Rock, Paper, Scissors

by Naja Marie Aidt

  “Look,” Luke says, “three eagles.”

  “I saw them,” Thomas grumbles.

  “Uncle Thomas! You made it!” Alice hops enthusiastically up and down.

  “Of course I made it. What do you take me for?”

  Alice grins. “Come have a look. You really can see the sea from here. It’s awesome, Luke! So awesome. Thank you for bringing us up here.” She strokes his arm.

  “My pleasure,” he smiles.

  They stand watching the eagles drift across the sky. But Thomas quickly sits down. Little by little he catches his breath.

  “Doesn’t your mother live out here somewhere?” he ventures.

  Luke nods curtly. Then he unzips his backpack. “I’m hungry,” he says.

  “Yes, food! And we’ve got sodas.” Alice eagerly begins to unpack. Like a little girl playing at going on a hike, and that’s what she is, too, Thomas thinks. Just a little girl playing grown up. Soon I’ll have to convince her to play store.

  Luke wolfs his food. He bites into his sandwich. His jaws grind at a measured, rhythmic pace. He doesn’t waste a crumb, his fingers don’t get greasy. Alice has kicked off her shoes. She’s sprawled out placidly, a blissful smile curling at her lips, her arms at her sides. “Ah,” she whispers. “Complete freedom.” Thomas digs into his sandwich. Rarely has anything tasted so delicious. A ripe tomato virtually explodes in his mouth; its acidic taste, its sweetness, its juice dribbling down his chin and onto his shirt, where it leaves a stain. The ham is salty and dry. The soda fizzes on his tongue. And there’s cheese. And a protein bar made with nuts and honey. They share the rest of the lukewarm coffee. It’s only at this moment that Thomas begins taking it all in. The plateau’s overrun with bristly grass. There are harebells and narrow-leafed thyme and varieties of cranesbill, white, rose-pink, blue. There are low-hanging, richly blooming baby blue eyes and saxifrage plants, with their tiny, yellow, distended inflorescence. There are cacti. Alice finds a small, unassuming white orchid dappled with wine-red dots. He’d had a short-lived passion for botany once, and this passion returns to him now. Plants in mountainous regions. Thomas scrabbles to his feet. Feels a tingling sense of joy scanning the countryside; the view is as awesome as Luke promised. You really can see the sea from here. The sandy beaches, a white belt running as far as the eye can see, and the water that almost seems to meld with the sky. He rotates 360 degrees and stares over the green forests, green lakes, green valleys, and green fields. Another mountain chain rising majestically, brown and gray. The snow on its summits. Everything is far away and deep down or high, high up, but also completely, incredibly close. Here, ants as big as fingernails crawl across Alice’s naked foot, here reptiles sun themselves on flat stones, here one of the eagles nosedives and comes so close that they can see its enormous wingspan and its sharp, curved beak. Thomas ducks involuntarily. He smiles at Luke, and Luke returns the smile, the smile sliding up his face; there’s a gleam in his eyes now, something Thomas has never seen in him: he’s exuberant, abandoning himself to the moment. The energy from the food now pumps through Thomas. Here they are at the top of the world, and unexpectedly, like a gift, he feels overcome with joy, which they share in common. Alice giggles excitedly. Luke joins in. An odd solidarity unites them. Because together they’ve reached the top, because together they are here. It’s suddenly very simple and very right. His endorphins rush through him like a cool, refreshing shower, like the first ripple of an orgasm, his fingertips prickle, his feet throb, he breathes deeply and exhales: I am alive, he thinks, I am happy; he laughs out loud and the others laugh, too.

  They begin the descent. Now the others can see, if they look up, the soles of Thomas’s shoes. He feels his way forward with his feet, sliding only once. It’s faster going this way. He stays focused. He doesn’t look down. He leaps the last step and lands squarely. The return trip along the spine of the thickly-wooded mountain is far easier than it had been going up, though he can feel his thighs burning, and the ball of his left foot grows especially sore and tired. They walk side by side. Alice puts on her windbreaker again. They chat. The tone between them remains friendly, like up on the plateau. Thomas describes his new store. A little too frenetically, he talks at great length about how he plans to decorate it, how the old countertop will have to be sanded and varnished, how they’ll have to dress up one of the walls with a beautiful patterned wallpaper, maybe something with dark-blue and gold? The rest will be painted off-white. And the floor, should he paint it black? Or go with a dark stain? “The back room will be really comfy. You can see huge trees in the courtyard in there. The light’s incredible.”

  Alice seems increasingly interested.

  “If you need a hand renovating it, let me know,” Luke says.

  Thomas scrutinizes him. “You mean that?”

  He nods. “Absolutely.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  Luke shrugs. Does he seem a little shy now, a little coy? What would she actually do, Alice asks more scrupulously. In her own assessment, she’d be good at helping customers, because she’s service-minded. She also thinks she could learn how to keep the books. “I’m awful at math, but I can count,” she says. Thomas thinks to himself: Now we’re playing store. He suggests she come in on Monday, so she can nose around. Just five or six hours a day. It’ll be a while yet before they open the other store.

  “So I can keep my job at the same time,” she says, kicking a small, knotted branch.

  “You have a job?”

  “Yeah, but it’s only in the evenings.”

  “You didn’t tell me that. What are you doing?”

  “Telephone sales, sort of.” She pulls the hood of her windbreaker up.

  Thomas eases his pace, so that Luke can pass him. He has a bad feeling about this. He lowers his voice. “What exactly do you do, Alice? What kind of job is it? Please tell me.”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “Tell me. You don’t need to hide it. Not from me you don’t.”

  “You want me to be totally honest?”

  “Yes. Totally.”

  “It’s an escort service. I just answer the phone.” When Thomas doesn’t respond, she goes on. “That means I’m not an escort, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not at all.”

  He stares at her.

  “I’m not!”

  “Who got you the job?”

  “Does it even matter? I’ve only been there for a few days. I needed the money really bad.” She pauses. Then she looks at him from inside the hood. Her face is in shadow. She says, “Mom knows.”

  “Jenny knows?”

  She nods. “Yeah. And she doesn’t care. I have to make a living somehow, right? It doesn’t bother me, it’s just a job. It’s better than cleaning houses.”

  They reach Luke, who has stopped to wait for them. Conversation grinds to a halt. They stride down a steep hill, the forest floor dense and dark with lean, lofty spruces, redwood, arborvitae, and evergreens stretching toward the light. They come to a patch of birch forest. Sunlight filters through the leaves, shimmering onto them. Gravel crunches beneath their feet, and from time to time they smell rot, mushrooms, wet ground, and then suddenly the scent shifts to wood sorrel and elderberry. They walk in silence, side by side. Alice pushes back her hood again. Luke tells them about a camping trip he took when he was thirteen, not far from here. At night he and his friend were afraid of bears.

  “This was in the fall, right before they hibernate—when they’re desperate and hungry. We lay in the tent clutching each other. The next morning we went home. Later I learned they don’t even have bears here.”

  “Did you live up here as a boy?”

  “No. We lived in the city until I was nine. Then my mother moved up here with the idiot, so I visited a few times. Mostly I lived with Fatso.”

  Luke seems more relaxed now, even his body. He’s not being sneaky or calculated; his movements are freer, his face softer. Though Thomas’s mood briefly darkened at the thought of Alice workin
g for an escort service, he nevertheless believes, at this moment, that things will work out, and even as Luke tells them how he loved visiting Jacques when he was a boy, Thomas can’t help but think of the new store, its interior design, its clientele—young people. He can picture it, and the images flit one after the other, coupled with the strong aroma of fresh paint and wood, so he only hears bits and pieces of Luke’s story.

  “But what did you actually do when you weren’t fishing?” Alice asks.

  “Oh, just about everything. Often we just sat in the living room watching TV. Sports. Usually. Sometimes he let me drink soda. Or he’d help me with my homework.”

  Thomas can’t believe his own ears. “He did what?”

  “Mostly history and geography. And he’d tell me about his youth.”

  Thomas looks at Luke’s profile in disbelief. Then he shakes his head.

  “What did he say?” Alice squeezes her head between her hands, as if checking that it’s still there.

  “How he’d carry on at the big dance halls, for one. He never went out without his hat and vest. I remember him saying that. Always his hat and vest. And a newly ironed shirt of Egyptian cotton. Polished, shiny shoes. He showed me a photograph of himself sitting at a long bar with a drink in his hand. Toasting the camera. I still remember his smile in that photo, a big, wide smile. He was very young then, and dark-haired. His hat lay on the bar. It was white. I used to think a lot about that Egyptian cotton, how exotic and strange it was. I’d never heard of Egyptian cotton before. And sometimes . . .”

  Luke stares deeply between the trees, as if he’s seen something interesting in the forest. “Sometimes there were others too. My uncle and Frank and many I didn’t know. I’d sit in the corner listening to the men talk. They’d forget I was there and it wasn’t until they were leaving that Jacques would see me and say, You’re still here, Kid. Go home, Kid. Then he’d put his big hand on my shoulder.”

  “So that’s why they call you The Kid!” Alice smiles excitedly, as if she’s solved one of life’s great mysteries. “I didn’t understand why. But that’s why, isn’t it?”

  “Yup. Jacques started that. But I was the only child there. Just me and . . .”

  “I remember that photograph,” Thomas interjects, sounding more curt than he’d intended. “But I’ve never heard anything about dance halls or Egyptian cotton. He probably just made that stuff up to entertain you. Or to make himself seem better than he was.”

  “But back then he really was like that,” Alice says. “That’s what Mom told me. That when he met grandma he went to all these really fancy places and that he wouldn’t have met her otherwise, because she went to those places. Or something like that.”

  “He met my mother at a costume party thrown by one of her fellow students. She studied art history at that point. Later she dropped out. But when they met each other she was a student. No more than twenty years old. Jacques lived in an apartment near the river, it had a great view, tall ceilings. He had a rich night life, knew everything about it, and she was enthralled by his bohemian lifestyle. They got married. My grandfather was furious.”

  “What about your grandmother? Was she furious too?” Alice asks.

  “She died young. Just like my mother.”

  “Also breast cancer?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened then?”

  “They had me. Not long after that Jenny came along. He had money then, he worked a bit for his uncle—a goldsmith—but he also dabbled in seedier things. My mother didn’t know anything about that. But when Jenny was really little things changed. His uncle fired him after he stole money and gold from him, but he didn’t report him to the police—because he was ashamed that his own nephew had swindled him. That’s when Jacques began his career in crime. They moved out of the hip apartment by the river. And he started beating my mother.”

  “How do you know?” Luke asks. He adjusts his backpack.

  “From Kristin. I don’t remember it myself, of course. Not really. Just that one time. I must’ve been four years old.”

  “But why?” Alice asks. “And why did he hit you? I asked Kristin yesterday, but my mom won’t talk about it. She always says that it wasn’t so bad. But I can tell she gets really nervous.”

  Thomas sighs. “Listen, he wasn’t very smart. I’m sorry, Luke, I know you have a different image of him, but he just wasn’t. He was unscrupulous. Ruthless. My mother was obviously beside herself when she realized where the money was coming from, the money that put food on our table. She was probably hysterical, and so he smacked her. And it just got worse and worse.”

  Luke and Thomas lock eyes. Once again Luke’s words are cool, measured. “Why didn’t she just move home to her rich family?”

  “I don’t think she wanted to go home to her father, they weren’t on good terms. But I don’t know. There were others, after all. An aunt up north. A cousin. She must have been desperate. She was so young.”

  “But she just took off?” Luke holds Thomas’s gaze.

  “Yes. She did. I don’t know why. I’ve stopped wondering.”

  “Have you really?” Luke asks. He’s so close that Thomas can smell his body. His sweat, almost resinous, and even a hint of something like jasmine, something very alluring, that seems to emanate from him.

  “Have you really stopped wondering?” he repeats.

  “No, you haven’t,” Alice says. “He hasn’t. You can’t! Imagine if it were you.”

  Luke looks at her with an almost startled expression.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Imagine if it were your mother who left you when you were five years old, your father who beat you.” The look Alice gives him is at once sharp and quizzical.

  “But my mother left me too,” he says, and now he sounds like a sniffling child.

  “Still, you know what I mean. It’s not the same thing. You just didn’t want to live in the country with your stepfather,” Alice says. “My father left as well. That kind of thing happens, it’s normal. But seriously, it’s not the same as what Thomas and my mother went through. Wouldn’t you say?” She looks at Thomas, her eyes wide.

  “I don’t know, Alice. I don’t know what it was like for Luke when he was a kid.”

  “But where did you actually live when he was in prison? Mom never said anything about that.”

  “He wasn’t in prison when we were little. They never caught him. It wasn’t until we’d moved away that he got locked up.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  Thomas glances up at the trees. “Maybe he just got reckless. Maybe he was just older and had lost his grip. I don’t know.”

  Alice goes quiet, disappearing into her own thoughts. She looks like someone who’s been given more information than she can grasp. The path veers, the terrain growing more and more barren; they’ve reached the tree-line above the parking lot. They walk for a bit in silence.

  “In my opinion,” Luke mumbles, almost inaudibly, “those who run away are cowards.” Thomas wants to say something, something about how Luke himself ran away from his mother, something about how Luke shouldn’t say one bad word about his mother, but before he does Alice stops abruptly.

  “Look! We’re already here! How strange, I thought we had a ways to go yet.”

  There’s the parking lot. There’s the blue Opel glinting in the sunlight. Alice takes the keys and trots ahead. Thomas and Luke march side by side, unspeaking, and Thomas realizes they’re walking in rhythm. He climbs in the back seat. “Thanks for the hike, Luke,” he says. “It was a wonderful experience.” Luke nods, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror. He puts the key in the ignition. They drive at a good clip back to the farm. Now and then, to equalize the pressure change, Thomas pinches his nose and blows air. The road declines steeply. And now exhaustion settles in. Alice and Thomas doze on the way home; sleep arrives to the faint accompaniment of rap music on the radio, sluicing into Thomas’s mild dreams. In them he’s swimming, he’s with a w
oman, he’s feeling the sun burning on his back.

  As soon as they turn onto the graveled driveway leading to the house, they see commotion on the grounds. Maloney’s chopping firewood. His face is flushed, and he’s swinging the ax in broad arcs. Helena, Patricia, and Kristin sit drinking tea on the patio. The girls are chasing each other on the lawn with the water hose, and they howl—a shrill, lively, wonderful howl—every time they spray each other, a sound that reaches inside the car. As soon as they’ve parked, Alice rushes out and joins the twins. She peels off her windbreaker as she runs and tosses it on the grass, and the girls hoot as they spray her, their laughter only increasing. She wrestles the hose from Nina who then, with Maya, runs screeching around the house where Alice can’t reach them. She drops the hose and chases them. Thomas saunters over to Maloney, who’s standing underneath the lean-to of the woodshed. He cleaves a log with a single blow of the ax, and the split halves fall onto the flagstones, white and dry. He dabs the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. He’s soaked through.