Chapter Text
Jamie’s room isn’t small, but it feels small, here on the floor, between his large bed, his tall wood dresser, and his desk covered in various electronics in various states of taken apart and put back together. His scratchy, brown and beige Persian rug tickles the back of my neck. I’ve got one wing spread under his bed, the other propped against his dresser. Jamie’s sat, swaying back and forth in his spin-y office chair. There are two big speakers on each end of his desk playing Def Leppard. It’s loud, but not too loud. I close my eyes and focus on the guitar riff of Gods of War.
We do this now, listen to music together.
I come over to Lady Ruth’s for a meal at least once a week. It’s nice, especially as the year’s getting colder and the nights longer. I’ve never had family to share warm meals with on crisp autumn evenings before. Even when I’ve had a shite day, or I feel like the Salisburys only invite me over out of pity, I end up full of good food and a warm feeling in my heart at the end of the evening.
Sometimes when the meal is starting to wind down, and Ruth is putting a fourth slice of cake on my plate, Jamie will say something like “I recently got Queen’s greatest hits on vinyl” or I’ll say “have you heard the song The Hardest Button to Button”. And then it’s only a few minutes before we decide to move to his room and listen to whatever we’re talking about. I try to help Ruth clean up, but usually she shoos me away to spend time with her son.
When Baz comes with he helps clear the table, which makes me feel a little less guilty. And then he plays cribbage or cards with Lady Ruth. A few times I tried to get him to listen to music with Jamie and I but he says my taste in music is all boring rock anthems. Most of Baz’s music is sad and whiny though, so I don’t think he has a right to judge.
Baz didn’t come tonight; he’s been studying like crazy for his midterm exams.
So I came over for a late lunch and Jamie and I ended up here: me on the floor with my wings spread and stomach full, Jamie sat in desk chair quietly humming.
I still feel unsure of how to talk to Jamie and Ruth most of the time. I don’t know how to have a family when I went so long without one. When I’m at the age where most people have settled into independence from their family.
And I feel like deep down they shouldn’t like me. Who would like the product of their dead sister/daughter, and her awful husband? That part’s still hard too. The fact that I had a mom, and that The Mage, well…
So I don’t quite know how to talk to Jamie yet, but he says he likes me, and his taste in music is amazing. It’s easy sitting together, enjoying a good album. It makes the lack of conversation comfortable instead of awkward and suffocating.
Run Riot fades out and Hysteria fades in. It’s a great song. It makes me think of late summer sunsets and the care home I was in between fourth and fifth year. One of the kids had a shitty little radio he’d listen to after dinner before lights out. I heard Hysteria for the first time on that thing, it was so grainy, and the signal kept cutting in and out.
The song sounds much better on Jamie’s set up. It’s crisp and loud enough to wash through your bones.
He’s got all these old cassette tapes, some vinyl, and a massive digital library on his laptop, which is what we’re listening to now. It would have been nice to grow up with Jamie as an uncle. I’ve had this thought a lot recently. He’s funny, in an uncle way, and he’s kind. We could have listened to so much more music on his big speakers together. I could have listened to his commentary on his favorite albums when I was too young to form my own opinions about music. I could have heard his stories about Normal secondary school when I was still in school.
I feel a sadness rise inside me at the thought of being here as a kid, instead of stuck in care homes. It’s a sadness that’s becoming more familiar to me, a loss for something I never had. The longing I felt as an orphan now pinpointed to this specific family, my family. The family I had out in the world all the times I felt truly alone in life.
Tears start welling in my eyes, and I squeeze them shut, trying to make it go away. Because once I let myself get sad about this, I get angry about it, and I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of feeling like there’s too much inside of me to hold. I try to be grateful that I found my family at all. Young me would be ecstatic if he could know.
I press my palms to my eyes, wiping away the moisture.
“Jamie,” I say, thinking maybe I should head home.
He hums in acknowledgment, but I don’t actually have anything more to say, so he just looks at me for a moment. I move my hands away from my face, doing my best to make it look like I wasn’t just wiping tears away.
He’s gazing into the middle distance—a look that often comes before he starts talking about something close to his heart.
“You know, for a long time I felt like I was a Normal,” Jamie starts. “Well I mean, I reckon I am now but, for a long time I felt Normal, and I felt less-than because of that. Lucy’d gone to school for magic, so had both my parents, and I… I couldn’t. I tried ignoring how I felt about that, but you can’t ignore shite like that. Neither can other people, I don’t think. Cindy could sense I felt bad for myself, you know? It put a real strain on our relationship.” Cindy’s his ex-wife. I don’t know much about her, I don’t think they ended on bad terms, but I don’t think they kept in touch either.
“There’s some advice kid,” Jamie smiles, his tone shifting, “don’t act all down, and tell dates how boring you are, it’s a real turn-off.”
I chuckle. This is something else we do now. Jamie will tell me stories, or try to give me advice—like he’s making up for all the years he missed imparting wisdom upon me. He has a weird way of bouncing around from seemingly unrelated topics, but when I can figure out what he’s getting at, his advice is usually decent. Sometimes it’s bullocks though. You can’t read all those Facebook conspiracy theories without it messing with your head I guess.
“She said to me once, ‘I can’t help you, and you don’t seem to want to help yourself’ which hurt. That turned into one of our bigger arguments…” he trails off. I figure that’s the end of the conversation, (he does that sometimes: stops talking without ever finishing his thought). But Jamie starts again, “my point is, for a long time I based my self-worth on my lack of magic, yeah? Hell, you saw what that did to me with Smith. I hope you, well you’re okay with yourself, yeah? I mean, without magic?”
I nod. And I mean it. It was hard at first, but my magic was always too much for me to hold, never really felt like it was mine in a way that was manageable.
“That’s good,” he nods thoughtfully, “that’s good, you’re already a lot smarter than me, boy,” he smiles a more genuine smile at that. “Don’t ever get down on yourself for that, okay? It’s good you’ve got your friends, and Baz. Don’t push good people away when you’re feeling like shite. I learned the hard way that that doesn’t fix anything.”
“You’re right,” I say nodding again. I don’t tell him I did try to push everyone away, before America and then right after it. He’s heard about some of that, I try not to go into detail though. I don’t ask about Cindy either, despite how curious I am, I’m not sure he wants to go into detail about her.
“I love Rick Allen’s drumming on this track,” I say when I tune back in to the music and realize Love and Affection is playing. It’s a great closing song.
Jamie latches on to this and starts talking about the relationship between the drums and the bass guitar in this song. He knows a lot more technical stuff about music than me, I’ve no clue what half of it means, but it’s easy to listen to him ramble.
Jamie tried to learn the bass guitar years ago. He told me a few of his uni friends were going to start a band, but those plans quickly fell apart. He’s still got the bass and the amp he bought stuffed in his closet, but Jamie says he’s much better at listening to music than making it. When he first said that to me Lady Ruth chided him for putting himself down, and insisted he was plenty good at the bass. The whole time she was talking Jamie was looking at me dramatically shaking his head. I almost choked on my sandwich from laughing.
Another time when bass playing came up, I offhandedly said Jamie should show me how to play, he shrugged me off but then Ruth wouldn’t stop pestering him until he pulled the bass guitar out and played the opening riff of Smoke on the Water for me. It was pretty bad; I think he forgot how to tune the instrument, but it was nice laughing with him about it. And it’s nice how aggressively supportive Lady Ruth is of her son.
The last track of the album comes to a close, so I stand and stretch my wings. Jamie spins to click out of the music player on his laptop. Then he stands as well. I can see through his curtains that it’s already dark out despite being only four in the afternoon. Fucking autumn.
“I hate that it gets dark so early now,” I complain. I’ve been complaining about it every day for the past week, but I still hate it.
“Yeah,” Jamie says, following my gaze to the window, then turning back to me, “See you next Sunday?”
“Yeah, Sunday,” I say, pulling my wings in close to my back.
Jamie smiles and claps my shoulder.
When I make it out to the dining room Ruth has a plastic bag sitting on the table, filled with leftovers for me and Baz. I grab the bag and head to the living room. Ruth sees me and sets down her cup of tea to stands and hugs me. I bend down and reach my free arm around her. Her hugs are always warm and firm. She smells exactly like what you’d expect a grandma to smell like. She kisses my cheek then pulls back.
I can’t help but smile.
I say my goodbyes, and grab my coat after Ruth makes me promise not to eat all the shepherd’s pie before Baz gets any. I promise. (But it’s his own fault that I ate all the pudding she sent home for him last time, he’d left it in there for a week. It was going to spoil; I had to eat it).
It’s chilly and dark out as I walk down the driveway headed to the tube station. I kick a pile of fallen leaves on the side of the road just for the hell of it. I try to be okay with the mixture of happiness and grief and insecurity that swirls inside me after visiting the Salisburys. I’m glad they keep inviting me back. I’m glad they consider me family, even if I don’t know how to accept that yet.