The 10 P.M. Question (15 page)

A thin heat crawled up behind Frankie’s ears. At the same time, everything in the truck seemed to slow down just a little— Ray Davies’s panting, Louie’s hand-tapping and leg-jiggling, the movements of his face.

“Maybe Ma’s a
house
sparrow,” said Frankie, very deliberately. He turned to look at Louie, tried a weak smile.

Louie went very still and stared straight ahead, through the windshield. It was so odd for him to be utterly immobile that Frankie felt almost afraid. Ray Davies gave a little whine and burrowed into Louie’s armpit.

After a long while, Louie said, “She has to be a caged bird, doesn’t she?” He kept looking ahead. “Something that’s had its wings clipped. Something really pretty, but a bit sad.”

Louie’s hand slipped sideways, feeling for Ray Davies’s head. He rubbed behind the dog’s ears, slowly, thoughtfully.

“A chaffinch,” he said. “Or a lovebird. Or maybe a canary.”

Ray Davies gave a low, pleased growl.

“Yeah, a canary,” said Louie. “One that doesn’t sing much. Doesn’t sing at all.”

“She sings,” said Frankie in a small voice.

“But not really,” said Louie. He finally turned and looked at Frankie.

“Lamb chwarma?” he said.

It was never completely dark in Ma’s bedroom, even when she’d switched off the bedside light. A diffused glow came through the window from the street lamp directly outside the front gate. Ma never drew the curtains; she liked the glow from the street lamp.

Frankie had been listening for the click of the bedside light; sometimes he preferred to ask questions in the dim color of that outside light.

“Are you still awake?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Ma whispered back.

Frankie laid his head back on Uncle George’s pillow. He liked its smell
—
apple shampoo (which Louie said Uncle George had been using since 1977) and Uncle G’s aftershave; he always shaved last thing at night, to save time in the morning, which was why in the evenings, if he was there at dinner, he looked even swarthier, and slightly disheveled.

“Everything all right?” said Ma, turning over and sitting up a little.

“Yeah,” said Frankie. He looked at the woman in the painting, but only her hair gleamed, the rest of her swallowed up by the night.

“Solly Napier’s cousin died. At his school. He was thirteen.”

“That’s
terrible,”
said Ma. “How?”

“Hole in his heart,
”
said Frankie. “No one knew. They were playing soccer.”

There was a loud thump on the roof, followed by the skittering of claws on metal. The Fat Controller. Her night was just beginning.

“You haven’t got a hole in your heart, Frankie,” said Ma.

“I know,” said Frankie. “I’m just saying. Solly went to the funeral. They had a soccer ball on the coffin and it rolled off during the service and bounced down the aisle.”

“Oh,” said Ma. Frankie could tell she was trying not to giggle.

“The Bolshoi Ballet is coming,” said Frankie. “The greatest ballet company in the world.” He’d read this on the poster at the town hall. “They’re doing
Sleeping Beauty.
”

“I love that music,” said Ma.

They lay there, silent, listening to the sounds outside the window: the occasional passing car, a door slamming, the Fat Controller arguing with next door’s cat, Colin.

“Did you ever see the Bolshoi Ballet?” Frankie asked.

“On video,” said Ma.

Colin-next-door was Burmese. His mournful whine rose and fell, an unearthly music that set Frankie’s teeth on edge. The Fat Controller’s response was a kind of gruff meow, no-nonsense, pitiless.

“Wouldn’t you really like to go?” said Frankie.

“Yes,” said Ma, after a pause. “But you know how it is.”

The two cats continued outside the window, an eerie drawn-out duet. It was more mysterious than Russian, Frankie thought, untranslatable
—
except for the Fat Controller’s final exasperated yelp-yowl, which Frankie interpreted as buzz off. There was more thumping and rustling and then a long quiet.

“I wish you could just go,” said Frankie. “We could get you a ticket as a birthday present.”

He knew he shouldn’t be saying this; he hadn’t said anything like this to Ma for a very long time. Not since the time he’d given her a handmade birthday voucher inviting her to see the nest of yellowhammer fledglings he’d discovered up in McCullough’s Reserve. Ma had cried that time. She’d stood at the bench in front of the electric beater, shaking; tears had rolled down her cheeks and pinged off into the cake mixture.

“Maybe, you never know, maybe it would be okay this time,” said Frankie. It was an old hope, one he’d almost forgotten about. For ages now he’d told himself not to think like that.

“I’m sorry, Frankie,” said Ma. Her voice was just a whisper.

They both lay still, listening now to the muted kitchen noises that signaled Uncle George’s arrival home. The fridge door opening and closing. The bang of the kettle against the sink. The pipes shuddering as the hot tap ran.

The bedside clock showed 10:15 p.m.

“Sorry,” Frankie said. He kissed Ma on her cheek.

“I’m sorry, too,” said Ma softly.

“It’s okay,” said Frankie, sliding off the bed. “One thing,” he said from the doorway. “I definitely don’t want a soccer ball on my coffin. Or a cricket ball. No balls, okay?”

“You’re not going to die,” said Ma. “Not till you’re extremely old.”

He really didn’t know how adults could say things like that. It was preposterous. Not to mention virtually a lie. How could they possibly know?

“’Night,” he said, and closed the door.

The day began in the worst possible way. Twice. First, it began at 3:49 a.m. when the Fat Controller jumped through Frankie’s bedroom window with a rat and proceeded to do a presentation juggle on the floor in front of his bed. Frankie knew this was happening even before he turned on the light. It had happened before; he recognized the particular sounds of this tumbling act. It was as loud as forty Cossacks and accompanied by the Fat Controller’s very peculiar deep-throated meow of triumph.

This was enough to make Frankie queasy. But when he snapped on the light and saw that the Fat Controller’s trophy was a bush rat, he almost barfed on the spot. There’d been plenty of mice in the FC’s hunting career, and any number of birds, but this was the first rat Frankie knew of. The rat was large, dirty brown, and utterly repulsive, with an alarmingly long tail. As far as Frankie could tell it was dead. But maybe it had merely been terrified into unconsciousness. Either way, he decidedly did not want it in his bedroom. The Fat Controller had so effectively eviscerated her last victim (the world’s tiniest gray mouse) that Frankie had used an entire bottle of laundry soap eradicating the blood and entrails from the carpet.

But removing the Fat Controller wasn’t easy, since she became ferocious and most uncooperative if her hunting celebrations were interrupted. Since Frankie couldn’t bring himself to pick up the rat (in case it was still alive) and since the Fat Controller couldn’t be persuaded to leave the rat, he
had
to pick up the Fat Controller — no mean feat, considering her body mass — with the rat in her mouth, and cart them both down the hall, out through the kitchen, and into the backyard, all as quietly as possible and holding the growling cat at rigid arms’ length in case any part of the rat brushed his skin and he somehow contracted bubonic plague. The back section was creepy at night and doubly creepy when the wind was up. The black-boy peach tree, the grapevine along the back fence, the garden bench, the trellising on the side of the garage, all took on most sinister aspects, shape-changing and seeming almost to mutter at him. The walnut tree hung over the garden shed in an especially threatening way, a malevolent giant, swaying heftily. Even as Frankie thought this, walnuts rained down on the shed roof and the clatter startled him so much, he dropped the Fat Controller. She gave a prolonged growl and bounded under a garden chair, the rat still firmly in her jaws. Frankie raced back across the damp grass and into the house, banging the back door behind him.

He was exhausted and disgusted in equal parts by the time he returned to his room. He shut his window and fell back into bed. But a minute later, he leaped out again, remembering that when she had prey to display, the Fat Controller attempted entry to the house by any means possible. He spent the next ten minutes securing all the other open windows — honestly, the house was a burglar’s paradise — though he didn’t dare go into Gordana’s room. Gordana was quite capable of raising the entire house if someone entered her bedroom during the night. But, Frankie reasoned, her bedroom was upstairs, and though the Fat Controller did have a quite astounding ability to launch herself through windows from the most awkward angles, he was confident the force field of disdain hanging about Gordana would be felt by the cat even at her most distracted.

Back in bed he tossed about, trying to get comfortable. He was too hot (thinking of rat innards), then he was strangely chilled (thinking about Ma, how bothered he was by Louie comparing her to a canary), then, somehow, hot and cold both together (thinking how
unsettled
he felt these days, how not-on-top-of-things). Finally, he distracted himself by trying — as he had for the last two weeks — to decide definitively what kind of bird he might be.

Secretly, he wanted to be something intrepid and hardy, a storm petrel, say, or tough and streetwise and lippy, like a jackdaw. Or a swallow; they were like great one-day bowlers, Frankie had often thought — dressed in colors, swift, graceful, and able to catch things in flight. He loved ospreys, too. They were kind of piratical with those dark stripes around their eyes, swashbuckling and athletic. It was annoying how easy everyone
else
was to match with a bird. (Gigs, for instance, was a merganser; his stepmother was a laying hen; Mr. A was a harrier hawk; Bronwyn Baxter was so obviously — he loved this — a strutting pouter pigeon.)

Frankie turned over yet again and checked the clock: 4:15 a.m. He banged his pillow about, getting it thick at the bottom the way he liked it, and plunged his head back into it. The window rattled. It was definitely colder these nights. Autumn in earnest — that’s why the Fat Controller’s hunting was accelerating. Two weeks till camp. He had a horrible feeling he might be a hummingbird, sort of small and incessantly wing-beating, hovering anxiously.

But just as he was dropping off, it came to him, like a gift to make up for the rat. A kingfisher. He could be a kingfisher. Perched on a power line, still and watchful. Spying out the land and the water. Waiting.

The morning began for the second time, at 6:45 with a thunderously slammed door, followed by shrieking from Gordana. It interested Frankie that you could be more or less asleep but still able to accurately identify particular sounds and the people making them. The shrieking seemed to be right outside his bedroom door; it seemed pitched directly at him.

“Ohmygod!” she was wailing. “That disgusting,
disgusting
feline! Ohmygod, she’s like a serial killer! She has no human feeling —”

“Of course she doesn’t have human feeling,” said Uncle George, who was somehow also outside the door. “She’s a sodding cat. She’s supposed to do this. For God’s sake, keep your voice down, Gordana.”

“Why should I? I feel
sick.
I want to wash myself all over, except I
can’t,
can I! And why can’t you ever wear underpants, for God’s sake? No one wants to see your repulsive parts.” Wail, stomp, wail, stomp. Gordana was apparently flouncing back upstairs in the loudest possible manner.

“Thanks very much,” said Uncle George, to no one in particular.

Frankie moved sleepily out of bed and opened his door. Uncle George was standing there wearing only his “Partially Bling Man” T-shirt, which stopped just above his genitals. It was his favorite piece of clothing, though it was a joke against him. The T-shirt had been a present from Louie and Gordana two birthdays ago following a very unfortunate proofing error that had landed Parsons Porritt in big trouble with a client. The client was the Blind Institute, and somehow —
“How? How? How, in Christ’s name!”
Uncle George had raged — somehow, in the publicity pamphlet Parsons Porritt had designed for them, the partially blind had twice been referred to as the partially bling.

The T-shirt was black and had a drawing of a man with elaborate pieces of bling decorating one side only of his body. In the early morning and late evening Uncle George often wandered around the house wearing nothing but the tee.

“Sorry, old man,” he said to Frankie. “Thought a fire must have broken out.” He crossed his legs, tugged down the bottom of his T-shirt and made a gasping O with his mouth. It was so silly, Frankie couldn’t help smiling.

“What is it?” said Ma, coming down the hallway. She was in her bathrobe and Chinese slippers, looking very sleepy, her hair plastered against her head like a little black cap. Frankie had one of those odd flashes of memory that seemed to visit him at quite inappropriate times. He recalled Ma in her old bathrobe, walking up and down this same hall at night, talking to herself, reciting Russian vocabulary over and over. That robe had been leaf-green and brocaded, almost like a pretty coat. For a long time it had been Ma’s principal outfit.