by Sasha Troyan
Mummy’s pretending to read The Brothers Karamazov. I know she’s pretending because she has not turned a page.
“Read to us, Mummy,” I say. Mummy reads from The Four March Sisters. My sister is too little to understand. She sits by Mummy’s feet playing with her doll. Mummy is very sensitive. She cries during passages I don’t find so sad. We take turns reading. She gets upset because I’m stupid. I mispronounce words. I have never learned how to read English, because we moved from America to France when I was five. I know how to read only French. She tells me how to pronounce a word and the next paragraph when I see the word again I’ve forgotten how to pronounce it. Sometimes I wish and wish for the word not to come up again, and for a few pages it doesn’t, but then, just when I’ve forgotten all about it, it reappears. Once when I was very little and she was reading The Secret Garden she asked me the name of the character she was reading and I couldn’t tell her and she closed the book and looked sad, but I was listening to the sound of her voice. Sometimes the words made no sense. Sometimes it was like a river and I was looking at the picture in the book and wondering whether I could tame a bird or a fox and have him for a friend. I was looking at the boats on the bed and imagining that they were floating off the bedspread and into the air.
After we have read for a while, Al pulls on Mummy’s skirt. “Tell me a story,” she says. Mummy tells the best stories, and they all have happy endings. She gives the characters in her stories our names. “Once upon a time,” she says, “there were two little girls called Al and Gabriel who woke up one night to find that they had gossamer wings.” She has to explain what gossamer is to Al. “They flew up through the sky and the stars.” Mummy tells the best story, but when we get to the end she says she feels a bit tired.
“Would you mind if I finish off the story tomorrow?” she says.
“Yes,” we say, “finish it now.”
“Well,” she says, “I’ve got myself into such a spot I can’t think of an ending. Perhaps you can help me.”
“No,” I say, “we want your ending.”
“Very well then,” she says, “but don’t complain if you don’t like it. The next morning Gabriel and Alex awaken and discover that they’ve lost their magical powers. They can no longer fly the way they used to and they’ll have to stay on this earth forever.”
“Oh no,” I say, “that’s not fair, that’s a dreadful ending.”
“We don’t want that ending,” Alex says, and bursts into tears.
“I’m sorry,” Mummy says. “It’s only a story, Alex.” She picks Al up and places her on her lap and brushes her hair away from her forehead.
“Please make up another one,” I say.
“Now, don’t be difficult, Gabriel,” Mummy says, getting up. We watch her walk up the stairs and soon the sound of her piano fills the living room. It’s the slow sad movement of a Mendelssohn Trio.
I sit on the floor with Alex and we play dolls, but I can’t really concentrate. I keep listening, but all I hear is the sound of the piano, the sound of clicking needles, and the river rushing beneath the house.
At seven o’clock Daddy’s still not here, and Juliet says the roast beef is going to be completely overcooked. She runs to the kitchen to turn off the oven.
At eight o’clock Al has fallen asleep on the floor. Granny says, “I’ve had enough. Let’s eat. Come help me,” and I take her arm and we go into the dining room.
We have dinner in silence because everyone is tired and because we’re all listening for the sound of tires crunching gravel. I count the cars passing our house. The front lights shine onto the white wall of the dining room. Mummy moves her food from one side of her plate to the other. Granny eats bread. She eats only the crust. She leaves the doughy part by her plate, and I make little balls of it and pop them into my mouth.
The telephone rings while we’re changing plates for dessert. Mummy runs to the telephone. We strain to hear, but there’s only the sound of the river, of Ethel sipping her wine, and of Granny’s foot tapping against one of the table’s legs.
When Mummy comes running back into the dining room, she doesn’t say anything. She sits down and, without replacing her napkin, begins eating the melted ice cream very fast.
“Was it Daddy?” Alex says.
“Oh no,” Mummy says. She puts down her spoon and plays with her napkin, folding it and then unfolding it. “Just a friend.”
“Does your friend know when Daddy’s coming back?” Al says.
“Of course not, my lamb, how would they know?” Mummy says. “Perhaps he’ll come tomorrow.”
Two
A low whistle awakens me. I look over at the window, but there’s no bird, just a rectangle of gray sky. I move closer to Al who’s asleep, her white blanket with the blue flowers pressed to her nose. Even though I know I’m too old to suck my thumb, I take a corner of her blanket and press it to my nose and suck my thumb.
Usually Daddy awakens me. Every morning he listens to music. He listens to the same piece over and over again. He plays it very loudly. Ethel gets very annoyed. She says she doesn’t mind getting up early, what distresses her is Daddy’s lack of consideration.
But today the house is silent. There’s only the sound of Granny opening or shutting a drawer, the floorboards creaking and the river rushing beneath the house. I hear again a low whistle but much shorter, followed by another two.
I climb out of Al’s bunk bed, run down the stairs through the living room where the blue velvet curtains are still drawn, our dolls and books scattered across the carpet and the black and white tiled floor. I peer into the entrance.
“Good morning,” Granny says. She turns from the mirror where she is fixing the cuffs of her sleeves. She’s wearing my favorite dress of hers, a mauve dress with a pleated skirt. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” I say, staring over her shoulder into the mirror at the reflection of the coat rack. My father’s blue jacket and his brown felt are not there. I wonder if my father’s wearing his brown felt hat now. I like to watch him put it on. First, he positions it to one side, then to the other and then, when it’s exactly right, he smiles. Granny says he wears it to hide his bald spot.
“Shall we go then?” she says. “It’s still early, just five, but this way we’ll have plenty of time before the sun rises. Aren’t you going to wear shoes?”
“No,” I say, looking down at my bare feet. “But—I’m not ready. Can you wait for me?”
“Very well,” she says, picking up her flower basket, “But don’t make me wait too long. I’ll be out front.”
I run up the stairs to my parents’ room. Through the half open door, I can see one corner of their bed and the vase I filled with red roses yesterday. I think I can smell Daddy’s cigarettes.
Slowly, I open the door, revealing more of the bed, of the unwrinkled cover, the smooth pillows. The room is so still that at first I think I’m alone.
Mummy’s sitting in a chair, leaning forward with her elbows resting on her knees and her chin on her folded hands. She’s staring out the window at the white road going up the hill. She’s wearing the same shirt and khaki skirt as yesterday. Max is snoring by her feet. I tiptoe across the thick gold rug past piles of unfolded clothes.
“Mummy,” I say, placing one hand on her shoulder.
“Ooh,” she says, glancing over her shoulder and placing one hand over mine. “You startled me.” With the back of the other hand she wipes her eyes quickly and then leans over and runs her hand along Max’s short dark brown hair, “You didn’t startle him. How did you sleep, my lamb? I’m completely exhausted. I’ve been dusting and cleaning and then I pulled everything out of the cupboards. I decided it was time to get rid of all these clothes I never wear. They’re too big for me now, anyway.”
“Could I have them?” I say.
“Whatever for, darling? They would be much too big for you and by the time you’re old enough to wear them I promise I’ll buy you some that are much nicer than these. I could
kill myself for emptying all of the cupboards. Why couldn’t I start with one? I was going to ask you to help me, but I think I’d better lie down and rest. The place looks worse.”
“It doesn’t look that bad,” I say. “But you’ve got cobwebs in your hair, Mummy.” I brush them away.
“I’m not surprised. It’s just as well he’s not here.”
“When’s Daddy coming?” I say.
“I don’t know,” Mummy says.
“Is he coming in the morning or the afternoon?”
“I don’t know darling, really, I don’t. Aren’t you going for your usual walk with Granny? Isn’t she waiting for you? “Atchew Atchew.” I’ve got dreadful hayfever. Would you mind taking those flowers on your way down?”
“But I put them there for you. Don’t you like them?”
“Of course I do. They’re lovely. They’re my favorite color. I’m so sorry, darling. What a dreadful mother you have! Always saying the wrong thing. I thought it might be the roses making my eyes water. Leave them. Now that they’re not right by my bed, I should be all right. I’ll see you later, my little friend.”
Mummy always calls me her little friend because I’m the only one she can talk to. My sister is too little to understand. My mother says I’m more mature than she was at twenty.
Roses come into sight one by one as we walk along the white fence. Every few steps I stop to untangle the wet hem of my nightdress and Granny rushes on. I like walking barefooted, feeling the wet grass and earth between my toes. Granny’s also walking barefooted. She left her shoes by the road. She takes only three or four quick steps before she stops, and I catch up with her and whisper the name of the rosebush in her ear. Each rosebush has a story, like a person, and Granny tells me how this one was married to this rose, how this other one broke off her engagement with this one, and where each rose is from. Usually I listen to every word she says. I want to remember everything for the next morning so that I can impress her with my memory, but today I want only to ask her where my father is even though I know that as soon as I ask, her hand will tighten on the basket she carries and she will frown, her wrinkles gathering round her lips.
Sometimes, if I linger too long to stare at drops of dew gliding down a stem or hanging from a petal, when I wait and wait for a drop of dew to detach itself from its petal, Granny disappears completely into the mist and all I can hear are her bracelets jingling and the sound of scissors clicking. Sometimes, we catch petals falling from a rose spotting the grass with pink, white, or red.
We don’t talk. Granny’s listening for larks. They seem to be following us. I listen for them too, but over their songs I hope to hear the sound of my father’s car. His car makes a different noise from anyone’s. I would recognize it anywhere. Sometimes, I hear a fluttering of wings, but when I turn there is only the movement of a branch swinging back into place. Granny says one rarely sees larks because they’re brown and blend in with the thickets. They’re not very good-looking birds; it’s their flight and their song which is worth waiting for. We pass the Clair Matin, Danse du Feu, Danse des Sylphes, and the ones I always forget the name of, Ghislaine de Feligonde. There are more roses this year than ever before; only the white fence with its peeling paint has suffered from the gardener’s absence. Granny cuts one or two roses from each rosebush. She cuts the stems as long as she can.
Once when I was very little and did not know about flowers, I cut off the heads of all the roses along the fence. I placed them in the skirt of my dress and then I ran to my mother and said, “Close your eyes. I have a surprise for you,” and when she opened her eyes, I let go of my skirt and the roses came tumbling down onto the floor and Mummy burst into tears.
Granny told me she, herself, was very naughty, even naughtier than I. She used to take her sisters’ dolls and bury them in the garden. She would hang by her legs from the branch of a tree and refuse to come down until her sisters had promised to give her their pocket money. She was very fat, so fat she said she could hardly walk through the doorway. Then she went on a diet and she became very beautiful and all the boys went running after her, and she had to pass some on to Ethel who wasn’t so pretty. Granny was very lazy. She used to lie in bed eating pastries instead of going to school.
My father says the only reason I’m not first in my class is because I’m lazy, but I think I’m stupid. He doesn’t understand because he used to be first in his class. My best friend Catherine is also a very poor student, and we both copy off each other’s tests and as we’re always both wrong they can’t tell whose is whose.
“Let’s hurry,” I say, pulling on Granny’s arm.
“Whatever for?” Granny asks. “I’m too old to hurry.”
“Perhaps Daddy’s here.” I look over my shoulder. The mist has shifted, revealing the lower part of the willow tree, but concealing its middle so that now it appears to be cut in two, the top part unrelated to the bottom.
“Perhaps,” she says, “but it won’t hurt him to wait for a minute while you walk back with me.”
We don’t return along the white fence. We walk through the orchard, along the river, which appears and then disappears beneath clouds of mist. And then I see, floating down the river, in and out of bands of mist, my father’s brown felt hat. It swirls round and round, not once does it get caught in the reeds.
“Look, look!” I let go of Granny’s arm and run across the grass.
“What?” Granny says. “Stop hurrying me. I’m getting all out of breath. What did you see?”
“Nothing,” I say. I must have imagined seeing my father’s hat. How could it be floating down the river?
The mist turns pink, and the sun’s first rays streak the lawn gold. At last we reach the house and step into the kitchen where we leave the roses to soak in the kitchen sink. Granny is going to lie on her bed, and I’m supposed to go upstairs and climb into mine, but I don’t.
Instead, I tiptoe out of the house, across the gravel, past my mother’s gray car. The sharp stones cut into the soles of my feet. I push open the heavy wooden door and step into the garage.
There’s a space where my father’s car usually stands.
Perhaps once, when there were haystacks and the door was left open, the barn was a sunny, cheerful place, but now it’s cold and dark. In one window, a piece of cardboard replaces a glass pane. Another window is streaked with mud. I shiver and cross my arms. I turn to leave but hear a rustle, coming from the other side of the garage where tools are kept. Perhaps Tiger has hidden her litter in one of the cardboard boxes. I tiptoe across to the other side. Nothing appears to have changed, neither the uneven dirt floor, nor the worktable covered in dust. One soiled yellow glove hangs from a nail: a rake and shovel stand against one wall. Only a piece of brown paper tucked beneath a cardboard box flutters, as if something had just brushed against it, but perhaps it’s only the draft slipping beneath the door. I listen to the mournful cries of doves. At first it sounds as if they’re outside, but then I think I can hear their wings flapping above. I look up at the beams where garlic usually hangs and almost cry out; hanging across the laundry line are the skins of some kind of animal. They’re too big to be rats, maybe they’re cats, but their fur doesn’t look like cat hair. Their eyes glint in the dark—one is going to jump out at me. I rush to the door and turn the handle but it won’t open; it’s locked. I run to the other side of the garage, through the door, and across the gravel. I run into the house as fast as I can.
“Juliet, I saw some rats,” I say.
“Rats,” Juliet says, standing in her brassiere and underwear. She does not stop pulling on her pantyhose to look up at me.
“Yes, hanging on a clothesline in the garage.”
“How very odd. I wonder what they’re doing there?” She hops around the room, lifting one knee, then the other. She seems to be dancing to an imaginary tune and each time her heel comes down particles of dust float up into the air and catch the sun. She weaves in and out of piles of books and clothes. She passes o
pen windows. Juliet believes in fresh air. She stops only when her pantyhose are pulled on without a single wrinkle.
“I saw their eyes gleaming in the dark,” I say. The image of them comes back to me and I close my eyes.
“How could skinned rats have eyes?” she says. “He must have cut off their heads.”
“Who?” I ask.
“The gardener,” she says, “Who else could it be? I saw him hanging them up last summer.”
“But the gardener’s away,” I say.
“Well,” Juliet says, “he’s supposed to be, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he were still lurking around. Just last night I thought I saw a face peering into my window.”
“But what are they?” I say.
“They’re muskrats. They live in water. Come to think of it, I suppose it could have been your father.” “Not Daddy. He would never—”
“Of course he didn’t string them up. He left that to the gardener, but he could have shot them. They have to get rid of them. I don’t know why you’re getting so upset. It’s not as if I told you that your father drowned kittens.”
“Do they drown kittens?” I say.
“Of course. What did you think they did with the rest after you’d chosen the one you wanted?”
“You’re lying, Juliet,” I say and burst into tears, remembering the way Mme Daudiet would bring them in a basket, six beautiful kittens from which we could choose only one.
“Very well,” she says, “I’m lying. But your father did shoot muskrats last summer.”
“He couldn’t have this summer,” I say. “Because he isn’t here. He’s in Brussels now.” I follow her into the bathroom. “Do you know what Brussels is like?” I say.
