by Jaap Robben
“We’ll play it by ear,” Dad mumbles. “No point hanging around if he’s napping.”
Lucien’s name by the door is decorated with blue and yellow scribbles. One of the nurses must have clamped his fingers around a felt-tip pen.
“Ready?” Dad looks at me, one hand on the door handle. “Bry?”
I nod and he throws open the door as briskly as he once pulled milk teeth from my mouth. The closed blinds flap against the open window. Crêpe-paper birds on strings dangle from the ceiling. Below them lies Lucien. The thick hair on the back of his head is sticking up, uncombable as ever. From the waist down, he is lying flat on the blanket, but his face and his upper body are turned away from us. He’s grown closer to the sides of his bed since we saw him last. My brother changes in little things. Thicker eyebrows. Spots along his hairline. Bottom lip sticking out like the rim of a holy-water basin.
“Lucien?” His eyes open to two slits, a yellow breadcrumb of sleep in one corner. Mum would have wiped that away in a flash.
“You’re Lucien,” I say to remind him of himself. “It’s us again.” And I tap my chest. “Brian and Dad.” I shift along a bit so there’s room for the pair of us next to his bed. Even so, Dad hangs back. He licks his lips and coughs without needing to. I take another step so he can stand beside me.
“I’m fine where I am,” he says and nudges my hand with the chocolate egg. “For your brother.”
I’ve already taken hold of it, but I’d rather he gave it himself. “You do it,” I whisper and try to give it back.
“No, no. You’re better at this.” His hands disappear into his jacket pockets. Lucien leers at us. I hold the egg up to his face a second, then put it down on his bedside cabinet. Lucien only understands chocolate when he tastes it.
“It’s been a few months, hasn’t it?” I want to touch him but I don’t know how, so my hands stroke the railing of the bed. On the magnetic photo board by his head, Lucien is curling at the edges. It’s the one where Mum is crouched beside his wheelchair and her leggings have squished her tummy into two rolls. A ponytail spouts from her head and her hands clutch the same shoulder bag she’s had for a thousand years. Above it is a new photo, with Didier. Like all their pictures, he’s got his arms round her and she’s pressing her cheek to his to show us how much he loves her. “Dee-dee-yaaay,” Dad calls him, putting on his la-di-da voice.
Mum always sticks their snapshots in the middle. Peeping out from behind them is a group photo of Lucien with the other residents, at the entrance to a theme park. Everyone is looking at the camera except my brother. The only photo of him smiling is the one where a stranger’s hands are holding a guinea pig to his cheek.
I’m down in the right-hand corner with a magnet half over my face. It’s the photo Mum had in the little window in her purse. One of my front teeth has just come through and my hair is slicked back and gelled tight. I remember feeling all grown up because it was the day I got my earring put in. I had one of those rattail braids down my back too, but you can’t see that in the photo. “Look,” I say to Lucien. “That was me.” There’s a familiar strangeness in talking to him. Mostly because he doesn’t say anything back. Grown-ups are better at yakking like this, even if it does sound like they’re talking to their dog.
Lucien gawps at the paper birds, which have been swaying gently from the ceiling since we came in.
“How about a little light?” Dad tugs the cord on the blinds. All the windows are rigged so they only open a crack, to stop the residents tumbling out. We can see summer through the window but it still seems miles from Lucien’s bed. From the whole building, come to that. The mopped floors smell of outdoor swimming pools.
Lucien scrunches up his eyes in the sudden light. They open, twitch shut, and then open wide again. Hopeful, like he’s forgotten why he closed them in the first place.
On the parched field outside the window, two residents are playing tennis but they only get as far as tossing the foam rubber ball. Up it goes and their rackets flail through the air, too late and well wide of the mark. Then they hunt the ball and get ready for a new throw, straight-faced, knees bent. One player has her fists clamped tight around the neck of the racket. The other has put hers down and is throwing the ball with both hands. Whoosh. Missed. Rummage in the bushes.
“Your brother would rather have a nap, by the look of it.” Dad gently squeezes Lucien’s feet, the only part of him that’s under the blanket. A touch without touching. “I’m off for a coffee. Back in a bit.” He shambles out the door, a new record. It usually takes him longer to disappear.
“Lucien?” I ask. “Want some chocolate?” The ribbon is wrapped tight around the egg, so I pull it off for him. The rustle of cellophane makes him curious and his head rises from the dent in his pillow. “Look!” My knuckles smash the egg into brown fragments. “This is for you.” I hold a blunt shard of chocolate in front of his face. “You like this, don’t you?” Lucien starts to rock from side to side and I drop the shard into the cave of his mouth. His crooked teeth are smaller than I remember, but it’s probably just his head that’s bigger. He sucks, chews, smacks his lips. His forearms rise up from the bed at odd angles and his fingers play slow-mo on invisible piano keys.
“Mah-mah-mmah!” he shouts crossly.
“Want some more?” Teasing, I dangle a new piece in front of his eyes. He opens his mouth so wide I’m afraid it will tear at the corners, so I pop the chocolate in quick. When he lived at home I could understand the sounds he made. Like if there was food on the table and he couldn’t reach. Or if he spotted the hoover, which always scared him silly.
“Brian,” I say, so he can repeat after me. “Come on, say ‘Brian.’ Say it and I’ll give you another bit.” I climb up and sit on the deep windowsill. The heels of my shoes clunk softly against the radiator. “Brian,” I repeat. “Braa-yun.”
Suddenly he’s wobbling so fiercely that the wheels under his bed start to groan. He stretches an arm in my direction and his fingers stir the air. “Do you mean me? Do you remember?” I point to my photo on the board. His face cramps up and he strains to look past me, out of the window. “Do you want to see them playing tennis?”
I turn and nearly fall off the sill. A girl has her cheek pressed to the window pane. “What the …?” She rolls her other cheek to the glass and leaves a greasy stamp with her nose. Lucien makes a sound I’ve never heard him make before. He howls. The girl has a ponytail and curtains of black hair that fall over her ears. Her tongue licks slow patches in the haze of pollen on the glass. Then she steps back to admire the result, holding on to the window ledge with both hands. “Do you know her?” It’s only now that the girl seems to notice me. She smiles. I can’t really tell whether she lives here or she’s a visitor like me.
“Is she your girl?”
Lucien is choking with excitement. Red veins pop into the whites of his eyes, his breath comes in gags and gulps.
The girl waves both hands at him. I pat Lucien on the back and he quietens down for a while. She has gone. Lucien coughs, and flecks of applesauce spatter his lips, chin, and shirt. “Easy now. Don’t choke.” I grab his beaker from the bedside cabinet and push the spout between his lips. His head begins to shake wildly. “Easy, easy.” He tries to slap the beaker away from his mouth. Afraid to leave Lucien alone, I hope someone out in the corridor will hear and come in to help. Thankfully, his chest stops heaving. Another bout of coughing. “Are you okay?” He swallows a couple of times and I tilt the beaker of water to his lips. He sucks a mouthful or two, then turns his face from the spout. “Point if you want more,” I say and put the beaker on the windowsill where he can see it.
“Was that, like … your girl?” I peer out in case she’s crouching below the window, but all I see is mossy paving slabs and a strip of greenish gravel. “Does she do that a lot?”
No answer, of course.
I hear scuffling out in the corridor
and expect to see Dad returning with his coffee, or one of the nurses coming to check on us. The door handle is pointing down, so someone must be on the other side. “Hello?” The girl who licked the window peeps round the door.
“Is that you?”
She giggles and pulls her head back.
“You can come in, you know.”
The door flies open and the handle strikes the buffer on the wall. “Here I am!” she cheers, arms half-raised. She looks older than a girl, but she’s not really a woman. A kind of “girllady” whose breasts have shown up early. Her skirt is a lampshade and her right foot points inward like it’s on a mission to trip up her left. She comes closer and her eyes lock onto mine, as if she’s trying to drill through my pupils and see inside my head.
“Brian,” I say. “That’s my name. What’s yours?”
“Thelma.”
“Hi, Thelma.”
“No-hoh. Thh-elma.”
“Thelma?”
“Don’t copy me! Thel-ma!” Her fingers scrabble at her waistband and yank her Minnie Mouse top up to her chin. She plucks a name sticker from the black vest underneath. “Look,” she grouches. The sticky side is fluffed with black. She presses it to her breast and rubs. “There.”
“Selma,” I read out loud.
She looks proud.
“Do you live here too?”
Her forehead wrinkles. “I’m nearly new.”
“How long have you lived here then?”
“Bigger than a week,” Selma says, her voice unexpectedly loud. The words that come from her mouth sound rounder than when I say them.
“Two weeks?”
“Bigger!”
“A month?”
She tilts her head and looks at me like I’m supposed to know the answer. “Before here I lived with Gran.”
Lucien has turned as far as he can to face us. “I know him already,” she says and clumsily manoeuvres her way past me to the bed. “You think I’m cute, don’t you?”
Lucien howls.
“You think I’m cute, don’t you?” She takes his face in her hands and squeezes his lips together to make a fish mouth. For a moment I’m afraid she’s going to kiss him. His eyelashes flicker anxiously as she runs her thumbs under his eyes.
“I don’t think he likes that,” I say.
“Does too,” she replies.
Now Selma’s thumbs are gliding over Lucien’s closed eyelids. The muscles in his neck tense up. He looks like he wants to shake his face free of her hands. But at the same time the cramp melts from his fingers and they go from gnarly twigs to looking pretty normal. Selma lets go suddenly and his head falls back into the pillow.
“Huh-hmmm. Huh-hmm.” He smiles a big banana grin.
“He’s my brother,” I say.
Selma turns to look at me and plants her fists on her hips. All the while Lucien is trying to wobble and hum her hands back to his face.
“No,” Selma snaps. “Work to do.” With one hand on the bed rail and the other on my shoulder, she edges past me.
“Will you be coming back?”
She scuff-steps out of the room and heads down the corridor. Lucien cranes his neck to watch her go.
“She’s gone,” I say. “Want some more chocolate?” Lucien slumps back, his restless fingers claw the sheet.
“Want me to do what she did?” I take his face in my hands and squeeze his cheeks until he pouts. I can feel his molars grind between my palms. Maybe I’m being too careful. I run my thumbs along his eye sockets and keep on stroking. When I let him go, his head snaps back. But he doesn’t smile the way he did for Selma.
Out in the corridor, she is nowhere to be seen. Dad’s probably hanging around the smoking area.
“Just the man I’m looking for,” he says as soon as he sees me. “I was about to head your way.”
“Lucien is sleeping again.”
“Oh … not much point then.” He nods toward the coffee machine. “Want one?” I shake my head. A baldy old man is sitting in the corner, rubbing finger and thumb together like he’s trying to coax sparks from his skin. His long beard is trimmed in a semicircle and the fingernails of his other hand rat-tat-tat on the tabletop. He must be able to read, because a card propped up in front of him says JACQUES YOU’RE ALLOWED ONE CIGARETTE EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR. His fold-up alarm clock says four minutes past. The coffee machine splutters and falls silent. Dad jabs the blue button until the thing starts humming again. “Penny-pinching bastards have set it so you can’t get a decent cup.” His coffee overflows. “Hah! That’s more like it!”
A nurse walks by and I zip out into the corridor. “Zoubida!” Her plastic clogs squeak as she spins round.
“Hey, Brian! Haven’t seen you in a while.” Her testy little smile is for Dad.
Zoubida is my favourite nurse. “I thought you didn’t work here anymore.”
“Oh, there’s no getting rid of me.” She rubs a hand over her tummy. “I’ve just become a mum …”
“Good for you,” Dad says. “Hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for.” He thumps me on the shoulder.
“A bit late to reconsider …”
It takes Dad a second to twig that Zoubida is joking too. When it comes, his laugh booms down the corridor, so loud that everyone turns to look. Zoubida slips me a wink.
“Must be getting on,” she says. And, like every time she sees me, she gives my split earlobe a gentle tug, as if there’s something she can do about it. “Makes you look tough, you know,” she says. “See you later.”
I feel a blush rising as I tag along behind Dad toward the exit.
“Okay then. That was that.” He raises a hand to the receptionist but she’s staring at her computer screen.
-
2
The sun is high in the sky. Our little shadows have to scuttle to keep up with us. In a corner of the car park, workmen squat in the shade of their vans. One glugs down a bottle of water, pours the last mouthful over the neck of the guy beside him. A man next to them claps white clouds from his hands and tears a chunk of bread from a loaf that’s lying between them on a plastic bag.
“May I trouble you for a moment?” It doesn’t dawn right off that the voice is talking to us. “Mr. Chevalier?” A man with a ring binder in his left hand is bustling up behind us.
“Who’s asking?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who might you be?”
The man has an extra chin below his chin. And another one below that. “Santos is the name,” he puffs, extending a hand to Dad by way of greeting. “I recently took over as unit manager here.”
“Aha, the unit manager …”
“I understood from reception that Lucien’s father was paying him a visit.” It sounds like he’s talking about someone else.
“Yes, well … we were just … uh …” Dad clicks his key fob to unlock the doors to the pickup but we’re not close enough to make the lights flash impatiently.
“I’ll get right to the point. It’s about Lucien.”
“Then it’s his mother you need to speak to.”
“We have indeed contacted your wife to …”
“Ex-wife.”
Dad crosses his arms, and his leather sleeves creak at the elbows.
“Excuse me. Of course. Your ex-partner.”
“If it’s cash you’re after, she’s the one to see.”
“It’s regarding another matter.”
“Yeah? Well, you can see her about that too.”
Rubble thunders down a chute across the way and booms in the skip below. “It’s just that from Lucien’s dossier I understand you share parental authority.”
“Listen here,” Dad says. “We divided our boys nice and even, like.” He leans in close to Santos. “She got Lucien. I got Brian. Her choice.”
>
“It concerns the renovations taking place this summer,” Santos continues warily. “Since your ex-partner is on honeymoon and therefore not in a position to …”
“Honeymoon?”
“Is Mum getting married?”
“Um … Yes, I believe so …” Santos flips open the ring binder and snaps it shut immediately. “That’s the information I have here.”
“To Didier?” I ask. “So the wedding’s been and gone?”
“I would imagine so.” Santos shields his chest with the binder. “As I understand it, they are on a four-week honeymoon.”
“Four weeks!” Dad laughs with a bunch of oh-ho-hos, like he does when someone gets hit in the face by a swing on America’s Funniest Home Videos.
“My apologies, I assumed that both of you would have been informed.”
“So, she’s off sunning herself on a beach somewhere and Lucien’s left to stew in his own juice.”
“That’s not quite how I would put it,” Santos says.
“Did she put you up to this?”
“No, not at all. My question concerns the renovations. I’m sure you yourself must be aware of the pressing need to modernize our facilities.” Santos breathes easier as he launches into his spiel. “The layout of the building dates from the time of the monastery, and nowadays we are more a hospital than a residential community. We had hoped to complete the work in May but, despite careful planning, there have inevitably been a few hiccups along the way. Temporary accommodation has been arranged for our more mobile residents, in collaboration with local partner organizations. But given the shortage of beds in the region, space is at a premium. So, my question to you is: would you be willing to care for Lucien at home this summer?”
“Whoa-ho-ho!” Dad holds up his hands. “We pop in here every now and again. The boy barely knows who we are. And now we’re his carers for the summer? Things are tight as it is. Two dogs. Brian here. Myself. And in case you were wondering …” He zips up his jacket, half opens it again, sniffs. “I am a working man.”