Lone Star

by Mathilde Walter Clark

  You have your öwn toilet on the third floor, she said. Use that instead.

  The rooms we didn’t use were all at the front of the house, connected to the hallway, a music room with stucco and frescoes on the ceiling, my dad’s library was a dark room with built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelves and glass-fronted cabinets, and in the dining room, which was even darker than my dad’s library, stood an enormous round dining table fashioned in a dark wood, there were custom display cabinets with polished glass doors, and the ceiling in there was, like the walls, covered in dark paneling with a checkered pattern carved into the wood, like the latticed lid on a pie.

  Only once did I see guests in any of these rooms, the music room it was, some of my dad’s foreign colleagues. They didn’t sit on the chairs, didn’t set their drinks on the table, didn’t use the furniture as furniture, but remained standing in the archway with their drinks in hand, gazing into the room as one would admire a painting or a theater set made of papier-mâché that might collapse if actually put to use.

  The rooms we did use were all at the rear of the house, facing the back door. There were two kitchens and a butler’s pantry that, like the solarium, seemed to be haphazardly furnished. There was, for example, no place where we could all sit together and eat. Maybe it had never been necessary, and no one had considered creating a dining area, or maybe it was the other way around, more like how a cat would lie down in a windowsill arranging itself around things already there: Because there happened to be no dining area, we just didn’t eat together.

  My siblings and I had to keep track of dinnertime. At six we gathered on a row of tall barstools at the kitchen counter. We were arranged by age, just like the Dalton brothers in Lucky Luke, me on one end and my little brother on the other, my dad hadn’t come home yet. From my seat against the wall, I was able to peer sideways down the line and observe the others more freely, this strange row of siblings who had suddenly come into being. I couldn’t help but look at Jessica especially, the middle sister, with her caramel-colored hair and skin. I wanted to squeeze it, it was almost irresistible not to pinch a hunk of the suntanned flesh of her forearm between two of my fingers, but you had to avoid touching her at all cost, and preferably not look at her, either. Noticing my sideways glance, she turned toward me and shouted: Hwat?

  Hot-tempered and abrupt, Jessica wasn’t just physically different, her alphabet was too, she grew breathless when she spoke, inverting her letters. Ask became aks, what became hwat. She was the first to lose her temper and the quickest to laugh. Now she was angry, her dark brown eyes almost black, but she wasn’t looking directly at me. She avoided looking directly at anyone.

  hwat! She trembled and looked at the table, her eyes barely focusing.

  I turned away. Nothing, I said, nothing at all. Sorry. I was just looking at you.

  If only I dared tell her how lovely I thought she was. My other two sisters resembled me like Russian babushka dolls, one inside the other, but she was so different. How could I explain to her that I still hadn’t gotten over the miracle that she and the others were my siblings, that they were my family, that I might never get used to it?

  I dreamed of bringing them all home and turning them into a part of my story, to weave our lives together in a braid so tight it would never come undone. But it was clear they were busy making their own story, their American story, they had their own history which I wasn’t part of, and when the summer was over, I would fly home, and they would continue into a future that I wasn’t a part of, either.

  On the other side of the counter, their mother stood like a cashier in a grocery store, waiting. What do you vant to eat? At home, dinner was ready when you sat at the table, but here it was prepared only when we sat down. She found plates in the cabinets, they rested before her, empty, some were plastic, others china, and now she waited for us to tell her what to put on them. She chewed gum, her jaws working under her skin, grinding muscles like those of a horse. Their mother’s relationship to food was strained, a mix of uncontrollable desire and peevish duty, the transition between not eating and eating might go in any direction, these were uncertain moments. None of us had any realistic suggestions. Eugene offered a few imaginative ideas in his soft little voice: drumsticks, hamburgers, the kind of meals that required regular preparation in a stove, which both charmed her and made her irritable.

  Do you think this is a restaurant? Mein Gott, cooking and cleaning, this is all I ever do …

  Giving up on us, she turned toward the freezer and retrieved something she called chicken nuggets, frozen clumps that she plunk-plunk poured out of the bag and onto our plates and warmed in the microwave. Plate after plate, the clumps were laid before us. They had the same rubbery structure, like a bouncy ball, and were difficult to chew and even more difficult to swallow, so she placed a bottle of ketchup on the counter to help them go down.

  We weren’t allowed to leave the counter until we’d eaten everything. My siblings ate with their fingers, I with a knife and fork, and gradually as we finished, we’d slide from the barstools and disappear upstairs or into the solarium to watch television. One evening, while their mother waited for dinner suggestions and rummaged around for plates, she discovered in one of the cabinets, concealed behind mixing bowls and plastic containers and canned food, a plate with something on it. She pulled it out and showed it to us. What was on it was a petrified square with a bubbling layer, once supposed to have been a grilled cheese sandwich, instantly recognized by everyone as Eugene’s.

  Sabrina was always last, little sparrowlike Sabrina, who was so small you could fit her in the palm of your hand. Sometimes she sat on her barstool slumped over her food for more than an hour before their mother stormed into the kitchen, yanked the plate away from her, and set it in the refrigerator so she could continue the next day.

  As we battled the clumps, she prepared her own dinner. Every day she ate the exact same thing. The first summer she ate blueberries smothered in a concoction of whipped cream and crème fraîche that she ate out of a plastic mixing bowl, standing, so thoroughly pervaded by her craving that everyone fell silent.

  The following summers she had switched to raw steaks. They lay in the refrigerator packed in paper from the butcher section of the supermarket, each day a large, fresh slab. When she removed the rubber band, the paper unfolded on the kitchen table like a flower with the slab in the center, a piece of meat the size and thickness of a craftsman’s hand. The meat was so bloody it was almost violet, marbled with fat, and she would eat the meat directly from the paper, standing at the kitchen table with a fork and a serrated knife. Each bite was a triumph of such unbridled happiness that she would exclaim: I love the meat in America!

  The same thing every day, bite after bite. I love the meat in America!

  •

  Sitting beside me, my siblings’ fingers were slick with ketchup and grease. There were no napkins, and to my horror they licked their fingers clean. I almost couldn’t pull my eyes away from the barbarity.

  What do you think of those slobs? She was talking to me. I didn’t respond but simply smiled sphinxlike, considering myself lucky that my mother had taught me how to use a knife and fork. When I was done, I laid down my silverware at 4:20, just as Danish writer and socialite Emma Gad prescribed in her book on etiquette, so everyone could see that I was done. I knew all about eating with a knife and fork, had advanced in the area since I was two, eating herring at a restaurant and reaping praise from the waiters and the other diners, and now I was eleven. I was expert at eating with knife and fork. Not even my own dad was as good as me.

  You should see yourselves, eating with your fingers like slobs. Look at your sister! She was talking to my siblings. Look how she uses her knife! That’s because she’s European. Europeans are more civilized. Ach. She looked at me. What have I döne to deserve these American childrön?

  My siblings didn’t particularly listen, or only listened with half an ear. She wasn’t warm like other mothers, didn’t hug th
em or put Band-Aids on them or tuck them in or tickle them, she was cold but interesting, and no matter what her mood was, she spoke to me like an adult. It made me feel important, necessary even, for how else could she interpret the meaning of what transpired around us, or rather, her? I was the camera that recorded, she was the voiceover, there was a kind of collaboration between her and me that meant I was to maintain and save all the details she registered. I was the witness. It was about seeing and remembering and understanding, every single moment quivered with meaning.

  In the evening, the invisible membrane surrounding the first floor loosened. My dad had come home and had his dinner, and the tv was on at the foot of the bed in their bedroom. If my siblings and I weren’t busy doing other things, we came in and sat with them, sprawling out on the floor like pawns on a chessboard. The room was larger than a living room, maybe even as large as one of the apartments I’d lived in with my mother, it was difficult to say with certainty. But there was a stone fireplace and drapes that were much too long and spilled heavily onto the floor, and several decorative sofas arranged around oval tables with vases full of dusty ostrich feathers and artificial flowers—and yet, they sat in the bed on top of a shiny synthetic cover and watched tv.

  It was as if the entire universe leaned toward her right there to support her, ensure her balance, and keep her spirits up, and the evening’s most important accessories, whiskey glass and cigarettes, were within reach on the nightstand. It was her best time of day, she practically glowed, conciliatory and cheerful. At the foot of the bed, on the tv, the news anchors pitched a steady flow of balls for her to catch: on the other side of the river they had found a baby in a dumpster, a reporter was on the scene. This is terrible, huh, John? My dad mumbled something about the increasing degree of brutalization. I didn’t understand how a baby could wind up in a dumpster. She explained how. When she was in the right mood, and she focused her attention on you, it felt like being warmed by the first rays of the spring sun.

  She drank her Scotch according to a special system. Down in the kitchen, before heading upstairs, she filled a tall glass with ice, Johnnie Walker Red, and a little water. She took a second glass of water up with her too, and for each sip of Scotch, she’d top up her whiskey glass from it, ensuring that it never went empty, but only became more transparent as the evening progressed, and when at last the Scotch was completely diluted, she got up and went downstairs to fetch another.

  But the most fascinating thing was the mason jar. I believe it had once contained apple juice, it held a gallon or so and was the size and shape of a Chinese lantern or one of those rice-paper lamps that you found in kids’ bedrooms back then. She used it as an ashtray and to store the cigarette butts that she systematically smoked forth out of their long white paper cylinders, the way others knit or mow their lawns, something that had to be done but which in principle could go on forever.

  As she commented on the news, the ash tip grew longer and longer. I expected it to let go and fall onto her lap and burn a hole in her skirt or in the synthetic bed cover, but it never did. Just as the house constituted her internal organs, the cigarette was an extension of her body. Right before the ash broke off, she’d scoop the jar from the nightstand with unfailing assurance, and without averting her eyes from the screen she’d clench it between her knees, unscrew the lid, and let the long dry worm drop through the opening. She’d choke the cherry by screwing the lid back on and return the jar to the nightstand without so much as a glance, all in one fluid movement.

  I saw the gray haze swell in the glass and die out, and I watched the pile of ash grow over the course of the summer like sand in an hourglass. Which unit of time was measured in that jar? Two or maybe three weeks? By chance I was there when it was full. She would stand up and carry her heavy gray lantern to the kitchen, while I remained behind filled with an inexplicable relief, as if some meaningful assignment had just come to an end, something almost insurmountable gotten out of the way. Then she’d be in the doorway with a new glass, and light another cigarette and start over, and soon the glass would again glow and pulse with its gray haze, and it crossed my mind that maybe she held the very heart of this house in her hands. That if life in that glass died out, it would somehow affect life in the house. It would die out, I was certain, come to a standstill and fall to pieces.

  the hot, humid nights dipped us into a comatose sleep that we’d be pulled out of in exactly the same way each morning.

  Why are you not öp yet?

  Her shouts could be heard even as she stomped up the stairwell, with her robe fluttering wildly behind her as if it were ablaze. It was as if each day she hoped for a miracle, that the morning hadn’t arrived, or that she didn’t have any children, or that the children she had were transformed into adults and could get themselves up and make their own breakfast, and now, as she ascended the stairs, her disappointment that none of these things were true transmuted into a feeling of being imposed upon.

  Are you still sleeping?

  The children’s clothes lay on open shelves and scattered in piles on the dressing room floor, and through the doorway I saw her in there pulling different articles of clothing out of the piles and handing them to my sleepy siblings as they emerged from their bedrooms. Her hair appeared to have grown several centimeters in diameter since the day before. For every weekday that passed, the pile of hair atop her head grew evermore wild and unmanageable, it resembled a haystack someone had been in the process of moving but had given up on. I’d reached the conclusion that she didn’t let her hair down during the night, but let it stay up, elegantly piled, and once a week, on Tuesday, she visited the hairdresser to have the entire mess untangled, combed, washed, and piled up again.

  I slipped quietly out of bed and found my own clothes, a pair of freshly ironed Bermuda shorts from the suitcase, a striped T-shirt, and my white Nike sneakers, which I carried into the room with my brown suitcase every day so they wouldn’t vanish in the communal shoe cabinet downstairs. I set them near the staircase to remember to bring them down, and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

  Soon my sister came out. We stood together, leaning over the sink scrubbing our teeth in systematic ovals from one side of the mouth to the other. Afterward we admired the results in the mirror. Her teeth were squarer than mine, and overnight they seemed to have turned white as ivory. I didn’t understand how that was possible. She said it was because she’d begun to brush her teeth every day.

  Did I teach you how to brush your teeth?

  That made her angry. Of course I knew how to brush my teeth! She just hadn’t done it as often before I’d arrived, she said, but inspired by me, she would now brush them with me, if not twice a day then at least in the morning if she happened to remember. It left a better taste in the mouth, too. She slid her tongue across her teeth.

  A fresh flavor of spearmint. She smacked her lips.

  What is spearmint?

  Something like peppermint, but not peppermint.

  Down in the kitchen their mother talked incessantly, like a transistor radio that wouldn’t shut off. She began to tear at my sisters’ hair, one by one, with a thickly tangled brush that lay in a plastic basket on the kitchen table or behind the television, or wherever it might’ve ended up, and if she had to spend even a second searching for it, her irritation would glide almost seamlessly and organically into her nonstop chatter.

  My siblings responded to their mother’s talk as they would to the buzz of a fridge: they only noticed it if it ceased, and to get through to them, she barked orders, shouts, threats, or requests nonstop. Where is the brörsh? Issa! Where is the brörsh? Stop being such a crybaby, Sabrina. Eugene! Eugene! Is that what you are wearing to skool? That same outfit? How many days did you wear this? Where is your öther shoe? Ach, what have I done to get söch sloppy childrön!

  At some point my dad would appear on the stairwell with his eyes glued to the back door, a profile clearing his throat, his wet hair combed, and emanating the scent
of soap and Old Spice. Pleated pants, shirt pocket full of writing utensils and head full of the inscrutable. Equations, I imagined, and jumbled sequences of symbols and numbers (he was always absorbed, it seemed to me, in the mystery of the universe and always on the verge of solving it). After some back and forth in the chaos of the kitchen, he opened the door. Okey dokey, he said, trying to get an overview of my siblings, who were clustered by the cabinet where the pile of shoes lay helter-skelter and more than a foot high, and struggling to find a matching pair. All righty, time to go! We are already running late! I was ready; the moment I saw him I’d gone out and put on my sneakers and I was already waiting by the door. Outside, we ran toward his blue Ford parked in the garage. If the little ones didn’t get there first, Carissa and I shared the front seat, which was shaped like a long bench that included the driver’s seat. It was covered in red vinyl, in the heat our thighs stuck to it, and once we reached school, we’d have to peel them from the seat like a Band-Aid. We drove with the windows rolled down; you had to sit closest to the window so you could rest your arm on the edge and feel the wind tickle your arm hair. We drove past the park where the air was cooler, on the very same street where my dad had once watched 2001 Space Odyssey with my mother, but I didn’t know that. For me, it was the stretch where my siblings and I selected houses. Like those on Washington Terrace, they were so huge I didn’t know whether to choose one with a spire and tower and portico, or maybe one with teeth along the roof like on a castle. Or maybe a French chateau? My siblings each had their very own house. That’s my house! Eugene shouted, pointing at one with five towers. That used to be Jessica’s house, Carissa said. Not anymore, Eugene said, now it’s my house.