The 10 P.M. Question (26 page)

Frankie stood up and began tidying his sketches. “So?” He was suddenly agitated, the pleasant interlude debating tattoos wiped out. “So?”

“So nothing,” said Sydney. “But I suppose she doesn’t mind sad endings, either. Maybe she even likes them.”

Frankie felt the familiar, horrible surge down his arms, the rush of pins and needles. His heart started up its pounding. Little black dots swam in front of his eyes.

“Well, that’s her!” he said. His voice was abruptly loud once more, very loud — quite without his seeming to be in charge of it. “Who cares what endings she likes? It’s got nothing to do with anything!”

Even as he shouted this, Frankie wished something would stop him, but a great sore need seemed to be welling up. It was propelling him from the inside and he couldn’t be quiet.

Sydney was very still, but her eyes blinked rapidly.

“I —” she started, but he wouldn’t be interrupted.

“We’re not the same!” he spat out. “I’m me and she’s her! Hear that?
I’m ME and she’s HER!
” It sounded absurd, he knew it. Even in this once-more instantaneous wound-up state, he could hear the words, enraged and plaintive and absurd. The words began reverberating, like a strident playground chant in his head.
Me Her Me Her Mehermehermeher . . .
The black dots swam across his vision and a horrible taste filled his mouth.

And then the front door opened in a rush. That’s how Frankie remembered it later — much later when he looked back on the dreadful tableau, the beginning of the end, as he thought of it. There was a painful, charged silence, there was Sydney’s stricken face and the little girls shrinking in the doorway, and then there was the gust as the front door opened and Freya’s voice, the almost mythical Freya calling out.

“Spring is here
and
spring is here! Mama’s home, little kittens. Get out the suitcases!”

All the echoing loudness and fury dissolved in an instant, and everything in the oddly grand dining room seemed to hiccup and then restart. That’s how Frankie thought of it later. He would see and hear it all in a long, drawn-out moment: Sydney’s face slowly emptying, her elbows sliding along the table until her arms were flat and her head could drop onto them; the little girls meowing hello; Freya’s disembodied, unexpectedly sweet voice talking mother cat nonsense; and Frankie himself, slumping into the chair again, emptied out now, and looking up at the bishop, who looked back implacably, giving away absolutely nothing.

Frankie lay in his bed. He lay facing the wall, his eyes open, but seeing only blackness. His entire body ached. He wanted to cry but it wouldn’t happen. His insides were dried out somehow. He was prickly and withered and exhausted.

His head throbbed and there was a jagged pain behind his right eye; the rodent voice told him this was probably a brain aneurism, just as minutes ago it had insisted his aching muscles were meningitis.

He had been mentally reciting batting shots
(cover drive, on drive, off drive, straight drive)
to keep the rodent voice at bay
(square cut, forward defense, back foot defense),
to prevent thoughts about madness
(edge, pull shot, French cut),
to shut out the future, which seemed to be worsening by the day.
(Block shot, leg glance, sweep shot, reverse sweep.)
And there weren’t enough to get him through the entire night, even if he repeated them over and over, which he already had.

So, now he was on to birds
(canary, budgie, parrot, macaw, mynah, nightingale, Philomel, bulbul)
because he really wanted to stay in his room, not leave his bed in that shrinking way and move, groping, down the hallway, to Ma, ever ready and patient
(lark, thrush, throstle, mavis, blackbird, linnet)
or asleep, and then climbing out of sleep, still patient and soothing
(plover, peewit, pigeon, ringdove, turtledove).
He wanted so much to stick it out, brave it, beat down the rodent voice
(woodpecker, jay, magpie, jackdaw, rook, raven, crow).
He wanted to crawl out from under the despair of Sydney going
(goldfinch, chaffinch, blue tit, wren, robin, cuckoo, yellowhammer, wagtail, sunbird, weaverbird).
He wanted to cease worrying, to feel different once and for all, to calm down, chill out, be released
— wader, stork, crane, heron, spoonbill, ibis, swan, teal, mallard, diver, dipper, grebe, martin, petrel, swallow, swift . . .

Frankie woke with a rinsed-out head and wobbly legs. It was an important day. He knew this just as surely as he had absolutely no idea what the day would hold.

It was the second day of the second week of vacation. In the middle of the previous night, he had made a decision.

At 2:07 a.m., and for the seventh night in a row, he had been wide-awake and sweating, alternately opening his eyes and squeezing them shut, alternately viewing the dark forms in his bedroom or the rainbow of pulsing colors inside his head. For the seventh night in a row, his head swam with words — it was roiling with conversations, dictionary definitions, song lyrics, old nursery rhymes, and lists, endless lists: lists of cakes, of school projects, of book titles, of birds, of four-legged animals, sports stats, batting shots, bowling actions, Chilun vocab, flowers, trees, cathedrals, paint colors —
anything
that would stop his mind from straying into uncontrollable territory and his body bolting down the hall. He had been utterly weary, and wearily amazed that a body and brain so desperate for sleep could still fail to achieve it.

In the middle of this seventh sleepless night, Frankie felt nearly resigned to his new state. Probably he would never sleep again; probably he would have a permanently slowed-down half-life now, even though he was only twelve and three quarters. He felt almost intrigued by his monumental exhaustion, by the strange new deadweight of his head and his limbs, the peculiar buzzing sensation that seemed to have settled over his entire skin.

At 1:39 he had switched on his lamp for the hundredth time and picked up
Asterix and Cleopatra
. In the past Asterix had been a reliable soporific, not because he was dull, not at all. He was as comforting as an old friend, funny and pacifying. But now the well-loved jokes and exchanges seemed to shout inside Frankie’s head; the pictures bulged and strobed. He tried to read the words very, very slowly, but then they were being spoken by the rodent voice, and he had to put Asterix down and stare hard at Morrie for reassurance. The absurdity of looking for comfort in a skull did not escape him, but in his new sleepless world everything seemed absurd. Or pointless.

Frankie hadn’t been able to see the point in anything much since the terrible episode at Sydney’s house. For the last week, he had dragged himself around, pushing drearily through each day as if through stiffened porridge. He wasn’t hungry and he couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t be bothered talking. He seemed to have lost his capacity to laugh, too. Louie had been around twice and neither he nor Ray Davies had stirred the faintest hint of mirth.

“Frankie’s lost his mojo,” Louie said.

It was after dinner on Sunday. Louis and Uncle George were playing backgammon at the table. Frankie slouched on the sofa beside Gordana, looking at nothing. Ma was in the kitchen. At dinner she had put her hand on Frankie’s forehead to see if he had a temperature, but Frankie had shaken her off.

“Does one
have
mojo at Frankie’s age?” mused Uncle George.

“Don’t be repulsive,” Gordana said.

But Frankie didn’t care. He didn’t care what any of them said.

“You do look undead,” said Gordana. She rose and stood over him, her hands on her hips. She scowled; she was like a humorless matron, assessing a backsliding patient. “You’ve got massive pits under your eyes. And your hair’s all lank.” She leaned into him and sniffed. “And it smells.”

He hadn’t washed his hair. He couldn’t be bothered. He couldn’t see the point. And what was the point of soap? He just stood under the shower each day and let the water pour over him. Nor could he be bothered drying himself afterward; he wrapped a towel around and stood at his bedroom window, staring into the backyard, which looked suitably dismal now that the trees had lost most of their leaves and a general dampness had descended.

“Everything all right, old chap?” Uncle George asked.

But Frankie had just shrugged and left the room, closing the door on Ray Davies’s hopeful face. He could hear them all as he walked away.

“Definitely in love,” said Louie.

“More like crossed in love,” said Uncle George.

“Like you two would know,” said Gordana.

What would any of them know? Frankie had thought, trudging down the hall. They didn’t have a clue.

But later that evening Gordana had come into his room. She came in without knocking, which had always been her habit, though she hadn’t come near his room for months and months. Frankie was so surprised that a flicker of something stirred momentarily in him. He was sitting on his bed,
Asterix and Cleopatra
open, waiting.

“What’s the matter?” said Gordana.

“Nothing,” said Frankie. It sounded pathetically unconvincing.

“
What
is the matter?” Gordana favored the broken-record technique.

“Vacation,” Frankie mumbled. “Boring. You know, Gigs away.”

“Why didn’t you go to his concert?”

Frankie had rung Dr. Pete on Saturday afternoon and said he wasn’t feeling well. He hadn’t wanted to go to the Brass Gala. The thought of exultant brass music made him feel quite cold inside.

“Too tired,” said Frankie.

“Where’s Sydney?”

“Busy,” said Frankie. “Being a child-minder.”

“What’s
really
the matter?” said Gordana.

She went over to his desk and lifted the lid on the music box. Plastic Lara rose creakily and began turning. The tinny tune and Gordana’s gruff concern seemed to open a pit in Frankie’s chest. It made him give a great dry gulp, and he thought he might cry. He
wanted
to cry. He wanted to crumple up and fall off the bed and wail, maybe even yell. But he couldn’t. It just wouldn’t happen; he was a rag doll without stuffing now, listless beyond belief.

“It’s something to do with Sydney, isn’t it?” said Gordana. “Has something happened with her mother?”

“Nothing new,” said Frankie. Which was technically true.

“Have you had a fight?”

“No,” said Frankie. Also technically true.

He had talked to Sydney just twice since the terrible day. His head had been playing a more-or-less continuous movie of the afternoon, all the scenes and exchanges at hurricane speed: Sydney’s head-down distress at the prospect of leaving alternating with his own humiliating outbursts and the punch-drunk feeling he’d experienced when Freya had delivered her — somehow — inevitable news.

In Frankie’s private film, he seemed to have burst from Sydney’s house not long after that, gasping for air, desperate to get away from the confusion of feelings. The film showed him walking unnaturally fast through the streets, through the Hiroshima Gardens, standing at the midtown bus terminal, reading the timetable over and over, traveling home through the city in a strange repeat of the ride a month earlier, his head so full it was actually blank, a white noise of unspeakable thoughts, and no thoughts at all.

On Wednesday Sydney had phoned. She sounded her normal self, which Frankie found astonishing. They weren’t leaving for three weeks, Sydney said. Frankie had been awake all night, dreaming up solutions. He told her she didn’t need to leave at all, she should come and live at their house, in Louie’s room. Or, it was possible she could live at the Aunties’, in Frankie’s room. He had it all worked out.

He listened to Sydney’s breath, steady and even.

“Face facts, Frankie,” she said eventually.

“What do you
mean
?
Why?
”

“It’s easier.”

He had nearly hung up then. He didn’t understand her. She was too different from him, after all.

“It’s not so far away,” she said. “Two and a half hours by plane is nothing. You can come and visit.”

Frankie was silent.

Sydney sighed. “At least we got
The Valiant Ranger
done,” she said. “Do you think Mr. A will mark it before I go?”

That was when Frankie had hung up. It was an almost involuntary reaction, his body’s response to the mention of their book project. He just couldn’t think about
The Valiant Ranger.
His mind simply snapped shut if he considered it. It was that whole business about the endings, and his demented tirade. If he allowed his thoughts to stray there, he thought he might curl into a ball and stay bunched up for the rest of his days.

Of course he had phoned Sydney back a minute later. He had said, “Thorry” and she had laughed croakily and said she could come over the next day and bring the sketches he’d left behind. But by Thursday Frankie had had two sleepless nights and was feeling extremely strange. And he did not want to see his drawings. He’d rung Sydney and said there was a big order on. Two dozen midwinter Christmas cakes. He had to help Ma.