Broken Soup (5 page)

The day Stroma was born, when we went in to see her, Mum said it was astonishing how much love there was in the human heart. She said she thought we'd filled it, me and Jack, but here was a whole nother room with Stroma's name on the door.

They must have lost the key. Because now I was the one who spent hours picking Play-Doh off the sofa and toys off the floor. It was me who discovered the instant healing powers of a Band-Aid and how many peas Stroma would tolerate at any one meal. I did the hugging and the singing and the bedtime stories. It wasn't Mum or Dad who skipped down the street yelling “We're going on a Bear Hunt! We're going to catch
a
big
one!” anymore. It was me.

But I was never as good at it as them. And I didn't want to be doing it, not all the time, not just because there was no one else, and that must have showed. I wasn't Mum and Dad, and when Stroma threw a tantrum, you knew it wasn't just about her bathing suit or the bath mat from her dolls' house or the brown bit on a banana. It was because everything had caved in on top of her and she'd had enough.

I knew already there was no such thing as a normal family. You might think you've got one, but something always happens to prove you wrong. There were kids at school worse off than us, way worse—that's what I kept telling myself. And I knew my parents were good people. It wasn't their fault something bad happened to them.

But after Jack died, they protected themselves by refusing to love us, the kids who had dying still to do. And it fell to us to keep ourselves alive until somebody remembered we were there.

The next day we were sitting in the cafeteria, me and Bee, watching some of the boys from her class have this food fight. She said, “How are they doing that without getting a hair out of place? Is there that much gel in there?”

I laughed and said, “Jack used to have a thing about some of the girls here too.”

“What thing?” she said.

“He used to rant about the taste of lip gloss and the fact they spent all their time looking at themselves in reflective surfaces. He used to make me laugh so hard. I had to promise never to be one of them.”

“Well, you're not,” Bee said. “And neither am I.” She got up to put her stuff in the bin, and I watched her and so did everyone else. I so wished that Jack was still around to meet Bee. It was like a sudden ache in my side, that never happening. He'd have liked her as
much as I did. I wanted to tell her that, but I didn't know how to say it, so I said nothing.

“What are you up to tonight?” she asked while I was searching in my bag for the homework I couldn't remember doing.

“Cooking dinner, giving Stroma a bath, putting her to bed, and hiding in my room,” I said, counting things off on my fingers, letting my thumb hang down.

“Why don't you two stay at mine?” she said. “Carl won't mind.”

“Yeah, and it would give my mum a break,” I said, trying to make it sound funnier than it was.

Bee said, “What's the thing with your mum?”

“It's a ‘she's never going to get over her son dying' thing.”

She asked if Mum was sick.

“I don't know,” I said. “If she was sick, then the medicine would work, I suppose. I think she's just the saddest person ever.”

“Oh God,” Bee said. “Imagine how she must feel.”

I said she didn't leave a lot to the imagination. I said she made it pretty clear.

Bee looked at me like she was working something out. “Are you pissed off at her?”

“Not a lot of point in that,” I said. “There's no one to be pissed off at. She's not in there.”

After school I phoned Mum on my mobile. She
didn't answer, of course, but I left a message, with Bee's phone number, just in case she needed anything. I felt funny about leaving her for the night, like she was my kid or something, like she should have a babysitter. I said to call me if she wanted us home, and I almost wished she would, but I knew she'd probably much prefer a quiet night in without us. I knew she'd barely notice we were gone.

I watched Stroma clinging to Bee like glue on the walk home. I hoped Bee wasn't claustrophobic.

Stroma stopped dead in the street because she didn't have her teddy or her pajamas. I nearly plowed into the back of her.

Bee said, “You can wear one of my T-shirts.”

“Can I use your toothbrush as well or will that be germs?” Stroma asked. Bee said she thought her toothbrush was safe, but that Sonny's would be a better fit. Stroma said, “What about my mouth, though?” Bee sniffed her breath and said she thought that was safe too. It was such a relief watching someone else take care of my sister.

 

Sonny was crying when we got there. We could hear him through the door. As soon as he saw us, he started crying even harder. Carl was looking at Bee like it had been going on for too long and he didn't know what to do.

“I've got it, Dad,” Bee said. She put her arms out
for Sonny and he climbed into them. She took him out through the open front door, down the walkway. His arms were around her neck, fingers laced together through her hair. He was still bawling. Stroma and I were left in the hallway with Carl, who looked like the last thing on earth he needed was two more people in the house. I got this hollow feeling, like staying was going to be a really bad idea and I'd have to start letting Stroma down gently.

“Is it a bad time?” I asked. Stroma groaned, this sort of “Why did you say that?” noise, like it would be all my fault if we couldn't stay now.

“Oh, he's in a mood, that's all,” Carl said, rubbing his ears as if Sonny's noise had got right in there and wouldn't come out. “Bee's good with him when he's like that. He gets sick of me.”

He asked if we wanted a drink or a snack or something. He said to Stroma, “You've been at work all day, you must be
pooped
,” instantly becoming her funniest person in the world ever.

I watched Bee and Sonny, swaying together. She was talking into his hair, he was playing with hers, still yelling his head off. I wondered where their mum was.

Bee went up and down the walkway for ages and when she came back in, Sonny was asleep on her shoulder. She put him on the sofa without waking him up. Carl said, “Thanks, kid. I was running out of ideas.”

Bee shrugged and said, “
Nada
, Dad. Glad to be of service.”

Stroma sat with Sonny like she was Florence Nightingale or someone, twitching at his covers, sighing over his cheeks and eyelashes and the rise and fall of his little chest. Acting like he was the cutest thing she ever saw, all the time only four years older than him.

“Has he been all right?” Bee said. “He feels hot.”

“A bit moody; he's getting a cold.”

I asked if me and Stroma should go. I didn't want to be any trouble.

“No, don't,” said Carl. “No, it's great you're here. I'll make some supper before his lordship wakes up. You two do whatever. Come and help me, Stroma. Be my sous-chef.”

They disappeared to the kitchen and we stayed where we were, watching Sonny sleeping like he was TV.

“He's lovely,” I said.

“He's gorgeous.”

I felt bad for moaning so much about Stroma, for making her sound like hard work. I thought, I bet Bee helps out loads and does it better than me and never complains about it. I said something about her being such a good person.

“You're just making stuff up,” she said. “What makes
me better than you? What are you talking about?” She was laughing.

“Well, you're nice about everyone. You never complain.”

“I just don't do that out loud. You should be inside my head.”

“Are you a monster in there?” I said.

Bee looked dead serious. Funny serious. She narrowed her eyes. “You have no idea.”

It cracked me up.

“Was Jack a good person?” she said. “Do you mind me asking?”

“I don't mind at all. I like talking about him. You know that.”

“OK, so was he a good person the way you say I am or whatever?”

“He was the best person,” I said, and I did a really good job of smiling. “Everyone knew that. He was always helping someone out. Friends, that is, not Mum and Dad so much, I suppose, but he'd do anything for his friends.”

“Who were his friends?” Bee asked.

“Oh, there was Melly who lived down the road, and Pete and Oscar from your class, except Pete's left now, hasn't he? He hung out with them mostly.” Melly and Pete and Oscar, who tried their best but didn't know what to say to me when Jack was gone. They didn't have a clue.

“I like Oscar,” Bee said. “He doesn't say much, but when he does it's funny.”

“I miss him,” I said. “Jack, I mean.”

“I know you do,” she said, sitting behind me, braiding my hair.

Stroma and Carl made rice with broccoli and tomatoes and fish sticks, enough for everyone. Sonny woke up and clung to Carl and ate like a horse. After supper, Bee took him for a bath and Carl played the shape game with me and Stroma. You draw a random shape and the next person has to turn it into something with a different-colored felt-tip marker. Bee joined in, too, and Sonny, dripping and shiny from the bath, drew on his own legs and set Stroma off laughing again. Everyone was busy making a six-year-old happy, which made a change from it being just me.

At seven thirty, Carl took Sonny to bed with a bottle and I read Stroma a story on the sofa. She curled herself up under the quilt, put her thumb in her mouth, and started playing with my hair like she used to do with Mum. After a bit I untangled myself and kissed her on the forehead.

She said, “Can we stay here tomorrow as well?”

Later, Bee and Carl and I were washing the dishes. We were humming the same tune and doing a kind of dance around each other just to get things done in the tiny kitchen. I didn't know where anything
went because there weren't any cupboards. The battered wooden filing cabinet with the radio on top was the last place I expected them to keep plates and cups and saucepans. The cutlery lived in the top left of a chest of drawers, the same sort you put your underwear in. I think jam and honey and stuff went in the right. Whatever was left seemed to live on the table. It was much nicer than those kitchens with plastic cupboards lining the walls and a place for everything. It was much more fun than washing up at home.

When it was as tidy as it was going to be, Carl said, “Time for some sugar,” and he started rolling a joint. Bee let her head drop back and said something to the ceiling about being the teenage daughter of a teenager.

“You're not having any,” Carl said.

Bee said, “I know,” and I held my hands up in the air to say I wasn't interested either.

Jack used to smoke grass. Mum got cross because he'd stop finishing his sentences and eat everything in the house, but really she was relieved he was doing it at home and not in some bus shelter where she couldn't find him. Dad thought she was way too easy on him. He said Jack's room might as well be the bus shelter once all his friends found out you could smoke there, but that never really happened. Maybe once or twice when they were out.

Anyway, Carl smoked and it stank up the kitchen, and then he started making a packed lunch for Stroma.

I said, “I can do that tomorrow morning.”

He looked at me. “You know what? It's your night off. Go and watch a movie upstairs or something.”

I asked if I could have a bath and Bee went to run me one. When I got there, she'd lit candles and used bubbles and suddenly I felt like Stroma must have done all evening: taken care of. “What would I do without you?” I said, and I really meant it.

“What you've been doing,” Bee told me. “Getting on with it. It's what we all do.”

 

Stroma woke up in the night and forgot where she was. She climbed into my sleeping bag and then went straight back to sleep, leaving me with a few centimeters of space and a chance to watch the dawn.

Jack used to sleep badly. When we were younger, he'd shake me awake and say, “It's OK, Rowan, you had a bad dream. I'll look after you.”

I always knew it wasn't me who'd been dreaming. I also knew he didn't want to lose face, so I never said anything. I used to lie awake with him snoring in my bed too.

The sky changed from dark to light so slowly I didn't notice it happening and suddenly it was morning. Stroma stretched her little body out and opened
her eyes, and that was it; she was wide awake and moving at the speed of sound, filling the place with her questions and her chitchat and her singing. I moved over into the warm space she'd left behind and closed my eyes, feeling that thing sleep does around the edges when you're ready to fall back into it. I could hear Sonny burbling away to someone upstairs, the toilet flushing at the end of the hall, Stroma opening the sock drawer in the kitchen. Then I forced myself out of my sleeping bag and into my clothes and the making of breakfast.

Carl said he could take Sonny to the babysitter's and Stroma to school on his way to work, so I got to go with Bee, on time for once.

“God, Carl's cool,” I said while we were waiting for the bus.

“You can say that again.” Bee smiled at me. “He's very rare.”

“What's he do?”

“He works in a school in Hackney, two or three days a week. He hangs out with all the kids the teachers can't deal with anymore. He's their friend. He says he doesn't like teachers either. The rest of the time he's with Sonny.”

We stood there for a bit, looking down the road at where the bus should be. “Where's your mum?” I said, and I hoped she didn't mind.

Bee said, “Oh, she's not part of it, really. She was young, like my age, when she had me. She's been back a few times, but never for long. She gave Dad a lot of grief.”

“What about Sonny?” I said. “He must miss her.”

She shrugged. “No. He's better off, I reckon.”

I felt like I was prying. I said I was sorry.

“I see my mum now and then,” Bee said. “She's pretty wild. She's like an artist's model and a professional hippie, and right now she's in Madrid, cooking macrobiotic food for this insane writer. She's been there two years. I don't mind.”

She smiled at me, like she'd said this stuff a thousand times and she was bored of hearing it. “Don't be sorry, because I'm not. Carl took me to India when I was nine. We lived in this community in Wales for a while. He taught me how to take pictures and grow vegetables, and he's into homeopathy and he can speak Italian and…”

“OK,” I said. “Sorry was so the wrong word. I'm not sorry.”

Except I was, because I felt like never going home again.