Have sex.

  I’d forgotten that my fertile window was coming up. I thought James looked at me awkwardly last night when I told him I was going on this spur-of-the-moment trip. We’ve got only two more cycles before my next dive. Still, not having to do it today is a bit of a relief.

  There are no weird noises coming from downstairs, thank goodness. Dad sleeps in a room off the lounge these days. It used to be the dining room when I was a kid. When I was little, my dad and I used to play a thing we called “pillow talk.” I’d lie by the headboard of his bed, and he would climb under the covers, saying, “Cor, I’m whacked. Time for some shut-eye.” He’d make this big show of settling down for the night, and then he’d lie back on me as I pretended to be his pillow. I’d let him “fall asleep” for a few moments, and then I’d say something and laugh, and he would look around in shock, going: “What? Who said that? It sounded like it was coming from my . . . my pillow! But it can’t be. Pillows don’t talk!” He’d reach behind his head and pretend to plump me up, making me laugh even more, and the cycle would go on and on. Back then, Dad slept only three or four hours a night.

  I put my mum’s folder on the floor and lie back. Have sex, my phone tells me again, and I switch off the reminder. I Google pictures of Irish wolfhounds for a while. Maybe a second dog is what I need. Then, I check my emails. Spam from an estate agent, a weekly fitness report from MapMyRun, and then this: an email from the Mars Project. The subject heading is “Your entry.”

  “Dear Ms. Solvig Dean . . . pleased to inform you . . . through to the next round of the contest . . . required to attend a conference day at Center Parcs in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire . . .”

  I drop my phone, as if it’s scorching hot, and I look up at the ceiling, where glow-in-the-dark stars were once stuck. I’m not thinking about Irish wolfhounds or childhood games any more. I’m thinking about dark nebulae, giant voids, black holes.

  17

  “Are you sure you can handle this?” I ask James. “You could always go to the café and hang out with the kids.”

  “You’re just nervous you won’t be able to keep up with the robo-leg.” James finishes attaching his running blade and gets out of the car.

  “I’m talking about your heart, mate,” I say, prodding him in the chest. “A couple of Parkruns here and there aren’t exactly gonna prepare you for this.”

  “Pfft, it’s a mere 17K,” he retorts. “I’m worried about you because you’re twice as likely to get blisters as me. Mate.” He grabs his water bottle out of the trunk.

  I bare my teeth at him, then put in my earphones and start running towards the coastal path. We leave Kynance Cove and head east towards Cadgwith. It’s only May, but the sky is cloudless and blue. A perfect day to be out on the Lizard Peninsula. I’m glad James suggested it. His running prosthesis has been gathering dust since Christmas, but now he’s getting active to boost our chances of conception. It’s good to see him being physical. I feel more attracted to him when he exercises.

  The Lizard Peninsula is a Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. This part of the county really gets James going. On the way over here, he explained to me that the rocks on the peninsula are made of oceanic crust.

  “Speaking of crusts,” I replied, “let’s get pizza tonight
.”

  James slowed to take a bend in the road. “The word pizza is over a thousand years old,” he pontificated.

  I’ve downloaded a podcast to listen to on today’s run. It’s part of a science series run by two guys in Colorado. This episode is called “Women in Space.” I haven’t listened to any of the other episodes in this series before, but there are some intriguing titles such as: “How to Grow Skin” and “The Truth about Crows.”

  “Hey, Elijah,” says a guy in my earphones. I take a quick look behind me. James gives me a wave. I increase my pace.

  “Good to see you again, Powell.”

  Irritatingly, Elijah and Powell start talking about their weekends, and this goes on for some time. To summarise: Elijah went to a flea market with his wife, but they didn’t buy anything. Powell went to a gig and drank too many Keystone Ices. Today Elijah and Powell are drinking Cougar Pale Ale, as supplied by Elijah, whose house they are recording in.

  “Let’s talk about women in space,” says Elijah, cutting short Powell’s story about where he woke up after the gig.

  “Oh right, that’s what we’re talking about,” laughs Powell, taking an audible gulp of beer. “Well, Colorado is an aerospace mecca, so we had to talk about this stuff at some point, right? And we thought we’d give it a twist by talking about women in space.”

  “The first woman in space was the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova,” says Elijah. “She orbited the earth forty-eight times in 1963.”

  “It was a man who came up with the idea of sending a woman to space, right?” Powell chimes in. He then affects a bad Russian accent: “Sergey Korolyov.”

  “That’s right. And there were these super-strict criteria. The women had to be skydivers, under thirty, less than five foot seven, under 154 pounds . . .”