by Sasha Troyan
Ethel has the worst room. It’s long and narrow and even with the shutters open it’s very dark. It used to be nicer before they cut it in two to make a bathroom for my grandmother. Ethel sleeps here to be next to Granny. Granny has the nicest room. The river runs beneath her room. It used to have the wheel.
“Where’s Mme Daudiet?” I ask.
“She’s away,” Ethel says. She opens the closet door and peers inside.
“Where did she go?”
“She’s away on holiday,” Ethel says, opening one of the chest drawers, then closing it.
“But Mme Daudiet never goes on holiday in June. She’s always here.”
Ethel leans over the chest of drawers to stare into a small mirror with a thick gold frame. With the tips of her fingers, she rubs in streaks of brown foundation which have dripped down her neck.
“Why don’t you open the shutters?” she says without turning from the mirror.
I open the shutters and stare through the glass door. There’s a weeping willow, behind it a dark fir tree and even further a lone birch.
“Give me a kiss before you go.” She presents her brow, closing her eyes as if not to see me. She smells of peppermint.
I open the door leading to Granny’s room. She’s sitting on the sofa in the shadows holding her hat by the brim, stroking it absentmindedly as if it were a cat. As her hand passes across the brim, a ray of sun catches the cloth flowers revealing their true colors, and the petals tremble and for a second the flowers look real.
I climb onto the window ledges and open the wood shutters. Through one window, I can see the river surging from the house as if eager to leave behind the dark tunnel; it rushes twisting in and out of banks of tall grass and buttercups.
“How beautiful the river is,” Granny says, “and even if I can’t hear it anymore, I remember the sound.” She places her hat beside her. “And isn’t it nice to come back each year and find it exactly the same? Just a few cobwebs and dust this time.”
“Yes,” I say, and it’s true now the shutters are open. The sun turns the red rug crimson. The curtains with their green and yellow water lily pattern are barely rumpled, the matching couch only slightly damp to the touch. In one corner, Granny’s four pink suitcases stand. Only the ivy has grown. Delicate shadows of leaves flutter on the ceiling and one wall.
I always unpack Granny’s clothes. I like to see and touch each silk dress, to smell the mango and avocado scent from the fruit she hides between her clothes. She has dresses which are every color of the rainbow. This year she has three new dresses; a pleated mauve one trimmed with black; a white one with gold buttons, and a blue-green one the color of the sea.
“May I ask you a question, Granny?”
“Of course,” Granny says.
“Where’s Mme Daudiet?”
“She’s—” Granny starts to say, “Come here.” She grabs my hand and squeezes it very tight. “She died. She died six months ago.”
“She didn’t,” I pull my hand away.
“I’m afraid she did.”
“Will I never see her again?”
“You will never see her again,” she says, “at least not on this earth. Who knows what happens after? Your grandfather said he would come and tickle the bottom of my feet to let me know if there’s life after death.”
“Did he?”
“Well, I’m still waiting to feel that tickle. When I die I’ll come and tickle the bottom of your feet.” She leans over and tickles the bottom of my foot. “Now,” she says, standing up and holding out her hand. “Will you help me make my bed so I can have my forty winks?”
I walk across the gravel courtyard to Mme Daudiet’s cottage, just as Luis drives up the white hill. He’s going to his hotel in Malsherbes. I peer into one window, remembering how neatly Mme Daudiet used to make her bed, each corner perfectly folded, the blue bedspread pulled so tightly there was not a single wrinkle.
“What are you looking at?” Al pulls on my arm.
“I’m looking in the window,” I say. “But I can’t see inside because it’s all dusty.” All I can see is Al’s reflection: the outline of her round cheeks and her curly hair. Her hair is curly because Mummy and Juliet rubbed lotion in her hair. I wish they had rubbed some on mine.
“Where’s Mme Daudiet?” Al asks.
“It’s a secret,” I say.
“I have a secret too,” she says.
“You do not,” I say.
“I do too,” she says.
“Then tell me,” I say.
“I-no-I always go first. It’s your turn,” she says.
“Mme Daudiet is dead,” I say.
“She is?”
“Now what’s your secret?” I ask.
“Juliet owns a wig,” she says.
“Oh, I knew that,” I say. “Let’s go see our tree houses.”
We run across the lawn, which is knee high, past pink and yellow pansies that stream from broken clay dishes, huge spider like poppies, banks of dahlias and roses. I pretend not to hear Juliet calling from the house. We’re barefooted and every few steps one of us treads on a thistle and stops and hops around, holding one foot in the air, shouting “ow, ow,” while the other one laughs. We run across a small wooden bridge through tall grass across another bridge and along a bank lined with silver willows and snowballs and a row of red roses. We stop by our trees. Dark ivy covers my tree. One single beam slips through the leaves. Daddy says that one day they might have to cut my tree down because all the branches and even the trunk are rotting, but that will not happen for a long time. For now, it’s the best kind of treehouse. Al’s tree is healthier than mine, but she wishes she could have mine. Often she helps me instead of working on her own. Our trees are connected to one another. We can climb over a branch and visit without having to touch the ground. We play for a long time.
We swim in the dirty pool. We play our favorite game: banging bottoms. Facing one another, we hold each other’s hands, then quickly, as we drop down into the water, we place our feet flat against each other’s feet. We pull hard on each other’s hands and bang bottoms, our legs going up in the air. We do it over and over again. We laugh, then float onto our backs and stare up at the sky. We leave a trail of water across the white parquet and up the stairs.
Standing on the wood bridge, outside Granny’s room, I don’t need to peer between the curtains to see if she’s still sleeping. I can hear her snoring. She doesn’t snore evenly the way I pretend to snore if Juliet peeks into my room. Granny snorts. The first time I heard her snore was when I was sleeping in Granny’s bed and fell asleep after her instead of before.
I tiptoe into Granny’s room. The smell of roses drifts through the open window. The sound of the river is very loud. It’s almost like being on a ship. On top of Granny’s head Tiger, the marmalade cat, lies. She always settles there while Granny sleeps. It makes me laugh because Granny does not like cats. After lifting the cat off her head, I place one hand flat against Granny’s arm, just above her elbow. Her skin is smooth and soft and slightly damp. It reminds me of the cooked white of an egg. “It’s time,” I whisper into her ear.
“Is it really, dear?” Granny asks. “I feel as if I just laid down.” She throws the sheet back and swings her legs over the side of the bed.
Every evening we climb up the hill. Granny won’t let Ethel come. I’m the only one. I think she gets weary of Ethel following her all the time. Ethel lives with Granny because Granny is very rich. She’s a millionaire. Ethel is poor, but she has better health than Granny. Slowly, we climb up the hill, through an arcade of trees, up stone steps covered with moss. Granny keeps her eyes fixed on the ground and each time we come across a dandelion or a poppy she carefully steps around it.
She pulls on my arm. She bends over and tips the head of a wild yellow flower towards her. She peers inside and inhales deeply and when she looks up her nose is covered with pollen. The gold particles catch the sun. We pass by purple, pink, and yellow dahlias. I pretend not to se
e Al following us, hiding behind one tree after another.
As we approach the top of the hill, Granny begins to whistle. She whistles so well that if you didn’t see her you might think she was a bird whistling behind a bush. She taught me how to whistle and in the beginning when I couldn’t whistle very well she showed me how to whistle using a leaf.
At the top, Granny lets go of my arm. She flops down on the grass, slides up her dress and unhooks her stockings from her garters, and slips them off. They float a few feet away like two small ghosts. She slides one hand down the front of her dress and pulls out her cigarettes and then with the other hand she pulls a silver lighter from her pocket. She lights a cigarette. She breathes in deeply and leans back on one hand.
“I suppose the gardener’s left,” she says. “It doesn’t look as if anyone has been here for months.” Still there are sweet peas. Their delicate mauve flowers flutter with the slightest breeze, and there are small green tomatoes brushed with pink and farther along, tiny pale green and white strawberries. Overhanging us are laburnums. They line one side of the garden; their gold powder dusts the grass beneath them. Al has climbed to the top of the tallest tree. She has wrapped her legs around the trunk and she is swaying back and forth in the wind.
On the other side of the garden patch, above us, cherry trees grow. Their petals lie in circles like pale pink petticoats abandoned in the heat. Birds swoop from the cherry trees to the mulberry trees, back and forth, their cries filling the air.
Granny’s not supposed to smoke. She always tells me not to start. She says it’s a filthy habit, but she’s too old to stop. Life isn’t worth living if she can’t smoke, she says. Her father smoked two packs a day until he died at the age of ninety-five. Sometimes Ethel asks Granny whether she has been smoking, and Granny always replies, “What do you care?” Ethel always says, pursing her lips and lowering her eyes, “Oh Will, you know why. How can you? Shame.”
“You look just like your mother sitting there,” Granny says. “She used to sit like that with her head slightly to one side as if she were listening for something.”
“Do I? Do I look like Mummy? Ethel says I look just like Daddy.”
“You don’t look a bit like him. You’ve got the Bodley features.”
“But I’ve got big feet and hands.” I stick out my hands and Granny puts out her cigarette and takes my hands in hers. Her hands are soft and creamy. Ethel says small feet and hands are a sign of aristocracy. Ethel and Granny have the smallest feet and hands.
“Your eyes—your eyes—are just like mine, almond shaped,” Granny says. I stare into her eyes. They are dark green with only a tiny bit of brown.
Ethel’s not the only one who says I look like my father. He says I look like him too. His nose was just like mine until one morning he woke up and found it hooked. He says it will happen to me one day. Every night I pray it won’t happen, and every morning the first thing I do is run to the mirror and check.
“You’ll see,” Granny says, letting go of my hands to light another cigarette. “You’ll grow into a lovely young woman, and then the two of us will go around the world. We’ll travel on the QEII.”
I picture us on board the Queen Elizabeth the Second. We’re wrapped in blankets lying on chaise longues and drinking consommé.
“Shall we go now?” she asks, putting out her cigarette. She scoops out some earth with one hand, then pats the earth with the other until the stub is hidden completely. She slips on her stockings and her shoes and then I take both her hands and pull her to her feet.
We stand at the top of the hill staring down at the lawn. It dips, levels out, then drops again until it reaches the river. Across the river is the bank of silver willows with our tree houses and beyond it the wild field. The river meanders through the garden, cutting it into islands connected only by narrow wood bridges. The rectangular swimming pool, once turquoise but now green, stands in the middle of the lawn. A stone patio overgrown with moss and black-eyed Susans separates the lawn from the house. The wind blows the grass this way and that way as if it cannot make up its mind.
“We’ll see the roses tomorrow,” Granny says. “It’s almost time for my gin and tonic, and I’m too tired to go any further.”
When I glance back at the tree, Alex is no longer there.
“Look who’s here,” Granny says, looking over her shoulder as she passes into the living room. “Hello, darling.”
“Close the door,” Mummy shouts as she reaches for pieces of paper floating off the coffee table.
“Mummy, Mummy,” I shout, running past Granny.
Mummy turns and clasps me in her arms. “You’d think I hadn’t seen you for a week.” She holds me away from her and stares at me. Her eyes gleam with tears. “You look so pretty tonight. And how are you?” She turns to Granny and hugs her. “You can’t imagine the traffic.” Her hands flutter to the back of her head. Her bun is always coming undone. “Just getting out of Paris took me forty-five minutes. I was hoping to get here before you and when I finally did arrive, the house, except for Juliet, was empty. Ethel has gone to the farm. I don’t know where Al is.”
“She was up in a tree,” I say.
“You do look a little frazzled, darling,” Granny says. “You’ve even done your shirt up wrong.”
“Oh dear, have I?” Mummy says, looking down at her dress. “I’m always doing that, and I’m covered in dog hairs. I do hope Max hasn’t gone off to kill more of the neighbors’ chickens.”
The first time we came here Max went straight to the farm and killed a dozen chickens.
“Perhaps he’ll meet up with Ethel and she’ll be in time to stop him,” I say. Mummy opens her handbag and fumbles inside, then empties it on the coffee table. We stare at the tortoise-shell comb with missing teeth, a crumpled handkerchief, and a string of pearls entangled in scraps of paper. “Oh dear,” she says, “I can’t find it.”
“What?” I say.
“The key,” Mummy says.
“Mummy,” I say and pull on her arm. “Mme Daudiet.”
“Yes, dear, I know,” Mummy says, shoving everything back into her bag. “I wasn’t going to tell you right away because I know how fond you were of her.”
“What did she die of?” I say.
“She had a heart attack.” Mummy avoids looking in my eyes as she puts her hair up and pushes the comb into place.
“Gabriel,” Granny says, “will you do me a favor and run and prepare me a gin and tonic?”
“But it’s too early,” I say, “It’s not seven o’clock.” Ethel and Granny have a rule about not drinking before seven.
“Please,” Mummy says.
I walk slowly to the kitchen. I know they wanted to get rid of me, but I wish Mummy would tell me the truth. I’m not a baby. I stop and stare at myself in the entrance hall mirror. I can’t tell whether I look more like Mummy or Daddy. I push my fringe away from my forehead. It’s not unusually high like my mother’s, but my hair is the same color as hers, brown with reddish flecks and very long. It reaches my waist. Granny used to have hair which she could sit on but one day she had it bobbed, and her father was so furious he would not speak to her for one whole year. Granny says my skin’s like hers. My nose isn’t like Mummy’s either; hers is narrow and ends in a sharp point; mine is broad.
Juliet stands at the sink. She’s washing lettuce. She inspects one leaf at a time. She brings each leaf almost to her nose. “I wasn’t hired to be a cook you know,” she says, without turning around.
I take out the gin and the tonic and prepare Granny’s drink, then Juliet turns and says, “Oh it’s you!”
“Yes,” I say, “I’m making a drink for Granny.”
I walk back slowly, my eyes fixed on the rim of the glass. Every time I walk faster it spills onto the stone floor. When I walk back into the living room, Granny and Mummy are sitting side by side on the blue couch. Granny is holding one of Mummy’s hands and stroking it.
“Did Granny tell you?” I ask.
“We almost had an accident. Juliet screamed ‘Here comes the turn off’ and then Luis swerved across the road and we almost hit a car and then we almost went into a telephone pole and then Ethel became hysterical.”
“I heard that,” Ethel calls from the entrance, walking into the living room with a basket filled with eggs. “You’re exaggerating as usual, Gabriel.”
“She probably gets that from me,” Mummy says. “Where’s Alex? Isn’t she with you?”
“She’s playing with the gravel,” Ethel says.
“Is Daddy coming soon?” I say.
“Yes,” Mummy says, letting Granny’s hand drop. “Hopefully, in time for dinner.”
“Come here,” Granny says, and then she whispers in my ear. “Why don’t you run and cut some flowers for your mother’s room?”
“All right,” I say.
We’re sitting in the living room waiting for Daddy. The room is filled with shadows, and the face of the girl in the painting which hangs above the fireplace is hidden. I try to remember whether her eyes are green or brown. Sometimes, we have a fire, even in the summer because the nights are cool, but tonight we don’t because there’s no chopped wood. Juliet’s shadow flickers as she leans towards the yellow lamp. She’s darning one of my socks. She gets very angry because we walk around the house in our socks. She says we want her to spend all day mending. I saw her put three fingers through the hole of one of my blue socks. She looked over her shoulder and then threw my sock into the rubbish bin.
Ethel and Granny are knitting handbags out of beads. The beads catch the last of the light and are reflected onto the floor. Al and I love to help string the beads on the wool. We love to hide the beads in our pockets and our shoes or we use them to make necklaces for our dolls.
Granny and Ethel are sitting opposite each other, and sometimes it seems as if they’re imitating one another because their needles go in and out at the same time. They stop only to take a sip from their gin and tonics. I like to watch them knitting because their eyes become dreamy as if they’re thinking of Africa. Perhaps they’re thinking of elephants slowly ambling through the bush. Perhaps Granny is thinking of the times she used to take the Victoria into town and buy boxes and boxes of pastries instead of shoes. When my father comes, they’ll have to stop. He doesn’t like talking to them while they’re knitting. He doesn’t like the sound of needles clicking.
