Things To Talk To Jim About by Jaime Gill

Things To Talk To Jim About | Jaime Gill

“I hate you most of the time,” my dying mother says, sitting stiffly upright in her hospital bed.

Well, there it is. Said out loud at last.

“I know, Mam.” 

She looks disappointed. Perhaps she’d expected that to be a stab to the heart, but she’s never been as good at hiding her feelings as she thinks. 

“And don’t go thinking this is the morphine talking; it isn’t. This is me.”

“I know, Mam.”

When I’ve held her gaze long enough for her to know I heard and understood, I check the clock behind her.

Thirty-eight minutes left. 

“You know, sometimes I think it might have been kinder if you’d killed me too.”

That one does hurt. Not quite a stab to the heart but a solid punch to the chest. But I don’t let the pain show, an old boxing trick. I’ve spent weeks working out what she might say today and how I’d reply, even wondered if she might say something like this. I’ve never quite believed her all these years when she’s tried to make her little life sound happy. She chattered perkily about monthly Sunday roasts with her co-workers and babysitting for her niece’s kids, the grandchildren she’d never have. But her eyes never came alive.

Might it have been better if she’d died? Could that be true? I file that under things to talk to Jim about.

“I suppose you want to go now.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“No,” she says, bravado draining away. “You’re still my son, I can’t change that. There’s other stuff I want to talk about. And I worry about you. Isn’t that strange? I don’t like thinking of you all alone when I’m gone.”

I could tell her she needn’t worry, I won’t be alone. It’s true that when she dies, I’ll have no living relatives, or none who’ll speak to me. But there are other families than the ones we’re born into. I have a prison family and a sobriety family now. Not the kind of families who sit down to have portraits taken together, but still real. 

But I don’t say any of this. She probably doesn’t think I deserve people who care about me. She’s probably right.

Our eyes meet across three meters of air that might as well be a universe. An old, sleeping memory stirs. When we were still a family, we’d sometimes hold staring contests over dinner. Kelly was the champion, which annoyed me, given I was seven years older. Kelly had the willpower of a mule, until she was broken. But we’d abandoned the staring game years before that. 

This isn’t a game, though. Nobody can win here. 

I break the silence with a joke, veering off my own script. “So, no small talk today, then?” 

“Small talk can bugger off. We’ve been doing that for thirteen years. Let’s talk properly. It’s probably our last chance.”

I look across at Shaun, improbably huge on his tiny stool by the door. He’s scrolling his phone or pretending to, as if he can’t hear us or we’re boring him. He’s one of the better screws – it was good of the Governor to make him my guard today. There are perks to being a model prisoner, even if the other cons give me shit. The hospital’s been good, too, sorting out this private room for the visit. Did Mam tell them what she wanted to talk about?

“Okay, Mam. Ask anything you like. But I don’t think I have the answers you want.” That’s from the script.

She hesitates. I think she’s also rehearsed this conversation, but expected me to play a different part. Perhaps she thought I’d get angry. Understandable. I used to be combustible as spilt petrol, any careless word a match that might set me alight. It’s taken years to learn self-control, and my grip’s still shaky. 

“You know, now I’m on morphine, I think I understand drugs better. They’re better than I’d imagined. When they dose me up, it’s not just about stopping the pain. It’s more than that. Even stuck in this bed, I feel more…powerful. Like the outside world doesn’t matter that much. Is that how it felt for you when you did those things?”

I nearly say I haven’t touched drugs in ten years and don’t really remember, but I test that thought. That’s another thing I’ve learned. I am not to be trusted, least of all by myself. My brain is a cowardly creature and will contort itself into any shape to make life less painful. If that means lying to me, it won’t hesitate. That’s why Jim says I need to examine my thoughts, pick them up like stones to check they’re solid and not hollow. Doing this now, I realize I don’t want to remember – but that doesn’t mean I can’t.

I imagine myself young again. I’ve spent a third of my life in prison, almost all the years I can really remember. My memories of the world without walls are thin and unreal, like trying to recall a recurring dream I haven’t had in a long time. I picture the Bigg Market in Newcastle, that intoxicating, poisonous oasis of neon and noise in the heart of the old city. I remember prowling those streets with the boys on Friday nights, blood full of stimulants and heart full of appetite, always looking for a fuck, fight, or both.

“Well, they weren’t the same kind of drugs, Mam, but yeah, I know what you mean. I felt stronger when I was off my head.”

“So we’ve finally got something in common. Maybe I should have taken up drugs years ago.” Mam’s laugh is brittle and bitter.

Have I met this woman before? This isn’t the mother who brought me up, that busy blur of sweet fuss and worry. And she isn’t the fidgety, artificially cheerful woman who has visited me inside every month, chattering about exactly nothing and visibly relieved when the hour was up. This woman is harder and sharper-edged. Has she always been there, underneath? When I took her call three weeks ago, I heard it in her voice – the cancer had changed something in her, at a deeper level than mutating cells.

“But this is the thing,” Mam says, proceeding to her point like a prosecutor. “I’m still me, even when I’m full of morphine. It doesn’t change who I am inside.”

I know where she’s going but wait. It’s important she says it.

“I always tried to believe it wasn’t you who did it. I told myself there was a demon inside you. But that’s not true, is it? It was you, wasn’t it?”

We’ve never talked about this since I got clean. Years and years of talking about anything but this. “Yes, Mam. It was me. It was my fault.”

“Oh, bugger off. You always want so much credit for confessing, but I don’t care about that anymore. I want to know why. And I don’t believe you don’t remember anything, I just don’t. You must have some clue.” Her eyes gleam. Don’t cry, Mam, please don’t cry. “I deserve to know.”

“I can’t help you, Mam.” Probably true. “I don’t remember.” Total lie. 

The twelve steps tell us addicts we have to be truthful, and that secrets are our worst enemies. We must especially be honest with those we’ve harmed and make amends to them. God knows I’ve harmed Mam; it’s hard to imagine how I could possibly have harmed anyone more. But there is an exception to the obligatory truth-telling. Isn’t there always? Except when to do so would injure them or others.

And the truth would injure Mam. If cancer wasn’t already killing her, the truth would.

But yes, Mam, I do remember.

#

It was late, after the pubs shut. I didn’t live at home anymore; I’d left that shithole town for a well-paid job in real estate in Newcastle. But I sometimes went back to get pissed with old boxing buddies and often passed out on the family sofa rather than catch an expensive taxi back to the city.

Mam was working the late shift that night. As I let myself in and slung up my jacket in the hallway, Dad crept down the stairs behind my back. He forgot the mirror. I could see his reflection – half-unbuttoned shirt, frightened rabbit expression.

For a moment I stood paralyzed, as if lightning had struck me. Then I bounded up the stairs to Kelly’s room, threw her door open, and saw. She didn’t say a word, didn’t have to.

Yes, I was drunk and on speed. Yes, I was in a hurricane of red-roaring rage as I ran back down. But there was also a part of me that kept a strange, cool clarity. Like an inner me watching from the eye of the storm. 

Dad was pouring himself a whisky in the kitchen, but jerked round when I stormed through.

“She’s lying.” He didn’t even wait to hear what Kelly might have said before denying it.

I ran at him and threw a hard right into his face. I’d been boxing since I was a scrawny 13-year-old desperate to know how to defend myself. By 15, I’d realized fighting made me feel better – then others needed to defend themselves from me. So when I threw that punch, put all my shoulder and weight into it, I knew what damage it would do. My fist smashed Dad’s nose flat like it was plasticine, cracking his glasses back onto his face hard enough to shatter a lens and gash a cheek.

He crumpled to the floor and spluttered through blood. Maybe that could have been the end, but he looked up with big pleading eyes and said it again: “She’s lying.”

And that was that.

That inner me sat in the eye of the storm, observing myself slamming fist after fist into his face. I remember thinking I could kill him. I knew that would break our family, but wasn’t that already true and wasn’t that his fault? Everything had to end that night, one way or another. It had all gone on too long.

I was dimly aware of Kelly coming down, dressed now, crying and grabbing my shoulder. I shrugged her off, sent her flying against the fridge. I heard her call the police, but it was just lawn furniture blowing around – nothing to a hurricane.

Dad was still alive when two officers dragged me off him, blood bubbles blowing between his shattered teeth. 

The ambulance arrived five minutes later – too late.

#

“You must have some idea why.”

Mam’s really crying now. I’ve retreated into that calm place inside the eye of the storm. I won’t cry. I won’t make today about me. That’s the promise I’ve made to myself ever since this visit was authorized. Today’s just for her.

“I’m sorry, Mam. I really want to help. I just don’t remember.”

Which is what I told the police, and the lawyers and the judge. Medical experts backed me up, saying the alcohol and amphetamines in my blood were more than enough to have pushed me into blackout. The prosecutor countered that I’d been drinking and drugging for years, and my tolerance would be higher. “And look at the size of him,” he said to the jury, and they did. 

Given previous assault charges, it wasn’t surprising I got close to the maximum sentence. I didn’t care. The only reason I’d pleaded diminished responsibility was because Mam begged me to. I wanted to disappear, and death wasn’t an option, so prison seemed the next best bet.

I’ve only ever told two people the truth about that night: Jim and Kelly. 

I felt like I was betraying Kelly, shaming her, when I told Jim. But I knew he’d never tell a soul. That was one of the first promises he made to me, as long as I promised to tell him everything. 

Kelly won’t tell, either. I talked to her at night sometimes, in those first years inside. Only in my head, though. She’d lived one day longer than Dad. The next day, while Mam was at the police station finding out what was happening to me, Kelly found the pills Mam kept for when her shifts swapped and her sleep got scrambled. Kelly took the lot. Fourteen years old.

I didn’t see that coming. I’d thought I was protecting her.

When a cellmate offered me smack later that week, I said yes. I’d always looked down on smackheads as losers with a death wish. That seemed laughable now. I was a loser and I did wish for death. If it hadn’t been for Mam, I’d have made it happen. But I couldn’t after Kelly.

The next few years and all the savings I’d been so proud of were swallowed in a heroin haze. The trial, the sentencing, the transfer to maximum security – I don’t remember much. The only lucky thing that happened to me in my whole life was being put in a cell with Jim three years later. Jim had found sobriety, the twelve steps, and God in prison, and was determined to recruit me for all three. He succeeded with the first two, eventually.

Mam’s pushed herself upright, no more tears. Her mouth opens but stays stuck, like we’re in some shitty soap opera and someone hit pause.

“What, Mam?”

She chokes the words out.

“Did he do something to you? Something you’re not telling?”

I stay as still as I can, try not to let one muscle in my face move.

The one question I didn’t think she’d ask. She did ask it once, long ago, and I said no. In all these years since, she’s never expressed a word of doubt about him. She’d worshiped Dad. That’s what my aunts always said. “She worships that man.”

“I dunno what you mean, Mam.”

She stares into my eyes as if she might find truth in there. It’s such a lie, that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Dad had lovely eyes. Big and brown, like a Labrador. And he was famously kind. Always had time for us kids, never pissed away his weekends watching football in pubs. We were a good family, that’s what people said: well-raised, well-educated.

“It might help me to know it wasn’t all your fault,” Mam says quietly. “I don’t want to hate you when I die. I want to understand.”

I don’t fucking know what to do. I am not fucking prepared for this. 

“Mam, I’m sorry, but I really need the loo. I can’t think properly. Shaun, can you take me?”

He rises so quickly, I know he’s listened to every word. 

In the bathroom, I slump against the wall and stare at scarred, trembling knuckles. I want to call Jim but even Shaun would never let me use his phone in private. A hurricane of fear roars around me.

“Okay in there?” Shaun calls.

“Sorry, just finishing.”

I splash my face with cold water and look up into a mirror that’s just like the one in my cellblock: same oblong shape, same cracked edges, same weirdly grey reflection. Does the Government order these things in bulk? I imagine thousands of them across Britain, making everyone who already feels like shit – the dying, the addicts, the disabled – feel one shade of shit worse.

I see eyes that are the spitting image of Dad’s. I’ve had them all my life. I had them that first night Dad came to my room while I was still loose-limbed with sleep, when he slid my boxer shorts down while whispering “Be quiet, you’re just dreaming.” But you don’t hurt like that in dreams.

I never told Jim about that, only about Kelly. 

I’d never thought Dad would do it to her. I’d got this idea that if it was little boys he was really into, a girl would be safe. I’ve read enough books since to know how stupid that was. Or maybe I’d got myself out and didn’t want to think about the people I’d left behind. Maybe. My brain, the liar.

I turn from my reflection. Mam might hate me, but I hated me first.

When I first pretended not to remember that night, I told myself I was protecting Kelly. After Kelly died, I told myself I was protecting Mam. How could the truth help her, with Kelly and Dad dead and me in prison? Why destroy all her memories of our family and make her think she’d failed me and Kelly? Better that I be the monster. 

But Mam just said she wants the truth. She probably can’t imagine what that means, but she said it.

Shaun assesses me warily when I step out, then escorts me back. Mam watches me suspiciously as I sit.

“I’m sorry.” I had something else to say but it dies in my mouth. 

“Well? Did he do something?”

“No, Mam. I don’t remember. I just know it was my fault.” 

She sags. I can’t read the expression on this stranger’s face. Doubt? Relief? Disappointment? Maybe she’s accepting she really will die hating me. But whatever that expression means, it’s better than the one she’d wear if I told her the truth.

I’m doing the right thing for her.

During the silence that follows, I examine that thought. I pick it up like a stone, then look underneath. There are dark wriggling things there because, yes, it’s true, but it’s hiding other truths.

I’ve always told myself I kept these secrets to protect Kelly and Mam. But if that were really true, then I’d start telling people everything that happened as soon as Mam’s dead. Starting with Jim. 

But I know I won’t. 

I still can’t bear the shame of anyone seeing that puny, crying little boy I used to be. 

It’s me I’m protecting. It’s always been me.

Things To Talk To Jim About by Jaime Gill was selected as the winner of the 2024 HoneyBee Prize in Fiction by Juliana Lamy. Here’s what Ms. Lamy had to say about the piece:

This stunning story is a brief masterclass in pacing and natural characterization. Each event occurs precisely when it means to, each character emerges with their own network of faults and feelings intact. The revelations in this piece feel inevitable, yet strike with the oblique, off-center shock of the surprising. There are beautiful moments of language here that, at certain points, seem to be all that stands between the reader and an emotional totaling.

More about the author: