Nemo’s Little Man
For the first time in ages, I manage to get away from the office before five, so I’m looking forward to congratulating myself with a cold can of beer. Imagine my surprise when I get into our kitchen, and find that we have company.
“Hm.” I react, surprised impolite, before recovering ably with “So, who is our guest?”
“Daddy, this is Victor.” Nemo says, smiling broadly.
Victor nods and grunts a greeting. At least, that’s what I interpret it as… he might just as well be slumping forward, air farting out through his innards.
“Hm. Okay. So, kiddo, how was school today?” I say, steering around the breakfast bar, and Victor, and heading for the fridge. Maybe two beers are more in order, I admit to myself.
“Oh, it was okay. A bit boring. My teacher is so dumb!”
“Well, now, we’ve talked about this…” I say, popping the can, feeling cold air hiss over my fingers. “They aren’t dumb, they just aren’t used to children quite like you. It’ll be better in a couple of years, at big school.”
Nemo wrinkles her nose, clearly not convinced, and then rolls her eyes at Victor, sharing some joke with her new friend.
“Mum isn’t home.” She says. “She’s working late. She said you’ll have to do dinner.”
“Excellent! You ready for pizza?” I say, acting up, then, “Is Victor staying for dinner?”
“You big silly, daddy!” Nemo squeals, and then giggles, “Victor doesn’t eat!”
I take a first cool draft from the can, and smile at my daughter.
“Of course he doesn’t.” I say. “Okay, let’s take a look at him.”
As I examine him, Victor’s head turns slowly towards me, seeming to appraise me in turn. I look him up and down, where he sits at the breakfast bar.
“So, okay.” I say, after a minute. “These are… pieces of our last sofa, from the garage. And this here… this is the head of your Tiny Tears doll. That’s really clever, how you’ve used it as an elbow. Most people wouldn’t have thought to do that.” Nemo watches, and nods approvingly as I evaluate her work. “And so… Hm. I don’t even know where you dug this up from. This is half of an old plaster Buddha that I gave your mother as a joke, when we were dating. I thought she’d thrown him out when he broke.”
I look at Nemo, and she looks away, the guilty coyness of a child performed as well as it ever was.
“Nemo, have you been up in the loft?”
“I only…”
“No, Nemo, you know you’re not supposed to go up there by yourself. What if you’d had an accident.”
“I’m sorry, daddy.” She looks at me with her big brown eyes, though, and my annoyance melts. “I was really careful, though.”
“Well, okay, never mind.” I say, and turn back to Victor. “Just, don’t do it again, okay? You’re still too small to do some things.”
Every parent believes that their eight year old has magic in them. My wife and I have just had to come to grips with the fact that in our case, we didn’t just believe it, it was a hard and natural fact.
Victor grunts as I poke at a part of him. I grimace at the soft, wet feeling, and glance at Nemo.
“Is this… part of an animal?”
“Ummmm… Yes!”
“Really?” I say, and screw up my face with revulsion. “How… on second thoughts, I don’t want to know.”
“Well, there was this doggy…”
“I said… don’t worry. It’s better that I don’t know.”
I look closer, and notice that, under the junk that Victor has in place of muscle and bone, there is more of the soft tissue. Some of it is pink and looks strangely dry. In other places, it is wet and dark, and around it the more absorbent of Victor’s materials are black with the juices that they’ve soaked up.
“Why on earth did you need to use meat?” I say, already knowing that the explanation will both make perfect sense, and be utterly incomprehensible to anyone except Nemo.
“Well, how else was Victor supposed to be alive, without a heart?”
See what I mean?
“Well, I… good point,” I look deeper inside the boy that Nemo has made, and continue, “but there’s more then just a heart in here, sweetie. I mean, what are those?”
“Well, those are lungs, daddy.” She says to me, her voice matter of fact, as if I am some kind of idiot for even asking.
Without realising it, I’ve finished my first can, so I turn back to the fridge for another, and while I’m at it, I get the pizza out of the freezer.
I save my question until it’s in the oven, and the second can is open and half sunk.
“So, why does Victor need lungs, then, sweetie?”
Nemo giggles again, leans across and pokes me in the ribs.
“So he can talk, you big silly!”
Eyes wide, I look at my daughter, then to her friend, and then back to Nemo again.
“Talk?” I say.
Which is when I hear Victor’s ramshackle parts creak and jingle against each other, as he turns my way once again.
And then Victor talks.
