Broken Soup (11 page)

“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.

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.”

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.

I said, “I'll give it to you one day. I'd like you to have it.”

“You don't have to do that,” he said.

“I know that. But someday this room is going to have to be dismantled so…” I got this picture in my head of me in my thirties, with a job and a mortgage and all that, Stroma grown up and Jack still sixteen, with his room untouched and his photos faded. It was so wrong. A wave of how wrong it was hit my chest. I wasn't supposed to get older than him.

Harper picked up Jack's guitar and pulled a face that said, “Is this OK?” I nodded and he started tuning it, holding his head close to hear, bending the notes in and out.

“You play guitar?” I said.

Harper said, “A little,” and then he started playing this thing that was so sweet and sad and simple, like a circle of music, the way it kept going, and I said, “Liar.”

I didn't hear the footsteps because I was listening to him play. I was the happiest I'd been in a while just sitting there and listening. I didn't see the door opening because I had my back to it and I was watching his hands move. I only turned around when Harper stopped.

Mum was standing in the hall, staring at him. There was so much in her face where normally there was just a blank.

I said, “You OK, Mum?” She didn't say anything. She turned away like a slow ghost. I heard her go and lie down on her bed next door, could hear the creak of the mattress and the awful silence.

Harper said when she pushed the door open she looked like she'd just won a prize. He saw the disappointment bloom on her face and she didn't move. “She just stared.”

I thought about Mum waking up all groggy in the dark downstairs and hearing footsteps in Jack's room. Not just footsteps—a boy's footsteps and a boy's voice, a seventeen-year-old's, a guitar playing more than six stilted notes.

It must have been like waking from a bad dream. She must have thought her boy was home.

 

Harper said he should go and I didn't argue. We walked past Mum's room on quiet feet, our movements exag
gerated, the closing of a door, each tread on the stairs slow and soundless.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” he said while I was trying to open the front door without clunking. We were whispering. “Will you be all right?”

“Course,” I said, but how did I know? Probably not.

“I'm sorry, Rowan,” he said. “That was bad.”

“It's not your fault,” I said. “It's OK.”

He kissed me on the cheek, so warm and quick, and his hand was on my neck, and then he walked down the path into the street. I couldn't see the ambulance, but I stood in the open door listening to it cough and start up and drive away.

I went up to see Mum. She was lying on her back with her arms above her head. I sat on the bed, gently so it wouldn't annoy her, so she wouldn't feel crowded. I said, “Sorry we scared you.”

Her eyes were sort of glistening in the half dark and I could see she was looking at me. I kept on. “He's my friend, Mum. You'd like him.”

She breathed out and turned her head away from me. I stayed there, not knowing what to do, getting ignored until I heard the key in the lock and Stroma's bright voice in the hall.

I knew nothing I could do would help. She'd lie there till the morning and probably even after that, and
it would be my all fault.

Stroma's cheeks were bright red from all the indoor running and Dad was smiling. They must have had a good time.

I should have told him about Mum there and then. I should have told him what just happened and what had been going on for months. But I didn't want to watch his smile disappear. I thought that would do more harm than good. Another great decision.

Stroma was tired out and Dad stayed for a while and made us some pasta. Part of me wanted Mum to come down and give the game away in some spectacular fashion—let Dad find out without me doing the telling. I had to force myself to sit down. I kept jumping up to rinse pans and wipe surfaces, and I was feeling a bit speeded up, a bit quicker than everything around me.

It was good though, to eat something I hadn't cooked. I caught myself pretending Dad hadn't moved out at all, that this happened every night and I wasn't responsible for absolutely bloody everything after all.

“How's Mum?” Dad said. Stroma and I stopped chewing and stared at him.

“Not so good,” I said. I was thinking, Just tell him, just ask him for help. It won't kill you.

“In what way?”

“She's got the flu,” Stroma said. “She's in bed sleeping.”
I looked at Stroma and she stuck her chin out and glared back.

“What? How long's she been sick?” Dad said.

I wanted to say, “Oh, years, didn't you notice?” but Stroma said “Since yesterday” before I could think it through. That girl was frighteningly good at lying.

“Have you been managing all right?” he said, and I wanted to hit him. I really did.

I looked at my food and Stroma said, “It's OK, Dad. We're good helpers.”

“Does she need anything?” he said, getting up. “I'll go and see her.”

“No,” I said, a bit too quick. “It's fine, Dad. I've just been up there. She's sleeping.”

There was this awful count to five while he decided whether to sit down again or not. I could feel Stroma holding her breath beside me. Then he said should he stay the night, he could sleep on the sofa, and on and on until I said, “Dad, I'm fifteen years old. You can go home. It's fine.”

We practically had to push him out the door.

As soon as he left I said, “Why did you lie to Dad?”

“You do,” she said. “All the time.”

“Well, I wasn't going to tonight. I was going to tell him. Mum's really bad, Stroma. I think we need his help. I don't want to lie anymore.”

“If Dad thinks Mum is sick, he won't love her anymore and he won't come home so we're
not
telling on her,” Stroma said. Her face started to cave in and her shoulders started to heave up and down, but she kept it together and she didn't cry.

“What if she gets worse and not better?” I said.

“Don't say that.”

“We have to think about it, Stro. Maybe we're not such good helpers after all.” I tried to give her a hug, but she was angry and turned away. I knew how she felt, like if someone comforted her she might just fall apart all over the place and make a big mess.

Me and Stroma couldn't do this anymore.

 

I dug out an old family video when Stroma and Mum were both asleep and I was all by myself for once with a TV.

Jack used to have this thing about Princess Diana, about how if nobody had told us she died, we could all have survived on TV clips alone, her getting out of cars, attending galas, stroking children. There must have been tons of stuff on film that no one had seen yet, enough to last for years. He said that considering most of us never actually clapped eyes on her for real, how would we know the difference?

Watching us all in the past, unthinkingly, carelessly happy, I wished I could say the same about our family. I
wished I had enough unseen footage to pretend things were the same as before.

The first bit of film was of me and Jack in a wading pool—pretty young, sun hats and underwear, the usual stuff. We were splashing each other, laughing and pouring water on our heads. Mum and Dad were laughing behind the camera, you could hear them. Then I started wailing about something—a watering can in the eye maybe—and Mum came into view, all smiles and big sunglasses and long hair. She was so pretty and she was wearing this thin dress with bare feet. It just froze me to the sofa seeing how young and lovely she was then.

I fast-forwarded the tape for a while, stopped to look at me as the grumpiest bridesmaid on earth, Stroma walking and falling over balls in the garden, Jack waving from the top of a tree, endless football games, several birthdays. I was thinking I should show Stroma the tape, remind her of the way things started. Then this line of crackle went down the screen and there was Jack like I remembered him, headphones on, shining and full of it, singing into the camera, filming himself. He was so close up he could have been in the room. Once he stopped singing, the crackly line came down again and it was back to some party we'd forgotten we had—Dad at the barbecue, Mrs. Hardwick and her husband, Mum laughing.

Jack had basically crashed the family album, hijacked it. And I just played him and rewound him, played him and rewound him, played him and rewound him until my eyes were so tired I couldn't see him anymore.