By the Shore

by Galaxy Craze

  I walked to the kitchen. I looked at the phone; it just sat there and looked back at me. I opened the refrigerator; everything looked cold. I went to my mother’s room. She hadn’t made her bed yet, blankets and pillows and baby pillows all piled up. I got in it and pulled the pile over me. I thought about eating some cereal, but it seemed cold and terrible to me. Toast, biscuits, baked beans, the leftover onion soup—but all I wanted was those fluffy pancakes. I thought I heard a car, I jumped up and ran over to the window. My toes were freezing, I pressed my face to the glass and held my breath, but there was no car. Soon, I thought. They’ll be home soon.

  Waiting is the longest feeling. I went back to the kitchen.

  Finally I really did hear a car coming up the driveway. I stood up out of my mother’s bed. It was almost three. I heard voices: my mother’s, Rufus’s, Eden’s. The rustling sound of bags, doors opening and closing. They had all gone out together, and they hadn’t even tried to wake me.

  “You slept late this morning,” my mother said. She walked in with fresh air and sun around her. Rufus came in behind her, carrying shopping bags. They didn’t look hungry.

  “Hello. You slept late?” Rufus said to me.

  I stood there like a storm. He put the bags down on the table and started unloading them.

  “Did you get your schoolwork done?” my mother asked. I watched her put the car keys on the table.

  “I’m hungry,” I said to the ground.

  “Didn’t you eat anything?” She looked concerned. I thought maybe it was an old note I had found lying on the table this morning.

  “Mum bought me a doughnut!” Eden said, leaning against the wall, his hands behind his back. I could see the sugar around his mouth. I thought, He’s never been as hungry as I am right now.

  “I thought you were going to make fluffy pancakes.”

  She looked at me, and her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, no. We forgot to get eggs from the egg woman.” She stood like that with her hand on her mouth and her eyes wide. “I’m so sorry, darling. Oh, God, I knew I was forgetting something.”

  I was trying to remember if I ever forgot things.

  “You haven’t eaten anything at all today?”

  I shook my head. “You said in the note that you were coming back soon. I was waiting for you.” I wished I hadn’t said that. I didn’t want her to know I had waited for her.

  Eden and Rufus were both looking at me. The room was quiet; I had been whining.

  “Darling, I’ll make you lunch.” She walked over to me and stroked my hair. I looked at the floor.

  “I brought you back something.” She pulled out a pink-and-white-striped paper bag. It was from the pastry shop in Sheperton, the town. That’s where they had gone; it was almost like a city. She handed me the bag. “Don’t eat it yet,” she said. “I’ll make you some proper food first.”

  “Lucy, where does this go?” Rufus asked, holding out a box of Familia.

  My mother turned to him. “Just up there,” she said, pointing to the cupboard. She watched him for a moment, and then she looked back at me.

  Rufus was opening cupboards behind her. I thought, Why is he putting food away in someone else’s kitchen? Doesn’t he have a book to write?

  “What is it? What is it?” Eden ran towards me to look. He held his own pink-and-white bag in his hand.

  My mother stood next to me—she put her hands on my shoulders—and Eden stood in front of me, waiting to see what I had from the pastry shop. It was all the attention I ever wanted this morning, but it was too late. I opened the bag; the smell was warm and lemony. Inside were two fairy cakes wrapped up in rose-tinted wax paper. I put my hand in the bag and lifted one of them out. I unwrapped the wax paper; it was a tiny square cake with yellow icing and little painted pink-and-white flowers on it. I just wanted to look at it. It was doll-like and precious.

  I thought of them at the pastry shop in town, where there were people sitting at round white tables drinking cups of tea and coffee and eating cakes. I wanted to turn around and kick my mother, but I was so tired I felt like I might fall over. I wanted her to take me and sit me down in the chair and spoon-feed me.

  “I had some cappuccino,” Eden said to me.

  “One sip,” my mother said. She gave him a look that said, Be quiet; don’t tell her what we did this afternoon. The fairy cake was in the palm of my hand. I tasted the icing, a tiny bit on my finger, then sweet and stinging on the tip of my tongue. I looked at the cake in my hand. Then I let it drop to the floor.

  …

  There was a soft knock on the door. I rolled over on my side facing the wall. Turning away is so easy: a turn of the head, an unanswered question, an unreturned phone call, a letter thrown in a pile. My mother opened the door and came in. I heard her walking towards me, slowly, looking at the floor to make sure she didn’t step on anything. I felt her put her hand on my shoulder, and the side of the bed sank a little as she sat down on it. I opened my eyes halfway. The room was a shadowy dark. It smelled like toast; she was bringing me food. I couldn’t wait for today to be over.

  My mother sat next to me on the bed. I could hear her breathing. Then I felt her hand in my hair, and that place behind my ribs ached and my shoulders began to shake. Then I was crying.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Her hand rested on my forehead. I couldn’t catch my breath, I was almost choking. I didn’t think I would be able to talk; my throat felt sore. She turned her body to me and I put my face in the sheets.

  “Try to tell me, please.”

  She stroked my hair again, and this made me calmer. I wanted to just fall asleep, but my head hurt and my eyes stung.

  “Why do you get so angry with me?”

  This made me start again from my stomach. I didn’t want her to think there was something wrong with me. She never saw what I was really like. The other day when I was alone, walking home from school, eating the packet of crisps the man in the shop gave me, I felt so calm and light. I walked down the quiet road singing a song to myself. I thought, Yes, this is the way I was born. This is the way I am; I’ll be able to dance in front of my mother, to wrap my arms around her; I’ll tell her everything. But then something turns, like a splinter in my chest, and I’m me again, frowning at the ground. That’s what I wanted to tell her, but it’s hard to scrape the truth out of your chest.

  I looked outside at the trees. They said, It’s hard, it’s hard.

  I took a breath—it was loud and shaky—and said, “You’re mean to me on purpose.” I was on my side facing away from her.

  “May, I would never try to be mean to you.”

  “You always tell your friends bad things about me. I heard you. You said, ‘May is difficult.’ You said it to Suzy on the phone and to Granny.” My voice got louder and louder, like a flame.

  “You can be difficult. I also say how wonderful you are. I’m sorry if that hurt you. I love you.” She said that as though it would make up for everything: I love you, the biggest gift of all. I love you meant nothing to me; it wasn’t like a ten-pound note falling out of a birthday card.

  “Why didn’t you come back and make fluffy pancakes like you said you would?”

  “I forgot, darling. I’m sorry, I really forgot. Anyway, you usually like to be left alone.” She put her hand on my shoulder. We were quiet for a long time. It was almost dark out now. I could see the trees from my window, against the sky.

  My mother said, “I made you a cheese-and-tomato sandwich.” I sat up and pulled my knees to my chest. The sandwich was on her lap in a saucer.

  “May, you should try to tell me when you’re upset with me. You have to talk about things.” She ran her hand down my back.

  “Please send me to live with my father.” I let my hand fall against the mattress. I thought, I’ll just start over, find someone new: my father.

  “You don’t even know him,” my mother said.

  Then she was quiet, her hand still on my back.

  “I can
help you,” my mother said. “You get yourself in such a state about these things.”

  I wanted help, I wanted to be pulled to the shore. I looked down at my hands. I felt calmer now.

  “Do you want some mint tea with milk?”

  I nodded. She leaned towards me and kissed the top of my head. When she left, a slant of light came through the door, but nothing changed. Next to me the cheese-and-tomato sandwich sat on the blue-and-white saucer. I looked at it and thought, I don’t really need to eat at all. Knowing that was like a piece of magic, a gift, like being able to fly. But my bones and skin felt itchy and thirsty, and my stomach felt like it was somewhere else far away. I don’t need to eat, I’m not grabbing the sandwich; I’ll just take a bite slowly, a small bite, a baby bite.

  When I stood up holding the empty saucer with only crumbs and a piece of crust left, I felt more like me again. All one thing.

  Nine

  We had a surprise test in French class. Madame Monet, our teacher, wrote down three questions on the blackboard for us to answer.

  “Only three! That’s all, girls.” She lifted her arms in the air as if to say, See, it’s nothing, as light as air. Her straight dark hair was pulled tightly off her face in a small bun, her eyes done with dark liner, and her lips the shape of a kiss. There was something about the way she moved that made me think of a marionette.

  I stared at the three questions on the board. I saw her look at me and I bent down over a piece of paper, but all I wrote was my name. I saw Jolene across the room, hunched over her desk.

  When Madame Monet turned her back, the heads of three girls in front of me, Barbara, Courtney and Polly, came together as quick as a pull-string purse. Barbara’s hair fell straight and sunny over the back of her chair. I could see them showing each other the answers. The three of them were on each other’s side. On the floor by the side of Barbara’s desk was a red plastic heart-shaped handbag. Soon all the girls will have one, I thought.

  When I got home, I went to my room and sat at my desk with my cahier in front of me. Today, I said, I’ll start; from now on. . . . I looked and looked at the book, and every time I lifted my head it was darker outside. It made me nervous the way time did that, the empty notebook pages, the black lines to fill in. I stood up and pushed the notebook off my desk, and then I stood in the middle of my room. Outside, the trees looked in at me, and I saw a girl throw her book against the wall.

  My mother and Eden were in our small sitting room with the sloped ceiling and tiny square fireplace. This was meant for one person, one woman, the headmistress of the school. They never had husbands or children of their own, just a small dog, a Scottie with a tartan raincoat. I imagined her by the window, in her favourite cushioned chair, at a round table, a blanket on her lap with a book and a tea tray. She would sit under a circle of light from the standing lamp with the flower-shaped shade.

  Downstairs the schoolgirls would be in their nightgowns, plain white cotton ones, talking in bed, giggling, getting up, sneaking to the kitchen. That was long ago when this house was a happy school. I think I’ve seen them in the middle of the night, wandering down the hallways, disappearing around the corners like the thinnest part of the moon.

  Eden was on the sofa, wrapped in a big white towel. His hair was wet and sticking up all over the place. He looked like a duck.

  “You look like a duck,” I said.

  My mother looked up at me. She was sitting in the big green chair, an old heavy red leather book open on her lap. It was a photo album, one I had never seen before.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m just looking for something.” She was turning the pages slowly, concentrating. The photographs were yellowing, black and white squares falling down the pages. I stood with my arms crossed in front of me.

  “Come here.” She patted her leg. I walked over, dragging my feet, and sat down on the arm of the chair.

  “I want to go somewhere.” I wasn’t sure how to act, I felt half melted. I thought she wanted me to be like him, my brother. ‘Easy;’ that’s how I’ve heard her describe him to her friends. Eden looked at me and looked away like he knew something, a secret about me.

  “What, darling?” she asked, staring at the photos.

  “I want to go for a ride in the car somewhere.” A drive, a drive. I thought if we drove away everything would be different when we returned. It’s like when you can’t find something, you have to leave the room for a while so it can work, the magic. Go outside and count to ten, walk up and down the stairs, turn around in circles, and then when you come back it will be there, easy to find. Now it was a drive, and then I thought I would come back and be able to do my French homework.

  “Let’s get ice cream from the special place, the little place with the balloons,” Eden said, walking towards us with his towel open.

  “I can see your ugly little willy,” I said.

  He turned around quickly and wrapped the towel tighter. My mother poked her elbow in my side.

  “Don’t, you’ll make him self-conscious.”

  But nothing had changed about him. He turned right back around and said, “Mum, remember the man that gave me the balloon that floated, and I got the chocolate ice cream with marshmallows?”

  My mother nodded and said, “Then you got sick.”

  “That’s because you made me eat fish!” Eden said.

  She turned another page and looked across the room. “Okay. Let’s take a drive there.”

  We all stood up, then my mother looked around suddenly and said, in a hushed voice, “Eden, go downstairs and ask Rufus if he wants to come with us.”

  “Okay.” He turned to run out; he loved to have a mission.

  “Wait!” she yelled. “Don’t say I told you to ask, just act as if we were wondering.”

  He nodded and wrapped his towel around him like a cape. He pattered down the hallway and then down the stairs. It was quiet, just the two of us.

  Her face changed; suddenly, she looked worried. “I hope we’re not bothering him.”

  She sat down and waited, twisting her hair around her finger. Her legs moved up and down under her skirt. Girls in my class did this, shook their legs. I had never seen my mother do it before; it bothered me. I sat down and pointed my toes, then flexed them, then pointed them, an exercise we do in gym. But I did it to have something else to do, to show I didn’t care if he came with us or not.

  A few minutes later we heard Eden running up the stairs, making aeroplane noises. He ran into the room, red-faced, catching his breath, holding the towel around his shoulders with one hand. In the other he held a small folded white piece of paper which he handed to my mother. It read, I would love to go out for ice cream with you.

  My mother stood up. “That means he wants to come, right?”

  “Yes,” we both said together, because sometimes we couldn’t believe her questions. It was as if she didn’t understand words clearly.

  “Okay. He’s coming, good.” She took a deep breath and walked over to the mirror, looked at it, then walked away.

  “Did he say he would come up here?”

  Eden shrugged.

  “Where’s the pen? Where’s the pen?” She sounded panicky, as though she were saying, “There’s a fire, there’s a fire!” There were two pencils on the table by her chair in an old mustard jar. She tore a corner from the old newspaper on the table and wrote, We’ll be ready in ten minutes. Let’s meet by the front door.

  She folded the note and wrote his name on it.

  Eden stuck his arm out straight, a messenger to the Queen. My mother put the note on the palm of his hand and he closed his fingers round it. Then he pedalled his bare little feet, running in place, making aeroplane noises, then he flung out his arms, using the towel for wings. I hoped he’d get a splinter too.

  I saw my mother walk over to the mirror again. Then she put her hand on top of her head and said, “I shouldn’t have written that. I should have just knocked on his door.”

 
I followed her to the bathroom. She splashed some water on her face, looked in the mirror, pulled her hair out of the ponytail, brushed it down, looked again, then put it back in a ponytail. Her hands scurried in the bottom of her handbag for a lipstick. When she pulled it out, the lid was missing and there were little pieces of tobacco and things stuck on it. She wiped the top off with a piece of toilet paper and dabbed it on her lips.

  “Why are you putting that on?”

  She looked at me blankly. I put my hands in my back pockets and stared back at her.

  “Patricia’s his girlfriend, you know,” I said.

  She wiped the colour from her lips with the back of her hand and pushed past me. “What am I doing?” I heard her say, as she walked down the hallway.

  “Mum! Mum, where are you? I have an urgent delivery!” Eden yelled. He bumped into my mother, spun around, and handed her another note, a corner of a plain white piece of paper, folded, with her name written on the front. She unfolded it and started to read, but the letters looked like stitching; the words meant nothing to us.

  “It’s written in another language,” she said. Her voice was slow, skating over the ice. “Eden, hurry and get ready. May, put your coat on.”

  When I came back with my coat she was still looking at the note, as though it would solve itself.

  “I hope it doesn’t mean something bad. I mean, I hope it’s not something mean.”

  …

  Rufus was standing by the front door when we came down the stairs. His shoulders hung forward, like a shy boy’s. He wasn’t like other men; he didn’t walk around as though he had medals pinned. to his chest.

  “Hello,” my mother said. It came out in a nervous laugh. “Did you get a lot of work done today?”

  “Some.” He looked at my mother as though he was seeing her for the first time.

  “What did that note mean?” she asked.

  “Oh . . . nothing, really.” I saw his face flush. He turned around and walked out of the door, leaving us alone in the hall. My mother stopped for a moment. She was thinking, What did I just say to make him leave? She hadn’t seen the way he had looked at her because she had been watching Eden tie his shoe.