Emyr walked across the carpark toward the school gates. It was quieter now that the last of the students had left. A lone bird called out and Emyr shivered as if hit by a memory. A cool breeze worried around the tarmac, drifting between the parked cars and the dark green shrubbery. It pushed at the sweet wrappers and rattled the half empty drinks cans. It teased the fallen leaves, tempting them into a lazy dance. Circles of late autumn flashed against the wet tarmac, in a delicate chorus line. The bird called out again and Emyr stopped walking. It felt as if he were being pulled into a dream, like this was the beginning of some old song, a childhood ditty his mother used to hum. The breeze strengthened and the line of leaves danced across the carpark towards Emyr’s feet.
“Emyr? You in there?” Meera appeared in front of him, the breeze wandered off. “You, okay? You look weird.”
“Sorry?”
“Like you seen a ghost or something! Anyway, I was asking if you would like a lift to the station,” Meera’s eyes widened as she tilted her head with the kind of indulgence usually kept for that special pupil.
“Oh, no. Thanks, but I’m good,” Emyr blushed.
“It’s no trouble.”
“I know and thank you but I er, I have a session. With the counsellor.”
“Oh…”
“Yeah…”
“Okay. Well, that is good. I am glad you are doing that. I hope it’s helping,” Meera placed her hand gingerly on Emyr’s shoulder and dropped it just before it made contact.
“It is.”
“Great!” uncertainty crossed Meera’s face followed by a need to find something profound to say. Something meaningful and comforting. She smiled, “That is really, great. Great! So, I’ll see you in the morning then.”
“Yeah.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
The office was warm and professionally comfortable. From among the calm array of carefully curated ornaments on the shelves a clock ticked out its steady beat. Outside the last rays of the sun pushed their way past the brittle line of trees and caught the threads of a damaged cobweb stretched across the window pane.
“I feel stuck. I don’t know how else to say it. I’m stuck. I don’t know where to go. I have no destination, no direction. I don’t know. I’m not so much stuck as, how do I describe it? Lost sounds too dramatic. Rudderless sounds too off beat. Drifting? Maybe.”
The sun cast long shadows, insect legs sctratching up the beige walls, Emyr turned away from the shadows and looked into Emma’s placid face.
“I am alone. Alone. God, that is such a small word to describe something so all encompassing,” Emyr frowned. “Alone feels heavy, old, itchy and dusty. It smells familiar and odd, like an old blanket, like a memory. Like a half-forgotten tune. Something I used to sing along to all the time and now I can’t remember for the life of me why. It’s all too close, all of the time. It’s stuffy under the blanket. It’s blocking out the light, cutting off the air, but it’s too heavy to move on my own.”
A spider emerged at the bottom corner of the web and started to pick its way up the broken threads.
“I’m surrounded by people all the time. All day. People. At work, my colleagues, my pupils. Hustle and bustle all day long, noise and life and everything. At home, there’s Noah of course. And Aunty Carol won’t leave me alone. Both of them actually – tag teaming it: phone calls, messages, WhatsApp-ing me, sending me reels and memes and god knows what. A constant stream of content. Checking in without checking in,” Emyr looked at the question in Emma’s eyes. “I can feel them measuring the amount of time I take to respond. Factoring in whether or not I’m in work, or on the train, or whatever. I can feel them on the other end of the data stream. Measuring the amount of elapsed time, gauging my mental state in minutes and seconds. Trying to work out if I am grieving well or properly or at all. Trying to work out if they need to step in.”
“Is that what’s really happening?”
“I don’t know,” Emyr sighed and looked down at his reflection in the glass coffee table. “Maybe not, not really. It’s just that, whenever I’m with them, any of them, not just Noah or Carol, but Sandy or Hitesh or even Meera, I can see something working behind their eyes. Like they are sizing me up. Kübler-Ross is taped to the back of their eyelids and they are trying to work out where I am on the chart. Is Emyr in denial still, is he in bargaining, anger? Have they gone forward or back? Up or down? Snake or ladder?”
“How does that make you feel?”
How do you think, he looked up pushing away the uncharitable voices, now was not the time. “Angry. Of course. Apologetic, like I owe them an apology for not doing it right. So that makes me feel even angrier.”
“You’ve mentioned that before,” Emma looked back through her notes. “That feeling of not doing something right.”
“Have I?” Emyr hated it when she started to connect things, in ways that always made sense, at least while he was in the room. “Oh. Well, yes, I do think that. I feel like I do most things wrong. Don’t most people though? Feel that way, I mean. We are all making this shit up as we go…”
The spider was almost half way up, its body glistening in the weakening light.
“It’s just that right now I feel I don’t know how to do any of this. I am bad at all of it. I’m a bad son. A bad boyfriend. A bad nephew. Colleague, teacher, friend. A bad queer. A bad musician. A bad, person. Well, no, I am not a bad person. Not a bad person, I am just bad at being a person, right now. I am bad at being a son, a boyfriend, a nephew, all of it. I feel like I’m letting them all down and I can’t even tell them. These are meant to be the people I care most about in the whole world. I should be able to tell them. Shouldn’t I?”
“You don’t owe them anything.”
“Don’t I? Maybe, maybe. I mean a part of me knows that, we have talked about this before, I just can’t shake the feeling that I am letting them down. All of them. That I am letting her down.”
“Her?”
Emyr looked at the clock on the shelves, almost the top of the hour. Outside the spider tied off the last thread and stretched its legs out, testing the new construction.
“Mum. I feel like I am letting her down. If I am not doing this,” Emyr gestured to the room. “properly, then I am letting her down.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“It was nothing. Really. I’ll apologise next time I see him. Simone understands,” Emyr’s other shoe thudded onto the rug. “It’s fine.”
“Emyr.”
“I said it’s fine.”
Emyr watched as Noah started to take of his trousers, fold them and put them on the chair by his side of the bed.
“I want to help you,” Noah took of his sweatshirt, distracting Emyr for an instant. “This isn’t the first time you’ve lashed out at a friend and I need you to know that you can say anything to me. I want to help.”
Emyr looked at Noah. Emyr was drunk, not very clever on a school night but so what. He will simply add this to the list of things he is no good at, he’ll get Emma to add it to her list next week. Noah looked concerned, he was trying his best to hide it but Emyr, even in his current state, could see the signs. The way he kept trying to smile but was worried that it’s not appropriate, the way his fingers fidgeted while he talked.
Anger had coursed up Emyr’s spine like those electrode machines in black and white monster movies. He had almost heard the crackle as the electricity arced from one vertebrae to the next. That is what had almost got him in trouble. Luckily all he had had for Simone was some drunken flailing around and a torrent of snotty tears interspersed with barely coherent babble. Simone is six feet two in his heels with a penchant for big wigs and low-cut dresses that expose his broad and hairy chest. With his strong arms, Simone pulled Emyr into a fierce hug. Emyr smiled as he recalled the smell of Simone’s cheap deodorant and the pinch of the purple sequins against his cheek.
“You are sweet thing Emyr,” Simone squeezed tighter. “You really are a darling, and I feel for you. But use that language with me or any of the other girls again and you and I will have a serious difference of opinion. Understood?”
Emyr tugged at the left leg of his trousers, as he freed this leg he sat down sharply on the bed and stared at his right trouser leg, “I think it will be fine. Water under the thingy.”
Emyr freed his right leg and kicked the trousers across the floor, his whole body sagged, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, the session today was really intense. Maybe the pub wasn’t the best idea.” Emyr reached out and pulled Noah down onto the bed. Emyr remembered the night they first met, too much alcohol then too, and nervousness, flirtation and a sudden, desperate need to kiss. Noah settled into the cwtch and pulled the duvet up from under their tangled feet.
“I’ll do better. I promise,” Emyr kissed Noah’s neck.
“I know, love. I know.”
Emyr quickly fell asleep and as he dreamed the song came back to him, an autumn melody wrapped in a vision of tea and biscuits.
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