‘Is it bad that Grandpa hit you?’
‘I don’t know, Max, those were different times.’
One night my mother used the term shell shock at dinner in front of guests. Although she had not been talking about him, my father became very quiet. He waited until the guests had left. He waited until he was sure that I was asleep; he even came into my room to check. But I was awake, and I heard my mother’s pleas through the wall: she had not been talking about my father.
Afterwards I heard him apologise to her, as he used to apologise to me. He was ashamed of his trauma, ashamed of the trauma he was visiting upon us.
If my father had lived a little longer I could have asked him. I could have tried to understand what made a good man pose with his beaten enemy: what made a loving father beat his only son with his army-issue leather belt?
He was a good man, though. That’s what complicates things. My mother and I loved my father, and eventually the beatings stopped.
‘Dad,’ said Max on the bus home. ‘Do you think sometimes the police arrest people even though they didn’t kill someone, because they can tell they’re glad they’re dead?’
‘The police aren’t going to arrest me, Max. Is that what you’re talking about?’
Max brightened. ‘Did they tell you that?’
‘No, Max, no, they didn’t tell me that. And I’m not glad that the neighbour’s dead. It’s a terrible thing.’
15
When we got home Arla opened the door.
‘Oh, yeah, Dad, Arla’s coming to stay,’ said Max. ‘The reason I didn’t tell you was I forgot.’
Arla laughed and kissed Max, and he let her take his hand and draw him across the threshold.
‘Well, this should complicate things in interesting ways,’ I said. ‘How’s the life promiscuous?’
‘I guess right now it beats the life monotonous,’ she said, reaching up to be kissed.
Arla still had that West Coast sheen. She had cut her hair into a long bob and looked polished and poised in a knitted vest and knee-length skirt. Even in high shoes she was tiny: a smaller, sleeker near-facsimile of her older sister.
Millicent came in from the kitchen.
‘So, why are you here, Arla?’ I said. ‘What can we help you with this time?’
‘I asked her to come,’ said Millicent. ‘I figured we could use the help.’
I looked from Millicent to Arla to Max, then back to Millicent.
‘You were unconscious, Alex,’ said Millicent.
‘Right enough,’ I said. ‘The house is yours, Arla. London is yours. But I’m not unconscious any more so we don’t need any help.’
‘All good,’ said Arla, voice light as spun sugar.
‘Alex,’ said Millicent simply, ‘I’m going to need you to get Max ready for bed.’
‘But I want to talk to Arla,’ said Max.
‘Bed,’ said Millicent.
‘Mum …’
‘Max, what say tomorrow you skip school and we hang out?’ said Arla.
‘I’ll get into trouble.’
‘Not if I ring your principal and say I’m your mom.’
Max stared at Millicent. Arla stared at Millicent. Millicent looked appalled but she nodded gently.
‘Can I have twenty-four hour ’flu?’ asked Max.
‘Sure, Max. ’Flu is good.’
‘Can you say I’m delirious?’
‘Sure, Max. Delirious is super-good.’
I sat on the edge of the bath as Max brushed his teeth.
‘Dad, why did you call Arla promiscuous?’
‘I didn’t call her promiscuous.’
‘You said, “how’s the life promiscuous?” And then she said you were boring. Because really you were saying she’s a slut.’
‘We were both joking. And don’t say slut.’
‘Girls call girls sluts.’
‘Max, don’t say slut any more. OK? I don’t think she’s a slut, and she doesn’t think I’m boring. OK?’
‘If you say so, Boring Dad.’
He spat and rinsed.
‘Max, you haven’t really brushed your teeth.’
‘Because I was talking to you, Dad. Dad, is Arla promiscuous?’
‘Max, drop it.’
‘Is she, though?’
‘Bed.’
I sat on Max’s bed and watched him fall asleep. He looked so very young, and so very beautiful. He stirred slightly when I ruffled his hair, and I watched him from the doorway for a long time. Millicent touched my arm; I realised I hadn’t heard her come upstairs.
She nodded at Max. ‘We made that.’
‘Yes, we did, didn’t we?’
I held her to me, felt her breath on my neck.
‘It’s fiendishly clever, whatever it is,’ I said.
I held her very tight and we stood, watching the rise and fall of Max’s torso; I found myself without anger for the first time in days. Sleep of the innocent.
‘I need to apologise to Arla, don’t I?’
I asked Arla to forgive my thoughtlessness. She hugged me, told me it was all good, and that I was being far too English about things. I corrected her by pointing out that I was Scottish. She hugged me again, and said that sort of confirmed her point. I apologised again.
Arla had bought two bottles of good island whisky at the airport. Millicent opened Max’s bedroom window so that we’d hear him if he woke, and we sat on the grass drinking and talking. Arla drank her whisky with ice. Millicent and I drank it the Scottish way, dripping water from our fingers into the glasses.
‘Three drops of water. No more.’
‘You’re freaking kidding me, right, Alex?’
‘No, Arla, I’m deadly serious. You’re killing it with ice.’
‘So three drops of water? What’s with that?’
‘Releases the esters. Which for some reason improves the flavour.’
‘Ooh. Science,’ she said, valley-girl style. ‘You Brits sure are smart.’
‘Wow. Irony,’ I mimicked, falsetto. ‘You Americans sure do learn fast.’
‘Yeah, I guess we made it as far as sarcasm.’
She picked up my drink and tasted it.
‘You see?’ I said. ‘Much better.’
‘No. Icky.’
‘Please yourself.’
‘I do.’
We lay on our backs, drinking whisky and looking up at the sky. Say what you will about light pollution, but I swear we saw stars.
‘This place is actually pretty cool,’ said Arla. ‘Why do you call it Crappy?’
‘Crappy Rub Sniff,’ said Millicent. ‘If you spell Krapy with a K and one P, and Sniff with one F.’
‘Backwards, you mean?’ said Arla. ‘K-R-A-P-Y-R-U-B-S-N-I-F?’
‘Max figured it out. Don’t know why we didn’t.’
‘Huh,’ said Arla. ‘Smart kid.’
A police helicopter appeared and hovered for ten minutes, the beam from its searchlight twitching nervily, cutting white steel swathes into the blue-brown sky. For a moment the beam strayed into our garden, and Millicent and Arla raised their glasses to it.
‘Feel like home?’ I asked.
‘Sorta kinda no,’ said Arla. ‘I live in a real nice neighbourhood.’
Millicent kissed me, got up and went upstairs. Arla watched her go.
‘Millicent never asked me for help before,’ said Arla. ‘Guess she decided I finally grew up, or something.’
Millicent closed Max’s window. The light in the bathroom came on, and I could see her outline on the frosted glass as she brushed her teeth.
Arla turned over and lay on her front, looked at me appraisingly. ‘You guys OK, Alex?’
The words were out before I could stop them. ‘Was she planning to leave me?’
‘Cute question, Alex.’ Arla laughed her spun-sugar laugh. ‘Do you even know my sister?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Does it seem to you like she likes to share?’
‘She talks …’
‘Really? With me she sure locks the hell down.’
Water trickled down the drainpipe. Millicent never turned off the tap when she was brushing her teeth.
‘You know how she left us, Alex?’ Arla turned to look at me. ‘Oh, she didn’t tell you? Like, on her fricking prom night she tells Mom she’s going to the store.’ She drained her glass. ‘I mean, I guess at the time I thought it was kind of funny when her doofus boyfriend Thaddeus came round in his tux, and he’s standing there sweating in the kitchen trying to make conversation with my dad, and Dad’s being super-mean to him, like he offers him a t-shirt to change into, which obviously he can’t say yes to, but does not ask him to sit down. But by ten thirty even my dad’s starting to get a little agitated. And Millicent rings three days later to say she’s in fricking Providence, Rhode Island.’
She paused, looked at me, made it clear she expected a reaction. ‘That’s like 3,000 miles.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘no, she didn’t tell me that.’
‘And two days after that Thaddeus dies. At the funeral his parents present it like it’s an unfortunate accident, like he mixed alcohol and painkillers by mistake. And my parents want to act like nothing’s happened. And Millicent doesn’t come back for the funeral. And there are all these rumours about what really happened. And she never comes home.’
The lightness of her voice. I’ve got you wrong, I thought. There’s nothing flighty about you at all.
‘Guess why Millicent left, Alex?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Neither do I. Because she never once told me. She never talked about it to you?’ The disappointment was tangible. ‘Like some kind of boy-trouble thing, or maybe, I don’t know, an abortion, or something? There was this weird ridiculous rumour that she gave birth to a baby in a beet field. Ha.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That must all have been hard for you.’
‘Yeah, Mom and Dad got even more sucky after that. Kept pointing out there were no beet fields for hundreds of miles. They heard the rumours too.’ She smiled brightly.
‘You’re right,’ I said after a while. ‘Leaving is her default response. She goes into lockdown with me too.’
Millicent stopped brushing her teeth. The light in the bathroom went out. The water carried on running in the drainpipe.
‘I don’t know what I was expecting,’ I said. ‘It’s not as if Millicent was handing out group hugs and candy kisses. I never thought she was that kind of Cali-girl. She called me motherfucker on our first date.’
‘That’s that thing you do, isn’t it, Alex? You know, where you try to mask what you’re feeling with irony.’ She drained her glass again, picked up the whisky bottle, pulled out the cork with her teeth, and poured herself another whisky. ‘Kinda English.’
‘I’m …’
‘… Scottish. I heard ya.’
I stood up.
‘Where are you going, Alex?’
‘Get you some ice.’
‘No need.’
‘And Millicent’s left the tap on.’
We drank. I smoked. The helicopter reappeared. Its beam cut violently through the garden. Arla was silhouetted against the wall for a moment. Then she was fission-bright. I lost her form in an aftershock of blur and shadows. I put my hand to my eyes. When at last I could see again, I saw that Arla was rubbing her eyes.
‘Oucho,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Oucho.’
‘So,’ she said, ‘who’s the perp?’
‘Sixteen and white in this area. Statistically speaking. Twocker.’
‘And for those of us who don’t speak Brit?’
‘He takes cars without the owners’ consent.’
‘He’s been under-parented,’ she said, grinning. ‘Statistically speaking.’ Her mouth, I thought, it’s Millicent’s mouth. It has the same wry twist when she smiles. But her voice is light and air, where Millicent’s is darkness and smoke.
The helicopter had fixed in one position. It was low now – perhaps sixty metres – and its beam was pointed straight down into the nearby mews. We heard sirens, then car brakes, then boots on cobblestones. There was a lot of shouting.
‘Are they … beating on him?’ asked Arla.
She was right. Cries of pain, and cries of righteous anger. It sounded bad.
‘We should do something, right?’ said Arla.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We should.’
We put down our drinks and went running to the front door. I flung it open, and we set off towards the mews. At the end we turned left, then left again. The engine note of the helicopter grew louder, then more urgent. We turned into the mews but the cars, the men and the boy had gone. The helicopter was slowly rising. As we watched, it turned off the searchlight and headed east.
‘So what do we do?’ said Arla.
I looked around. There were a few tyre marks but no trace of the boy’s presence in the street, no trace of his arrest, nothing that bore witness to a beating. ‘Not much, I guess. I could write a concerned letter, but I probably won’t.’
‘I guess you gotta be cautious.’ Cau-tious. Those long Californian vowels. Millicent was losing them now.
‘Actually, they’ve been incredibly polite with me. Lucky I’m not a sixteen-year-old boy.’ For the first time in days the fear was lifting. Alcohol helped, I decided. Alcohol and Arla.
‘Alex, I think I got a shard in the sole of my foot.’
I hadn’t noticed, but she had taken off her shoes, had run barefoot through the streets. I bent down. A glint of glass almost level with the skin, the blood dull brown in the orange sodium glare. The glass was ugly and uneven, and I didn’t think I could get it out here. I needed better light.
She held my arm and hopped gently back to the house. I fetched antiseptic, a saucepan of hot water, and two large towels. I sat Arla on the sofa, and turned all the lights on.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Even in this light you are tanned.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am tan in any light. It’s a California thing.’
‘I look a little more Scottish than you, obviously.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Pleasingly Scottish. Kind of Byronic pale.’
‘Byron wasn’t Scottish.’
‘Take the compliment, Alex,’ she said.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘You have beautiful arms, Arla. Beautiful tanned Californian arms.’
‘What kind of a dolt even cares about arms?’
‘Take the compliment, Arla.’
I bathed her foot, and patted it dry with a towel. Then I looked again at the glass. It seemed to be a wedge-shaped sliver, pushing a long way into the sole of her foot. Really a hospital was the place for this. I touched the edge of the glass very lightly with the tip of my finger. Arla winced.
I took a thumbnail on each side of the shard, and tried to draw it out of her foot. Nothing happened, but Arla inhaled sharply and bit her lip. I tried again, and this time the right side lifted a fraction. Blood was pooling again where the shard had shifted. I looked up at Arla. She had tears in her eyes and was clearly in pain, but she nodded at me. I tried again, and the other side of the sliver shifted. Arla put her hand on my head, stopping me. She took three deep breaths.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Go.’
This time the shard slipped out easily. I held her foot for a moment, and felt the stiffness in it start to ebb away.
‘The doctor gave me a bottle of morphine,’ I said. ‘Want some?’
‘Uh uh. Whisky.’
Arla washed her foot while I put coffee on the stove and fetched cigarettes and whisky. I went to the bathroom to find her a plaster, and took a large swig of morphine.
When I came down Arla had filled the glasses and was sitting with a lit cigarette in her mouth. I went to the kitchen and fetched the coffee, and found a candle on top of a cupboard.
I lit the candle, and turned off the lights in the living room. Then I gave Arla her coffee, sat beside her on the sofa.
‘
You smell of perfume and half-metabolised whisky,’ I said.
‘You also,’ she said. ‘Minus the perfume.’
We locked eyes for a moment. Then she patted my arm and looked away.
‘Arla, I used to sleep with a lot of women. Before I met Millicent.’
‘Why did you stop?’
‘I met Millicent.’
‘So again, why did you stop?’
‘I couldn’t get it right.’
This amused her. ‘You sucked at promiscuity?’
I took her hand in mine. She turned towards me, looked down at her hand, then looked very directly at me. Those eyes. Untainted California green. A better version of Millicent, I thought. Like Millicent before me, before Max, and before Bryce. A Millicent without the betrayal.
‘So, Arla,’ I said, ‘do you want to show me how it’s done?’
She laughed. ‘You want me to show you how to do promiscuity?’
‘Yes,’ I said, looking her steadily in the eye. Her face was very close to mine, and I could feel her breath on my cheek.
‘You’re making a pass at me?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’d like for us to have sex, and you’d like for us to do it without emotional involvement or hurt?’
‘Yes.’
‘And do you think that’s possible for you, Alex?’ She said this with great simplicity.
‘You manage it,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think you would.’
‘You think I’m vulnerable.’
‘Your son and your wife are asleep upstairs. I’d say that makes you vulnerable. And it makes them vulnerable. And she’s my sister, which makes me vulnerable. Page one of the book is you do not screw your sister’s husband. Also every other page. In capital letters and a super-easy-to-read typeface. This would not be right, Alex, for you or for me.’
‘Really?’ I said.
‘I do promiscuity. I do not do cheating. I do not do revenge. Especially not on my sister. She adulates you, you know.’
‘I know.’ I pinched the bridge of my nose and thought of Millicent. ‘I mean, I don’t know.’
A Line of Blood Page 56