Читать книгу Zones - Damien Broderick - Страница 5

SATURDAY, 8 APRIL, LUNCH

“That was delicious, sweetie. I must eat lunch with you more often.”

“I cannot tell a lie,” I say, cleaning away the plates. “Papa Giuseppe did it all.”

Poppa wipes the last of the flan out of his beard. It’s been going gray recently. Tall and rather thin and going gray, a nice person really, but quite vague. “Who?” he says vaguely. “Someone I know, I hope.”

“It’s a brand of frozen quiche, donkey.”

“Rudeness is not attractive, Jenny. Are you saying you cheated?”

“Certainly not! I never told you I’d made it from scratch. That’s why I had to rush out to the supermarket at the last minute and miss half the Science Show.”

“I thought you went to get eggs.”

“You can get eggs anywhere. You can get eggs at the milk bar around the corner. You can get eggs at the 7-Eleven store at half past midnight.”

“I might be able to,” my father says sharply, glancing up from his Awfully Official Papers that are spread out over a third of the kitchen table. Mum would never let him do that. “You, on the other hand, will be tucked up in bed and well asleep by that hour.”

I sigh loudly. “Don’t nag. You know I always get back before curfew.”

“Hmph. Scraping in just under the clang of the witching hour. Speaking of which—”

“Ha, very funny.”

“Pun unintended, I’m glad to say. Speaking of which, I repeat, whom are you going out with tonight, someone I know, I trust?”

“David. You know him, and you can trust him.” Maybe.

“I know David?”

“Poppa, you’ve only lectured him on the theory of fiscal macro-dynamics or some damned thing every single time he drops in here to—”

“Ease up, Jenny. That David. Nice boy—I think. Does he know how to keep his hands to himself?”

“Poppady!” I’m shocked.

Actually I’m not terrifically shocked, because in fact I have to keep warning Davy to do exactly that whenever we sit next to each other in the movies or round at Louise’s for a video like Drugstore Cowboy the other night, so who knows how I am going to keep him cool while we snuggle up alone together at his folks’ place watching something gross? Do I really want to, for that matter? But it is always wise to sound as pure and outraged as possible when your father asks a question like that.

I think he sees through me, though.

“It’s a reasonable thing for the parent of a daughter to ask, I believe, especially a daughter whose mother currently declines to sit at the same table with us. I have to do the work for both Hattie and me, after all. Mother and father in one horrible balding bundle.” He smiles in self-mockery, which is always a happy thing to see in a grown-up.

“Currently?” I say, quick as a steel trap. The mysterious telephone mugger just won’t get out of the back of my mind.

“You know I hope to re-establish cordial relations with Hattie, sweetie.”

“Oh, don’t be a stuffy old Prof, Prof,” I tell him, feeling angry underneath my burst of fond love. “‘Cordial’! You still love her, admit it.”

“I admit it. But we are divorced, after all. Let’s change the subject, Jenny. The topic’s painful.”

“We have to talk it through properly some—”

“Not now.” He’s avoiding my eye, suddenly. He looks meaningfully at his watch. “I really do have a lot of work to finish. I think I’ll take all this stuff into the study. Leave the washing-up, I’ll fix it later.”

“Poppa!” I shout. I pound on the table. “How can you just stand there and say ‘the topic’s painful’? I’m part of the topic!”

“Later, Jenny. I mean it. I have too much on my plate right now to divert any emotional energy into this sort of draining row.”

“I don’t want a row, I want to—”

“You’re yelling, Jenny. For somebody who doesn’t wish to get into a row, you’re—”

“Oh damn it,” I yell, and slam back my chair and stomp to the front door, where the bell is buzzing.

“Madeleine,” I grunt.

“Hi. Would you rather kill me now or should I come back later with witnesses?”

I glare at her. She’s doing her retro-Madonna number. The kid’s got no taste. For once I agree with my father. Socks in three different luminous colors. Lace around her breasts, which are getting pretty spectacular these days anyway. Ballet tights, dark bracelets from her elbow to her wrist, a wonder she can lift her arms. Metallic woven jacket with bits of silk and satin and leather hanging off it, a bunch of Catholic rosaries around her neck, urchin shoes. God, she looks like a reject from MTV. No, that’s not fair. Standing there with the early afternoon autumn sunshine blasting through hair that seems to have exploded upwards after her brain went off, she looks like one of the success stories from MTV.

“My father will flip,” I tell her, giggling.

“You got no style, Jenny,” Madeleine says, coming in and slamming the door behind her. “Look at you. Worn out jeans, old school sweater, awful shoes, let’s face it, and your hair hasn’t changed since you were 10. Where’s your class? ‘Gonna dress you up,’” she sings in a thin little voice, like something out of 1985 or whenever it was, writhing as she bops down the hall. A trailing rosary catches on the handlebar of my bike and almost trips her on her face. She doesn’t appreciate my snigger.

“Got any Pepsi?”

“Come upstairs to my room, I’ve got some in the fridge.”

One of my father’s lateral thinking breakthroughs was providing me with a small refrigerator of my own, the sort they have in hotel rooms. I keep Cokes and stuff in it, and ice cream and chocolate when it’s hot, and he figures this stops me from making a mess in the kitchen. Considering that I am preparing half the food in the house these days, this is pushing his luck.

“Where’s the olds? Sorry,” she catches my look, “the old.”

“Downstairs getting some report prepared. ‘Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,’ that sort of thing.”

“Huh?”

“William Blake or something.”

“William who?”

I give up. “A poet.”

“Uh. Does he play with a band?”

“Let’s start again from the beginning, shall we? Hey, Madeleine, ah jest lahhhv yo’ clothes.”

“Whah, thank yo’, babba dorl.” She twirls, sending bits spinning outward. She throws herself backwards across my messy bed and tries hard to look like a frame from a video clip. “Music,” she cries. “Play music. I’ll go crazy if I don’t hear music.”

I switch on K-Rock but it’s doing a retrospective on the era of the Beatles and the Stones or something. Not that I’ve got anything against John Lennon, or Julian for that matter. No, Julian wasn’t one of the Beatles, was he? Anyway, it’s Mick Jagger and the Stones who’ve just been here for their first tour in twenty-three years or whatever it is.

Madeleine finds a Yothu Yindi CD and starts bouncing around the room, humming and pulling faces. “What kind of reports?” she asks, popping a big bubble of gum.

“What kind of reports what?”

“Is he writing? I mean, I never thought about it until just now. What is your father?”

“Economist,” I mumble. Maybe I’m jealous. That’s what it feels like, a nasty little stab. But I couldn’t tell you if I am jealous because she’s paying attention to Poppa instead of to the fun time we are supposed to be having, or because I want to keep Poppa to myself. Having a mind like a steel trap isn’t all good times. It hurts. Maybe I just shouldn’t worry about it.

Madeleine stops dead and stares at me with her jaw hanging open and the blob of gum stuck to her front teeth.

“Jenny! Your father’s a communist?”

I fall on the bed laughing, then fall off it laughing. I can’t help it. She’s such a jerk.

“What did I say?” She’s giggling with me, and we are both snorting like fools and pounding our feet on the floor without really knowing why. There is a crabby shout from downstairs to please for the love of God get rid of those damned rhinos or leave me in peace. I choke and cover her mouth with a pillow. She fights me off and whispers hoarsely:

“Tell me true! Is he a communist or what? I won’t hold it against him, Helen’s father is a bus-driver.”

“Economist,” I hiss. “Money. You know, that paper stuff we wish we had some of so we could buy a— buy some—” I have to stop. I can’t think of anything I want to buy.

“Clothes,” Madeleine is saying dreamily, “records, great beads, get our hair done every day, cars, trips to Disneyland and see Braincase playing in New York or Las Vegas or wherever and—”

Downstairs, the phone rings. I think of going down to get it, but decide Poppa’s closer. It keeps ringing. I get up and go to the door. By the time I hit the landing he’s come out of his study and answers it. He glances up to me.

“Are you the teenager with the mind like a steel trap?”

I stare at him. I haven’t told anybody, not even him over lunch.

“Is that Davy?”

“I shouldn’t think so, unless his speech has improved markedly. Well come on, don’t dawdle, my computer’s probably having a melt-down while I loiter here.”

I gallop down the stairs. He grimaces and mutters something about damned elephants should have been put out with the rhinos and hands me the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Don’t hang up,” the voice says.

“You again.”

“Oh, if only you knew. If you realized how much sweat and pain and bloody trouble you put us to, doing what you—” His voice cuts off suddenly, as if someone had covered the mouthpiece. A few seconds later he says in a much more controlled tone, “I’m not getting off to a very good start this time either, am I?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea.” I see Madeleine peering down over the top banister with her eyebrows pushed up into her frizzy blonde hair, doing a question at me. I shrug back and wave my free hand in a circle. I add, “I suppose it depends what you’re trying to say and who you think you’re saying it to.” Whom.

“Who am I saying it to? No, hang on, my turn. This is Rod Gianforte. You’ve never met me, but I guarantee that I’m of sound character and clean in mind and person. Please laugh, that was a friendly self-deprecatory joke.”

“Ha ha,” I say. I hold the receiver away from my face and stare at it. When I get it back to my ear he’s saying, “...tremendously important.” The voice takes a deep and shuddering breath. “Listen, nameless teenager, I would beg your indulgence for just three more questions. Think of this as some kind of intelligence test, or a quiz, yes, that’s it, like a—”

“What’s the prize?”

“The prize? Golly, the prize...it’s just about anything you could ask for, I suppose, when you think about it.”

He seems so enthralled with this thought that I start to hear a weird sound, in behind him, like a whole room of other people sitting and listening and holding their breaths. “Um, anyway, mysterious teenager, I really would be very grateful if you’d just give me the answers to these three—”

“Jenny,” I say, on a sudden impulse.

There is a sound like a wave going out late at night, low tide, gentle but powerful, like a roomful of ghosts brushing through each other.

“Thank you, Jenny. Thank you very much. Now, this is the first question. You will think it sounds strange, crazy, nuts, but please just tell me the simple truth. What is the name of the president of the United States?”

What kind of quiz is this? A quiz for cretins? A test for people who don’t know what day it is? Come to think of it, this guy sounds as if he doesn’t know what day it is. He’s already proved he doesn’t know what time it is.

So I give up trying to analyze his motives and tell him, “Bill Clinton.”

“Bill. The informal touch. Okay. Thank you, Jenny. That was great. Now, question two: who were the previous two presidents? Do you understand what I mean by that? In the four years before this president came into office, who was pres—”

I’m really pissed off by his presumption of my ignorance. One of Poppa’s snide jokes comes into my head, and I say, “George Bush and before him Bing Crosby.” Some sort of awful singer, that’s all I know about him, but the reaction is spectacular. I hear this wheezing gasp, then a gulping snort.

“You’re joking,” the voice says weakly.

“It’s Poppa’s joke, not mine, but he says the real thing was just as silly.”

Very patiently, the voice says, “And who was that, dear?”

“You know as well as I do,” I snap. “Ronald Reagan, and what the hell is all this about?”

“Crosby,” he says. “Movies. Reagan. Wasn’t he in cowboy films? I really can’t....” He sounds as if he is struggling with a hairball. “Thank you, Jenny. Here’s the final question. I’d like you please not to hang up anyway, after you’ve told me this, but even if you do decide to, give me the answer first. Okay?”

“Fire away,” I say. I am getting pretty bored, and Madeleine has gone back inside my bedroom and turned the sound up and she’s dancing her disco aerobic steps, and I know Poppa will be out any minute to shout at us. I can do without that, because I want no trouble fouling up my date with David in a few hours.

“Was Kennedy or Nixon the President of the USA?”

“That’s the question?”

“Yes. Do you want to hear it again?”

“No. What a dumb-ass question. Is this a trick or what?”

He sounds terribly worried and baffled. “No, Jenny, this is not a trick question. Just tell me, which one was president? Have you ever heard of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, the presidential candidates in—”

“You’re driving me crazy,” I say. “Of course I’ve heard of them. In fact I did a social-ethics essay on them last term, ‘Camelot and Watergate, a comparison.’”

“Camelot and— Fascinating. My God. Apollo, Camelot, I feel as if I’d fallen into a mythological— Look, Jenny, if you did an essay on them, then think back carefully to this one point. Which one of them became President?” A sort of screech gets into his voice.

“Which one? Which one? What do you mean, which one?” I shout at him. “Both of them did. They were both President, you dumbo,” and I hang up in his ear, hard.