Howard had remained oddly apart from the crowd, unperturbed by the attention. His father was lean, dressed in a leather jacket, fancy heeled boots and tight black jeans. His mouth was tight and his eyes were unfriendly. When he had turned aside to light his cigarette Ruth had noticed that his hands were strong and square. She remembered the awkward way Howard had stood next to his father at the back of the room after the concert was over, watching all the other parents chattering and laughing as they had cups of tea and cake.
Ruth had felt bad about the way no one bothered to include them and had been trying to summon up the courage to approach when Mrs Rayson, the plump, friendly music teacher, beat her to it with the offer of a drink and some cake from a tray. Howard’s father had given a curt shake of his head and turned away. Ruth had lost her nerve and turned away herself.
At the end of the evening, after the headmaster had spoken and they’d put away the chairs, she’d found herself behind Howard and his father as everyone was walking out to their cars. How small Howard had seemed next to that strong, wiry man. And how distant they seemed from each other. She could almost feel the heavy silence between them, and it had made her wonder.
* * *
They’d been on the train for forty-five minutes before Howard spoke.
‘Should be there soon,’ he muttered, looking at his watch.
‘No speaking on trains,’ Ruth joked in a low hiss.
Howard grinned. ‘No standing up or … sitting down either,’ he said.
‘But especially no breathing.’
The train slowed and they both stood up.
Howard put his hand on the sliding door, waiting to pull it open.
Ruth imagined one of his father’s big square hands picking up the belt the night before, then lifting it up high and bringing it down on Howard’s bare legs.
Smack
. The sound would be sizzling and sharp, like bacon frying in a hot pan. Did he grab Howard tight with his other hand so he couldn’t get away?
Crack
. How many times did he do it? Did he stop when his arm got tired? A burst of loathing exploded inside her. Next time she saw him she would cut off that greasy pigtail and stuff it in his mouth.
They walked down the ramp towards the line of buses. At school she’d noticed bruises on Howard’s legs but she hadn’t asked about it. He was so skinny and pale she’d thought he might have something wrong with him that he didn’t want to talk about. ‘That one is ours,’ Howard said, pointing at one of the big ones. ‘We get off at stop six.’
Ruth nodded.
‘You don’t have to put up with being hit, you know,’ she blurted out when they reached the bus and joined the throng of people waiting to get on. ‘There are people you can tell. They can get him for hitting you.’ She wasn’t even sure if this was true but …
surely it was
.
Howard’s expression remained completely blank as though she hadn’t said anything, and it made her immediately sorry she’d spoken.
It felt good to be getting onto that bus, as if they were in a movie. No one knew them. They didn’t have to explain to anyone what they were doing. They filed in behind a dozen or so others and found themselves a seat about halfway down the bus. Ruth took off her coat and stuffed it in her backpack, then put it on the rack above them.
‘Can I have the window seat again?’ Howard asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘You can have it on the way home.’
‘Whatever,’ Ruth shrugged, watching more people get on.
Howard turned away to stare out the window.
By the time the bus pulled out from the kerb it was three-quarters full, mostly with old ladies and a few morose-looking couples dressed in overcoats and gloves, rubbing their hands together and commenting on the cold. There was one girl a little older than Ruth sitting across the aisle with someone who looked like she might be her mother. The girl was pretty, with long red hair, tight jeans and tan suede boots, and Ruth had felt her checking Howard and herself over when she was settling into her seat. But when the girl’s mother also looked over with a curious, friendly glance, Ruth avoided meeting their eyes. Let them wonder why she was travelling alone with the strange skinny kid. She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
The driver was the last one to take his seat.
‘Good morning, folks,’ he called cheerfully. ‘We’ll be off in less than a minute.’
No one answered him or even smiled. Ruth thought it was a bit rude but she didn’t want to be the only one to reply. She watched him throw himself down into his seat and switch on the radio. Pop music blared out as he turned the key and the engine fired into life.
Outside, clouds hung low overhead and light rain drizzled down the large windows. Ruth looked out at flooded gutters swirling with small currents of brown water and thought of the rain the night before. That steady, soft beat on the tin roof, like someone trying to get in. Ruth had lain there thinking of the world outside and what might be going on out there, half wishing she was there and at the same time glad she wasn’t. When the bus pulled out, a rush of excitement filled her. At least she wasn’t watching the cycling!
Marcus doesn’t do quiet!
her mother was always joking.
He likes an audience
. As though it was funny and somehow lovable to be someone who never even
tried
to do anything unless at least fifty people were watching! She thought of him that morning doing his exercises in the kitchen.
What about
her
?
he’d said, pointing at Ruth as if she was some functionary who was there only to help him become a star.
And yet it hadn’t always been like that. Prickles of guilt poked through her thoughts like little thorns. It hurt having to admit it. She and Marcus used to get on.
You’re the one who declared war
, he had said to her in exasperation just the other day, and it was true.
The morning after she’d lost Rodney, Marcus had knocked on her door holding a fifty-dollar note.
‘Hey, Ruthie, I’m really sorry,’ he’d said. ‘I know you loved that rat. I’ll make it up to you if I can.’
She could tell immediately that he was genuinely sorry. It was there in his eyes. No one was making him apologise. He felt bad. He held the money out to her.
‘Here, have this, and I’ll have another fifty on Thursday when I get paid.’
She’d stared at him and the money and then shut the door in his face.
‘I mean it, Ruthie.’ He’d thumped the door. ‘I just lost it. I’m sorry.’
‘Just piss off!’ she’d shouted. How could she forgive him when he’d thrown away the most precious thing she’d ever owned?
* * *
Ruth turned to Howard but he seemed more cut off than ever, hunched over, tracing one raindrop with his finger as it made its way slowly down the pane. She looked past him out the window.
It was good being up so high in the bus. When they stopped at the lights she could see pedestrians hurrying across the wet, shining road, turning their heads away from the wind. She saw a couple of little kids in cute yellow raincoats, too, and a group of teenagers, soaked through, their hair plastered to their faces, throwing an orange between them and laughing.
She liked the steady rushing sound of the engine, the shifting of gears and hissing of brakes and the sudden jolts. If only the trip would go on forever. If only she and Howard could just stay on the bus and travel for days and nights to some unknown place and end up in some big, strange city and live with people who didn’t know them; if only she could just start all over again!
* * *
That first morning after losing Rodney she had been the last into the kitchen. Marcus and Paul had already had breakfast and were getting ready for school.
‘So when can we go back to look?’ she’d asked curtly.
‘Back where?’ Her mother was sorting through the dishes. ‘Come and do your lunch quickly. There isn’t much time.’
‘To the bridge?’
Her mother had sighed as if it was the last thing she wanted to think about.
‘Look, I don’t know,’ she’d said. ‘Ask your father.’
‘Dad?’ But he was writing notes to himself at the table. She could see the rows of figures – costings for some stupid new idea, she guessed – and it filled her with fury.
Couldn’t he just give up and go to work like a normal person?
She’d heard him talking on the phone about a new-style yoghurt he was developing that was going to be different to anything else available because it made itself in the tub or something. Not even her mother bothered to get excited anymore.
‘Ken?’ Mrs Craze waved one hand in front of his face to get his attention. ‘Concentrate.’
‘What?’ He looked up, blinking.
‘Ruth wants to know when we’ll go back to the river to look for her rat.’
‘Oh.’ Her father sighed and took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
‘You said we’d go soon.’
‘Ruth, it doesn’t make sense. Unfortunately, that thing is gone.’
That thing? How
dare
he?
Ruth glowered at him.
‘But you promised.’
‘I know, but –’
At exactly that point, the phone had rung.
It was a short call. Mary Ellen had taken a turn for the worse overnight and they were being told to go to the hospital immediately. After Ruth’s mother had relayed the news she stood looking from her husband to her daughter and then back again expectantly, as though either of them might say something that would make what had just happened make sense. Mr Craze simply looked back at his wife without speaking, his face devoid of expression.
Mrs Craze suddenly gasped and put one hand over her mouth and the other arm around her belly. She doubled over as though she’d been hit with a sudden excruciating pain and turned away.
Mr Craze rose from the table.
‘I’ll ring Faye now,’ he said. ‘You and Ruth go to the hospital. I’ll come by with the boys later.’
Her mother nodded and left the room.
Ruth pushed her breakfast aside, glad that it was taken for granted that she wouldn’t be going to school. So Mary Ellen had taken a turn for the worse.
But what did that mean?
She was going to get better because people did
beat cancer
these days and Mary Ellen of all the people in the world simply
must
.
On the way to the hospital, Ruth worried about how she could possibly tell her aunt that Rodney was gone. Again and again she tried to string together a few sentences to explain how it had happened.
Marcus and I were fighting and before either of us knew it or could even think … It happened so quickly …
But how could she tell Mary Ellen that? And yet how could she not! Her aunt loved Rodney the way she did.
Since being in hospital, Mary Ellen had become even more attached to him, if that was possible.
How is our little guy doing?
she’d whispered during Ruth’s last visit to the hospital, the same mischievous giggle in her voice whenever Rodney was mentioned.
Ruth had become so accustomed to the prone wasted body in the hospital bed that it was easy for her to forget her aunt was so ill. She firmly believed that Mary Ellen would start getting better soon because …
she had to
.
Occasionally Mary Ellen would lie back on her pillows dreamily and her voice would become wistful.
Rats make good use of whatever is around them, Ruthie. They know how to forage and look under the surface for what they want. Life is never quite what it seems … for a rat.
* * *
As it turned out, there was no need to worry about telling Mary Ellen that Rodney was lost. By the time they got to the hospital that day she was slipping in and out of consciousness.
So this was what ‘taking a turn for the worse’ actually meant
. Ruth was totally stunned. It was such a huge change from when she’d seen her aunt only a few days before.
She sat back and watched as her mother and Aunty Faye tended their sister. They held her hand and gave her sips of water and turned her over and rearranged her pillows and had hushed conversations with the doctors and nurses. Sometimes Mary Ellen would open her eyes and smile a little
;
then she would become fretful and agitated as though she was struggling with something huge sitting on her chest. The nurses would come in then and give her an injection and she’d become easy and calm again.
Ruth’s shock gave way to numbness after a while. By mid-afternoon she was not only numb but scared. Her aunt’s sallow skin and feather-light frame was something she’d grown used to, but now her skin was as yellow as cheese and weirdly translucent, too, like plastic. Every bone in her body looked like a sharp stick trying to push through her skin, and her breathing had become harsh and raspy. Every now and again it stopped altogether and Ruth, her mother and Aunty Faye would wait expectantly until the air came rushing back in deep, desperate, ragged gasps.
So what was happening? Ruth didn’t dare ask. This was her aunt and yet … it wasn’t. Someone else was lying in her aunt’s bed.
But no … it
was
Mary Ellen
.
* * *
At one point, Mary Ellen waved her sisters away as though their fussing irritated her and motioned feebly for Ruth to come nearer. Right up close, her aunt’s gaunt face became huge, as big as the whole world, the eyes enormous and glittering as though someone had lit bright-blue flames behind each one to make them shine. Ruth had the strange feeling that her aunt was actually in some other place, already seeing things that no one else had seen.