How the Light Gets In (5 page)

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 nervous 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.

After dessert, I go with James to the lounge-room. I lie across one of the leather couches and James lies across the other. He is wearing basketball shorts and a singlet. For a moment we are silent. Suddenly he sits up and moves his body towards mine as though he has a secret to tell. I sit up too, but then he falls down again: a change of plan. He takes a pen from the coffee table and pretends to write something important in the margins of the TV guide; frowning, feigning worry, wanting me to look at him.

‘You’re left-handed,’ I say.

‘Congratulations,’ he says, without looking up. ‘I’m a southpaw.’

‘Isn’t that a boxer?’

‘
Duh
. It just means a left-handed person.’

He looks even harder at me now, his light-blue eyes
narrowing on me, like a lizard suffering from too much sun trying to see what’s trapped under its claw.

‘I didn’t know that,’ I say, blushing.

I stare at his arms, his legs, his cheekbones. He knows that I’m watching and does everything he can to pretend he doesn’t know. He changes the channel to a cop show. A team of FBI agents pounce on a bunch of drug runners in an alleyway. They are wearing yellow sweaters with FBI written boldly in red across the front.

‘The FBI look just like a football team,’ I say.

‘No they don’t,’ he says without looking at me. ‘They look nothing like a football team.’

I wonder how long it will be before I will be alone in this house. It’d be like being alone in a five-star hotel. I could sleep in each of the beds, snoop in the cupboards, sit in the spa in Margaret and Henry’s ensuite, drink some alcohol, eat the whole box of chocolate liqueurs I saw in the piano room, smoke a cigar while on the phone and pull out the photo albums. I could roam around freely for a few days.

Perhaps something tragic could happen to the Hardings and the house would become mine.

It’s almost dark outside and we haven’t turned the lamps on. The room is blue. On the TV, two skinny, tattooed removalists are taking furniture out of somebody’s house and loading it into a van.

I remember an old joke I made up that nobody ever gets.

‘I’d like to start a furniture removal business called The Heimlich Removers,’ I say.

James doesn’t look at me, ‘Congratulations,’ he says. ‘That’s very funny. You should tell somebody who thinks it’s as funny as you do.’

I am red again. James smiles, a twisted smile, and then he looks at me, long and hard. Our eyes connect for too long,
my stomach lurches and I look away.

Margaret comes into the room and stands between the two couches.

‘You’ve been watching that TV for hours,’ she says.

‘Really?’ I wonder what the rule is on a Saturday.

‘It’s all crap,’ says James, ‘but there’s been some witty distractions along the way.’

Margaret sits on the couch next to me, produces a small apple and starts to munch. These apples appear so frequently it is as though she is a tennis player producing balls from within the folds of her pleated skirt. She takes regular toothy bites and finishes quickly. She holds the apple core between her thumb and index finger. ‘James, why don’t you change out of those sweaty gym clothes?’

James ignores her.

She frowns. ‘I don’t know why you’d have a shower and then get right back into the same clothes.’

Margaret leaves the room and I say, ‘I’m going to my room to read.’

James swings around. He sits up and rests his chin on the back of the couch so that he can watch me go.

‘We have root beer,’ he says. ‘If you get me some you can watch whatever you want on TV.’

I am forced to look at him and he sees that I am blushing again.

‘You’re blushing.’

‘Congratulations,’ I say. ‘How astute.’