She Is Haunted

by Paige Clark

  Well, who took just three strikes yesterday to light a match? And Mrs Moore only caught Elisabeth’s final try.

  She walked faster. Her glossy black hair was tucked neatly behind oversized ears. They were ears large enough to catch the wind, carrying her as if she were a vessel that bobbed whenever she reached a crack in the path. Last year, Elisabeth thought, she wasn’t the concertmistress of the St Monica School Orchestra. Last year, she was a lowly, second-stringer, no-name.

  At the gates of the junior school, she left Trifford, kissing him lightly on the cheek.

  ‘Ew, germs,’ he said.

  Original, she thought. She watched as he was swallowed up by the other children, dancing in their bright green and purple uniforms. She wished he would be more careful. He was still so small.

  Outside the secondary school, Brian was smoking cigarettes with a couple of other boys. This prehistoric oaf was the only thing besides Austin Kim standing between her and the St Monica Award.

  ‘Didn’t you hear that smoking kills?’ she asked.

  ‘Frigidity kills quicker,’ Brian said.

  ‘I’m impressed you know what that means.’

  ‘I’d be impressed if you had a drag.’

  ‘I smoke menthols,’ she said.

  Elisabeth told the truth. Her mother had briefed her on white lies. But she didn’t believe her that they were harmless.

  ‘I’ve got a menthol,’ said one of Brian’s friends.

  Months ago, while looking for matches to practise with, Elisabeth had found a pack of menthol cigarettes her mother had stashed. She spent hours in the backyard in the shadow of a large fig, watching the rats run from the roof of the house to the big tree and back. She struck match after match and carefully burnt each smoke to a nub. Every third cigarette, she would allow herself one puff. As if by magic, the packs she took were always replaced.

  Once her father came home unexpectedly during this ritual and walked past her and into the house through the kitchen.

  Smoking is bad for you, Elisabeth, he might have said.

  It won’t happen again, Dad, promise.

  Or, I did it so Mama wouldn’t.

  Instead he said nothing and the cigarettes regenerated like flatworms.

  Elisabeth took the menthol and inhaled. After all, it was for Science.

  ‘Wow, wow, wow,’ Brian said.

  ‘Don’t you dare be late for Chem.’ Elisabeth stomped the menthol out. She didn’t wish these boys ill, despite the fact that they were A-plus morons. Little did they know, she thought.

  After her first class, Elisabeth met up with Kelly Bush in the hallway. Kelly might have been her best friend, but she was still a ninny with a small head like a rabbit. She had a freckle face. In fact, she had so many it looked like her face was one big freckle. Elisabeth only had twenty-nine, sometimes more in summer. But who was counting?

  Every year, Kelly’s father came in during career week and bored everyone’s brains out. Today, he was due to visit each grade nine History class. He was an important lawyer and in his free time he made babies that resembled small mammals. Kelly had one sibling in every grade at school. Elisabeth made a mnemonic device to remember their names. But she couldn’t keep their rabbit heads straight. No way.

  The bully Billy Marquardt walked down the hall towards them, his buckteeth an inch ahead of him. He hated kids with braces and all girls. In particular, he hated Jamie Wilson, the school’s resident nerd.

  ‘I’m suing your solicitor father,’ he said to Kelly. ‘His class was torture.’

  ‘My dad’s not a solicitor,’ Kelly said.

  ‘Solicitors are lawyers,’ Elisabeth explained to her friend. ‘It’s the same thing.’

  ‘You’re as painful as he is,’ Billy said to Kelly. ‘Except you’re stupid too.’

  ‘Bullying is a violation of school policy,’ Elisabeth said.

  ‘Spare me.’

  ‘You know I won’t.’

  ‘Oh, I do apologise, Kelly. Your dad is super. Brilliant, in fact.’ He waved. ‘Adios, chicas.’

  ‘This is your warning,’ Elisabeth said.

  ‘Shit. I’m scared now.’

  Elisabeth was white-flame furious at her friend. She worried that Kelly was brain-dead. Surely the St Monica Award winner could not have a best friend who was a vegetable.

  But when she locked eyes with Kelly, she welled up with pity. Of course, nobody really knows what their father does. If somebody asked Elisabeth what her father did, what would she say?

  My father sits around in his boxer shorts. They’re so old the elastic’s gone.

  My father spends all day on a couch that’s disintegrating, and eats leftover takeaway. Our refrigerator runs so cold, sometimes the tofu is frozen solid.

  My father goes to the shops and eats custard tarts and pretends to look for work painting houses.

  My father is from another planet.

  So, she said, ‘Oh, Kel, you know I have no idea what my father does. I don’t have a clue.’

  She touched her hand to her friend’s small head, to hair that was never as soft as she expected it to be.

  Patricia Loo started the car by blowing into the interlock that was fitted to the ignition so the car wouldn’t start if she were over the limit. This always seemed unnecessary to her, since she hadn’t had a drink since university. Plus, John Loo had given up booze a few months back. All the same, she needed to buy non-alcoholic beer for him, in case he fell into an alcoholic’s rage without it. She was low on a few things actually—menthols, instant coffee, skim milk. She’d been putting off going to the shops for days, ever since she’d run into Mrs Kim in the organic foods aisle.

  The wife of an orthopaedic surgeon, Mrs Doctor Kim had been buying brown rice bubbles for her so-called genius son. She’d managed to smile at Patricia though her face was tight and shiny with collagen.

  ‘Brain food,’ Mrs Kim said.

  ‘I heard Austin is doing really well in Chemistry,’ Patricia said.

  ‘He’s nationally ranked. And only fourteen! Young for his grade.’

  Patricia wanted to tell her my daughter smokes my cigarettes so I won’t. I catch it sometimes on her breath when she kisses me goodbye.

  Instead she said, ‘Elisabeth is fourteen too. She thinks she’s got a good chance for the St Monica Award this year.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. Austin said she’s his only competition. May the best man win.’

  Woman, Patricia thought. Lately, Elisabeth had even grown into her ears. It was something Patricia had been afraid of for many years without ever realising. Of course, she had seen glimpses of her daughter’s elegance before. She had seen it in Elisabeth’s long fingers, in the way they stretched across the neck of the violin.

  ‘You know she’s concertmistress this year,’ Patricia said.

  ‘We’ve been at every show. Would not dream of missing one,’ said Mrs Kim. She thumbed the boxes of cereal looking for bent corners. ‘Would not dream of it.’

  Well, she’d brave Mrs Doctor Kim to get the beer, Patricia thought. John Loo said he drank it for the taste. It gave him the illusion of being drunk yet he could start the car. He’d quit the hard stuff when Patricia found him one day with Elisabeth, her mouth to the interlock, puffing in her sweet breath, her smooth black head sloped like a nursing baby’s.

  ‘I’m leaving, John,’ she’d said.

  ‘Hey, lady,’ he’d asked, ‘why so sad?’

  Patricia put the car into reverse. She backed out past where Elisabeth sat that day on the driveway, the engine humming brightly. She drove straight past her memory to the shops.

  Elisabeth couldn’t believe Jamie Richardson was so hopeless he’d fallen over and broken his jaw and then afterwards was so hopeless he’d let the doctors wire his mouth shut. This meant he was number one on Billy’s hit list—idiotic and fated to have perfect teeth. Whenever she saw the two of them approaching each other in the halls, she groaned.

  Today Elisabeth did not have to pick
up Triff from school, so she decided to go home the long way and she ran into Jamie and she was polite to him. Though she did take note of the spittle balanced on the cleft of his chin. That spit sparkled. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Billy and a few boneheads—Brian and some others. She willed Jamie to walk faster, but he was slow from the fall and no doubt destined to get himself into hot water.

  ‘My God, if it isn’t Elisabeth P Loo. Elisabeth “Perfect” Loo. The hero of St Monica’s,’ Billy said. ‘Jamie, I didn’t realise you were going out with Batman herself.’

  Billy was close to Jamie now, his teeth sticking out like skewers. He is going to impale Jamie with his teeth, Elisabeth thought.

  ‘Hey, Brian,’ she said, ‘can you get Billy out of here? I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘Jamie, you’re a lucky fucking cripple. You know what they say,’ said Billy.

  ‘What do they say?’ Elisabeth asked.

  ‘They say she has the tightest pussy in the school.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Brian said.

  ‘They say her pussy is so tight she’d even come with a cripple dick like you.’

  ‘Well, that’s not what they say, Billy,’ she said. ‘They say that my pussy is so tight that I’d even feel a micro-dick like yours.’ She wedged herself between the two boys. You’re safe, Jamie, she thought. Brian and the boneheads edged away.

  ‘But Billy, one more thing.’ She felt his hot breath. ‘You’d never make me come.’ She slapped his face hard.

  This was not how you won the St Monica Award, she thought. No doubt Austin Kim was in a lab somewhere taking risks with his facial hair. If you have to, you can draw in eyebrows. Hair grows back, her mother told her. She said this every time Elisabeth got a haircut.

  Elisabeth entered through the kitchen door as she did every afternoon, announcing herself and grabbing one of her father’s beers from the fridge. Nobody home. She sat at the wide table, at the spot where she’d worn down the wood with homework. She started with Mathematics. This was the easiest place to start because there were problems and there were solutions. In a way, though, all the subjects had solutions, she thought, touching where she pictured the freckles on her face were, as if counting them would help her with her Pre-calc. Twenty-nine. That wasn’t the answer. That was no way to win the St Monica Award.

  Trifford, who was a genius in his own right, had counted his way through school, but multiplication did him sideways. Well, she’d warned him.

  Elisabeth cracked open her beer. Drinking made her feel her age. The beer did not taste crisp like the white wine she drank with her mother at Christmas. She took another sip. It tasted like a couch, which was not what she expected. But then again, this getting old was not what she expected. This getting old was not for sissies. She decided to smoke an entire cigarette.

  Patricia Loo went to the shops and then to the dry cleaners and then to Trifford’s school, where there had been an incident at the library earlier in the week. According to the librarian, Triff had destroyed most of the science-fiction section and some of the fantasy.

  ‘So, by destroyed, you mean he ripped up all the sci-fi books and some of the fantasy ones?’ Patricia asked.

  And the librarian said, ‘No.’

  ‘They weren’t destroyed then, were they?’

  ‘Well, I guess, no.’

  ‘So, he just took the books off the shelf and didn’t put them back?’

  ‘I think he might need to see a psych.’

  ‘I’m sorry he wasn’t a polite patron of this library,’ Patricia said.

  ‘After he did it,’ the librarian said, ‘he came up to me and put his arms around me. He looked at me and said, “Hey, lady, why so sad?”

  Patricia could not imagine her son’s arms spanning the width of this librarian, a plum pudding of a woman.

  ‘I can see if the school counsellor has time.’

  ‘Yes, that will be fine,’ Patricia said.

  When Triff met Patricia at the car after class, she scooped him up and put him in the backseat even though he protested that he wasn’t a baby and could sit in the front. And even though it was a short drive, he took off his shoes and socks and fell asleep before Patricia had turned into their street. She pulled up the driveway and put the car into park. Triff twitched as he fell into a deep sleep and Patricia watched him until his face went still. Then she turned her gaze to her house, which at this hour was mostly in the shade of the fig. She thought she saw something stirring in the tree, but it was too warm for it to be the leaves falling. Just a trick of the light, she thought.

  She went to the backseat and she scooped up Triff again. She picked up his tiny shoes and his tiny socks. They’re still babies, really, she thought. She did not notice that she dropped a sock on her way to the back door. She did not know that this was how things were lost.

  Patricia met Elisabeth at the kitchen door and Elisabeth held it open for her mother because her hands were full with Triff. He could sleep through anything.

  ‘I’m going to play outside,’ Elisabeth said. Her mother felt comforted by the word play, because she worried often that her daughter was too serious. And she wanted Elisabeth not to be serious more than she wanted her to win that award. Though everyone had such nice things to say about her daughter. Sometimes other mothers came up to her and asked to shake her hand.

  Patricia tucked Triff into bed and wedged his superhero doll beside him. She heard John at the front door and she fixed her hair in the mirror behind Triff’s bedroom door. In the afternoon dark, even with the curtains closed, she could see the cracks spreading across her face.

  She met John in the living room.

  ‘This place is a fucking dump,’ he said.

  She could see it was a dump. She could see the dust and hair that had been walked on too many times and had balled up to form clumps of dust and hair. She could see where the arm of the couch was slowly starting to peel away from its body. She often slept here when John had a bad night, sometimes not even bothering to make it into a bed.

  ‘This fucking couch,’ he said.

  ‘You love this couch.’

  ‘Look, this arm isn’t even attached.’

  ‘Push it in here and then it will be fine. See?’ She scrambled to put the arm back on, but John grabbed it from the other side and ripped it off in one go. Patricia stumbled and fell forward onto the carpet, onto the dismembered part of the couch. John walked to her and put his heavy boot on her head.

  I’ll teach Elisabeth how to drive. Then she can take Triff to school.

  I’ll buy him all the fantasy novels he wants. I’ll get him the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’ll get him the Percy Jacksons too.

  I’ll vacuum tomorrow.

  I’ll ask Elisabeth to do it if I’m not feeling up to it.

  She felt John release his foot and kneel down beside her. She felt his face moving towards her. She felt his lips moving too.

  ‘Hey, lady, why so sad?’ he asked.

  Austin ‘No Eyebrows’ Kim would win the St Monica Award. Elisabeth realised that now. Stuff him. She finished her cigarette, her neck itchy from where she’d leant against the fig to observe a baby roof rat run through its highest branches. Her brother’s sock stuck out from the grass and she rose to pick it up. She caught sight of the rat again and this time it was not running. It was falling, pedalling in the air as if caught in an invisible hamster wheel. It seemed to her to have come from nowhere.

  Elisabeth watched as the baby rat convulsed on the ground, each fit further and further apart in time from the one before, until it was quiet. She picked it up with her brother’s sock and spoke to it.

  ‘I didn’t think you had accidents like we do,’ she said.

  She took the rat inside, through the kitchen and to the living room where her mother was sprawled on the floor. Elisabeth P Loo, of sound body and mind, sat down on the couch. The room was holding her body together. She sat and she stroked the dead rat until its body had no heat.

  E
lisabeth thought to herself that she was grown up now. She thought that maybe she had been grown up without even realising it. But what she didn’t think, sitting on that old hateful couch, its innards spilling out, was that it would be years. Years before her father would go to the trouble of replacing the missing arm. Longer still until her mother asked her father to move out, though he never would. He would stay at the Paradise Motel for exactly two and a half nights before he would come back with his dog eyes brimming over and smelling of fake beer. It would be years before Elisabeth got up off that very same couch, kissed her mother lightly on the cheek and then her brother. Years before she walked out the door and did not walk back in again.

  When she did, she would pause only briefly to catch the sun through the limbs of the big fig tree. No amount of time passing would ever dislodge the memory of that baby rat, falling and falling as if it came from the sky itself.

  A WOMAN IN LOVE

  the sympathy one feels for a dog

  helpless in his dog life

  the sympathy one feels for a man

  helpless in his man life

  for the grey cat leashed to the fire hydrant

  the sympathy one feels for a woman

  alone at the dinner table.

  —Deborah Landau, from ‘The City of Paris Has You in

  Mind Tonight’

  I get half of nothing. My ex, Bernard, was a lawyer and a pessimist, so we signed a prenuptial agreement. He is still both of those things, even though he believes he is past tense to me now. I bet he calls himself a realist: I saw this coming. I knew she’d never change. Well, hell. If we’re telling fibs, I could say he’s an optimist. After all, he thinks he can be done with me quick smart.

  Ha ha, I say to that.

  I’m making it sound like I deserve a reward for being married to the guy. I don’t. Honestly, I am pleased to leave his handsome terrace house with nothing but a framed painting of an ancient Japanese turtle and a book of Deborah Landau poems. I only wanted visitation rights.