How the Light Gets In

by Hyland, M. J.

  I open my present: a hand-carved box containing dozens of miniature elephants, the whole lot covering no more space than the tip of my baby finger. My hands are shaking.

  ‘They’re hand-carved in India,’ says George. ‘They use a magnifying glass to make them. We knew you’d love it.’

  I kiss George on the forehead and withdraw just in time to vomit on the rug.

  But it takes a few more hours for things to really go wrong, and I am forced to go on behaving as though nothing is about to happen.

  After dinner, Aunt Sarah arrives, and we are going to Grandma Bell’s house. Mandy is the last to emerge from the house.

  ‘Has anybody seen my purse?’ she says.

  I am in the back seat of the Bells’ car with Paul and George.

  ‘That’s the strangest coincidence,’ says Mrs Bell, who is sitting in the front seat. ‘I was about to ask the same question.’

  Mr and Mrs Bell get out of the car. ‘Why don’t I help you look for it?’ says Mr Bell and I know these will be the last ordinary words I hear spoken for a long time.

  I stay in the car and wait for it.

  A few minutes later Mrs Bell emerges from the house with a handkerchief to her face, partly for somewhere to hide, partly for comfort.

  ‘Lou, could you get out of the car please?’ Her voice is choked, as I expected it would be.

  ‘Walk with me for a minute,’ she says.

  We walk to the bridge.

  ‘We found my purse and Mandy’s purse hidden in the bottom of your suitcase. Not that it really matters now, but we also found a packet of cigarettes.’

  It is remarkable to me how such a sudden, shocking moment can also feel inevitable. I look over the bridge and feel like laughing. I lean my head against the wood and wrap my arms around my head to deaden the sound of Mrs Bell’s voice.

  ‘Surely you knew you’d get caught? We know about the money you stole from the poor Hardings.’

  I bash my head against the rail of the bridge. I have never been as angry or as ashamed.

  ‘Stop that!’ she says. ‘Haven’t you got anything to say for yourself?’

  I am a deaf mute with snot running from my nose. I bang my head again.

  ‘You knew you’d be caught. You had to be caught. I don’t understand. And on Christmas Day.’

  I am letting the tears roll off my face and onto my coat. Mrs Bell hands me her handkerchief.

  I use the handkerchief and start to walk back to the car. Mr Bell is coming towards me. He’s shaking his head.

  ‘Somebody is coming to pick you up in a moment,’ he says. ‘You’ll be taken back to the hostel. Then we’ll all get on with our Christmas.’

  He seems like a different person.

  But the person who is coming to pick me up is late, and I must wait in the kitchen. Mrs Bell sends the boys to their rooms and they protest.

  ‘But, Mom, it’s Christmas!’

  ‘What’s the matter with Lou, Mom?’

  Mr Bell eats half a Christmas pudding, which was probably intended to last a week or more. He does not look at me.

  Mandy looks at me and shakes her head and says tsk. I want to kill her.

  I look at the ground and I do not look back up again until I leave the house. When the driver asks me whether I want to say anything about what I’ve done, I recognise the voice. It’s Rennie. I smash my head against the window and scream until he shuts up. I look down and don’t look back up until I reach the door of the hostel and look to see who is letting me in. It’s Gertie and I want to break my silence and I want to hug her, but she takes a deep breath before I reach her and I know she thinks I’m guilty.

  ‘Fuck everything,’ I say.

  24

  Every morning at the hostel, the chaperones and inmates say and do the same morning things, but now I find this a comfort.

  This morning I have an appointment with my psychiatrist, Dr Trevor. I have seen her six times since I got back and I cannot tell her the truth. She is short and chubby and has long blonde curly hair, which she ties in two annoying plaits.

  ‘Please sit,’ she says when I am already getting into my chair.

  My chair faces her desk, and the window, with its view, through slanted peach-coloured blinds, of a car park.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  I am stony silent with Dr Trevor and her motherly gentleness, in spite of the fact that I am desperate to tell somebody everything about myself; to answer this question and countless questions like it; to have somebody say some things that might help me know what is wrong. She has asked me the question I want to answer, but I am cold.

  I look carefully at her eyebrows, which I know will pass for real eye contact. ‘I’m okay,’ I say.

  ‘Are you sleeping well?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, my resistance extravagant and pointless. I am making her bad at her job when what I need most is to encourage her to do her job well.

  ‘You look tired,’ she says.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes, and your leg is shaking.’

  I realise that one of my legs is jumping up and down and I put my hand on my knee to stop it.

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ I say.

  She is silent now, trying to force me to spill the beans on myself. I can see that she is running a professional pep-talk with herself; reminding herself that it is important to maintain some patience, to win this game of verbal chicken.

  She occupies herself in subtle ways while she waits. I watch her tongue as it licks the corner of her mouth and I notice that she has developed a rash there, at the corner, a pink wound, with creases in raw flaky skin. She moves a box of tissues on her desk to get a better view of the picture of whoever it is she has on her desk.

  I smile at her with genuine warmth and for a moment I believe that I might be able to tell her – telepathically – that I would love to talk, but that I simply cannot.

  What I really want, is for Dr Trevor to do something about my silence without me having to do anything. I want her, not me, to know, miraculously, what to do about it. It isn’t good enough that she is an ordinary human being; that she isn’t the sharpest knife that was ever pulled out of a drawer. It isn’t good enough for me that she tells me things I think I already know.

  She asks me questions about vegetables. She wants to know if I like them. I go so far as to tell her that I don’t like them, or fruit, especially not apples.

  She asks me about maths and whether I enjoy doing it.

  ‘I know you are very gifted at math,’ she says, ‘but do you enjoy it?’

  I tell her that doing maths for very long makes me feel dizzy and that I don’t, therefore, particularly enjoy it.

  She says, ‘It’s not uncommon for delinquents to hate both vegetables and math. Almost without exception a delinquent teenager will perform poorly at math and possess an almost pathological distaste for vegetables, and in your case, also fruit.’

  I swear at her without meaning to and then apologise.

  ‘It’s okay to be angry with me,’ she says. ‘This is an appropriate place for your anger.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I appreciate that.’

  Gertie comes into my dormitory, which I now share with Kris and Ivanka. Both were thrown out of their host-family homes for taking drugs.

  ‘I want to talk to you about Lishny Bezukhov,’ Gertie says. ‘He’s gone missing from the juvenile centre where he was being held.’

  ‘So?’ I say.

  ‘We were wondering whether you might be able to help us. Maybe you might have some idea where he could have gone?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  I spend the next day on my bed trying to remember everything about Lishny; testing the memory of him, testing myself for real feeling. I still care about him. In fact, I miss him and would do anything to see him again.

  I ask Gertie if they have found him yet.

  ‘No, and we’re all getting really worried,’ she says. ‘Aren’t you worried?’
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  ‘Not really. He’s better off on the run than being locked up for something he didn’t do. Especially in a country that executes people when it can’t even be sure they’re guilty.’

  I regret how immature I sound, but I mean what I say.

  She smiles at me. ‘Do you have any idea where he might be?’

  ‘Is he going to be sent to prison?’

  ‘The evidence against him is very convincing.’

  ‘As convincing as the evidence against me?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Then he’s probably innocent.’

  I burst into tears and can’t stop. Gertie holds me. I don’t feel sad exactly, mostly embarrassed and angry. I tell her what happened at the Bells. I tell her everything.

  ‘I didn’t take the money,’ I say. ‘I swear I didn’t take it.’

  ‘I believe you,’ she says.

  When I’ve sobbed enough, I tell her I want to lie down. I’m so desperate for sleep it feels like it could make up for everything.

  ‘Can I sleep in your bed again?’

  ‘Of course, dear. Come with me.’

  When I wake up, Gertie is sitting on the end of the bed. She has a cup of tea for me and some chocolate biscuits and wants to talk about Lishny. She tells me that maybe things will work out for him. The police are thinking of just sending him home. She says there’s new evidence in the case and it looks like somebody else might have drowned the girl. A psychotic and childless next-door neighbour, for instance.

  I don’t believe her.

  ‘I shouldn’t even be telling you this,’ she says and reminds me that if Lishny stays on the run he’ll have a miserable life; that he’ll be an illegal immigrant forever or permanently unemployed, or in slave migrant labour along with all the poor Mexicans, or he’ll be deported. Whatever happens, as long as he stays on the lam, he won’t be able to finish school.

  On the lam. On the lamb. Lishny would love this expression.

  I drink my tea and eat my chocolate biscuits and Gertie talks for a long time. She paints a convincingly dim picture of Lishny’s life on the run.

  ‘There’ll be no more chess tournaments,’ she says. ‘He’ll never get to be a GM.’

  ‘Poor lamb,’ I say. ‘Poor running lamb.’

  Gertie’s hand lifts, her fingers rigid, and I wonder if she’s thinking of slapping me.

  ‘Come on, Lou. You’ve got to help us. Please don’t make light of this.’

  Gertie gets up, as though to leave, and I worry she may never speak to me again.

  ‘Wait,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell you where I think he might be, on two conditions.’

  I tell her that the first condition is that the police must say they figured out where he was without any help. The second condition is that I get to see him again before either one of us is sent home. I’m not exactly sure why I tell her. I even suspect I might have fallen into a trap. I don’t believe anything any more. I just want to see him.

  The phone rings early on Monday morning. It’s Phillip who brings me the news.

  ‘Lishny’s been found. He was at his uncle’s. He was going to come back to the hostel tomorrow. He wants to go home to his family. There’s a female officer who’d like you to call her back. Have your breakfast first.’

  I have been afraid to swallow before, but now I am afraid to chew. I sit in the common-room with morning television droning on in the background.

  There are two black dogs at the gate of the juvenile detention centre. Gertie comes with me to the reception desk, then leaves, so that Lishny and I can be alone.

  Lishny is wearing a long-sleeved jumper and his hair is longer. He is sitting in an armchair near an open fire. I am led to a chair opposite his by a guard who tells me we have half an hour and then leaves.

  We say nothing for a while. His eyes look too blue – as though they have given him nothing but food colouring to drink. We stare at each other and then laugh, but since we don’t talk about why we have laughed, it seems to be the perfect response. It’s a surprisingly beautiful room, lined with bookshelves and lots of dark wood furniture. Lishny looks so comfortable, almost as though he were pretending that this is his home and I am his visitor. This gives me an idea.

  ‘We live in a nice house, Lishny,’ I say. ‘We’re doing well for ourselves these days.’

  ‘We live in an excellent house,’ he says. ‘Even better when the dogs are on holidays.’

  ‘I’m so glad we didn’t have those children.’

  ‘More love for me.’

  ‘More for me too.’

  Lishny stands up and I hope he is going to kiss me. He prods at the fire with a poker.

  I hold out my hand for him.

  ‘Do you know that the worst feeling in the world is to be wrongly accused,’ he says.

  ‘I know,’ I say.

  ‘Do you? It’s not the consequences of the accusation. Not even because of the punishment that will follow, but because of what it does to your words.’

  Lishny stands by his chair.

  ‘To be accused like this, when I have done nothing to hurt anybody … it makes me deaf and dumb,’ he says. ‘I am deaf and dumb.’

  I can barely breathe. I tell him about what happened to me at the Bells’. He listens in stunned silence, in awe, his eyes full of tears.

  ‘Your words count to me,’ I say, my voice flat.

  We stare at the fireplace.

  ‘Will you sit on the floor with me for a while?’ he asks. ‘I want to complete something.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  We sit on the floor, legs crossed, opposite one another.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ he says. ‘This is how it should have happened.’

  I close my eyes.

  ‘It is a Sunday morning and you have found a way to escape from the hostel. You decide to go to the big library in Chicago and immediately you see me sitting on the steps. You are happy and so am I. You walk up and hold out your hand. I take you inside the library, to a place where I have been sitting for many, many hours. I show you the books I have read. We sit on the floor. We stare into each other.’

  He stops. ‘Will you tell me the rest of our story? Could you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell you what happens next. We close our eyes and hold each other’s hands.’

  ‘Like this,’ he says.

  ‘Yes, like this.’

  ‘We kiss the way we wanted to kiss in the hostel, but never could.’

  We have only a few minutes. Maybe we have five minutes left. It isn’t long.

  ‘The librarian walks by and we hold our breath. She is speaking to somebody near the door. I say that we need to be somewhere more private and you tell me you have an uncle who lives in the city and that he has a mansion. We get into a taxi. Your uncle is away but the maid lets us in. We lie on the bed and drink what we like and smoke cigarettes. We are naked, but we don’t touch. We fall asleep and when we wake we are holding each other, as though we have done this for a long time.’

  I continue.

  ‘We are in love and we can feel it in the room, as though it were watching over us. We decide we will wait a little longer. We have a long time before your uncle is due back. He will probably let us live with him in his mansion. We have a long time. We decide to come downstairs and we light a fire. The butler will be here in a minute, to tell us it is time to eat. We enjoy the waiting.’

  I pause.

  ‘Should we open our eyes?’ I ask.

  ‘You can, but I will not ever,’ says Lishny.

  ‘Then I won’t either. You will be the last thing I ever see.’

  Lishny lets go of my hand, and whatever it was holding us together is gone.

  ‘Leave the room,’ he says.

  I keep my eyes closed, stand up and walk backwards to the door. I find the handle, turn it and walk outside and into the long hallway. The guard is waiting.

  ‘Are you finished?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  Gertie dr
ives me back to the hostel, her short arms held out stiff and straight at the steering wheel.

  ‘Your mother has sent an urgent fax to head office,’ she says.

  My heart pounds.

  ‘A fax! My mum has never used a fax machine in her life!’

  ‘She has now. It’s quite long and marked confidential. It’s waiting for you on your bed.’

  ‘Do you know what it says?’

  ‘No, it’s marked confidential. Somebody else might have read it, but I haven’t.’

  When we get back to the hostel I want a coffee, but the kitchen door is locked. Rennie Parmenter must be in there holding one of his ‘How many people are sitting at this table?’ sessions. I don’t want to read the fax. I go to the barred window. Gertie walks up behind me and I put my hand out for her to hold it. She does. I’m not nervous at all. I want to stand with her at the window, in silence, and that’s what we do.

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘The Italian waiter is across the road.’

  Every day the Italian waiter flicks his restaurant’s blue and white check tablecloths to free them of crumbs. He grins at the people passing by, standing firm and proud, with legs apart, under the long plaits of garlic which hang in the window.

  I tell Gertie that I like to send the waiter psychic messages because I have become fond of him. He is an old man, thin and small with a round potbelly.

  I tell her that if I get out of bed early enough, I like to watch him before breakfast when he comes onto the street with a basket full of bread loaves.

  He takes each loaf in its turn and bashes it hard against the restaurant’s brick wall. He beats each loaf exactly three times and then returns inside. At first I regarded him as morose and superstitious, but now when I watch him, I count each loaf with exacting care, holding my breath with worry, afraid that one day he might not beat each loaf three times and that this miscalculation might lead to misfortune.