How the Light Gets In (17 page)

She says, ‘You’d better have a shower, then meet us downstairs in the kitchen. James and Bridget have already left for school.’

Henry opens the window. ‘Keep this window open and your door shut until we say otherwise.’

‘Sorry,’ I say. I can still feel the speed in my blood, but I’m not high. I just want to sleep.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So are we,’ says Margaret, meaningful and serious as hell. I don’t blame her.

I take the stairs on tiptoe and listen at the kitchen door. Margaret and Henry aren’t talking. Margaret is blowing her nose. I go inside. The kitchen is the most cramped room in the Harding house and I have never liked being in it.

With its door at each end, a long table which takes up most of the space and forces you to stand close to whomever is doing the cooking, a small window which sees the branches of a tree and no sky, and the schedule on the fridge telling everybody what they must do, it is the most unnerving room in the Harding house.

‘Aren’t you guys going to work today?’ I ask.

Henry stands up and pulls out a chair for me to sit in. Both doors are shut and there is no tea or coffee on the stove.

‘No.’

I want him to say more.

‘Lou, you don’t really expect us to go to work after what’s happened? What would your own mother do?’

I sit down and think to myself that it would be water off a duck’s back for my mum. She’d keep brushing her hair in an
earthquake and she doesn’t believe in discipline. When Erin and Leona beat me to a pulp, she yells out from the kitchen, or over the din of the TV, ‘Youse can fight your own battles, but break that table and I’ll break your necks.’ Afterwards, when I lie on my bed, she comes to me with a cup of tea. I take it and the tea on my swollen tongue makes me happy. ‘Can you stay here a while?’ I ask, and she does, and we talk until I fall asleep.

‘I’m not taking drugs,’ I say. ‘I was just in a weird mood from lack of sleep. You know I have really bad insomnia.’

I’m not stoned, but I seem to have acquired a thicker skin, a layer of immunity. I feel as though I could say anything and not feel in the least bit skinless. How wonderful it would be to always feel immune; immune from things and people, what they think and what they say.

‘Lou, please don’t lie to us,’ says Margaret. ‘Lying is the worst thing you could do right now.’

Henry is less angry. ‘We know how troubled you are, Lou, but that’s no excuse for what you’ve done. There are two children in this house who we need to protect and we can’t have you around them if you’re taking drugs.’

They’re using my name a lot. I decide the best thing to do is tell some of the truth; to cooperate. Make them feel as though they’ve cracked a hard nut. Let them get on with their lives. I’ll deal with Tom later and make my move as soon as I can. I’ll tell him that I want his family to adopt me.

‘Okay,’ I say, ‘you’re right. I did a really stupid thing last night and I can’t believe I did it. I tried some drugs. But as you can see, I didn’t enjoy the experience.’

Henry leans under the table and takes his diary out of his briefcase.

‘We’re going to have to call Flo Bapes. The Organisation has to know about this. Your parents will have to be contacted. The decision is not ours. It’s out of our hands.’

The very sound of that name – Flo Bapes – makes me shudder. When I called her last week to ask her if I could see a doctor, she told me this was a matter for Henry, who I now believe is glad to have me out of his hands. He wants to wash his hands of me. In fact, he’s at the kitchen sink doing just that. He feels cleaner already. He feels relieved. The manual has told him what to do and all he has to do is follow it. It hurts. I’m amazed at how much it hurts.

He reaches for the phone.

I start to sob; great gulps of air and heaving convulsions. I hadn’t thought that it would be this serious. I would rather die than go home. Henry’s hand hovers theatrically over the receiver, waiting for me to give him a reason not to dial the number.

Then I realise that it is only a threat. I feel like laughing.

I say, ‘Is there any way I can stop you from telling them? It’d kill my mum if she knew. It’d kill my dad too. Can’t you just ground me or something?’

Margaret is pale and small dark bags, filled with a foul blue liquid, sag under her eyes.

‘Who gave you the drugs? We need to know who’s behind this before we can agree to anything.’

I pluck a name out of the fluorescent kitchen sky. ‘A girl called Simone,’ I say.

My appetite is coming back. I feel like pancakes. I feel like being hugged and put to bed, but not my own bed, a new and different bed. Henry and Margaret’s four-poster bed. I wish I was at the airport meeting Margaret and Henry for the first time.

I say, ‘I’ve never met her before. I was walking home from school and she came up to me. She is really pretty and friendly. She said she’d seen me at the audition and wondered if I’d like to have pizza with her and her friends.’

As I tell this lie I can see Simone and her friends. They look like regular high school students. They are in the drama club and they have a 3.8 grade point average.

‘And what happened?’ asks Henry, wrapping his hands around an empty cup as though to warm them.

‘We were having pizza and somehow I was telling them how lonely I’d been feeling and they asked if I’d like to try something that’d make me feel really happy. They told me it was one of those natural herb things, you know, like that guarana stuff you can buy in the shops.’

Margaret has been rubbing her eyes by sticking her fingers under the lenses of her glasses, as though she’s too tired to take them off. She stops and slaps the table. ‘And you believed this? You fool!’

‘It sounded okay. They were so casual about it. They seemed like really nice people. Simone is bright. She’s going to Yale and wants to do pre-law.’

I have no idea what I’m going to say before I say it. Margaret doesn’t agree with Henry. She thinks I should be sent home. She wants me to be punished. ‘Well, you’re not as smart as you make out, are you?’

‘I suppose not.’

She takes her glasses off, holds them in the air and peers through them at the calendar on the wall, affecting a strange toughness, as though she busts drug users for a living.

‘And so you took this drug – this unknown substance – on the strength of a pretty face who claims she’s going to Yale?’

‘Yes, I was stupid,’ I say. ‘They just had a small brown packet and poured powder into my drink and then I drank it. I felt sick. Then I said I should go home and they offered to drive me. That was about eight-thirty. They drove around and around and I kept telling them to drop me off or let me out.’

As I tell this story, I can see Simone’s car. It’s a Saab with
white sheepskin seat covers. She has two friends, one girl and one boy. The boy has blond hair. The girl has short red hair. They laugh a great deal and I laugh too. We are driving fast, listening to loud music.

‘I was lost. I didn’t know where they’d driven me. I wouldn’t have known how to find my way home and I thought it would be more dangerous to get out of the car. By the time they dropped me out front it must have been late.’

‘It was two-thirty a. m.,’ says Henry, exhausted.

Margaret wants to know if she and Henry can search my room. I agree and stay downstairs with my head on the kitchen table. I have stashed an empty bottle of gin under my mattress and the rest of the speed is in my underpants.

They are taking a long time. I lie on the couch and watch some TV, hoping they’ll leave me alone for the day. Then I remember that the first all-cast rehearsal is on tonight and that I still haven’t solved my problem.

Henry comes in first. ‘We didn’t find anything.’

Margaret is still angry. ‘We need to look in your wallet. Can I have it please?’

‘Yes,’ I say and hand it across the back of the couch.

‘There’s not a cent in here,’ she says. ‘Not a penny. Did these people make you pay for the drugs?’

I have no idea what the right answer is. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘After I’d already taken the drug and we were in the car, Simone and her boyfriend told me that I had to chip in or they might not be able to get me back home.’

This Simone girl and her boyfriend sound like lunatics. I hope I never see them again.

‘Good God,’ says Henry. ‘How much?’

‘Twenty dollars and all my change,’ I say.

Margaret and Henry leave the lounge-room to confer for a minute.

‘We want you to promise you’ll never see these people again,’ says Henry. ‘They could have killed you and left you in a ditch on the side of the road.’

Margaret is still cross. ‘Next time anything like this happens we’ll be calling Flo Bapes. There’ll be no more sympathy. We will not allow you to corrupt our children. If you ever consume alcohol or any kind of drug again, you’ll be on the next plane home.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again.’

I don’t believe they’ll send me home.

‘You’d better stay home today,’ says Henry. ‘You look like death. But you won’t be going anywhere tonight. We’ll talk about your schedule later. And don’t talk to James and Bridget about any of this. Just say that you were sick today.’

I feel like telling them that Bridget and her friends drink all the time and that she spends most Friday nights playing drinking games, like ‘quarters’ and ‘spin the bottle’. I feel like pointing out that I haven’t met a single American kid over the age of fourteen who doesn’t drink.

‘But I have the first all-cast rehearsal tonight at school. I have a big part in the musical.’

Margaret and Henry have forgotten all about this. They leave the room once again to confer and I listen to their hushed, angry voices. Henry must be sticking his neck out for me again.

He comes back in alone, his neck red, ‘We’ve agreed you can continue to go to rehearsals. You’ll need to give me a copy of the timetable and Margaret and I can show up at any time. You’ll only be going to rehearsals and nowhere else. Besides rehearsals, you are grounded until we say you can go out again.’

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘You’ve saved my life.’

Henry and Margaret go to work. I sleep on the couch for a few hours and then wake up when the sun floods the room. I draw
the curtains and lie down again, but the wave of sleep has washed up on the shore of my unhealthy skull and I am filled with dread again. I can’t rehearse without alcohol and I have no money. In two hours Bridget and James will be home from school joyfully making cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise that squeezes straight out of the container, and then they’ll lie on their bellies in front of the TV, talking and laughing before they do their homework. I have no choice but to try the booze cabinet.

The cabinet is locked and the key is nowhere to be found. I search the house for some loose change. I start with all the drawers on the ground floor and then the drawers in the basement. I leave the bedrooms till last. I find a grand total of one dollar and thirty-five cents. I imagine, for one startling paranoid moment, that my looting for coins has been filmed by a closed circuit TV and that they’ll all watch it together when they get home.

I lie on my bed and pray for sleep. I say the Our Father about twenty times. This doesn’t work. I go to my desk and write a letter of apology and put it under Margaret’s pillow. I go back to bed. I panic. I take the note from under the pillow. She won’t like the idea of my having been in the bedroom. I move the note under the piano lid and then take it out again. I move the note to seven different locations before tearing it up. I lie on the bed again and try to think of a plan.

Margaret knocks on my door as soon as she gets home. She hasn’t taken her shoes off. She usually takes her shoes off right away and replaces them with slippers. Something must be wrong. She hates her corporate clothes.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.

I sit up. ‘I feel rotten,’ I say. ‘I feel really bad about what I’ve done. I’m really sorry.’

‘Apology accepted,’ she says, ‘but what I’m really interested in is a huge improvement in your behaviour. And no more lies.’

I’m confused about this reference to my behaviour. What else have I done wrong? I bet it’s the outburst over James.

‘We just want you to fit in. That’s all we want.’

‘Where’s Henry?’ I ask.

‘He’s staying back at the office late tonight.’

‘That’s my fault, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. It is.’

Margaret is using her special parent voice, stern and slow.

‘Are Bridget and James home yet?’

‘No, James has debating practice and Bridget has a science club meeting. They’ll be home with Henry. He’s picking them up at seven.’

She still feels some warmth towards me. I can tell by the way she isn’t in a hurry to leave my room.

‘I have rehearsal at six-thirty,’ I say. ‘I’d better get ready.’

‘Well, just let me use the big bathroom for a while. I need a good bath. The cold is playing havoc with my back. Then it’s all yours.’

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I hope it makes you feel better.’

I lie on my stomach for a while and then I realise what I must do. When Margaret is in the bath, I must borrow some money. I’ll put it back next week when I get my allowance. It’s medicine. That’s all it is. It’s just medicine. I only need it when I sing so there’s really nothing sinister about it at all. That’s all it is. The musical will be over in a few months and I’ll be free. Anyway, I’m not just getting through rehearsals, I’m learning how not to be nervous. At the very worst, this is my way of finding out how ordinary people feel.

Margaret’s handbag is on the swivel chair in her study. I open it and find that she only has two twenty-dollar notes and about two dollars in change. I take a twenty and go
upstairs. I listen at the door of the big bathroom. She’s still in the bath. I decide to get on Bridget’s bike and leave even though it’s only half-past five.

If I don’t leave right away, Margaret will want to drive me. I have no choice. I write a note. I say I have to get to the auditorium early to warm up. I say that if she’d like to come along and watch, that’d be great. I sign off,
I love you
and as I’m writing it, I think I mean it, but I’m not really sure.