The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Years passed. He never saw this girl. Then he heard that she had married someone else, and it hit him like a thunderbolt. He nearly choked on the news.

  To the astonishment of all of those around him.

  Later, when he was still a teenager, Byron fell in love again — with an older girl, one of a superior class, named Miss Chaworth. Again, he loved her with his own profound madness. Only, one day he overheard her talking to a friend. She said, with a sneer, “Do you think I could care anything for that lame boy?”

  Meaning Byron with his twisted foot.

  Again, years later, his mother said to Byron, “I have some news for you.”

  “Well, what is it?” Byron said.

  “Take out your handkerchief first,” she suggested. “For you will want it.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Take out your handkerchief,” she insisted.

  He did so, holding it up for her to see.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Miss Chaworth is married!”

  The strangest expression crossed his face, and he returned his handkerchief to his pocket, exclaiming: “Is that all?”

  “Why,” said his mother, “I expected you would have been plunged in grief!”

  Byron did not reply and, after a moment, changed the subject.

  So, when Madeleine and Jack lay side by side on his bed — with the door open, at Federico’s insistence, and with Federico complaining his way through a pasta in the kitchen — staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars that Jack had stuck to his ceiling (so that they corresponded to the signs of the zodiac), and Jack explained that, as an Aries, he had courage, fire, and fertility, Madeleine would laugh, but as she laughed, she would smile to herself, and think, Behind that bravado you’ve been hurt, haven’t you? Over and over, by girls in the past. You’ve loved with intensity and passion, and have learned to hide your heartache, learned to press your handkerchief back into your pocket and pretend that you are okay.

  And she would look at his legs in their blue jeans, wondering which one was lame. Then frown slightly in confusion, remembering neither was.

  On the street, she’d approach Jack from behind, touch his shoulder, and he’d turn around with that expression he got when he saw her these days. It was startled, embarrassed, happy, bold, and uncertain all at once. She liked him when she saw it, she felt a rush of fondness, and then, maybe seeing her fondness, he would relax and start talking.

  He did talk a lot.

  In that way, he was like Byron.

  I’ll miss him, she thought sometimes, when I go home.

  But they could email.

  Speaking of email, her friend Tinsels was taking a while to reply. But that was not a surprise. Tinsels was always floating around in pools reading books, or else out riding horses. She hardly ever checked email, and when she did, she forgot her password, or how you opened Gmail, and she’d often fling computers across rooms, demanding tech support. “I am endearingly hopeless with technology,” she liked to say.

  Eventually, Tinsels would figure it out and reply.

  As for Jack, the disbelief in his chest was like brooms jostling in a closet. That’s how much it confused him. He kept thinking of things to make the smile dazzle across Madeleine’s lovely face: He’d bring her raspberry slices from Fitzbillies, or a takeaway coffee with a peppermint chocolate resting on the lid. He found her a second-hand bike basket and secretly attached it for her. The smile would come, and deep in his mind, somewhere behind the toppling brooms, he would whisper to himself in wonder: “She actually likes me.”

  The words seemed to play on a chime bar.

  She talked a lot about her life before, and her chin lifted in the air as she remembered. She’d skated and paraglided. She’d been expelled from boarding schools for running away on weekends. Her dad has always been angry about the running away: He sometimes wouldn’t talk to her for weeks. He must be furious right now, she said, sounding nostalgic.

  But when her father wasn’t angry, she explained, it was like a light seemed to shine from inside him. People would turn and look at him when he passed. He was good at life, she said. In one night he could give a speech at a reception, play pool, get drunk, do a multi-million-dollar deal, go dancing, come home, and start again. He never got hangovers. It was true he was always busy, but he never stopped thinking of ways to entertain her and her friends. He’d climb up behind the puppet show to explain to her how the strings worked. Or, at the start of a meal, he’d shove something up his sleeve like lightning ready for a trick that he would play to entertain her, seven courses later, at the end of the meal.

  “Seven courses?”

  “It was a degustation,” she explained.

  Jack felt like he had to run to keep up with Madeleine’s conversation.

  Definitely, he had to be funny. The way she laughed at his jokes, it was like she was catching on to them with both hands and holding tight. Sometimes, her eyes seemed to move around his words, searching for the humour, and he thought it was like she was sizing up a shredded old tissue to see if she could use it for an origami rose.

  It didn’t always work. Once, he was quoting lines from the movie Monsters, Inc., which she hadn’t seen, and she was falling about laughing, and he told her how he and Belle used to have this thing where they’d look at each other and shout, “Mike Wazowski!” — the name of a character in the movie — and Madeleine laughed even harder.

  Then she stopped suddenly and reflected. “That’s not actually funny,” she said.

  “No,” he said, “I guess it’s not.”

  “I mean, I can see how it was funny at the time, but here? Now? It’s not.”

  “You’re right,” he apologised.

  She had those bright eyes, that way of twisting her foot, and often when they’d just sat down somewhere, she’d be jumping up again ready to go. She was always looking around, waiting for something.

  He thought maybe she was waiting for her dad to come and whisk her away, and he worried about this. He’d dig his nails into his palms as a wish to the stars that Madeleine’s parents would never get back together.

  He felt quite guilty about that.

  It seemed unlikely, though, after all this time, that the dad would suddenly turn up. So that was a comfort.

  Madeleine and Jack were not always together.

  Madeleine spent time with her mother too, and reading. She was reading about Isaac Newton these days.

  Also, although Jack did not know this, she rode her bike to the broken parking meter to send letters to Elliot Baranski.

  Dear Elliot Baranski,

  Yeah, okay, you can exist if you want.

  Well, that sucks about the Butterfly Child not fixing the crops for you! She’s teeny-tiny, right, though? So … maybe a bit too much to ask of her? Could make more sense for you FARMERS to look into the problem. More likely to have the expertise, right?

  Have you tried fertiliser? I hear that can work wonders.

  Maybe it’s a pest control issue. Is it organic farming? If not, use pesticides. If so, well, try them anyway but do it at night.

  Well, I’m not really the girl to ask, seeing as I’ve never even SEEN a farm (except on TV) — and maybe neither is the Butterfly Child.

  Especially if she’s sick!

  But your only basis for thinking she’s sick is that she’s sleeping? That could be because she’s tired.

  When she goes out with her insect companions she’s probably partying hard, getting blitzed, loaded, tanked (etc.), coming back, and passing out? Do you have Alcoholics Anonymous for Insect People in your Kingdom? If so, sign her up.

  What else? OK, it seems like you have guilt because you think it’s your fault if she is sick? I doubt that it is. I THINK, if I’m understanding you right (and your letters confuse the hell out of me) — but, anywayz, I THINK you were saying that the reason you couldn’t get up and take the lid off the jar (?) was that you had a broken ankle?

  Well, don’t beat yourse
lf up over that.

  When I broke my ankle, everyone was like shouting at me, “Don’t get up! Stay still!” which they didn’t need to, cause it freakin’ well KILLED. So I just lay there in the snow till the huskies came with the sled. And I can guarantee that if someone had said, “Oh, Madeleine, by the way, there’s a little butterfly-fairy thing inside that jam jar over there, would you hop on over and open the lid?” I would have said, “Tell the *%$ butterfly to open her own &^# lid.”

  Those little marks indicate choice language (in case you don’t have that convention in your Kingdom).

  Also, when Tinsels (she’s my best friend) broke her FINGER (with the blender when she was making a Long Island Iced Tea, and forgot she was blending it, and put her finger in to taste it), she had to lie down in a hammock for a month.

  Hang on, I have to go, meeting a friend. We’re going to the Trinity May Ball — seeing the fireworks in a punt even — it’s a surprise he arranged for me —

  Okay, I’m back. It’s the next day. And I’ve been thinking some more about your issue. I just looked at your letter, and you seem in a STATE about it, so I wanted to tell you that I recently discovered that the way to solve a problem is to write it down. With, like, a question mark, and then WRITE THE ANSWER.

  Try it. It totally works.

  It’s the Isaac Newton approach.

  Isaac was also a big believer in thinking about a problem. Just thinking. Here’s a nice quote from him about it:

  “I keep the subject constantly in mind before me and wait till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.”

  But wait, listen, I just remembered that my therapist, Claudia, once told me that sometimes you can solve a problem if you STOP THINKING ABOUT IT. Think about other things. Or just, like, go to bed. And tell your subconscious or whatever — your dreaming mind, maybe — to sort the whole thing out for you.

  k, it’s 3 a.m., better go.

  catch you,

  M.T.

  P.S. Sorry about the conflicting suggestions for problem solving, i.e., think all the time or don’t think at all. I guess it’s a choice between genius of all time Isaac Newton, or my (very nice and often quite sensible) therapist, Claudia Tilmaney.

  P.P.S. In making your choice you might like to keep in mind that:

  • Someone famous once said that you could split up the entire history of mathematics into two halves — the first half is all previous mathematics from the beginning of time; the second was Isaac Newton. And Isaac Newton was the better half.

  • When Tsar Peter of Russia visited England back in the days of Isaac Newton, the things on his must-see list were: shipbuilding, the Greenwich Observatory, the mint — and Isaac Newton.

  and

  (most important of all)

  • Isaac Newton invented the cat flap.

  By comparison:

  • I remember once Claudia telling me she was useless at her multiplication tables (it bothered me a lot — from then on, I was always kind of like wanting to say to her, “Nine twelves?” or “Eight sixes?”).

  • To the best of my knowledge, Tsar Peter of Russia never once asked if he could meet Claudia.

  and

  • Claudia doesn’t even OWN a cat.

  A few days later, Elliot Baranski replied:

  Dear M.T.,

  Thanks for your thoughts on the Butterfly Child.

  She’s still sleeping, crops still dead in the ground, but my ankle’s on the mend and I feel like an ass for complaining like I did in my last letter. Sorry about that.

  A wave of Reds is on its way — we get Color attacks here, not sure if you know about those. I think I recall that you don’t get Colors in the World.

  Most often, you don’t have a clue that a Color’s coming until the warning bells ring (or until it’s on you), and most Colors travel alone, but Reds travel in waves, and in the open. So you get a week or two’s notice of them (towns up the line call it in).

  Anyhow, if I write you a letter that’s sort of off-kilter in the next little while, don’t take it personally. Fourth-level Reds mess with your mind.

  But then they’ll be gone —

  — and I’ve gotta go myself.

  Elliot

  Madeleine could see him clearly, the writer of the Elliot letters. He was probably around her age. Shy and awkward, teeth that criss-crossed at the front, a high freckled forehead, round glasses, an awkward way of laughing at all the wrong times. Or a laugh like a snort that made him blush. “Elliot Baranski” was his alter ego — his avatar, his escape.

  Who did it hurt to play along?

  One thing about all this — the correspondence with “Elliot,” the romance with Jack — it felt truer to her previous self.

  She had never even suspected that Jack liked her until the night he kissed her on the roof, but as soon as he did, it made sense.

  Because that’s how it used to be. In her previous life, there were always eyes on her. People wanting her attention, just because she was rich and pretty. And mostly she’d be hanging with her own friends, but sometimes she had liked to meet these other people, answer their questions, ask them about themselves.

  So now it was happening again, and she was having fun.

  She liked them both, Jack and the letter writer, but even more, she liked their alter egos: Lord Byron and Elliot Baranski.

  Around this time, Darshana Charan asked Jack and Madeleine to come over early to babysit.

  Darshana was their Science and Mathematics teacher, the former microbiologist who now cleaned students’ rooms.

  Her daughters were four and three: Rhani, the elder, was wild, loud, and passionate about robots and aliens; Chakiki, the younger, was sweet, obliging, and loved fairy wings and princess crowns.

  “You are no child of mine!” Darshana often said to little Chakiki.

  On this day, Jack and Madeleine arrived at the same time. They could hear the sounds of Darshana and her elder daughter impersonating monster roars, and the high voice of Chakiki explaining that their noises hurt her feelings.

  “Remind me I have something to tell you,” Jack said as he knocked.

  “Tell me now,” said Madeleine.

  But the door flew open, and there was a tumble of little hands dragging them inside, while Darshana shouted instructions to everyone at once, and then was gone.

  Some time later, the girls were watching TV side by side on the carpet, while Madeleine and Jack sat on the couch. There was a careful space between them; their fingers tangled once and then drew apart.

  “This is what I have to tell you,” Jack said to Madeleine. “I’m not Byron after all.”

  On the TV, a dinosaur roared, the sound like bathwater sucking down a drain.

  “I’ve figured it out,” Jack continued. “I’m not him, but I met him once. In one of my former lives. That’s why I felt like I was him — because I knew him so well. We used to shoot the breeze, Byron and me.”

  Madeleine turned back to the TV. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Me too. We had a blast, eh? You, me, and Byron.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t take me seriously. I did! I did know Byron. And not only that but I was a guinea hen at the time.”

  Madeleine laughed, and the two little girls turned and held their fingers to their lips with a sharp “shhh.”

  Obediently, they stayed silent for a while, then Madeleine curled her feet beneath her and turned sideways to Jack. “Do you actually believe in reincarnation?”

  “Of course I do. Have you not listened to a single word I’ve said? All of us are reincarnated. We all come back under the twelve different signs of the zodiac so we get to draw on the twelve different elements of our character, and I happened to be a Scorpio when I was hanging with Byron.”

  “I thought you were a guinea hen.”

  “Not a scorpion, a Scorpio. A Scorpio guinea hen, and there’s nothing hilarious about that, a guinea hen is a noble creature and I held my head high when I was one.
It’s true that I don’t have exact memories of my former lives, but I’ve got glimpses and sensations and so on, and if you would ever, sort of like, listen to your heart, you might get glimpses of your own past lives too. You might even meet yourself from a former life, so, you know, be ready to be polite.”

  “Okay, that part makes no sense.”

  “Sure it does,” said Jack. “You never listen when I talk, do you? Time is crumpled, see. I’ve told you that before. It’s sort of folded on itself — there’s really only one time and it’s now, and Rhani’s goldfish there could easily be you from a former, or even future, life.”

  They regarded the fish. It ignored them, lost in its own thoughts.

  “It’s not a goldfish,” said Madeleine. “It’s blue. It’s a fighting fish.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “Well, don’t let them forget to feed me,” said Madeleine. “And maybe you could get me a castle or something for my fishbowl.”

  The dinosaur cartoon finished and Sesame Street began.

  “Oh, Sesame Street,” said Rhani, turning to Jack and Madeleine. “We always get a chocolate biscuit when this comes on.”

  Chakiki also turned. “Yeah, we do. We get the kind with the white bit in the middle, and we get two ones each.”

  The only thing the little girls had in common was a swift ability to lie.

  “You can look me in the eye,” Jack said, “and tell me that your mother flies to the kitchen to get you a couple of chocolate biscuits whenever Sesame Street starts?”

  “She doesn’t fly to the kitchen,” Rhani withered. “She just kind of like strolls in.”

  “I can look you in the eye,” offered Chakiki.

  “I’ll call her and check, shall I?” Madeleine suggested, and the girls sighed noisily and turned back to the TV.