by Nina George
Breaking into a run to keep up with her, I notice the glittering, silvery fingerprints her fright leaves on the walls. I get the feeling she isn’t running toward the stage but away from it.
“In the ballet, Marie has a dream and in that dream she dances for the very first time en pointe. She falls in love for the first time, she becomes an adult, and never again will she believe that toys have souls. But they do, don’t they, Sam? Everything has a soul, and everything recurs.”
I don’t know, but her desperation is overwhelming me and so I say, “Of course it does, Maddie.”
She sets off again and I pursue her. The labyrinth seems to have doubled or tripled in size. We race back and forth, and then the theater bell rings once and then a second time.
“I must find the stage!” she cries desperately. She stops, and turning to face me, she beats the wall with her fists.
Closing my eyes, I listen and hear the murmur of the audience. I take her by the wrist.
“Come with me,” I say.
She lets me pull her after me, tripping along on the points of her ballet shoes like Marie in The Nutcracker, and I can feel her pain, as if she were walking on broken glass. The murmur grows in volume as we near the stage. A beam of light splits the darkness, illuminating tiny, floating specks of dust. I can already see the red velvet curtain, already hear the sounds of the instruments in the orchestra pit and the stage manager preparing to pull the cord that will haul up the curtain for Maddie’s entrance…But then Maddie freezes.
“Sam,” she croaks, grabbing both my hands with hers. “I’m so scared.”
“What of, Maddie?”
“Going out there,” she whispers, glancing around her in panic.
We’re standing very close to the edge of the stage. I hear a rustling sound and muffled conversations. There are hundreds of thousands of people on the other side of that curtain: I can feel the heat of their bodies. The stage lights emit a low hum. The air is heavy with expectation.
“I’ve seen you dance. You’re beautiful and you can do this!” I tell her.
“I can’t do it. I can’t go out there.” She makes to turn and flee into the dark labyrinth, but I stop her.
“I can’t do it. Let me go!” she begs again.
“Why? What are you scared of?”
“They’ll point and laugh at me. They’ll say, ‘She’s no good.’ They’ll see how ugly I am!” Two tears detach themselves from her lovely eyes and trace long, blue-silver lines across her delicate white skin.
It dawns on me that she’s not talking about dancing but about a completely different performance, a completely different form of “stepping back into the light.”
“What are you most scared of?” I ask.
“There’s no one there, Sam, nobody left to love me.” She crumples in despair on the boundary between light and dark, when all she needs to do is take one step—one tiny step—back into the brightness and warmth of life. I can tell how she longs to whirl across that stage, watch the curtain rise, and then dance and live and laugh, lost in the music, the light, and the waves. She wants to live, but she fears life more than death.
“I’m here, Maddie,” I say gently. “I’m going to sit in the front row and clap. I won’t take my eyes off you, and no one will say you’re ugly. I love you. I’m here.”
I pull on one of her arms, then the other, but she stays slumped on the floor at the back of the stage. When a roving spotlight grazes her arm, she shrinks back as if burned. Tears stream down her cheeks as she tilts her face toward me, and the misery in her eyes is heartbreaking. Such despair, such desire, such loneliness.
“But what happens if you leave me too?” Madelyn asks.
“I won’t.”
“Everyone leaves someday. Everyone.” Frantically she jumps to her feet and staggers off into the darkness. Her silhouette seems to fray, her white outfit fades, her arms and legs become feathery shadows, and a heartbeat later she has melted into the surrounding blackness.
“I’m not leaving,” I call after her quietly. “Did you hear me, Maddie? I’m not leaving!” I scream, but she doesn’t hear me. She simply doesn’t hear me and if she does, she doesn’t believe me. The day is sucking me away, but I don’t want to leave her. I want to stay with her and sleep forever, yes…
Sam
It feels as if I’m being thrust upward out of the strange, foaming depths. I wake up in bed. My heart’s beating so hard I can feel its pounding in my neck and temples. It wasn’t a dream. No dream could ever be as close and as real as Maddie’s fear, voice, and hands.
I throw back the covers and all the accumulated warmth instantly escapes. I get up and feel an immediate longing to visit her. What lessons do I have this morning? Assembly, then English. They never check attendance at assembly so I could arrive late.
The Nutcracker, I think. I have to find and listen to it.
I glance at the clock. It’s still early. My mother will be helping Malcolm to get ready, so there’s no way she’ll notice that I’m leaving home earlier than usual. Then, just as I’m hurriedly packing my rucksack and heading out of the house, it happens. The telephone rings.
My mother appears from the kitchen, spots me, signals for me to wait, picks up the phone, and after a couple of seconds, exclaims, “Oh, Madame Lupion!” It flashes through my mind that I’ve missed something or forgotten to take something into account.
My mother listens and replies, “What?” then “No, not that I know of,” and finally “Oh, really? No, he’s fine. He was at Scott’s and…What? Yes, of course.” She hangs up and catches me just before I make it out of the door.
“Samuel!” she hisses.
Steve, freshly out of the shower, comes down the stairs and says, “What’s going on? Hey, Fanman.”
My mother’s eyes are glittering with fury, disappointment, and surprise. “I didn’t realize you were a diabetic and have your blood purified three times a week.”
“What?” asks Steve. “How come?”
“Nor did I know that my son is undergoing pain therapy,” she says, ratcheting up the volume. “And I had no idea that I’d written all these things to your teacher and that you’d missed the entrance exams for St. Paul’s!” She points to the kitchen. “Please go in there and sit down.”
Steve slowly follows us into the room, glancing first at me and then at his wife in bewilderment. I take a seat. My mother gives me a glare I’ve never seen on her face before, and my shame is dark red. Malcolm comes into the kitchen, stammering, “M-Mum? Sam?” but she gestures to him to leave.
“Well, you owe your mother an explanation!” Steve orders.
“You keep out of this,” I can’t help saying.
“Wow,” says Steve, “where did that come from?”
It’s very quiet in the kitchen. The only sounds are the ticking of the small clock on the oven and a buzz as the fridge springs into action. My mother looks so tense that I’m scared she’s going to start shouting or spank me.
So what she actually does comes as a huge surprise. She pulls up a chair, takes my hands, and says, “Samuel, I’ve loved you ever since you were born. Sometimes you’re a stranger to me. You seem peculiar and that feeling has only intensified now that you’re a teenager, but I love you.” Tears are running down her face. “Whatever you’ve done, I guess you must have had good reasons for doing it.”
I swallow hard. How long has it been since we last held hands? Not since I was really small, I reckon.
“Samuel. I’d like you to tell me, right now, what drove you to…”—she gropes for words to describe my faking excuse notes and counterfeiting her signature—“go to such great lengths to play truant and even skip the tests.” She waits, still holding my hands, and her kindness and her concern overwhelm and envelop me. “Are you scared of someone at school? Are you being bullied? Or—”
“What?” I’m genuinely stunned. “No!”
She lets out a cry of relief, whereas I am overcome with shame and appalling guilt. Not because I lied, but because I dared to imagine that my mother didn’t really love me. Not as I loved her. Not to the point where she could never have lived without me. And because I didn’t trust her to care for me.
“Pre-exam stress?” Steve asks, only making things worse.
I shake my head. “I was with my dad,” I confess.
“Oh,” is all my mother says. She slumps back against the arm of her chair. One of her hands releases mine, but she immediately puts it back again.
More ticking from the clock on the oven.
The whoosh of the boiler. The buzz of the fridge. The drip and puff of the coffee machine.
Malcolm standing wide-eyed in the doorway, staring at us.
The scent of Steve’s aftershave.
My mother’s eyes gazing at me, blinking with the colors of distress, anger, pain, and helplessness.
We hold each other’s gaze and for the first time it is as if we’re really speaking openly with each other—all without uttering a sound. Our muteness says everything there is to say. I realize I’ve hurt her, not by loving my father but because I’ve gone behind her back. She offers me a glimpse of her anger, but she bottles it up. Her fingers clasp mine even more tightly, as if she can barely stop herself from yelling or weeping, but she keeps her emotions in check. For my sake and hers.
Abruptly my mother draws herself upright, and her breathing settles. She looks at me and gives a faint smile that contains sadness and pain, resignation and tenderness.
“When I first got to know him at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I thought he was the most arrogant person I’d ever met.” She’s still staring at me, but her gaze passes through me into the thicket of bygone days. “Two days later we were in Sudan. A child soldier shot at us. The boy was the same age as you are now, Sam. That day I took the photo that later won a prize: the cowrie necklace lying in a pool of our dead driver’s blood.”
Her eyes are once again focused on me. She stretches out one hand and strokes my cheek extremely gently with it. Her voice has subsided to a whisper as she says, “I never took another portrait photo after that—not a single one.”
A tear trickles down her cheek, and I remember how she used to lay that cheek on mine when I was ill or running a temperature. How could I have forgotten?
“Your father saved my life by shielding me with his body. Can you imagine what it’s like to think that you’ve reached the end of your life?”
Yes, I can. That’s where my father is right now.
“The only emotions that really change your life, Sam, are fear and love. I was so afraid, and I’d never loved anyone. I had nothing to cling on to as the end approached.” She’s smiling and weeping at the same time. “Thinking of your father reminds me of the moment I realized that there’d been more fear than love in my life. I always held that against him. I was ashamed. I’m still ashamed. I’ve sought to lead a life that exposes me to as little danger as possible.”
I pause before asking, “And now?”
“Now it’s the other way around,” she says. “I have more love and less fear.”
Steve exhales. “Well, that’s a relief, Marie-France.”
“How is he?” she asks me, calmly and gravely.
“Not good,” I whisper. “Not good at all.” This time it’s my turn to have trouble controlling my emotions. I’d dearly love to throw myself into her arms, but I know that would be too much today. “He’s wearing my scoobie. He’s in a coma, and no one knows if he’ll ever come back.”
“Oh sh—” Steve exclaims, aghast.
“And that’s why you’ve been to see him so often,” my mother concludes, gulping hard.
I could tell her about Maddie or Eddie. I could tell her that I now know three things: I’m in love, I’m not going to stop going to the hospital, and I’ve just realized that I really do want to be a writer. No, not “want”—must. I don’t have a choice, but only now has that become clear to me. It feels as if it’s the only way to make sense of everything—people, colors, emotions, landscapes, and rooms I can read as if they were books. And Maddie too.
A story found me in Oxford. That’s what always happens: stories find you.
There’s one thing I’m not going to do for the time being, though, and that’s go to school. I couldn’t sit in class at Colet Court while Maddie would like to live but longs to die. I can’t study math and electrical circuits and French while my father’s fighting for survival. I must go to Maddie and tell her that I’ve understood and that I’ll be there for her.
Malcolm is perching on the bottom step out in the hallway. When I wave to him, he gratefully jumps to his feet and comes into the kitchen. My mother puts her arm around him and hugs him tight. Steve has placed his hand beside my mother’s on the plastic tablecloth, and they link their little fingers.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” my mother asks in a faint voice.
“Because you’ve got one another,” I answer honestly. “You, Malcolm, and Steve have got one another.”
And that’s exactly how they look as they face me. Without realizing it, they are intertwined.
Tears well up in my mother’s eyes, and she lifts her hand to her mouth. “I had no idea that’s how you saw things,” she says. She opens her arms wide. Come to me! her empty embrace cries, and very cautiously we both stand up and I hug her and she hugs me. I hadn’t noticed I’d grown, but almost overnight my mother and I are the same height. As we stand there, it’s clear that everything has changed.
I realize at that moment that you can always decide: nothing simply happens. It’s always possible to decide whether to lie or tell the truth, whether to be an asshole or not to be an asshole.
Steve claps his hands and says, “All right then, I’ll drive you to the hospital and then to school, okay? We’ll tell the head teacher that you’re going to take a break this year. But no more lies, do you hear? Marie-France? Sam?”
I nod and say, “I’ll wait for you outside, Steve.”
My voice has broken. I can feel the sound of my words echoing inside me. It is deep and calm and green. Dark green.
Henri
The barrier is a smoky gray and like glass. It’s never-ending, reaching down as far as I can see, and no edges to it are visible to my left or right or above me.
I don’t know what happened just now. I cannot remember having opened my eyes or waking up. Dark, turbulent depths gape beneath my feet. It’s as if something far below was propelling me upward and is now pressing me against an obstacle whose origins and nature I cannot discern.
It has no tangible surface, and yet it stretches as taut as skin above me. I float within touching distance of its underside, which hovers like a coffin lid over my head. I’m so thirsty, and I struggle for air.
I can feel myself breathing. Air flows into my lungs but is then sucked out of them again, leaving me constantly short of breath.
Then I spot them, on the other side of the glass. Shadows coalesce into men and women in blue or purple trousers and shirts going about their mysterious business.
“Hello! Please, I’m thirsty!”
Nobody hears me.
“Hello!” I cry. “Please, over here!”
They pay no attention to me whatsoever.
It is a continually shifting landscape of people and shadows. Intermittently, for a few short, jerky moments, the scene comes into focus, and I glimpse neon tubes, walls, and machines, but nowhere the blue brightness of day or the pitch-blackness of night.
Someone moves my arms and legs—at least I think they’re my arms and legs. I recognize my own hand by the familiar colorful band on my wrist. I try to waggle my forefinger, but I don’t succeed. I can’t feel a single part of my body. It’
s as if I consist exclusively of water and darkness, with my thoughts swimming in circles on the surface.
I can feel the air, though. I can make out the electrical odor of machines and the reek of smoke clinging to the hair of the men and women. I can sense the crackle of thoughts. I feel as if I’m a silent island surrounded by a sea of other people’s thoughts. These alien thoughts come from the figures leaning over me, and they glance off me like marbles.
I don’t know why I’m doing this. It makes no sense.
I could simply stay here tonight.
I can’t put up with another night when she doesn’t even look at me.
How about I make a salad rather than steaming some vegetables? Salad’s a negative-calorie food. Or maybe I’ll have a tiny piece of chocolate after all…
I’m working too hard. It must end sometime.
I feel sudden, acute pains, as if I’m being run through with a spear. They crush my heart, burn and singe and scorch me. The agony of it makes me want to scream. It is my lack of all bodily sensation that’s splitting and tearing me apart—and this impenetrable barrier.
I must be asleep, but very soon I’ll wake up. All I need to do is wake up.
A fragrance assails my nostrils—the aroma of a mild summer’s evening on the coast of Brittany, redolent with jasmine, pancakes, salt, and caramel.
Oh my darling! For an instant the pains soften. Any moment now I’m going to wake up, and Eddie will be by my side. My darling Eddie. I’m filled with such love and then such yearning, followed by a deep and plaintive sense of loss and a horrible feeling of shame. I used to be with her. I was once at the dawn of life. I was once immortal. Now I’m dead, or as good as. And I’m not asleep. Oh no, I’m not asleep—I’m almost dead! That’s the truth. Or is it?
A crackle of fear. A hum of tiredness, like a drowsy bumblebee. A flicker of worry, like a defective neon tube.
What is this? Where am I? In a bed? This bed is somewhere in a world from which I’m gradually fading, having already lost my arms, my legs, my body, and my voice. The people on the other side of the glass ignore me, even when I call out to them. I might as well be invisible to them.