Number 8 (2 page)

“That's what Mom says.” A sharp ache starts just under my rib cage. I think of Mom, how she looks when she's singing. Happy. She hasn't looked like that for a long time.

“Can we turn this on?” Esmerelda taps the keyboard. “I'm taking piano lessons, but we don't have one at home.”

I switch it on and she tries out the different rhythms—swing, Latin American, rock.

“If you know how to play the piano, you can compose songs and accompany yourself as you sing them.” She tosses her head importantly. Her dark hair is still moving as the rest of her stops. It's like a wave coming into shore. “Does your mother do that?”

“What?

“Make up songs.”

“Sometimes.” The living room is so different with Esmerelda Marx in it. “When Mom worked at the casino, before this new manager came, she used to sing her own songs. They're pretty mournful, you know, all in minor chords about people leaving each other and having no money, but dat's dem blues, as she says.”

I remember how at Trenches Road I'd come home from school and Mom'd be rehearsing. I'd go and make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sit out on the balcony. Her voice would float out to me, as rich as hot chocolate. There were questions and answers in the music, no nasty surprises. I felt full sitting out there, satisfied, and it wasn't just from the sandwich. Once I told her she was like the number eight. I meant it as a compliment but she frowned. She thought I meant she was too round. “I'd rather be skinny and angular, like seven,” she said. I told her she didn't want that, because seven is particularly mean-looking, like a medieval scythe. You could take someone's head off in one blow with one of those things. But she must not have been convinced about the scythe thing because after that I noticed how we had all this Diet Coke in the fridge and tons of lettuce. After work, though, late at night, she'd sneak up plates of french fries from the café below.

“It must be so great, your mother being a singer,” Esmerelda says.

“Yeah, well,” I say. “It means we move a lot. We have to go wherever she can get work.” I think of Mom this morning and her bright face as she put on too much lipstick in front of the mirror. “Wish me luck, Jackson,” she said, with a big false smile. I wanted to, but I knew the job she was going for wasn't what she really wanted. “We have to pay the rent,” she'd said last night. “Dreams are expensive.”

I could feel the black cloud coming down over me so I shook my head to clear it. I didn't want to spoil even a second of this miraculous afternoon. “Esmerelda sounds like a singer's name,” I say, “or maybe an actress.” I've read in Mom's magazines that women like you to ask questions about them and their feelings. And anyway, I was interested. “Is it Spanish?”

Esmerelda shrugs. “It was the name of a mermaid in a movie my mother saw as a child. She said she always wanted a romantic life, and there's not a lot of it in the banking world. I guess she wanted something different for me.” She laughs. “‘You've got to balance your accounts, Ez. Mind your deposits and withdrawals, otherwise the bottom line of life will reach up and swallow you.'”

When Esmerelda does her mother's voice she puts on this flat nasal tone and it's hilarious. She sounds just like the finance reporter on TV, the one mom throws her shoes at. I start doing it too, not throwing my shoes that is, but making my voice go down like hers at the end of each sentence, as if announcing a funeral. We start laughing, and we can't stop. I look at Esmerelda hooting away and suddenly I feel like I've known her all my life. She doesn't look like Wonder Woman anymore. Funny how when you
laugh at the same thing, at the same time, you feel like you're not alone anymore. Suddenly I want to tell her everything, about the terrible quiet and the stinginess of odd numbers. But she gets started first.

“I've always lived on this street,” she says wistfully, looking around the room. “I can't wait to travel. Have you ever been outside Australia?”

“Yeah, to the U.S. But we didn't stay long. I remember on our last night we went out to a diner and had chocolate cake for dinner. There's a photo of me somewhere with chocolate all over my face.”

Which makes me remember the ten little boats sitting on the kitchen table. A growl of hunger swirls in my stomach. “Hey, let's eat, I was practically dying of starvation before you got here.”

We go and get the cakes and Esmerelda suggests we sit outside. It's a balmy (not barmy, well, maybe just a bit) afternoon and we can smell the jasmine climbing all over the soundproof fence.

“That's nice, the jasmine,” I say casually. “You never get that smell in the city. Where we lived it was mainly bus exhaust and paella.”

“What's paella?”

I tell her about the Spanish dish, the shrimp and chicken, mussels nestled in their shells, and the greasy fingers you get when you eat it. She tells me how great it must be to know that sort of exotic stuff. While she's talking, I'm eating five cakes. They're light and lemony, with sugar frosting that melts on your tongue. I'm hypnotized by how good they are.

“I'd rather eat your mother's cakes than paella any day,” I say, wiping my mouth. I can feel the sugar tingling on
my chin. “It's not that great, you know, moving around all the time. You're always the new kid. You hardly have time to learn people's names before you have to start all over again.”

“Mmm,” says Esmerelda. “Will you forget mine, do you think?” She opens her eyes wide suddenly, and I get that feeling of falling again. Now I think her eyes are more like a stretch of grass, maybe a golf course: green, smooth, with no odd spiky bits. You could lie down in them, close your own eyes…

She's still staring at me, and now she's fluttering her eyelashes. She looks like an actress on TV. You can tell she's thinking about how she looks, and I wish she wouldn't. I liked how it was before, when there was nothing else between us.

“I won't ever forget
your
name,” I tell her. Oh, how corny that sounds. Pathetic. I snort. “I mean, it's too long—there are four syllables before you can even draw breath.”

We both look down at the plate. There's only one cake left. We stare at it. “Well, just call me Ez then if it's easier,” she says, and takes the cake. “Everyone else does.” I notice her eyes are narrow again.

There's a silence between us, the first one, I realize, that afternoon. I've said the wrong thing, but I'm not sure what it was. I want to get back to when we were telling each other things, without thinking.

“You know, I've moved fourteen times in thirteen years. Thirteen is a very bad number, but I guess seventeen is worse. I hope we don't get to seventeen. You know why?”

Ez doesn't say anything, but I think that's because her mouth is full. “See, the seven in seventeen is a really mean number. It's thin and sharp but you should see how they draw it in Europe. It looks even more dangerous because
there's a spike like a crossbow through the middle. I know because at my last school I sat next to this Italian boy who kept getting into trouble for drawing his sevens that way.”

I glance at Ez's face. She's looking at the half-devoured mangoes on the lawn.

“Some people think seven is a really
lucky
number,” she says. “When my dad went to the casino, that's what he played at the roulette table. He said it was an amazing place, there were all these men in gold chains and million-dollar suits, ladies in low-cut dresses.” She turns to me, and her face is all eager again, and open. “Tell me about the casino,” she says. “Did you ever go there? Why did your mom leave?”

Now I get it. Esmerelda wants to hear about the exciting, glittery side of things, like TV. I don't blame her, what with all this suburban quiet soaking up everything like blotting paper. I decide I won't say anything about being lonely or Mom's new job, that's if she gets it. Right now, Mom is probably wearing that smile and waving her arms around for the boss or whoever's interviewing her. She's telling him that sure, she's had years of experience in waitressing and serving beer, and really, all she's ever wanted is to work at this gorgeous Homeland pub. She'll do the dinner shift three nights a week, as advertised, and lunch and Saturday nights as well if they want. She won't tell him how she's decided that she'll give up singing and become a civilian if she gets this job. She won't tell him, either, how you've got to know when to give up on a dream, and get real. (That's what civilians do, she thinks, they have normal jobs and stop being crazy artists hanging onto crazy dreams.) And she won't say how it's about time she made a stable life for her son who thinks numbers have supernatural powers and has a nervous cough. Well, I
told
her the cough had nothing to do with Trenches Road and
its backfiring buses, but she didn't listen and now she keeps telling me to breathe deep the fresh air. I don't tell her that the breathless thing is actually worse now, due to the quiet. In this place you can even hear yourself swallow. It's unnerving. But she's got enough to worry about.

“Jackson? How long did your mom work at the Blue Moon?”

“About a year and a half.”

“Well, she must have seen a lot of rich people in that time, just like my dad did.” Esmerelda nudges me. “Did she see that millionaire guy, you know the famous one who—”

“Oh, yes, and she got invited out to dinner by these guys in Ferraris and Jaguars. Once she got to ride in a Lamborghini, you know the car with the doors that open upward like wings.” Actually, Mom only ever saw those cars as she drove out of the parking lot in our 1984 Ford Escort on her way home. But she always described them to me, because I collected model cars for a while.

“So why did she leave?”

“Oh, it's kind of complicated.” I look at Esmerelda. I don't know whether I should tell the truth about it. I'm sure Mom wouldn't like it. But then I take a risk. Mom would understand. This is Esmerelda Marx, for goodness sake. She's waiting to be entertained. And boy, do I have a story for her.

“Well, see, it was like this. Mom got along really well with the manager—you know, the boss who employed her. Her job was to work at the bar and serve food but this guy, he was always trying to get more spots for her, singing. He said that's what she was born to do. He was such a fan, he was a real jazz tragic—”

“A what?”

“You know, someone who's crazy about jazz. He could
tell you the whole history of jazz if you sat there long enough. He loved the way Mom sang, said she was another Ella Fitzgerald, and no matter what was happening in the casino he'd make sure he came to listen to her. But then he had to quit—his wife got really ill—and the owners took on a new manager. That's when the trouble started.”

“Why, wasn't the new guy a jazz fan?”

“No. He wasn't excited about anything except money. He kept stalking around, telling people to do their jobs quicker or they'd be fired. He kept a stopwatch in his pocket. ‘Watch out, things are gonna change round here,' was his favorite saying. He even told Mom to sing more songs in an hour, so people'd get more value for their money. Can you believe it? He told Mom she didn't bring in a big enough crowd. Said she was getting old and her breaks were too long between sessions. Well, actually, Mom thinks she only takes about six minutes, just time enough to have a drink and pee. And I can tell you, Mom pees faster than anyone I've ever met.”

“So does my little brother. He's always in such a hurry to get on with his game, sometimes he's still dribbling as he leaves the bathroom.”

“Well, Mom wasn't happy, as you can imagine, but then a really bad thing happened.” I stop here because I feel a cough coming on. I try to swallow it down but this familiar feeling like a door closing over my throat starts and I begin to bark. Honestly, I sound like a dog with emphysema. That's a terminal disease. I looked it up in the dictionary.

“Should I get you a glass of water?” Esmerelda's looking at me like I'm dying.

I nod, mainly so she won't hear me so loudly in the kitchen. Water never really fixes the cough, I just have to let it go till it's finished. It's exhausting.

I drink the water, and wipe my eyes.

“Have you got TB or something? There's a famous opera where the heroine dies of tuberculosis.
La Traviata
. Her last song is fantastic. She coughs up blood all over her lover's handkerchief. I know about tuberculosis because I sang one of the songs from that opera last year for the Christmas play. I had everybody howling.”

The cough is still there. I take a deep breath, and hold it for four seconds. I count the numbers out in my head, watching them drift together into a set like gentle cows corralled in a field. I put a bracket around them like a friendly arm to stop them from getting out. My heart slows a little as they pair off inside their enclosure, cozy.

“Have you been to a doctor?”

I nod. “Yes, a few. I'm okay. They say I do it to relieve stress.”

“Wow. Why don't you jog or do yoga instead?”

I shrug. How can you answer a question like that?

“So,” begins Esmerelda with a little wriggle of impatience, “what was the really bad thing, or don't you want to talk about it?” She looks up at me again, wide-eyed, and flicks back her hair.

“It's okay,” I say, watching the way her hair settles on her neck. “See, things were getting pretty ugly, especially when Tony—that's the mean manager—hired a new security guy. He was a brick wall with legs and he followed Tony everywhere, making sure the staff did what the boss said. He was even stupider than Tony, if that's possible. He's one of those guys with no neck, and shoulders like a gorilla. He had this habit of humming the theme to
Rocky
under his breath. Fancied himself as a boxer, I guess. Well, one night, Mom had a really bad argument with Tony and she left in such a hurry, she forgot her
handbag. When she got to her car, she realized she didn't have her keys. She dithered around for a while, because she was still so angry and didn't want to go back in and have to see Tony.”