Rory Perkins
The Cost Of Saving The World
A year after my wife’s funeral the news says the oceans have risen another two inches and Sam asks why. I don’t know if he’s talking about Beth being gone or the melting ice caps so I say nothing and send him off to school.
The Grieving Dads forum tells me not to shy away from painful memories. Something about a child’s ability to process grief through exposure therapy. Later that evening I ask Sam if he wants to go through some of Beth’s old stuff. There are photos of her getting arrested. Old polaroids of her glued to the underside of oil tankers and laying down in front of buses. Sam pulls a Save Our Planet scarf around his neck and wants to know if she was a whore.
“It’s what they’re saying at school.” He says. “That she slept with a hundred men and animals so I must be part walrus.”
I don’t tell him it was a different time. I don’t try to explain the freedom of the 60s or how we were both pretty wild back then. I don’t tell him how last night was the first time I got to sleep without staring out of the window, thinking about the way my body would fall.
“No,” I say, “all your mother wanted was to save the world.”
~~~
Sixteen months after my wife’s funeral we are called into the headmaster’s office. His mustache forms around words like difficult situation and school-home continuity when really he wants to say what do you expect.
Sam and a girl in his class were caught on top of one another in the biology classroom. Clothed, but their intentions were pretty clear. When I walk in, the girl’s parents are bright red and refuse to meet my eye. I imagine them saying tragedy and hopeless because everyone knows about Beth but no one knows the love she left us with. I ask Sam what was he thinking then give him a wink so he knows it’s just for show.
The headmaster has an old newspaper showing Beth’s face open on his desk as if that explains it all. An article from a few years ago about the time she broke into a fish farm and released a school of salmon into the wild.
I don’t tell Sam about the dangers of unprotected sex. I don’t give him a lecture on biological changes and the different ways to love.
“Vegetarian for dinner?” I say on the way out. He nods and asks if we can go visit the ocean.
~~~
Twenty months after my wife’s funeral Sam comes home with a split cheek. “I thought you would be proud”. He says. “I did it for Mum.”
Apparently, one of the older boys had built a fire in the playground and thrown in all the old PE shoes.
“He said he needed two more and then Mum’s life would have been for nothing so I decked him.”
At the funeral someone had brought a picture from Beth’s early years as an activist and put it on the coffin. It was a freeze-frame of two opposing city marches, and Beth in the middle of it all, fist raised. Underneath it the inscription read ‘Violence is never the answer. Mostly.’
I don’t tell him that his mother spent her life fighting for peace. I don’t tell him that some things in life cost the sacrifice of their opposite.
The parents on Grieving Dads tell me to give Sam space, so I go outside to stand below my bedroom window, in the space where my body will never fall.
~~~
Two years after my wife’s funeral Sam says he is scared. He is learning about the ozone layer and how we only have a few decades left. He says we should go do our bit, like Mum; drive down to the beach and collect other people’s rubbish out of the ocean. It’s dark by the time we get there but he doesn’t seem to care. He wades straight into the surf and comes back with arms full of plastic bottles and empty cans.
I sit down on the sand and try not to think about death. About how much we’ve lost and how easily the world can pretend everything is fine. The ocean cannot speak and so I speak for it, whispering tragedy and hopeless over and over until I see Sam standing above me. He offers me a hand and asks if I’ve given up. He is covered in the dirt of other people’s rubbish and still dressed in Beth’s old clothes. In the darkness, I can just make out a smile.
I don’t tell him that it’s no use. That we’re not going to solve climate change by picking up a few plastic bottles. I open my phone and sign out of my Grieving Dads account.
“No.” I say. “Let’s go save the world.”
Politics Laid Bear
My wife doesn’t believe me but I watch him every day on the news lumbering up to the podium, big paw raised to the crowd. He tells the school children to play out in the woods alone, makes promises of free honey and tree houses for all. It’s kinda scary. Sometimes he, because it is a he, gets all worked up while giving a speech and ends up throwing the lectern into the crowd. For some reason, no one reacts. The rest of them stay standing there, clapping and nodding along like he has just promised to do away with stamp duty.
Kelly says I’m going mad. She takes me on long walks in the countryside to try and convince me that it’s all an illusion. She says there’s no bears in Kent. None, at least, with political aspirations. To prove I’m not making it up she says I should check myself into a clinic, which isn’t an entirely unreasonable idea.
“Do the tests,” I say to the receptionist.
“Which tests?” They want to know, so I tell them about the bear, and the televised debates, and the bear’s slogan, which is ‘Honey, I shrunk the deficit’. After that they seem to take me seriously because I’m moved to another clinic, which is really more of a hospital, and put into a room with other people who nod and say shit, really? in an earnest voice when I tell them what’s going on on TV.
I suppose they want to keep us together, the few of us who know the truth, while they go away and contact the Houses of Parliament. That’s what the guy in the bed next to me says, anyway. He also says that we’re secretly Russians. Not us specifically, but everyone else in the hospital, and when the nurse comes in to give us cups of colorful pills we say privet and watch her face for signs of recognition.
Kelly hasn’t come to see me. I think maybe I’ve finally got through and she’s making plans for how the kids are going to get to school if the bear gets his way. She’s always been like that. Practical. Resourceful. I get a letter saying that she has moved away. Somewhere out of the bear’s constituency, I assume. I tell her I will join her soon but she doesn’t respond. Probably because of the Russians, and the way they intercept people’s mail.
It takes a few days but eventually the drugs begin to work. When I watch the evening news there are only hints of bearishness. A low growl during a debate. A flash of fangs as one of the politicians waves to the camera. A doctor comes in and says I am free to go, which is funny because I had never thought of myself as trapped, and now there is nothing keeping me here, no Russians or bears or government conspiracy.
Tomorrow I will find Kelly. I will tell her that I’m sorry, that sometimes it is easier to believe in honey and tree houses than tax cuts and better wages, knowing that any knock on the door could be the bear, forcing its way back into reality and asking for our vote.
Rory Perkins is a British writer focusing on shorter works. He has been published in Vast Literary Press, SoFloPoJo, Passengers Journal, and Artam's The Face Project (forthcoming). He can be found at @rperkinswriter on Bluesky.
