Ordinary Joe by Jon Teckman

Author:Jon Teckman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008118785
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

MILL HILL, NORTH LONDON

The journey home seemed to take forever. The traffic, even in the early afternoon, was horrible, forcing the driver to weave through narrow side streets in desperate pursuit of a few feet of unoccupied road. As we drew nearer to my home, he had to ask me for directions, in response to which I could only mumble and splutter like the Elephant Man chewing a toffee. Every time I tried to speak, a crimson stream dribbled from my mouth into the sodden red paper napkin I was holding to my battered face. The cabbie checked occasionally that I wasn’t bleeding on his upholstery, but otherwise seemed unperturbed by my plight.

When we got to within a few minutes’ walk of my house, and tired of trying to make myself understood through swollen lips, I asked him to pull over. I handed over the contents of my wallet in settlement of the fare and shuffled home, engendering fear or laughter in the people who saw me, depending on their predisposition towards bleeding men in suits.

I eventually made it to my front door and fumbled for my keys with my left hand, while my right stayed pressed to my face, holding the napkin in place. I managed to hook them out of my pocket, but then dropped them behind one of the pot plants that adorned our front step. Even the thought of going down on my hands and knees to grope for them gave me a headache, so I rang the bell. There was no answer. Looking at my watch, I realised that Natasha must be collecting Helen from school. I was close to tears, not of pain – although my whole face felt as if I’d been used for batting practice by a Major League baseball team – but from the accumulated anguish of a day that had started brightly but had descended to my being labelled a cowardly weasel, punched in the face and made to struggle home only to find myself locked out.

I sat down on the step and rested my throbbing head in my hands. After what seemed like a lifetime, I heard the patter of excited feet and felt eager hands grabbing at me as Helen and Matthew, surprised to see me waiting for them, raced ahead of their mother to greet me. As I looked up, I heard the sharp scream, followed by the gut-wrenching sobs of my daughter and the maniacal giggling of my son who, while not used to seeing his father toothless and bleeding, was easily excited by blood and trouble.

Natasha heard the commotion and sprinted up the path, umbrella raised above her head, her face etched with the terror that only a mother can know: that the man on her front step whom she had assumed to be her husband was, in fact, a murderous, paedophiliac, Jehovah’s Witness off his face on Special Brew or crystal meth. She was relieved to see that the cause of her daughter’s alarm was only her husband sporting a face like a dentist’s dream.

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