Freckles(25)

One last attempt.

I swallow, feeling a rising panic in my chest, a swirling in my stomach. I hear the tremble in my voice. His behaviour is unsettling.

It probably went back to Nessie’s farm, I say. So what’s up with your car, I ask.

He stops circling the garden and looks up at me.

I couldn’t drive because of the rats. Come on, he says, with a wave of his hand as though he’s a farmer leading a herd, though Pops doesn’t have a farming bone in his body.

Rats. I follow him. First lambs, now rats. Pops, your shoes, I warn him as he treads mud into the cheap linoleum kitchen floor, all through the house and out to the front garden. He lifts the bonnet of the car and stares into it. He looks at a bunch of wires and I think I look at him the same way. Something wrong with the wiring.

Look.

I don’t know what I’m looking at.

The engine.

Well I know that.

Well then, you know more than you’re letting on. I tried to drive this and smoke came out of the engine. Gerry came over and said rats had made a nest and eaten all the wires. It’s completely gone. He can’t fix it.

Rats, I ask.

That’s what he said. They nibbled through the wires.

Does your insurance cover it.

No, they say they need proof that rats ate the wires. I told them I’d bring one in as a witness to testify to his acts, but how good are they with plea deals.

Jesus. I lean in closer. That’s disgusting. So did they do that damage overnight or were you driving around with them in there.

I don’t know. I suppose if they’d been in there when I was driving, I’d have burned them out, but there’s no dead ones in there that I can see. But it doesn’t explain what they’re doing in the piano.

There’s rats in the piano, I call after him, wide-eyed. As disgusted as I am, I’m relieved he’s not losing it after all. If Gerry was a witness to this then it means he hasn’t made it up. But it leaves the lamb open for investigation. Detective Freckles.

No, not rats, he says as I join him in the music room. I’d say these are mice. House mice.

He has a beautiful baby grand piano. Throughout my youth he taught classes here, individual classes for children and adults, hour after hour on a Saturday. I would play outside or upstairs in my room or watch TV while listening to wrong notes and slow playing while he patiently guided them. Always so patient.

He holds a finger up for me to listen.

I listen.

The room is silent, I don’t hear anything. Just a creak in the floorboards as I shift my weight.

Sshh, he says, annoyed by my disturbance.

He looks into thin air, ear cocked. Something triggers his head to move. He looks at me hopefully. Did I hear that.

I, I clear my throat, I didn’t hear anything.

He stares at the piano. Well it’s not playing right, he says.

Maybe it needs to be tuned. Play me something.

He sits down. His fingers move gently over the keys as he thinks of what to play, as they try to find their place. Mozart’s Piano Concerto number twenty-three, second movement, he says, more to himself, and he starts to play. I’ve heard him play this piece before many times. It’s beautiful, heartbreaking, but haunting. He once bought me a ceramic ballet dancer that played this music when it spun around. You would have to twist it, wind it up, and it would start playing fast but then slow down. Sometimes during the night it would let out a sudden tune, giving me a fright, and as it twisted all by itself I would hide under the covers, avoiding the cold stare of the ballet dancer’s blue eyes. It’s beautiful when Pops plays it, but it always haunted me.

He plays one dud note and he bangs his hands down on the keys. Loudly, dramatically. The deep notes echo for a moment.

Mice, he says, pushing the stool back and standing. I’ll lay another trap. He opens the top. That’ll stop them.

He leaves the room, the smell of his BO staying in the room with me.

Katie is on the train. She’s sitting alone, nobody else beside her. I deliberately followed her into this carriage and watched the empty seat beside her for twenty minutes, anxiously. It’s been about two weeks since she said what she said to me about Pops being a perv and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head, it has kept me awake late into the night doing more scrapes of my skin from freckle to freckle than usual, and to top it off I’m under pressure from girls at school to win back our star player. Something bad was said to me and I’m the one who’s supposed to be apologising for it. Sometimes it would be easier to be a human if there weren’t other humans. I finally build up the courage to sit beside her, and when I do, she looks at me with such fear on her face. I’ve never seen her look like that before and I wonder if her fear is because she’s afraid of me, or because of Pops.

Her eyes widen and she looks around as if trying to catch somebody’s eye for help. What do you want, she asks angrily.

I want to know what you meant about my Pops.

Your Pops, she rolls her eyes. Freckles, I shouldn’t have said anything. I said sorry already, okay. I got mad and it came out and it shouldn’t have.

If you tell me, then I’ll tell Sister Lettuce that I forgive you and to let you back on the team.

She sits up at the mention of that. We’re getting closer to Limerick station, I want her to hurry up.

It’s just something I heard, she says finally.