‘So what do we do?’ Pea asks me.
‘Watch them,’ I say. ‘That’s obviously what she wanted us to do. This is why we didn’t find a note at home. A throwaway note; that was never going to be Mum’s style. She made us more films, and sent them here.’
‘Luna, I’m not sure if I can …’
I look up sharply at my sister.
‘Pea, you can. I need you to be able to do this with me. I need you to be strong, because I know one thing, I can’t do this alone.’
‘Right.’ Pea nods. ‘OK.’
‘I guess we start with number one,’ I say. ‘The far wall is pretty good for projection. I think I saw a chair downstairs; we need something better to set this up on.
‘I’ll get it.’ Pea’s tone is flat, quiet, as she heads downstairs.
When she returns she holds the torch and I work to set the projector up, taking the task moment by moment, not thinking about what will happen when we finally start it running.
‘I don’t know how much juice is in this battery pack,’ I say. ‘Depends if Mum thought to charge it before she …’
‘Well, she thought of everything else,’ Pea says. ‘Luna, this whole thing. The building, the projector – shit, even the trip. None of it seems real, does it? It’s all a bit like it’s some kind of dream, don’t you think? Like we might wake up at any minute.’
And she only knows the half of it.
‘But am I in your dream, or are you in mine?’ I ask her, plugging the projector into the power pack. I hold out a hand to her. ‘Ready?’
Taking it she nods. ‘Ready.’
The room that was virtually pitch-black seconds before is now filled with dazzling light, a rainbow of colours flickering and flashing as the film feeds through the reels: scratches, hairline flaws, for an instant nothing at all, and then her.
Like the film we watched at home, she’s in her beloved garden on a warm summer’s day. Hollyhocks and lupins stand tall and beautiful behind her, superimposed on the lumps and cracks of the wall behind, the peeling wallpaper and mould-ridden damp patches. It takes Mum moment to settle into her carefully positioned chair, a moment more as she stares into the distance, deep in thought. Then she turns, and looks into the camera. She looks at us.
‘What I’m about to tell you is going to be very hard for me. I’ve lived all my life with this story and it has never gotten any easier. But for you, too, it’s going to be very hard for you.’
Pea’s fingers tighten around mine; we are utterly silent and still.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
‘Jesus.’ I clasp my hands over my mouth, as if I am trying to stuff the last few seconds of time down my throat and swallow them whole. ‘Jesus.’
The air around me fills with heat, and exhaust, pushing its way into my lungs, but still I suck it in, grateful for any oxygen that has seen sunlight. Glad to be out of that building filled with … with words I cannot allow to be true. My knees buckle, and I see the sky fall away from me, as I stagger out onto the street, before the vibrant pain of my head crashing against the sidewalk is lost in darkness.
Feet, brightly coloured, block heels, yellow flares, red sandals step over me.
The hems of pleated summer skirts flare in my face as busy people rush by, and, as I watch them, I see the street, empty and composed, except for an elderly lady, trailing a trolley bag behind her. At exactly the same time, a group of women talking loudly about some guy called Paulie and what a dirt bag he is. They walk where the old woman walks, at exactly the same moment, like a double exposure, they occupy the same space, the same moment. I am not here. No one sees me. Feet don’t step over me, they step through me. I don’t them feel moving through my core, because I am both here and not here. I am then and not then. In this moment, I am nowhere.
I understand the peace that Mum was so desperate for; I get just a glimpse of what it must be like to be a ghost, feeling that if I could find a way to raise my hands to my eyes, I could watch myself fly away into the air, one particle at a time.
I remember what she’d said in her film, her reasons why, and a sob rips through me. It can’t be true, it just can’t be true.
We sat there, the two us, hand in hand in that dark and dirty room, as she told us, once again, so close to the camera that we could only see part of her face, that she had been stalked all of her life by a ghost that never let her go.
And then she looked at me.
‘Luna, I was never going to tell you,’ she says. ‘But I have to, I see that now.’ Mum stopped, looking at the camera, and somehow, even before she said it, I almost knew what was coming next. ‘I was raped, at home, in my bedroom. By someone I knew and liked, someone I thought I could trust.’ She closed her eyes, and I saw that all-too-familiar crease deepen as she fights back a memory. ‘It was bad, and I was hurt. I was unconscious for a little while, and as I was coming round I realised he had his hands on my throat. The pain, the pressure, the desperate need to breathe. I knew that if I blacked out that would be it, I’d never make it out alive. I thought of Henry, and my sister – and somehow I even thought of you, my children, and the future that I wanted so badly – and I didn’t want to die, I refused to die for him.
‘I don’t remember much, I don’t know where the strength or fury came from, only that I wasn’t going to die, and it was clear that if it wasn’t going to be me, then it would have to be him. I kneed him hard, between the legs. It winded him, and in his fury he hit me, but he lost his grip, lost his balance. He fell, slipped in blood, my blood. I heard this crack as the back of his head hit the corner of my wardrobe. He was dazed, lying there, jammed between my bed and the wardrobe. And I … I knelt on his chest, grabbed his hair again. I took hold of his head and I smashed it as hard as I could against the wardrobe, and I did it again and again, until most of the blood on the floor was his. Until he was silent and still. I was twenty years old and I’d just killed a man, a man I knew everyone liked and respected. But I didn’t die, I didn’t let him have that.’
The summer sky over her head had rippled against the dirty wall, pocked with mould.
As we watched, she took a deep breath, and I saw the tension, the weight of what she has lived with, drain away from her. ‘I couldn’t go to the police. Besides, back then it wasn’t the cops we went to if we were in trouble. But, in any case, it didn’t matter, because I knew I wouldn’t be believed. He was a pillar of the community, beloved not only by me, but the whole neighbourhood. My father respected him. Thought he was a good man. So I knew that it would be my fault, it would be because of what I wore, that I’d invited him into my home. They’d say that I set out to seduce him. I knew it would be like that, because that’s what it was like then. A girl like me, who liked short skirts and strappy tops, well, a girl like me was asking for it. God knows, before it happened to me, I felt that way too.
‘So I ran away. July thirteenth, nineteen seventy-seven, the night of the blackout. The city was dark, except for the fires from the looting. It was chaos, no cops anywhere, the only people out on the street were the people who were up to no good. It was the perfect night to get away with a crime and I was lucky I had a sister who knew how to do it. If it had been Dad that had come looking for me instead of Stephanie, it would have been a very different story.’
Her gaze shifts past the camera, and it’s as if she’s looking into the room, into the corner, as if she can see where it happened. Mum returns her focus down the lens. ‘Stephanie was dating a guy who was a foot soldier for the Mob; he knew people, I guess. People who cleaned up this sort of mess. And he’d do anything for Stephanie. My sister didn’t even blink an eye, she just took over. There was no question of cops or telling anyone. She ran a bath, scalding hot, on a boiling hot night. She had to cut my clothes off of me, there had been such a lot of blood. Some mine. I remember her hands on my shoulders, guiding me into the bath, and how it scalde
d because it so hot it was nearly unbearable, turning my skin red raw. I sat in that bath until the red water became cold and I started to shiver.
‘Eventually Stephanie came for me. She told me everything was taken care of, I was to never say a word about what had happened to anyone. I was going to leave with Henry as planned. I was in shock, I guess, but so was she, I think. It was only when I was ready to go, ready to find Henry, that I realised that the remnants of the dress I’d been wearing were still in the bathroom. I picked them up, and stuffed them behind the wardrobe in my room. I poured bleach onto the floor and left it there in a pool. It wasn’t until I was on the plane to England that I started to shake, and I couldn’t stop. Henry thought I was frightened of living somewhere new, but I was frightened of what I’d left behind, and the secret I took with me.’
Mum’s hands, so fine and delicate, replicate that tremble as she reaches for the cigarette that had been sitting, waiting in the ashtray on the garden table. ‘I knew about you a couple of weeks after we arrived in London. I knew you had to be from him. I thought I would hate you, I thought that Henry would hate me. When I told him I was pregnant, even though he knew that you couldn’t be his, he didn’t ask any questions, and I couldn’t tell him how it happened. I couldn’t allow myself to even think about it. Maybe he knew, maybe he sensed what had happened, but if he did, he also knew that I couldn’t talk about it, not then, not ever. I realised just how lucky I was when he held me and told me he’d loved us both. I thought, maybe I can just walk away from this, maybe if Henry loves me enough I can find a kind of peace. And I loved you, Luna. I think if it hadn’t have been for you, when I’d woken up from the nightmare, I’d have ended it then. But you gave me thirty more years of life, and love and joy, and then Pia too. I’m so grateful to have the most wonderful two daughters in the world, and thirty more years of almost happiness that I didn’t deserve. Thirty more years that I cherish, and I’m so grateful for that.’
She turned her face into the afternoon sun, light edging her profile.
Film fluttered round and round the projector, tick, tick, tick. Then nothing, but the blank light of the bulb against the rotting wall.
And that was when I scrambled to my feet and ran.
Something hard, and painful, jerks at my neck, and everything comes into sharp focus. A boy, hardly more than ten, has grabbed my camera and he’s trying to rip it from my neck.
‘Give it back, you little prick!’ I yell, grabbing at the strap, which strains and pulls tighter.
‘Fuck you, lady.’ He pulls so hard that the strap burns my neck and I see him racing off; the few people who pay any attention at all simply watch him go.
‘Stop him!’ Shouting as I get to my feet, I taste blood on my tongue, the skin around my neck stings and I want to cry. ‘Please stop him, it’s my dad’s camera! I can’t lose that too!’
As the boy reaches the end of the street, and I’m about to lose all hope, he comes to a crashing stop, running into the stomach of a tall man, dressed in a suit and tie, despite the heat. The man grabs him by the scruff of his torn shirt, and whispers something in the boy’s ear, something that stops the boy struggling at once. Boiling tears scorch their way down my cheeks as I watch him being dragged him back along the sidewalk, his feet barely touching the ground as he is marshalled into line by his captor.
Still in the man’s clutches he holds out the camera to me, and I take it, cradling it close.
‘What do you say, Ricky?’ The man’s voice is familiar, but not the tone, authoritarian and utterly confident. ‘What. Do. You. Say?’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ the boy mumbles, scrambling away the instant that he is released.
‘Thank you so much, I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost it.’ I look into his light-blue eyes, framed with auburn lashes, and it isn’t until he smiles back that I realise who he is, the wonder if it suspending everything else for a beat. It’s clearly him, even if the last time I saw Watkins Gillespie he was thirty years older.
‘Miss, are you quite well?’ He sees my tear-streaked face, and his hand supports me at my elbow. Gratefully I lean against it.
‘Mr Gillespie?’
‘Yes, I apologise, have we met?’
After the film finished, I didn’t know what else to do but tear myself out of that space, out of that moment, and run. I had to get away, far way. I didn’t think about Pea, or anything, I just needed to be away from the place where it happened and where I had discovered the truth about my birth. My head pounded, my stomach lurched, and I felt sick and full of bile as I exploded out of the building. Somewhere during those moments did I pass out, or pass through? If I’m out cold on some hot sidewalk, Pea will find me soon enough. If not, if somehow I am here again in 1977, then there is only one reason, one purpose I have to be here.
I need to save my mother’s life.
‘We haven’t met,’ I say, collecting myself. ‘Not yet, anyway. I’ve heard of you.’
Gillespie’s face is kind and concerned. It gives me a little strength.
‘Well, then, Watkins Gillespie, pleased to meet you.’ He offers me his hand, and I take it; it’s firm and strong.
‘How did you get that kid to just hand my camera back?’
‘I’ve helped half his family stay out of jail, or get out,’ he says. ‘He’s a good kid, just a hungry one. I told him to come by my office later and I’d feed him.’
‘That’s kind,’ I say.
‘I can’t help noticing that you’re in some distress. Is there anything I can do?’
I shake my head, fighting the threat of tears once again.
‘I’ve recently had some bad news, but there’s nothing you can do. Thank you for asking.’
Reaching into his top pocket, Gillespie produces a business card.
‘You’ll be amazed, there is always something a lawyer can do. Call me if you change your mind.’ His smile is charming. ‘I’ll give you the best rate just for being so beguiling. Good day … ?’
‘Luna,’ I say.
‘Luna, as luminous as the full moon,’ he muses. ‘Well, now, I have an appointment with some gentlemen who do not like to be kept waiting. I wish you good day.’
‘Mr Gillespie, before you go… ?’
He hesitates.
‘Could you tell me the date and time please? I’m on my way to a very important appointment too.’
‘Certainly. July eighth, and it’s a little after one in the afternoon.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Goodbye.’
Just before it happens again the air vibrates. Holding the camera, I cradle it close to my chest and I brace myself for the next shock wave. A cacophony of colour and pain explodes outside and within, and when I come to the camera is still in my arms, my cheek jammed hard against the sidewalk.
‘Luna?’ Pea’s voice cuts through the chaos, and I cling on to it, my north star, the one fixed point that I can navigate towards. ‘Luna, it’s OK, It’s OK. I’m here with you. It’s going to be alright.’
‘What happened? What did you see?’ My tongue is thick and dry, but somehow I form the words, unable to move while my legs still feel so heavy, like gravity has doubled and trebled just for me.
‘Nothing, I just came out a second ago and you were on the floor.’ Pea rests a cool palm on my forehead. ‘Just for a minute, maybe less. Maybe I should call an ambulance? You might be in shock. Christ, your neck is bright red, like a burn or something? I’d better call someone.’
‘No, don’t, I’m fine.’ As I struggle to sit up, the sidewalk tilts dangerously; I reach for Pea, clinging on to her to keep tethered to this world. ‘Just need a minute. It’s the eighth of July right? What’s the time?’
‘It’s just turned one.’ Pea frowns. ‘Luna, Christ. I mean … I just don’t know what to say.’
‘You heard what she said,’ I say. ‘She really said it, didn’t she? It’s not in my head?’
‘It’s not in your head,’ Pea says. ‘I just …
I mean, she was ill, much more ill that we knew; we can see that just looking at that film. She hid so much from us, it’s possible. It’s possible that she was muddled … mistaken.’
‘No, she wasn’t.’ I sit still, letting my body settle into the sidewalk, the truth settle into me. ‘She was telling the truth. I think … I think maybe I’ve always known it. On some level. But now I know for sure. There’s a reason I’m the only person in my family with blue eyes.’
I look at my sister.
‘Dad isn’t my dad.’
‘That’s what she said on the first film.’ Pea takes my hands in hers. ‘We knew that.’
‘My real dad is the man that raped her, Pea, the night she ran away from New York.’
‘Yes.’ Pea nods, her voice catching. ‘Mum was raped.’
‘By the man she killed.’ I say the words because I have to. Because saying them might make them seem real.
‘Yes, she killed the bastard that did it. She said she did that. And that Aunt Stephanie helped her clean up the mess and somehow got rid of the body, that’s what she said. She said that happened, and she left for London with Dad and found out about you later. That’s what she said happened.’
And there it is in a few words. The truth that Mum had run from all of her life, the truth she couldn’t hide from anymore. The ghost that had stalked her and would not let her rest, the reason that she wanted to die.
I need what’s happening to me to be real. I need it to be some miracle of the universe, a secret portal unlocked just for me, just at this time and not the structures of my brain collapsing inside my skull.
I need to know, to prove that I can move through time and change it.
I need to know I can save her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
‘Luna, people are looking at us,’ Pea whispers, pulling me back into the moment. ‘Let’s try to look a bit less like a pair of crazy people.’
Getting to her feet, she offers me her hand, and I clamber up, dusting myself down.
The Summer of Impossible Things Page 9