“Don’t act stupid!” Plum shrieks, and David flinches but can’t hide, and Justin feels her loudness like a punch against the jaw. “You know what I’m talking about! Were you ever going to tell me? Were you ever going to tell Mums and Fa? Or were you just going to sneak away like a — a rat?”
The bungalow door wheezes and Cydar steps out, a cigarette sloping between his fingers, his black-snake eyes aware of everything. “You’re scaring him,” he warns, meaning the boy, and Plum understands: but it is Justin who spins toward him, grateful. “What are you screaming about, Plum?”
Plum kicks a skin of soil from the path. “You shut up, Cydar! Don’t pretend to be dumb. You know what’s going on. Well, I know it too now. Maureen told me the big stupid secret. She and Justin are in love, and now they’re running away.”
Justin laughs like he’s been shockingly slapped. Cydar takes a long draw from his cigarette, sliding his eyes to his brother. “Is that true?”
“No!” Justin cries. “Of course not!”
“Well why would she say it, if it wasn’t true?”
Justin wheels to his sister. “I have no idea!”
“Maybe because she’s crazy?”
Justin grabs it like a drowner. “She must be!”
Plum smiles gruesomely, flexing her fingers around David’s wrist. “Yeah, that’s what I reckoned. That would be silly. You wouldn’t be in love with her. But then I asked David, and he said you visit their house sometimes.”
“David’s a little kid, Plum! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about! He’ll say anything you want him to say!”
“Yeah,” Plum agrees stonily. “I thought that too. You can’t trust what a kid says. But then I remembered your car.”
Justin, standing under the open sky, holds up his hands defenselessly. Unpracticed at having to protect himself, nothing comes to his aid. The brothers and their sister stare at each other in silence while a brown myna ticks its way across the bungalow roof and a cabbage moth dips from flower to flower. Justin looks to Cydar, and when he sees the darkness in his brother’s face he laughs in astonishment. “Cydar! You’re joking!”
Because Cydar, who has always distrusted the world, is suddenly seeing there’s no reason why Justin shouldn’t prove himself untrustworthy as well. Deceit is such an ordinary thing, and Justin is an ordinary man. He gives his brother the thinnest of glances, taps ash into the ash-ridden dirt. “What did Maureen say, Plum? Don’t scream it, just say it.”
Plum raises her chin. “She told me that she and Justin love each other — that they’ve loved each other for a long time. That they’re probably going to get married, and that they’re going to live in Berlin.”
Justin gives an incredulous bark. Cydar’s gaze crosses the weeds to his brother. “That sounds very happily-ever-after.”
Justin goes to reply but only gapes, empty hands hanging. A strange calm moves through him, and when he speaks, the panic has been smoothed from his voice. “Cydar, it’s not true. Believe me. I don’t know anything about this. There’s just me — you know me.” And although Cydar ponders him for another instant, Justin sees him remembering that they do know each other — that this family which has never fitted quite snugly together is nonetheless bonded and reliable. Relieved, he turns back to his sister and says, “I don’t know why Maureen told you those things, Plum. But why do you believe her? Just because she said it, that makes it true?”
Uncertainty flickers inside the girl, she almost takes all her accusing words back; but the Holden is evidence made of steel, and she says, “I’ve seen your car parked near the playground on days when you were supposed to be at work. What was it doing there?”
Justin hesitates; a smile scratches his face. “I work in a bottle shop,” he replies. “I deliver flagons to old ladies who can’t carry them home on the bus. I deliver cartons of beer to men who get the shakes if they leave the house. Sometimes I stay and talk to them, because, besides something to drink, what they want is someone to talk to while they’re drinking. That’s probably what I was doing when you saw the car: talking about grandchildren and eating fruitcake. That’s what I am, Plum — a delivery guy. Not someone who runs off to Berlin.”
Cydar looks away, blows smoke from his nose. Plum stands swaying slightly, depleted by confusion. Beyond the geraniums is Justin, the brother of whom she is so proud. The one who races her up the stairs, eats the unwanted food from her plate, teases her about rock stars, lets her carry off his spare change. “Why would I like Maureen?” he is asking. “Why would I want to marry her, let alone go away with her? She’s already got one husband who can’t stand being in the house with her. She’s old, too — she’s an old married housewife with a kid. Why would I like that, Plum? What’s in it for me?”
This morning such words would have been sacrilege; now she stares longingly over the weeds at him, wanting and wanting to believe. Wanting to keep him for as long as she needs him; wanting an end to the demolition of the cornerstones of her life. Wanting the humiliation of having to apologize. She wipes a wrist across her dry lips. “So she made it up?”
“She must have. Because I swear it isn’t true.”
And, indeed, he seems appalled. He looks like he’s been confronted by a pack of hostile dogs. Plum wants to believe him, and discovers that she does: yet threads of perplexity catch and pull. She asks, “But why would Maureen say it, if it isn’t true? She already has everything. Why would she pretend she has you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s not — well. She’s a bit — funny, don’t you think?”
Plum muses. “At night she walks outside in her dressing gown. That’s strange.”
“She gave you diamonds. That was strange too.”
“She stares at our house like an exorcised ghost,” contributes Cydar from the door — the siblings think of the films they’ve watched together, and know exactly what is meant. “She’s always hugging me and touching me and saying she understands me.” Plum has warmed to the task. “She wants to be a teenager, even though she’s old.”
“She’s comical,” says Justin.
“Not comical,” corrects Cydar. “She tries too hard, that’s all.”
“So why would I like her?” Justin looks back to his sister. “Maureen’s silly. She’s sad.”
Plum nods, shifting her grip on David’s wrist. Now that the word has been pinned to her, Plum sees that Maureen is sad. It’s sad that she would sabotage her good-enough life by making up stories. It’s sad she could imagine that somebody like Justin would love her. If she’s a bit crazy, that too is sad. But Plum doesn’t feel sad: she feels a pinpoint anger that has a precise name. Insult. She has trusted Maureen, been honest with her, sought solace in their friendship, credited Maureen with fine thoughts and sympathy — and in return Maureen has given a brutal kick to Plum’s already somersaulting world. In doing so, Maureen is not merely sad: she’s as bad as, or worse than, Plum’s school friends. Justin says, “I don’t think you should be friends with Maureen, Plum,” and Plum, from the heights of white-lipped dudgeon, replies, “No. I couldn’t be.”
“I’ll take David home,” says Cydar, stepping away from the bungalow door.
“No, I’ll do it.” Plum pushes the boy behind her legs. “I want to. I want to see her one last time. After that, we won’t be friends.”
Justin and Cydar watch their sister walk away, leading the lamb-like child by the hand. The overgrown shrubs bob and waver in their wake. When she’s rounded the house and disappeared, Justin turns to his brother. Cydar thinks he looks exhausted, and older than he had been. “Thanks,” says Justin, with the good grace to be ashamed; and Cydar, who is not the type to dissect what’s done, only drops his cigarette butt into the dirt and crushes it with a toe.
Plum leads David to the front door, and presses the bell. She is not nervous, although she supposes she should be. She is, rather, like a saint going to the pyre, brave because she’s sure that she has right on her side. After a decorous pause, Maureen opens the door.
“Aria! David!” As if she’s never expected to see them again. “Come inside! Did you have a lovely time?”
“We played on the swings.” Plum will keep to the facts. “You swung really high, didn’t you, David? And we ate coconut ice. Then we went to my house, and talked to Justin and Cydar. There was a moth in the garden, wasn’t there, David? A big white fluttery one.”
The boy is wandering away down the hall, listing toward the wall. “Come inside, Aria,” says Maureen. “I’ll get you a glass of cordial.” So Plum follows her neighbor through the house to the kitchen, where David has tucked himself beneath the overhang of the counter. She can see that Maureen is jumping with curiosity, and it makes Plum want to snigger. Maureen is always trying to be mysterious, like a hieroglyphic: suddenly she’s as plain as a blackboard. Stopped in the doorway, Plum throws her a scrap: “I told Justin what you said — that you and him love each other.”
“Oh yes?” The words snap on the air. She’s filling a beaker with water, looking across the kitchen at Plum, her back very rigid, her eyes wide. She would scramble out of her skin if she could.
So Plum is deliberate. “I thought you wouldn’t mind if I told him that I knew. You said it was a secret, but it couldn’t be a secret from him.”
Water rises to the beaker’s rim; quickly Maureen turns off the tap.
“Cydar was there,” Plum adds conscientiously, “so he heard what Justin and I were saying. I hope that’s all right? I couldn’t tell him to go away.”
“I did tell you it was a secret, Aria. You should have respected that. Still, everyone has to know eventually.”
Plum shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. I didn’t tell Mums or Fa, though.”
“What did Justin say?”
“I’m not going to tell them, so you don’t need to worry.”
Maureen crosses the kitchen with a green drink for her son. She has forgotten to make one for the visitor. “What did Justin say, Aria?”
Plum tips her head against the wall, lets her gaze rove to the ceiling. There’s a cobweb in the corner that has somehow escaped notice. “He was a bit surprised.”
Maureen wraps the boy’s hand around the beaker. “Drink it. What do you mean?”
“Well, he said he doesn’t love you, for a start. He said that you give him the creeps, looking at our house all the time.”
For all her nonchalance, Plum’s heart is racing. The kitchen wall is painful against her temple. She knows how barbarous she is being, and what Mums would say to this. She knows, too, that she’s walking an edge — that there’s something unpredictable in this situation. But like the saint going to the pyre, she has a final and glorious chance to castigate a foe: and every word is a small revenge for what’s happened and will happen to her.
Maureen has straightened, and is staring at her. “I can’t help looking at your house. It’s outside my window. You often look into my garden from your bedroom window, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but that isn’t what he meant. He laughed, when I told him he was marrying you. He said you’ve already got a husband, even if he’s never in the same place as you. Justin said you’re a housewife with a husband and a baby, and what would he want with that? I think he’d prefer someone newer, you know? Somebody more like him. You’d be kind of secondhand. Oh, and that’s another thing: he said you’re too old. You’re not really old, but you’re too old for someone like him. I mean, you’re much older than him, aren’t you? So it would be stupid. You wouldn’t understand each other. You’d have nothing to talk about. Because Justin doesn’t care about the kind of things you do. He doesn’t care about furniture and magazines and everything. He’d just think it was dumb, caring about stuff like that.”
Maureen is as still and failingly beautiful as a stuffed cheetah in a museum. She stares at Plum with glassy eyes, the boy huddled at her feet. “You’re being unkind, Aria.”
“I’m just telling you what he said!” Plum’s pained. “You said you wanted to know. Justin said you must have been joking, what you said about you and him. He didn’t mean it nastily, but he said, What’s to love about her?”
Maureen’s gaze shifts down to her son, who hides his face behind the beaker. She doesn’t reply for several moments, in which Plum hardly breathes. “I don’t believe you,” she says.
Plum shrugs indifferently. “Oh, yeah,” she adds: “He said you were funny. Comical, he said.”
The woman slightly tilts, then rights herself. Scarlet blood is infusing her throat. Plum knows she will never stand in this kitchen again, and accepts this fallout willingly; but she takes a final look at David. He has been a pure thing in these last soiled weeks, and she will miss him. She pities him having to grow up in this house with this mother, but she supposes he will be all right. Most people appear to be all right, and whatever becomes of him, it won’t make a difference to Plum’s life. She has Justin; she can change schools and make new friends; the worst that can happen has happened, and things will get better from here. Soon, she’ll probably be very happy. The likelihood of which prompts her to advise, “Don’t worry, Maureen. You have a nice house and a nice family. That’s enough, isn’t it? Why should you want more? Why do you want my brother, too?”
“I would like you to leave now,” says Maureen.
Plum doesn’t argue, but pushes away from the wall and walks down the hall, the hair standing up on her arms because Maureen is following her, which at first is worrying but then suggests that she’s not as angry as Plum has assumed her to be. At the front door the girl turns, ready to be on polite terms if that’s what her neighbor wants. They will never be friends again, what Maureen did was too peculiar and cruel: but Plum has sufficient pity to spare for someone she once admired. The girl and the woman face each other, Plum on the concrete porch and Maureen on the hard-wearing mat, and their history of mutual loneliness skips through the moment and might once more have linked them, but Maureen says clearly, “Maybe your friends are right to hate you.”
EVENING COMES IN WITH SUDDENNESS. It is afternoon, and then it is dusk, and the sensation is of drifting under a spell or of losing time intergalactically, to the gentle ministrations of almond-eyed extraterrestrials. The clouds that have lingered on the outskirts of the sky move in, gritty and dented. Sparrows speed to their roost in the conifers as shadows glide over the roofs. Cardigans are shaken from dresser drawers. Doors are closed against the dark. Then dusk is gone, and it’s night again.
Plum slips her arms into the sleeves of a windcheater that has sat, fatly folded, in her cupboard for months. The garment had fit last winter; now her wrists show beyond the cuffs. She runs her palms down her chest, feels the bumps of her breasts and the ridge where her ribs meet her soft belly. The fleece feels odd against her sun-roughened skin; and sheathed in the windcheater it is easy to believe she won’t see her body again until autumn and winter and blustery spring have passed. Underneath the shroud of her clothing, she will change. When she next sheds her covering, Plum will be something different.
Rain starts to fall, striking her window. Her blind is closed so she can’t see the rain, but hears its tat tat, a raven’s beak on the pane. In minutes the rain becomes heavier, chasing the raven away.
In the rubbish bin down the side of the house, where puddles of water collect when it rains and nibble at the house’s red stumps, is stuffed Plum’s cornflower-blue party dress. Part of her had argued against throwing the garment away, because she doesn’t own another really stylish dress. It was childish, this part had protested, to take out her hurt on a piece of clothing.
But keeping the dress was impossible. It was mortally marred. Plum had accepted the inevitable, and had in fact felt some relief as she knotted the dress and dumped it amid the garbage bags. Her eyes were dry as mirages, although she’d wept in the hours since arriving home from Maureen’s. All the cockiness that had supported her in her neighbor’s kitchen had abandoned her, leaving her mauled and ill. Plum had expected Maureen to react as a snail does when tapped on the eye,
with immediate and humble retreat: instead she’d done what Samantha would, or Dash. Maybe your friends are right to hate you. There’s something wrong about a grown-up who could be so nasty to a young girl. Plum had felt as if all her bones had been disengaged from one another. She’d put her face into her pillow and wept.
But then something in herself had stepped away, and unexpectedly Plum found she detested the girl writhing and sniveling on the bed. “Stop crying,” she told herself, and she had stopped. “Don’t cry again,” she’d said. “I’m sick of it.”
It was a cold dead voice that addressed her, the sort of voice that tolerated no excuses, and Plum was too startled to offer it any. She’d turned over and sat up, looking around through waterlogged eyes. “What shall I do?” she’d asked herself, and it occurred to her that she could telephone Sophie, and try to explain. Say she was sorry, which, Plum discovered with surprise, she was.
She had wiped her eyes and turned them toward the window that had been, in these past weeks, the portal to a world that was more potent than she’d imagined. Nothing could be salvaged of the incandescent friendship she’d had with Maureen; the dress, like so many lunches, would have to go in the bin. When she thought of Maureen, the feeling Plum felt most was remoteness. But she would miss David. Maybe, in time, she’d find a way to talk to him without Maureen knowing. Maybe Plum could help him in small ways, the way his mother had almost helped her.
She’d climbed from the bed, taken the dress from its hanger, and gone outside to the bin. Later, at the dinner table, she’d been more talkative than she had been for days. Mums and Fa had beamed like sunflowers, delighted to have her back. Her parents, Plum knows, want her to be happy. They would be disappointed about the briefcase and her behavior toward Maureen; but if they knew the neediness behind her crimes, they would forgive her. They might even be proud of her. After such an unappetizing week, Plum had eaten her dinner with gusto. It had been a day like tumbling into terrifying water: it’s amazing to think this is still the same day that had begun with the sound of the Holden driving away. She’s been in black water, she’s almost been drowned; but she’s climbed up the bank, stunned and gasping, and she’s safe now. Alive, and, though in pieces, still in one piece.
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