How the Light Gets In (7 page)

‘What’s
wrong
with you, James?’ he asks.

James flicks his flick-comb at my face.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he says, his baby moustache like a scribble above his lip.

‘Please stop it, James!’ says Henry. ‘I don’t know what ‘s wrong with you. You’ve been acting very strangely ever since …’

Henry realises what he is about to say and turns away, awkward, shifting in his seat, ashamed.
But who are you ashamed of?
I want to ask.
Are you ashamed of your son or of me? What have
I done wrong?

It is our ninth day on the road and we stop at a roadside cafeteria because I say I need to go to the toilet.

‘The
bathroom
,’ says Bridget. ‘You need to use the
bathroom
.’

Margaret follows me into the cramped cubicle. It smells foul; a mixture of human waste and ‘Pine Forest’ air freshener.
The smell forces me to breathe through my mouth.

There is one small sink in the cubicle, a room so small that when the door opens it comes close to hitting the toilet bowl.

When Margaret follows me I think she must be coming in to use the sink while I urinate. I expect that when she realises both sink and toilet are in the same tiny room, she’ll leave and come back when I’m finished. But when I open the cubicle door she is right up behind me, and I can feel her bosom on my back.

‘You go first,’ she says.

I am paralysed by this idea. I know that I should say something smooth and easy like, ‘Okay. You wait outside and I’ll yell when I’m finished.’ I rehearse this sentence but can’t speak.

She stands in front of the locked cubicle door, and is staring, in her phlegmatic way, at the lower half of my body. She strikes me as being emotionless, a person who would never blush or burst into tears over anything. She is too normal, too relaxed, as she stares right at me and talks loudly at me about the heat.

I am skinless.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I don’t need to go after all.’

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I’ll go then.’

And so I stand and stare at the wall, red-faced, while Margaret slowly unbuttons the metal studs on her jeans.

Back in the van, while James and Bridget sleep, I remember saying goodbye to my mum at the airport.

‘Okay, I’m going now,’ I said.

My mum looked down at the brand-new camera hanging around her neck. ‘But there’s an hour and a half till boarding.’

‘I just want to go,’ I said.

She wanted happy pictures of us together. She wanted something good to happen, so that one day it would be possible to
say, ‘Remember when I saw you off at the airport when you were going to the States?’

She looked over her shoulder at a group of exchange students sitting with their families in the cafeteria. She wanted to ask one of them to take a photo of us, our arms around each other, smiling.

‘All right,’ she said.

She lifted the camera up over her head and put it carefully back in her bag, making a comfortable nest for it and checking to see if it was secure, as though it was a miniature me she was stashing away. My mum wore her cardigan wrapped around her waist, the other mothers wore theirs draped around their shoulders.

‘Gimme a hug,’ she said. So, with my backpack on my back and my shoulder bag swinging heavily down to my elbow, I hugged her and my breasts made awkward contact with the top of hers. Her breasts, flattened against mine, repulsed me. They were too large and warm, eager to maintain contact, mine small and cold.

I let go, adjusted my bags and said, ‘Rent out my room if you want. You could probably get thirty dollars a week for it.’

I turned away from her and started walking, my throat fat with grief, my jaw shaking and my teeth grinding. Even at a distance of a few metres I could hear her crying. I adjusted my bags again, felt for my passport and rushed towards the boarding gate. My throat cleared.

Her sadness didn’t matter. If my new family could afford a sleep clinic or good doctor to help me, I’d take them; I’d take two dozen of whatever I could lay my hands on.

A few hours later, James sits up close to me and stares. His once thin and scrawny moustache is thicker now, more like
those being grown by the friends he takes down to the basement. We are under his black sheet and his leg is rubbing against mine.

‘Hey there, weirdo,’ he says, his voice a deep, low whisper.

‘Piss off, loser,’ I say, and to stop myself from turning red, I think of myself as a disused telephone, its plug wrenched from the wall, the cord dangling, no longer capable of being startled.

‘Weirdo,’ he says.

It’s our eleventh night on the road, and I’m sitting cross-legged, looking out the back window, riding the bumps in the road, letting myself sail. At times the road is so quiet that we seem to hover like a spacecraft under the bright stars, taking off when the road climbs up a hill and landing when it glides down the other side.

I like the open country road at night. It is one of my favourite things, along with the sound car tyres make on a wet road, and road signs with knives and forks on them to signify food, and beds to signify sleep, and the sight of an aeroplane at night, with its landing lights on. Everything that is stupid by day seems intelligent and meaningful by night. I love to look out the wide back window and pretend that I am alone.

I love how the road lights burn holes in the dark. The damp air, and the darkness, inside and out, remind me of my first game of murder in the dark. The shock of pitch black, of hands reaching out for hands, exaggerated cries, an odd weightlessness in my legs as I ran fast to hide in a cupboard at the end of the hallway. I was nine or ten and my sisters’ boyfriends were much older, adults compared to us.

When we drive at night, I feel that same weightlessness and speed in my blood. And when we drive at night something happens to James. During the daylight hours his conversation is quick and sharp, defensive, like verbal kung fu.

But at night there is a change. James’ big face, his tufty, immature sideburns, his pimply skin, his oiliness, are all covered up. He looks better, but more than that, the fact that his flaws can no longer be seen in the dark seems to cause in him a psychic transformation, and his words are kinder.

Bridget and Margaret are sleeping and Henry drives. All is quiet and smooth and peaceful. James sits close to me, and copies my cross-legged pose. In the darkness his face looks good and it occurs to me that mine might too. I look at him, much longer than I could bear to look at him with the light on us.

James’ eyes rearrange me when he stares back. My body shudders; a tiny, sharp, quick pulse travels through me, and my face, rather than rising to a blush, feels warm as though I were sitting before an open fire. My palms, rather than sweating, crave the sensation of skin and so I rub my own hands, one over the other softly, deliberately, to feel flesh. James’ eyes have narrowed but they do not look away. He continues to gaze into my eyes and his chest rises violently; a deep, sudden breath. We have become something else in the darkness and it feels more like the truth.

A car overtakes us, going too quickly, and Henry beeps hard and clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth, tsk, tsk.

I look away from James, excited, and afraid. We have nearly kissed each other’s shadow and now we pull away. We lie down, facing out the back window, close enough to each other for it to take a long time for the stirring to go away.

One of us has to speak. I ask him, ‘Do you know what desquamation is?’

James does not look at me.

‘I don’t know. It’s clearly a noun. Probably some kind of illness. Am I right?’

‘If I knew what it was I wouldn’t have asked you,’ I say,
staring out of the window. This disappointing bit of conversation ends, and what had seemed to be the truth suddenly looks like a dangerous lie the darkness told.

We are eating in a hotel restaurant to celebrate Bridget’s fourteenth birthday. Bridget opens her presents. Margaret and Henry give her a gold bracelet with a diamond in it and her grandparents have given her a gold pen. Henry orders champagne and my stomach churns at the sight of it. For the past few days I’ve been craving alcohol. I miss the way it makes me feel: soft, nerveless and edgeless. Most of all I miss how it helps me sleep.

‘Let’s toast to Lou. Our newest family member.’

My glass is empty but I don’t refill it. When we toast, I use both hands to hold on, and drink the air from the glass.

I look at Henry. ‘Since it’s a special occasion, could we drink some champagne?’

Henry looks at Margaret and Margaret looks at Bridget.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Margaret, ‘but the legal age for the consumption of alcohol is twenty-one.’

After our fancy dinner we go to the movies in a decayed old movie house in a small country town. Bridget gets to pick the film. We shove our hands into boxes of greasy popcorn and the almost-fluorescent white pieces bounce like tiny erasers from our knees and litter the carpet.

The movie is boring and it reminds me of Steve and his habit of deliberately disturbing innocent people in cinemas.

Steve and his best friend, Ryan, find a romantic, feel-good movie and sit next to a woman, preferably an old woman. Then Steve turns to Ryan during the pre-movie advertisements and confesses to a murder or some other violent crime he pretends to have committed only a few hours earlier.

In a loud voice he’ll say something like, ‘Look, I didn’t mean for the knife to go right through her lungs,’ or, ‘She wasn’t meant to fucking die!’

Then he waits for the woman to get scared and move seats or leave the cinema.

Steve has an unnerving and convincing imagination when it comes to making up crimes. I pointed this out to Erin once and she spat in my hair. ‘It’s only
fun
,’ she said. ‘But you wouldn’t even know what that is!’

Bridget is holding her mum’s hand while watching the boring movie and Henry has fallen asleep. After all the popcorn has been eaten, James moves in his seat so that his shoulder touches mine. I move away but he moves closer. His knee presses up against me and then he pretends to scratch so that he can rub his hand on my leg.

I feel as though I’ve swallowed fast-acting poison. I’m sweating, not just a light prickling sweat, but a pouring sweat from the palms of my hands. I need to leave the movie theatre.

I make my way over the outstretched legs of Bridget and Henry and Margaret

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I whisper.

I sit in the foyer for about twenty minutes and then decide to find something to drink. A drink will help the panic and maybe help me sleep when we get back to the motel. What I need to do is buy a small bottle of gin and drink some now and some later, but not too much.

I take my wallet out of my pocket and check for the twenty dollars Margaret gave me.

I walk a few blocks and find a licensed grocer. The woman behind the counter bothers me. There’s no doubt I look older than I am, but older women are better at knowing the difference between sixteen and twenty-one.

The shop is dark and there is a group of teenage boys getting ready to shoplift in the back corner.

‘Can I have a small bottle of gin, please?’

The shopkeeper is trying to keep one eye on the shoplifters and one on me. She puts her pen in her mouth and looks me up and down.

There’s a Guatemalan worry-doll stuck to the cash register with sticky tape – a thick wad of tape wrapped round the head and feet – a sad, desperate and superstitious presence in this bleak, grimly-lit place. I decide to speak a little more; perhaps my accent will help convince her that I’m old enough.

I say, ‘If you don’t have any gin I’ll have that vodka instead.’

‘We have gin,’ she says with tired resignation, putting her pen down on the counter. ‘The big bottle is on special if you want that.’

I realise that this is a gift horse.

‘How much is off the usual price?’ I ask.

‘Two dollar twenty,’ she says. I am surprised she hasn’t asked me what part of England I’m from. Everybody else does.

‘Okay,’ I say, ‘that’s a terrific bargain. I’d better take two.’

Suddenly she is suspicious and she squints at my face. I get ready to leave, worried that I might collapse or vomit.

There is a menacing burst of laughter from the corner full of boys.

‘Damned kids,’ says the shopkeeper.

She looks back at me one last time then swings around. With her back to me, and one hand reaching up for the bottle of gin, she says, ‘One bottle per customer only.’

I say, ‘One bottle’s fine.’

I sit in a nearby park and drink enough gin to feel soft. I stand once or twice to see how I am on my feet and I am fine. I wrap the bottle inside a jacket in my backpack and head back to the cinema. I buy a bottle of water and wait in the foyer.

Margaret comes out of the cinema looking angry. ‘It’s bad manners to walk out of a film. It makes the other people feel awkward. Where did you go?’

‘Nowhere,’ I say. ‘I just didn’t like the film and I thought I’d go for a walk around the block a few times.’

Margaret has strong feelings about this, which is rather strange. I walk out of films all the time, especially when actors continually don’t know what to do with their hands and have only got parts because they’re handsome or pretty.

‘You should always finish what’s on your plate,’ she says. ‘When you start something you should finish it.’

All along I expected her to be cross about me being on my own in the dark, in a strange town, but this doesn’t seem to be her concern.

‘You should apologise to Bridget,’ she says as we walk out.

‘Let’s hit the road,’ says Henry when he catches up with us a few minutes later. For once, he isn’t trying to hide the fact that he’s having a boring time. I wink at him, but he doesn’t wink back.

In the back of the van I tell Bridget I’m sorry. ‘What for?’ she says.

‘For walking out of the film.’

She rolls her eyes and looks away from me. ‘
Whatever
. I don’t care. You can do whatever you want.’

Our motel for the night is down-market; neon sign busted, a skip of overflowing garbage near the manager’s door and brickwork the colour of shit.

Margaret comes back from the manager’s office with only one key. I notice this right away. James and Bridget are swimming in the pool.

‘There’s only one room left,’ she says.

‘Couldn’t we go somewhere else?’ I say.

‘It won’t kill you,’ she says.

Henry gives her a look, as though he’d like to argue with her, but can’t find the courage. She always gets her own way.

‘I’ll walk up to the motel further back that way,’ I say. ‘I’ll ask if they have three rooms.’

Henry shakes his head and makes his favourite
tsk, tsk
sound.

‘It’s not the end of the world,’ he says. ‘Just relax.’

There’s no airconditioning in the small room, not even a kettle or small basket of plastic-wrapped biscuits. Worse still, there is only one double bed and that’s where Margaret and Henry will sleep. There’s no other room or beds and I am desperate for some privacy.

James, Bridget and I collapse on the couch and sulk about the prospect of having to sleep on the floor. Margaret puts her hands on her hips and says, ‘It won’t
kill
any of you.’

Bridget keeps on protesting, and saying that it isn’t fair, and when she looks at me I’m suddenly aware that this is my punishment for trying to intervene when that woman was beating her child, or for walking out of the film; or both. It’s obviously not an economic necessity.

We put our blankets on the floor and lie down under sheets with two pillows each under our heads.

Bridget and I are in the middle of the room, and James lies away from us, nearer to the wall. We have agreed that none of us will sleep on the couch, for the sake of fairness, but I wonder if James plans to move there once Bridget and I are asleep.

The window is open but there is no breeze. For several hours I lie awake listening to cars arriving, people spilling out and making their identical arrangements. I watch the motel room wall on which car headlights cast sudden beams of light, and I imagine this is what it must be like crouching under the searchlights of the enemy. One beam of light scans from left to
right and then holds to the ceiling for too long, and I think the enemy has no intention of giving up. Another beam swipes quickly across the wall and disappears and I know that the enemy is leaving. I wonder if the enemy, whose beam has just been doused outside my door, will stay up all night drinking, the TV turned up too loud.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been sleeping when it happens; when I am woken by James, whose hand is in my underpants. I think that I am dreaming at first, and move to shake it off.

I have my back to him and move away, in case he is sleeping and doesn’t know what he’s doing. But he moves in closer, and I decide to pretend to sleep. If I am asleep, then how can it matter? It will be as though nothing has happened.

I close my eyes, to remove myself from this strange thing. I am woozy at first then something else. It’s a surprise, the slow release of a pleasant poison, drip by drip. I should want him to stop, remove his searching hand, but if we are asleep, what can it matter?

I lie still. His hand is moving and I don’t block its path. I’m curious. I’m curious as hell about what happens next.

His hand makes its way – as though it belongs to somebody else – into the front of my pants. I clench up. I want the feeling, but don’t want James to be at the other end of it. I clench still more, then relax. His finger starts to rub.

Tomorrow it will be as though nothing has happened. I don’t want to touch him and I don’t have to. How can somebody who is asleep touch somebody? His finger continues in its fast, silent, and tireless way and the better I feel the more I wonder how it is he knows what to do and what it is that he’s getting out of it.

He stops and we both play dead.

In the morning, Margaret opens the curtains and the room becomes too bright, too soon.

‘Time to get up,’ she says. ‘Time to hit the road.’