‘Duh,’ says James. ‘It’s only all over the information we got.’
‘Not really,’ I say.
James laughs. ‘Yes you do,’ he says. ‘You wrote it down as your number two hobby after reading.’
Margaret is staring at the floor by my feet as though waiting to see what will fall off me.
James is right. I wrote everything on my application forms. I was in an altered state of super confidence when I was filling them out. I thought that being in America, surrounded by wealth, the new air, the very idea of a fresh start, would obliterate all my fears. I thought I could change identities like a double agent.
‘I don’t really sing in front of people,’ I say.
James laughs again.
‘That’s pretty stupid. What’s the point of singing if nobody ever hears you?’
Margaret doesn’t stop him. I feel like a red walnut about to be cracked open by James’ next sentence and I would do anything to make him stop. I start coughing. It’s not real at first, but soon it is. Before I know it, I’m in the middle of a violent coughing fit.
Margaret goes to the kitchen to fetch some water, but when she returns, I have run up the stairs to the bathroom. I drink some water and the coughing stops. I need to use the toilet but there is no lock on the bathroom door. I take a chair from under the window and shove it under the door handle.
Margaret comes to see how I am. The door handle rattles. ‘Are you all right in there?’
‘I’m fine. I’ll be out in a minute.’
‘Okay,’ she says.
I wait until I hear her footsteps on the staircase before I go outside.
According to the Organisation’s rules, I’m supposed to tell Margaret or Henry where I’m going whenever I leave the house but I need to be alone, urgently. I go right out the front door and start walking around the neighbourhood.
I like to walk around the streets at night and fantasise about being in other people’s houses.
It started when I was nine and I wagged school one day. The night before, my sisters pulled my trousers down to my ankles in front of their boyfriends, because I used a big word. My mum just laughed, and I hated her.
I got on a train and travelled as far as I could on one ticket. It was a hot day and the sun curdled the asphalt, drugged the crows on their wires and made people smell of vinegar. The sun also made the day easy to remember.
I had my face pressed to the train’s window and made curtains out of my hands. The train sped through green suburbs. I saw back yards and gardens filled with toys and sheds and swings and swimming pools. I wanted to get off the train and into one of the lives I could see from the window.
I got the idea then that I would one day live in somebody else’s house and be adopted by somebody else’s family. I had engaged in a great deal of adoption fantasy before this, but this was much more than daydreaming about who my real parents might be: famous writers, royalty or billionaires. This was about getting out for good. More exciting than my favourite book, Papillon, and more treacherous than The Great Escape.
I got off the train and walked until dark, in the silent lam-plit streets and cul-de-sacs. I walked slowly past front yards filled with the homey blue lights of televisions flickering through lounge-room windows. I became hungry as I watched the shadows of people moving behind net curtains, their shadowy shapes slow and drowsy, as though they rolled and turned beneath heavy sheets.
I knocked at the front door of a two-storey house and said, ‘Could I come in? I’ve run away from home.’
I wanted the woman who answered the door to acknowledge my craving without words or questions. I wanted her simply to get it.
In this big house, the family had been watching a movie together. The mother took me into the living room and told me to sit. The father turned off the TV and it hissed to a disappointing black. The small children – a girl and a boy – did not speak nor look at me. I said, ‘This is a nice house.’ The mother sent her children to their bedrooms. I wanted to follow them up the stairs and find a bed of my own. I wanted the mother to say, ‘This is your bed. You can stay here tonight.’ But the mother had a hard voice. She wanted to know why I was out on the street alone when it was so late.
I told her that I wanted to sleep in a bed in a nice big clean house. The father stood by the door. He had a nasty double chin and I didn’t want to look at it.
‘Has something happened to you at home? Are you in trouble?’ he asked, the crease in his chin bobbing.
For a moment my body believed that something cruel and dreadful had happened to me at home. I considered acting out a lifetime of imagined torture.
‘No,’ I said, ‘nothing has happened. I just wanted to see what it was like somewhere else.’
‘I’d better call your parents,’ said the mother, but I refused to give her the number and wished that I had cried or lied.
‘Can’t I just be a visitor for one night? Couldn’t I just stay on the couch and watch the TV with you in front of the fireplace and then go to bed?’
The mother walked to the phone in the entrance hall. ‘I’m calling the police,’ she said. ‘Your parents will be worried about you.’
I curled into the corner of the big leather couch and held onto my knees. I stared at the black TV screen.
I wanted a cushion behind my back and a cup of hot chocolate in my hand. I wanted to eat some of the bread and butter pudding and ice-cream the children had left on the table, but the mother called the police and told them that a runaway had come to her home.
When the receiver dropped into its black cradle the curtains ballooned suddenly with cold fat misery.
I ran into the hallway and picked up a small red coat that was lying on the floor. I held the coat – too small to wear – against my chest and ran to the train station.
Since then, I have fantasised so vividly that sometimes I believe I have spent the evening in the company of rich strangers. I go home after nights of walking the streets and looking into people’s windows and I feel a distinct urge to ring them to thank them, or write them a letter to tell them how I am (perhaps enclosing a recent photograph of myself and my dog).
On my way to school each day I use the same laneway and pass a house whose kitchen window has no blinds and is always open. I crouch in the laneway and peer inside. I watch the family of four – mother, father and two young boys – as they eat their porridge and toast and drink their orange juice.
The smell of the scene haunts me. The way the father reads the paper, and the mother reads a serious magazine, makes my heart expand in my chest so much that I can barely breathe. I ache with wishing I could climb inside, or that they will see me one day and ask me to live with them.
Sometimes, as I walk the streets of neighbourhoods far from home, I get so hungry my mouth fills with water. Then I go home and deep-fry chips and shallow-fry eggs, cover them in tomato sauce and eat in my bedroom with my eyes closed while my mum and dad and sisters sit in the lounge-room, yelling ‘Get fucked’ or ‘That’s fucking stupid’ at the eleven o’clock news.
As I walk up the drive of the Harding mansion, I can see my family again – all of them – chain-smoking in the lounge-room, the air thick with smoke, and I no longer care what happens to them.
Henry is sitting on the leather divan near the phone in the entrance hall, waiting for me.
‘There you are,’ he says, his face strained with the effort of concealing worry.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I just went around the block to get some air.’
‘That’s no problem,’ he says. ‘You’re home now.’
4
It’s Saturday morning. For most of last night, and the night before, I lay in my bed and turned from side to side, hoping that with the next turn, sleep would engulf me, but sleep came nowhere near.
The weather is milder today and there is a scent in the air of grass drying; the perfume of summer. The house is flooded with light and dust motes. Although I have slept for only
three or four hours, my appetite is back and my breathing is less shallow.
I go to the kitchen and sit at the table with the Hardings even though I don’t want breakfast. I never eat breakfast. Suddenly, Bridget and James leave and head for the family room where the TV is. Henry gets up from the table. ‘It’s my turn to do the dishes,’ he says. He takes his cereal bowl and his hand touches mine. I feel weird and I wonder why they don’t have a dishwasher and why they don’t put the stereo or radio on during meals. It’s too quiet.
‘I’ll do them,’ says Margaret.
Henry leaves and Margaret and I are left alone.
‘Come sit with me in the dining-room,’ she says.
‘Okay,’ I say.
We sit at the dining-room table. She turns around in her chair to face me, her healthy skin glowing. ‘Well, what do you think so far?’
She pulls her chair in closer and puts her arm around my shoulder. I fall into a thick-throated silence. I need to cough. I need to urinate. And I cannot think. I am better in groups; terrible at being alone with just one confident and chirpy person, especially when they move in so close.
Margaret wants to play the role of confidante. The scene has been rehearsed not just in her mind, but also in the collective mind of the family. Or perhaps this is another of the Organisation’s planned interviews.
‘Great,’ I say. ‘It’s great.’
My throat tickles and I start another coughing fit.
Margaret watches and doesn’t offer to get me some water.
‘Sorry,’ I say when I’ve finished.
‘Tell me about your singing,’ she says. ‘I’d like to hear you.’
I only sing when I’m home by myself, when the flat is empty and I can put a CD on. I don’t think it’s any great loss that nobody else will ever hear me.
‘I really don’t feel confident enough yet. I have to know people a bit better before I can sing for them.’
I tell this lie so that I might force myself to find the confidence. I’ll go even further. I will trap myself into doing it.
‘I’ll sing for you next weekend,’ I say. ‘That’s usually how long it takes me.’
‘Only if you feel ready,’ says Margaret, ‘but it would be nice to hear a good voice in the house.’
She stands up. I stand up.
‘But you sing, don’t you?’ I ask.
‘Only in the choir. Hardly ever. I used to sing much more,’ she says. ‘In the old days. It’s been a long time.’
‘Maybe you could again. We could rehearse a song together and then surprise everybody.’
She takes my hand and kisses it on the knuckle. Then she holds it against her chest and stares at me.
‘It’s so great to have you here, Lou,’ she says. ‘You make me think.’
I follow her into the kitchen.
‘How about some pancakes?’ she says.
‘Yum,’ I say.
And I think: What do I make you think? Why is it great to have me here? I haven’t even been very interesting. I haven’t been half as interesting as I planned to be. I just cough and blush and act half crazy.
When I’ve finished eating, Margaret asks me to load the washing machine and Henry comes in and puts a tick next to my name on the washing schedule for this week. When he passes me, I look at him and I notice that his eyes are watery.
From my bedroom window I watch the wide, tree-lined street below; children ride tricycles and bicycles and skateboards. Lawns are mowed and cars are washed. People jog wearing bright clothes that seem to be made of plastic. A man practises tai chi on the wide median strip and looks as though he is under water. I hang my head out the window and the breeze on my face and the smells from a barbecue make me smile.
While I’m lying on the bed reading my favourite short story, ‘The Overcoat’, by Nikolai Gogol, Bridget comes to my door
‘Do you want to come out with me and my friends?’ she asks, the edges of her white t-shirt implausibly clean against her brown neck and arms.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask.
‘Shopping,’ she says.
‘What kind of shopping?’
‘For clothes,’ she says. ‘I haven’t got any summer clothes yet. It’s a nightmare! I’m wearing last year’s fashions.’
This is the kind of ridiculous thing my sisters would say. I frown at her. I do this without thinking. It’s the kind of disdainful look my sisters like to beat me up for. I regret making a mean face, and try to smile.
‘I don’t really like clothes shopping,’ I say.
Bridget sighs and puts one sneaker down hard on the other as though wishing she could kick me. ‘Whatever.’
‘Wait,’ I say, hating the idea that I am responsible for ending what could have been our first real conversation. ‘Do you know what desquamation is?’
‘What?’ she says.
‘Desquamation.’
She crosses her arms over her breasts. ‘How do you spell it?’
‘How it sounds.’
She shrugs.
‘Why don’t you just look it up in a dictionary or something?’ ‘I will,’ I say, trying hard to smile. ‘Thanks.’
‘Whatever,’ she says and leaves the room, the door wide open.
I am terrified of girls in groups; their gossip and treachery. Shopping malls, fashion magazines, change rooms and trying on clothes, they all make me feel angry and dirty. And shop assistants who barge in on you, and girls who like to shop; they always want to see what other girls’ bodies look like.
I follow Bridget down the stairs, but she is out the door before I can explain. I go down to the basement, where James is playing table tennis with some friends. They stop playing their game of doubles and turn to look at me. Like James, they have oily skin and the beginnings of thin moustaches, conspicuous and patchy. James’ facial hair is the least developed of the four, and he seems younger than them.
James comes towards me, but not to speak. He is picking up a six-pack of root beer, a big bottle of cola and two large bags of chips. His friends stand and watch.
‘This is Lou, our exchange student,’ says James, as though I were the new cat.
‘Hi,’ I say.
They look at me to see if I am gorgeous and decide that I am not. I am too much of an ‘it’; neither boy nor girl. Short black hair, white skin, and thin, without shape. Only older women look at me for long, fascinated by what Mrs Walsh once called my ‘androgyny’. My mum’s best friend, Paula, always says, ‘But with a bit of make-up, some peroxide and a dress, she could be a model like you used to be.’
My mum is dismayed by my tomboy clothes and leaves her old dresses on the end of my bed with strange notes, like, You would look lovely in this.
‘You could be beautiful,’ she says. ‘You could really stand out.’ According to my sisters, however, I have mean eyes. ‘Dark and evil grey,’ Erin says.
James’ friends say nothing more than ‘Hi’ and get back to their game.
I go up the stairs, into the kitchen, and stand with the fridge door open, staring inside, waiting for my face to cool down, thinking about what James’ friends will say to him: ‘Bummer, James. She looks like a choir boy.’ I suppose I do.
I return to my room by the back stairs, passing Margaret in her den.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you go help Henry in the garden?’
‘Okay.’
Henry is dismantling the tree house.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Hi,’ he says, with a busy look on his face, hammer dangling from his hand.
I lie on my bed for a few hours. Henry comes to my room to ask me if I’d like to go for a drive with him to get some chicken for dinner. His eyes are weepy again and his bottom lashes are sticky. I want to ask him why his eyes are wet like that.
‘No,’ I say, ‘I think I’ll stay here.’
‘If you like,’ he says.
‘I’m tired,’ I say. I want to go with Henry, but I’m n
ervous about having to find enough to talk about, alone with him, in the car, especially if we were to get stuck in traffic.
We are having dinner at the dining-room table. The front door is open to let in the sounds of Saturday evening. James had a shower before sitting down to eat and his wet hair drips onto his place mat. Bridget takes two phone calls during the pumpkin soup and Margaret tells her not to get up while dinner is on the table.
Bridget sighs. ‘It’s no big deal, Mom.’
Henry removes the soup bowls and brings in the main course, a chicken casserole.
The pepper grinder is passed around the table and Henry coats his casserole in fine black powder.
I was once in a restaurant with my mum and dad. One of Dad’s greyhounds had finally won a race and we were celebrating. A few tables away a waiter used a pepper grinder. My dad looked up suddenly from his steak and half stood to look out of the window. He was grinning.
‘I think there’s a horse and cart out there,’ he said.
‘Well go and have a look,’ said my mum. I closed my eyes for a moment and listened to the sound of the pepper grinder and I got my dad’s joke. The pepper grinder sounded a bit like hooves on cobblestones. I laughed and pointed out the big window behind me.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘it’s going around the corner.’
My dad squinted and looked. ‘I can’t see anything.’
I laughed. ‘That’s because they were going very fast. A big hansom cab with four high wheels.’
I liked my dad just then.
When we’ve finished eating, Margaret gives twenty dollars each to me and Bridget and James (in that order).
‘It’s your responsibility to make sure it lasts the week. Once it’s finished, don’t ask for another penny more.’
There is a conscious effort to include me in all that the family does: the good, the bad and the tedious. I wonder whether the Organisation has issued a handbook: Your Guide to Being an Effective Host-Family or How to Make Your Host-Daughter (or Host-Son) Feel at Home. I wonder if I would find such a book in Henry or Margaret’s bedside drawer. I’ll look later, when I’m alone in the house.
How the Light Gets In Page 4
