The 10 P.M. Question (18 page)

“
Pat Cat, Stress Less,
by Gigs Angelo and Frankie Parsons!” Mrs. Monaghan, the science dean, called out the results. “A most imaginative and innovative project. Well done!”

“Bong! Ga! Swet! So!” Gigs was on his feet, punching the air. “Holy cow! Hot dog!”

“Mr. Angelo! Modesty,
please
!” Mr. A was shouting from the end of the row. But he was grinning, too. “Well done,” he mouthed, clapping his hands in Gigs and Frankie’s direction.

We won,
thought Frankie, wonderingly.
We
won.

I’ll take the present around to Sydney’s house,
he thought,
and tell her about the prize.

“Going to see your girlfriend?” said Seamus Kearney when Gigs and Frankie followed the twins off the bus.

“What’s it to you, Mr. Turnip Head?” said Gigs. He was in a thoroughly cocky and provocative mood, Frankie could see. It was like the time they’d won the Year Seven interschool cricket champs. Gigs had been so ecstatic and careless, he’d gone too far with Ronald and was bitten on his bowling arm.

“Where’s she live?” said Eugene. “Coby Street? Rochford Towers? Hastings Street?” Coby Street was full of bed-sitters and run-down housing, and Rochford Towers was, according to Louie, where you went for drugs. Frankie gave Eugene a look conveying comprehensive weariness with a brain so tiny. Gigs gave a finger signal conveying the minuteness of a lower down part of his body. Frankie shoved Gigs in the general direction of the Music Arcade before one of the Kearney brothers could thump him.

Sydney lived in Washington Crescent, Frankie knew. But he didn’t know which number. He figured he’d walk up and down the street and somehow he would intuit which was her house. Or maybe he’d see a Porsche in a driveway. Frankie wondered about that Porsche. He knew almost nothing about cars, but he was pretty certain a Porsche meant money.

It was a twenty-minute walk to Washington Crescent from the midtown terminal. He knew that because Sydney had told him she had to make sure Galway and Calcutta had eaten breakfast by 8:15 so there was enough time to get to the terminal by 8:35. Freya never rose before nine, which was when she took Sydney’s sisters to their Montessori school. Frankie had no idea what she did for the rest of the day.

It was a pleasant walk. Frankie took the route through the Hiroshima Garden, where the maples and gingkoes were in full autumn blaze. His favorite part of the garden was the ornamental pond and bridge. In the summer, he and Gigs liked to sit on the bridge, dangle their feet just above the water, and spot frogs. Frankie liked the water lilies, too, their absolute whiteness, their thick velvet down. But there were only lily pads just now, like small green place mats floating on a winking table.

Frankie had visited the garden many times when he was younger. It was in the period Teen attended ikebana courses and developed a passion for Japanese aesthetics. Frankie had trotted beside Teen while she explained the elements of Japanese garden composition, the necessity for balance, the pleasure in formality. He was only seven, but even then it was the
tidiness
that he liked so much.

Their own garden at home was a street disgrace, Frankie thought. None of the family paid any attention to it these days. Hydrangeas, flag irises, and agapanthus ranged, blowsy and unkempt, along the street border. There was a disorderly abundance of flowers for every season, and clumps of native trees — the result of Uncle George’s erratic planting enthusiasm — and a permanent crop of weeds. Once, a long time ago, someone, possibly Ma, had planted perennials in terra-cotta pots: pansies, sweet william, and cascading daisies — but the plants were a sorry sight now, ragged or diseased or smothered by twitch grass. The pots were covered in moss and lichen and were massed against the garage wall like a crowd of shabby horticultural refugees. Occasionally Frankie thought he should do something about them, as he knew all about the science and maintenance of potted plants. He’d paid his dues with the Aunties’ veranda display; he’d knelt beside Teen, spooning potting mix around seedlings, patting down the soil. Was there any other twelve-year-old boy in the universe who knew the names of so many flowers and shrubs? Perhaps he should just get a job in an old people’s home as soon as he left school, stay there for the rest of his life. He’d fit in perfectly.

On the other side of the Hiroshima Garden was a small shopping center — a dairy, a greengrocer, a video store, and a butcher’s. Frankie intended buying the meat for Ma here, though he didn’t as a rule like to patronize any butcher’s shop except Wysocki’s down the hill. For a start, Mr. Wysocki and his son, Peter, behaved as if it was completely natural that a twelve-year-old boy should be doing the family shopping. They didn’t make the predictable lewd jokes, either, if he asked for chicken breasts or legs. Plus, they made the best sausages in town. Gigs often came with Frankie to Wysocki’s because he liked to talk soccer with both father and son. The boys did Chilun for Peter’s amusement. He liked to guess what they were saying, and it was interesting how often he got the gist. It was because of the Russian, Peter said. Russian was a Slav language — like Polish. Mr. Wysocki and Peter conversed in Polish when they were making sausages or chopping meat or hefting carcasses. Gigs reckoned they laughed in Polish.

The butcher’s at the shopping center was called the Meating Place, ha, ha, and Frankie was served by a girl. She didn’t look much older than Gordana but she sliced lamb back-straps like a pro. Frankie had never thought of girls being butchers. He hadn’t thought of girls being engineers, either, until Sydney had told him about her father’s cousin, Lily, a dike engineer in the Netherlands. Probably he’d spent too much time with elderly people and was doomed to think in old-fashioned ways. The thought depressed him.

Sydney wanted to be a pilot. This was just one of her aspirations, though. She wanted to be a living statue in a street theater, too, also a police-dog handler and a stand-up comic. Gigs was planning to be a professional cricketer. He was planning to get his international career out of the way before he got married. It was typical of Gigs to assume he would have no difficulty finding a wife.

But Frankie had only very hazy notions of what he wanted to be. An artist? But would he ever be good enough? Something to do with birds? A conservation worker? A zoologist? A pet shop proprietor? In his very darkest moments, he didn’t know how he would be able to leave home to
become
anything. Perhaps he would be one of those sad guys who worked from their bedrooms, on a computer, guys with unwashed hair and clothes that didn’t match, guys who lived with their mothers and had cats and turned out to be serial killers.

He must never buy a computer.

Washington Crescent had exactly fifty-three houses. Frankie counted them as he walked along first one side of the street, then the other. Unfortunately, it was not at all obvious which was Sydney’s place. What had he expected? A geometric flag? Dreadlocked curtains? A letter box signaling Sydneyness? (On Louie’s street, signature letter boxes were something of a theme. There was a letter box in the shape of a grand piano at number 37, where a music teacher lived. Number 42 had a sailing ship letter box. Louie and his roommates had fashioned one out of empty beer cans and an orange boundary cone they’d swiped from a club cricket game.)

There was no sign of a Porsche in any driveway, but maybe Sydney’s mother was out. If she did have a Porsche. Probably Evie Hewitt had that wrong. What would an eight-year-old girl know about cars? Frankie stopped outside number 28 and shrugged off his backpack, which was becoming intolerably heavy. Number 28 had a trampoline on the front lawn, which suggested kids. Maybe he could just knock on any old door and ask people if they knew where a wack-job called Freya lived with her three fatherless children. Maybe he could just stand in the middle of Washington Crescent and yell out Sydney’s name. Maybe he could just forget the whole thing and go home.

But as he bent to pick up his backpack, a figure turned into the crescent, on the same side of the street. It was Sydney. She was wearing bright yellow leggings and a green tunic painted all over with flowers. From a distance she looked like a walking banana palm. (It was one of her Netherlands outfits, Frankie knew; Sydney made most of her clothes in Amsterdam because her grandmother had a sewing machine.) Clothes aside, the figure was barely recognizable as Sydney. She walked slowly, her head down, her hands in the pockets of her jacket. Frankie watched her approaching. She was like a comic strip picture of dejection. Even her dreads seemed to sag. He had never seen her like this before and it made his heart sink to his shoes. It made him mute, too, so that Sydney was only a couple of yards away before she raised her head and saw him. She pulled off her earphones slowly and awkwardly, an odd sleepwalking movement.

“Huh,” she said, blankly. “What?”

“What what?” said Frankie. He gave an experimental smile.

“What are you doing here?” said Sydney.

“What happened?” said Frankie. “Evie Hewitt said you had to go home.”

“Yeah, Thydney hath to go home to her thithtith.”

Frankie laughed, but Sydney just stared.

“So, which is your house?” he said, looking around. “I was trying to work it out.”

“You’ll never geth.”

“Does your mother really drive a Porsche?”

“Yeth, she duth.”

“Stop it,” he said.

“Thtop it,” said Sydney.

“Seriously.”

“Theriethly.”

“Sydney!”

“Thydney!”
said Sydney without the slightest smile.

A car backed out of a driveway across the street and straightened up parallel to where they were standing. The woman at the wheel looked with open curiosity at the two of them. Sydney languidly raised a hand and gave her the finger. Frankie flushed and looked away.

“Nothy old thow,” said Sydney in the same deadpan voice.

Frankie said nothing. He couldn’t think what to say. Or do. He shouldn’t have come. The whole thing was a big mistake. He felt slowed down now, too, as if Sydney’s mood was an infection he was rapidly succumbing to. He felt a little sick.

“Thorry,” said Sydney. “Sorry.” She suddenly slapped the side of her head with her hand, as if she were clearing it of static, waking herself up. Then she stood still again, not quite looking at him.

Frankie found his hand undoing the zip on his backpack and, as if unbidden by him, removing the birthday present scroll.

Sydney turned on her heel and started walking. “C’mon,” she said over her shoulder. “Our house is on the other side.”

He began following her, across the street and around the curve of the crescent until they reached a house near the corner. It was white, weather-boarded, two-storied, with shuttered windows and several chimneys. The front garden was grand and elaborate. Large oak trees marked the perimeter. There were roses all along the driveway.

“Stop!” said Frankie as Sydney began to walk up the driveway. He waved the scroll at her back. She stopped and turned around.

“C’mon,” she said. “My mother’s taken my sisters to the gym.”

“I can’t,” said Frankie. “I’ve got to get home. I just wanted to give you this present.”

“Don’t give me a present,” said Sydney, turning back again.

“What?” said Frankie. He was confused. “It’s your
birthday
.”

And quite unexpectedly Sydney slumped down on the driveway. She seemed just to subside, like the side of a hill in a TV avalanche. Then she buried her face in her knees and stayed that way, unmoving. She made no sound but Frankie knew she was crying. The only sounds were from the oak trees where abruptly Frankie was aware of a rackety burst of birdsong. It was like a surging soundtrack in their own private film.

He felt calmer now; somehow it was better that Sydney was crying. It was awful, too, but it seemed as if some incapacitating spell had been broken.

It’s official, Frankie thought, as he walked over to Sydney’s humped form. He
did
have some sort of freakish premature aging. He wasn’t scared of females crying, like most normal twelve-year-old boys. He knew what to do. It seemed as if he’d been used to it all his life — Ma, Gordana, even the Aunties. He was like one of those shrunken, wrinkled kids with that horrible disease, only his aging was on the inside.

He sat down on the grass beside Sydney.

“What happened?” he said.

“Do you have an all-time favorite cake?” asked Frankie.

Ma was setting the cake alarm. She was catering for a shared ten-year-old birthday party tomorrow. It had a Queen of Hearts theme. Thirty-three jam tarts, thirty-three Queen cakes, thirty-three gingerbread princesses, heart-shaped fairy bread and pastries, and three separate layered birthday cakes. Frankie shuddered. Thirty-three ten-year-old girls. Pass-the-parcel. Candle-blowing. Spittle on the cake icing.

“Simnel cake,” said Ma. “You?”

“It changes,” said Frankie. “Some years lemon ricotta, some years Christmas cake.”

It was a cold night. The heat from the electric blanket seeped upward through the duvet. Frankie refused to have such a thing on his bed, in case it went faulty and the bed caught fire. Even so, he worried about Gordana’s blanket, about her forgetting to turn it off before she fell asleep. Last winter he’d taken to sneaking into her room and flipping the wall switch just to make sure, but, of course, she’d woken one night and there’d been an almighty row. She’d called him Freak-Boy and demanded he see a shrink.

Sometimes, Frankie almost longed to see a shrink. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. He could have his own personal one, just like Ma.

“I don’t know what to do when I leave school,” he blurted out.

Ma was rubbing lotion on her hands and didn’t answer immediately. Frankie loved the smell of Ma’s hand lotion. It was the oldest smell in his memory, he thought, lemony and faintly medicinal.

“There’s no hurry, is there?” said Ma.

“Everyone at the Pepys table knows. Esther. Vienna. Gigs —”