Commonwealth(22)

Caroline had the bigger room with two sets of bunk beds, and Franny, being smaller, had the smaller room with twin beds. The two sisters were connected by neither love nor mutual affinity but by a very small bathroom that could be entered from the bedroom on either side. Two girls and one bathroom was a workable situation from the beginning of September through the end of May, but in June when Caroline and Franny returned from California they found Holly and Jeanette had made themselves at home in one set of bunk beds while Franny had lost her room completely to the boys. It was four girls in one room and the two boys in the other with a bathroom the size of a phone booth for the six of them to share.

Caroline and Franny lugged their luggage up the stairs. Luggage: that which is to be lugged. They passed the open door of the master bedroom where Cal was lying across their mother’s bed, his dirty feet in dirty socks resting on the pillows, watching a tennis match at top volume. They were never allowed to go into the master bedroom or sit on the bed, even if they kept their feet on the floor, nor were they allowed to watch television without an express invitation. Cal didn’t lift his eyes from the screen or give the smallest recognition of their arrival as they passed.

Holly was behind them, close enough to bump when they stopped walking. “I was thinking that all four of us could dance in white nightgowns. Would that be okay? We could start practicing this afternoon. I’ve got some ideas about the choreography if you want to see.”

As for there being four girls in the dance recital, only three were in evidence. Jeanette was MIA. No one had noticed she was gone, but Franny’s cat Buttercup was missing as well. Buttercup had not come to the door to greet Franny as surely she would have after two weeks away. Buttercup, the lifeline to normalcy, was gone. Beverly, drowning in the sea of child-life, had no clear memory of the last time she’d seen the cat, but Franny’s sudden, paralyzing sobs prompted her to do a thorough search of the house. Beverly found Jeanette beneath a comforter on the floor in the back of the linen closet (how long had Jeanette been missing?). She was petting the sleeping cat.

“She can’t have my cat!” Franny cried, and Beverly leaned down and took the cat from Jeanette, who hung on for only half a second and then let go. The entire time Albie followed Beverly around the house doing what the children referred to as “the stripper soundtrack”:

Boom chicka-boom, boom-boom chicka-boom.

When their mother stopped walking the soundtrack stopped. If she took a single step it was accompanied by Albie saying only “boom” in a voice that was weirdly sexual for a six-year-old. She meant to ignore him but after a while he proved too much for her. When finally she snapped, screaming “Stop that!” he only looked at her. He had the most enormous brown eyes, and loose, loopy brown curls that made him look like a cartoon animal.

“I’m serious,” she said, making an effort to steady her breathing. “You have to stop that.” She tried to find within her own voice a sound that was reasonable, parental, but when she turned to walk away she heard the small, quiet chug, “Boom chicka-boom.”

Beverly thought about killing him. She thought about killing a child. Her hands were shaking. She went to her room, wanting to close the door and lock it and go to sleep, but from the hallway she heard the thwack of a tennis ball, the roar of a crowd. She stuck her head around the doorframe. “Cal?” she said, trying not to cry. “I need my room now.”

Cal didn’t move, not a twitch. He kept his eyes on the screen. “It’s not over,” he said, as if she had never seen a tennis match before and didn’t understand that when the ball was in motion it meant the game was still going on.

Bert didn’t believe in television for children. At its most harmless he saw it as a waste of time, a bunch of noise. At its most harmful he wondered if it didn’t stunt brain development. He thought Teresa had made a huge mistake letting the children watch so much TV. He had told her not to do it but she never listened to him when it came to parenting, when it came to anything. That’s why he and Beverly had only one television in this house, and why it was in their bedroom, which wasn’t open to children, or wasn’t open to her children during the regular course of the year. Now Beverly wanted to unplug the television and cart it off to what the realtor had called “the family room,” though no member of the family ever seemed to light there. She went down the hallway, Albie following at a safe distance, churning his music. Did his mother teach him that? Someone taught him. Six-year-olds didn’t hang out in strip clubs, not even this one. Beverly went into the girls’ room but Holly was there reading Rebecca.

“Beverly, have you ever read Rebecca?” Holly asked as soon as Beverly stepped into the room, her little face bright, bright, bright. “Mrs. Danvers is scaring me to death but I’m going to keep reading it. I don’t care if I had the chance to live in Manderley. I wouldn’t stay there if someone was being that creepy to me.”

Beverly nodded slightly and backed out of the room. She thought about trying to lie down in the boys’ room, the room that had once been Franny’s, but it had a vaguely nutty smell reminiscent of socks and underwear and unwashed hair.

She went downstairs again and found Caroline banging around the kitchen in a rage, saying she was going to make brownies for her father and mail them to him so he’d have something to eat.

“Your father doesn’t like nuts in his brownies,” Beverly said. She didn’t know why she said it. She was trying to be helpful.