I will love my son again, one day. Edward has not been himself of late. On the coffee table where I rest my puffy ankles there sits a picture of the two of us with our arms locked, smiling together, on sports day in his final year of Primary School. First in the egg and spoon race. The rosette redder than his cheeks, but only just. He has never been one for posing well in photographs, this may be the only one from that day with his tongue stuck firmly in his gob. Had it not been for the television packing in last night halfway through the news, I might not have stared so long at that rosy cheeked, cheerful, mischievous little boy. If he ever decides to come back to me, I will be here waiting for him.
It is 5:30, I will need to leave for work in five minutes. I do not know when Edward will wake up, I never do. It would be generous to call his sleeping pattern a schedule. If I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I expect to hear sounds of keyboard tapping, machine gun fire, and — regrettably, grossly exaggerated moaning — emanating from his too-large computer monitor. Edward moved into the basement of our home twelve months ago. I do not know why, something about needing more space. I only wish it were more air. He has not left our home in over a year. It is possibly closer to two years now, but I would not dare to count back all those months where nothing happened, nothing changed. I often go a full day without seeing him. I will knock on his door and call on him to see if he wants me to make him anything for dinner. But I hear nothing back. Maybe just a snore.
I know that he gets up when I go to work as the mail is always sitting in a pile on the glass top of the coffee table in the living room when I get home. Mixed in with the bills and takeaway flyers is a card from the Post Office with his name on it. After a third attempt at delivery his parcel is being held at the depot. I could ignore it. But he would brood. He would never ask why I had not picked it up, but life would be insufferable until I did so. If I were truly brave, I would ask him to pick it up himself. Not tell, just ask. But what would be the point? Edward would turn up for it at midnight, if he could find it. Even if worked that out, Edward would not know how the bus timetables have changed (at least his ignorance on this saved him from the furore on the town’s Facebook group). When I consider how little he has seen, even of the thirty feet either side of our front door in so long, I feel buried alive. Perhaps that is what he has become. Entombed in the basement. Alive but not living. I cringe, and curse myself, but it remains true:
He.
Chose.
This.
*
Some days your shift goes by without any consideration at all until it is met by a dead stop. Every light atop the self-scan tills is blinking red in a zig-zagged rhythm. Tills are not within my immediate purview, but with fellow managers like mine, what isn’t? I apologise to each of the customers who have been waiting for God knows how long for their scales to be balanced, for help finding hidden barcodes, but I needn’t force myself to make the face. Forty years in customer service have thoroughly drawn the apologetic frown lines into my cheeks, the wrinkles hand carved into a stony expression which says it all. With a tap of my fob onto each of their tills the lights flick from furious red to reassuring green. Who could have missed ten tills flashing, beeping, and as many customers fizzing at being ignored? When I find him, he ignores me too.
‘Let me get that for you, my love,’ says Kayden. He scans a loaf of bread and pint of milk through for an older lady at the final self-scan and becomes enraptured in their chit chat. She inserts her bank card the wrong way into the terminal and he fixes it for her.
‘Oh son!,’ she beams. ‘That’s it working now.’
‘No problem at all, just pop your pin into the wee pad there and you’ll be all set. Don’t worry, I won’t peek,’ he tells her, whilst he covers his eyes like a toddler. At least this makes a change from him chatting up the girls on the kiosk.
‘Now, can I give you a hand with these bags?’
‘That’s awful kind of you, son, but I’m just out to catch the next bus.’
‘Bus stop it is then madam, follow me.’
Kayden bags up the woman’s groceries and escorts her out the front door of the shop and across the road to the bus stop. He might be charming; she will surely make some remark about how chivalry was once thought dead. But just let her get to know him. He has only just turned eighteen but has managed a tenure’s worth of bother. Like a nomad he trails from one department to the next in search of a home, or for a manager with the patience to not kick him ever further off the plank. When he returns to find me standing in his place the lights in his eyes die screaming.
‘Sarah, I’m sorry! I know I shouldn’t-’
I cut him off. Five minutes before the end of any shift is too late for the giver or receiver of any shop floor bollocking. But he does not need to know that yet.
‘Come with me,’ I tell him sternly, and about turn. His head is slumped, and feet trail where he follows me through the frozen aisles to a sharp right turn before the stairs to the manager’s office, left, and into the electronics section.
‘Pick me a new T.V. Nothing fancy. Just something that will fit on the unit,’ I say, and gesture a broad arm’s length. Not too much of an onus for a stay of execution. ‘So long as it gets the Freeview channels. That’s all I want.’
‘Do you not watch Netflix?’ he asks, incredulously. ‘Prime? Disney Plus? Paramount Plus?’
‘I watch television, Kayden. And if you can’t find me one we can go upstairs and have the conversation you thought we were having-’
He interrupts me, pleads, and apologises.
‘You’re young. You should know T.V.’
‘Nah, not really,’ he replies, sizing up each model like a gardener eyeing the ripeness of his peaches. ‘T.V. shows that are actually on at like a set date and time are for pensioners and prisoners. No offence.’
Wondering which of those he considers me to be.
‘It’s on-demand streaming that you want. All I ever watch now is YouTube.’
‘Enjoy videos of cats and people falling over, do you?’
‘Nah, you’ve got it all wrong, there’s a whole world of entertainment out there. Pick any topic you’re interested in, and you’ll find a dozen channels on YouTube making three videos a week about it. Politics, football, girls talking into their make-up mirror for forty-five minutes. You name it. It’s all there. Plus, you can’t buy a new T.V. without these apps on it. It’s as easy as changing the channel.’
‘So, I can pick any of them as they all do the same thing?’ I ask.
‘Pretty much.’
‘Okay, I’ll go for that one,’ pointing to the cheapest on offer.
‘Why that one?’
‘Not too big, good price, and it looks quite heavy.’
‘Quite heavy?’ he asks.
I hand him my car keys.
‘Since you’re so keen on helping old women with their shopping.’
*
Kayden was just as quick loading my new T.V. into the car boot as he was getting in the passenger seat. Meeting a friend one street over, he said. I do not care to know how he found out where I live. Though I am glad he invited himself along as I would have never been able to lift Edward’s parcel and the television on my own.
‘Are you wanting it set up in here?’ asks Kayden. He wedges himself in the hall between the television in his arms and the stairs at his back, nodding left into the living room.
‘Yes, that would be great, Kayden.’
I wait until he is fully in the living room to drop Edward’s parcel onto the carpet runner for a moment. It is a tonne weight. If I could not tell that Edward was awake from the pile of mail on the coffee table, the sickly, savoury smell of something microwaved lingering in the air like a low mist would seal it. At least his plate made it into the sink this time. The living room is tidy enough. Not up to the standard for guests but Kayden won’t care or even notice. Is he the first guest here since-? Yes. Yes, Kayden, the eighteen-year-old toerag from work is my first visitor ever since Edward’s Father and I divorced. I hated people inviting themselves over. Always made excuses. Tea and cakes and chit chat about the dissolution of the marriage my Mother knew would never last. Knew it. Never said it until the papers were signed but knew it all the same.
The reminder is grim, but fleeting. Any ill feeling is hollow. Now I’ve got to wrestle this great big rectangular package back up off the floor and into the kitchen. I could ask Kayden, but he is already on his hands and knees screwing in the feet of the new T.V. With an almighty heave, and an unsettling crack along my spine, the package slams onto the kitchen table. Kayden shouts through to ask if I am alright and I tell him that I am, or will be. Once he is gone, and I can put my feet up in front of my new television. It is a curious thing, the package. Sealed in brown cardboard, with several customs stamps and a return address of somewhere in California. Something for his computer, no doubt, but why would it be so heavy? And how is he paying for it without a job? I go to knock on the basement door, but I hear him hurry down from upstairs. God, I hope his pyjamas are clean, or that he is wearing more than just the bottoms.
‘Where is it?’ Edward asks. More a grunt than a question, actually.
He hovers on my shoulder, and I turn. Sweat patches pool under his armpits. Crisp dust makes sandy beaches over the patch of beard under nis neck and the chest of his shirt. Though only a few inches taller than me it is almost instinct to cower a little when he gets so close. His senses for personal space and personal hygiene leave more than a little to be desired.
‘It’s on the table, Edward. It’s awfully heavy,’ I don’t have the energy to fight him for a Thanks, Mum.
‘That’s it, Sarah,’ Kayden calls from the living room. Edward rushes in before me. In his wake he leaves a waft of body odour that could knock out a horse.
‘Hi Mate,’ says Kayden. I cannot yet see his face over Edward’s shoulder, but his voice cracks at the mere sight of my son. I try to get in ahead of Edward, but he barricades the doorway to the living room with his bulk.
‘Absolute belter of a telly your mum picked,’ says Kayden. He reaches a hand to Edward and is refused. Edward stares at him silently for a moment until unleashing his anger on me.
‘Why did you get a new T.V.?’ His eyebrows furrow to a point when he finally turns to let me in.
‘The old one packed in last night,’ I tell him.
Edward rolls his eyes and trots off into the kitchen. How could an answer so obvious be so wrong? Kayden and I stare mutely at one another across the glass topped coffee table. Neither of us would admit, but we are waiting for the groan from Edward lifting his parcel and then the slam of the basement door. When they come, Kayden – who could chatter on endlessly for an entire shift to anyone who would listen – stands stunned. His lip trembles, as if he is about to say that he did not know I had a son, but for the first time in his life he thinks before he speaks and elects not to. How could he have known if I would never tell? If he had thought about it at all, meeting Edward could not have been that much of a shock, moany old lady at work must have a family somewhere afraid of her too.
‘Thank you, Kayden,’ I say to break this silence which hangs between us. He tells me it was no problem at all. My channels are all installed, and I can whittle away my nights with cat videos and people falling over too, if I so choose. Kayden slots the old T.V. and all the polystyrene into the box for the new one, and I ask him if he will place it into the boot of my car. I will take it to the dump another night.
As he lowers the boot lid we are both blinded. I am wearing compression gloves for my arthritis, and I slip them off to offer up my bare hands to the warmth of the sun. I ask Kayden what his plans are for the rest of the day. He checks the time on his phone. He will have to run if he wants to meet his friend on time. A game of fives with his pals and then a barbecue. Have to make the most of the summer, he tells me. I thank him for all his help, again. And he sets off down the street in a jog, before he stops, thinks, and turns back to me, running.
‘Does your son do a podcast?’ he asks, not even an ounce out of breath.
‘I have heard of them, but I’d like to err on the side of no. Why do you ask?’
‘I’m sure I recognize his voice. It’s very distinctive. I’m sure I haven’t met him before, but I definitely know his voice from somewhere.’
How he could have discerned anything about Edward, or his voice to be exact, from a few grunts and even fewer words is beyond me.
‘I think you’re mistaken,’ I tell him, and hope to leave it at that.
*
No sooner have the bin men have collected the mess of cardboard and bubble-wrap of his last Californian return address parcel that Edward receives another, or more likely, I do. It’s only just past eight so he’ll be nowhere near getting up. The kitchen and it’s ten steps are too long a stretch under the weight and vastness of these bloody things, so I lug it through the hall and hoist it onto the coffee table. Two mystery parcels in as many days strikes me as very odd indeed. But I won’t ask. I would not be given an honest answer regardless.
A Tuesday off work is rare. Finding something good to watch on a weekday morning is rarer still. The shopping channels are attempting to hawk premium meats and cheese whilst the retro channels are showing repeats of a detective drama My Father watched through blooming clouds of cigarette smoke when I was a child, before the public information campaigns, before he knew it was not just him whose life was being shortened. It’s all rubbish. Maybe Kayden was right about trying out the streaming channels. There is a button for YouTube on the remote and I click it, but it asks me to scan a QR code to sign in and I give up there. On the news they are debating, or rather shouting about, the gender pay gap.
Edward huffs his nostrils derisively from the doorway. He should not be up this early, perhaps he heard the doorbell and waited for the sounds of my struggling to cease. Either his parcel would be on the coffee table, or I would have collapsed in the hall attempting to get it there.
‘Is there nothing better you could be watching?’ he asks, with a particularly patronising inflection on nothing. He learned that from his Father. A pity such traits did not walk out the door along with him.
‘Well, I agree, Edward. And I’m glad you’re up as I was hoping you could set me up on Netflix or YouTube,’ I ask. ‘There’s got to be something better for me to watch.’
When I reach the remote out to him over the far end of the couch, I nearly spill the mug of tea cradled in my lap.
‘You don’t need YouTube,’ he tells me. Everything he ever says is spoken within a sigh. He knocks back my hand with the flab of his thigh as he bends over to pick up his parcel. He clings on at diagonal corners and groans as he drags it up to bare the weight of it on his chest. His knees wobble as he attempts to steady it and exit the living room without saying another word, but he cannot hold on. The parcel slips out of his grasp and crashes through the glass counter of the coffee table. As it falls his nails dig in like claws and he scratches off the front of the packaging. Underneath it, the framed photo of the two of us at sports day lies smashed. Shards of glass swim deeply through fibres in the sheepskin rug. Fuck and shit and cunting thing, he grumbles. When he leans forward to save the parcel, against my protestation, he catches his ankle on a shard of glass. The wound is neither deep nor bloody, but he limps upstairs to the bathroom and runs the shower regardless.
I consider following him but only for a moment. This might be my only chance to see what he’s been up to. A window into a world, his world, which has been shut in my face for so long. Let him attend to himself. He won’t accept my help. He might only mistake it for pity. I need to be quick. I take the dustpan out from under the stairs and hurriedly sweep up the glass. Tiny pieces stab in between my fingers, but no blood is drawn so I collect as many as I can and set the dustpan to one side. There are still plenty to scoop up, I’ll likely be finding them embedded in my slippers for weeks. The parcel sits within the wooden surrounds of the coffee table, the cardboard on one side torn almost completely where Edward’s unkempt fingernails dug in. Whatever is inside, is gold and could almost be glowing. It appears to be a rectangular tablet, plain if not for an indented triangle at its centre. I do not know why he would buy this, or with what money. Something boys must like. I take a picture on my phone and send it to Kayden.
Do you know what this is?
He replies instantly. Of course he does, he’s meant to be working.
Sarah that’s mad!!
It’s a YouTube Play Button,
an award for getting loads of subscribers
How many is it for?
I lean into the hollowed-out centre of the coffee table and tear the cardboard down further. Careful not to slit my wrist on the jagged glass. The inscription reads:
Presented to
PropagandaPunk
For surpassing 1,000,000 subscribers
I knew I recognized your son’s voice!!!
Kayden attaches a link to a YouTube video. I click it. I was not aware that I even had the app on my phone. The title reads:
Ten Male Privileges DEBUNKED
Four hundred thousand views. Twenty-five thousand thumbs up.
He’s famous Sarah!
I don’t agree with what he says but A LOT of people do
I swipe away Kayden’s incoming texts as the loading wheel spins ominously. When the video begins, it feels as though it might never end.
‘ …but feminists don’t care about the struggles of men. Not until you’ve checked your privilege, cut off your balls, and accepted the Church of the Matriarchy and all its teachings.’
I skip to another, then another, endlessly.
The MYTH of #MeToo
‘…these systems of shame and control which are leading men in their droves to walk away from dating, and I don’t blame a single one. They’ll never let the truth get in the way of a false allegation, their own moment in the sun.’
The CULT of Feminism Will DESTROY the WEST
‘ …and modern men are no better, because we let it get this to this stage. They talk about the misogyny of saying that a woman’s place is in the home. Honest to God, one generation is all it took for this insanity to take root. You can’t feed a family on a Gender Studies degree whilst beta cuck husband does the dishes and keeps quiet.’
It is OK to Be An INCEL
‘…for all their faux pity, their cries of men’s mental health, it all comes down to one singular and salient truth, and if you’ve been watching me for long enough you know what that is: if this is what they made us, then this is what we must be.’
I cannot watch another second. There are so many of them and they go from years ago until just yesterday. Of all the reasons there could have been for me never seeing him, for him to escape into another life, was it truly this? The scripts, the animations, the unbridled frustration of it all. Is this the reason I no longer recognise, or love, my own son? I throw my phone towards the armchair on the other side of the room. It almost feels wrong to touch it. Another video plays, muffled in the cushion where it landed. I stare it. My shoulders hunched into my chest, still kneeling on the living room carpet. I shift my hips to sit down and land on a larger piece of my glass without truly feeling it, or anything at all.
It is Edward’s voice. There is no doubting that. But not his face. Instead, a crudely drawn cartoon boy reacts, bemused, and sticks its middle finger up to what appears behind him on screen. It wears a hood to disguise its face until what is being said invokes so much rage that the hood whips back to show a mohawk and an expression of pure fury. My chubby cheeked little menace announcing to the world his disdain for women he could not possibly have met, the beliefs he supposes they hold, and the alleged harm this lays upon him – and by extension; Western civilisation as a whole, for some reason.
There is a shift in the room. The air is colder. Clouds conceal the sun on what was until minutes ago another blistering summers day. Edward stands in the doorway. His eyes dart from me on the floor motionless, to his opened parcel still stuck inside the shattered coffee table, to my phone on the armchair across from us both. He bolts. He could only be quicker if he were balancing an egg and spoon. I scarper up to my feet and run only to meet the basement door with my chin.
‘Edward,’ I call.
‘Edward!’ I bang my knuckles until they are almost bloodied.
‘I need to speak to you,’ I can feel him wishing me away.
‘How about PropagandaPunk? Can I speak to him?’
A moment passes, I stop banging, and the door handles gently twists.
*
Edward cuts a solitary figure in the armchair on the other side of the living room. It yawns when he finally leans forth to speak.
‘I hate the name, but it stuck,’ he says. It is a while before he continued. I cannot tell if he does not know what to say next or hopes in vain that I will excuse him and pretend this never happened. If I am capable of doing anything in this moment, despite racing feelings of betrayal and disbelief, I will wait for him to speak again.
‘It’s about rebelling against all the shit modern society requires of you as a man. All the lies fed to you in movies, T.V., videogames – everywhere. Like propaganda.’
He fiddles with his phone for a moment then one of his videos starts playing on the T.V. FEMINIST’S Are Driving Modern Men into ISOLATION.
My thumb snaps on the mute button.
‘You have never listened to me,’ he says flatly. So casual in its cruelty. And I think he means it, or at least, he thinks he does. ‘But they do.’
‘Who, Edward? Who listens to you?
He strikes the coffee table with his foot and his cheeks turn purple.
‘Nine million of them!’ he screams. ‘But soon it will be ten.’
‘What are you on about, Edward? Do millions of people listen to you saying these things?’
He laughs in my face, smugly, just like his Father used to, ‘Yes, but only one amongst those millions will matter to you.’
It’s his Father, it could only be his Father, but I want to hear him say it.
‘You will never understand me because you kicked the one person who did out of this house.’
His Father could not have cared less for Edward or me when he decided to walk out on us. Decided we were no longer worth his time, or effort, decided our love was worthless. Did you know whose love was worth his time? Shirley from the Chippie with less braincells than teeth, but Edward doesn’t know about that, and I won’t tell him whilst he is already so upset.
‘He watches. We text about it all the time.’
‘Have you been speaking to your Dad, Edward?’
‘We text.’
‘Have you spoken to him on the phone?’
‘I’m going to call him. I suppose you’ve seen the Play Button. That was for one million, yesterday was the one for five hundred thousand. I should have received them years ago, but they tried to silence me’
‘Who did?!’
‘None of that matters now,’ he asserts. ‘Today is the day the channel will hit ten million subscribers, and I want him to see it live.’
‘Edward, your Father has not seen you, live, in four years. Do you understand that? You know that he could at any time? If he wanted to? I wouldn’t like but neither would I stop it.’ Am I crying?
‘Don’t lie to me,’ Edward spits. ‘After today, you’ll never lie to me again.’
‘Wait, Edward. Tell me one thing. There are really nine – ten – million, all living in their mother’s basements?’
‘They can be,’ Edward replies. He jags his pointed finger towards the living room window, as if addressing the entire world. ‘Ten million men like me who got left behind – who wouldn’t stomach the fakery any longer. Feminism ruined the world for us. We used to live ordinary happy lives until they took it all from us. Ideologues, misandrists, cunts! We understand this. We get together to talk about it. We help each other.’ He inhales deeply before he says the next part, the killing blow, ‘They did more for me than you ever have.’
‘Edward, I am the only person who has looked you in the eye in two Christmases and you won’t even give me the time of day. Why does their company mean more to you than mine?’ I edge forward in my chair, desperate to catch his eye but he looks down and away from me.
‘I thought you wanted me to make something of myself.’
‘Edward, I won’t deny that getting ten million people to listen to what you have to say is something, but if neither they nor you can see that it’s a very, very negative and untrue something, I despair for you all. This isn’t you, Edward. I know you.’
He smiles, wryly, and rips the remote control from my hand. He unmutes the television and plays the next video in the queue, FEMALE PRIVILEGE in DIVORCE Courts.
‘This is the first one that went viral. Someone sent it to him, and he texted me. We’ve been speaking since then. He’s the only person who recognized my voice. He doesn’t even live here anymore but he listens to me more than you ever have.’
I can’t take this anymore. I need to some fresh air. I stand up but Edward leaps off of the armchair pushes me back down onto the couch, but I cannot hold on and stumble down upon the broken glass.
‘Stay down!’ he screams.
I am definitely crying now, and if I’m struggling to handle it, Edward certainly can’t bear it at all.
‘I better start the stream,’ he says, inhaling sharply to try and regain some cool.
‘Edward, don’t!’ I yell as I pull myself up and step around the coffee table. I kick my handbag and its contents come flying out across the floor and into the hall but I cannot stop now. I grasp at his heaving shoulder only to be shrugged off, my hip banging against the kitchen table. That will leave a bruise. I catch the basement door as he swings it back at me and descends the steps. The bannister shudders as he stomps down and dust from the rafters shakes through my hair like a pepper grinder. The door to the kitchen creaks closed and we are each sunken into this damp, dark pit he calls home. I reach out but Edward has vanished.
There is a clicking overhead.
Edward is on the other side of the room lit by a single flickering bulb.
I have never wanted to be down here since Edward claimed it as his own. He would never have welcomed me, but there is no lock on the door. I could have snuck a peek whenever he went to the toilet. Thousands of opportunities but none of them could have prepared me for the scene in which I stand. Nothing has changed. Everything is as his Father left it when this was his workshop. Dribbles of hardened varnish down the sides of their tins and brushes are wet with cobwebs. Toolboxes and scraps of wood and metal pile atop the rusted workbench. The only concession made is a mattress on the floor with a desk and computer at its end. Even the YouTube play button lays on the floor, framed portraits of his Father and caught fish with bulbous black eyes hang over the makeshift bed.
Edward steps over to his desk and tentatively I follow. He shakes his mouse to wake two computer monitors; the first of which displays a live counter of subscribers. The figure jumps:
9,998,752
9,999,107
10,000,004
Messages from his subscribers make a speeding vertical conveyer belt across the second screen. The pointer on the screen hovers over a button which reads:
GO LIVE
But Edward hesitates. Takes a deep breath. And turns to me.
‘Well, I guess the secret’s out.’
He holds his phone at arm’s length and hits dial. The screen fills with his face; he wipes his lips with the back of his hand and lifts the mop of brown hair over his forehead. It rings, and rings, and rings to no answer.
‘Edward-,’
‘Shut up!’ he barks over the ringing. The call disconnects.
I call his Father.
‘Sarah, I’m in the pub, what’s up?’
I have not heard that voice in so long but even after one syllable all the memories come flushing back. The lies. The deceit. The late nights at work, such translucent cover. The promise that I would forgive him, for Edward’s sake, if only he would leave her. I want to be sick. I want to slam my head against the wall. Swallow the shards of glass still scattered across the living room floor. More than any of that however, I want to tell Edward that, yes, the secret is out. All these years he thought he was hiding from me were nothing compared to the lengths at which his Father will hide from one honest conversation with his only son.
‘Someone wants to speak to you,’ I tell him, and hand my phone to Edward. His fingers tremble as he takes it from me.
‘Come upstairs when you’re ready,’ I tell him.
His videos are still playing on the television. I switch it off and hardly recognise the woman staring back at me in the black void of the screen. I cannot hear him from the living room. Cannot hear if he is having the conversation with his Father about which he always dreamed, or is coming head first at reality.
I take a seat on the couch, and I wait for him.
