The only problem is, I’m not that good on voices, but I could think of muppet scenarios. I’d love that. Maybe I should write to Brian Henson. Maybe he’d be interested in some of my muppet scenarios for whatever muppet programs he’s putting together.
I open the door and go inside.
‘Hi,’ I say.
She is not surprised.
‘Hi.’
‘Are you a Jim Henson fan?’
‘Does the pope shit in the woods?’ she says.
We laugh loudly and the librarian taps on the glass.
We talk in a whisper for a while. ‘Do you want to go somewhere and have a coffee or something?’ she asks.
‘Is the bear a Catholic?’ I say.
The librarian returns. She opens the door and one of her breasts presses against the glass like a balloon filled with water, ready to burst if she presses any harder, ‘Should you two be in class?’
‘Journalism project,’ says the girl, whose name is Yvonne.
When the librarian leaves, I say, ‘Did you see her boob pressed up against the glass? It looked like a balloon about to burst.’
‘Yeah,’ says Yvonne, ‘I noticed that too.’
Maybe I could talk to Yvonne about my obsession with breasts and how I’m worried that mine look like pork-buns.
We leave school and walk to the end of Main Street and go to a dark and dingy café where I drink coffee some weekends and where they don’t care if you smoke. I light a cigarette and Yvonne looks at me as though I have taken out a gun or a knife, but she says, ‘Oh, God! You’d better give me one of those.’
We smoke and talk and laugh.
‘I’m a Mormon.’
‘You don’t look like a Mormon,’ I say.
‘I don’t taste like one either,’ she says.
I laugh loudly, a kind of ecstatic choking, almost exactly the way she laughs and I wonder if there’s something wrong with me; a style of laughter is something you have for yourself, a highly personal trade-mark, it’s not supposed to be contagious like a ’flu. But I continue to laugh hard and long for no good reason.
Yvonne puts her hand over my mouth to stop me.
‘No, seriously,’ she says, ‘you should know that if my mom or dad were to walk in here now you’d have smoked your last, and your ass would be grass if Bishop Burpcrumb found out.’
Yvonne doesn’t look nervous; doesn’t look like somebody pretending to be tough or brave. She’s not the biddable type; not trying to impress me because she needs a friend. I like her.
‘Do you have to go to church and stuff?’ I ask.
‘Yep. Until I leave home. No sport, or anything else for that matter on Sundays. No caffeine, no alcohol, no sex before marriage, no anything much at all.’
‘No masturbation?’ I say.
‘What’s that?’ she says grinning, and we laugh.
Next time we see each other I’m going to ask her if she’s ever masturbated. I’ve done it about thirty times, and I want to know when other girls start doing it and whether I’m the only one or whether I’m in some kind of minority group.
Yvonne and I eat lunch. She tells me all about Mormonism.
‘We baptise the dead you know.’
‘Why?’
‘To save their souls, so they can go to heaven. So far two hundred million dead people have been baptised, including Buddha, Shakespeare, Einstein and Elvis Presley.’
‘What’s heaven like?’
‘I’ll show you.’
She pulls a piece of cardboard out of her bag; it’s a picture of Mormon heaven. It’s all pink bunny rabbits, fairy-floss, soft white clouds, green meadows and fields of daisies with what looks like hundreds of six-year-old, blonde-haired, multiple twins, holding hands.
We laugh and I don’t want Yvonne to go home and I want to tell her this, but instead I look at my watch.
‘Do you have to leave?’ she asks.
‘No, not yet,’ I say.
I think about what I am about to say next for some time. I try to weigh up the pros and cons. I lean across the table and whisper, ‘Do you want to have a drink? I have some here.’ I tap my bag. ‘We could have some gin. I could order some orange juice and we could mix it?’
‘God, I’d love that,’ she says and I am immensely relieved that I haven’t persuaded her; that I haven’t talked her into something she isn’t ready to do. It could have been such a filthy thing to do, enticing a Mormon to drink. It could have been such a horrible thing to do.
At six o’clock Yvonne looks at her watch and for the first time I see dread in her eyes.
‘I better run,’ she says.
I don’t want to move from the table in case my mood moves with it.
‘I might stay a while,’ I say. ‘See you on Thursday?’
She fiddles with the straps of her backpack.
‘I won’t be at school on Thursday. I have to do something at home. But we’ll meet again, for sure.’
‘For sure,’ I say. I want to tell her how funny she is. I want to tell her that I like her face.
‘For sure,’ I say again and watch her go.
Margaret is standing in the hallway when I get home.
‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ she says.
‘Sorry,’ I say, but cannot remember why I was supposed to be home early.
‘You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I say, the base of my spine shivering, telling me I need to clench or I’ll urinate right where I’m standing. Everything seems to collapse with something my body has realised before my mind.
‘Tonight is James’ first heat for the national debating championships. They’ve gone on ahead.’
Nobody has told me this.
‘I didn’t know,’ I say.
Margaret is angrier than I have ever seen her; her mouth tightens, her chest heaves and she has to fold her arms across her chest so that I won’t see her hands shaking.
‘Bridget told you. I checked with her before she left. She said she told you after dinner and if you can’t remember that far back then there’s really something wrong with you.’
‘Oh,’ I say, paralysed, impotent, ready to cry for the second time in less than a week.
‘Maybe I forgot because Henry’s mum is in hospital.’
‘I doubt it,’ she says.
Margaret drives me to the auditorium in silence, but it is Henry who is most cross with me. During the last round of the debate, I lean over to ask him if he or Margaret would like anything to drink since I am going to the bathroom, and he turns on me, ‘For God’s sake, please just stay where you are.’
I stay in my seat and notice that Henry’s eyes are watering badly, and that he uses his sleeve to dab them dry.
After the competition – which James’ team wins – we go to a pizza restaurant. James is excited about his victory, but he’s disappointed that Margaret has made what he calls a bank manager’s decision not to go to the restaurant the rest of the team is going to.
‘You were excellent,’ I tell James, and he was.
As he stood on stage, waved his arms and walked into the aisles, he seemed much older, as though there are two versions of him.
‘Thanks,’ he says, blowing air on his knuckles and then rubbing them against his suit jacket lapel.
The mood is subdued. Margaret hardly eats and nor do I. She is distracted by every movement. When somebody walks in or out, she watches them; somebody scrapes their chair to get out from a table and she turns in her seat as though she is about to be arrested.
Henry does most of the talking, which is unusual, probably to make up for Margaret’s silence and he conducts a thorough post-mortem of the flaws in the other debating team’s performance.
‘They were too greedy for laughs,’ says Henry. ‘Too worried about individual kudos to work as a team.’
‘They were just too retarded,’ says James, some stringy mozzarella dangling from his hungry mouth, and the other version of James, the better James
– the one I saw up on stage, the one from last night – is obliterated.
I spend the dinner thinking about how I will make amends, how I will start again and how I will ask for help.
‘I was wondering,’ I say as we are walking through the front door, ‘if everybody could meet me in the living room in five minutes.’
Not only am I going to turn over a new leaf but I’m going to ask for help and start behaving like a new and nice person. I smile at everybody, such a smile my whole face shakes.
‘What for?’ asks Bridget.
‘I’ll tell you when we’re all together.’
Margaret drops the car keys into the basket and folds her arms.
‘I think we’re all too tired tonight, Lou,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you just tell us now?’
James is unnerved by something he sees in my face and holds his bag in front of his chest like a shield.
All of Margaret’s warmth towards me has been sucked dry, as though she was hooked up to a vacuum during the night.
Henry seems to harbour a deep suspicion, planted not by something he’s seen, but by something someone has told him. Perhaps Margaret has persuaded him, at last, that I am no good or too much trouble.
Bridget is impatient; for her I am irrelevant. I think that perhaps only James will feel anything when I say what I’m about to say. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ I say.
But that’s as far as I get.
I am about to say sorry. I am about to tell them that I still can’t sleep and that I want a doctor. I am about to apologise for everything and ask for help, but my nose begins to bleed.
James takes a box of tissues from the dining-room table and passes it to me. Margaret, who is normally so fond of any kind of action, especially action or drama involving the human body, takes a chair and places it behind me but does no more; not a single word is spoken before she leaves the room, followed obediently by Henry.
‘They know you smoked in your room again last night,’ says Bridget, and something tells me that she is the informant. ‘They’re really pissed about it too.’
James doesn’t know I smoke.
‘Fuck,’ he says.
Bridget breaks into a smile, the kind that sometimes happens when somebody’s nervous.
‘Smoking is such a loser thing to do,’ she says and storms out of the room, as though she needs to go away and fume in private.
I lie on my bed and take out four sheets of paper. I will write four apologies, starting with Henry.
Dear Henry,
I’m sorry about throwing that cup of coffee at the wall and for smoking in my room. I promise it will never happen again and I wish I had the courage to tell you how wonderful I think you are. If you were my real father I’m sure I’d be a hundred times better than I am. I’ve liked you since I saw you at the airport. I liked you when we were at Flo Bapes’ house and there was a storm and you opened the windows to let the thunder and lightning get in.
I’ll always like you and I’m very sorry.
Love,
Lou
I put this note in an airmail envelope and wait until three a.m. I go to Henry’s bedside and stick the note in his shoe. Somehow I know that he’ll read it privately; that he won’t tell Margaret and that he’ll think about what to do with me in a different light.
After breakfast, Henry calls me into the dining-room where he is stacking his briefcase.
‘Thank you,’ he says, a little nervously. ‘But there’s really no need.’
‘That’s okay,’ I say.
He half clears his throat the way a person does when they don’t want you to know that they need to clear their throat.
‘You have a lot of sheer humanity,’ he says awkwardly.
As these words roll over in my head, Henry stuffs a newspaper into his briefcase, looks nervously towards the kitchen door, shuts the lid heavily and locks the lock. He looks around at the kitchen door again and I know he is worried about Margaret.
He smiles with effort. ‘That came out wrong,’ he says.
‘That’s okay,’ I say.
As he walks out the front door, I grab hold of the words and make them stand up: sheer humanity.
I can’t let Henry leave without something lighter, something friendlier, passing between us.
He stands on the doorstep and I pull the door closed behind us.
‘Henry,’ I say. ‘Do you know what desquamation is?’
He lifts his briefcase to his chest.
‘Are there any clues?’
This is an interesting approach. I have to pretend to know less than I already do.
‘All I know for certain is that Antarctic explorers suf fered from it quite often before they died in the snow. From my reading, it seems desquamation was always around when Edwardian-era Antarctic explorers perished.’
Henry is glad of the change in tone and wants to employ his powers of deduction.
‘Ah, well. I remember reading something about this. Is it what happened when a type of volatile fuel was used for portable cooking stoves? I think it refers to the effects of toxic fuel gases inhaled in close quarters, like in tents?’
Henry walks towards his car but is happy talking about this. I should ask him more encyclopaedia-style questions.
‘Could be,’ I say. ‘That’s sounds plausible to me.’
He opens the passenger door of his car and puts his briefcase on the seat. ‘Anyhow, I could look it up for you at work. I have a good dictionary on my desktop.’
‘No, don’t do that. I want to find out for myself.’
‘Bye, Lou,’ he says, ‘have a good day at school, and don’t worry.’
‘No?’
‘No, I don’t think you should.’
‘Okay.’
As he is getting in the car, I walk around and stand next to him. He hugs me and I feel good. I know that I will start all over again; rewind this, and go back to the beginning.
13
The weather is colder, at last. At lunchtime, I lie on the lawn where I compose my apologies for Bridget, Margaret and James.
I feel a hand on the back of my head.
‘Lou,’ says Tom. ‘I thought it was you.’
I look up and smile.
‘It is me,’ I say, ‘and you must be you.’
I’ve been carrying Tom’s camera around ever since he gave it to me and I’ve finished the roll of film, but haven’t wanted to use my short supply of money to get it developed; nor have I known how to contact him without asking James. I’ve been hoping that Tom would find me.
‘Did you take any pictures?’ he asks.
‘Yeah, they’re in here.’
‘Great. Any hints?’
‘Oh, they’re not that interesting. I hope you didn’t miss any deadlines or anything?’
‘What for?’ he says.
‘The audition,’ I say.
‘Oh,’ he says, not a good liar, his eyes shooting out over my shoulder as though he’s casual as anything. ‘I decided not to worry about that. It wasn’t a good play, anyway.’
Tom is crouching like a frog.
‘Do you want to lie down?’ I ask.
He lies down and we talk for a while. There is no explanation for this that I can think of, but in Tom’s company, I am like a different person. For one thing, I still don’t blush.
‘What’s your favourite film?’ I ask.
‘What’s yours?’ he asks back.
‘I have a few,’ I say. ‘The Shawshank Redemption is up there.’
‘I love that film,’ he says.
‘Really? What’s your favourite part? What’s your favourite line?’
Tom isn’t uncomfortable even when he’s stuck or trapped.
‘I dunno,’ he says, ‘I just love the whole thing.’
‘What about when Morgan Freeman says “Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.” I love that line.’
‘Isn’t Morgan Freeman the greatest,’ says Tom, like one great actor compliment
ing another.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘But what about that line?’
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘It’s an awesome line.’
We are silent.
‘What other films do you like?’ he asks.
I half expect him to ask me what my favourite colour is, like the boy I held hands with at the roller-skating rink.
‘Down by Law,’ I say, ‘and Smoke.’
‘Never heard of them,’ he says, as though he knows every other film and I just happened to have mentioned the only two he hasn’t seen or as though these films are bad or don’t count.
We are silent again.
‘I like you,’ he says, reaching for my hand and his eyes give me another shock. But still I do not blush.
I put my head on his leg and close my eyes.
‘I was wondering,’ he says. ‘Do you want to escape with me? We could take the rest of the day off, go to one of those one-hour photo places together.’
‘Why not,’ I say, pretending to be casual just like him. ‘Let’s go.’
I move quickly to prove I’m keen, and to my amazement, I keep holding his hand.
‘Maybe we could get a coffee,’ he says.
‘I was just about to think that,’ I say, smiling, and watch as one side of his face lights up more than the other.
The photographs are developed and we go to a café to look at them. Tom is satisfied with the pictures I have taken of him.
‘You’re good at this,’ he says.
‘Thank you,’ I say, worried about the photographs I have taken of myself, sitting up in bed, using the camera’s self-timer.
‘It’s a photographic essay,’ I say. ‘It’s called “Insomnia”. I took them in the early hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep. I look like a corpse. Except, of course, not.’ Cos a corpse gets lots of sleep, and I don’t.’
‘You couldn’t ever look awful,’ he says, looking into my eyes.
I wish that people I want to like wouldn’t say such stupid things and even though it’s Tom that should be ashamed of this corny line, I blush for the first time since we met. Unlike James, he looks away to let me recover, and I do, quickly. For this I like him.
How the Light Gets In Page 12
