by Galaxy Craze
“What are you talking about?”
“When I wet my trousers because you wouldn’t let me upstairs in my boots.” Even now, just saying it made me embarrassed.
“You always used to wet yourself. It wasn’t my fault; you had a problem.” When she smiled, the corners of her mouth curled up like a cat’s tail.
I had the feeling I was holding my breath. Then I said, “I’m not surprised Trevor never telephoned you again.”
At first, I thought she hadn’t heard me, she stood so still. “Excuse me?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “What did you just say?”
“I said I’m glad Trevor hasn’t phoned you. You’re so horrible.”
She dropped the magazine on the table. She stood with her hand on her hip and her lips pursed, as though she were posing for a picture. “Well, if he doesn’t phone then I won’t be his girlfriend. I’ll be free to shag anyone I want, just like your mum does since your dad left you.”
I stared at the stitching on her jeans pockets. I thought: We will never be friends again.
“My dad didn’t leave us,” I said, steadying my voice. “He’s in India, buying antiques for the shop.”
“India!” Greta said, as though it were a joke. “I just saw him walking down the King’s Road.”
I looked at her but couldn’t speak. He was already walking through my mind, the sound of his footsteps against the pavement: a tall man with dark hair and skin, in denim jeans and a pressed white linen shirt from India. He floated down the middle of the road, his gaze somewhere between the rooftops and the sky.
Upstairs, Eden was asleep on the big bed. The room was not dark. The curtains were drawn and the light from the streetlamps shone through the windows. I looked at the things on top of Mum’s dresser; I lifted the lid on the wooden apple and let it drop, the way Greta had done, humming a song.
An old photograph lay on the dresser, against the wall. In the photo, I was sitting on Mum’s lap, she had her hand on my forehead, and we were both laughing. Underneath, my father had written My two loves.
“Eden, Eden … wake up.” I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him lightly. He turned over and his hand fell open on his forehead. “Eden.” I pushed him again; my voice was louder. “You can sleep in my room tonight. I’ll let you!” Eden opened his eyes; they were dark and wet from sleep. He sat up, rubbing his eyes with his hands. He moved slowly, stumbling forward from the bed, his forehead warm and damp from sleep.
We lay in my bed, head to toe. I pressed my toes against Eden’s back to warm them. It was an attic room with a porthole window and a copper bird perched on top. A car drove down the street and the headlights crossed the bedroom wall.
“Greta said she saw Dad walking down the King’s Road,” I said suddenly, in the dark.
Eden turned under the covers. “Greta saw him in London?”
My teeth touched. “Yes.”
“But he would have come home if he was back,” Eden said. “He would have, wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t he tell us?”
Eden was silent and I closed my eyes. Before he’d left, my mother and he had arguments, late at night in the kitchen and on the telephone. The morning he left for India, only Eden and I were downstairs to say good-bye.
“Do you think it really was him, May?” Eden said again, from the end of the bed.
I shook my head. “Greta’s a liar.”
I lay down on the pillow. I thought, Eden will never fall asleep now. He wants me to tell him Dad would have come home to us, first thing! He needs me to tell him. Then he’ll lie down, turn his face to the pillow, and fall asleep, knowing he has weight. That he, Eden, is enough of a reason for his father to come home.
“Maybe it was someone who looked like him,” Eden said, hopefully.
I nodded in the dark. “That’s probably what happened, Eden.”
“He wouldn’t be here and not tell us, would he?”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” I said, but I lay with my eyes open until I heard Eden turn his face to the pillow, until his breathing grew soft and slow.
NINE
On the weekend, Mum and her friends Annabel and Nicole were sunbathing in the garden. They lay topless, on their backs, on bamboo mats, covered in coconut oil.
In a basket, under the shade of the tree, Nicole’s baby daughter lay sleeping.
“The spirituality thing, you’ve always been into that,” Nicole was saying, “but what more could you be looking for? You have a husband, this house. The shop’s doing well. Two children.”
“Are those in the good or bad category?” Annabel asked. She rested her head on a silver reflector. “I’ve always said, opposites attract but not for very long.”
“I think you’re probably right,” my mother said, turning onto her stomach and resting her head on her hands.
When people asked how my mother and father met, she said that she had gone to his shop, looking for a present for a friend. The way he dressed, spoke, touched her on the shoulder made her think he was gay, and by the time she realized he wasn’t, he had already seduced her.
I walked up the garden steps.
“Hello, my darling,” my mother said. “What have you been doing?”
I shrugged. “Just walking around.”
“That’s a pretty dress,” Annabel said.
I looked down, touching the tiny roses on the fabric. “Thanks.”
I went over to the basket to have a look at the baby.
“Leave her, May,” Nicole said, her voice like swatting a fly. “She just finally settled down.”
I stepped away from the basket.
“Come lie down with me,” my mother said. She moved over on her mat, making room, and I sat down beside her. I felt the sun on my back, and the straps of my sundress fell loose around my shoulders.
“You smell like the swimming pool,” my mother said. “I was thinking maybe we’ll go away somewhere for a week or two, just us three. I have a bit of money saved for a holiday.”
“Isn’t Dad coming back soon?”
“The last time he phoned he was having trouble shipping a table back.” She sighed, laying her head on her hands. “Wouldn’t you like to go away? You and Eden don’t want to spend the whole summer in the city.”
“I just want to stay here, Mum.” I didn’t want to go on holiday, pack the car and drive for hours—get lost, hot and bothered. I was happy to stay here, swim at the Fulham pool, and practice the breast-enlargement and stomach-flattening exercises I read about in Sixteen magazine.
I imagined myself returning to school anew. I had never been a good student, but I wanted for once to really try. We would be taking our A-levels soon. I had already read one of the books on the autumn syllabus. I would sit in the front row of the classroom, raising my hand and not wishing every time the teacher asked a question that she wouldn’t see me.
Annabel took a joint from her handbag. “Remind me I must phone Suzy about the party at San Lorenzo’s tonight. She’ll put us on the list.”
She lit the joint and passed it, across me, to my mother.
“I really fancy a cup of tea,” Nicole said.
“Oh, so do I,” Annabel said.
They sat up from their mats, tying their bikini straps behind their backs.
“Do you want some tea, darling?”
“No, thanks, Mum.”
I watched them walk down the garden steps and into the kitchen. The sound of their voices and laughter floated into the garden, but I could not hear the words they were saying.
I lay by myself on the mat and wished I had friends like my mother had. Maybe from a book, maybe from a film; I had an idea of what I wanted: a friendship I had never had. I watched the other girls. Girls in twos: sitting together on the bus, walking home from school. Going over to each other’s houses, spending the night. I imagined them, sitting up in their beds, talking until dawn. The light turning dark, the dark turning light, outside their windows.
When I listened to my mother and her friends
talking about falling in love, I imagined a best friend, a girl. We kept no secrets from each other; our thoughts blended together in the air. She would never believe in heaven and hell but in the trees and the sky and the places hidden beneath. The color between us would be sea-green. In the secret history of friendships, engraved in stones, ours would be among the greatest. The sea glass, the pile of leaves! The friend I had always wanted. The one you were born with. That made you happy to be alive and living in this world at the same time. We were like sisters, each of us a wing of a small blue bird.
I was almost asleep when I heard the baby cry.
I sat up and went to her. A spider crawled along the wicker edge of the basket, and I gently blew it away. I put one hand beneath her head, the way my mother had taught me to do with Eden, and lifted her up.
I held her to my chest as I walked around the garden, telling her the names of the flowers and plants. “Those are daisies by the wall, and mint and thyme are growing in the pots.”
Amaryllis began to cry, and I thought it meant that she didn’t like me. That she could feel in me a meanness I felt in myself: a sharp bone through the skin.
Nicole ran up the garden steps. “Did you wake her?”
I shook my head. “She was crying, so I picked her up.”
“Well, you should have left her. She really needs to nap.” Nicole reached for her, taking her from my arms. “If she doesn’t nap, she doesn’t sleep well at night. You’re not hungry again, are you?” she said, in a softer voice to her baby.
She sat down on the grass and unbuttoned her blouse. I wasn’t sure if I should look, or look away. She put the baby’s mouth to her nipple. I stood where I was, fiddling with a button on my cardigan.
Nicole looked up. She saw me watching her. “Never seen a pair of tits before?”
I felt myself blush and walked away. I had always thought she was pretty with her pale skin and round dark-brown eyes.
Nicole lay down on her side, on the mat, with the baby beside her. She closed her eyes and kissed Amaryllis gently on the forehead.
They dressed for the party in the bedroom. Annabel wore a white minidress and silver-colored sandals with long straps that tied around her ankles like a ballerina.
My mother wore a crochet vest and long dark denim skirt with wedged-heeled sandals.
Nicole sat on the bed, talking to her mother on the telephone, making arrangements to leave Amaryllis with her for the night.
Before my mother left for the party, she asked me to collect Eden from his friend George’s house. George lived on Cranberry Road, just across the common.
At George’s house, I straightened my dress on the doorstep. When I rang the bell Mrs. Barstow appeared instantly, as though she had been standing behind it.
“Oh, hello!” Her voice was as high as a song. “Isn’t it nice of you to help your mum, taking care of your brother. She must be quite busy alone in the shop while your father’s away.”
“Yes, she is, Mrs. Barstow.” I smiled primly, standing with perfect posture on the doorstep.
Mrs. Barstow wore her hair back in an Alice band. Her pale-yellow summer dress fluttered in the light breeze. She was older than my mother, ten or fifteen years older, and her house was decorated like an English cottage. The print of the hand towels in the downstairs loo matched the wallpaper, and miniature seashell-shaped soaps—that looked as though they had never been used—sat in the silver soap dish.
“Eden!” she called over her shoulder, into the hall. “Your sister is here!”
Eden and George came running down the stairs. Eden held his swimming costume wrapped in his towel. From the kitchen came the smell of a roast and boiled potatoes and I lingered in the door, hoping she would ask us to stay for supper.
“Say thank you, Eden.” I poked his shoulder and Mrs. Barstow gave me an approving smile.
“Thank you, Mrs. Barstow,” Eden said.
Before we left, she gave us each an orange-flavored Penguin bar for the walk home.
It was a warm evening and we walked home through the common.
A woman wearing a red-and-white polka-dot dress and a man dressed in a suit sat on the bench. Couples held hands, walking along the path in the late-afternoon sun. A young boy rode his bicycle down a steep slope while his mother chased after him.
Our house was empty when we returned. The smell of Annabel’s scent lingered like a ghost in the hallway.
Eden walked into the garden, calling to Porridge.
An empty bottle of white wine sat on the table with three wineglasses. Glasses with lipstick marks around the rim. I drank the leftover wine from the glasses.
A note lay on the table, beside the empty bottle. It was a shopping list:
oranges
bread
frozen peas
butter
jam
But beneath the list, hidden under the bottle of wine, something else had been written. It said, Emptiness—what’s the use of going on?
I held the note in my hand and read the words again. I thought, A mother shouldn’t leave notes like this lying around. I dug my nails into the paper.
Upstairs, I ran hot water in the bathroom sink and tore the note to pieces. The scraps of paper floated in the water. Slowly, the letters faded and the ink turned the water pale blue.
I stood in the garden. Eden had set up an imaginary game of twigs, rocks, and stones at the bottom of the tree. I thought I heard him talking to them; the sticks and stones, as though he were talking to another child.
“Eden?”
He looked at me from where he crouched on the ground with what seemed like fear—or the embarrassment of someone who thinks he is alone but realizes he has been watched.
“Have you ever heard a song that goes like this: Emptiness—what’s the use of going on?”
“I don’t think so. Who’s it by?”
Your mother, I thought.
The evening light cut across him; lightening his face and hands. Porridge crawled out from under the bushes, she circled the terrapin pond touching her nose to the still water. Eden reached out to hold her, bringing her to his chest. “She feels so warm from the sun,” he said.
For supper I made baked beans on toast and sliced tomatoes with salad dressing. Eden fed the cat leftover fish.
We carried our food into the living room, eating in front of the telly. I sipped Ribena from a wineglass, and we finished the packet of chocolate digestive biscuits.
It was Saturday night. We watched the telly until there was nothing on except lines on the screen and a girl hugging a dog. On the street outside, a woman stood alone at the bus stop, eating a packet of crisps. I fell asleep on the sofa and Eden slept on his bed of pillows on the floor.
In the middle of the night, we were woken by the sound of footsteps and our mother’s voice echoing in the hallway.
“May? Eden?” she called, frantically.
I lay on the sofa in the dark room, too tired to answer.
The sitting room door flew open. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said, steadying herself against the doorframe.
“You’re drunk.”
She shook her head and stumbled on the edge of the carpet. She held her hand to her chest. “I was so worried! Imagine what I thought when I saw your empty beds.”
“Oh, God,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We’ve slept in here before. Where else would we have been? You were obviously too drunk and stoned to think to look in the living room.”
“I’m not drunk anymore, darling. I feel perfectly fine, just a bit hungry. Should I make breakfast?”
She knelt down beside Eden. He turned on his side, pulling the blanket to his chin.
“What time is it?” I had thought it was the middle of the night, but when I looked out of a corner of the curtain it was nearly light outside. A man walked a dog on a lead. The newspapers had already been left on the doorsteps and the light from the streetlamps faded into the day.
Eden sat at the kitchen
table, his eyes puffy from sleep, drinking a cup of milky tea. His blond hair stuck up like something newly hatched. The clock on the kitchen wall said half past six. The windows of the houses across the street were dark.
Our mother hummed a song to herself as she cracked eggs into a bowl: a song she must have heard at the party, a song she might have danced to. Strands of hair fell from her ponytail, around her face.
“I have something to tell you,” she said.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice a flat line. I was sure it would be something bad.
“It’s a surprise.”
“What kind of surprise?” Eden said, his tired eyes lighting up. “Tell us, Mum!”
“Okay,” she said, smiling. The smell of eggs and tomatoes filled the kitchen. “Do you really want to know?”
Eden nodded.
“We’re going on holiday!” She clasped her hands in front of her, opening her mouth, so that for a moment she looked like a doll that had just come alive. Her lipstick had worn off except in the corners of her mouth, her cheeks still red from rouge and drink.
“A holiday? Where are we going?”
“That’s the surprise. Guess?”
“Ibiza,” I said, but she shook her head.
“Druzilla’s Fun Park!” Eden screamed. He had seen the adverts on telly and had been begging her to take him. “I know! We’re going to visit Dad in India!” he shouted.
Her face fell, as though popped with a pin. She shook her head, looking at Eden sorrowfully. “No, darling. We are not going to India.”
She turned her back to us, stirring the eggs in the pan. A shudder shook her shoulders, and I thought, It’s too early to cry this morning.
“We’re going to America,” she said.
“America?” I said, as though it were a word I had never heard.
“We’re going to visit Renee.”
Renee was our mother’s friend. She had moved to America two years ago and now, when she telephoned, her voice echoed down the line. Renee had sent our mother a book called The Beginner’s Guide to Inner Peace and tapes of Hindu chants. She kept the book on her bedside table.