by Jaap Robben
“Look.” Selma puts on a sun visor. The Disneyland Paris logo has almost rubbed off.
“Have you been there?”
“With Gran.” Her face clouds over. “After Grandad died.”
“That’s sad.”
“Huh?”
“Sad for your grandad. That he’s dead.”
She points at a photo of herself as a little kid in diving mask and swimming trunks. “Then I was long, long ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“A ve-e-ery long way on the bus. It was holidays.”
“What country was it?”
“It was …” She bites her lip. “The beach.”
“Do you visit Lucien every day?”
Her smile warps her face. “Lucien thinks I’m cute.”
“Do you always stroke his face?”
“Always!” She sounds like I’ve accused her of something. “His mum showed me.”
“His mum? That’s my mum too! Have you met her?” For the first time in ages, Mum feels close, almost like she’s in the room with us. “What did she say?”
Selma gawps at me.
“Does she visit often?”
Selma just smiles.
“Did she tell you anything?”
“Lucien thinks I’m cute.”
“Is that all? Didn’t she say anything about me?”
The same smile answers every question.
“Can you turn it on?” She touches the video recorder. For a second, I wonder if she was kidding. I never meet anyone who knows my mother.
Selma presses a videotape into my hands. I slide it into the opening and press play. She starts clapping. I go to turn on the TV too. “No!” she snaps. “I can do that.” She points at the red button on the remote but stops just short of pressing it.
Then she drags me over to her cupboard and whips out a bra. “Look, look, look!” she shouts, though I’m already looking.
“Put that away.” I can feel my cheeks turning red and I don’t want them to.
Selma laughs and drapes the bra around her neck like a feather boa, moving to music only she can hear. She mimes into an invisible microphone while the fingers of her other hand tickle the air. Her breasts and her belly sway along under her top. There are more bras in her cupboard, all of them big and white. She hoists the bra above her head like she’s at a football match and it’s a scarf with the name of her team on it.
“Put it away, will you?” I don’t want anyone walking past to see me standing here while she’s doing this. “I’ve got a scooter, too.” I nod at the poster on the side of her cupboard.
“Really?” Selma asks. “Really you have?” The bra hangs slack in her right hand and finally drops to the floor.
“I’m still working on it. I have to fit a new spark plug.”
“Have you got helmuts?”
“Helmuts?”
She raps her knuckles gently on the side of my head. “For if you fall, dafty.”
“I like to ride without.”
I sit down on her bed. The bra is lying in the middle of the floor. As Selma flumps down next to me, the mattress dips and I slide a little closer to her. The tip of her right shoe traces circles on the faded linoleum. Her ears are small and round. All at once I understand why people say ears look like shells.
“You’re my first visit,” she says softly.
“Really?”
Selma nods and tucks loose strands of hair behind her ear.
“What about your mum?”
“Gran is my mum.”
“But she can’t be.”
“My mum wasn’t we-ell. And I had to live with Gra-an.” She draws out the last word of every sentence, as if she’s told me time and again and she’s sick of repeating herself. “Longer and then longer.”
“And your real mum and dad?”
She shrugs.
“Are they dead?”
“No,” she whispers, like we’re on a secret mission. “They’re a bit …” She points at her head and makes circles with her finger. “That’s why I lived with Gran and Grandad. And then Grandad died,” she huffs, like it was a really stupid thing to do.
“Gran was my mum this long.” She holds up nine fingers.
“Why don’t you live with her anymore?”
“She went to an old fox home.”
“An old fox home?” I chuckle.
“Don’t copy me.” Without looking, she picks up a doll behind her and combs her fingers through its matted hair.
“Does that mean your gran can’t come and visit?”
“Want a drink?”
She jumps up and the doll lands in my lap.
“Here I get to choose.” She holds a tumbler under the tap. When it’s full, she drinks it down in one go. Then she fills it again. She holds the tumbler in front of her face with both hands, to make sure she doesn’t spill any. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” I never drink water. Water’s for dogs. Selma has left a bite of lipstick on the other side of the rim. I take a swallow.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I look up at Selma. Girls don’t normally get this close to boys like me. She looks into my eyes, for two seconds, then three. From this angle you can’t really tell she lives in a place like this. Maybe a little, something about her nose. But then noses always look weird if you look at them long enough.
“What’s your favourite drink?” I ask for the sake of something to say.
“Energy drink.”
“Honest?”
“My fave-rits.”
“Mine too.”
She shuffles a little closer. So close that no one could fit between us. My heart is pounding in my throat. There’s not a sound from the corridor. If I stand up now, our faces will touch. Little lines appear next to her eyes. She leans toward me. I shrink back and water sloshes onto my lap. The air smells of shampoo, her hair tickles my cheek. A giggle, a smack of the lips, and she whispers, “Tonight we’re having lasan-yaa!”
-
8
Halfway across the car park, Dad puts a tube of rolled-up papers to his mouth and blares at me to get a move on.
“What have you got there?”
He shows me the papers. “Boy-oh-boy-oh-boy. You wouldn’t believe the crap I had to fill in …” AGREEMENT in big fat letters at the top of the first page. In the space below Dad’s name there’s a squiggly signature. I didn’t even know he had one.
“Have we got enough room?” Dad recites. “Is the shower wheelchair accessible? Which party is liable. When he has to take what pill. When he has to eat. As if I don’t know my own son. That Santos bloke even wanted to send someone round to take a look.”
“To look at what?”
“To pay us a house call,” Dad sniggers. “See if anything needs adapting.”
“So it’s going ahead then?”
“What do you mean?”
“Lucien’s really coming home?”
“What do you think?”
“When?”
“Soon. First we need to pick up one of those special beds for him. And a wheelchair.” Dad unlocks the doors.
“But … but …”
We get in.
“… isn’t Lucien better off here?”
“Course not. He lived at home with us for years, didn’t he? And after that we picked him up and dropped him off at weekends. Now he’ll be staying a bit longer, that’s all.” Dad tosses the papers in my lap.
“Or do you think your old man’s not up to it?”
I shake my head.
“Well then. Lucien is my son, too. And I have every right to do what I want with him.”
“Have they paid you the money yet?”
“End of the month.”
“Not till then?”
&nb
sp; Dad parps his horn three times. I nearly jump out of my skin. “We’re going to have a fine old time together, Bry.” I expect a thump on the shoulder but it doesn’t come. “Deal?”
I nod.
“Just the three of us.”
I don’t say a word about Selma or tell him she spoke to Mum. I don’t even want to think about the jokes he’d crack if he knew I’d been talking to a girl from this place.
I flick through the papers for a bit. I can read most of the words, but I don’t really get what they say. It’s a while before I notice that Dad’s turned off in the direction of our old flat.
“Just a quick look,” he says.
The flat’s from when the four of us still lived together. Dad bumps the car onto the pavement and keeps the engine running. I recognize everything immediately. Even the boys playing football across the road, though they all have different faces now.
“Well, well,” Dad mumbles, and shakes his head. “Honeymoon …” There’s a smell of threadbare carpets from his hair as he leans across and peers up at the building. As if our old life might be waiting behind the front door and all we have to do is figure out where we left the key. “That’s the house where the two of you were made, son.”
Nothing has changed. Except the red railings that ran along our gangway have been painted dark blue. When Lucien would start pinching us, Mum used to let him walk up and down out there. I usually walked in front of him, kicking a football.
Our tiled paradise. That’s what Dad used to call it. When your floors are tiled from wall to wall, you’re not just any old loser, he’d say. “Tiles everywhere. Did you look behind the toilet?” he asked Gran when she came to visit. Her last visit, as it turned out.
She sat talking to Mum for a long time, then let herself be helped into her grey coat.
“Do you think I’m kidding?” Dad asked.
“I don’t think anything, Maurice,” said Gran, checking the contents of her handbag. She wanted to be driven home.
“There are even tiles under the kitchen cupboards.”
“Ah.”
Gran’s response to everything Dad said sounded like a sigh.
“Don’t you believe me?” Dad got down on his knees and began ripping out the skirting boards under the kitchen units. A dusty swirl of cobwebs. “Look.” He pressed his cheek to the floor. “All the way to the wall.”
“Could you take me home now, Maurice?”
Gran kissed her palm and rubbed it over my head. “It’s true,” I said to her. “Look.” I lay down too. Greasy balls of fluff, dried-up macaroni that had fallen down the back of the cooker, a scrap of old newspaper. “Wow!” I shouted. “Wall to wall. Not everyone can say that, eh Dad?”
He was already halfway to the lift. Mum hugged Gran by the open door. Her stocking heels lifted out of her shoes.
“You’re Lucien’s mother. I can’t make that choice for you,” Gran said, glasses knocked sideways and pressed against her face. Her wrinkled hands patted Mum’s back, the way they do in judo when someone has to let go. Mum asked a question I couldn’t catch. “He’s his child, too,” Gran answered. “Whether you like it or not.”
Humming restlessly, Lucien walked up to them, dragging his fingernails across the wallpaper. You could tell how much he’d grown by how high the scratches were. A flap of sticking plaster hung in front of his eye. “Mum!” I shouted. “Lucien’s been picking at his eyebrow again!” He had hit his head on the edge of the coffee table days before. I had pushed him, but nobody saw.
It was mostly me Lucien pinched. Mum said it was my own fault because I was too rough with him. Either that or I was supposed to know better. One time she was sitting right there on the couch when Lucien went for me. She picked me up, parked my bum on the dining table, and stroked the red patch that would later turn blue. “You know your brother can’t help it, don’t you?” It sounded like our little secret. “Your mum saw what happened. Lucien didn’t mean it.”
“It hurts,” I squeaked.
“Well, your mum might have just the thing for that.” She disappeared into the kitchen and I heard the scrape of a freezer drawer.
“What do we have here?” She pressed the ice lolly gently against the red patch. “Is it helping yet?”
“A little bit.”
“When it stops hurting, you can eat what’s left.” I counted back from fifty in my head so it wouldn’t look like the pain had stopped all of a sudden.
By then, Lucien was lying on the rug in front of the couch. With outstretched arms and crooked fingers, he was clawing at the air trying to catch the light from the ceiling lamp. He had forgotten all about pinching me. You could eat a whole ice lolly in front of him without him wanting one too.
-
9
A policeman standing in the middle of the road signals for us to stop. His car is tucked out of sight on the shoulder.
“What does he want? Were you over the limit?”
“Trap shut,” Dad says as we come to a halt. “Let me do the talking.”
The copper slaps the side of the pickup, then appears at the open window on the driver’s side.
“Well, if it isn’t our old friend Maurice,” he says, removing his tough-guy sunglasses.
“Yves,” Dad replies, eyes fixed straight ahead.
I don’t think I’ve seen this copper before. He checks out the stuff in the back of the truck, casting a beady eye over the scrap iron without touching anything. Then he wants to see our papers. I open the glove compartment and hand them to Dad. “So, here we are again, Maurice …” Chirping crickets, the creak of spruce bark. “Had a few phone calls about you recently.” He tap-tap-taps on the wing mirror. “Drove off without paying at the petrol station. A spot of bother down the pub.”
Dad shakes his head dismissively.
“False accusations as usual?”
“I paid Benoit.”
“He didn’t seem to think so. Not the amount he was due in any case.”
“Don’t you have criminals to catch?”
“Why do you think I pulled you over?” the copper grins. “Licence plate registered in your name now, is it?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“So if I make a little call, it will all check out?” He turns as if to walk over to his car.
“Any day now,” Dad mumbles. “Admin cock-up. I’m getting it sorted.”
“Cock-up’s your middle name, Maurice.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning these things always seem to take a wrong turn where you’re concerned.”
“They don’t know their arse from their elbow down at that post office.”
“And there’s still that unpaid fine, Maurice. It’s not even thirty euros. Wait till the warning notice hits the doormat and it’ll only cost you more.”
Dad’s picking foam rubber from a tear in the front seat.
“Do you hear me, Maurice?”
Dad nods, eyes still fixed on the road.
I root around in my pocket. “Here!” I hand the copper all the money I have. “Now will you leave my dad alone?”
“Bry!” Dad barks.
“Letting the little lad cough up for your fines nowadays?”
“Do you want my money or not?” I ask.
Officer Yves lifts the pointy beret from his head, runs his fingers through his hair, puts the beret back on.
“Last chance, Maurice. Next time we run into each other, that paperwork better be in order.”
Dad gives a nod I can barely see.
“And you can sort things out down at the petrol station yourself.” Yves takes a step back and waves us on. Dad starts the engine, accelerating so fast that the wheels spin before they grip the road.
“That’ll shut him up for a while,” I say, expecting a thump on the shoulder.
“Fee
l good did it? Shitting on me like that?”
I don’t know why he’s so angry.
“Acting the big shot, rubbing your old man’s face in the dirt? Well?”
“I was only trying to help you out.”
“Where did you get that money?”
“Saved up.”
“Piss off.” He shoves my face so hard that my head cracks off the window.
A high-pitched drone starts up in my ears. I can see from his lips Dad is screaming at me while he stares at the road ahead. Makes no difference if I answer. The wobble-headed dog on the dashboard is already nodding at every word he splutters.
-
10
The sun sinks behind a mountain range of clouds. The yelp of a vixen stabs the air. Little lights dot the wooded hill that fills our horizon. Every night they light up in the same places, but during the day you’d never know people live there. Hunched on a crate, Dad snaffles a handful of sunflower seeds from a paper bag. He traps one between his teeth, cracks it open, and blows the skin away.
“Bry?” It’s the first thing he’s said to me since this afternoon.
“What?”
“Go and see if our Emile is still awake.”
“How come?”
“So you can collect the rent.”
“Hasn’t he paid already?”
“For this week, yeah.”
“So?”
“Rent is paid in advance, Bry. It’s the way of the world. And Wednesday is collection day.”
“Wednesday?”
There’s a fierce bark from the dog cage, then a whine. Rico’s tail sweeps the concrete floor. He can’t stop himself sniffing Rita’s hole, keeps on and on until she snaps at him.
“Can’t we take that load of scrap in the pickup to the yard tomorrow, see how much we get for it?”