Broken Soup

by Jenny Valentine

  “Seen it,” she said.

  “No you haven’t,” I said. “This isn’t one of Mum’s. It’s a new one.”

  “Yes, it’s under your bed and I have,” she said, and then she realized she shouldn’t have seen it and made this little um noise. Her eyes went all wide and she looked away.

  “You’re not supposed to go in other people’s rooms without asking. When have you been in my room?”

  “When you were in Jack’s,” she said, like she’d prepared that one, tested it for holes, and found it watertight.

  We were quiet for a minute while I swung between letting her off and getting a lock for my door. Then Stroma said, “There’s definitely a bit of him in it, I think.”

  “In the picture you broke into my room to see?”

  “Yes. It’s a good one.”

  “Bee took it,” I said, and Stroma went “Huh?” and lost pace for a step or two. “You heard me. Bee took it.”

  “Your Bee? My Bee? That Bee?”

  “Jack’s Bee,” I said. We sounded like one of her Dr. Seuss books.

  There was that “Huh?” again.

  “Jack and Bee were together,” I said. “Boyfriend and girlfriend.”

  “Like you and Harper?”

  “No, not like me and Harper. We’re friends. We’re not anything else, not really.”

  “Not yet,” Stroma said, and I thought, God, she’s too knowing for her own good, too damn precocious. I pushed her a little, not hard, in a “shut up” kind of way.

  “How do you know about Bee?” she said.

  “I just know.”

  “Well, how? Did she tell you?”

  “Kind of. I found out.”

  “How?”

  “I found a postcard from Jack to Bee. I asked her.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In a book in her room,” I said.

  “Hah!”

  “Oh, OK, Stroma, the room thing doesn’t matter. It’s not exactly the issue here.”

  “What about letters?” Stroma said. “Would they be important? Would it be OK to find them in a room that isn’t yours?”

  “Letters?”

  “Yep. Letters to Jack. I can’t hardly read them, though. It’s all scraggly writing and scraps and some of them are teeny.”

  “Where?” I said. “In Bee’s room?”

  She wasn’t listening. “Do you write letters to Jack? Do you think you can still read when you’re dead?”

  “Stroma!” I said. “You are doing my head in. What letters?”

  “The ones in Jack’s floorboard. Do you know about that?”

  I did know. It was the place he hid his weed, the place Mum never found. He showed me once. I hadn’t thought to look in it, no idea why, it just hadn’t occurred to me. Maybe because I was the complete idiot.

  “Am I in trouble?” Stroma said.

  “Course not.”

  “Mrs. Hall says there are bits of Jack everywhere, like dust. She said letters were a good idea and so did one of her leaflets.”

  “Have you told anyone else about them? Have you told Mum and Dad?”

  “Duh!” Stroma said, which I took to mean she could tell them she was marrying a Martian and moving to the moon and they wouldn’t hear her. She had a point.

  Dad was waiting outside when we got home. He said, “Your mother is in, but she’s not answering the door.”

  I asked if he was sure because I thought she was going out that morning, and I tried to look all wide-eyed and innocent while he studied me for signs of lying.

  “I can hear the TV,” he said.

  Stroma said, “I left it on for the fish.” She had two goldfish called Bigs and Orange that she hadn’t paid the slightest bit of attention to since the day she got them. I’d almost forgotten they existed and I thought she had too.

  The lie worked on Dad. I was pretty alarmed at the seamless way she handled it. He ruffled her hair and picked her up in a fireman’s lift and walked her to the car. Halfway down the path he said, “Sure you won’t come, Rowan?”

  “No thanks. I’ve got homework.”

  He’d already turned away from me and he waved with the back of his hand while Stroma looked at me from down by his trouser pockets, upside down and grinning.

  I let myself in the house and checked where Mum was. The TV was on pretty loud, but she wasn’t in there so I turned it off. I found her in the bath with the door open, steam filling up the hallway, flowering in the light.

  “Dad was knocking,” I said.

  “Didn’t hear him,” she told me, turning on the hot tap with her foot.

  I wondered how long this could go on before everything came apart and Dad found out, because the lies weren’t going to keep on working forever.

  I pulled the door shut because I didn’t want Mum to see me going into Jack’s room. I went straight to the floorboard, which was under his bed near the back right leg, against the wall. I crawled in on my stomach. Most of me stuck out and I had to listen for sounds of Mum getting out of the bath so she wouldn’t catch me.

  The broken board was about thirty centimeters long. I had to pry up one end of it with my fingernails and press down hard on the other with my elbow. When the board sprang up, it nearly caught my head between itself and the bedsprings. I felt around with my left hand and found a wedge of papers and a bag of weed I thought maybe I should give to Carl. Then I wriggled back out of there and ran down the stairs to my room before Mum was out of the water.

  There were three letters from Stroma on matching paper weighed down with stickers. Everything was fairies and “make a wish…,” nothing darker than lilac. Jack would have laughed at it, stuck two fingers down his throat, but now she could pretend he liked it. It was that “reinventing Jack” thing again, that “make him who you like” game because where was he to argue? I wondered if I did that, which bits of him I was guilty of airbrushing.

  There was a letter from me too, a really old one apologizing for something, I couldn’t remember what. It surprised me that he’d kept it. I’d drawn a picture of him crying, teardrops flying out to the side like fountains, and me saying “Sorry” in a speech bubble. I felt like it was from someone else. I didn’t recognize my handwriting or the way I drew or anything. As if being eight or nine or however old I was then was like being in another life entirely. Which it was.

  I didn’t read my or Stroma’s letters first because I wanted to see the others. I guess I knew before I looked that they’d be from Bee. And I only looked at one, maybe one and a half, before I stopped and put them in my bag to take them back to her, because it felt like spying.

  Hey J x x x

  Yes yes yes let’s go somewhere on Friday. I want to see those bodies in Brick Lane that are all peeled and on display. I want to see what a real heart looks like. Or we could go to mine because Carl’s at work and I could look at you instead. Mmmm. Or maybe both but which one first?

  Did you read the book yet? Read it! It’s very important. What it says is you can’t live your life again and even if you could it would be EXACTLY the same because that’s the POINT. We are not in charge. God knows who is (not God, you know what I mean).

  So until Friday I will wait and smile x x x B

  Oh and Carl says I look DIFFERENT and do I have a BOYFRIEND. I said NO ALL BOYS ARE JERKS. So sorry x x x He wants to meet you but don’t worry because you’re going to LOVE him. He is out there x x x x

  Bee still wasn’t picking up her phone, so I went around there. I read one of Stroma’s letters on the way.

  Dear Jack

  How are you. I am fine. mum is stil sad and Ro is stil Bossie.

  Mrs. Hall said send a ballon but you need gas then she said send a leter.

  Ro ses your not you enymore. rmember the time you let me Hide under your bed as a top seicret and no Body found me? I do.

  Ro is beter at cooking but not mashed pertato or egg. wors than ever.

  I am trying to be very very helpful.

  Bye fo
r now. Pleas right back.

  From Stroma x x x

  Carl let me in. I could tell by his face he knew what I knew and all that, but he didn’t mention it. He just said she was in her room and kind of touched me on the shoulder as I walked through.

  Bee was reading and I asked her what the book was and she said, “Right now it’s a short story about an Eskimo girl whose lover dies so she makes a model of him out of whale fat.”

  “Then what?”

  “She melts him and makes another one. I haven’t finished it yet. I’m not thinking of trying it though.” She shrugged and laughed quietly.

  She put the book down and moved over for me on the bed. I sat on the edge with my bag on my knee and I told her I found something. “What?” she said, and she shuffled back against the headboard and wrapped her arms around her legs.

  I got out the pile of letters and Bee rested her cheek against her knees, held out a hand for them. I’d tied them all up with a shoelace so they wouldn’t get lost in my bag. Her fingers were shaking while she picked at the knots. I wondered if I’d done the right thing.

  “Did you read any?” she said, not looking at me.

  I told her one. I said sorry.

  “No, no, it’s OK.”

  Bee spread them out in front of her on the bed. I showed her Stroma’s letters, too, and we read one of them. It can’t have been more than a couple of weeks old. She smiled and wiped her eyes at the same time.

  To Jack

  We did Jack and the bean stork at story time which has got the cow and the magic beans and the giant who lives at the top. All the picchers I did wer of you. This boy max sed my clowds were very good. The seicret is coton wool.

  If you come back then Mum will cheer up and Dad will come home and it will be a good idea and more fun arond here like befor. the only good thing is Ro has a boyfrend who is very nice with a van you can live in. His name is Harper and he is even tawler than you.

  Please right soon from Stroma x x x

  PS my best party bag is

  bulbel gum cola flaver

  a Harmonica

  An eraser that looks like money

  A key ring enythng Simpsons

  Hair band or braselet or both.

  Whats yours?

  pps bye!

  Bee reached for this box under her bed and tipped it out on top of everything else. It was Jack’s letters, some on torn scraps, some pages long, still in their envelopes, his handwriting everywhere. “Oh God,” she said, “look at them all together,” and she picked up a handful and dropped them again, like shuffling cards.

  She asked me where I’d found them so I told her about the floorboard.

  “I’d like to see it,” she said, and I thought she meant the hole in the floor, but she was talking about Jack’s room because she’d never been.

  I said she could come right now, anytime, whatever she wanted, but she said, “Not today. I’m going to look at these today, put them in order.” And she ran her hands over them all lying there on her bed. She was smiling.

  I thought maybe I should go and I said so, but she didn’t really hear me. “Do you want to be alone?” I asked her.

  Bee didn’t look up. She just nodded and said, “Do you mind?”

  I left the room and shut the door.

  “Thanks, Rowan,” she said from the other side.

  Carl was sitting in the kitchen and he got up when I went past. I gave him the bag of weed. I said, “It was Jack’s.”

  He said, “Do you want a cup of tea?” and I didn’t, really, but I stayed for one because of the way he asked me, like I’d be doing him a favor.

  He didn’t say anything while he was making it. Sonny was opening and closing the fridge, over and over again, talking to himself. I felt a bit awkward sitting at the table looking at my hands. When he put the mug down in front of me, I sipped at it, even though it was too hot, because I had nothing else to do.

  “She told you, then,” he said, and I nodded. I’d burned my tongue on the tea and there was this numb fuzzy patch at the tip of it. “I’m glad you know. I’m sorry we took our time about it. Are you OK?”

  “Me?” I said. “Yeah, I’m fine. I had no idea, but it’s fine.”

  Carl let out a big, long sigh. He rubbed his hands in his hair like he was washing it. He picked up Jack’s bag of weed and put it down again. He smiled this tight-lipped, unhappy smile.

  “He was a great kid,” he said. “Part of the family.” I said I was glad about that. “You and Bee have been so alike,” he said, “with your brave faces, getting on with it.”

  I thought about Mum. I wished she would get up in the morning and get dressed. I wished she would smile and speak and get on with her day like the rest of us. I started telling Carl about the black hole Mum was in and how if I thought about it too hard I could feel it coming to get me, too, like putting your hand over the nozzle of a Hoover. I was saying this stuff and only really looking at it after it was out.

  “I don’t have time to fall apart,” I said, and Carl laughed, but it wasn’t meant to be funny.

  “You’re a great help to her, I know that,” he told me, and I wasn’t sure if he meant Mum or Bee or Stroma. “Come back soon,” he said when I got up to go. “You still have a lot to talk about.”

  Sixteen

  My phone rang just after I left. I didn’t know the number and I almost didn’t answer.

  It was Harper. “Because of you I had to get a cell phone.”

  “Why?” I said, smiling.

  “Because I need to call you and so I have to stop at a phone booth and then I don’t have change and…I thought, Enough. So now I have one and this is my number and there is to be no talking shit, do you read me?”

  “Roger, roger, over and out,” I laughed. “See? What did you need to say?”

  “I was checking up on you. You were sad today. And rude.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t mention it. Totally understandable. Where are you?”

  “Leaving Bee’s.”

  “How is she?”

  “No idea. I just gave her back her love letters.”

  “Do you want to meet me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Can you get to that bookshop on Harmood Street? I could catch up with you around there.”

  The light was graying. Not dark yet, but things were losing their edges. I know that walk so well I can do it without thinking. My brain switches off and goes somewhere else, like when you’re writing something down at school and you stop hearing the teacher’s voice, but your hand keeps writing it anyway. I was miles away and I nearly walked straight into him.

  “Where’s the limo?” I said.

  “Parked. I’ve been walking. How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  We started back the way I’d come.

  “Let’s try that again,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I keep thinking about Bee,” I said. “She’s eighteen and she’s already lost the person she loves. What could be worse than that?” I thought, Never meeting him, maybe, but I didn’t say any more.

  I told Harper about the pile of letters on Bee’s bed, about how it must feel to have only those left. Letters and photos instead of flesh and blood. I said, “You should see Stroma’s.”

  “Stroma’s what?”

  “Letters to Jack. I had no idea she thought about him. Not that much.”

  “Of course she does. He’s her brother.”

  “She thinks there’s a mailbox to the other side in his room. I seriously think she’s expecting a reply.”

  “That kid is something else. Maybe we should send her one.”

  “You know, I have to go home,” I said. “Stroma’ll be back soon. I can’t deal with Mum and Dad in the same house. I need to be there so he’ll leave.”

  “Why are you doing all this yourself?” he said, and I asked him who else there was to do it. “I don’t get why you don’t tell your dad.”

  “Because I
don’t want to live with him. I don’t want Mum to wake up one day and find she’s lost all her children.”

  When we got to the house, Dad and Stroma weren’t back yet and I didn’t want Harper to go. “Do you want to come in?” I said.

  “Not sure I’m welcome, are you?”

  “You are with me.”

  I checked on Mum in the sitting room. She was asleep on the sofa, curled up with a blanket over her. Her sleeping pills and a glass of water were on the table by her head. I sneaked in and counted how many were left, out of habit.

  We went upstairs. “Do you want the grand tour?” I said, trying to lessen the embarrassment I felt at taking him into my tiny, stupid room. I pushed the door, expecting him just to look and keep moving, but he went in and sat on the bed.

  “It’s like the ambulance,” he said.

  “Pretty compact, you mean.”

  “Perfect. I like it. And you’d be all right in mine. You’d be used to it already.”

  “Where shall we go?” I said, half joking.

  “Anywhere you want,” he joked back. “Just name the day.”

  I asked him if he wanted to see the photo, the picture of Jack he’d given me before I met him. I reached down and felt for it and handed it over. Harper looked at Jack for a long time and Jack stared right back. It was the closest they’d ever get to being introduced.

  “That’s my brother,” I said, breaking the silence with the obvious.

  “Pleased to meet you, Jack.”

  I thought of Bee standing there with her camera, of Jack laughing and being high and so into her. “He was with Bee,” I said.

  “And look how happy he was.”

  I took Harper to Jack’s room. I hadn’t done that before with anyone. He was respectful up there, hushed and careful, like someone was sleeping. I said Jack would’ve preferred it if we’d jumped on the bed and cranked up the music, but I appreciated it, Harper’s sense of occasion. He was quiet and he put things back in the right place, and he took it all in.

  He loved Jack’s Map of the Universe. He studied it and shook his head and laughed out loud at how microscopic and insignificant we are, almost exactly like Jack had done the first time he saw it.