The 10 P.M. Question (11 page)

“In the world of corrections”— Mr. A fixed Gigs with a gimlet eye —“
anything
can happen. Listen up, please . . .
One
— the
orange
sheet is a permission slip for your parents or guardians to sign.”

He held up the yellow sheet. “
Two
— this is a list of costs.
Three
— the
blue
sheet is a list of gear you will need for camp. Note that it
excludes
listening devices of
all kinds
. This means Walkmen, Discmen, MP3s, iPods, iPod Nanos, iPod Shuffles, mobiles, two-way radios, field telephones, car phones, tin cans joined with a string . . . Is this crystal clear to even the most obdurately cloth-eared among you?”

“What’s obdurate, Mr. A? What’s cloth-eared?” said Bronwyn Baxter.

“
Four
— the
green
sheet”— Mr. A ignored her —“is a note enticing your parents to accompany us, one day, two days, three, a morning, an afternoon, half an hour, twenty-seven seconds, whatever they can manage. . . . Bring all these back read and signed by your parents or guardians, two Fridays from now. No questions! Dictionaries out!”

Frankie, trying not to think about camp and its implications, had noted automatically that Mr. A had had a haircut. About two inches, Frankie figured, assessing the newly neat halo of silver hair. He’d had an eyebrow trim, too. His eyebrows looked like eyebrows now instead of shaggy hay bales. Gigs and Frankie were convinced that Mr. A was bossier and more officious in the days immediately following his haircuts.

Frankie had stared vacantly at the colored sheets for some time in class, then stowed them in his backpack. At home he had transferred them from his backpack to his desk, where he regularly stared at them, since they had continued to lie there, unread and unsigned, for the last fortnight.

It was hearing about the Year Eight Notts camp five years ago that had made Frankie wish fervently to transfer, along with Gigs, to the school. Gigs had told him all about it; his cousin Vivi had told
him
. It was
amazing,
Gigs had said.
Eight
days
more or less in the bush, horseback riding, bird-watching, kayaking, rock climbing, a mini drama production with the band, a dance competition . . . The camp was the high point of the Notts experience. No other school had anything like it, blah, blah, blah . . .

Frankie wound up the old music box and watched the one-armed ballerina perform her jerky pirouette. He thought of the ballerina as Lara, though she didn’t look anything like the Lara in
Doctor Zhivago,
which was the film that “Lara’s Theme” came from.
Doctor Zhivago
was Ma’s favorite film; naturally it was set in Russia. Frankie had watched the film often with Ma.

The film Lara was voluptuous and fair-haired, with pouting lips. She wore cloaks and fur and moved with grace. The music box ballerina was skinny and plastic, with only a few strands of black hair and no discernible lips. Her pink tulle skirt was tatty; her dance was bumpy and oddly fevered. It was because she was old, Frankie knew; the music box had been Ma’s sixth-birthday present from her parents. It had also been her last birthday present from her parents because when she was six years and five days old, her parents had been killed in a car crash, and Ma had gone to live with the Aunties.

Frankie closed his eyes and listened to the mutated “Lara’s Theme” slowing and slowing and finally stopping.

It was because of Ma that Frankie couldn’t possibly go to camp. He could admit this to himself in the privacy of his bedroom, where only Robert Plant and Morrie were witness to his thoughts. It was not something he could discuss with Gigs or Louie or Gordana — with anyone else in the world.

The
problem
was, he just knew that those in charge — Uncle George and Ma herself — would not accept Ma as a reasonable excuse for Frankie staying at home. Which meant he would have to go. Except that he couldn’t, because if he did, he would spend the week disabled by worry, the rodent voice taking up permanent, deafening residence in his head. He would feel nauseous with anxiety about Ma. (Who would do her errands? Who would keep her company? Who would chat to her at night when Uncle G was working and Gordana was doing as she pleased? Who would keep a constant and careful — though carefully nonchalant — eye on her? Who would hold her hand when she was feeling a little bit wobbly?)

But almost as bad, he, Frankie, would inevitably develop new and pressing worries, about himself and the world in general; he would lie awake in the camp bunk while everyone else was sleeping, obsessing about Chinese industrial pollution, about the ozone hole, about Peak Oil, about the diseases carried by horses and the perils of kayaking, about the possibility of campylobacter from camp food and septicemia from grazes and cuts. He would lie in his bunk while this catalog created a progressively more high-pitched white noise in his head and there would be no possibility of padding down the hall to Ma’s room for reassurance.

Frankie banged the music box lid shut, and plastic Lara was confined once more to her horizontal position in the dark. He flung himself back on his bed, and the Fat Controller mewed halfheartedly at this rough treatment.

Frankie raised his eyes to Robert Plant and silently spoke his treacherous thought:
I’m tired of it.
He looked at Morrie and said the thought aloud: “I’m tired of it.” He was tired, tired,
tired,
so
tired of all the worry — worry about himself, worry about Ma, worry about the world. Then instantly he felt shabby and mean, disloyal to Ma, ashamed of himself.

He curled his fists so his nails dug into the skin of his palms. It was his way of being stern with himself, of pulling himself together. He clenched his teeth, then wobbled his jaw furiously so that it clicked and the sound rang in his head. He often did this to banish rodent thoughts before they took hold.

So, he was tired of it all, but what could he do? Nothing, that’s what. It was just how it was.

There were worse things, of course there were. Floods in India. Earthquakes in Peru. Children with tuberculosis or kwashiorkor or polio. What was he complaining about? It was nothing, really, just an eternal inconvenience. But, so what?

He uncurled his fists and looked at the half-moon marks on his palms. He knew what he was going to do.

He would fake Uncle George’s signature on the camp forms and tell Mr. A — with just the right amount of regret — that family circumstances meant he couldn’t attend. Uncle George would never realize about camp because he was just too flat out these days to register anything, especially events on anyone’s school calendar. And Ma would never know; Frankie was very practiced at protecting Ma from information that might upset her.

And good old Mr. A would be too sensitive and kind to ask awkward questions; he would just pat Frankie kindly on the back and suggest some books to read while they were away. Gigs wouldn’t ask questions, either, because he never did. That was the good thing about Gigs.

Nor would his classmates say anything, because in five years they never had. Of course, Frankie hadn’t told a single person about home, but he figured someone had — either Gigs, for kindly reasons, or that arch busybody, Bronwyn Baxter, because she loved to pass on gossip.

It was the best solution. In fact, it was the only solution. And if somehow — he couldn’t think how and he’d canvassed all the possibilities — if somehow Uncle George and Ma found out later, after camp, it would be too late to do anything about it.

“So, that’s that,” he said to Morrie and Robert Plant. “All settled.” He closed his eyes.

Or almost all settled. There was one remaining problem, of course. A three-foot-seven-inch problem with bulging eyes and rattling bangles, who could be guaranteed to do what everyone else obligingly did not — ask questions. There was no way out of that one — Frankie just knew.

He could hear Sydney’s questions clearly. He’d been hearing them in his head for two weeks.

“Question,” she would say in her raspy way. They might be anywhere, sitting at his desk, Sydney scribbling, Frankie shading the soft gray underbelly feathers of his rare bird. They might be sitting at the Pepys table doing their math or riding the bus to Frankie’s place or walking down the hill to the shops on an errand for Ma. Sydney would be no respecter of place or time.

“How come,” she would say with a bluntness that would make him flinch, “your mother
never
leaves the house?”

Frankie had spent a good deal of time thinking about how he would answer this. He had all manner of imaginary responses lined up.

“She has an allergy to sunlight,” he would say.

Or, “She’s actually clinically blind, but you can’t really tell.”

Or, “She has this incredibly rare foot condition. It stops you from walking any distance. Just easier to stay indoors.”

Or, “She’s in a witness protection program — she gave evidence in a big court case and now she has to stay more or less hidden in case any of them trace her whereabouts.”

It was all crap, of course, but it didn’t matter much what he said, because the other question would come hard on its heels, as predictably as frost on a winter morning.

“But how
long
has it been, how long since she went anywhere?” Sydney would fix him with those black bean eyes, her nose stud would seem to flash, and he would be stuck fast, a possum in the headlights, compelled to answer. Those eyes would pull the answer from him, draw it out slowly, like a syringe extracting blood.

“Hmmm,” Frankie would say, strenuously casual, looking away, fixing his eye on something solid and ordinary: a tree, a parked car, the dictionary, the black-and-white hatching on his rare bird, the cricket cup and the sharpened pencils pointing to the ceiling like a circle of bayonets. “Hmmm,” he might say again, so relaxed and unemotional he would seem practically comatose. “A while now, I guess.”

Then he might pretend to recall just exactly how long. He might narrow his eyes, seem to be calculating the time, as if it were so unimportant, he’d never bothered to do it before. . . .

“Let’s see,” he might say eventually. “About nine years. Most of my life, really. It’s normal for me. I hardly notice it. I honestly never really think about it. Really.”

“Really,” he would say again, ever so lightly.

“Did you know, the Russians had accidental daylight saving for sixty-one years and nobody noticed?” said Frankie. “It was Stalin’s fault. He ordered the clocks put back in nineteen thirty-eight and then forgot to un-order them.”

Frankie liked to pass on to Ma curious facts he picked up about Russia. He’d heard this one on a radio program about the history of daylight saving.

“I did
n
’
t,” said Ma. “He was a terrible person.”

“It’s more terrible ending daylight saving,” said Frankie. “Plunging us all into darkness.”

“Do
n
’
t you start,” said Ma. She was lying with her hands tucked behind her head, listening to some piano music. Russian, of course. Some Dmitri or Sergei or Pytor. Frankie was looking at the yellow-haired woman in the painting, who somehow appeared more apprehensive than usual. Perhaps she hated the end of daylight saving, too. But no, they wouldn’t have had it back then, when people wore billowing nightgowns and slept in four-poster beds. The radio said it had been invented in the nineteen twenties.

“Seamus and Eugene Kearney’s brother might have hepatitis,” said Frankie. He could never figure out the color of the woman’s eyes. Hazel? Topaz? Ginger?

“Which one?” said Ma. Seamus and Eugene had six brothers; no one could really tell them apart
—
they were all big and baboon-like.

“Danny. He’s turned yellow. His whole flat has turned yellow. It’s incredibly contagious. Seamus and Eugene might have it.”

“It’s possible,” said Ma. “Do you like this music?”

“It’s okay,” said Frankie. “
I
might have it,” he said.

“Have what?” said Ma.

“Hepatitis,”
said Frankie. “I think my eyes have a yellow tinge.”

“You
don’t
have it. You never have anything to do with the Kearneys.”

“But they’re in my class. I could have touched things they’ve touched. Desks, door handles, dictionaries, cricket bats . . .”

Ma leaned over and turned down the music. “Do you wash your hands before you eat? Do you share food or bottles with the Kearneys? Do you always use soap?”

“Yes. No. Yes,” said Frankie.

“I promise, you don’t have it,” said Ma. “You look too healthy.
Tanned and clear-eyed. I think you’ve grown, too. The Aunties thought so.”

“Symptoms don’t show for two weeks and people can feel completely normal,” said Frankie. Who cared about extra height when liver damage was almost certain?

“How’s the book project going?” said Ma. “I like your title. Sydney told me. She’s nice, Sydney.”

“It’s okay,” said Frankie truculently. He wished she wouldn’t try to distract him in this obvious way. It never worked.

“You reading anything good at the moment?”

“Articles on hepatitis.”

“Frankie,
please.
” Ma sat up in bed and took his hand in hers. “Listen to me. What type of hepatitis is it? A, B, or C?”

“C,” said Frankie miserably. “And that’s the worst kind.”

“Aha!” said Ma. “It’s also the kind that’s passed on by blood.”

They sat there in silence for a moment.

“Have you been sharing needles with any of the Kearney boys?”

“Ha, ha,” said Frankie, but already he was feeling a tiny bit better.

They sat in further silence.

“Okay, then?” said Ma.

“Yes,” said Frankie. He decided the woman in the painting had
amber
eyes. They were strangely transparent.