“I’m busy talking to June’s mother,” said Mrs Smith. “Leave your bag here and go outside, Helen.”
Okay, okay, I thought. Sorry for being concerned. But Mrs Smith was looking extra fierce, so I didn’t dare say anything. No one ever told me anything anyway. I drifted outside and went to sit on my bench. I could see my favourite old swing rocking gently by itself in the wind. There was no one around, and I wished I could go and sit in it one more time, but Mrs Smith had warned us all about it: its rope had frayed too far, and no one was allowed to use it now.
As I sat, pulling my blazer around me even though it was warm, I heard the bell ring and gradually everyone started moving towards their classes. I saw June crossing the playground, slightly bowed by the weight of her books.
As she glanced up, she caught Kean’s eye and blushed. He waved awkwardly, but didn’t go any closer. I didn’t know whether to feel glad or guilty. I guessed that he was scared that June was still infectious.
I was sure of it at the end of the day, when we were packing up to go. June had spent break time with Mrs Smith, going through schoolwork that she had missed, their heads bent close together as they pored over the work.
Subsequently, she piled up nearly every textbook and workbook from her desk and tried to jam them into her bag. When the final book wouldn’t go in, she flung it aside in exasperation and it landed on the floor in front of Kean. He passed it back to her, but I noticed him surreptitiously wiping his hand on his trousers afterwards.
I could see the hope in June’s eyes as he stretched out to return her book, and I think he saw it too because he looked away and tried to crack a joke. “I’d carry your bag,” he said to her, “but it’s so heavy, the strain on my neck might give me … meningitis. Maybe that’s what made you sick. Carrying too many books.”
Somehow, Kean carried it off as usual. Joe, because he was scared as well, laughed with Kean, and I heard a couple of sniggers from girls who’d been envious of his doting on June.
June just looked confused, as though she didn’t understand. She gazed blankly at him and then walked out the classroom.
I waited until she was gone and then forced myself to laugh. Kean caught the end of it and smiled at me. I think my reaction made him feel better about what he’d just done.
“So, Booysens,” he drawled, “can I walk you home?” He jerked his head invitingly, and I couldn’t resist.
“Yes,” I said, hardly believing my luck.
I puffed and panted a bit when I swung my bag onto my shoulder, but he didn’t take the hint, maybe because Felicity was peeping out the top. June was walking in front of us for most of the way. Part of me felt proud that Kean had finally chosen me, but I also felt as though I’d swallowed a piece of apple and it was sticking in my throat, like Snow White, especially when June turned around once and saw us, then looked away again.
Don’t be stupid! I mentally waved a stern finger at myself. I hadn’t done anything this time to make Kean prefer me. It was his choice, and I had nothing to feel bad about.
“So, this is where I say adios,” said Kean, when he got to his turn-off.
“Okay, but I thought …” Marilyn Monroe would have pouted, “So soon?” and he’d have melted at once, all thoughts of home discarded. Instead, Felicity started her hiccupping again. She really had terrible timing. I lifted her from my bag reluctantly.
“Isn’t it your turn to take Felicity home now?” I asked, holding her out to Kean.
“What, this thing?” he mocked, swinging her around by one leg and then tossing her up casually in the air. That set her off screaming and I grabbed her as she fell, my arms cradling her protectively.
“Don’t!” I snapped.
“I’m just trying to make her shut up,” Kean laughed.
“All you have to do is rock her and burp her over one shoulder, like this.” Felicity’s shattering yells faded to a whimper, interrupted by the odd hiccup.
“You’re cool, Booysens.” Kean wasn’t listening to me anyway. “You keep her a while longer. I know I can rely on you.” He flashed a quick wink, and while I was still trying to figure out a clever way to respond, he was off.
Usually when Kean noticed me, I felt like tap-dancing down the pavement. Instead, today, I just felt relieved he was gone. I could still see June ahead of me and I jogged a bit closer. When I was within earshot, I called out to her. “Hey, June, wait for me!”
She didn’t even bother to turn round.
“June!” I yelled, out of breath from trying to jog and shout at the same time.
She didn’t slow down or look at me; she also didn’t speed up and hurry away, just kept walking at the same pace, as though she hadn’t even heard me. I couldn’t stand it when people acted like that.
I stopped jogging and stared after her, my hands resting on my knees as my breath was coming in gulps. My side was aching and I thought I’d got a stitch, but even after I’d started to breathe normally again, it was still there. I put my hand on my side, where the aching was.
“I wish it would stop,” I told Felicity.
When I got home, I could hear Hank’s music from the driveway. Its mystical melody entwined itself around the flaking wall and enchanted the weeds that had sprung up in huge clumps across our lawn. If I could view the garden through the eyes of his Debussy nocturne each day, I’d see Paradise, I thought.
The music stopped briefly as I slipped into the kitchen, past a pile of unwashed supper plates, and then I heard Caryn’s voice and vigorous clapping. “That was beautiful!” she cried out, and I imagined her flinging her arms around my brother, her coppery fringe flopping into his eyes and Hank not caring at all. “Don’t stop!”
I crept a little closer so that I could hear Hank’s response. “I don’t want to carry on,” I heard him say, and I imagined I heard desperation in his voice. “Can’t you hear? My heart’s not in it. I’m just going to do the stupid competition to please my parents and then never play again.”
But you love the piano, I thought, and then a moment later, Caryn echoed my thoughts.
“I thought I did,” said Hank, closing the lid. It shut with the finality of an undertaker’s closing a coffin lid. “But if I do well in my piano, it means seven or eight years of medicine.” He made it sound like being sentenced to Robben Island. “I really wanted to be a doctor, once. And my parents understood that and listened to me. But somewhere along the line, they stopped listening. And so I just carried on pretending.”
“Why?” I echoed Caryn’s question in my mind.
“Just look at this house, Caryn. There’s damp on the walls. The cement in the driveway is cracking. My mom walks in from work looking like a zombie and my dad falls asleep the minute he gets home. I could change that if I were a doctor. I could rescue them. That’s what they want, even though they don’t come straight out and say it.”
“And you? What do you want?”
Before he could answer, I heard the phone ringing in the lounge. I ran into my room before they could see me, half closing my door.
“Hello, Hank speaking …”
There was a pause and I edged closer to my doorway, straining my ears to hear.
“Really? Wow. That is … that’s amazing.”
“Who is it?” I heard Caryn whisper.
Hank didn’t answer as he replied again to the mysterious voice on the phone. “Yes, I’ll think about it. Thank you so much.”
The phone clicked onto the receiver.
“So, tell me,” I heard Caryn say excitedly. “You look like you just won the Lotto.”
My brother laughed, and the unexpectedness of it made me realise he hadn’t done that at home for a long time.
Through the crack in the door where the hinges held it to the frame, I could see Hank glance towards my room, then he lowered his voice so that I couldn’t hear. I saw Caryn’s eyes widening though, and then I heard her squeal. “Awesome, Hank!” She flung her arms around his shoulders, and he swung her around until the
y bumped into the couch and fell over, giggling. I wished I could join them. I could do with a laugh.
Instead, I went to the piano and opened the lid. With no Madame Pandora to stop me, I tossed my shoes into a corner and took “Winter” out. I closed my eyes, trying to visualise an icy December in Russia, but the expression in June’s eyes as Kean mocked her kept haunting me, and then her face blurred into mine until I couldn’t make out who was who.
My fingers fell onto the first melody notes, sensing each sound, and they rose from the piano and filled the room like a swelling orchestra performing at a state funeral. When I reached the end of the piece, my fingers slipped on the last chord, and I realised the keyboard was wet.
“We’re going out, Helen!” I heard Hank yelling from the kitchen. The door slammed as they left.
I guessed Caryn wanted to go before my parents got home. Wiping my face, I got up, unable to bear the aching that gnawed at me. I went through to the kitchen, carrying Felicity, sat her down on the counter and turned on the hot tap.
“You’re lucky you’ll never have to do this,” I told the doll, adding Sunlight Liquid to the water and pulling on Mom’s gloves to start the dishes. “If you were real, this is what you’d have to look forward to when you grew up.”
I once would have called Felicity’s expression smug; now, she seemed to blink her eyes in sympathy. Crumbs clung to the plates and the glasses were stained. Mom usually washed the dishes when she had time, but the night before she’d had to work, even though it was a Sunday, so Dad had only brought her back after nine.
“Sometimes,” I told Felicity, “I wish I could go and study medicine, even if I hated it, just to take my parents away from this life.” I imagined their gratitude to me and saw them sitting with us in the evenings, chatting, maybe even playing a game like 30 Seconds or Balderdash, instead of staggering through supper and collapsing into bed.
“But more than that, you know,” I tried to focus hard on the plate I was scrubbing so I wouldn’t cry. “I wish my parents weren’t so tired that they couldn’t hear me.”
I wished I could tell them what I’d done that day, but I was scared to burden them. I wanted to tell them about walking home with Kean, which should have been a dream come true, and then watching June struggle home on her own, her arms aching from the books she was carrying. Like secretly feeling it was my fault she was hurt and that I shouldn’t have let him walk with me. But I had to grab the opportunity when it came. If I didn’t, it wasn’t likely I’d get another.
“But I miss June,” I confessed, putting up a gloved finger to my mouth to make sure Felicity realised this was confidential. “At least I could tell her stuff, even stupid little things, like how I admire Marilyn Monroe, and she listened.”
She truly did listen. Who else did, really?
*
Thirteen
I HOPED THAT THINGS between me and June would get better after a while, but she still kept to herself all the time.
A few days later, I was just walking out onto the field during break, behind Kean, when I saw June sitting alone on the grass near the forbidden swing, eating her sandwiches. She looked rather forlorn; even the grade threes and fours, who used to play on the swing, were giving it a wide berth and had scattered to the other side of the playground, screaming and yelling after each other like hooligans.
“June!” I called impulsively from behind her.
When, as usual, she didn’t look back or respond, Kean turned to shrug at me. “Leave her,” he said, walking away. But I couldn’t. I suddenly felt my chest and then my neck and face burning, and my hands were sweating from anger. I marched round in front of her so that she couldn’t pretend to ignore me any more. June looked up, startled, and then smiled shakily. Her smile cooled my anger a little, and I tried to be calm.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to speak quietly to mask my anger. I glanced over my shoulder to see if Kean had seen me, and then I felt ashamed for checking. He wasn’t looking anyway. He had his back to us.
June turned the left side of her face towards me, her head tilted. “Pardon?”
I repeated the question and she looked blankly at me, as though unsure of what to answer, and I felt myself losing control again. How dared she treat me like this?
“What. Is. The. Matter?” I shouted.
June flinched, as if my words were the echo of a slap. “Nothing, thank you.” She played absentmindedly with her last salami sandwich, and then ate it. Not that I cared. I wouldn’t have accepted it anyway, even if she had offered.
“Kean thinks you’re too good for us now,” I said the most hurtful thing I could think of on the spur of the moment. “You sit alone. You won’t answer when I call you. Why are you staring at me like that?”
June had been leaning forward, her head tilted to one side. At my words, she jerked back quickly and shrugged, looking away.
The bell rang, and all the little kids behind her started running to go and line up before class. June didn’t move, then twisted her head around, looking confused, and hastily sprang up, almost overbalancing as she did so and grabbing the old swing for support.
Kean looked back just then and laughed as she struggled to right herself. Part of me desperately wanted to help her, and the other part was too furious even to touch her. I half reached out, but she wasn’t even looking. She walked off unsteadily and I was left alone beside the swing, its frayed ropes holding on by a thread.
“Child!” a peremptory voice called, and I looked up to see Madame Pandora gesturing to me to come inside. I sighed inwardly. I’d forgotten for a moment that I had a lesson straight after break. She strode off, the tails of her flowing black jacket flapping like two beckoning hands.
“So, you are going to impress me today,” she stated once we were in class, seating herself in her chair and gesturing to the piano.
“I hope so,” I said doubtfully.
“And your brother?” Madame Pandora continued, as though I had not spoken. “Will he be impressing me too, at the competition this Friday? It is at the Music Academy, in the hall, at three thirty. All those vying for the prize money or hoping to get in line for the scholarship will be there.”
I cleared my throat. “Hank isn’t very happy about everything. He was hoping to win the competition so he could study medicine, but …”
Madame shrugged. “And what about his teaching then?” she asked. “Sometimes stashed between his music books, I see the teaching magazines.”
“I know,” I muttered, annoyed that she could see so clearly what my parents had not.
“It is important,” she murmured, “to listen to what he says. Not just the words he speaks, but the unspoken messages.” She nodded wisely, which irritated me even more. It wasn’t like she had to live in my house.
“Of course,” she continued dreamily, “he does have great talent.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said sharply, wishing she’d shut up about his talent and wishing I’d practised an extra half hour yesterday.
“So, what are you waiting for then? Play!” she said dramatically, giving me a slight smile.
Madame listened in silence to my piece, leaning forward, her foot occasionally tapping as if to reassure herself that I was still playing in time. At the last note, she sat back, looking at me thoughtfully. “You have great talent too,” she said. “Great talent.”
“Like Hank,” I said, trying not to sound sarcastic, but Madame Pandora only raised an eyebrow, and I knew she’d caught my tone.
“The difference between you and your brother is that he’s not only playing for himself but his parents too. That is his greatest problem,” said Madame Pandora. “But you … you are only playing for yourself. And that is your problem.”
Usually when I got home, the house was as silent as a grave, with only Hank there every now and then if he wasn’t working, but today when I walked home, I could hear the shouting before I even got to the driveway.
For a moment, I considered turni
ng around and heading off in the opposite direction, but where would I go? It wasn’t like I could go to June any more. Just thinking about it felt awful, so I reluctantly pushed open the kitchen door, which someone had forgotten to lock, and walked in.
Hank was sitting down in the lounge and my parents loomed over him, barely a chink of light visible between their bodies, so close together they seemed joined down the seams. Definitely their United Front.
“You never felt like this before you met Caryn,” said Mom, her voice trembling, though whether from anger or grief I couldn’t tell. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Yes, I do!” shouted Hank, jumping up from his chair so he towered over both of them. I could see his tufts of orange hair sticking up wildly over their heads and quivering as he shook with anger. “For the first time in my life, I actually do know exactly what I’m doing. I’m just not doing what you want me to do. That’s all.”
“What we want is for you to have a future,” Dad said.
“Oh, right? Like you?” yelled Hank wildly, flinging his arm out to gesture at the rest of the lounge. “Like this? Where you work yourselves to the bone just to hold onto a house that’s going to the dogs?”
“That is enough!” Dad roared.
Hank deliberately misunderstood. “No, Dad,” he said, dropping his voice until it struck a note that reminded me of his Debussy nocturne, a whisper of grief. “This is not enough. It’s not enough of a life. For any of us.” Hank put up his hand, and I saw him wiping his cheek although I couldn’t believe he was actually crying. “I’m sorry, but I can’t make this right for you. It’s too much to ask. I’m living my life the way I choose to live it.”
Mom sat down suddenly on Dad’s plastic chair, and it squeaked as her limbs flopped down. Hank stared at her blankly for a moment, then walked out of the lounge to his room. Dad turned round and saw me, still frozen in the same place at the kitchen door.
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