How the Light Gets In

by Hyland, M. J.

  Next I go to James’ room. I lie on his bed and smell his unabashed smell. I don’t sleep there and the blue walls make me uneasy. I go through his drawers and find a birthday card from somebody called Isabella, which says, ‘Dear James, You are such a great friend. I hope I know you forever, Love Isabella, with lots of kisses.’ There’s no date on the card, but I suspect that it is a few years old. It makes me cringe.

  Bridget’s room is pink and has photographs stuck all over the walls; neat, in frames. Many are pictures of her standing in gangs of beautiful girls and boys. In every group photograph, she is the only girl without a boy’s arm wrapped around her middle or draped over her shoulder. I sit at her dressing table and open a tube of pink lip-gloss.

  Bridget has a make-up mirror with three facets labelled Day/Evening/Office, which swivel so that you can pull one to the front and allow the others to slip behind. Each mirror is lit for a different setting: bright and natural for Day, subdued and pink for Evening and dully fluorescent for Office. I don’t understand what she cares about at all.

  When I have been alone in the house for several hours, the only thing I can think to do is lie on the couch. I’m not in the mood to drink, so I take some gin from a bottle in the liquor cabinet and put it in a picnic flask for later.

  I go to the supermarket and buy some cigarettes and smoke in the garden until my chest burns and I feel dizzy. I fall asleep on the couch and wake with an ear so squashed and sore that I wonder for a moment if somebody has belted me up while I was sleeping.

  I make two cheese and mayonnaise sandwiches, go to my room and read some more books for school.

  At seven o’clock, when I hear a car pull up outside, I close my curtains and undress for bed. I spend the next few hours listening to the sounds a family makes in a large and beautiful house; the noises of a family as they must have been before I arrived: the unselfconscious and peaceful sounds of doors opening and closing, chairs scraping on polished boards, a microwave beeping, names being called out and answered, a TV turned up too loud then turned down, a fridge door opened and closed, bathroom taps running and toilets flushed. I listen to all this with great concentration and remote sadness, as though it were a radio play.

  I don’t leave my room, except to use the bathroom.

  It’s Sunday morning and time for the Harding family breakfast. I have slept badly and worry about facing Margaret and Henry. My head is full of sour, persistent thoughts.

  Last night I read a letter from Erin. She writes, amongst other things:

  Dear Louisville (ha ha!)

  Mum and Dad say Hi or howdy or something like that. They bought a new car and are driving all over the place like motor-heads

  Etc …

  Guess what? I’ve decided to study nursing. Remember Michelle from school? She only had to study for one year and now she has the most grouse job except for one bit. Do you know what she has to do? She administers consolations for old men who are dying. Know what that means, clever clogs?

  Etc …

  Mum and Dad say they’ll write soon when they’ve finished burning rubber. I went to the show last week with …

  Etc …

  Lots of lurv,

  Erin

  I don’t reply to Erin’s letters. I don’t reply to any of their letters: Mum’s, Dad’s or Leona’s. They have all become shreds. I have written only one letter, a special letter – full of lies – to my English teacher, Mrs Walsh.

  One day – a winter’s Sunday – Mrs Walsh was in the same train carriage as me. I was surprised to see her using public transport and didn’t want her to see me at all. I was with Leona and Erin and three of their male friends; all three of them dirty with tattoos, and drinking stubbies of beer.

  We were making noise, shouting obscenities. Mrs Walsh made a special detour half way up the carriage to say hello to me.

  I was sitting apart from the others with an unlit cigarette between my lips, flicking it up and down with my teeth. She asked me how I was and congratulated me on my most recent assignment, for which I’d received ninety-six per cent. Then she looked at Erin and said, sotto voce, ‘Your intelligence is useless to you. You are clearly destined to fly economy class for the rest of your life.’

  The train stopped and she got off.

  I have written Mrs Walsh a tremendous letter; my only letter. I described an approximation of the contents of the colour brochures I saw advertising the benefits of this international exchange-student program: boys and girls in canoes on sparkling rivers, boys and girls rehearsing in full costume for a Chekhov play, families sitting together on a bleacher eating hot dogs at a baseball game, and a happy party of exchange students wrapped in the flags of their respective countries singing and dancing in the park.

  Bridget comes into my room and sits on the end of my bed with a towel wrapped around her head, the skin on her face tight and dry from too much soap and water. ‘How are you?’ she asks.

  ‘Fine,’ I say.

  I notice for the first time that Bridget has a wart on her right knee, a small one, but still a wart. I think about the question on my passport application form, which asked whether I had any distinguishing marks. I didn’t, but felt a strong impulse to write that I have a blue wart on the back of my right knee.

  ‘Look,’ says Bridget. ‘Just don’t worry about James. You take him too seriously and you shouldn’t. He lives inside some stupid comic strip.’

  She is pleased with the adultness of her tone. Only fourteen and she is giving a sixteen-year-old advice about her older brother.

  My sternum aches. ‘Have Margaret and Henry told you what I said to them?’

  Bridget pulls the tail of the towel around to the front of her shoulder as though it were a veil.

  ‘They said you are upset about James being a bit of a pain.’

  ‘Were they angry?’ I ask.

  ‘They just want you to get along with him, that’s all.’

  ‘I want to get along too,’ I say, as though everything were simple.

  She squeezes my foot just like her mother does to her, and just like James does to his mother. I want to talk more, I want more information, but she gets up to leave.

  ‘Just don’t take the bait,’ she says. ‘You always take the bait.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She stops in the doorway. ‘Have you been smoking in here?’

  I haven’t brushed my teeth.

  ‘No,’ I say, quite incredulous.

  ‘It smells a bit like smoke in here. Anyway, see you later.’

  At breakfast Henry and Margaret sit at opposite ends of the table, as usual, and seem calm, cheerful. The difference is that they don’t pass me anything. There’s usually a lot of ‘Have some more eggs, Lou’ or ‘Would you like some orange juice?’ and ‘What a beautiful day’.

  Perhaps the only difference is that Henry doesn’t look at James. But then I wonder if Henry ever did look at James. I might assume he did because there’s usually an awful lot of eye contact going on in this family. A lot more than I think I could ever get used to.

  James scoffs his food, but just as he is about to leave the room he turns to face me.

  ‘Hey, Lou, I was wondering if you want to see a movie tonight. I’m being picked up at six o’clock, if you’re interested.’

  At least at the movies there’s always the darkness and always the chance it will be good and even if the film’s bad you can pretty much not exist for two hours and not feel too gloomy, unless the film is so bad that you are forced to walk out.

  ‘That’d be great,’ I say.

  James smiles and I smile back.

  Henry stands.

  ‘Everything’s okay?’ he says, not quite a question and not quite a statement.

  ‘Everything’s great,’ I say, but Margaret says nothing and I know it isn’t great.

  In the car on the way to the movies, James makes a point of telling his friends (one of whom is Isabella) that I can play chess better than Todd (whoever Todd is)
and that I can get most crosswords out in less than ten minutes.

  ‘Shit,’ says just about everybody. ‘You must be pretty smart.’

  James makes the moment brighter by not leaving me to have to answer this myself.

  ‘Sure is,’ he says. ‘Lou makes my sister look like one of the seven dwarfs.’

  James and I sit next to each other in the cinema and even though I am mostly repulsed by him, in the dark it is simply as though I am sitting next to a friend, which isn’t something I even know a great deal about but that’s what it feels like, and I wonder if we might be able to sort each other out.

  The movie isn’t especially sad but right at the end when a couple who are maybe somewhere in their thirties are behaving happily together, my eyes get hot and I think that it would be pleasant to cry. I reach out for James’ hand and hold it. We stay still like this and when the movie ends I let go and we walk out side by side and even in the bright lights of the foyer I am not afraid to see him.

  Part Two

  10

  It’s my first day in high school. Margaret drops us at the front gates on her way to work. Today she looks like an air hostess, ready to serve passengers in first class; a pristine white scarf around her throat and a gold brooch on her navy-blue lapel.

  ‘Good luck, Lou,’ she says. ‘And don’t forget to introduce yourself to the principal.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I say. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

  James walks on ahead then turns to say, ‘You don’t have to say thanks for everything, you know. It’s not like she gave you her kidney or anything.’

  Bridget sighs. ‘Whatever,’ she says, and we walk together in silence through the gates.

  The building is large and square, dirty white, and surrounded by a wire fence; like a former gulag with an empty, well-mown lawn in front and a limp American flag hanging from a pole near the enormous front doors.

  We are early and there are only a dozen or so students hanging around the front steps in their brand new clothes. Some of them are brandishing their first set of car keys, eyeing off their new cars which are parked beyond the fence, clean and shiny in the distance.

  The corridors are wide and long and lined with metal lockers and dozens of red, blue and white doors, all snapped shut and freshly painted. The building is hushed, still emerging from hibernation, stale and sleeping; lights out, eyes shut, stuffed full of things that happened last year, scarred by the scuff marks, graffiti and smells of those who have moved on.

  We see James rushing on ahead, turning a corner, almost running.

  Bridget says, ‘Well, this is me.’ She opens a locker, puts her bag inside and takes out a notepad and some pens. ‘I’ll take you to your locker and then show you where your first class is. Mom collected your locker key last week.’

  I take the key. ‘Thanks.’

  Taped to the inside of her locker is a photograph, a portrait, cut into a heart shape, of a red-haired boy; rufous and sleek, like a certain kind of fox. ‘Who’s that?’ I ask.

  ‘Nobody,’ she says and slams the metal door.

  My locker is in the basement; a dark, hollow, subterranean place without windows, away from classrooms. This suits me fine. It’s cooler down here and there is a bathroom nearby, but the smell is dreadful: a mixture of eggs and donuts, coming from the basement’s cavernous, over-lit cafeteria.

  ‘Show me your program,’ says Bridget. I take the crumpled sheet out of my backpack and she grabs at it.

  ‘American History,’ she says. ‘Let’s go.’

  I haven’t finished unloading my bag when she starts up the wide stairs, two steps at a time. I close my locker and follow.

  I stare at her. The cartilages at the back of her fine brown knees splay like miniature cathedral buttresses. I stare at the clean white edges of her short skirt. She doesn’t look back to see if I’m following.

  The corridors begin to fill with students. Bridget greets her many friends along the way, dozens of them. She stops to talk to a few, mostly quick conversations about who’s got a new car and who’s dumped whom over summer. All of the people she stops to speak to are handsome or pretty. She introduces me to no one and no one asks her to.

  I had been ready to swallow my nerves, had rehearsed some clever things to say, had expected to be the centre of considerable and awkward attention, but Bridget’s friends barely look at me. I wonder what it would be like to be one of them: tanned, healthy and brave.

  She takes me into a small classroom crammed with graffiti-scarred desks and tells me to pick one, ‘You better choose one you like now,’ she says, ‘you’ll be stuck with it all year.’ Her tone is censorious.

  ‘Thanks, boss,’ I say, trying to assert myself. ‘It’s hardly a big deal.’

  There is nobody else in the room and it smells of suffocated paint.

  ‘Whatever,’ she says. ‘I’ll leave you alone now.’ As though I should want it that way.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  I sit next to the farthest wall under a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. His skin is dark and sagging under black eyes and he has thick dark sideburns which look as though they have been glued on, like an ape from Planet of the Apes.

  The bell rings, but no one appears, not even the teacher. It’s ten past nine. I take out my new notebook and a red pen.

  In primary school I was good at ruling up the pages in fresh exercise books. I liked to write my name and classroom number neatly in the box provided, open the front cover and press it down, take out my new ruler and favourite red ballpoint pen and begin to rule every page in the book.

  I performed this painstaking task with immense pleasure. What a tremendous feeling to be at the start of a clean and promising new exercise book. Perfect ruling, and lots of straight neat lines signified that I would never make another mistake. But if the ruling went wrong, I would fly into a rage of self-disgust. I’d tear out the page and then, disappointed with the torn edges left behind – this crinkly proof of failure – I’d tear out the corresponding page to even things out.

  A few crooked lines later and I had torn out every page until there was no exercise book left. I did this countless times, in every school year, and hid the piles of waste paper in my cupboard. To support this habit, I stole dozens of fresh red and white exercise books from the local newsagent.

  The room is still empty. Although I know something is wrong I sit and wait, inert and stubborn, feeling lonely. I pinch my thigh hard so that it hurts. I talk to myself. This is another fresh start and I’m going to get it all perfect. No more blushing. Act really confident. Say lots of funny things. Look at people when you speak to them. Answer lots of questions. Meet the smartest people in the class.

  I hear singing: the American national anthem. I leave the classroom and wander the corridors but by the time I find the assembly hall I am red and the back of my neck is crawling with perspiration. The singing ends and a row of students move onto the stage where they are presented with awards.

  Somebody says, ‘God bless this year’s seniors’ and there’s a speech by last year’s prom queen about senior year being the most significant year in a student’s life. She must have taken the day off from her new job as the receptionist at the local mega dental clinic. Behind her, as she speaks, her yearbook photograph is displayed, a Vaseline haze around the edges as though she is a movie star.

  I go to the bathroom near my locker, sit on the cold cubicle floor and wrap my arms around my legs. Will it be the same now? One crooked line and I turf the whole thing out? No, I say, it won’t be the same. I stand up and go back outside, desperate for friendship and complete change.

  The basement dwellers are at their lockers, talking and laughing. I look around. At a locker near mine there’s a pretty girl with long black hair and a broken and blackened front tooth. I like that she has this flaw in an otherwise dolly-perfect face. I stare at her and she says, ‘Hi’ and I say ‘Hi’ and then she walks briskly away, leaving for her first class which also happens to b
e the same as mine: American History.

  All the desks in the classroom are taken, but one. A tall boy, good looking and blond, is sitting at the desk I chose earlier and I realise with a swoop in my stomach that I have left my notebook behind. He is flicking through it, as though trying to decide whether it’s worth pawning.

  I take a deep breath and walk over to him, my heart kicking. I hope he’ll notice my accent. I hope he’ll want to talk to me.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I think I left my notebook on this desk.’

  He looks up at me, slowly, calmly, and I wonder what it would be like to move so smoothly, instead of like a scared field mouse.

  ‘Did you?’ he asks, already in possession of the answer. ‘Does it have your name in it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

  He tucks my notebook under his history textbook. I realise we are being watched by a corner full of girls, their long blow-dried hair stiff with spray. Vainglorious pig, I think. Probably a footballer.

  I begin to blush as he speaks. ‘How do I know it’s yours then?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say.

  He laughs, ‘No worries, mate.’ The stiff-haired girls laugh with him.

  I take the desk near the door and watch the other students. They are almost manic with enthusiasm for this first day, hugging and saying ‘Hi’ to each other and catching up on their summer holidays. A boy and girl in the corner hold hands between their desks and do not speak nor move their faces into any kind of expression.

  She is fat and so is he, like two people destined to become identical. They stare to the front, lost in the summery and secret world of their romance, smug yet terrified; their fingers gripping as though to say to each other – don’t let go of me or this is what you’ll face again.