by Sasha Troyan
“Mother,” Mummy says.
“And the food,” Granny says, “You must have missed that.”
“I can’t complain,” Daddy says, “the food was excellent.”
Granny snorts, then purses her lips, “Since everything was so very excellent, I’m surprised you could tear yourself away at all.”
“Mother, really. Please,” Mummy says. She places one hand over Granny’s.
Daddy does not say anything but leans over and tries to brush the grass out of the cuffs of his trousers.
“Come,” Alex says, pulling my shoulder.
“Not now,” I say, moving away.
“Why?” she says.
“Because,” I say. She pulls on my pony tail.
“Stop,” I shout. “Stop pulling my hair.” I push her away.
“What’s going on?” Daddy asks, throwing a handful of cut grass at me.
“She wants to play,” I say.
“Why don’t you?” Daddy asks. He throws another handful of grass at me.
“Don’t,” I say.
“Go on,” he says.
“All right,” I say, slowly getting up from the grass, scowling at Alex. We climb up to the top of the hill and then we roll down. At first I go slowly. But then Alex says, “Let’s race.”
“All right,” I say. I’ll show her. We run up and then we roll down, faster and faster. We get all dizzy, but we don’t care. We shout and laugh. When we stop, we’re all hot and Al’s cheeks are very red and her dress has green streaks down the front. We have cut grass in our hair and down our dresses and in our pants.
We lie on our backs and stare up at the sky. More and more clouds are gathering. Swallows swoop lower and lower. They pass close to one another, but never brush each other’s wings. We turn on our stomachs and stare at the grownups. All we can see from here are their feet and their legs: Granny’s wearing white stockings and tiny purple shoes, her feet barely touch the grass; Mummy’s legs are hidden by her dress; Ethel has placed both her feet side by side; and Daddy keeps crossing and uncrossing his legs. We crawl up to them slowly. Max keeps sniffing us. He probably thinks we’ve become dogs too. We bark. Woof. Woof. But when we reach the grownups we stop barking because they’re so quiet. They do not say anything. They’re all staring at Daddy who is shining his shoes with his napkin. He holds the napkin stretched between his hands and rubs it over his shoes back and forth, back and forth. Soon they’ll be like mirrors.
“I know it’s late,” Mummy says wrapping her arms around herself, “but would anyone like some tea? It’s chilly this evening.”
“I’m sure you feel the cold because you’ve lost so much weight,” Granny says. “You used to have such a wonderful appetite. I’ve never seen you looking this way before.”
“She doesn’t look all that bad,” Daddy says. He shoves the napkin into his pocket.
“Anyway,” Granny says, looking up at the sky, “I think we should go in. It looks as if it’s going to rain.”
“I don’t know,” Daddy says. “I wouldn’t be so pessimistic. I’d give it a chance if I were you. The sun might still come out. See—it’s struggling now.” The sun appears once again as if my father could will it to come out when he wished.
“Well,” Granny says, lifting her cuff and then raising her wrist to her face because she has trouble reading her watch. I run over. “Six thirty,” I say.
“Just as I thought,” Granny says. “It’s almost time for our gin and tonics.”
“I think we’ll take a chance,” Daddy says.
We watch Granny and Ethel walk towards the house. Granny rests her arm on Ethel’s shoulder.
“Come here, my sweet,” Mummy says. She brushes the hair away from my forehead. “You too, Alex. My goodness, you two are hot.”
“We’ve been rolling in the grass,” I say.
“Yes,” Alex says, “we’ve been rolling in the grass.” I pinch Al because she’s always copying me. Mummy says she’s a little echo.
We stare at the swallows swooping across the pool. They fly so low I expect their wings to touch the surface. Maybe Granny is right and it will rain.
“What have you two been up to?” Daddy says.
“Granny bought me a canoe,” I say. “A big orange canoe and tomorrow we’re going to go down the river.”
“Daddy, do you want to come?” Alex says.
“I don’t think there would be enough room for the three of us,” he says.
“Yes, there is,” Al says.
He looks over at Mummy. “Besides, we wouldn’t want to leave your mother behind.”
“Atchew, atchew,” Mummy sneezes. She jumps up from her chair. “It must be the pollen in the air.” We watch her walk across the grass. She walks very fast and the skirt of her dress swings from side to side. She runs into the house.
“I felt a drop,” I say. “Granny’s right, it’s going to rain.”
Clouds have gathered in the sky. There is only a small piece of blue sky left.
“No, no,” Daddy says, “come here you two. I have a secret.” We rush over. We love to hear secrets. I place my arm around Daddy’s neck and then Al copies me and places hers around his neck too. She rests it on mine. I try to shrug her arm off, but then Daddy whispers, “I have something to tell you which is very very difficult to explain. You must listen carefully and try to understand.” He turns his head from side to side to look at both of us. He pulls out his napkin and holds it in one hand.
“First,” he says, “Tell me, do you like chocolate ice cream?”
“Oh yes,” I say. “Very much.”
“I like vanilla better,” Alex says.
“Well,” Daddy says, shoving his napkin back into his pocket. “Let’s just pretend you both like chocolate and vanilla equally, I mean the same. Can you do that?”
“Oh yes,” I say. “I’m very good at imagining.”
“Now, this is the difficult part,” he says. He takes out the napkin again and twists it between his fingers. “If I asked you to choose between the vanilla and the chocolate ice cream, it would be very, very, very difficult, assuming, I mean, if you liked both chocolate and vanilla the same?”
“Oh yes, it would,” I say.
“Well,” he says, “You see that’s what’s happened to me. I love your mother very much, but I also love another lady.”
Perhaps my father’s teasing. He loves to tease us. Sometimes he tickles us so much we pee in our pants. I giggle and look over my shoulder to see if he’s laughing too, but he’s staring down at the twisted napkin. Alex stares at me, as if to make up her mind. Her mouth is wide open the way it is when Mummy tells us a story.
I watch the swallows swoop across the pool. They fly so low their breasts and sometimes the tip of one wing cut through the water, leaving a ripple which disappears immediately. There are many more swallows now. They seem to have all flown down from the vegetable garden, and their cries fill the air. Their cries seem too loud and the rest of the garden too quiet, too still, as if a spell had fallen on everything except for them.
“Aren’t you coming in?” Mummy says, walking toward us, and we look up and realize that it has begun to rain. The rain comes down slowly, one big drop and then another big drop. I try to find a rhythm to the rain, plop ti plop, plop, but they’re never even and the sound they make as they hit my arm or the chair or the earth is not the same.
“I’ve told them,” Daddy says, letting the napkin drop to the ground.
Mummy stares at us, as if she could see it in our faces. Her forehead crinkles like a piece of paper, then she says, “Why?” She stares at Daddy’s bent head. We wait for him to say something, but he continues to look down at the grass, at the folded napkin. She turns and I hear her gasp, as if she cannot breathe. She sobs and then she runs. She runs holding one hand to her chest, her skirt flying up in the back and Daddy jumps up from his chair and follows her. We watch him run after her. He catches up with her just before the stone steps. He grabs her elbow, but she
breaks away. Over her shoulder, she shouts, “I thought we agreed,” and Daddy stops and stands with his long arms hanging limply by his sides. He watches her disappear into the house, then slowly walks back towards us, passing his hand through his hair. Drops of rain have mottled his suit. “Shouldn’t you be going in now?” he asks, as lightning strikes in the distance.
I walk slowly over to the pool, stare at the rain coming down hard now, tiny bursts of water which disappear as soon as they touch the green film covering the surface.
I let myself fall into the water, hear Al come in after me. The water is warm like tears, especially the top part, and smells of the rain and the grass and my clothes balloon and help me float but then they weigh me down and it’s hard to swim. With my arms, I try to clear myself a clean path, but the grass closes in almost immediately. I swim round and round, then I float onto my back and look up at the sky.
“I think it’s dangerous. Come out,” Daddy says, but we continue to float as the storm becomes more and more fierce. Lightning strikes first white, then yellow, the garden lights up like the negative of a photograph.
I look over at my father only when I’m so cold, I’m shivering and Al’s lips are blue. My father is sitting in a fold out chair. He sits without moving, looking down at his shoes, at the white-now-gray napkin lying on the grass. Drops of water slide down his forehead, along his nose. They accumulate at the tip and then they fall one by one onto his chin and then onto his shirt. His shirt has turned pink and his jacket and trousers have turned black and stick to his body in strange folds. His scalp shines between strands of wet hair. He looks up, and I see tears rolling from his eyes and landing on his hands. I look away.
Juliet stands in the middle of our room on the pale blue carpet with the white crosses. The sky is gray and the only light comes from the electric bulb in the corridor. She raises her Scottish kilt above her knees. At first, all I can focus on are her wide calves and her twisted feet. She puts one hand in the air and does a Scottish jig. She goes round and round the room, lifting one knee, then the other. Al’s the first to laugh. I don’t until Juliet drops her skirt and stands in her stockings and moves her hips from side to side, keeping her torso absolutely still. Then I can’t help it.
We’re sitting outside around the dining-room table covered with a white cloth Aunt Ethel and Granny embroidered the summer before. It was Daddy’s idea to eat outside. The air is filled with the scent of the rain and the cut grass and every now and then when the breeze blows drops of water fall onto us. Al and I are wearing our best dresses, white dresses with tiny white butterflies. Juliet tied huge white bows to our hair. Al’s fell off. Granny said we look like bridesmaids. Mummy looks like the bride because she’s also wearing a white linen dress and a pearl necklace Daddy gave her.
She walks out of the kitchen holding a soufflé in a bowl. It’s perfect, almost as high as a chef’s hat. As she places the bowl on the table, the soufflé wobbles and I’m afraid it will drop.
“Almost seems a shame to cut into it,” Granny says.
“Yes,” Daddy says. “Maybe we should all just look at it. A work of art.”
Mummy cuts into the soufflé. She gives me a big helping, but she forgets that I like the sides of the soufflé, the crispy cheese parts.
It’s very quiet. You can just hear the knives and forks against the plates, Ethel sipping her wine, water dropping from leaves and in the background the river.
I study the candles, the way they cast reflections across the white cloth and across people’s faces. I hear Daddy tell Mummy how beautiful she looks and she says that candlelight is becoming to everyone.
“At my age not even candlelight will do it,” Granny says.
“Did you grow up by candlelight?” I ask Granny.
She laughs and says she isn’t that old.
“Maybe you should go on a cruise,” Ethel suggests to Mummy and Daddy.
Daddy laughs, then brushes some crumbs off the table. “You think that’s the solution,” he says.
Juliet says she’s never been on a cruise, just a hovercraft and she’ll never do that again. I ask her what a hovercraft is and she says it’s like a submarine. I don’t think I’d like to go on a hovercraft. What if you get stuck down on the bottom of the sea and can’t get out?
Al and I play touching each other’s feet under the table. Then Daddy asks me to recite a poem I learned for school by Victor Hugo about a boy who died during the revolution. It’s in French so neither Granny nor Ethel nor Juliet can understand it, but I recite it with as much feeling as I can, all the time staring at one corner of the white tablecloth. It’s so sad, it makes me cry. The grownups are so moved they forget to clap and I can’t tell if it’s because of the poem or because of Mum and Dad.
Then Al and I ask to be excused. We float candles across the swimming pool.
Daddy turns on the gramophone and music drifts across the lawn. We watch Mum and Dad dance around the pool. I remember Mum telling me that Dad is not a very good dancer. He’s always stepping on her feet. But tonight they seem to dance without any effort. Daddy holds Mum very tight and she rests her cheek against his chest. They’re reflected in the water. You can see only pieces of them because of the big circles of floating grass. The grass specks Mummy’s white stockings and white shoes and the cuffs of Daddy’s trousers fill with grass.
We don’t want Dad to dance with Juliet but when they do we can’t help laughing. We ask her to do her belly dance, but she pretends not to know what we’re talking about. Granny and Aunt Ethel sit and sip their gin and tonics. They wave to us from their blue fold-out chairs on the patio.
Four
In the morning I tiptoe up the stairs to my parents’ room, past the boxer prints. Each boxer stands, arms lifted, knees bent, ready to punch. All three look alike. The only difference is in the color pants they wear: red, blue, and green. The house is silent except for the sound of a window opening and closing and the cries of birds flying to their nests under the eaves.
All I can see through the half-open door of my parents’ room is the bottom corner of their bed and a section of the mantelpiece and the wall. I watch shadows shift, first one is on top then the other. The bed creaks. My father’s orange heels come out from beneath the sheets. I cannot see my mother. Perhaps she’s disappeared. I hear her moan. She is hidden beneath my father. He is suffocating her. I open the door further. My father is up on his hands.
I run back down the stairs and out the door, through the garden, across one narrow bridge, then another. The trees’ reflections stretch all the way to the other bank, throwing shadows onto the grass. I pass snowballs, a cherry tree and a silver willow so tightly intertwined it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. The wind dies and then picks up again, scattering petals and leaves. I watch the leaves float down the river until they meet weeds. The leaves churn round and round and some are sucked under and disappear. Sometimes I hear a flutter of wings and a strange cry and the long grass along the bank parts and a black moor hen flies up a few feet, then drops back down again. I think I hear my name called but there’s no one, just the trembling of a branch. I continue but again I hear my name. I can’t tell from which direction. I’ve reached the end of the bank where it narrows and there are bushes on either side and suddenly I feel as if the grass is rushing up at me and the trees are closing in and it’s too quiet and I rush back along the bank as fast as I can.
Along the white fence the roses are drooping. Some have fallen apart, their petals scattered across the lawn. All that’s left are their ugly heads. The birds are very loud. It’s as if they’ve all come out to drink the rain. Then I hear Granny’s dress. It makes a whispery sound. She places her hand on my shoulder.
“I’m feeling a bit tired this morning,” she says.
“The roses are ruined,” I say. “Finished.”
“They’ll come back,” she says. “There will be even more soon. We just have to prune them.”
She gives me a
hug. I like the feeling of Granny’s corset, firmer than anyone could possibly be.
“Gabriel,” she says. “There are things I can’t tell you because they’re not for me to tell. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I say. I wonder if she means Daddy’s lady. I wonder if his lady has boys. If he will like them better than us and go away.
“Why don’t we go check on the vegetable garden?” She suggests.
“Okay,” I say.
The garden glistens, drops of water lie in the seams of leaves. The geraniums have lost their petals. Each leaf is decorated by a round circle Granny calls a halo. We walk slowly across the stone patio. I stop to pull some moss between the cracks but drop it immediately when I see the pale gray beetles. Granny laughs. “They won’t hurt you,” she says. Slowly, we climb the hill to the vegetable garden and Granny leans quite heavily on my shoulder. When we reach the top, Granny says, “Shame!” The vegetable garden looks as if it has been shaken. The sweet peas have been stripped of their flowers, bits and pieces of their mauve petals are scattered across the earth and the grass. One of the cherry trees has lost a branch. We can see exactly where it broke off because of the clear oval circle.
Then we hear Mummy calling. She runs across the lawn. She’s wearing a white nightdress with red ribbon threaded through the wrists and the hem. Her hair is down, and she’s barefooted.
“He’s leaving,” she says. Her voice is faint.
“Oh dear,” Granny says. She hugs Mummy, then presses me against her. For a moment, we stand at the top of the hill, staring at the trees bending in the wind. The top branches swirl round and round. They look like angry girls swinging their long hair.
Walking down the hill, we have to be careful because the grass is long and wet. Every now and then I slip. It makes me think of the time when Alex and I used to glide down the mountains. I wish there were mountains here.
Mummy says Daddy wants to have breakfast with us before he leaves, but I don’t listen. I run to my treehouse. I sit on my bunk bed of logs and chew on a piece of grass. The sun struggles to appear through the clouds, but it can shed only now and then, a feeble light on the faded yellow buttercups along the river. I’m going to go down the river in my canoe. I’m going to go as far as I can. Maybe all the way to Estouy, where I’ll buy some caranbar. They’re my favorite sweets. Al likes to keep the wrappers. They’re bright yellow with Caranbar written in purple.