A Song for Issy Bradley

by Carys Bray

  – 13 –

  Dirty Sandwich Licker

  No one has touched Zippy since Issy died. Not properly. Dad sometimes pats her shoulder and Jacob occasionally climbs onto her knee, but no one has hugged her, no one has wrapped their arms around her and asked if she is all right. So when Lauren’s mum opens the front door and steps forward with outstretched arms it’s lovely but it’s also a bit sad, and Zippy has to try really hard not to cry while Lauren’s mum rubs her back, as if she is trying to alleviate sadness in the same way women at church rub the backs of their babies to alleviate wind.

  “I thought about popping round to yours,” Lauren’s mum says as she lets go and ushers Lauren and Zippy indoors.

  “And I would have, but I wasn’t sure … your mum’s so quiet. I didn’t know what to say.”

  Zippy is glad Lauren’s mum didn’t pop round. Lauren’s mum isn’t married and she’s got a tattoo on her ankle. Her hair is yellow-blond and she says “Oh God” all the time. She even adds extra syllables: “Oh Go-o-o-o-d,” and Zippy can imagine Dad’s face if Lauren’s mum came to the house with a big helping of condolence and a side order of blasphemy.

  “I’m glad you’ve come, Zippy. I told Lauren there was no way she was going to this Jordan Banks’s party on her own. You’ll stick together and be sensible, won’t you?”

  Zippy nods; she always avoids addressing Lauren’s mum directly because it feels weird calling her Mel. Every adult she knows is either Mr. or Mrs., Brother or Sister. Lauren’s mum is the only person who wants to be called by a first name and Zippy can’t get used to it.

  “Come and sit down. This’ll be nice, won’t it? Give you a chance to have some fun.”

  She’s horribly nervous; she hasn’t been to a party with nonmembers since she was in junior school—when she asked Dad, she wasn’t expecting him to say yes.

  She sits next to Lauren on the brown leather sofa. Lauren’s house is always tidy because it’s just Lauren and her mum, and everything matches too, like in a catalog.

  “I’ll leave you to yourselves, make yourself at home, Zippy.”

  “Sorry about that,” Lauren says. “I told her not to make a fuss, but she said it’d be worse if she didn’t say anything.”

  “ ’S OK.” Zippy flips her shoes off and lifts her feet onto the sofa.

  “What are you wearing tonight?”

  She opens her backpack and pulls out a Primark T-shirt and a pair of boot-cut jeans.

  “Oh. You can wear something of mine. There’s this makeup tutorial we can watch and I’ll do your hair too, if you like.”

  ZIPPY CATCHES ANOTHER glimpse of herself in the mirror above the fireplace in Jordan Banks’s living room and tries not to stare. The girl from the YouTube makeup tutorial promised soft, smoky eyes, but Lauren didn’t follow the instructions.

  “It’s difficult with blue eyes and dark hair,” she said. “Browns are OK for every day, but I reckon blues are better for parties.”

  Zippy’s eyes look enormous: boggly and metallic-bright like an insect’s. Her hair is different too—Lauren backcombed the front section, dragged it behind her ear, and secured it with a flower clip. She is wearing Lauren’s clothes: a little blue dress, a cardigan, leggings, and Ugg boots.

  It had been lovely not to think, to follow Lauren’s persuasive lead and allow herself to be fussed over and tended, ministered to. But if Dad could see her now he would say she looks worldly and immodest, he would be furious, and she isn’t sure whether she likes the version of herself that keeps darting past the mirror. It feels as if she is hiding inside someone else’s body, as if her eyes are cameras set to record an experience that is happening to someone else.

  Music thumps out of an iPod dock in the corner of the room. A few people are half-dancing, others are jammed onto the sofa, vying for space, laughing, and some are sitting on the floor slotted around the perimeter of the room, like the edges of a jigsaw. Zippy recognizes plenty of sixth-formers and lots of them have said hi, but she doesn’t know anyone properly, there’s no one she can chat to or sit with, and even if there was, they might feel awkward—what to say to the girl whose sister has died?

  She checks her watch. She has been wandering between the living room and dining room for almost three minutes since Lauren went upstairs with Jordan Banks. If she had the energy, she might manage to be cross, but everything seems so immaterial. What’s the point of being angry about something that won’t matter in the morning? She looks for something to do, something that won’t make her look lonely and friendless. If she had a phone, she could at least stand in a corner and play a game or pretend to text people. Instead, she studies the bookshelf and stretches something that would ordinarily take seconds into minutes. Jordan Banks’s family owns fifty-one books. She has read very few of them, just the Roald Dahl stories that came free with boxes of cereal a few years ago. The rest of the books are by Stephen King and there is also a slim, modern translation of the New Testament. Dad says that Stephen King isn’t uplifting; he also says that modern translations of the Bible are useless because they are diluted, like a game of telephone. If she was by herself, Zippy would slide the book off the shelf and have a go at reading the familiar stories in modern English.

  When she has stared at the books for far too long, she plods back into the dining room. The table is buried under a flock of bottles and there are stacks of clear plastic cups on the windowsill. She squeezes past several people and helps herself to a cup, looking for something that’s OK to drink. She isn’t sure what’s alcoholic and what’s not. There’s Coke, which some people at church drink, but she’s never tried it. Dad says people who drink Coke aren’t obeying the spirit of the Word of Wisdom, and when it comes down to it, it’s pretty easy to avoid Coke, much easier than never imagining what it will be like to have sex. She looks for lemonade, but she can’t trust any of the clear drinks. One of the sixth-form lads, Will something-or-other, picks up a bottle and fills his cup with a drink that’s yellow and fizzy. He notices her watching and angles the bottle toward her cup.

  “No thanks,” she says.

  “Oh yeah. You’re Muslim, aren’t you?”

  “Mormon,” she mutters.

  Will’s wearing a cardigan and big glasses that he probably doesn’t need. At least he’s talking to her, even though she’d rather not talk about religion because whenever she has to stick up for the Church the words come out wrong. Dad makes it all sound sensible and logical, yet when she borrows his language and ideas, it always sounds absurd.

  “Oh, right, a Mormon,” he says. “You shouldn’t be at a party, should you? It’s not allowed, is it?”

  “I’m allowed.”

  “Sorry, I must’ve got mixed up.”

  “I think it’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, the no-parties thing.” Zippy’s face grows hot under its glaze of makeup. She’s embarrassed to have been mistaken for a Jehovah’s Witness. Dad says they don’t let people have blood transfusions and they believe only a few people can get to heaven. She doesn’t know much about them, but they sound weird and she doesn’t want anyone to imagine that she’s got anything to do with them.

  “So what do you want to drink?” Will starts lifting other bottles off the table, reading out names she doesn’t recognize.

  “Something nonalcoholic,” she says.

  “A small one won’t hurt. Here”—he lifts a white bottle—“try some of this with a bit of Coke. You’ll like it.”

  Zippy looks beneath the bottle’s palm tree and sunset picture and catches the word “rum.” “No, it’s OK, thanks. I’ll get some water.”

  She presses through the crowd, past a kissing couple—“Excuse me, sorry”—and down a step into a long, narrow kitchen. The light is off and there’s another couple embracing near the back door; she tries not to look at them and heads straight for the sink.

  “Zippy?”

  She puts the cup down on the draining board and turns slowly because she doesn’t know what to say. It’s Adam standing b
y the back door, practically wearing a girl—she is hanging from his neck like a long scarf, her mouth fastened to his collarbone. And he is holding a green glass bottle.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you, probably,” she says, even though she hasn’t come to Jordan Banks’s party to drink beer and get off with people.

  “Are you by yourself?”

  “With Lauren.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs. With Jordan.”

  Someone else follows Zippy into the kitchen, switches on the light, and walks to the far end of the room to open the fridge. The girl detaches herself from Adam’s neck and turns around. She is blond, tall. Adam rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand, and when the girl looks from him to Zippy her eyes slice a dislike so sharp it hits Zippy like a pair of throwing stars.

  “Back in a minute,” Adam says to the girl. He puts the beer bottle down next to the sink and nudges Zippy to the back door, which he opens, making an after-you gesture.

  She steps into a long, paved garden. It’s cool outside, it smells of damp leaves and wood smoke, and the sky is bare black, dotted with occasional stars. Tubs of dying flowers run along the fence that splits the garden from the neighbors. Adam follows her out and strides past her to a wooden bench that leans next to the back fence. He sits down and pats the slats beside him. When Zippy sits, her little dress rises up past mid-thigh, utterly failing the Sit-Down Test.

  “Zippy, you’re a nice girl.”

  Adam’s words hang in the air for a bit. He leans back and rests his hands on his legs. His hands are lovely, he’s got piano fingers; he can play loads of nice songs, he likes Coldplay and Iron and Wine, but his dad prefers him to practice hymns in case he gets sent somewhere foreign on his mission and there aren’t any pianists. He likes the old hymns that no one sings anymore—“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and “Cast Thy Burden Upon the Lord”—he says they’ve got better harmonies. Sometimes he sits and plays them after church while everyone’s chatting and Zippy watches him. She watches him on the sports field at school during rugby practices too. He wears a number 8 shirt and he pushes at the back of the scrum, grabbing the other lads and pulling them over. No one at the party would believe that he sometimes sings hymns. She glances at his fingers, happy that a part of him is hidden from everyone except her.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Zippy.”

  She wonders how much beer he’s had; she’s seen drunken people only on television, where they fall over in the street, pull angry faces, and laugh at stuff that isn’t funny. Adam looks like himself; when he walked to the bench he walked in a straight line, so he can’t be drunk, and he’s mistaken if he thinks she’s going to let him tell her off.

  “Neither should you.”

  “Well, that’s me told.”

  “Yeah, consider yourself told, Carmichael.” She gives him a light punch on the shoulder, glad of the chance to make a joke out of things, uncertain how else to respond to their mutual misdemeanors: her immodest clothes and his consumption of beer while that girl slithered all over him. “Don’t let me ever catch you at it again,” she teases.

  “You won’t,” he says.

  “Good.” She places a tentative hand on his shoulder. “No one’s perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. I won’t tell my dad or anyone about the beer … or the girl.” She moves her hand to her lap and waits for him to thank her.

  “Right,” he says.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go to parties. And maybe I shouldn’t either,” she adds quickly. “But you—you need to think about preparing for your mission.”

  “I think about it all the time.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Some people don’t go, you know.”

  “Yeah, sad, isn’t it?”

  “And loads of lads muck about before they go.”

  “Oh, I don’t think they do.”

  “My brother, right? He was drinking and doing other stuff—everything. Then he repented and off he went. When you get back from your mission everyone expects you to get married straight away, so the only time to muck about is before you go.”

  “That’s just your brother, not loads of lads. It’s no reason for you to muck about and break the commandments.”

  “Do you seriously think anyone keeps all the commandments?”

  “People try.” Zippy slips her hands under her thighs, hiding them from the spiky cold. “I try.”

  “Do you know what Brother Campbell said once? He said proper kissing before marriage is wrong; if you kiss someone in a way you wouldn’t kiss your mum, your dad, or your sister, it’s a sin. What a load of bollocks!”

  Zippy squirms. You aren’t supposed to criticize leaders, even if the criticism is true. She pulls her hands out from under her thighs and rubs them together nervously.

  “I’ve been thinking—it’s the best thing about Critical Thinking, you get to think for homework. Are you going to do it next year?”

  “No, Dad says it’s Atheism for Beginners masquerading as an AS level.”

  He snorts. “Bishop Bradley’s so serious, no offense—he is, though, isn’t he? So, here’s what I’ve been thinking … if you weren’t already a member, would you join the Church?”

  She has thought about this before. “No,” she confesses.

  “Me neither.”

  “But I’ve worked it out—that’s why we’ve been born into it, see? Heavenly Father knew we wouldn’t find the truth any other way. It’s pretty amazing that out of all the billions of people in the world, we’ve got the truth.”

  She stares up at the vast black sky. “Look up. See? The universe is so big and like, incredible. Do you ever … do you think we knew each other before we came to Earth? In the preexistence? Sometimes I like to think—I think we were probably friends. And now here we are, together.” She pauses and risks another pat on his shoulder while he’s looking at the stars. “We’re being tested to see if we’ll choose the right. If we make mistakes, we can repent. Sometimes when I think about how amazing it is my head goes all spinny. Brother Campbell’s got to be wrong about kissing, my dad’s never said anything like that—and you’re right, he is really serious—but he says kissing’s fine, as long as you keep your hands to yourself.”

  “Yeah, well, Brother Campbell was reading it out of a book by a General Authority. No offense to your dad, but he’s only the Bishop.”

  “Your dad’s the Stake President and I bet he’s never said anything about not kissing.”

  “He never talks about stuff like that.”

  “Lucky you. My mum and dad did it together. Mum sat there wringing her hands while Dad talked about the Sacred Powers of Procreation; it was like a Family Home Evening lesson just for me—they even started with a prayer.”

  Adam shakes his head.

  “I was so embarrassed,” she says. “I kept laughing, but it wasn’t funny. That book of Brother Campbell’s was probably really old.”

  “Would you seriously marry someone you’d never kissed?”

  She looks at Adam’s mouth and thinks she’d marry him no matter what, even if he’d never held her hand or said he loved her. “Course not,” she says.

  “Then he started going on about licking the butter off sandwiches.”

  “Who, Brother Campbell?”

  “Yeah, he reckons if you kiss a girl and you don’t marry her, you’ve licked the butter off another man’s sandwich.”

  “It’s just the Campbells, they’re weird. Sister Campbell thinks girls who’ve, you know, done it are filthy.”

  “It is different for girls,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just different.”

  “How?”

  “Well, think about my finger—how many germs are on my finger? Not many, right?” He holds his hand up and wiggles his index finger at her. “Now think about how many germs are in my mouth.” He turns sideways and opens his mouth wide. When he breathes out his breath smells
bready and she wonders if it’s what beer smells like.

  “So my finger is a bit like … and my mouth is, well, you know … And it’s not as bad for a bloke, is it?”

  Zippy becomes aware of the workings of her heart as it flushes indignation along miles of capillaries. The feeling folds her in half and she reaches for her feet in an effort to curl her body around it, sliding her hands into Lauren’s Ugg boots as she pretends to adjust her socks. “You really think that?” She straightens; maybe he has drunk too much beer, perhaps drunken people fall over their thoughts before they fall over their feet. “Adam, you sound like Angel Clare.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Oh, no one.”

  “This is a weird conversation.”

  She stares straight ahead, at the back of Jordan Banks’s house. People are talking and laughing in the kitchen. Looking at them move behind the window is like watching a reality show on a flat-screen TV. No one in the kitchen has the gospel, none of them know where they came from, why they are here, and where they are going after they die; this thought usually cheers her and makes her feel extraordinary.

  “So, have you already …?” She’s glad that the light from the kitchen window is mostly shining over the part of the garden that is nearest to the house and she and Adam are swathed in shadows.

  “No.” He shakes his head and his shoulders rise defensively as he adds, “Not yet.”