Beck does without thinking. But she jumps on him, yowling like a kitten made of cacti, and Beck goes down in a tangle of shirtsleeves and mismatched buttons.
She’s only his half-sister – the Maestro has an affinity for short relationships that end in screaming fits and neither he nor Joey knew their fathers – but Joey’s a pocketful of light in his gloomy existence. He has to love her twice as hard to make up for the sin of hating his mother.
Predictably, breakfast is cornflakes with a side dish of disapproval.
Has there ever been a time when the Maestro didn’t greet him with a glare?
She sits in a corner of their tiny kitchen with squash-coloured décor that probably looked trendy thirty years ago. Who is Beck kidding? That shade of yellow never looked good. A single piece of burnt buttered toast sits next to her mug of coffee. The table can seat three, if no one minds bumping elbows, but as usual it’s flooded with the Maestro’s sheets of music. She tutors musicianship and theory at the university. Beck wonders how often her students cry.
Beck slinks past, telling himself he did everything right. She has nothing to erupt about. It’ll be OK – totally OK.
He reaches for two bowls as Joey bangs around his legs, prattling about how she’s going to be a chef when she grows up.
‘And I’m gonna call my restaurant –’ she sucks in a deep breath to yell ‘– JOEY’S GOODEST GRUB.’ She jabs her spoon into Beck’s ribs to get his attention. ‘That’s a great name, right?’
‘Yow – yes.’ He snatches the spoon off her.
He fills Joey’s bowl with cornflakes first, which leaves him with the mostly smashed flake dust. With milk, it’ll become sludge. Brilliant. He sets Joey’s bowl on her pink plastic kiddie table in the corner, and eats his while leaning on the fridge.
Joey launches into a detailed description of what her chef apron will look like – something about it being shaped like a unicorn – which exactly no one listens to.
Beck watches the Maestro’s red pen whip over the music. The students’ work looks like something has been murdered over it.
Beck checks the plastic bag with his squashed sandwich. Joey has a thing about making his lunch. He sniffs it and detects peanut butter, tomato sauce and – are those raw pasta shells? Maybe he’d rather not know.
‘You’ll be late.’ The Maestro’s voice is deep and raspy. Even if she didn’t have the temperament of a bull, she’s an intimidating-looking woman. Broad-shouldered, six foot, with a crop of wiry black hair like a bristle brush – and she has long, spider-like fingers born for the piano.
Beck shovels the last globs of cornflake sludge into his mouth and then runs for the school bags. He crams in his untouched homework and sandwich, but takes more time with Joey’s – checking that she has a clean change of clothes in there, that her gumboots are dry, and her rainbow jacket isn’t too filthy. A finger-comb through his curly hair and duct-taped shoes on his feet, and he’s ready.
Joey pops out of her bedroom dressed in overalls with a pink beanie over her brush-resistant black curls. She snatches her jacket off Beck and dances towards the door. Preschool is blissfully free of dress regulations.
Beck has worn the same uniform shirt for so long it looks more pink than red.
They’re about to run for the front door when the Maestro shuffles papers and says, ‘A word, mein Sohn.’
Really? They have to do this now? She couldn’t just let them skid out of the door, out of her hair, without raking him over the hot coals for once?
Joey kicks the front door open with her glittered gumboots. ‘I’m gonna beat you there!’ she yells.
Beck slinks back into the kitchen, slowly, his eyes on the ugly tiled floor. If he doesn’t make eye contact with the tiger, it won’t eat him, right? One of these days he’ll just bolt out the door, defy her, just once. Instead of acting the obedient puppy, resigned to its next kick.
‘Ja, Mutter?’ He uses German as a tentative appeasement.
The Maestro lays down the red pen and kneads her knotted fingers. The tremors have already started for the day – the tremors that destroyed her career and turned her into a tornado over Beck’s.
Painfully slow seconds tick by like swats against Beck’s face.
He has to get out.
Needs
to
leave.
‘You woke late,’ the Maestro says. ‘I don’t permit Faulheit in my house.’
‘I didn’t mean to be lazy.’ Yeah, he slept in all of twelve minutes. ‘I’m sorry.’ Suck up. It’s the only way to get out alive.
The Maestro snorts. ‘Why are you inept at dedication and commitment? Do you want your progress to stagnate?’ She picks up her mug. It trembles violently and coffee sloshes over the side. ‘Or is this your streak of teenage rebellion?’ She sneers the word ‘teenage’, like she never was one. Which is highly likely. Beck always imagines she strode into the world as a bitter giant, ready to clobber everyone with a piano.
‘I’m sorry.’ Beck resists a glance at the front door to see how far Joey’s gone. He doesn’t like her to cross the road alone.
‘Ja, of course you are sorry. A little parrot with only one phrase to say. A lazy parrot who – look at me when I speak to you.’ Her crunchy voice rises, and she hauls herself upright, more coffee escaping her mug and dripping down her wrist.
He doesn’t want to do this again. He’s going to be late.
‘Mutter, please, I’ve got school.’ Beck snatches a glance at the clock.
Her hand flashes out of nowhere and slaps his face. The shock of it sends him a step backwards. He always forgets how fast she can move.
‘Do not disrespect me!’ she snaps. ‘School is not important. I am speaking to you. That is important.’
Beck does nothing.
‘The only important thing in your life is the piano.’ Her voice shakes the ceiling plaster. ‘The piano is life. And every time you laze instead of practising, you shame me. You shame my name. You’ll amount to nothing, Sohn, nothing! Are you listening?’
‘Yes, Mutter.’ Beck speaks to his shoes.
‘Is my advice a joke to you? LOOK AT ME WHEN I SPEAK.’
Beck’s neck snaps straight to stare into her angry eyes – and she tosses her coffee straight in his face.
There’s a petrifying moment when he thinks it’ll be hot, that it’ll scald the skin off his bones. But it’s lukewarm. Coffee slides down his face and soaks his hair, his shirt collar.
Beck chokes on something – definitely not a whimper, possibly rage – and clenches his hands behind his back.
‘Does this feel like a joke now?’
Beck refuses to wipe his face. He stands statue still and meets her eyes again. ‘No.’
The Maestro lowers the empty mug, which is, Beck concedes, a positive movement since she didn’t smash it across his skull to finalise the lesson.
‘That is how it feels,’ the Maestro says, ‘when you throw the sacrifices I’ve made for you back in my face. Now go to school, du Teufel.’
You devil.
He doesn’t ask to change his shirt – he’s not going to stick around in case she changes her mind and flings the mug at his teeth – so he just nods and runs for the door. Goodbye, Mother, thank you, Mother, what would I do without your helpful life advice, Mother. He wants to hurt something. But all he can do is shut the front door, quietly, respectfully, and turn around and punch the brick wall.
But not too hard.
He can’t bust his hand – or she’d really kill him.
Blood bubbles on his knuckles as he walks down the driveway and catches up with Joey, who’s picking weeds and dandelions along the broken footpath.
‘This is for my teacher,’ Joey says proudly.
‘I’m sure she’ll love those affectionately picked weeds.’ Beck flexes his hand: stupid, stupid, stupid. But he’s pleased his voice stays level, kind. He’ll never let anything affect how he treats and talks to Joey.
Joey wrinkles her nose. ‘Why are you wet?’
Beck takes her hand in his bleeding one. ‘It was just a joke,’ he says.
Maybe it is a joke, all of this.
His life.
This school.
This place.
Maybe if he just laughed it off, didn’t let it touch him –