The 10 P.M. Question (16 page)

“The big girl’s been busy,” said Uncle George, gesturing to the closed bathroom door. “She’s left a little present, and worst luck, Gordana saw it first.”

“I don’t think I want to see it,” said Ma. She turned and went back down the hall.

“It’s a rat,” said Frankie. “She brought it into my room last night.” He’d overlooked the bathroom window.

“It
was
a rat,” said Uncle George, opening the bathroom door and pointing to the shower stall. Frankie’s stomach turned over but he felt compelled to look at the deposit on the no longer pristine white bath mat.

“You’ve got to admire the technical skill,” said Uncle George, looking down at it, too. “The precision really is magnificent. And then, it’s render unto Caesar —”

“Okay, o
kay,
” said Frankie.

The Fat Controller had left a perfectly cleaned rat kidney and one complete rat eyeball. Her best work yet, Frankie noted with one part of his mind, even as he shuddered at the revoltingness of it. The kidney was a deep red-black, tiny and delicate as a semiprecious stone. It had the look of something licked to a high polish. The eye seemed almost to shimmer under the bathroom light; it was like a slightly squashed, flaccid marble, shiny brown, with black speckling. Frankie was sure he could see an almost pleading look to it.

“Bit much before breakfast,” said Uncle George.

“She’s just following her instincts,” said Frankie feebly. His own instinct was to go back to bed, pull the duvet over his head, and stay there for the day. He felt enormously tired. But even as he stood barefoot and chilled on the bathroom tiles, considering the bits of the brown rat’s inner self, he remembered that it was Tuesday, April 11, and that was (a) the day the Science Fair results were announced, (b) the day they must hand in their work experience reports, and (c) Sydney’s birthday, and she had invited him to her house for book project and cake. He’d decided — with Gigs’s approval — to give her a starter list of Chilun vocab as a present.

“It’s so early,” said Frankie. “Why is Gordana up early?” Uncle George had wrapped a towel around his middle and was on his knees scooping up the Fat Controller’s little present with toilet paper.

“I’ll make pancakes,” said Uncle George. “Damage control.”

Pancakes would be good, thought Frankie. They hadn’t had Uncle George pancakes in a while. These were legendary and more or less like Uncle George himself: big and thick and buttery, and slathered with excessive toppings. The downside was that Uncle George obliterated the kitchen when he cooked. He was even worse than Gordana. Raw mixture actually hit the ceiling. And other people — usually Ma or Frankie — were always left to clean up.

Frankie dressed and gave his work experience report a final check. He wasn’t at all happy with it. There was a good enough description of Louie and his different routines, and then of the afternoon with Uncle George. (This had consisted of listening to Uncle G on the phone much of the time, first speaking very testily to a supplier, then mollifying a client, then swearing heartily about both client and supplier to his partner, Joe, who was somewhere at an airport and couldn’t hear properly.)

Frankie had his vocabulary list and he’d managed a tolerable description of the workplaces. But when he’d come to write the portraits of Louie and Uncle George, his pen had seemed to seize up. He couldn’t understand it. It should have been so easy. Uncle George and Louie were the most colorful and amusing, the most
entertaining,
characters in his life. He should have been able to write pages and pages about them.

Instead, the more he tried to capture them in words, the more they seemed to recede from him. It was as if he was watching them both through the wrong end of a telescope while they slowly diminished into the distance. At one point, disturbingly, it seemed he couldn’t even think what they looked like. He’d actually gone upstairs to look at the family photo in Uncle George’s office, but the more he stared at the picture, the less easy it seemed he could make them out. He’d stared at Gordana, too, and felt the same thing. She was both infinitely familiar and oddly unrecognizable. It had made Frankie feel so strange, he’d spun around and left the office. He hadn’t wanted to look at himself and experience the same sensation.

He put the report in his backpack, resigning himself to a poor mark. Mr. A had a genius for spotting a halfhearted effort. Gigs would get an A. He’d ended up having a whale of a time with a weed-eater at some mansion out in the country. Sydney, too, would get an A. She’d written pages; her vocabulary list was four columns. She’d shown Frankie her report but the same unnerving feeling had come over him when he began reading Sydney’s portrait of Ma. The words did and did not make sense. Ma seemed to dissolve as he read.

“It’s great,” he’d said colorlessly, and Sydney had bulged her eyes at him. Her eye-bulging could convey a number of emotions. In this case, Frankie knew, it was skepticism.

“I wish I could write as well as you,” he said, trying to make amends.

“A portrait can be a drawing,” was all Sydney had said. So he’d tried that. He’d sat down at his desk, selected a Faber-Castell 3B, opened up the music box, and begun sketching. But the feeling had come over him again and he’d ended up drawing a puffin and a sparrow. As sketches went, they were good, but he didn’t want to put them in the report.

In the kitchen, Gordana was bent over the table, paintbrush in hand, daubing a pair of jeans with pink paint. Frankie leaned in to see what she was painting, then turned away quickly. Gordana appeared to be putting the finishing touches to a nipple. The jeans were decorated at intervals with naked breasts.

“Don’t ask,” said Uncle George to Frankie. He was fully clothed now, pouring pancake batter into the frying pan.

“If you must know,” said Gordana, “it’s Saint’s Day. Saint Agatha. Virgin and Martyr. Put to death by the Romans. Rolled on live coals. Tongs et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Patron saint of fire and earthquakes.”

“Why breasts?” said Uncle George. “Or are you just being provocative?”

“They sliced off her breasts,” said Gordana. “
Torture
. She’s the patron saint of breasts, too.”

“You’re kidding!” said Uncle George. “A patron saint for breasts. Are there saints for other body parts? Eyes, ears, tonsils, testicles?”

“Shut up,” said Gordana. “She’s the saint for breast
diseases
.”

Frankie leaned over the bench, watching the pancake develop dimples and bubbles all over its surface. He wondered if there was a patron saint for rashes. He or she might be worth a prayer. He’d measured his rash again last night and it had definitely spread. But, worst luck, he didn’t really believe in saints.

“Who wants the first pancake?” said Uncle George.

“Me,”
said Gordana. “I deserve it. I’m still traumatized by that disgusting liver.”

“Kidney,” said Frankie.

“It’s ready,” said Uncle George. “Get a plate, Gordana.”

“Can’t,” said Gordana. “I’m in the middle of this nipple. Get me a plate, Frankie.”

“Get it yourself,” said Frankie, hating her.

“Don’t be childish,” said Gordana.

“Stop bickering, please,” said Ma, coming into the kitchen.

“Can you get meat?” she said to Uncle George. “Aunties tonight.”

“Lamb, beef, pork?” said Uncle George. “Let’s have lamb! Lamb filets with oregano —”

“Shut
up
!” said Gordana. “How can you even think about meat after finding offal all over the house —”

“It was hardly all over the house,” Ma began.

“And I’m
sick
of the Aunties. Why do we have to have them week after week after week? Why can’t we —?”

“It’s only every other week,” said Ma. “And they love it. They love to see you.”

“If only it was mutual,” said Gordana. She flicked the brush with her fingers and sprayed an arc of little pink dots over the waist of the jeans.

“Pancake,” said Uncle George, putting a plate down in front of Gordana. “Sour cream and maple syrup, the way you like it.”

“Careful!” said Gordana. “Don’t smudge the paint.” Neither Uncle George nor the plate were anywhere near the jeans, Frankie observed.

“Is it the eleventh?” said Uncle George. “If it’s the eleventh, I’ll be late. We’re wooing a new client. Big job. Frankie’ll get the meat, won’t you, old man?”

“I’ve got my book project,” said Frankie. “At Sydney’s.” He wasn’t going to mention her birthday in front of Gordana.

“Gordana?” said Uncle George.

“Nope,” said Gordana, her mouth full of pancake. “I’m going to Ben’s indoor cricket.”

“Oh,” said Ma. But she never queried Gordana’s after-school schedule. Instead, she looked at Frankie. “Could Sydney come here?”

And quite suddenly, Frankie was outraged. He felt it like a flood, rushing through his body, making him almost unsteady on his feet.
No,
he wanted to shout,
no, she could not! Why should she?

“She won’t mind coming here,” said Gordana. “She worships at Ma’s altar.”

“Shut up!”
Frankie yelled, swinging round on Gordana. “Shut your ugly screech-owl face!”

“Dear, dear,
dear,
” said Gordana. “Someone give the child a pill.”

Frankie wanted to weep with fury and frustration. He hated Gordana for provoking this response in him.

“Enough! Calm down, everyone!” said Uncle George. He flipped a pancake and caught it neatly in the pan. “Can you help me out here, Frankie?”

Frankie looked at Uncle George. His face had a light dusting of flour and there were oil spots down his Partially Bling Man T-shirt. A flick of butter rested in his eyebrow.

He looked at Ma, standing alongside Uncle George. She was dressed and ready in her baking gear — a faded cotton skirt, white T-shirt, low shoes. Her clothes were fresh and immaculate. As always, she seemed even more petite beside Uncle George. She looked like a girl, Frankie thought, a pale, delicate girl from another time. Her face wore the expressionless look it took on when this sort of arrangement was being discussed. It was as if she were somehow transporting herself away from the conversation, waiting for it to be over. Frankie couldn’t bear that look.

“I’ll get the meat,” he said.

“Good man,” said Uncle George. “Pancake?”

“And the code word is, fellas?” said Cassino.

It was Gigs’s week. “Palwankar Baloo,” he said. He was having a phase on famous Indian cricket teams.

Cassino actually laughed. It was exactly like a rock face trembling. “For real?”

“For real,” said Gigs. “Nineteen-oh-five, nineteen-oh-six to nineteen twenty, nineteen twenty-one. Thirty-three first-class matches. Left-arm orthodox spin.”

“Fair enough,” said Cassino.

“You should be on some quiz program,” said Frankie when they sat down. “Gigs Angelo. Subject: obscure cricketers.”

Gigs took out his breakfast. It was savory rolled pancakes.

“Huh, we had pancakes, too,” said Frankie. “But Gordana was a cow, so it was ruined.”

“What’s new?” said Gigs. “When wasn’t she a cow? I can’t remember.”

But Frankie could — barely. Gordana had been more or less tolerable until . . . He thought back, but it was hard to pinpoint. A couple of years ago? Till Louie left home, maybe. Yes, it had been all downhill since then.

“It’s because of her name,” said Gigs.

“What?” Frankie rolled up his ticket and poked it into the seat back. He surveyed the installation critically. The sad fact was they were running out of room.

“It’s a
man’s
name,” said Gigs. “Her personality’s warped because she’s got a boy’s name. She’s kind of in a permanent bad mood about it. Whose was it again?”

“My grandfather’s. Gordon Osbourne.”

“The one who died in the car crash?”

“Yeah,” said Frankie. “His name was Gordon and her name was Pearl. She was the Aunties’ little sister.”

“Not a very Russian name,” said Gigs.

“What?”

“Gordon.”

“It’s not Russian,” said Frankie, puzzled. “I think it’s Scottish.”

“But wasn’t he Russian?”

“No,” said Frankie.

“I thought that was why your Ma liked Russian stuff so much,” said Gigs.

“She just took it at the university,” said Frankie. “Then she took it again later, after she had us kids. Or something. She’s very good at languages.”

The bus pulled into the midtown terminal and the city kids began clambering on. Frankie thought about Ma’s Russian thing. Why
did
she like Russian stuff so much? He’d never really asked. It was just a fact of her life, their family life — an odd fact, along with all the others.

“Praedictum faciitus mixtum Yendys beeday?” said Gigs. (You got the thing for Sydney’s birthday?)

“Sure have,” said Frankie. He’d made a list of two hundred words in cursive script with Uncle George’s old fountain pen. He’d used fake parchment paper, then rolled it and tied it with string so that it resembled a scroll.

“So weird,” said Frankie. “I couldn’t work out how to spell some words.”

“Ours is principally an
oral
language,” said Gigs, in Mr. A tones, and they both laughed.

“Shakespeare spelled things all different ways,” said Frankie. “Even his name.”

“Yeah?” said Gigs.

Frankie was about to say that Gordana had told him years ago, when she was explaining her own wayward spelling, but at that moment the bus doors banged shut and the gears ground slowly — and Frankie realized Sydney hadn’t boarded.

“Hey!” Frankie was on his feet, rolling to the front of the bus. “Cassino! Sydney’s not here.” Frankie grabbed the pole behind the driver’s seat, steadying himself.

Cassino looked in his rearview mirror. “She’s not usually late, eh?”

“Never,” said Frankie. It was true. For a kid, Sydney was weirdly punctual. It was compensating for her mother, she said. Her mother didn’t believe in being on time for anything. Her mother believed that people should always wait for her.

Cassino was pulling over. “We can hold five.”

Frankie looked out the window, hoping for Sydney, running along the footpath, perhaps, signaling wildly.

“She’s not coming,” said Eugene Kearney behind him.