by Sasha Troyan
Mummy, Ethel, and I watch Luis load the suitcases into the trunk. The doctor helps him tie the last two suitcases on top of the car. Aunt Ethel climbs into the front seat. I watch her moving her mint round and round in her mouth, faster and faster. Luis pulls out a cap. It’s blue with gold trim.
“Where did you get that?” Aunt Ethel asks.
“I bought it in Paris. A special shop.”
“It looks perfectly ridiculous,” she says.
“Oh Ethel,” mother says.
“You’re to take it off immediately,” Ethel says.
Luis takes it off, but holds it in his hands as if reluctant to put it down again.
“If he wants to wear it—” Mummy says.
“I won’t drive with him wearing that ridiculous cap,” she says.
“I’m so sorry, Luis,” mother says.
“It’s all right. Miss Ethel upset today. I wear it tomorrow.”
The doctor, mother, and Al and I laugh.
“I’ll see you in a few weeks,” mother says, leaning into the car.
The gold car starts up and we watch it slowly drive across the gravel yard, through the white gate and up the hill. It disappears over the top.
Ethel left me Granny’s hat, but sitting on top of the chest of drawers in the shade it looks faded and old and hardly like hers. A corset hangs over a chair, the white elastics twisting in the breeze. I look through the drawers and shelves. They’re empty, not a thing is left, but then I find, slipped beneath the pale blue paper lining of one of the drawers, a handkerchief with a trace of pink lipstick in its corner and I remember the way Granny used to curl her upper lip and rub her front teeth with her handkerchief.
It’s Al’s idea. We’ve always wanted to see what it’s like but we’ve never dared to before. We’re going under the house, beneath Granny’s room, where there used to be a wheel for the mill. We’re standing in the river. We’re wearing boots, but the water is so high that water has got in them. I can feel stones and even snails under my feet. I can see to the other side of the house, but I don’t feel like walking under. I’m afraid I’ll lose my footing and get swept under. The ceiling has gray bugs and cobwebs. Al’s not afraid. She smiles at me, then lets herself drop. She floats down. I call to her, but she doesn’t hear me. She’s swept all the way to the other side. I look up. Juliet’s leaning out her window. She’s looking straight at me, but she doesn’t say anything. I duck under. The current is quite strong. I take a step, then another. Suddenly the floor dips and I lose my footing. I swallow water. I’m going to suffocate. I feel a muskrat brush my leg. I’m going to drown. I kick my legs and arms as hard as I can, then I let myself float. I drift out of the passage and the sun is warm and the red poppies so red it’s hard to look at them.
Al is sitting on the grass, struggling to take off her boots. I climb out and walk up and down the bank, making a squelching noise with my boots. I keep expecting Juliet to step out of the house. I picture her running out with her hair standing on end, but she doesn’t.
Twenty
The garden is filled with shadows. At this hour, five o’clock, the shadows are of the branches of the trees, not of the leaves or trunks. We’re lying in the hammock with Mummy. We’re covered with tiny specks of white from the dandelions we have been blowing. “He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not,” Al says. I thought you could only play that game with the petals of flowers. But Mummy says you can play it with anything. Juliet can tell you the first letter of the name of the person you are going to marry with the peel of an orange. She peels the orange from the top with a knife and then goes round and round and whatever shape the peel comes out is the first letter of your future husband.
“Girls,” Mummy says, taking our hands. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
I look up through the leaves at the sky. It’s still blue, but the air is cooler. The evening is almost here.
“We know,” I say.
“Xavier has asked me to marry him,” Mummy says. She lifts our hands and the gold bracelets which used to belong to Granny jingle. They catch the sun throwing light onto the grass. Mummy lets her hands drop and hugs us both tightly. Her hair brushes my cheek and I remember how Daddy used to pull it over his head and say he wished she could give him some.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“I told him I wanted to talk to you girls first.”
“Is Juliet going to stay with us?” Al asks.
“I haven’t really thought about it. But yes, I expect so, at least at first. Certainly, she’ll need to look after you while I’m away in South Africa.”
“Are we going to have to change apartments?” I ask.
“We haven’t decided yet. It might be more convenient to move into Xavier’s apartment. On the other hand, it’s a bit far from your school.”
“Will we have to change schools?” Al asks.
“Would you like to?”
“No,” I answer.
“Well, we’ll see. This September, anyway, you’ll be going back to your schools.”
“How long will you be in S.A.?” I ask.
“It all depends on how much Ethel needs me. It’s such a shame she refuses to fly. We would have been over there by now. She should be getting on board the QEII in an hour or so.”
In the distance we can hear the hunters. They have someone beat the fields so that the pheasants will fly up and then they shoot them. Granny used to say the poor birds don’t have much of a chance.
“Did I tell you about the time Granny brought us to America?” Mummy says.
“No,” I say, though she has told us many times.
“We kept reading our books and poor Granny kept saying, but look outside, look at those trees. Look at that landscape.”
As if he had been waiting for Mummy to tell us, the doctor appears from around the house. He walks with quick tiny steps across the lawn over to the hammock. He helps Mummy down. We watch them kiss on the mouth. He holds her very tight as if he’s afraid she’ll disappear. He takes her hand and Mum takes Al’s and he reaches out to take mine, but I run ahead. I run and run through the grass until I reach the house. I climb up onto the window sill beneath Juliet’s bedroom and I hoist myself up so that I’m peering into her bedroom. She’s fast asleep on the floor again. She’s holding her calendar rolled up in one hand as if she had been trying to swat a fly or a wasp before falling asleep.
When I peer through the living room window, Mummy and the doctor are sitting on the couch. Al is by their feet, with her head resting on Max. “We’ll have to have the grass mowed,” the doctor says, “before we put the house on the market.”
“Yes,” Mummy says. “I haven’t told the children yet.”
“There’s no rush. It won’t happen for a few months yet.”
“You know I don’t really care,” Mummy says.
“I don’t think I could live with someone whose main concern was interior decorating.”
I tiptoe into the living room and lie beside Al and rest my head on Max. I lipsing to Al that the house is going to be sold. We’re going to be orphans. They’re going to send us to live in one of the public housing apartment buildings and we’ll have nothing to eat, except for water and bread.
Twenty-One
Al and I are trying to roll up the carpet, but Max keeps sitting on it so we have to stop and shoo him away. There are boxes everywhere. All the boxes are numbered. The number one boxes are going across the street to the doctor’s house. The number two boxes are going to our apartment in Paris. The doctor is going to move in with us. The number three boxes are going to Daddy’s apartment. We keep forgetting to mark them so we have to open them to figure out where they belong. All the slipcovers and curtains have been sent to the dry cleaners. The house looks naked, like an old lady. In place of the paintings, there are white squares or rectangles. The only painting nobody wanted is of the little girl whose head is too big for her body. It’s standing in one corner of the living room
.
Juliet’s seated in the blue and white chair. She has her legs stretched before her. Her feet are bare and she reaches down and massages her bunions. Al calls them onions. It’s a good name.
“I think I’m going to have the operation after all,” she says.
“What operation?” Al asks.
“To have my bunions removed.”
“It must be so painful,” I say. “I don’t think I would if I were you.”
“The problem is that you have to be able to put up your feet for at least a few weeks. Now, when am I going to be able to do that?”
“Well, I’m sure you could take a few weeks off, Juliet,” Mummy says, as she passes through the living room, carrying a big box filled with Granny’s romance novels.
“What are you doing with those?” I ask.
“Well,” Mummy says. “I was thinking of giving them away.”
“Oh no, you can’t.”
“But you’ve read all of them.”
“I want to read them again. Besides, they’re in English. No one will want them anyway.”
“All right,” Mummy says, passing the box over to me.
“I suppose I should be getting up,” Juliet says. “They’re still those drawers in the kitchen.”
“Please, Juliet,” Mummy says. “If you’re not feeling up to it, do take a rest. You can even have the day off if you want.”
“No, no,” Juliet says. She gets up slowly. We watch her walk through the living room, one hand pressed to her lower back. She wanders into the entrance hall. Soon we hear a terrific clatter of dishes, the sound of glass broken.
“Oh dear,” Mummy says. “I wish she wouldn’t help. She’s usually so efficient, but our packing seems to have upset her.”
“It’s not just that,” I say.
“What is it?” Mummy says.
“Nothing,” I say.
“She says she’s not wanted,” Al says.
“Oh dear. The problem is that Xavier and I have been talking about whether or not we should keep her so I don’t want to say anything too misleading—”
More pots and pans are slammed in the kitchen. A door is closed. Mummy says she’s going upstairs to finish the attic.
Al and I stare through the glass door at the grass which has grown so tall, it no longer looks like a lawn. It reminds me of a forest. Wild flowers and thistles have grown and the grass is yellow and coarse and I can no longer run my fingers through the blades. Even the path Daddy mowed has grown, but it still hasn’t caught up with the rest and looks strange stopping halfway.
We have to be careful walking across the lawn now because snakes can easily hide in the tall grass. Soon the lawn will look like the wild field at the end of the garden. The doctor tried to mow it, but he almost fell into the river. He’s gone back to Paris until Mum returns from South Africa.
Then we hear Mummy call. “Gabriel, Al. Come and tell me if you still want these.” We walk slowly through the living room up the back stairs, through our room to the attic. Mummy holds up two enormous baby dolls: one has white hair, the other yellow hair. Their white lacy dresses have mold. “Yes,” we say. We take the dolls outside and place them inside the wheelbarrow and then we wheel it across the lawn as fast as we can and tip the dolls into the water. At first they float. The one with the gold hair flips onto her face, while the other one looks up at the sky; then they get caught in weeds. We watch them slowly fill with water and sink. Al wants to know if the fish will eat them. I say, yes.
Twenty-Two
“I wish I didn’t have to go,” Mummy says, leaning out the window of her gray Alpha Romeo, “and leave you girls.”
I stare down at my shoes. The trees and the sky are reflected in the black patent leather. I touch Granny’s pearls around my neck. I keep running my fingers over them, again and again.
“Why can’t we go with you?” Al asks, jumping up.
“Darling, it’s not going to be much fun, and what would you do while I was helping Ethel? To tell you the truth, I’m rather dreading it. But I’ll be back very soon, and I’ll call every day.”
“I’ll take good care of them,” Juliet says. She’s not wearing make-up today and her face looks unusually pale, as if she has no eyelashes.
“Fart face,” I lipsing to Al.
“Fart face,” she lipsings.
Mummy starts up the car, but it makes a funny noise and the engine dies and I think she won’t be able to leave. She tries it again and still she can’t start it up. I don’t want to hope but I can’t help hoping. She tries it once more, the engine runs, and we watch the car slowly cross the gravel, roll through the white gate and up the hill. It feels as if I’m sinking deeper and deeper into water, as if my feet will never touch the floor.
I keep expecting the car to reappear at the top of the hill. I can’t believe she’s really gone. I run and run up the hill. I don’t listen to Juliet calling. When I reach the top, I stare down the long white road that cuts through the yellow fields. I expect the car to reappear after the dip, but it doesn’t. There isn’t even a cloud of dust and the thickets are still.
“What shall we do now?” Juliet asks, when I get down to the house. She places one hand on Al’s shoulder and the other on mine. Her hand is broad and heavy, so different from Mummy’s.
“Nothing,” I answer and twist away. I duck under her arm and step into the house. The entrance hall is cool and dark. Mummy’s perfume still lingers in the air. The whitewashed wall is reflected in the mirror. For a second, I don’t recognize myself. My legs and arms are too long, my feet too big. My father’s prediction has come true. I think I can see a dip in my nose. I screw my face up into the ugliest expression.
“Very attractive,” Juliet says, standing beside me. “Let’s see if I can do a better one.” She twists her mouth to one side, closes one eye, then presses her finger to the tip of her nose. “We’re going to have a fabulous day.” She teases her hair with the tips of her fingers.
“What about me?” Al asks. “Look at me.”
“You look like a hamster,” Juliet says.
I slip away. The house is so empty it feels as if the walls are made of paper and not of stone, as if the slightest breeze will make it fly up into the air. In the living room the blue velvet curtains have been removed. There’s no carpet, just the white-and-black tiled floor. Dust covers the furniture. I stroke the top of the mahogany chest, then sit down on the sofa and stare at the empty space above the mantelpiece where the painting used to be with the little girl with the grown-up face.
Juliet stands in the doorway with one hand pressed to her lower back. Al sits next to me.
“I just need a bit of a lie-down, girls,” Juliet says. “And then we’ll do something really fun. Entertain yourselves, but don’t get into trouble.”
We watch her walk across the living room. I listen to her slow heavy footsteps up the back stairs. Her door closes with a bang. We continue to sit for a few minutes; then it’s so quiet I jump up and run from room to room. We stop in Ethel’s room and stare through the glass door at the weeping willow. It bends so low that the tips of its branches touch the grass like an old lady with long hair leaning over to tie her shoe. Al stands on Ethel’s bed and jumps up and down, making the bed creak and then the two of us jump, holding hands to keep our balance. We jump and jump. I jump higher and higher. I don’t care if I fall. I hear the springs creaking. We can feel them beneath our bare feet. We laugh at the thought of what Ethel would say if she could see us. We laugh and laugh until tears stream down our faces and I can’t tell if Al is laughing or crying.
I tell Al not to worry. If Mum doesn’t come back, we’ll run away and find her. I asked Mum to give me her address so that I could write to her, but really I wanted it in case she doesn’t come back. She packed all her clothes and all her toiletries. She even took the orange dress she never wears.
We climb up to the attic to play our favorite game one last time. We walk across the beam, placing one foot in front
of the other, toes touching heel, our arms outstretched, our shadows slanting the same way. We imagine that there are not two of us, but four. We give names to the others, our shadows, our names backwards, hers is Xela mine is Lierbag. Then we try to stand so close together we have only one shadow, and we manage to but it’s a strange-looking one, wide and different from either mine or hers, bulky, like an old lady carrying many bags. We hold each other very tight, then we make the game more difficult by trying to hop across the beam, first on one foot, then the other and then we see who can run across it faster. We play for a long time, then we stare at the drawings of sailboats. They’re done in red ink and cover one whole wall. We wonder who drew them and wish we had a sailboat instead of a canoe. Tonight we’re going down the river.
When we return to Juliet’s room, she’s not in her bed. There are bottles lying on the floor. One is overturned. “Juliet has peepeed,” Al says. Puzzle pieces are strewn across the floor. Her clothes are piled in one corner, her books stacked in another. One whole section of the green cloth covering the wall has come undone and hangs like a sail. We cannot find her suitcase.
For a moment, we think she’s gone, but then we hear water coming from the other side of the house. Juliet’s in Mummy’s bathroom. I hear her singing, “All I want is a room somewhere far away from the cold night air,” her favorite song from her favorite movie, My Fair Lady. She’s seen it six times. I pretended to have a stomachache the last time she wanted to go because she always embarrasses me by singing out loud all the songs. She says she likes the movie even though Julie Andrews should have played the part. I knock on the bathroom door. “We’re hungry.”
“I’ll only be a minute,” she says.
I knock again. “We’re hungry.”
“We’re hungry. We’re hungry.” Al and I shout, banging on the door louder and louder.
I don’t like Juliet using Mummy’s bathroom, but I don’t say anything when she comes out with her hair wrapped in a towel like a turban. I expect her to scold us, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s wearing a red terry cloth robe that looks like one my father owned. Her cheeks are flushed, and she doesn’t look tired anymore. “Follow me,” she says and claps her hands in the air as if she held a tambourine. “We’re going to have a fabulous time together. We’ll have a feast. There’s brie, boursin, Saint Andre. Three baguettes. Some left over hashi parmentier. You like that, don’t you? What else? I’ve got wine, champagne, sponge cake. No more dieting for me. I’m tired of dieting and anyway I only get fatter. Perhaps if I eat more, I’ll lose weight.” We follow her downstairs, through the living room and up our stairs. She leaves wet footsteps on the wood floor. All the time she continues to sing, “All I want is a room somewhere.” She steps between the bottles and books in her room as if they weren’t there. She sorts through her dresses. “Al, go get my make-up case. Gabriel, Kleenexes. I think there’re some in your mother’s bathroom.”
