By the Shore

by Galaxy Craze

  I stood up like I had other things to do this morning, like I didn’t care. Eden looked at me, watching me, the way you watch a balloon that you let go of float up and up until you are sure you can’t see it any more, until it’s just the plain wide sky.

  The way his bright, clear hair stuck up in places, the way his eyes drooped, made him look like something just hatched, something new. And I was ruining it, early on a Sunday morning. I ran my hand over the bottom part of my stomach, over the buttons of the jeans, and took a deep breath, sucking it in. Just like a woman, I thought. Just like a woman does.

  …

  I wished there were a lock on my bedroom door. I ate cereal standing up in the kitchen. This is what weekend mornings were like in London: eating cereal standing up on the morning-cold kitchen floor, waiting for my mother to wake up.

  I thought of the cliff by the sheep pasture. I imagined running forward with my eyes closed and then the falling-over part. I would want to look, would need to; I couldn’t just jump up and over. I wouldn’t be able to pretend it was just a diving board. I kept eating, holding the bowl close to me, right under my chin. My cup of tea was on the counter beside me. Then I saw myself at the bottom on the rocks, loose and collapsed, the same way I thought Eden would look. And the woman from the jumble sale, the one who had called me a “haunting little thing” in front of Barbara Whitmore’s mother, would say, “That little thing with them bad teeth what fell off the cliff.”

  It was nine now and my father was here, somewhere in this house, asleep in bed in one of the guest rooms. Since he’d been here, I’d looked in the mirror more than I ever had before.

  The Christmas holidays started soon, so we didn’t have much homework. I thought about Barbara’s party and that my father was here for Christmas. Those two things, the party and my father, mixing together like the ingredients of a spell, and making everything sparkle.

  I went to my bedroom and dragged the old boot box out from under my bed. In the box were used Christmas cards I’d saved so that I could cut them up and make my own ones. There were nail scissors for cutting out tiny things: the stars, the snowflakes, the redbreasted birds sitting on a snowy branch, and the holly. There were pieces of cut-up thick coloured paper (greyish blue, pinky orange, brick red) and some plain white pieces too. I filled up a glass jar of warm water to rinse the paintbrushes in. They were in the tin paintbox with the teddy bear sticker on the inside. I had three tubes of glitter: gold, silver, and a mixture with shiny green and red in it. The coloured pencils all needed sharpening. There were other things in the box too, tissue paper and ribbons, glue, a rabbit-shaped button.

  My head felt heavy on my neck from bending over. The floor was sprinkled with little bits of paper, like someone had thrown a tight handful up and let it sprinkle down. I picked up the card I’d made. It was damp from the glue, and I put it on the radiator to dry. There was a row of white Christmas trees, small ones, at the bottom. On the top I wrote Happy Christmas in glue and covered it in silver glitter. In the middle of the card, things floated around: a butterfly, a present in a box with a bow, a candlestick.

  Putting the tip of my finger in my mouth, looking down at the card drying on the radiator I thought for a minute—who I could give it to. My father would think it looked like something messy. There were other things he wanted to look at; cars and stereo equipment. I wanted to give it to Rufus; he would look at everything and know how long it had taken. Then he would save it somewhere safe, in between the pages of a book, forever, even if I never saw him again.

  I went to see if my mother was awake; she never slept this late. It was quiet in the house. Everyone was still asleep except for me and Eden. They must have stayed up all night, sitting in the living room, watching it get brighter and brighter outside.

  I stood in the kitchen looking at the clock. It was almost eleven. There was a sound at the door, a knocking sound. Someone was knocking at the door of our flat. I froze like a watched insect, my eyes on a corner of the floor.

  I heard a man’s voice, muffled, bumping through the walls, and then I heard Eden’s voice. I looked out and saw Eden standing at the end of the hallway talking to Rufus.

  “Hi, May,” Rufus said, as I walked towards him. He was standing on the step outside the door.

  “Look, May. See? Look how many different things my name means,” Eden said, holding up a piece of paper with typed words on it. He still had the blanket wrapped around him, the bottom dragging on the floor.

  “So?” I stood next to him, stepping on the bottom of his blanket. He moved against the wall, away from me, trying to pull the blanket, but it was stuck under my feet.

  “Is Lucy here?” Rufus asked.

  “Lucy?”

  “Your mum.”

  “I’ll look,” I said, and ran down the hallway loudly, like a child. I wanted her to wake up. I put my hand tightly on the knob and turned it; then I pushed the door open as though it were a heavy wooden gate.

  The floor of my mother’s bedroom was scattered with clothes. The curtains were closed; the room was hazy. A pair of big shoes were by the door, my father’s suede shoes. My mother lay on her side at the edge of the bed with her hands tucked underneath the pillow. My father lay next to her, on his back, his arms slack at his sides. A dark patch of hair on his chest rose and fell with each loud breath he took. They were both asleep. The sheets and pale yellow blanket fell down my mother’s back, the bones in her shoulders stuck out like butterfly wings.

  I stepped backward out of the room, pulling the door quietly closed. I stared at the door, at the thin lines in the paint. I had never seen my mother and father in the same bed before. When I walked down the hall the walls seemed nearer.

  “They’re sleeping,” I said to Rufus. He looked at me for a minute but didn’t say anything.

  “My mum and dad are still asleep, in bed.” My voice sounded loud.

  Then he knew that they were both asleep, together: Lucy and Simon, my mother and father, in one bed.

  “Oh.” His eyes went flat and he looked away from me. “Okay. I’ll just come back later.” He was talking fast, about to turn and walk down the stairs.

  “Is that man in my mum’s room?” Eden asked in a whisper.

  “My father,” I said. Eden leaned his back against the wall and looked up at the ceiling.

  “Is she happy? I mean, that he’s here?” Rufus asked softly. His face looked pale. This question must have been in his head since last night when Patricia said it. I didn’t know. It was something I never thought about, my mother’s happiness.

  “You must be glad he’s here.” Then I had to hold my breath; I felt it close to my eyes. I waited, and he looked at Eden, who was standing against the wall, his hands behind his back, as small as he could be.

  I wanted to tell Rufus everything: the way my mother asked about him, how she kept the note he had given her in a painted box. I wanted him to know the truth. His face looked so clean and wide, a field without hunters.

  “She thinks you were only pretending to be her friend.” My voice shook when I said it.

  “What?” I saw his hand hold the banister tight.

  Then I couldn’t say anything else. My throat hurt inside, but he kept looking at me, waiting.

  “Why does she think that?”

  It’s hard to tell anyone the whole truth, to give it all away. I still wasn’t sure with him. You have to be careful; people have hidden drawers and corners, and everyone has pieces of glass inside.

  “May, please tell her I want to talk to her when she wakes up.” It sounded serious, like echoes down a hospital wall.

  I nodded, but I had to look up at the ceiling because my eyes felt wet.

  The day was different now. It was still morning, but it felt as though it were late at night when you can’t sleep. I went to my room and made another Christmas card.

  …

  “Mum?” It was later now, darker; outside, the clouds looked like they were just a reach away. My mother,
Eden, and I were cooking in the kitchen. Annabel and my father were still asleep.

  “Look.” I held up the first card I’d made. The second one was still drying on the radiator.

  “It’s beautiful,” my mother said. She put her hand on the top of my head and ran it over my hair and the top of my back.

  “What time did you go to bed?” There was something in her face and in her wrist today, like the white from her bones was shining through her skin.

  “I don’t know, before the rest of them.” I imagined Annabel, Patricia and my father in the sitting room, it turning light outside, my father staring at Patricia’s legs, then crawling into bed with my mother. It was already noon. My father was still asleep. He could never be a mother.

  My mother crinkled rosemary and salt over the chicken. Eden was at the table, breaking the ends off the string beans. There was a whole sieve full next to him, still wet as if they had been rained on. She was wearing her old jeans with a big sweater and her moccasin slippers. Her hair was bunched up on the top of her head. The radio played Christmas songs, and Eden’s head went bobbing from side to side in time with them.

  “How much longer is May’s father going to stay?” Eden asked, twisting around in the chair, a green bean clasped in his hand. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t care what Eden thought about him, he seemed so small, a loose button hanging off the cuff of a jacket.

  “I’m not sure,” my mother said, opening the oven with a knitted cloth. A patch of warm air blew against my stomach.

  “He’s staying for Christmas,” I said to Eden. I was picking out potatoes from a big basket of them, dirt-covered and brown. “Should I scrub them in the sink?” I piled the potatoes up in my T-shirt and carried them to the sink.

  Outside, the bare branches of the tree reached up and up to the sky; that’s what they do. I stood on the footstool by the sink and let the water run, cold and clean. I pretended it was a swimming pool for the potatoes and scrubbed them with the vegetable brush. It was warm in the kitchen. With the carols playing on the radio, it felt like the best place in the world to be right then.

  I heard a door close behind me and my shoulders tightened. “What was that sound?”

  “I just closed the door so we wouldn’t wake Simon,” my mother said. I could tell she didn’t want him to wake up. I felt my shoulders drop down, loosen. I turned back to the sink, to the cold water. Something happened to me when my father was around, I never knew what to do with my hands. I didn’t want him to see me right then, with mud spots on my wrist.

  Someone knocked on the kitchen door. It sounded strange, as if this door would open to the grass and trees outside. I pretended this one room was our whole house, a safe feeling.

  My mother opened the door, wiping her hand down the top of her jeans. Rufus stood there, his eyes wide the way they went whenever he first saw her.

  “Lucy,” he said. It flew up like a swing.

  “Hello.” My mother clutched a dishcloth in her hand.

  “Hi, Rufus.” Eden waved from his seat, his small pile of green beans in a neat row next to him.

  My mother kept her eyes level, like they were stuck on one place on the wall behind him.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  She took a step back, away from him, and said, “I’m fine, thanks. How are you?” It was tight, the sound of her voice, like my grandmother’s.

  “All right.” It was small, under his foot, the way he said it.

  There was an advertisement on the radio, and neither of them spoke. My mother opened a drawer, looking for something, then closed it again.

  “I feel like I haven’t seen you in a long time,” Rufus said.

  She didn’t answer.

  “I finished the translation,” he said excitedly.

  “That’s great, Rufus, you must be pleased.” The tone of her voice was an ironed sheet.

  He nodded, lifting his shoulders up and dropping them down. The way he moved wasn’t like my father, who was always leaning back slowly, bringing a cigarette to his mouth.

  “I wanted to see—” Rufus began saying, slowly.

  “Did you want to pay your bill?” my mother asked, jumping in quickly, a bunny hop.

  “What?” He looked startled and made a sound like a sigh, like he was dropping something. “Lucy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if you wanted to take a walk with me?”

  “A walk? I’m in the middle of cooking lunch,” she said, like it was a ridiculous idea.

  “What about later? Should I come back later?” He looked as though he were walking over something that might suddenly break underneath him. Taking one careful step at a time, stopping and waiting, before he took the next step. My mother just watched him, struggling across the ice, not even reaching out her arm to help him.

  She put the top on the honey jar, picked up a spoon, and dropped it in the sink with the potatoes and water. She didn’t know what she was doing; she was just doing anything, while he stood holding on tightly to the back of a chair.

  Finally she stopped moving around and stood still, looking straight at him. I thought, Now she’ll stop and tell him everything; she’ll say, Tell me the truth, Rufus, because this is what I heard. But instead she said flatly, as though she were setting a table, “Rufus, I don’t know what impression I gave you, but I was just trying to be polite. I was being friendly.”

  She could hold her jug of silence to the end, without spilling a single drop. Who was he anyway? She would tell herself until it became the truth: He was just a man who wanted the quietest rooms. Other men had stayed in those rooms, and others would again.

  “That bed is a bloody rock,” my father said loudly, as he walked into the kitchen, stretching his arms up. He was wearing my mother’s green and pink Japanese robe. It was too short for him in the arms.

  “Make me a cuppa tea, darling,” he said to my mother, patting her on the bum.

  Rufus looked away quickly, the way you lift your finger off something hot. My mother stood frozen. I thought, She’s too embarrassed to move.

  “Hello, I’m Simon,” my father said, introducing himself to Rufus.

  “This is Rufus, he’s a guest here,” my mother said, but didn’t look at them.

  “Did anyone phone me?” my father asked, as he looked out of the window. “I’m expecting a very important call.”

  “Rufus?” That was Eden, saying his name like it was a question. “Was I bothering you last night? When we did the puzzle?” He was rocking backwards and forwards on his feet.

  “No.” Rufus swallowed as he spoke. In his face, around his eyes and mouth, a thin crack started.

  “Okay. I was just wondering,” Eden said, and went back to his chair at the table.

  “Put a piece of toast in for me, babes,” my father said to me. I pulled out the plug at the bottom of the sink; it made a gurgling sound. When I looked back, Rufus was gone.

  I picked up the phone to call Jolene.

  “I’m expecting a very important call,” my father said again.

  I put the phone down.

  “Rufus? What a horrible name, poor geezer. What did he want?”

  “To pay the bill.” She had her arms crossed in front of her and her voice sounded dry. She held her mouth closed tight.

  “He probably thought he could sweet-talk you out of it.”

  My mother dropped a teabag in the pot. “Probably.”

  She buttered the toast, spread marmalade over it, then put it on a plate in front of my father, who sat smoking a cigarette.

  “Look at that.” He pointed to the piece of toast. “Plop, plop! That’s not how you spread jam, it doesn’t even go to the corners. You just plopped it right down in the middle. It’s no wonder you haven’t found a man yet.” He was looking over at me, making a funny face. “Plop, plop!” he said again to me, so that I would laugh, and I did, from my throat, like a cheap present.

  Seventeen

  We sang Christmas carols next
day at the morning assembly. This was my favourite part of school, like the way it used to be, before we had lessons, when it was all painting and sitting cross-legged on the floor having stories read to us.

  The headmistress read us poems about wintertime and frost in her high-tea voice. I could feel the bones in my back against the wooden pew. Jolene sat in the row in front of me. I pulled lightly on a piece of her hair, but she stared straight ahead. Then I poked her between the shoulders.

  “Stop it!” she said, turning around as though she was trying to swat something.

  I put my hands together on my lap and held them there until assembly was over.

  …

  I followed Jolene outside to the school yard. She hurried ahead, as though she were trying to catch up with someone in front of her.

  “Jolene! Wait.” I touched the sleeve of her coat near the elbow. It was a damp day. A gentle wind rose up, like a small wave, and blew against us, the softest splash.

  “Sorry—that I didn’t come Christmas shopping with you on Saturday—” I began to say. She was looking over her shoulder into the playground. It was break and everyone was running towards the middle.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jolene said. She held her lips tighdy together and looked away from me. Neither of us spoke. We were standing by the side steps against the wall where the teachers come out between classes and sit on the bench with a cup of tea and a cigarette.

  “My dad came from London,” I said, brightening my voice, throwing it up like confetti. “That’s why. I just forgot, I’m sorry, Jolene.” She twisted the wooden button on her coat. In the winter we all wore navy duffel coats with pointy hoods.

  “Your dad came?” She looked up at me.

  “He has a Porsche. It’s red. We can go for a ride in it.” When you don’t have anything to say about someone, you have to talk about their things.

  She put her hand over her mouth; her eyes opened wide. “Oh, my God!” she said.