How the Light Gets In

by Hyland, M. J.

  She scrunches her perfect nose at me. ‘Nah.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Anyway, I went for an audition.’

  ‘Awesome,’ she says, without meaning it. ‘I hope you get a part.’

  I smile but she doesn’t smile back. She is afraid I’m going to follow her.

  ‘Do you know Tom McGahern?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says, and keeps walking. ‘James brought him over that night.’

  In one way or another, she’s always moving. I don’t know what she looks like when her long legs aren’t propelling her towards something: launching her onwards, towards something better. I decide not to take it personally, not to withdraw. But perhaps I have left it too late.

  ‘What do you know about him?’ I ask.

  She walks a little slower, but doesn’t stop. ‘He’s that millionaire freak who transferred from another school last year.’

  ‘Why is he a freak?’ I ask.

  She stops out the front of a house, ‘Just look at him,’ she says, gazing anxiously down the street as though Tom might poke his pale head out of an attic window and spit on her. ‘He looks like a freak.’

  ‘Have you ever spoken to him?’

  ‘I don’t need to,’ she says, pulling her bag close to her chest. ‘Everybody knows he’s a freak. Even his parents are freaks. And he doesn’t have any friends.’

  ‘Give me an example of this freakishness then.’

  She flings her bag across her shoulder and juts her head forward in anger. ‘Don’t yell at me. It’s not my fault he’s retarded.’

  ‘How can he be retarded if he’s on the honours roll?’

  ‘It’s called the National Honours Society and why don’t you ask him that? There’s a simple and embarrassing explanation.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Haven’t you wondered why he’s like at least three years older than everybody else? He was kept down. Practically brain dead from drug abuse.’

  I cannot breathe and therefore cannot speak. I look at the ground.

  ‘By the way,’ she says, her chest rising and falling, hardly able to breathe with anger and the restraint of her tight white bandage, ‘Mom can’t drive you anywhere today. She’s got lumbago again. Dad said if you go into town you could meet him at the office and he’ll take you home.’

  ‘I’ll walk,’ I say.

  As I go up the stairs to my room, my nose begins to bleed. I go into the bathroom and let the blood drip into the sink.

  I don’t try to stop the bleeding. I watch the blood splatter on the white porcelain, ‘as red as the nail polish Pushkin wore’, as Mrs Walsh said once when my nose bled into one of her white handkerchiefs.

  I watch my blood drip and pool in the sink like red milk. I like to see how much blood I can lose.

  With blood trickling down my chin I say to the mirror: May she have a terrible accident and lose the tip of her perfect nose and one long brown leg from the knee down.

  But when I get back to my room, I undo the curse and pray that Bridget doesn’t hate me.

  Then it suddenly occurs to me, like a thwack across the back of the head – it’s so obvious. If things don’t work out with the Hardings, and if I can’t live with them, I can live with Tom, in his mansion. When school has finished and my scholarship ends, I’ll move in with Tom’s family and become a citizen.

  I need to see him as soon as I can.

  Margaret calls out to me from her bed. I go in and she removes her glasses, rubbing the lenses with her cardigan sleeve. She seems like a spectre; not a hostile one, but simply not palpable or present enough. There is something not quite real about her.

  ‘You haven’t told me how your audition went?’ She sounds mildly affronted. I have left her out again. I’m not treating her like a proper host-mother.

  ‘It was good,’ I say, my head throbbing, ‘I’ve been called back. I have to go later today.’

  There’s an odd musky smell in the room; a smell of satisfied human damp.

  She puts her hand out for me. She wants to hold my hand. I can’t. This is something I still can’t let her do. My hand sweats at the mere thought of touching her, just as when my mum tries to touch me.

  I say, ‘I have to go now. I have to practise.’

  She tries to sit up but her nostrils flare up with the pain.

  I say, ‘Don’t sit up. You’ll hurt yourself.’

  She slides down again. ‘Why don’t you sing for me? I’d play the piano with you except that my back’s not so good. Why don’t you practise in here? I’d love to hear you.’

  My bladder twinges sharply as though stuck with a pin. I stare at the box of tissues next to her bed to stop myself from crying.

  ‘Please sing for me,’ she says.

  I stare at the perfect white tissue sticking out of the box in the shape of a big white molar. ‘Oh no,’ I say, going red as hell, ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asks, offended again, or perhaps she wants to see me embarrassed.

  ‘You’ll be hugely disappointed. I’m not very good.’

  She rubs her glasses again. ‘That’s silly and obviously not true,’ she says. ‘The standard of singing at that school is very high.’

  Now she sounds like a school teacher and I wish she was a completely different kind of person: the kind of person who understands how another person is feeling just by looking at them; somebody who doesn’t stare all the time or speak in a loud and confident voice. Somebody who knows when to look away.

  ‘I better go,’ I say and leave the room.

  There’s a supermarket around the corner but I decide to go to one further away. I ride Bridget’s bike. The shop is crowded. I look all around to see if there is anybody I recognise or who might recognise me. I go to the counter and ask for a bottle of gin.

  I ride home. I have one hour before the call-back audition. I go to my room, put a chair under the door handle, and drink as slowly as I can to give myself time to judge the gin effect. After twenty minutes I stand up and walk around my bed a few times to see how I’m going. I feel good, but I should have eaten something. Gin-effect sounds like genuflect, I think, and the phone rings in the hall. Margaret calls out, ‘Lou, could you get that please?’

  I pick up the phone. It’s Tom.

  ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘I was thinking about you all night.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I say blankly, wishing that I could hang up and call him back on the phone downstairs.

  ‘I think I’m either in love with you or I have rabies,’ he says.

  I know Margaret is listening.

  ‘That’s fine,’ I say. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m good,’ he says, confused. ‘I didn’t know if I should ring you at home. I don’t know how cool your host-parents are about me?’

  ‘Excellent,’ I say.

  I imagine him sitting up in his bed, nothing but underpants on, no longer smiling. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Great,’ I say. ‘Only Margaret has a sore back. Poor thing.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Anyway, I was wondering if you’d like to go for a picnic this afternoon. We could go to the park. I can’t wait a whole day to see you and I need to know if I have rabies or not.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ I say, ‘but I’m busy.’

  ‘Whaddya doin’?’ he asks.

  I feel desperate. If I tell him about the call-back he’ll get cross that I didn’t tell him about the first audition and he might want to come along and watch me and this idea terrifies me. I’m far from ready to sing in front of somebody I know. But if I don’t include him in this and he finds out, I could blow everything.

  I tap the receiver and say, ‘Hello? Hello? Are you there?’ I wait for what I think is a convincing length of time and then I hang up.

  I call out in the direction of Margaret’s bedroom, ‘They must have been cut off.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  I stay in the hallway for fear of her seeing my crimson face.

  ‘A friend f
rom school.’

  ‘Call her back,’ says Margaret.

  ‘I don’t have her number,’ I say.

  Margaret must control every situation. ‘I’ll look it up for you,’ she says. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘I don’t know her last name.’

  ‘Well, if she calls back I’ll be sure and get her number for you. What’s her first name?’

  ‘Um, Judy,’ I say. ‘Her name’s Judy.’

  I go to the call-back audition and when I get home, still a bit tipsy, I find out that Margaret’s back is so bad that she can’t come down for dinner. Henry, James, Bridget and I sit at the dining table, eating dessert and swapping stories about our day.

  ‘How was your audition?’ asks Henry.

  ‘Good,’ I say. ‘I might have a part.’

  James has his mouth crammed full of spaghetti but he puts his hand over his face and says, ‘You’ll probably get the lead part.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asks Bridget.

  James swallows as much as he can and speaks with his mouth half full. He suddenly seems about twelve years old. ‘I was there yesterday.’

  ‘Were you?’ I say, ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘You’re different up on stage.’ He smiles as though he’s captured my secret and he’s keeping it upstairs – like an insect in a jar – in his smelly room. ‘It’s weird. It’s almost like you’re a different person.’

  ‘Aren’t you nervous?’ asks Bridget. ‘Don’t you, like, blush like crazy?’

  I’m too exhausted to feel hurt by Bridget’s cruelty and spite.

  ‘Not really,’ I say.

  Henry holds up his glass of orange juice. ‘I hope this isn’t premature, but I think a toast might be in order.’

  ‘That’s really bad luck,’ says Bridget. ‘What if she doesn’t get a part?’

  The phone rings at half-past nine. I’ve got a part in the musical. The only thing that stops me from feeling pure terror is the knowledge that confidence, and a good night’s sleep, are only a glass or two of gin away.

  It’s Sunday night. Margaret is out of bed and we are all in the living room watching a video Bridget has picked up from the video store.

  ‘Pause it for a second,’ says Margaret. ‘I need an apple.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I say.

  I fetch her the biggest, roundest and reddest apple in the fridge.

  ‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ she says and pulls me towards her so that she can kiss me on the cheek. By the time I sit down again, tears of happiness are rolling down my face.

  About halfway through the film there is an unexpected sex scene. The woman, who is wearing a summer dress, lies on a kitchen table, takes her pants off, and spreads her legs, and the man, still wearing his trousers, undoes his zip and climbs on top of her. The camera is stationed at the woman’s head so that mostly what is seen is the man’s body pumping her, his head going back, his face grimacing.

  I think that the Hardings can see what is happening to my face and neck. I’m not blushing, I’m burning alive. My hair is singed. I cannot breathe. I am frozen with the shock of the impact of this thing I have seen. I can feel the pain between my legs and I can feel the table under my shoulder blades.

  The scene seems to last forever. None of us moves a hair. The man and the woman are being watched from above, the man pummelling the woman.

  The silence in the room can be felt, like pain. In the movie, another man comes into the kitchen. He is a friend of the first man and he begins to unzip his trousers.

  ‘Stop it,’ I say without intending to make any sound. ‘Stop the video.’

  Margaret has the remote control and she stops the movie. The room is silent, but only for a second. Margaret turns the TV back on and a gridiron game blares into the room.

  Henry, with no sweat on his brow, no quiver in his voice, no blush, not even an invisible embarrassment that might show itself in the way that he swallows, says, ‘I guess that was a pretty boring film.’

  James is next. ‘I hate when they put stupid sex scenes in films.’

  Bridget is worst of all. ‘As if anybody would have sex on the kitchen table!’

  Not one of them is troubled. Not one of them disturbed. Not one of them ashamed or sick or bothered. My emotion is more than they can bear. They have shut down and they are in this together.

  ‘I’m going to my room,’ I say, pain and sadness shooting through me. ‘I hate football.’

  On Monday morning the results of the auditions are posted up at school. I see Tom in class but instead of sneaking glances at each other across the room and talking in code, using the hand signals we’ve developed, he bows his head and sulks.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asks when we are leaving class. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to audition?’

  ‘I was too embarrassed,’ I say.

  ‘Crap,’ he says.

  We walk to our lockers together without speaking. Tom slams his locker shut and everything inside it falls. ‘I was going to audition too, you know, but I thought you’d hate that kind of shit.’

  ‘The Hardings really wanted me to audition,’ I say. ‘James put my name down. They were worried about me not being involved in anything at school.’

  ‘Crap.’

  ‘Ask them, then,’ I say. ‘Ask Margaret and Henry. They talked me into it and I just went along for the ride. I didn’t think I’d even get a part.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, thinking about living in his mansion house, ‘I should have told you. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Yeah right,’ he says.

  ‘Maybe you should come to the first rehearsal and see if you can still get a part. Then we can be in it together.’

  ‘No fucking way,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead going to those stupid rehearsals every night for months.’

  ‘Not every night,’ I say.

  Tom storms off with his bag dangling, straps trailing on the floor. I wish I could empty myself out like a trouser pocket. I feel filthy and nervous, standing here in the corridor, alone, surrounded by the noise and gay activity of happy students. I leave the building, my skin prickling with sweat, wondering what it is that happens between normal people, wondering what it is they laugh about.

  I don’t trust or even like Tom right now, but he’s the only person I can even talk to without feeling surreal. I have run out of gin and I have run out of money and I have the first all-cast rehearsal tomorrow night. I wish that I hadn’t let him go.

  When I get home, Margaret is sitting at the dining-room table cutting an apple into small pieces. I see to my horror that she has the score of Annie Get Your Gun in front of her.

  ‘I’ve been looking forward to you coming home,’ she says, ‘Look what Henry got at lunchtime.’

  I look over her shoulder. ‘Oh, that’s terrific,’ I say.

  She holds my arm, ‘My back’s a lot better. I could play for you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Maybe later. I had a really hard day at school. I need to go for a bike ride or something to clear my head.’

  ‘Hell’s bells!’ she says. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ She is holding my arm and I wonder if she can feel me shaking.

  ‘Are you sick?’ she asks. ‘Your eyes are all glassy. Did something happen?’

  ‘Not really. It’s just that I ran into a friend who went for the part and didn’t get it and as you can imagine she was upset and I wonder if she’ll ever talk to me again.’

  ‘I see,’ says Margaret, letting go of my arm, ‘You wonder if she’s jealous of the interloper.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘I thought she’d never stop crying.’

  ‘Is that Judy?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lie. ‘It’s Judy.’

  I ride my bike to a nearby phone booth and ring Tom.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. A woman answers the phone. Tom’s mum, I suppose.

  ‘Is Tom there?’

  ‘Is that you, lovely Lou?’

  I
nearly laugh. ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘We’re looking forward to meeting you,’ says the cheerful, posh voice. ‘I’m Tom’s mom.’

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll get him for you.’

  Tom and I meet in the park and sit on a bench and we kiss. I like him most when he doesn’t speak and when I look at his eyes a flare goes up in my soul. I tell him I need a loan.

  ‘Why don’t you ask your host-parents for some money?’ he asks.

  ‘They won’t give me any.’

  ‘What do you need it for?’

  ‘I need it for alcohol,’ I say. ‘I can’t sing unless I’m a bit tipsy.’

  He doesn’t seem surprised, in fact, he seems pleased.

  ‘Dutch courage,’ he says.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘It’s more than that, isn’t it? It runs a lot deeper than that, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I’d just like money to buy some gin.’

  He puts his hand in his tight jeans’ pocket.

  ‘Shit,’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve only got five. I thought I had more.’

  ‘Fuck,’ I say. I don’t believe him. ‘I can only get a small bottle with that.’

  He smiles. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ever taken speed? It’s even better. Especially if your problem runs a little deeper.’

  I don’t care what I take but I wish he’d shut up about this running a bit deeper business, especially since it’s obvious he’s talking about his own problem, not mine.

  ‘Give me some,’ I say.

  Tom has some in his pocket inside a plastic coin bag.

  We sit inside a piece of playground equipment; a bright green ball that you sit inside while somebody outside spins you around. It smells of vomit. Tom shows me how to snort the speed but most of it seems to get stuck in my nose and a horrible acidic taste, like powdered headache tablets, crawls down the back of my throat. It’s a dark and distasteful few minutes.

  ‘That’s revolting,’ I say, climbing out of the round green ball. ‘We should have got a few cans of beer to wash it down.’